CHAPTER XIV.

CONCLUSION.

[Sidenote: Vortices of national life.]

At this point, where we are bringing our inquiries to a conclusion, we

would fain look a little nearer into the mists which shroud the past,

and descry, were it possible, the actual dawn of history for the

individual nations; would see, not only how the larger bodies of men

have travelled through the prehistoric stages of their journey, but how,

having reached its settled home, each people begins to emerge from the

obscurity that surrounds its early days. What were the exact means, we

ask, whereby a collection of nomadic or half-nomadic tribes separated,

reunited, separated again, and developed upon different soils the

qualities which distinguish them from all others? What _is_, in fact,

the beginning of real national life?

The worlds which circle round the sun, or rather, the multitudinous

systems of orbs which fill space, might pose a like inquiry. There was a

time when _these_ which are now distinct worlds were confounded as a

continuous nebula, a thin vapour of matter whirling round in one

unchanging circle. In time, their motion became less uniform,

vortices--as the word is--set in, smaller bodies of vaporous matter

which, still obeying the universal movement, set up internal motions

among themselves, and cooling, separated into separate orbs. How like is

all this process to the history of nations! These, confounded once

together in one unstable mass of wandering tribes, have in like manner

separated from their nebulous brethren, and, setting up their internal

vortices, have coalesced into nations. And yet as a system of planets,

albeit with their own distinctive motions, do all revolve in one

direction round one central force, so the different families of nations,

which we may call the planets of a system, seem in like manner compelled

by a power external to themselves in one particular course to play a

particular part in the world’s history. The early stone-age Turanians,

the Cushite civilizers of Egypt and Chaldæa, the Semitic people, may all

be looked upon as different systems of nations, each with its mission to

the human race. Thus, too, the Aryan people, after they had once become

so separated as to lose all family remembrance, are found working

together to accomplish an assigned destiny, migrating in every

direction, and carrying with them everywhere the seeds of a higher

civilization.

The rays of history are seen gradually spreading from Egypt up through

Mesopotamia to the nations of Palestine--not yet the land of the

Hebrews--then to Asia Minor, and so to Greece. That is the land-root of

civilization. We are speaking rather of succession in time than of

actual succession by inheritance. We cannot tell, at any rate, that

Chaldæa was in any way indebted to Egypt for its early civilization, or

Egypt to Chaldæa. But with the exception of that blank, the rest of the

progress of civilization by inheritance does follow pretty clearly. The

Assyrian Empire inherited from the old Babylonian Empire. And the

nations of Palestine inherited from Egypt and Assyria both. On the

borders of Asia Minor were two peoples who commanded--for a time, at

any rate--the trade routes from Palestine and Mesopotamia into Asia

Minor. These two peoples were the Hittites[139] and the Phœnicians.

One commanded the trade route by land, the other commanded it by sea. Of

the first we know at present very little--little more than that they had

a capital at Karkemish; that they commanded the navigation of the

Orontes and the Upper Euphrates; and that they were at one time strong

enough to stand at the head of a confederation of peoples who made war

upon Egypt when at the summit of her power. There can be little doubt

that the Hittites passed on to the peoples of Asia Minor, who were in

blood nearly allied to the Greeks, some of the civilization of the

Semitic peoples farther south, and that these peoples passed the same on

to the Greeks of Asia Minor.

But of course the Phœnicians must still be reckoned as the great

transporters of civilization from Egypt and from Asia to the rest of the

world. They could hardly be said to possess a country; but they

possessed cities of vast importance and no small magnificence along the

coast of Palestine--Lamyra, Aradus, Byblos, Sydon, Tyre. From these

centres went out that boundless maritime enterprise which made the

Phœnicians the trading people of the world. Very early--in

pre-historic ages--the Phœnicians had possessed themselves of Cyprus.

From that point to the Grecian coast of Asia Minor, or to the coasts and

islands on either side of the Ægean, was an easy transition; then on to

the Mediterranean, to Sicily and Italy, but more especially to the

island of Sardinia; or again to Egypt and the farther coasts of Africa

on to Spain, and finally, through the Pillars of Heracles, to the

far-off ‘tin islands’ of the west, which were, it is likely enough, the

British Isles. This is, in brief, the picture of the doings of the

Phœnicians long before the days of history had begun to dawn upon the

Aryan nations of the Mediterranean.

If we desire to get any idea of the process by which the separation of

the Aryan peoples became completed, we must put quite upon one side the

idea of a nation as we see it now. Now, when we speak the word, we think

of a political unit subject to one government, stationary, and confined

within pretty exact limits of space. But very different were the nations

during the process of their formation; there was scarcely any political

unity among them, their homes were unfixed, their members constantly

shifting and changing combinations, like those heaps of sand we see

carried along in a cyclone. Let us, then, forget our political atlases,

with their different colours and well-marked boundaries, and think not

of the inanimate adjunct of a nation, the soil on which it happens to

dwell, but of the nation as the men of whom it is made up. The earliest

things we discern are those vortices set up in the midst of a

homogeneous people, an attractive power somewhere in the midst of them

which draws them into closer fellowship. It acts like the attractive

power of a crystal in selecting from any of the surrounding matters the

fragments most suited to its proper formation. Thus the earliest

traditions of a people are generally the history of some individual

tribe from which the whole nation feigns itself descended; either

because of its actual pre-eminence from the beginning, the power it had

of drawing other tribes to share its fortunes, or because, out of many

tribes drawn together by some common interest or sentiment, the bards of

later days selected this one tribe from among the others, and adopted

its traditions for their own. If we remember this, much that would

otherwise appear a hopeless mass of contradiction and ambiguity is

capable of receiving a definite meaning.

[Sidenote: The Greeks.]

The first rays of European history shine upon the island-dotted sea and

bounding coasts of the Ægean. Here sprang into life the Greek people,

who have left behind so splendid a legacy of art and philosophy. These,

as has been already said, made their entry into Europe traversing the

southern shores of the Euxine, along which passed, still as one people,

the ancestors of the Greeks and the Italians. The former, at all events,

seem to have delayed long upon their route, and it was upon these

shores, or perhaps rather in the tableland of ancient Phrygia, that

first began the separation of two races who reunited to form the Greek

nation. Some, the older race, the Pelasgi, made their way to the

Hellespont, and by that route into European Greece; the others, the

Ionians as they subsequently became, passed onward to the sea-shore of

Asia Minor, and, tempted no doubt by the facilities of the voyage,

crossed from this mainland to the neighbouring islands, which lie so

thickly scattered over the Ægean that the mariner passing from shore to

shore of Asiatic and European Greece need never on his voyage lose sight

of land. They did not, however, find these islands deserted, or occupied

by savages only. The Phœnicians had been there beforehand, as they

were beforehand upon almost every coast in Europe, and had made

mercantile stations and established small colonies for the purposes of

trading with the Pelasgi of Greece. The adventurous Ionians were thus

brought early into contact with the advanced civilization of Asia, and

from this source gained in all probability a knowledge of navigation,

letters, and some of the Semitic mythical legends. Thus while the

mainland Greeks had altered little of the primitive culture, the germs

of a Hellenic civilization, of a Hellenic life, were being fostered in

the islands of the Ægean. We see this reflected in many Greek myths--in

the legend, for example, of Minôs and his early Cretan kingdom; in the

myth of Aphroditê springing from the sea by Cythera; and in the worship

of Phœbus Apollo which sprang up in Delos. Legend spoke of two

Minôses--one, the legislator of Crete, representative of all that was

most ancient in national policy, and for that reason transferred to be

the judge of souls in Hell; the second, he who made war against the

Athenians, and compelled them to pay their dreadful yearly tribute of

seven youths and seven maidens to be devoured of the Minotaur in the

Cretan labyrinth. Until Theseus came. No doubt the two Minôses are but

amplifications of one being, who, whether mythical or historical, is an

echo in the memory of Greeks of the still older Cretan kingdom. In both

tales Minôs has a dreadful aspect; perhaps because this ‘Lord of the

Isles’ had been inimical to the early growing communities of the

mainland.

The myths of Aphroditê and Apollo have been already commented upon as

enfolding within them the history of their origin. Aphroditê is

essentially an Asiatic divinity; she springs to life in a Phœnician

colony. But Phœbus Apollo is before all things the god of the Ionian

Greeks; and as _their_ first national life begins in the islands, _his_

birth too takes place in one of these, the central one of all, Delos. In

Homer, Delos, or Ortygia, is feigned to be the central spot of the

earth.

Thus the Greeks were from the beginning a commercial people. Before

their history began, there is proof that they had established a colony

in the Delta of the Nile; and the frequent use of the word _Javan_[140]

in the Bible--which here stands for Ionians--shows how familiar was

their name to the dwellers in Asia. Wherever these mariners came in

contact with their brethren of the continent, they excited in them the

love of adventure, and planted the germs of a new life, so that it was

under their paramount influence that these primitive Greeks began to

coalesce from mutually hostile tribes into nations. In Northern Greece

it was that the gathering together of tribes and cities first began.

