probably rather in a medicinal or even magical use of that art, than in
the beautiful system of later melody. Among the various works and
instruments of smith-craft, and productions of art which the knowledge
of mines and metals led to, the momentous discovery of the sword is
particularly mentioned: by the brief enigmatic words which relate this
discovery, it is difficult to know whether we are to understand them as
the expression of a spirit of warlike enthusiasm, or of a renewed curse
and dire wailing over all the succeeding centuries of hereditary murder,
and progressive evil, under the divine permission. In all probability,
these words refer to the origin of human sacrifices, emanating as they
did from an infernal design, which we must consider as one of the
strongest characteristics of this race; and those bloody sacrifices of
the primitive world seem to have stamped on the rites and customs, as
well as on the traditions and sentiments, of many nations a peculiar
character of gloom and sadness. From this race were descended not only
the inhabitants of cities, but nomade tribes, whereof many led, several
thousand years ago, the same wandering life which they follow at the
present day in the central parts of Eastern Asia; where vast remains of
primitive mining operations are frequently found.
It is worthy of remark that, among one of these nations, the Ishudes,
who inhabit a metallic mountain, we find, if we may so speak, an
inverted history of Cain; mention is made of the enmity between the
first two brothers of mankind, but all the circumstances are set forth
in a party-spirit favourable to Cain. It is said that the elder brother
acquired wealth by gold and silver mines, but that the younger, becoming
envious, drove him away, and forced him to take refuge in the East.[40]
So is the race of Cain and Cain's sons represented from its origin, as
one attached to the arts, versed in the use of metals, disinclined to
peace, and addicted to habits of warfare and violence, as again at a
later period, it appears in scripture as a haughty and wicked race of
giants.
On the other hand the peaceful race of Patriarchs who lived in a docile
reverence of God and with a holy simplicity of manners, were descended
from Seth. This second progenitor of mankind occupies a very prominent
place even in the traditions of other nations, which make particular
mention of the columns of Seth, signifying no doubt, in the language of
remote antiquity, very ancient monuments, and, as it were, the stony
records of sacred tradition. In general the first ten holy Progenitors
or Patriarchs of the primitive world are mentioned under different names
in the Sagas, not only of the Indians, but of several other Asiatic
nations, though undoubtedly with important variations, and not without
much poetical colouring. But as in these traditions we can clearly
discern the same general traits of history, this diversity of
representation serves only to corroborate the main truth, and to
illustrate it more fully and forcibly. The views, therefore, of those
modern theologians, who represent the concurrent testimony of Gentile
nations to the truths of primitive history as derived solely from the
Mosaic narrative, and as it were transcribed from a genuine copy of our
Bible, are equally narrow-minded and erroneous.
It would be more just and more consonant with the whole spirit of the
primitive world, to assert, what indeed may be conceded with little
difficulty, that these nations had received much from the primeval
source of sacred tradition; but they regarded as a peculiar possession,
and represented under peculiar forms, the common blessings of primitive
revelation; and, instead of preserving in their integrity and purity the
traditions and oracles of the primitive world, they overlaid them with
poetical ornament, so that their whole traditions wear a fabulous
aspect, until a nearer and more patient investigation clearly discovers
in them the main features of historic truth.
Under these two different forms, therefore doth Tradition reveal to us
the primitive world, or in other words, these are the two grand
conditions of humanity which fill the records of primitive history. On
the one hand, we see a race, lovers of peace, revering God, blessed with
long life which they spend in patriarchal simplicity and innocence, and
still no strangers to deeper science, especially in all that relates to
sacred tradition and inward contemplation, and transmitting their
science to posterity in the old or symbolical writing, not in fragile
volumes, but on durable monuments of stone. On the other hand, we behold
a giant race of pretended demi-gods, proud, wicked and violent, or, as
they are called in the later Sagas of the heroic times, the
heaven-storming Titans.
This opposition, and this discord,--this hostile struggle between the
two great divisions of the human race, forms the whole tenour of
primitive history. When the moral harmony of man had once been deranged,
and two opposite wills had sprung up within him, a divine will or a will
seeking God, and a natural will or a will bent on sensible objects,
passionate and ambitious, it is easy to conceive how mankind from their
very origin must have diverged into two opposite paths.
