I have compared these weapons of the Australians with others of the same form in various parts of the world, showing grounds for believing that whenever we shall be able to collect a sufficient variety of specimens to represent the continuous progression of each locality, the _modus operandi_ will be found to have been everywhere the same.
Lastly, I have alluded cursorily to the analogy which exists between the development of the arts and the development of species. It may be better to postpone any comprehensive generalization on this subject until a much larger mass of evidence has been collected and arranged. Sir Charles Lyell has devoted a chapter in his work on the _Antiquity of Man_ to a comparison of the development of languages and the development of species. ‘We may compare,’ he says, 'the persistency of languages, or the tendency of each generation to adopt without change the vocabulary of its predecessor, to the force of inheritance in the organic world, which causes the offspring to resemble its parents. The inventive power which coins new words or modifies old ones, and adapts them to new wants and conditions as often as they arise, answers to the variety-making power in the animal creation.’ He also compares the selection of words and their incorporation into the language of a people, with the selection of species, resulting in both cases in the survival of the fittest (4th ed., 1873, p. 503).
Whilst, however, we dwell upon the analogy which exists between the phenomena of the organic world and the phenomena of human culture, we must not omit to notice the points of difference. The force of inheritance may resemble in its effects the principle of conservatism in the arts and culture of mankind, but they are totally dissimilar causes.
The variety-making power may resemble the inventive power of man; nothing, however, can be more dissimilar, except as regards results.
When, therefore, we find that like results are produced through the instrumentality of totally dissimilar causes, we must attribute the analogy to some prior and more potent cause, influencing the whole alike.
It might be premature to speculate upon the course of reasoning which this class of study is likely to introduce; this much, however, we may, I think, safely predict as the result of our investigation, that we shall meet with no encouragement to deify secondary causes.