These confederations were always based primarily upon religious union,

the protection of a common deity, a union to protect and support a

common shrine. They were called Amphictyonies, confederations of

neighbours, a name which lived long in the history of Greece. These

amphictyonies seem first to have arisen in the north. Here too the words

_Hellenic_, _Hellenes_, first spring up as national epithets. Hellas

never extended farther north than the north of Thessaly, and was

naturally marked off from foreign countries by Olympia and Pierus. But

the term spread southwards till it embraced all Greek-speaking lands to

the extremity of the peninsula, and over the islands of the Ægean, and

the coast of Asia Minor, on to the countless colonies which issued from

Greek shores; for Hellas was not a geographical term, it included all

the peoples of true Hellenic speech, and distinguished them from the

_barbaroi_, the ‘babblers,’ of other lands.

The two great nations of the Græco-Italic family kept up some knowledge

of each other after they had forgotten the days of their common life,

and, strange to say, in days before either of the two races had come to

regard itself as a distinct people, each was so regarded by the other.

The Italians classed the Greeks in the common name of Græci or Graii,

and the Greeks bestowed the name of Ὀπικός upon the nation of

the Italians. It is curious to reflect upon the different destinies

which lay ahead of these two races, who came under such similar

conditions into their new homes. Whether it were through some

peculiarity in their national character, or a too-rapid civilization, or

the two great influences of a changeful character and adventurous life,

the Greeks never cemented properly together the units of their race; the

Italians, through a much slower process of integration, lived to weld

their scattered fragments into the most powerful nation the world has

ever seen.

[Sidenote: The Romans.]

This second half, then, of the Græco-Italic family, crossing the

Hellespont like (or with) the first dwellers in Greece proper, proceeded

onwards until, skirting the shores of the Adriatic, they found out a

second peninsula, whose fertile plains tempted them to dispute the

possession of the land with the older inhabitants. Who were these older

inhabitants? In part they must have been those lake-dwellers of northern

Italy to whom reference was made in our second chapter, and who were

evidently closely allied to the stone-age men of Switzerland; but

besides these we have almost no trace of the men who were dispossessed

by the Italic tribes, and these last, who pushed to the farthest

extremity of the peninsula, must have completely absorbed, or completely

exterminated, the aborigines. The process by which the Italians spread

over the land is altogether hidden from us. Doubtless their several

seats were not assigned to the different branches at once, or without

bloodshed. Though still no more than separate tribes, we are able to

divide the primitive Italians into stocks of which the southern most

resembled the ancient type of the Pelasgic family; those in the centre

formed the Latin group; while north of these (assuming that they, too,

were Aryans) lay the Etruscans, the most civilized of all the three. At

this time the tribes seem to have acknowledged no common bond, nothing

corresponding to the word Hellenic had sprung up to unite their

interests: existence was as yet to the strongest only. And while the

land was in this chaotic state, one tribe, or small confederacy of

tribes, among the Latin people began to assert its pre-eminence. We see

them dimly looming through a cloud of fable, daring, warlike,

unscrupulous in their dealings with their neighbours, firm in their

allegiance to each other. This tribe gradually increased in strength and

proportions till, from being a mere band of robbers defending themselves

within their rude fortifications, they grew in the traditions of their

descendants, and of the other tribes whom in course of time they either

subdued or absorbed, to be regarded as the founders of Rome. They did

not accomplish their high destiny without trials and reverses. More

powerful neighbouring kingdoms looked on askance during the days of

their rise, and found opportunity more than once to overthrow their city

and all but subdue their state. Their former brethren, the Celts,[141]

who had been beforehand of all the Aryan races in entering Europe, and

now formed the most powerful people in this quarter of the globe,

several times swept down upon them like a devastating storm. But after

each reverse the infant colony arose with renewed Antæan vigour.

Thus in Italy, the development from the tribal to the national state was

internal. No precocious maritime race awoke in many different centres

the seeds of nationality; rather this nationality was a gradual growth

from one root, the slow response to a central attractive force. The

energy of Rome did not go out in sea adventure, or in the colonization

of distant lands; but it was firmly bent to absorb the different people

of her own peninsula, people of like blood with herself, but in every

early stage of culture from an almost nomadic condition to one of

considerable advancement in the arts of peace.

[Sidenote: The Celts.]

When from the Greeks and Romans we turn to the Celts and Teutons, we

must descend much lower in the records of history before we can get any

clear glimpse at these. The Celts, who were probably the first Aryans in

Europe, seem gradually to have been forced farther and farther west by

the incursions of other peoples. At one time, however, we have evidence

that they extended eastward, at least as far as the Rhine, and over all

that northern portion of Italy--now Lombardy and part of Sardinia--which

to the Romans went by the name of Cisalpine Gaul. The long period of

subjection to the Roman rule which Gaul experienced, obliterated in that

country all traces of its early Celtic manners, and we are reduced for

our information concerning these to the pages of Roman historians, or to

the remains of Celtic laws and customs preserved in the western homes of

the race. The last have only lately received a proper attention. The

most primitive Irish code--the Brehon laws--has been searched for traces

of the primitive Celtic life. From both our sources we gather that the

Celts were divided into tribes regarded as members of one family. These

clans were ruled over by chiefs, whose offices were hereditary, or very

early became so. They were thus but slightly advanced out of the most

primitive conditions,--they cannot be described as a nation. Had they

been so, extensive and warlike as they were, they would have been

capable of subduing all the other infant nationalities of Aryan folk. As

it was, as mere combinations of tribes under some powerful chieftain

(Cæsar describes just such), they gave trouble to the Roman armies even

under a Cæsar, and were in early days the most dreadful enemies of the

Republic. Under Brennus, they besieged and took Rome, sacked the city,

and were only induced to retire on the payment of a heavy ransom. A

hundred years later, under another Brennus, they made their way into

Thrace, ravaged the whole country, and from Nicomedes, King of Bithynia,

obtained a settlement in Asia Minor in the district which from them

received the name of Galatia. The occurrence of those two chiefs named

Brennus shows us that this could hardly have been a mere personal name.

It is undoubtedly the Celtic Brain, a king or chieftain, the same from

which we get the mythic Bran,[142] and in all probability the Irish

O’Brien. The recognition of the Celtic fighting capacity in the ancient

world is illustrated by another circumstance, and this is more

especially interesting to us of the modern world, whose army is so

largely made up of Celts from Ireland and Scotland (Highlanders). Hierôn

I., the powerful tyrant of Syracuse, founded his despotism, as he

afterwards confessed, chiefly upon his standing army of thirty thousand

Gaulish mercenaries whom he kept always in his pay.

For the rest, we know little of the internal Celtic life and of the

extent of its culture. Probably this differed considerably in different

parts, in Gaul for instance, and in Ireland. The slight notices of

Gaulish religion which Cæsar and Pliny give refer chiefly to its

external belongings, to the hereditary sacerdotal class, who seem also

to have been the bardic class; of its myths and of their real

significance we know little more than what can be gathered by analogy of

other nations. We may assert that their nature-worship approached most

nearly to the Teutonic form among those of all the Aryan peoples.

Peculiarly interesting to us are such traces as can be

[Sidenote: The Teutons.]

gleaned of the Teutonic race. The first time we have seen that they show

themselves upon the stage of history is possibly in company with the

Celts, supposing for a moment that the Cimbri, who in company with the

Teutones, the Tigurini, and the Ambrones were defeated by Marius (B.C.

101), were Celts.[143] What branch of the German family (if any) the

Teutones were, is quite uncertain. Again, in the pages of Cæsar we meet

with several names of tribes evidently of German origin. The Treviri,

the Marcomanni (Mark men, men of the march or boundary), Allemanni

(all-men, or men of the great or the mixed[144] nation), the Suevi

(Suabians), the Cherusci--men of the sword, perhaps the same as

_Saxons_, whose name has the same meaning.

It is not till after the death of Theodosius at the end of the fourth

century of our era that the Germans fill a conspicuous place on the

historical canvas. By this time they had come to be divided into a

number of different nations, similar in most of the elements of their

civilization and barbarism, closely allied in languages, but politically

unconnected, or even opposed. Most of these Teutonic peoples grew into

mighty nations and deeply influenced the future of European history. It

is therefore right that we pass them rapidly in review. 1. The Goths had

been long settled in the region of the Lower Danube, chiefly in the

country called Mœsia, where Ulfilas, a Gothic prince who had been

converted to Christianity, returned to preach to his countrymen, became

a bishop among them, and by his translation of the Bible into their

tongue, the Mœso-Gothic, has left a perpetual memorial of the

language. During the reign of Honorius, the son of Theodosius, a

portion of this nation, the West-or Visi-goths, quitted their home and

undertook under Alaric (All-king) their march into Italy, thrice

besieged and finally took Rome. Then turning aside, they founded a

powerful kingdom in the south of Gaul and in Spain. A century later the

East-Goths (Ostro-Goths), under the great Theodoric (People’s-king)

again invaded Italy and founded an Ostrogothic kingdom upon the ruins of

the Western Empire. 2, 3, 4, 5. The Suevi, Alani, Burgundians, and

Vandals crossed the Rhine in 405, and entered Roman territory, never

again to return to whence they came. The Burgundians (City-men) fixed

their abode in East-Central Gaul (Burgundy and Switzerland), where their

kingdom lasted till it was subdued by the Franks; but the other three

passed on into Spain, and the Vandals (Wends[145]) from Spain into

Africa, where they founded a kingdom. 6. The Franks (Free-men), having

been for nearly a century settled between the Meuse and the Scheldt,

began under Clovis (Chlodvig, Hludwig, Lewis) (A.D. 480) their career of

victory, from which they did not rest until the whole of Gaul owned the

sway of Merovingian kings. 7. The Longobardi (Long-beards, or men of the

long borde, long stretch of alluvial land), who after the Ostrogoths had

been driven out of Italy by the Emperor of the East, founded in defiance

of his power a second Teutonic kingdom in that country--a kingdom which

lasted till the days of Charlemagne. 8. And last, but we may safely say

not least, the Saxons (Sword-men, from _seaxa_, a sword), who invaded

Britain, and under the name of Angles (Engle) founded the nation to

which we belong, the longest-lived of all those which rose upon the

ruins of the Roman Empire.