Although this primitive division of mankind is now characterized as a
difference of races, this is far from being merely the case; and that
opposition which distracted the primitive world had far deeper causes
than the mere distinction of a noble and a meaner race of men. It is
somewhat in this manner a German scholar of the last generation, divided
all nations now existing, or which have appeared within the later
historical ages, into two classes; wherever he imagined he found his
favourite Celts and their descendants, he had not words strong enough to
extol their romantic heroism; while he pursued with the most pitiless
animosity, over the whole face of the earth, the unfortunate Monguls and
all those he deduced from that stock. The struggle which divided the
primitive world into two great parties arose far more from the
opposition of feelings and of principles, than from difference of
extraction. Great as is the interval which separates those ages and that
world from our own, we can easily comprehend how this first mighty
contest of nations, which history makes mention of, was in fact a
struggle between two religious parties--two hostile sects, though indeed
under far other forms, and in different relations from anything we
witness in the present state of the world. It was, in one word, a
contest between religion and impiety, conducted however on the mighty
scale of the primitive world, and with all those gigantic powers which,
according to ancient tradition, the first men possessed.[41]
The Greek Sagas represent this two-fold state of mankind in the
primitive ante-historical ages in a very peculiar manner, as the gradual
decline and corruption of successive generations; of this kind is the
tradition of the ages of the world, whereof four or five are numbered.
The Golden age of human felicity and the brazen age of all-ruling
violence form the two essential terms of this tradition; and the
intermediate ages are mere links, or points of transition to render the
account more complete.
In the age of Saturn, the first race allied to the Gods lived in peace
and happiness, and were blessed with eternal youth; the earth poured
forth her fruits and gifts in spontaneous abundance, and even the end of
human life was not a real or painful death, but a gentle slumber into
another and higher world of immortal spirits. But the next generation in
the age of Silver is represented as wicked, devoid of reverence for the
Gods, and giving loose to every turbulent passion. In the Brazen age
this state of crime and disorder reached its highest pitch; lordly
violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their
arms were of copper and their instruments and utensils of brass, and
even, in the construction of their edifices, they made use of copper;
for as the old poet says, "black iron was not then known;" a
circumstance which we must consider as strictly historical and as
characteristic of the primitive nations. Between this and the following
age, the better heroic race of poetical and even historic tradition is
somewhat strangely introduced; and the whole series of generations is
closed by the Iron age, the present and last period of the world--the
term of man's progressive degeneracy.
This idea of a gradual and deeper degradation of human kind in each
succeeding age appears at first sight not to accord very well with the
testimony which sacred tradition furnishes on man's primitive state; for
it represents the two races of the primitive world as cotemporary; and
indeed Seth, the progenitor of the better and nobler race of virtuous
Patriarchs, was much younger than Cain. However, this contradiction is
only apparent, if we reflect that it was the wicked and violent race
which drew the other into its disorders, and that it was from this
contamination a giant corruption sprang, which continually increased
till, with a trifling exception, it pervaded the whole mass of mankind,
and till the justice of God required the extirpation of degenerate
humanity by one universal Flood.
In the Indian Sagas, the two races of the primitive world are
represented in a state of continual or perpetually renewed
warfare:--wicked nations of giants attack one or other of the two
Brahminical races that descend from the virtuous Patriarchs; generous
and divinely inspired heroes come to their assistance, and achieve many
wonderful victories over these formidable foes. Such is the chief
subject of all the great epic poems, and most ancient heroic Sagas of
the Indians. In conformity to their present modes of thinking, and to
their present constitution of society, they describe that fierce race of
giants as a degraded caste of warriors; and they even give that
denomination to many nations well known in later history, such as the
Chinese, who bear the same name with them as with ourselves; the
Pahlavas, who were a tribe of the ancient Medes and Persians,
corresponding to one of the two sacred languages of ancient Persia--the
Pahlavi--and the Ionians or Yavanas according to the Asiatic
denomination of the primitive Greeks. It may even be a matter of doubt,
whether a regular caste of warriors, and an hereditary priesthood,
according to the very ancient system of the hereditary division of
classes, did not exist in the primitive world. However great may be the
chronological confusion evinced in these poems and Sagas, however much,
perhaps, of later history may have been interwoven into their ancient
narratives, and however much of poetical embellishment and gigantic
hyperbole the whole may have received, the leading features of historic
truth may still be distinguished with certainty in the chequered tablet
of tradition. For the hostility of two rival races in the primitive
world, considered in itself, and independently of adventitious
circumstances, must be looked upon as a positive and well authenticated
fact. It might perhaps be proved before the tribunal of the severest
historical criticism that poetry, that is to say, primitive historic
tradition clothed with the ornaments of poetry--is often much nearer the
truth in its representations of the primitive world than a dull Reason,
that draws its estimate of probability from mere vulgar analogies, and
which sees or affects to see every where only stupid and brutish
savages.
