Tradition, Principally with Reference to Mythology and the Law of Nations

by Baron John Francis Arundell Arundell of Wardour

CONTENTS.

CHAP.		PAGE
PREFACE,		[ix]
MEMOIR OF COLONEL GEORGE MACDONELL, C.B.,		[xix]
I.	THE LAW OF NATIONS,	[1]
II.	THE LAW OF NATURE,	[20]
III.	PRIMITIVE LIFE,	[26]
IV.	CHRONOLOGY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF TRADITION,	[55]
V.	CHRONOLOGY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SCIENCE,	[72]
VI.	PALMER ON EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY,	[92]
VII.	THE TRADITION OF THE HUMAN RACE,	[105]
VIII.	MYTHOLOGY,	[157]
IX.	ASSYRIAN MYTHOLOGY,	[182]
X.	THE TRADITION OF NOAH AND THE DELUGE,	[210]
XI.	DILUVIAN TRADITIONS IN AFRICA AND AMERICA,	[242]
XII.	SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON TRADITION,	[283]
XIII.	NOAH AND THE GOLDEN AGE,	[323]
XIV.	SIR H. MAINE ON THE LAW OF NATIONS,	[338]
XV.	THE DECLARATION OF WAR,	[386]

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PREFACE.

I shall have no hope of conveying to the reader, within the narrow limits of a preface, any fuller idea of the purport of this work than its title expresses; and as the chapters are necessarily interdependent, I can indicate no short-cut in the perusal by which this information can be obtained.

I venture to think that those who are interested in the special matters referred to will find something in these pages which may attract on account of its novelty—and some other things, new at least in their application—e.g. the comparison of Boulanger’s theory with the narratives of Captain R. Burton and Catlin.

The frequent introduction and the length of the notes, must, I am aware, give to these pages a repellent aspect, but the necessity of bringing various points under comparison has compelled this arrangement; and I regret to say that the argument runs through the whole, and that almost as much matter requiring consideration will be found in the notes and appendices as in the text.

I trust that these imperfections may not be so great as to estrange the few, among whom only I can hope to find much sympathy, who wish to see the true foundations of peace and order re-established in the world, and who may therefore to some extent be indulgent towards efforts which have for their aim and motive the attempt to erect barriers which would render the recurrence of the evils which have lately deluged mankind difficult, if not impossible.

There are others whom the recent scenes of horror have inspired with a love of peace and order, or of whom it would be more true to say, that the horrors of the late war and revolution have deepened in them the sentiment of peace and order which they have always entertained, but who still do not desire these things on the conditions upon which alone they can be secured. From them I can only ask such passing examination as may be demanded for the conscientious rejection of the evidence I have collected, or for its adjustment with more accepted theories.

There will remain for me much ground in common with all who retain their faith in the inspiration of Holy Writ, and who wish to see its authority sustained against the aggressive infidelity of the day; and even among those who reject the authority of divine revelation, there may be still some who are wearied in the arid wastes, and who would gladly retrace their steps to the green pastures and the abundant streams. Among such I may perhaps expect to find friendly criticism.

At the same time, I do not disguise from myself that, in its present mood, the world is much more anxious to be cut adrift from tradition than to be held to its moorings; and that it will impatiently learn that fresh facts have to be considered before its emancipation can be declared, or before it can be let loose without the evident certainty of shipwreck. Although the exigencies of the argument have compelled research over a somewhat extended field of inquiry, the exploration has no pretensions to being exhaustive, but at most suggestive; not attempting to work the mine, or, except incidentally, to produce the ore, but only indicating the positions in which it is likely to be found.

In the main position of the mythological chapters, that the heroes of mythological legend embody the reminiscences of the characters and incidents of the biblical narrative, I do nothing more than carry on a tradition, as the reader will see in my references to Calmet, Bryant, Palmer, and others.[1] I should add, that I limit the full application of De Maistre’s theory to the times preceding the coming of our Lord.