The condition of the German people, even so late as the time when they

began their invasion of the Roman territory, was far behind that of the

majority of their Aryan fellows. It is likely that they were little more

civilized than the Greeks and Romans were, in days when they lived

together as one collection of tribes. For the moment when we catch sight

of these--the Greeks and Romans--in their new homes, we see them settled

agriculturists, with no trace left of their wandering habits. It was not

so with the Teutons: they knew agriculture certainly, they had known it

before they separated from the other peoples of the European family (for

the Greek and Latin words for plough reappear in Teutonic speech[146]);

but they had not altogether bid adieu to their migratory life--we see

them still flowing in a nebulous condition into the Roman lands. Even

the Tartars of our day--the very picture of a nomadic people--practise

some form of agriculture. They plant buckwheat, which, growing up in a

few months, allows them to reap the fruits of their industry without

tying them long to a particular spot. The Teutons were more stationary

than the Tartars, but doubtless they too were constantly shifting their

homes--choosing fresh homesteads, as Tacitus says they did, wherever any

spot, or grove, or stream attracted them. The condition of society

called the village community, which has been described in a former

chapter, though long abandoned by the cultivated Greeks and Romans, was

still suitable to the exigencies of _their_ life; but these exigencies

imposed upon it some fresh conditions. Their situation, the situation of

those who made their way into the western countries of Europe, was

essentially that of conquerors; for they must keep in subjection the

original inhabitants, whether Romans or Celts; and so all their social

arrangements bent before the primary necessity of maintaining an

effective war equipment. Age and wisdom were of less value to the

community than youthful vigour. The patriarchal chief, chosen for his

reputation for wisdom and swaying by his mature counsels the free

assemblies of the states, gives place with them to the leader, famous

for his valour and fortunes in the field, by virtue of which he exacts a

more implicit obedience than would be accorded in unwarlike times, until

by degrees his office becomes hereditary; the partition of the conquered

soil among the victors, and the holding of it upon conditions of

military service, conditions which led so easily to the assertion of a

principle of primogeniture, and thence, by slow but natural stages, to

the conditions of tenure known as _feudal_; these are the marks of the

early Teutonic society.

Such germs of literary life as the Teutons possessed were enshrined in

ballads, such as all nations possess in some form. The re-echoes of

these have come down to us in the earliest known poems by men of

Teutonic race, all of which are unfortunately of very recent date. All

are distinguished by the principle of versifying which is essentially

Teutonic; the trusting of the cadence, not to an exact measurement of

syllables or quantities, but to the pauses or beats of the voice in

repetition, the effect of these beats being heightened by the use of

alliteration. Poems of this true Teutonic character, though many of them

in their present shape are late in date, are the well-known old German

lay of _Hadubrand and Hildebrand_, the old Scandinavian poems which we

call Eddic poems, our old English poem _Beowulf_, and the _Bard’s Tale_

and the _Fight of Finnesburg_, and finally that long German poem called

the _Nibelungen_, or say the poem out of which this long one has been

made. These poems repeat old mythic legends, many of which have for

centuries been handed down from father to son, and display the mythology

and religion of our German ancestors, such as in a former chapter we

endeavoured to sketch them out. Slight as they are, they are of

inestimable value, in that they help us to read the mind of heathen

Germany, and to weigh the significance of the last great revolution in

Europe’s history--a revolution wherein we, through our ancestors, have

taken and through ourselves are still taking part, and in which we have

therefore so close an interest.

But having carried the reader down to this point, our task comes to an

end. Even for Europe, the youngest born as it were in the world’s

history, when we have passed the epoch of Teutonic invasion, the star of

history _sera rubens_ has definitely risen. Nations from this time

forward emerge more and more into the light, and little or nothing falls

to the part of pre-historic study.

APPENDIX.

NOTES AND AUTHORITIES.

⁂ For the convenience of the reader, authorities are cited

whenever it is possible in an English form, and if not in an

English, in a French.

CHAPTERS I. AND II.

Christy and Lartet, _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ_.

Davis and Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_.

Dawkins, _Cave Hunting_.

Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_.

Evans, _Stone Implements of Great Britain_.

Evans, _Bronze Implements of Great Britain_.

Geikie, _The Great Ice Age_.

Greenwell, _British Barrows_.

Keller, _The Lake-Dwellings of Switzerland_ (trs. Lee).

Lyell, _Antiquity of Man_.

Lubbock, _Pre-historic Times_.

Mortillet, _Origine de la Navigation et de la Pêche_.

Mortillet, _Promenades Préhistoriques à l’Exposition_.

Mortillet, _Le Préhistorique, L’Antiquité de l’homme_.

Montelius, _La Suède Préhistorique_.

Tylor, _Anthropology_.

Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_.

Tylor, _Primitive Culture_.

Troyon, _Habitations Lacustres_.

Worsaae, _The Pre-history of the North_ (trs. Simpson).

And numerous articles in the Archæological and Anthropological journals

of England, France, and Germany.

Pp. 8, and 14-15. _Antiquity of Man._--The question concerning the

history of Palæolithic man which presses the most immediately for

solution, is that which has been just touched upon here: whether the

variety of animal remains with which the remains of men are found

associated, do really point to an immensely lengthened period of his

existence, in this primitive state. We have said that human bones are

found associated with those of the mammoth (_Elephas primigenius_),

those of the woolly rhinoceros, and with the remains of other animals

whose existence seems to imply a cold-temperate, or almost frigid,

climate; at another place, or a little lower in the same river bed (the

higher gravel beds are the oldest), we may find the bones of the

hippopotamus, an animal which in these days is never found far away from

the tropics. The conclusion seems obvious: man must have lived through

the epoch of change--enormously long though it was--from a cold to an

almost tropical climate. Some writers have freely accepted this view,

and even gone beyond it to argue the possibility of man having lived

through one of the great climatic revolutions which produced an Ice Age.

(See the arguments on this head in Mr. Geikie’s _Ice Age_.) And in a

private letter, written from the West Indies, Kingsley says that he sees

reason for thinking that man existed in the Miocene Era. (See _Life of

Kingsley_.)

On the other hand, these rather startling theories have not yet received

their _imprimatur_ from the highest scientific authorities. There are

many ways in which they clash with the story which the stone-age remains

seem to tell of man’s primitive life. For instance, the civilization of

the caves is to all appearance in advance of that of the drift-beds; and

yet, as we have seen (p. 18), the cave men must have existed during the

earlier part of the stone age, that of the mammoth. Here we see

evidences of a decided improvement, an advance; whereas between the

drift-remains associated with the mammoth and those associated with the

hippopotamus are seen few or none.

P. 9. _Cave-drawings or carvings._--The best representations of these

are to be found in the work of Christy and Lartet given above.

P. 19. The ideas which savages or primitive men associate with drawings

or representations of things (as also with the _names_ of things) are

sometimes exceedingly complex and difficult of apprehension--for us.

This the following example may show:--

In the earliest Egyptian tombs the beautiful and realistic drawings have

long attracted the attention of archæologists, both on account of their

intrinsic merit, and from the curious contrast which they present to the

more conventional religious drawing and sculpture of a later date.

Though the drawings of the first class are found exclusively upon the

walls of tombs, they have apparently no connection either with ideas of

death or with religious observances. They seem to represent merely the

earthly and secular life of the entombed man: here he is superintending

his labourers at their work, here he is hunting, here he is reclining at

the banquet and watching the performances of fools or dancing-girls.

This is what a mere study of the drawings suggests. A more complete

study of the inscriptions which accompany them have, however, convinced

Egyptian archæologists that the object of these wall-paintings is not

merely decorative or representative, in the sense in which drawings are

representative to us. Their essential use is what we may call magical.

They are believed to contain (and this is a universal savage belief as

touching drawings or sculptures of any kind) some elements of the things

they represent. Thus the tomb-paintings would be a kind of _doubles_ of

the things which the deceased enjoyed in this life. And they would be

placed in the tomb in order that the _double_ of the deceased (what the

Egyptians called his _ka_) might enjoy the usufruct of them in the new

state.