A circumstance which we must never lose sight of in this inquiry is that
man did not suffer an immediate and entire loss of those high powers
with which he had been endowed at his origin; but that the loss was
gradual, and that for a long time yet he retained much of those powers,
and that it was indeed the fearful abuse of those faculties in his last
stage of degeneracy which produced that enormous licentiousness and
wickedness spoken of in Holy Writ. And this is the real clue to the
whole purport of primitive history, and to all that appears to us in it
so full of enigma. This leading subject of primitive history--the
struggle between two races, as it is the first great event in universal
history, is also of the utmost importance in the investigation of the
subsequent progress of nations; for this original contest and opposition
among men, according to the two-fold direction of the will, a will
conformable to that of God, and a will carnal, ambitious, and enslaved
to Nature, often recurs, though on a lesser scale, in later history; or
at least we can perceive something like a feeble reflection or a distant
echo of this primal discord. And even at the present period, which is
certainly much nearer to the last than to the first ages of the world,
it would appear sometimes as if humanity were again destined, as at its
origin, to be more and more separated into two parties, or two hostile
divisions. And as the greatest of German philosophers, Leibnitz,
admirably observed that the sect of atheism would be the last in
Christendom and in the world; so it is highly probable that this sect
was the last in the primitive world, though stamped with the peculiar
form which society at that period must have given to it, and on a scale
of more gigantic magnitude.
On this important subject we have another observation to make, which
refers more properly to an incidental circumstance in primitive history;
for our great business is with the moral and intellectual progress of
man. But even in respect to this more important object, the circumstance
which we allude to should not be passed over in silence, as it tends to
exemplify, illustrate and confirm the principle we have already had
occasion to enforce; namely that we ought not to estimate by the narrow
standard of present analogies and vulgar probabilities, all those facts
in primitive nature and in primitive history which strike us as so
strange, mysterious, and marvellous; provided they be really attested by
ancient monuments and ancient tradition. We should ever bear in mind
what a mighty wall of separation--what an impassable abyss--divides us
from that remote world both of nature and of man. I refer to the
unanimous testimony of ancient tradition respecting the gigantic forms
of the first men, and their corresponding longevity, far exceeding, as
it did, the present ordinary standard of the duration of human life.
With respect to the latter circumstance, indeed, there are so very many
causes contributing to shorten considerably the length of human life,
that we have completely lost every criterion by which to estimate its
original duration; and it would be no slight problem for a profound
physiological science to discover and explain from a deeper
investigation of the internal constitution of the earth, or of
astronomical influences, which are often susceptible of very minute
applications the primary cause of human longevity. By a simpler course
of life and diet than the very artificial, unnatural and over-refined
modes we follow, there are even at the present day numerous examples of
a longevity far beyond the ordinary duration of human life. In India it
is by no means uncommon to meet with men, especially in the Brahminical
caste, more than a hundred years of age, and in the enjoyment of a
robust, and even generative vigour of constitution. In the labouring
class in Russia, whose mode of living is so simple, there are examples
of men living to more than a hundred, a hundred and twenty, and even a
hundred and fifty years of age; and although these instances form but
rare exceptions, they are less uncommon there than in other European
countries. There are even remarkable cases of old men, who after the
entire loss of their teeth, have gained a complete new set as if their
constitution had received a new sap of life, and a principle of second
growth. What, in the present physical degeneracy of mankind, forms but a
rare exception, may originally have been the ordinary measure of the
duration of human life, or at least may afford us some trace and
indication of such a measure; more especially as other branches of
natural science offer correspondent analogies. On the other side of that
great wall of separation which divides us from the primitive ages--in
that remote world so little known to us, a standard for the duration of
human life very different from the present may have prevailed; and such
an opinion is extremely probable, supported as it is by manifold
testimony, and confirmed by the sacred record of man's divine origin.
In order better to understand and judge more correctly of the biblical
number of years in human life, we ought never to overlook the very
religious purport of the symbolical relation of numbers in the divine
chronology. We should thus ever keep ourselves in readiness, as,
according to the expression of Holy Writ, the hairs on a man's head are
numbered--and how much more so the years of his life!--and as nothing
here must be considered fortuitous, but all things as predetermined and
regulated according to the views of Providence. Again, as the Scripture
often mentions that, in the hidden decrees of his mercy, the Almighty
hath graciously been pleased to shorten the duration of a determined
space of time:--as, for example, a course of irreversible suffering--or
on the other hand, hath added a certain number of years to a determined
period of grace, or prolonged the duration of a man's life; it behoves
us to examine which of these two courses of divine favour be in any
proposed case discoverable. In the extreme longevity of the holy
Patriarchs of the primitive world--a longevity which as has been long
proved and acknowledged, must be understood with reference only to the
common astronomical years, the latter course of the divine goodness is
discernible, and human life in those ages must be regarded as
miraculously and supernaturally prolonged.[42] In the duration of
Enoch's life, that holy prophet of the primitive world, whose
translation was no death, but which, as the exit originally designed for
man, should on that account be considered natural, the coincidence with
the astronomical number of days in the sun's course round the earth is
the more striking, as in the number of 365 years the number 33 is
comprised as the root--a number which, in every respect and in the most
various application, is discovered to be the primary number of the
earth. For, with the slight difference of an unit, the number of 365
years corresponds to the sum of 333, with the addition of 33; but the
number of days strictly comprised in those 365 years amounts to four
times 33,000, with the addition of four times 330 days.