My attention was first drawn to the coincidences of mythology with scriptural history by the late Colonel G. Macdonell.[2] Colonel Macdonell’s coincidences were founded upon a peculiar theory of his own, and must necessarily have been exclusively upon the lines of Hebrew derivation. There is nothing, however, in these pages drawn from that source. I may add, for the satisfaction of Colonel Macdonell’s friends, that as Colonel Macdonell’s MSS. exist, and are in the possession of Colonel I. J. Macdonell, I have (except at p. 243, when quoting from Boulanger,) expressly excluded the consideration of the influence of the Hebrew upon general tradition, which, however, will be necessary for the full discussion of the question.

Whatever, therefore, Colonel Macdonell may have written will remain over and above in illustration of the tradition. But whether on the lines of Hebrew or primeval tradition, these views will inevitably run counter to the mythological theories now in the ascendant. These views, indeed, have been so long relegated to darkness, and perhaps appropriately, on account of their opposition to the prevalent solar theories, “flouted like owls and bats” whenever they have ventured into the daylight, that it will be with something amounting to absolute astonishment that the learned will hear that there are people who still entertain them: “itaque ea nolui scribere, quæ nec indocti intelligere possent, nec docti legere curarent” (Cic. Acad. Quæs., 1. i. § 2).

I can sincerely say, however, that although my theories place me in a position of antagonism to modern science, yet that I have written in no spirit of hostility to science or the cause of science.

I have throughout excluded the geological argument, for the first and sufficient reason that I am not a geologist; and secondly, by the same right and title, that geologists, e.g. Sir C. Lyell, in his “Antiquity of Man,” ignores the arguments and facts to which I have directed special attention.

Nevertheless, I find that competent witnesses have come to conclusions not materially different from those which have been arrived at, on the ground of history, within their own department of geology. I have more especially in my mind the following passage from a series of papers, “On Some Evidences of the Antiquity of Man,” by the Rev. A. Weld, in the Month (1871), written with full knowledge and in a spirit of careful and fair appreciation of the evidence. He says:—

“These evidences, such as they are, are fully treated in the work of Sir C. Lyell, entitled ‘Antiquity of Man,’ which exhausted the whole question as it stood, when the last edition was published in the year 1863. It is worthy of note that though the conclusion at which the geologist arrives is hesitating and suggestive, rather than decisive, and though nothing of importance, as far as we are aware, has been added to the geological aspect of the question since that time—except that the reality of the discovery of human remains has been verified, and many additional discoveries of a similar character have been made—still the opinion, which was then new and startling, has gradually gained ground, until we find writers assuming as a thing that needs no further proof, that the period of man’s habitation on the earth is to be reckoned in tens of thousands of years.”—The Month (May and June 1871), p. 437.

Among various works, bearing on matters contained in these pages, which have come to hand during the course of publication, I may mention—

“The Mythology of the Aryan Nations,” by the Rev. G. W. Cox, referred to in notes at pp. 158, 165, 396.

The third edition of Sir John Lubbock’s “Pre-historic Times.”

Mr E. B. Tylor’s “Primitive Culture,” referred to in notes at pp. 41, 136, 300.

Mr St George Mivart’s “Genesis of Species.”

Mr F. Seebohm on “International Reform.”

Sir H. S. Maine’s “Village Communities.”

The Archbishop of Westminster’s paper, read before the Royal Institution, “On the Dæmon of Socrates.”

“Orsini’s Life of the Blessed Virgin,” translated by the Very Rev. Dr Husenbeth.

“Hints and Facts on the Origin of Man,” by the Very Rev. Dr P. Melia, 1872, who says (p. 59), “Considering the great length of life of the first patriarchs, Moses must have had every information through non-interrupted tradition. If we reflect that Shem for many years saw Methuselah, a contemporary of Adam, and that Shem himself lived to the time of Abraham, ... that Abraham died after the birth of Jacob, and that Jacob saw many who were alive when Moses was born, we see that a few generations connect Moses not only with Noah, but also with Adam.” I quote this passage as it is important to place in the foreground of this inquiry the unassailable truth that (apart from revelation) the historical account of the origin of the human race, to which all others converge, is consistent with itself, and bears intrinsic evidence of credibility.