This is the simplest _magic_ use of the copies or representation of

things in early Egyptian tombs. But the idea of the makers of these

drawings seems often to be more complicated than this. The drawings by

being placed in the tombs are supposed to give the _ka_ of the deceased

(_not_ in the tomb, but far away in the land of shades) the enjoyment of

the doubles of the things which he enjoyed in life. In this instance the

drawings are not the actual possessions which the dead man has, but they

correspond to, or influence, or in a certain sense create in the land of

shades new possessions, the doubles of the old.

These subtle and complex notions are by no means to be expressed by the

conventional words _magic_, _animism_, etc., loosely thrown about by

anthropologists.

Pp. 47 and 52. _Weaving._--The art of platting, which carries in it the

germ of the art of weaving, is of immemorial, undiscoverable antiquity.

There can hardly have been a time when men did not weave together twigs

or reeds to form a rude tent covering--a primitive house. And one proof

of the immense antiquity of this practice is given by the numerous names

for twigs, reeds, etc., in different languages which are derived from

words signifying to twist or weave. The word _weave_ itself (Ger.

_weben_) is connected with a Sanskrit root _vê_, meaning much the same

thing; and we find this same root _vê_ appearing again in the Latin,

_vimen_ a twig, and _vitis_, a vine, the last so named from its

tendrils, which we should judge were used for platting before they were

used for producing grapes. From the same root, again, and for the same

reason, are derived the Latin _viburnum_, briony; the Slavonic _wetle_,

willow; the Sanskrit _vetra_, reed. The Latin _scirpus_, reed, and the

Greek γρῖφος, a net, are allied; but these may not be

instances quite in point.

Such rude platting as this is a very different thing from the

elaborately woven cloths found among the remains of the lake-villages,

whose construction involves also the art of _spinning_.

P. 54. The view put forward in this chapter concerning the race of the

neolithic men in Europe, is that which seems to the writer most

consistent with _all_ the facts known, concerning the distribution of

pre-historic man. As was said in the Preface, the students in different

branches of pre-historic inquiry have not begun yet to collate

sufficiently the results of their researches, and their opinions

sometimes clash. We have to reconcile the pre-historic anthropologist

and the ethnologist with the student of comparative philology. Most of

the former are agreed that the earliest inhabitants of this quarter of

the globe were most allied in character to the Lapps and Finns; and were

consequently of what we have distinguished (Chapter V.) as the

yellow-skinned family. But they are far from agreed that the

bronze-using men were not of the same race; and some (Keller for

instance) are violently opposed to the notion that the substitution of

metal for stone was a sudden transition, and due to foreign importation.

In some instances there is evidence that the change was gradual.

But the evidence on the other side is stronger. The human remains found

with the bronze weapons are generally clearly distinguishable (in

formation of skull, etc.) from those associated with the implements of

stone. The funeral rites of the bronze-age men were as a rule different

from those of the stone-age men; for while the former generally buried

their dead, the latter seem generally to have burnt theirs (see Grimm,

_Ueber das Verbrennen der Leichen_). Now we have strong reason for

believing that the Aryan races (see Chapters IV., V.) practised this

sort of interment; and we have further reason for thinking that the use

of metals was known to them before their entry into Europe (see Pictet,

_Les Origines Indo-Européennes_ and Grimm, _Geschichte der deut.

Sprache_). Moreover, these Aryans unless their original home were in

Europe (see p. 99, _note_), must have come in at some time, and when

they did come, they must have produced an entire revolution in the life

of its inhabitants. No time seems so appropriate for their appearance as

that which closes the age of stone.

This theory does not preclude the possibility of, in many places, a

side-by-side existence of stone users and bronze users, or even a

gradual extension of the art of metallurgy; and these conditions would

be especially likely to arise in such secluded spots as the

lake-dwellings. Therefore, Dr. Keller’s arguments are not impeached by

the theory that the Aryans were the introducers of bronze into Europe.

CHAPTERS III. AND IV.

Bopp, _Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit Zend, etc._ (trs.).

Bréal, _Principes de Philologie Comparée_.

Geiger, _Contributions to the History of the Development

of the Race_ (trs.).

Grimm, _Geschichte der deutschen Sprache_.

Grimm, _Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache_.

Kuhn, _Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung_.

Müller, Max, _Lectures on the Science of Language_.

Müller, Max, _Sanskrit Literature_.

Peile, _Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology_.

Pictet, _Les Origines Indo-Européennes_.

Sayce, _Introduction to the Science of Language_.

Wilson, _Introduction to the Rig Veda Sanhita_.

Agreeably to the plan enunciated in the first chapter (pp. 4-6) I have

used up all the more generally admitted facts and theories to form what

seemed to me a reasonable account of the growth of language; to form an

account too which should subserve one great end of this volume, by

stimulating the thoughts of the reader at the same time that it pointed

out the nature of the evidence upon which conclusions are founded,

thereby preparing the reader to pursue the enquiry upon his own account.

The science of Comparative Philology is, however, in too unripe a

condition to allow us to speak with dogmatic assurance with regard to

its inferences; even those which seem fundamental have been, and may

again, be called in question. It is right here, therefore, to remind the

reader that it is quite upon the cards that further research may end by

upsetting the generally accepted theory of the growth of inflexions in

language. Even now there is a school of philologists and anthropologists

that denies the premise upon which this theory rests--the _radical_

origin of all language. This school maintains that, instead of speech

beginning in monosyllabic root-sounds, as is generally supposed, it

begins in extremely elaborate and complicated sounds which are in fact

nothing else than sentences; that it is only by the wear and tear of use

that the sentence has got split up into its component sounds, which have

then taken the character of monosyllabic roots.

This theory was first set on foot by a writer (Waitz) who is an

anthropologist rather than a student of language, and it might be

distinguished as the anthropological theory of the origin of speech. We

have no space here for a full discussion of its merits. It will be

enough to indicate some _à priori_ arguments in its favour.

1. It would make the language of primitive man analogous to a state of

things which many people think they have discovered as typical of the

most primitive savages--namely, a state of society which, in its

customs, marriage laws, etc., differs from modern society in being not

more simple, but infinitely more complex.

2. This supposed original expressive sentence and its subsequent

analysis would have considerable analogy to what we ourselves have just

seen is the history of writing, which begins with a more or less

elaborate picture; then the parts of the picture are split up, and by

the wear and tear of frequent use these parts are added together in

separate items to form picture-_writing_, which is quite a different

thing from picturing, and which is the immediate parent of writing as we

know it. An analogy of this kind cannot be without weight.

On the other hand, it must be pointed out that the strongest arguments

in favour of this view are the _à priori_ arguments. True, we do not

know enough of the languages of the world to speak with dogmatic

assurance. But the history of all the languages which have been closely

studied points away from the anthropological theory.

Again, the first argument in favour of Waitz’s theory is itself clearly

founded upon a paradox. It can scarcely be seriously maintained that

while we can trace the growth of implements, such as spears and knives,

from the simplest possible form upwards, such implements as speech and

social laws have been ready made in a highly complex form. Argument

number two serves to expose the grossness of this paradox. It would be

as reasonable to maintain that mankind had begun by drawing pictures

before they learnt to draw the elements out of which the pictures were

composed.

The whole theory, therefore, belongs to the category of theories which

explain _obscurum per obscurius_. It may be, and no doubt is,

practically impossible to explain in any _natural_ way how speech arose.

But at all events it is easier to understand how it may have arisen in a

simple form and grown to one more complex, than to imagine it beginning

in a complex state and by detrition resolving into simple elements.

P. 68. _Consonantal and vowel sounds._--The fact that even in Aryan

roots the consonants have more weight than the vowel sounds will be

evident merely from the instances given in the course of this and the

following chapter--_fly_, _flee_, _flew_ (_w_ is here a vowel sound);

_night_, _Nacht_; _knight_, _Knecht_; _Raum_, _room_; _asmi_, _esmi_

(_eimi_), _sum_, etc. This general rule holds good for almost all

languages, and seems necessarily to do so from the stronger character of

the consonantal and the weaker character of the vowel sounds.

But the _relative_ importance of vowels and consonants is very different

in different classes of language. In the Aryan tongues the essential

root is made up of vowels and consonants, and the variations upon the

root idea are _generally_ expressed by additions to the root and not by

internal changes in it. In this way, as we saw, most grammatical

inflexions are made: hom-o, hom-inis, am-o, am-abam, τύπτω, ἒτυτον,

ἒτυψον, etc. But in Semitic languages the root consists of

the consonants only, and the inflexions are produced by internal

changes, changes of the vowels which belong to a consonant. For example,

in Arabic the three consonants _k-t-l_ (_katl_) represent the abstract

notion of the act of killing. From them we get _kátil_, one who kills;

_kitl_ (pl. _aktal_), an enemy; _katala_, he slew; _kutila_, he was

slain. From _z-r-b_ (_zarb_), the act of striking; _zarbun_, a striking

(in concrete sense); _zarábun_, a striker; _zaraba_, he struck;

_zuriba_, he was struck. Compare these with occido, occidi, occisor, or

with τύπτω, τέτυφα, etc., and we see that in the Aryan tongues

the radical remains almost unchanged, and the inflexions are made _ab

extra_; but in the Semitic language the inflexions are made by changes

of vowel sound within the framework of the root consonants.

