The age in which we live is not more remarkable for its rapid onward movement than for its intelligent retrospect of the past. It is reconstructive as well as progressive. The light which is kindled by the practical discoveries of modern science, throws back its rays, and enables us to distinguish objects of interest, which have been unnoticed in the gloom of bygone ages, or passed over with contempt.
Men observe only those things which their occupations or their education enable them to understand and appreciate. When a savage is introduced on board the deck of a European vessel, he notices only those objects with the uses of which he is familiar--the sewing of a coat, a chain, or a cable, at once rivets his attention, but he passes by the steam-engine without observation, and if a work of art is forced upon his notice, he is unable to say whether it represents a man, a ship, or a kangaroo![14] So in past ages the flint implements of the drift, the parents of all our modern implements, whether for war or handicraft, must have been carted away in hundreds, unobserved, and in ignorance that these inconspicuous objects would one day be the means of upsetting the received chronology of our species.
Whilst, therefore, we devote our energies chiefly to progress, and fix our attention upon the present and future of war, it cannot fail to interest those who are actively engaged in the duties of their profession, if we occasionally take a glance backward and see what recent discoveries have done towards elucidating its origin and early history.
It might, perhaps, assist a right understanding of the principles on which the weapons and implements of savages deserve to be studied, if I were to notice some of those great questions respecting the origin of our species, and man’s place in nature, which the investigations of science have been the means of raising in our day. I need hardly say that the rude implements, which I am about to describe, are of little practical interest in themselves, as models for instruction or imitation. We have no need of bows and arrows in the existing state of war, and if we did require them, the appliances of modern times would enable us to construct them in far greater perfection than could be acquired by any lessons from savages. These weapons are valuable only, in the absence of other evidence, from the light they throw on prehistoric times, and on those great questions to which I have alluded, and from their enabling us to trace out the origin of many of those customs which have been handed down to us by past generations.