An analogous argument with reference to Christian tradition was sketched in a lecture by Mr Edward Lucas, and published in 1862, “On the First Two Centuries of Christianity.”

With reference to other parts of these pages, much supplemental matter will be found in—

“Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament,” by the Rev. G. Rawlinson, M.A., Camden Prof., where, at pp. 19, 20, will be found direct testimony to what I had conjectured from indirect evidence at pp. 270, 271—viz., that the Polynesian islanders “have a clear and distinct tradition of a Deluge, from which one family only, eight in number, was saved in a canoe.”

Also, but from a different point of view, in “Legends of Old Testament Characters,” by Rev. S. Baring Gould, M.A.

The articles in the Tablet “On Arbitration instead of War,” to which I have referred in chap. xiv. at p. 380, have recently been collected and reprinted by Lord Robert Montagu, M.P.

If I have exceeded in quotation, I must direct my readers, for the defence of this mode of composition, from the point of view of tradition, to a work which I trust some in this busy age still find leisure to read, Mr Kenelm Digby’s “Mores Catholici,” i. 40.

I must, moreover, add a passage from the general preface to the recent republication of Mr Disraeli’s works, which I came upon too late to introduce into the body of this book, but which I feel sure the reader, even if he has met with it before, will not be reluctant to reperuse:—

“The sceptical effects of the discoveries of science, and the uneasy feeling that they cannot co-exist with our old religious convictions have their origin in the circumstance that the general body who have suddenly become conscious of these physical truths are not so well acquainted as is desirable with the past history of man. Astonished by their unprepared emergence from ignorance to a certain degree of information, their amazed intelligence takes refuge in the theory of what is conveniently called progress, and every step in scientific discovery seems further to remove them from the path of primæval inspiration. But there is no fallacy so flagrant as to suppose that the modern ages have the peculiar privilege of scientific discovery, or that they are distinguished as the epochs of the most illustrious inventions. On the contrary, scientific invention has always gone on simultaneously with the revelation of spiritual truths; and more, the greatest discoveries are not those of modern ages. No one for a moment can pretend that printing is so great a discovery as writing, or algebra as language. What are the most brilliant of our chemical discoveries compared with the invention of fire and the metals? It is a vulgar belief that our astronomical knowledge dates only from the recent century, when it was rescued from the monks who imprisoned Galileo; but Hipparchus, who lived before our Divine Master, and who, among other sublime achievements, discovered the precession of the equinoxes, ranks with the Newtons and the Keplers; and Copernicus, the modern father of our celestial science, avows himself, in his famous work, as only the champion of Pythagoras, whose system he enforces and illustrates. Even the most modish schemes of the day on the origin of things, which captivate as much by their novelty as their truth, may find their precursors in ancient sages; and after a careful analysis of the blended elements of imagination and induction which characterise the new theories, they will be found mainly to rest on the atom of Epicurus and the monad of Thales. Scientific, like spiritual truth, has ever from the beginning been descending from Heaven to man. He is a being who organically demands direct relations with his Creator, and he would not have been so organised if his requirements could not be satisfied. We may analyse the sun and penetrate the stars; but man is conscious that he is made in God’s own image, and in his perplexity he will ever appeal to our Father which art in Heaven.”

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MEMOIR
OF
COLONEL GEORGE MACDONELL, C.B.

The following notice appeared in the Times, May 23, 1870—“In our obituary column of Saturday we announced the death of Colonel George Macdonell, C.B., at the advanced age of ninety. This officer, who was a cadet of the ancient and loyal Scottish house of Macdonell of Glengarry, was the son of an officer who served under the flag, and who, as we have been told, was on the staff, of Prince Charles Edward Stuart at the battle of Culloden, where he was severely wounded. His son, the Colonel now deceased, was born in 1779, or early in the following year; obtained his first commission in 1796, and was nominated a Companion of the Bath in 1817. He saw active service in the war in North America with the 79th Foot, and received the gold medal for the action at Châteaugay; and had he not accepted the retirement a few years since, he would have been, at his death, almost the senior officer in the army holding Her Majesty’s commission. The late Colonel Macdonell, who adhered to the Roman Catholic religion professed by his ancestors, and for which they fought so gallantly under the Stuart banners, married, in 1820, the Hon. Laura Arundell, sister of the Lord Arundell of Wardour, but was left a widower in May 1854.” His son, Colonel I. J. Macdonell, now commands the 71st Highlanders.