The usual grammatical root in Arabic is composed of three consonants, as

in the examples given above. Most of the Semitic languages are in too

fully formed a state to allow us to see whether or no these roots, which

are of course at the least dissyllabic, grew up out of single sounds;

but a comparison with some languages of the Semitic family (_e.g._

Egyptian) which are still near to their early radical state, show us

that they have probably done so.

The Coptic language, which is the nearest we can get to the tongue of

the ancient Egyptians, is extremely interesting in that it displays the

processes of grammar formation, as has just been said, in a more

intelligible shape than we find in the higher Semitic tongues.

P. 98. We are here speaking, be it remembered, of families of

_language_. The ethnology of a people is not necessarily the same as its

language; so that when we speak of a family of language including the

tongues of a certain number of races, we do not imply that they were

wholly of the same ethnic family. This caution is especially necessary

as regards the earliest great pre-historic nations who seem to have been

what are called Cushites--anything but pure Semites (see Chapter

V.)--but whose languages may properly be ranged in the Semitic family.

The Egyptian, for instance, was more nearly monosyllabic than any other

Semitic tongue (Chapter XIII.); yet such inflexions as it has show an

evident relationship with Hebrew and other Semitic languages (see

Appendix to Bunsen’s _Egypt’s Place in Universal History_).

CHAPTER V.

Brugsch, _Recueils de Monuments Égyptiens_.

Brugsch, _Histoire d’Égypt_.

Brugsch, _Matériaux pour servir_, etc.

Bunsen, _Egypt’s Place_, etc. (ed. Dr. Birch).

Ebers, _Egyptian History_.

Flower, W. H., _Races of Men_.

Legge, _Chinese Classics, with Introduction, etc._

Lenormant, _Manual of the Ancient History of the East_ (trs.).

Lepsius, _Chronologie der Egypten_.

Mariette Pasha, _Abrégé de l’Histoire d’Égypte_.

Maspero, _Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient_.

Maury, _Le Livre et l’Homme_.

Rawlinson, _Herodotus, with Notes_.

Rawlinson, _Five Great Monarchies_, etc.

Rougé (Vte. de), _Examen de l’Ouvrage de M. Bunsen_.

Sayce, _Ancient Empires of the East_.

Tylor, _Anthropology_.

P. 119. The word Turanian is untenable as an ethnic term. It can be

used--though with a somewhat loose signification--to distinguish those

languages which are in the agglutinative stage. But the reader must be

careful not to suppose that it comprises a class of nearly allied

peoples, as the Aryan and Semitic families of language, upon the whole,

do. The only race which includes the Turanian peoples of Europe and Asia

includes also those who speak monosyllabic languages: this is the yellow

race, and is of course a division of the widest possible kind.

P. 122. Touching the relationship of the Egyptians to the negroes a

variety of opinions are held. There can be no question that their types

of face forbid us to doubt that there was some relationship between

them; while the representations of negroes upon the ancient monuments of

Egypt show that from the remotest historical period there was a marked

distinction between the peoples, and that from that early time till now

the negroes have not changed in the smallest particular of ethnical

character. On the other hand, many people consider the Egyptians and the

Accadians to have been essentially the same people, the Cushites--or as

some call them Hamites--a race which perhaps anciently spread from

Susiana across Arabia and the Red Sea to Abyssinia and Egypt.

P. 123. The names _Chaldæan_ and _Assyrian_ are used with a variety of

significations by Orientalists, and in a way likely to be confusing to

the general reader. He will do well, therefore, to bear the following

facts in mind:--

1. The Tigris and the Euphrates, after both taking their rise in the

Caleshîn Dagh mountain in the Armenian highlands, soon separate by a

wide sweep, the Euphrates flowing south-west and towards the

Mediterranean, the Tigris flowing south-east towards the Persian Gulf.

But instead of flowing _into_ the Mediterranean, the Euphrates again

turns first due south, then south-east, so that it thenceforward flows

parallel with the Tigris. They approach nearer and nearer, until about

Bagdad they are separated by some twenty miles only; but here they once

more begin to increase the distance between them, and do not again

approach until just before they unite to fall into the Persian Gulf. In

ancient days they never united, as the Persian Gulf spread more than a

hundred miles farther inland than it does to-day.

The territory enclosed between these two great streams, with the

addition of some territory to the east of the Tigris and west of the

Euphrates, is that which the Greeks called Mesopotamia. Lower

Mesopotamia begins about the point where the streams approach the

nearest, and this Lower Mesopotamia is the territory distinguished by

the name _Chaldæa_.

Territorially this Chaldæa was in ancient days divided into two

districts--Shûmir in the south, and Accad in the north.

The earliest known inhabitants of these districts were a Turanian race,

who from their territorial possessions should properly be called the

Shûmir-Accadians or Shûmiro-Accadians. But it is common to call them

simply Accadians (or Accad), and their language, an agglutinative or

Turanian one, Accadian likewise.

Here therefore is the first element of confusion--between the smaller

territorial division, Accadia, and the larger ethnic division, which

includes all the primitive inhabitants of Chaldæa.

2. But there mingled with these primitive Accadians a Semitic race, and

gradually transformed them, so that the speech of the country changed

from being a Turanian or agglutinative, to being a Semitic and inflected

language.

Now, these Semitic people are probably the Chaldæans of the Bible; at

any rate the Bible seems to take no account of the primitive Turanian

stock. Its Chaldæans are a people allied by nationality to the Shemites,

though perhaps so far mixed with an earlier stock as to be what we may

call proto-Semitic.

Here is the second element of confusion, a confusion between the

unchanged land of Chaldæa and the two races who in succession inhabited

it.

3. Finally, the language of the Semitic (or proto-Semitic) Chaldæans was

practically the same as that of the people who rose into a nation in

Upper Mesopotamia, viz. the Assyrians. The Assyrians, as is said in

Chapter V., founded an empire which overthrew the ancient Chaldæan or

Babylonian empire,--for from its largest town the empire is also called

the Babylonian--and was in its turn overthrown by an alliance between

the revolted Babylon and the King of Media.

The third element of confusion then arises from applying to the language

of the Semitic Chaldæans the name Assyrian, which involves no

participation in the empire of the Assyrians.

It is probable that these elements of confusion have not always been

avoided in the preceding chapters. But with the aid of this note they

will no longer present difficulties to the reader.

It will be seen that both the Egyptians and Chaldæans of Genesis, chap.

x., are a Semitic people so far as regards the character of their

language, and belong in the main to the white race. So far as regards

their ethnic character, they were probably more mixed than the peoples

(Hebrews, Assyrians proper, etc.) who are called the children of Shem,

and therefore we may call them proto-Semitic.

The term Hamitic is altogether misleading, and had better be unused in

ethnical classifications. The real meaning, if we follow the intention

of its use in the Bible, is to distinguish from the purer Semites

(Hebrews, Moabites, etc.) what we may call the proto-Semites; that is, a

number of races, such as the Egyptians and Chaldæans, as well as the

Canaanites generally, who spoke Semitic languages, but were very

probably of impure blood, very likely of Semitic and Turanian

intermixture. If the word Hamitic be used to include the rest of the

inhabitants of the world who were not Semitic or Aryan, then, though it

will not be very useful, no objection can be taken to its employment.

But in that case we shall be obliged, forming our classification by the

known rather than by the unknown, to include the Canaanites (who spoke

Semitic languages) in the Semitic family; and this will be in direct

contradiction to the use of Hamitic in the Bible narrative.

CHAPTERS VI. AND VII.

Coulanges, _La Cité Antique_.

Grimm, _Deutsche Rechts-Alterthümer_.

Lavalaye, _La Propriété et ses Formes Primitives_.

Maine, _Ancient Law_.

Maine, _Village Communities_.

Maine, _Early Institutions_.

Maurer, _Geschichte der Dorf-Verfassung_.

Nasse, _Agricultural Communities of the Middle Ages_ (translated by Ouvry).

Pictet, _Les Origines Indo-Européennes_.

In the account here given of the two most important social forms, the

patriarchal family and the village community, the endeavour has been

rather to present such a picture of them as may exhibit their chief

peculiarities in a sufficiently clear and striking manner, than to enter

into a minute examination of the various remains from which the picture

has been constructed. It must not be supposed, however, that the

representations here given can be completely verified from existing

information. They are rather to be looked upon as typical of what these

forms may have been in their earliest stage and under favourable

circumstances. We only meet with traces of them when undergoing decay.