With regard to the gigantic stature attributed to the primitive race of
men, by the authentic testimony of universal tradition;--a testimony
which it is easy to distinguish from mere poetical embellishment or
exaggeration--it is singular that those who are otherwise so disposed to
apply the analogies of nature to the human species, should in this
instance at least hold up the now ordinary scale of human bulk as the
only standard of probability and certainty. The remains, more than once
alluded to, of that primitive world which has perished, show that of the
elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, the largest of all existing
animals, there were originally from twenty to thirty different tribes
and species which are now extinct. Of the mammoth, that gigantic animal
of antiquity, remains of which are found not only in Siberia and
America, but in the different counties of Europe, near Paris, and even
in this immediate neighbourhood, a great number of various species have
been also proved to have existed from the investigation of these
ante-diluvian remains. Even of animals more familiar to us, bones and
other remains have been discovered of a very unusual and truly gigantic
size. Bulls' horns fastened together by a front-bone--antlers of stags,
and elephants' tusks have been found, which prove those animals to have
been of a dimension three, four, and even five times greater than they
usually are at present. If in this elder period of organic nature, and
of an animal kingdom which has become extinct, this gigantic style was
so very prevalent, is it not reasonable to infer a similar analogy in
the human species, so far at least as relates to their physical
conformation, especially when this analogy is unanimously attested by
the primitive Sagas and traditions of all nations?
As regards our sacred writings, I must observe that they tacitly imply
and indeed pretty clearly attest the superior stature as well as great
longevity of the first men; while, on the other hand, they represent the
really gigantic structure of body as an organic degradation and
degeneracy, originating in the illicit union of the two primitive
races--the Cainites and the Sethites--an union which was the source of
universal corruption--as the all-destroying deluge was a mighty judgment
brought about by the pride and wickedness of those giants, and was
indeed against these principally directed.--Even at a later period, the
Scripture speaks of some nations of giants, that, prior to the
introduction of the Israelites into the promised land, occupied several
of its provinces, such as Moab, Ammon, Bashan, and the country about the
primitive city of giants--Hebron. These tribes are represented as
celebrated for valour indeed, yet as inclined solely to warfare, wild,
and wicked; and even the individual giants, that appear in the age of
Moses and in the history of David, are described as peculiarly monstrous
from their great corporal deformity. The only savage tribe now existing,
(as far as our present knowledge of the globe can enable us to speak,)
possessed of a very uncommon, enormous and almost gigantic stature--the
Patagonians of America, are at the same time noted for their personal
deformity. With them it is the upper part of the body that is of such a
disproportionate length, for when seen on horseback they appear to be
real giants, and hence they were so accounted at first. When on a closer
inspection we see the whole length of their bodies in the attitude
either of standing or of walking, we perceive indeed they are of the
very extraordinary height of from seven to eight feet, but not of that
gigantic stature which the first impression led us to suppose, and which
may so naturally have given rise to exaggerated accounts.
After all this, and what has been above stated, I need say no more than
frankly declare that, as to these two points, the extraordinary
longevity and gigantic stature of the first men,--I never could have the
courage to raise a formal doubt against the plain declaration of Holy
Writ, and the general testimony of primitive tradition. The full
explanation, the more correct conception, and the perfect comprehension
of these two facts are perhaps reserved for a later period, and the
investigations of a deeper physical science.
There exist also monuments, or rather fragments of edifices, of the most
primitive antiquity, which, as they are connected with the subject under
discussion, are here deserving of a slight notice. I allude to those
Cyclopean walls, which are to be found in several parts of Italy, and
which those who have once seen will not easily forget, nor the singular
stamp of antiquity they bear. In this very peculiar architecture, we
see, instead of the stones of the usual cubical or oblong form, huge
fragments of rock rudely cut into the shape of an irregular polygon, and
skilfully enough joined together. Even the great, and often admired,
subterraneous aqueduct, or Cloaca of ancient Rome is considered as
belonging to this cyclopean architecture, remains of which exist also
near Argos and in several other parts of Greece. These edifices were
certainly not built by the celebrated nations that at a later period
occupied those countries; for even they regarded them as the work and
production of a primitive and departed race of giants; and hence the
name which these monuments received. When we consider how very imperfect
must have been the instruments of those remote ages, and that they
cannot be supposed to have possessed that knowledge in mechanics which
the Egyptians, for instance, display in the erection of their obelisks;
we can easily conceive how men were led to imagine that more vigorous
arms and other powers, than those belonging to the present race of men,
were necessary to the construction of those edifices of rock.