I take this opportunity of adding a few facts, not without interest, to the above brief summary of a not uneventful life, as they might otherwise pass unrecorded. In the sentiment of the Gaelic saying—“Curri mi clach er do cuirn” (Wilson, “Archæol. Scot.,” p. 59)—“I will add a stone to your cairn.”

Colonel Macdonell’s father, as stated in the above account, was wounded at Culloden in the thigh, but was able to crawl on all-fours, after the battle, eighteen miles, to a barn belonging to a member of the Grant family. He there remained in concealment for six months, leaving nature to heal the wound; but the search in the neighbourhood in time becoming too hot, he had to decamp, and walked with a stick all the way to Newcastle, where he was not greatly re-assured by meeting a soldier who had just been drummed out of his regiment as a Catholic, with the word “Papist” placarded on his back. He, however, escaped all dangers, and reached Hull, and subsequently Versailles or St Germains, where he remained three years, or at least till the events following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle dispersed the Prince’s adherents. He then returned to England under the Act of Indemnity, entered the royal army, and was present with General Wolfe at the taking of Quebec. If I remember rightly, he had the good fortune to take an aide-de-camp of Montcalm’s prisoner, with important dispatches.

Colonel Macdonell’s maternal uncle, Major Macdonald (Keppoch), was taken prisoner at the battle of Falkirk. He was said to have been the first man who drew blood in the war. By a curious revenue of fortune, he was carried back into the enemy’s ranks by the horse of a trooper whom he had captured. He was executed at Carlisle, and the circumstances of his execution supplied Sir Walter Scott, I believe, with the incidents which he worked up into the narrative of MacIvor’s execution in “Waverley.” His sword is in the possession of Mr P. Howard of Corby Castle, near Carlisle.

Fortune, however, had in store another revenge; for the Duke of Cumberland being present, many years afterwards, at a ball at Bath, by a most unhappy selection indicated as the person with whom he wished to dance a beautiful girl who turned out to be no other than the daughter of Major Macdonald (afterwards married to Mr Chichester of Calverley) the circumstances of whose execution have just been referred to. She rose in deference to royalty, but replied, in a tone which utterly discomfited, and put his Royal Highness to flight—“No, I will never dance with the murderer of my father!”

With these antecedents, it is needless to add that Colonel G. Macdonell was a warm admirer of the Stuarts, and not unnaturally extended his sympathy and adhesion to the kindred cause of legitimacy in France; and the one event to which he always looked forward, and confidently predicted—the restoration of the monarchy in the person of Henri V.—is now, if not imminent, at least “the more probable of possible events.” There was, however, a belief which somewhat conflicted in his mind with the above anticipation—namely, his unshaken conviction that the Dauphin did not die in the Temple. He was frequently at Holyrood when the palace was occupied by Charles X., and he accompanied the Duchess de Berri to the place of embarkation for her unfortunate expedition to France. Colonel Macdonell also acted as the medium of communication between the French Royalists and the English Government; and on one important occasion conveyed intelligence to Lord Bathurst or Lord Sidmouth respecting the movements of the secret societies in Spain in 1823 some hours before it reached them by the ordinary channel. Part of the communication was made on information supplied by the Abbé Barruel; and in reply, Lord Sidmouth said—“Well, I remember Edmund Burke telling me that he believed every word that Barruel had written, and I fully accept the authority.”

Colonel Macdonell was under the impression that he was unwittingly and remotely the cause of the break up of the Ministry of “all the talents.” As this is an obscure point in history, it may be worth while to give the following facts. The impression produced by Marengo and Austerlitz had led to the Army Reform Bill of 1806, in which the points discussed were almost identical with those which lately excited the public mind. The disasters which accompanied our descent on Egypt in 1807, and the consequent evacuation of Alexandria, created considerable discontent and re-opened the question, and as further reforms on minor points were contemplated, suggestions from officers in the army were invited.