Although the writer fully recognizes the importance of the researches of

McLellan and others concerning the earlier conditions of society, no

attempt has been made to give an account of the results which have been

arrived at in this field of inquiry. Two reasons may be assigned for

this omission. Firstly, the intrinsic difficulties of treating the

subject in a manner suitable to the ‘general reader’ are, it is

conceived, a sufficient excuse for the omission. Secondly, the results

at present attained are so vague that the mere statement of them would

be valueless without entering into great detail. All that can as yet

fairly be regarded as established is either that the Aryan and Semitic

races have at one time possessed social customs and practices similar to

those which are found in the most barbarous people; or that they have

during some period of their history so far amalgamated with, or been

influenced by, other races that had just emerged from this state, as to

absorb into their traditions and customs traces of a social condition of

a much lower and more primitive kind than that in which we first find

them. If we try to form any conception of what the earlier state may

have been, we at once see that the results at present attained are

almost purely negative. All that can be predicated is that at one time a

large proportion of the human race did _not_ possess the notions of the

family and the marriage tie which were entertained by people in the

patriarchal state; that they did _not_ trace blood relationship in the

same way. What particular customs immediately preceded or led to the

patriarchal family, whether this latter is to be considered as the

original social type, and the lower forms are to be regarded as derived

from it, or _vice versâ_--to these questions no satisfactory answer can

at present be given.

Each step indeed in social change is to be looked upon, to a great

extent, as simply a phenomenon to be noted, the causes for which it is

impossible to determine accurately. This is especially the case with the

village community. The extent of its distribution would incline one to

the belief that it is a natural or necessary result of a certain stage

of social development; while the elaborate and artificial nature of its

construction points to the probability of some common origin from which

its developments might be traced. The greatest difficulty, however, lies

in trying to assign to this institution its due effect on civilization:

for it is frequently found in close combination with institutions to

which its spirit seems most strongly opposed. Thus while we find it

flourishing among the Germanic tribes, we also discover among them a

tendency to the custom of primogeniture much more marked than is

discoverable among other Aryan races. Yet this custom scarcely seems to

find a place in the pure village community beyond the limits of each

individual household. At the same time the patriarchal power was

certainly less among the Germans than among the early Romans, and

probably also less than among the Slavs.

CHAPTERS VIII.-XI.

Bournouf, _Commentaire sur le Yaçna_.

Bugge, _Sæmundar Edda_.

Bunsen, _God in History_ (trs.).

Bunsen, _Egypt’s Place_, etc.

Busching, _Nibelungen Lied_.

Cox, _Mythology of the Aryan Nations_.

Edda den ældra ok Snorra.

Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie.

Grimm, Ueber das Verbr. der Leichen.

Grimm, Heldenbuch.

Keary, Outlines of Primitive Belief.

Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers.

Kuhn, _Sagen, Gebräuche u. Mährchen_.

Kuhn, in _Zeitsch f. v. Sp._ and _Z. f. deut. Alt_.

Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_.

Lepsius, _Todtenbuch_.

Maspero, _Histoire Ancienne_, etc.

Müller, Op. cit.

Müller, _Lectures on the Science of Religion_.

Müller, _Chips from a German Workshop_.

Müller, _Origin and Growth of Religion_ (Hibbert Lectures).

Müller, _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. iv. Zend Avesta (Darmesteter).

Preller, _Griechische Mythologie_.

Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_.

Ralston, _Russian Folk-tales_.

Rawlinson, Op. cit.

Rougé (Vte. de), _Études sur le Rituel des Égypt_.

Sayce, _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_.

Simrock, _Handbuch der. d. Myth_.

Tiele, _Outlines of the History of Religion_ (trs.).

Vigfusson and Powell, _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_.

Welcker, _Griechische Götterlehre_.

Wuttke, _Deutsche Volksaberglaube_.

The origin and history of religion and mythology is (as we might expect)

a matter of keen controversy; and I cannot anticipate that the reader

would rise from the perusal of all the books given in the above list

with his mind not confused upon many points on which they touch. To

explain the position taken up in Chapters VIII.-XI., I will add the

following notes, which may help the reader over some difficult and

disputed questions.

1. In the first place, we have confined our attention altogether to the

essential framework of the religious system or the myth-system with

which we were concerned. The _irrational element_ is omitted, and the

mere process of omitting this relieves us from entering upon many points

which are strongly controverted at this moment. For instance, the work

of Mr. A. Lang cited above (and which I specially mention here, as it is

a good deal upon the _tapis_ at the present moment) is altogether

occupied in combating a certain theory of Mr. Max Müller’s, that the

irrational element in Aryan mythologies (Greek and Sanskrit especially)

could be shown to have arisen in most instances from _an abuse of

language_, or, more exactly, from an oblivion of the true meaning of

some essential word or name contained in the myth, whereby a wholly

mistaken and wholly irrational element has been incorporated into the

history of the god or hero.

This theory Mr. A. Lang combats by adducing the evidence that these

irrational parts in mythology may be _survivals_ of thought from an

earlier age in the history of the people, when what seemed irrational

(and often disgusting) to their literary successors, and seems

irrational and disgusting to us, seemed neither one nor the other.

Into this controversy we are not required to enter. But it is important

to point out to the reader how completely this lies outside the sphere

of study which we have chosen; the more so because, through some

criticisms of Mr. Lang’s book, a notion has gained currency (among those

presumably who have not read the book in question) that Mr. Lang has

revolutionized the whole study of religion and mythology, whereas he

only proposes to deal with one section, and that a small one, of it.

Nor can it fairly be said that we are bound in these chapters to pay

much attention to the _irrational element_ in belief. If we were writing

a complete treatise upon flint implements, we should be bound to include

not only those flints which had been clearly chipped with a definite

design, and which followed well-established forms, but with pieces of

abnormal shape, and even with flakes and cores, the _detritus_, so to

say, which had been left aside when the more available flints had been

chosen. If, again, we were dealing completely with the history of

village communities or systems of land tenure, we should be bound in

like fashion to treat of abnormal as well as normal forms. But obviously

that is not what is expected in the chapters of this book. We only

profess to treat of early civilization under its more usual aspects and

in its completest form. So with early beliefs; we only profess to

concern ourselves with what is rational and normal in the creeds with

which we are dealing.

There are always certain drawbacks, certain new liabilities to error,

which follow the step of each fresh advance in science. The shadow of

this kind which attends the comparative method which had been adopted

with such splendid results, not only in many natural sciences, but in

almost all branches of pre-historic study--the comparative study of

laws, institutions, language, myths, and creeds--is a tendency to

confound the condition of these things with which we are actually

concerned with their condition at some previous time. As Mr. Tylor

admirably says about language, that, interesting as it is to trace the

history of words, our understanding of their actual meaning is not

always facilitated by a misty sense that at some previous time they

meant something else, so we may say of many other things--laws, for

example, and customs, or, still more, myths and religions.

It will be obvious, for instance, that our appreciation of the place in

history of certain personages will be very little affected by tracing

some of the stories told about them to quite different countries and

periods in the history of the world. Suppose (for example) that we

should find in New Zealand legends a story closely analogous to the

story of Harold’s oath to William the Bastard. It would be by no means

safe to affirm that, if we sifted the multitudinous legends of the

world, we should not be able to find some pretty close analogy to

William’s celebrated trick of concealing the venerated relics beneath

the altar. How, it may be asked, would such a discovery affect our

estimate of the parts which William and Harold played as the rival

claimants for the English throne? If the reader can answer that question

he can decide the influence which studies into the religion of the

Maoris or Andaman Islanders are likely to have over his estimate of the

_rational_ parts of an historic creed. Such a discovery as we have

imagined would suggest the possibility that some remote channel of

tradition had fathered an old myth upon Harold and William. But it would

give us no clue as to how well it fitted upon their characters, how far

it gained general currency at the time. Upon these questions alone

depends our estimate of the position which the two historic personages

occupied in the world of their day. For a story which is generally

believed is almost the same as a story which is true.

Or, if the reader prefers a story which is really a myth, take the

history of Hasting at the siege of Luna, with which most readers will be

acquainted, and how he gained an entry into the town by feigning death

and obtaining that his body should be carried within the walls for

Christian burial. _That_ is undoubtedly a myth; it is found to be

sporadic among the histories of the Vikings and of the Normans, their

descendants. Should we discover that a very similar story has been

current among the Incas of Peru, how far could that discovery affect our

estimate of the supposed character of Hasting?

When the reader has made up his mind upon this subject he will be in a

position, we have said, to estimate the weight which we ought to attach

to discoveries of this kind in reference to historic creeds; because the

heroes of these creeds are evidently in the position of historic

personages for those who hold the belief. As long as the Norsemen think

that they hear Odin rushing along at night upon his horse Sleipnir, Odin

is for them an historic personage; as long as Greeks think that it is

Zeus who is ‘thundering from Ida,’ Zeus is as real to them as William

the Bastard was to the English nation--more real than Hasting was to

Dudo. And I maintain that an understanding of what the Greeks thought

about Zeus, or the Norsemen about Odin, is very little furthered by (in

Mr. Tylor’s words) a vague notion that at some other time they thought

something quite different.

We may, however, legitimately go a little way behind the date of our

documents. Our comprehension of the feudal system of land tenure is not

much assisted by comparing it with systems in use among the Zulus; but

it is useful to study the land tenure prevalent among the German

nationalities before the feudal system properly so called was

introduced. In the same way, behind the actual religious ideas shadowed

forth in the Vedic hymns, in Homer, or in the Eddaic poems, we may, I

maintain, legitimately go back to a time when the divine beings of these

creeds were more nearly identified with natural phenomena out of which

they sprang. It is just this condition of the Aryan creeds which I have

sought to portray in the chapters devoted to the subject. In the actual

documents before us the gods of Greece or Scandinavia do not take the

guise of the heaven, or the sun, or the wind. But enough remains in

their natures to show that it was out of these phenomena that they

emerged to become the independent personalities which we know. This is

what is meant by the _nature_ or _origins_ of Indra, Zeus, Odin, etc.,

as the expressions are used above.

P. 195. I take the liberty of transcribing a passage from Mr. Max

Müller’s Lectures on the Science of Religion.

‘One of the oldest names of the deity, among the Semitic nations, was

El. It meant strong. It occurs in the Babylonian inscriptures as Ilu,

God, and in the very name of Bab-il, the gate or temple of Il. In

Hebrew, it occurs both in its general sense, as strong, or hero, and as

a name of God. We have it in _Beth-el_, the House of God, and in many

other names. If used with the article as ha-El, the Strong One, or the

God, it always is meant in the Old Testament for Jehovah, the true God.

El, however, always retained its appellative power, and we find it

applied therefore, in parts of the Old Testament, to the God of the

Gentiles also.

‘The same El was worshipped at Byblus, by the Phœnicians, and he was

called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His father was the son of

Eliun, the most high god, who had been killed by wild animals. The son

of Eliun who succeeded him was dethroned, and at last slain by his own

son _El_, whom Philo identifies with the Greek Kronos, and represents as

the presiding deity of the planet Saturn. In the Himyaritic inscriptions

too the name of El has been discovered.

‘With the name of El, Philo connected the name of Elohim, the plural of

Eloah. In the battle between _El_ and his father, the allies of El, he

says, were called Eloeim, as those who were with Kronos were called

Kronioi. This is no doubt a very tempting etymology of _Eloah_; but as

the best Semitic scholars, and particularly Professor Fleischer, have

declared against it, we shall have, however reluctantly, to surrender

it.

‘Eloah is the same word as the Arabic Ilâh, God. In the singular,

_Eloah_ is used synonymously with El; in the plural, it may mean gods in

general, or false gods: but it becomes in the Old Testament the

recognized name for the true God, plural in form but singular in

meaning. In Arabic Ilâh without the article means a god in general; with

the article Al-Ilâh, or Allâh, becomes the name of the God of Abraham

and Moses.’

P. 197. _Nature-Worship._--The part which the phenomena of nature play

in training the thoughts of uncultivated men toward religion, and

poetry, and hero-worship, and legendary lore, has been made the subject

of warm controversy. And it may not be altogether amiss if we bestow a

little thought upon the question, and upon the character of evidence by

which this nature-worship is thought to be established.

That it is in no sense a degradation of our estimate of man to suppose

that his thoughts were led upward from the contemplation of the objects

of sense which lay around to the contemplation of a Higher Being beyond

the region of sensible things, will become, it is to be hoped, clear

upon a little reflection, and upon a candid examination of what has been

said in pp. 173-176. But still it may fairly be asked, Did this process

of deifying the powers of nature take place? Why should not the human

mind have come independently by the direct revelation of God’s voice

speaking in the hearts of men to a notion of a God ruler of the world,

and then, by a natural process of decay, proceed thence to a polytheism,

a pantheon of beings who were supposed to rule over the different

phenomena of nature, just as the different members of a cabinet hold

sway over the various branches of national government?

This was, until comparatively recent years, the received opinion

concerning mythology, and it is one which tacitly keeps its place in the

writings of many scholars, especially of those who have been brought up

almost exclusively upon the study of classical languages and classical

religions: for it is only after a wide study, and a comparison of many

different religions in many different stages, that the conviction of the

opposite truth forces itself upon one. It is obvious that for the

purpose of a scientific knowledge of the formation of religious systems,

we must not observe them in their fullest development, but rather turn

to such of their brother-religions as have remained in a more stunted

condition. Nor, again, should we deal, except very cautiously, with an

extremely imaginative people, like the Greeks; for with them changes

from any primitive form will be much more rapid and more complete than

the changes in some more meagre systems. The fragmentary Teutonic myths,

and the relics of these in mediæval superstition, are for this purpose

sometimes more trustworthy than those of Greece; and partly on this

account, partly because they are less familiar to the reader, we have

drawn largely upon them for illustration in our chapters upon Aryan

religion and Folk-tales.

The most useful of all, however, is the religion of the Vedas, in so far

as the Vedas give us an insight into the earliest faith of the people of

India. Here we may often detect the etymology of a name which would be

inexplicable if we only knew it in Greek or Latin and Norse. We have

seen how this is the case in respect of the word Dyâus; and how the

etymology of this word clearly shows, what from themselves we should

never discover, that Zeus and Jupiter and Tyr are names which had

originally the same meaning as a natural phenomenon. We say

_originally_, because the Sanskrit is found by numberless examples

(whereof we gave one, _duhitar_) to show an origin for many words whose

origin is lost in other Aryan languages, and therefore to stand nearest

to the primitive tongue of the Aryans. In this lies the whole force of

the argument. If the old Aryans once used the same word for ‘heaven’ and

for ‘god,’ it is impossible to believe that they had the power of

separating at will the two ideas which we receive from these two words:

for an examination of formal logic shows us that notions do not become

completely distinguishable until they receive individual names. The

inference is obvious that a considerable number, at any rate, of the

gods of our Aryan ancestors were nature-gods in the strictest sense.

It is equally true, however, that such divinities tend to fall into

certain forms, and accommodate themselves to ideals which, or the germs

of which, we may believe pre-existed in the human mind. It is thus that

we have noticed the sun-gods and the heaven-gods fulfilling their

separate functions, and answering to certain defined needs in the human

heart.

P. 230. _Persephonê and Balder._--The true _tragedy_ of the death of

summer is in the Norse religion portrayed in the myth of Balder, the

sun-god, which in respect of its force and intention fully answers to

the Persephonê myth. It has often been a subject of surprise that

Balder’s-bale, Balder’s death, was not celebrated at a time of year

appropriate to mourning for the loss of the sun-god, but at the summer

solstice, when Balder attains his fullest might and brightest splendour.

Why choose such a day as that to think of his mournful bedimming in the

wintry months? It seems to show a strange, gloomy, and forecasting

nature on the part of our Norse ancestors to be always reflecting that

in the midst of life--in the midst of our brightest, fullest life--we

are in death.

I imagine that the custom of celebrating Balder’s-bale in this way arose

not entirely from the desire to preach this melancholy sermon; though in

part no doubt this desire was the cause of it. It arose also from a

dramatic instinct inducing men for the sake of a strong contrast to

surround the sun-god with all the images of summer at the time when they

were thinking of his death. It gives a dramatic intensity to the moment;

and thus it corresponds exactly with the picture of Persephonê playing

in the meadows in spring-time surrounded by all the attributes of

spring, just as Hades rises from the earth to bear her for ever from the

light of day.

P. 241. _Thanatos._--Thanatos and Hypnos belong to the region of

allegory rather than pure mythology. For in pure mythology the place of

the first is taken by Hades. In Vedic mythology their part is played by

the two Sâramayas; one probably chiefly a divinity of Death, the other

of Sleep, and the two being brothers, as of course Death and Sleep are.

It has been suggested that among a group of figures sculptured upon the

drum of a column brought from the Artemesium (Temple of Diana) at

Ephesus, one is a representation of Thanatos, Death. The figure is that

of a boy, as young and comely as Love, but of a somewhat passive

expression, and with a sword girt upon his thigh, which Eros never

wears. His right hand is raised as though he were beckoning: and with

him stand Dêmêtêr and Hermes, both divinities connected with the rites

of the dead. Save in this instance--if it be an instance--Thanatos is

unknown to early Greek art. Hypnos when he appears wears a fair womanish

face with closed eyes, scarcely distinguishable from the artistic

representation of the Gorgon. As the moon, this last is in some sense a

being of sleep and death.

P. 255. Myths and the rules of their interpretation have been made of

late years the subject of controversy almost as keen as that which has

raged round that primary question concerning the existence of

_nature-worship_ which we have discussed above. In this (XI.) and the

previous chapters the writers have endeavoured to keep before the reader

only those features in a myth which are essential towards the

information we are seeking. For instance, the number of myths which can

in any system be traced to the phenomena of the sun is a matter of the

highest importance, as showing the influence which a certain set of

phenomena had upon the national mind: but of much less significance is

the question of the exact origin of the different features in these

legendary tales. If any given tale be found to originate _solely_ in a

confusion of language, a mistaken, misinterpreted epithet, then it has

almost no interest for us as an interpreter of the popular thought and

feeling: unless indeed the shape which the story takes should reproduce

(as it probably will) some one of the universal forms which seem to

stand ready in the human mind for the moulding of its legends.