Colonel Macdonell (then only lieutenant), wrote to Mr Windham, the Secretary at War, to point out that any broken attorney might create considerable embarrassment at any critical moment, seeing that, as the law then stood (an Act of George I. had extended the obligation of taking the sacrament to privates), any soldier could obtain, if not his own, his comrade’s discharge by pointing him out as a Papist. The danger was recognised, and Mr Windham brought in a bill directed to meet the case, but its introduction revived the larger question of the repeal of the Tests’ Acts and of the Catholic claims; and the discussion eventuated in Lord Howick’s bill, which was met by the King’s refusal, and the consequent resignation of the Ministry. This may explain the statement (mentioned in the obituary notice in the Times of the Marquis of Lansdowne), that he (Lord Lansdowne) could never understand how the Ministry came to be dissolved. “He had heard instances of men running their heads against a wall, but never of men building up a wall against which to run their heads.”[3]

It has been mentioned that Colonel Macdonell entered the army when quite a boy; and there were few men, I fancy, living, when he died last year, who could boast, as he could, of having served in the Duke of York’s campaign in the last century, but I am not able to state in what regiment. He was for some time previously in Lord Darlington’s regiment of Fencibles. He was at one period in the 8th, and at another in the 50th regiment, in which latter, I think, he went out to the West Indies and Canada.

It was in Canada, however, that his principal services were rendered, which indeed were considerable, and have never been adequately acknowledged.

When the Americans invaded Canada upon the declaration of war in 1812, it is hardly necessary to remind the reader that almost all our available troops were engaged in the Peninsula, and that Canada was pretty well left to its own resources.

Under these circumstances it will be recognised as of some importance that Colonel Macdonell was able to raise a regiment among the Macdonells of his clan who had settled there. But the conditions made with him were not fulfilled, and the command of the regiment, almost immediately after it was raised, was transferred to the command of a Protestant and an Orangeman, which caused a mutiny which was with difficulty suppressed. Now, it must be borne in mind that the regiment was only raised through his personal influence with the clan, and through that of its pastor, Bishop Macdonell, and that the adhesion of the Catholic Macdonells went far to determine the attitude of the French Canadians also. There were not more than 1200 regular troops in Upper Canada during the war.[4]

Before referring to the actions in which Colonel Macdonell was engaged, I will add the following particulars as to the Highland settlement which Colonel Macdonell gave me. In 1798, the submission of the Highland chiefs to the House of Hanover having been of some standing, and their adhesion being, moreover, cemented in a common sentiment of abhorrence of the French Revolution, they were willingly induced to raise regiments among their clans. This was done by Glengarry, Macleod, and others. At the peace these regiments were disbanded, but finding that complications of various sorts had necessarily arisen during their absence respecting their lands and holdings at home, and, in point of fact, that they had no homes to return to, the greater part remained temporarily domiciled at Glasgow, the place of their disbandment. I infer that they remained under the charge and direction of Bishop Macdonell, who had accompanied them in their campaigns as chaplain, and was the first Catholic priest officially recognised in the capacity of regimental chaplain. At Glasgow (previously only served as a flying mission), he hired a storehouse, which he opened as a chapel, but stealthily only, as two of the congregation were always posted as a guard at the entrance on Sunday. He found only eighteen Catholics at Glasgow at that time, i.e., I suppose, previously to the disbandment of the Highlanders. Through Bishop Macdonell’s influence with Lord Sidmouth—who, although a strong opponent of the Catholic claims, always acted in his relations with him, he said, in the most honourable and straightforward way—the emigration of the Highlanders to Canada was shortly afterwards arranged.