With regard to the particular question of sun (and other nature) myths

and their occurrence, the question which stands between rival disputants

is something of this sort: ‘All myths, that is, all primitive legends,’

says one party which may be regarded as the philological school, ‘are

found, if we examine closely enough into the meaning of the proper names

which occur in them, to represent originally some natural phenomenon,

which is in nine cases out of ten (at least for southern nations) a

story of some part of the sun’s daily course, some one of his

innumerable aspects.’ ‘Is it conceivable,’ say their opponents (we may

call these the anthropologists) ‘that man could ever have been in such a

condition that all his attention was turned upon the workings of nature

or upon the heavenly bodies? Far more probable is it, that these stories

arose from a variety of natural causes, real traditions of some hero,

reminiscences of historical events transformed in the mist of

exaggeration, or the legacy of days when men had strange and almost

inconceivable ideas about the world they live in, when they thought

animals spoke and had histories like men, that men could and frequently

did become trees, and trees men, etc., etc. Indeed, so strange and

senseless are the notions of primitive men, that it is wasted labour to

try and interpret them.’ This is a rough statement of the two heads of

argument. The second, so far as merely negative, must fall before

positive proof, as that the nature-myth hidden in an immense number of

stories can be by philology satisfactorily unravelled. There is,

however, also positive proof on the other side, when many stories, which

as nature-myths interpreted on philological principles should only have

existed among the people of a particular linguistic family, are found

among other races who have no real relation whatever to the first.

Both these sets of facts can be adduced, and to reconcile them in every

case would no doubt be hard. On the whole, however, it will perhaps be

found that, as has just been said, certain moulds for the construction

of stories seem to exist already in the human mind, obeying some natural

craving, and into these, as into a Procrustean bed, the myth more or

less easily must fit. These primitive forms do not, however, preclude

the undoubted existence--strange as such a phenomenon may appear--of an

especial mythopæic age connected with man’s observations of the

phenomena of nature--an age in which natural religions gained their

foundation, and when the doings of the external world had a much deeper

effect upon man’s imagination than in later times they have ever had.

P. 266. Thor’s journey to the house of giant Utgardloki (out-world

fire--fire of the under-world of Chapter X., and Chapter XI., p.

278)--is not told in the elder Edda, but appears at some length in the

Edda of Snorro (Daemisögur 44-48). There can be little question of the

antiquity of the tale, closely connected as it is with the labours of

Hercules as well as with all the most important elements in the Norse

mythology. But it may very easily be that it has undergone some

modifications before appearing in its present form; and we should be

naturally inclined to signalise as modern additions those parts of the

story which have an allegorical rather than a truly mythical character.

Allegory is a thing altogether distinct from real myth, and when it

springs up shows that the mythical character of the story is falling

into oblivion. The former is a growth of self-conscious fancy, while the

latter is the child of genuine belief. For instance--as an illustration

of the difference between allegory and mythology--I should be inclined

to signalise the appearance of the beings Logi (fire) and Elli (old age)

as a fanciful, an invented element in the story. Logi and Elli are not

important enough to be genuine deities of Fire and Age. In fact, the

former element has already received its personification in the person of

Loki. Yet the incidents with which they are associated may well have

formed an integral character of the older legend; and in the case of

Elli I feel pretty sure they must have done so.

What I imagine to have been the real case is this. Thor’s journey to

Utgardloki is a story closely parallel to the myth of the Death of

Balder, and tells once more the story of the sun-god descending to the

under-world. This fact is clearly shown by the name of the giant, who is

nothing else than a personification of the funeral fire, the fire which

surrounds the abode of souls (pp. 275, 278). All the powers with whom

Thor strives are personifications in some way of death--all, or almost

all. He tugs as he thinks at a cat and cannot lift it from the ground;

but the cat is Jormundgandr, the great mid-earth serpent, in part the

personification of the sea, but also (by reason of this) the

personification of the devouring hell ‘rapax Orcus’ (compare Cerberus

and the Sârameyas, and notice the middle age change of Orcus to Ogre).

He (or, in the story as we now have it, Loki) contends with a

personification of the death-fire, not with a mere allegorical

representation of fire in its common aspect. And again he contends not

with Elli, old age, but with Hel, the goddess of the under-world.

This is the original form into which I read back the mythical journey to

Utgardloki. It is easy to see how the story got changed. Loki is made to

accompany Thor instead of to fight against him; the later mythologists

not being able to understand how Loki could sometimes be a god and dwell

in Asgard, sometimes be a giant of Jotunheim. With this change the

others would easily creep in. Logi is invented to fight with Loki, and

Elli in place of Hel appears in obedience to a desire for allegory in

the place of true myth.

CHAPTERS XII. AND XIII.

Edkins, _Introduction to Study of the Chinese Characters_.

Lenormant, _Essai sur la Propagation de l’Alphabet Phénicien_.

Mahaffy, _Prolegomena to History_.

Rawlinson, _Five Monarchies_.

Rougé (Vte de), _Origine Égyptienne de l’Alphabet Phénicien_.

Taylor, _The Alphabet_.

Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_.

None of the Semitic alphabets can be considered as quite complete; as a

complete alphabet requires a subdivision of sounds into their smallest

divisions, and an appropriate sign for each of these. But none of the

Semitic alphabets in their original forms seem to have possessed these

qualifications. They never get nearer to the expression of vowel sounds

than by letters which may be considered half vowels. Each of their

consonants (in Phœnician, Hebrew, Arabic) carried a vowel sound with

it, and was therefore a syllabic sign and not a true letter.

No account is here given of the theory that the Chinese and the

Babylonian writing are derived from the same source, as this new and

startling theory is not sufficiently upon the _tapis_ to be treated of

in a book of this kind. The reader who is desirous of informing himself

upon the subject may do so (as far as is yet possible) by obtaining the

pamphlet by M. Terrien de la Couperie, _Early History of Chinese

Civilization_, wherein this theory was first expounded, as also another

and subsequent _brochure_, _History of Archaic Chinese Writing_.

CHAPTER XIV.

Curtius, _History of Greece_ (trs.).

Gibbon, with notes by Milman, etc.

Latham, _Germania of Tacitus_.

Latham, _Nationalities of Europe_.

Von Maurer, Op. cit.

Mommsen, _Die unterital. Dialekten_.

Mommsen, _Roman History_ (trs.).

P. 320. Following Mommsen, the Etruscans are here spoken of as though

belonging to the Italic family. This is liable to grave doubts; but the

question is at present too unsettled to admit of satisfactory discussion

in this place.

THE END.

INDEX.

“_Abant_,” the word, 154.

Abraham, Bible history begins with, 113, 129;

and Lot, 126, 155.

Accad, 125.

Accadians, 124, 128;

the inventors of cuneiform writing, 311.

Adoption, ceremony of, among the Aryans, 146.

Agglutinative languages, 79, 81, 83, 88 _et seq._;

spoken by the yellow race, 118.

Agni, 210; hymn to, 211;

the Indian fire-god, 248.

Agricultural life, the, gives rise to new relations, 156.

Ahanâ, 257.

Ahura-mazda, the god of Zoroastrianism, 234.

Air-god of the Egyptians, 188.

Alani, the, 104, 325.

Alaric, 325.

Alphabet, the Phœnician, 304 _et seq._

Amenti, 179.

Amun, 181, 201.

Ana, 193.

Ancestor worship, 143;

of the Aryans, 147.

Angles, the, 325.

Animal gods of the Egyptians, 191.

Animal worship of the Egyptians, 123.

Anubis, 192.

Aphroditê, 206, 224;

an Asiatic divinity, 318.

Apollo, 202, 209, 214;

the god of the Dorians and Ionians, 216;

shrines of, 216;

the sun-god pursuing Daphne, 257;

found in the mythology of all branches of the Aryan family, 258.

Aral, lake, the region of, the home of the Turanians, 120.

Aramæans, 124.

_Aratrum_, the word, 108.

Ares, the national divinity of the Thracians, 220.

Armenians, 99.

Art, the earliest rudiments of, 17.

Artemis, 204, 223 _et seq._;

and Endymion, the story of, a moon myth, 263.

“Arthur’s Chase,” 226.

Aryans, 98;

the origin of, 99;

evidence of language concerning, 108;

the early, a pastoral people, 132;

their entry into Europe, 133;

their social system, 140;

their faculty for abstract thought, 201;

the other world of, 241 _et seq._;

possessed a spiritual conception of the soul, 246;

separation of, 316;

their languages, 90;

two main divisions of, 91;

their mythology, remarkable for diversity of its legends, 199;

their religion contrasted with Semitic, 197;

the sky-god in, 199.

Ashara, the, 195.

Ashtoreth, 194.

Assyrians, the, 98, 129;

their gods, 193 _et seq._

Athene, 204 _et seq._, 222.

Attila, 119.

Australians, the, 118.

Avars, the, 119.

Aztec picture writing, 292.

Aztecs of Mexico, the, 116.

Baal, 193.

Baal Chemosh, 194.

Baal Zebub, 194.

Babel, 124.

Babylon, 127.

Babylonians, the, 98.

Bæda, quotation from, 1.

Balder, 203;

a sun-god, 229, 246;

the myth of his death, 250 _et seq._

Barbarians, origin of word, 105.

Barbarossa, legend of, 278.

Barter in the stone age, 139.

Bavarians, the, 104.

“Beauty and the Beast,” 259.

Bel Merodoch, 194.

Beowulf, 327; the poem of, 267;

the Lohengrin myth in, 276.