Colonel Macdonell was subsequently partially reinstated in his command of the Glengarry regiment. The important services rendered by Colonel Macdonell in Canada, to which I have alluded, were—1. The taking of Ogdensburg at a critical moment, on his own responsibility, and contrary to orders, which had the effect of diverting the American attack from Upper Canada at a moment when it was entirely undefended; and, 2. Bringing the regiment of French Canadian militia, then temporarily under his command, from Kingston, by a forced run down the rapids of the St Lawrence without pilots (passing the point where Lord Amherst lost eighty men), in time enough (he arrived the day before, unknown to the Americans) to support De Saluberry at the decisive action at Chateaugay. De Saluberry indeed had only 300 French Canadians under his command, which, with the 600 brought up by Colonel Macdonell, only made up a force of 900 (with about 100 Indians), with which to check General Hampton’s advance with some 7000 (the Americans stated the force at 5520 infantry and 180 cavalry, James, i. 305) in his advance on Montreal. In point of fact, Colonel Macdonell must be considered, on any impartial review of the facts, to have won the day (vide infra), yet he was not even mentioned in Sir G. Prevost’s dispatch.

Colonel Macdonell received the Companionship of the Bath for the taking of Ogdensburg, and the gold medal for his conduct in the action at Chateaugay.

I append the following accounts of the affairs at Ogdensburg and Chateaugay, adding a few particulars in correction and explanation—Alison, “History of Europe,” xix. 121 (7th ed.), says—“Shortly after Colonel M’Donnell (Macdonell), with two companies of the Glengarry Fencibles, and two of the 8th, converted a feigned attack which he was ordered to make on Fort Ogdensburg into a real one. The assault was made under circumstances of the utmost difficulty; deep snow impeded the assailants at every step, and the American marksmen, from behind their defences, kept up a very heavy fire; but the gallantry of the British overcame every obstacle, and the fort was carried, with eleven guns, all its stores, and two armed schooners in the harbour.” The difficulties, as I have understood from Colonel Macdonell, were not so much from the impediments of the snow, as from the dangerous state of the St Lawrence at the time, the ice literally waving under the tramp of his men as he passed them over (ten paces apart). The stroke of the axe, by which they judged, told it indeed to be only barely safe, and it had never been crossed by troops before at that point, as it was deemed insecure, being within three miles of the Gallops Rapids. (Among the guns were some taken from General Burgoyne.)

A fuller account of the taking of Ogdensburg may be read in Mr W. James’ “Full and Correct Account of the Military Occurrences of the late War between Great Britain and the United States of America,” vol. i. p. 135–141: London, 1818; he adds, “Previously to dismissing the affair at Ogdensburg it may be right to mention that Sir G. Prevost’s secretary, or some person who had the transcribing of Major (Colonel) Macdonnell’s (Macdonell’s) official letter, must have inserted by mistake the words ‘In consequence of the commands of his Excellency.’ Of this there needs no stronger proof than that Major (Colonel) Macdonnell (Macdonell) while he was in the heat of the battle, received a private note from Sir G. dated from ’Flint’s Inn at 9 o’clock,’ repeating his orders not to make the attack; and even in the first private letter which Sir G. wrote to Major Macdonnell (Colonel Macdonell) after being informed of his success, he could not help qualifying his admiration of the exploit with a remark that the latter had rather exceeded his instructions—(Note.—Both of these letters the author has seen”), vol. i. 140. Colonel Macdonell’s explanation to me of his taking this responsibility on himself was simply that he saw that the fate of the whole of Upper Canada depended upon it. Colonel Macdonell had received information that 5000 American troops were moving up in the direction of Ogdensburg, and they, in fact, came up a week after it was taken, under General Pike; but seeing the altered aspect of affairs, they moved off, and fell back upon Sackett’s Harbour, anticipating a similar attack at that point.

Colonel Macdonell always spoke with much emotion of the gallant conduct of a Captain Jenkins, a young officer under his command, who, although he had both arms shattered by two successive shots, struggled on at the head of his men until he swooned. He survived some years, but died of the overcharge of blood to the head consequent on the loss of his limbs.

As Ogdensburg was a frontier town on the American side of the St Lawrence, Sir G. Prevost authorised payment for any plunder by the troops, but Colonel Macdonell received a certificate from the inhabitants that they had not lost a single shilling—which must be recorded to the credit of the Glengarry Highlanders under his command.

As I have already said, although Colonel Macdonell commanded the larger force, and by an independent command, at the action of Chateaugay, his name is not mentioned in Sir G. Prevost’s dispatch, nor in Alison, who apparently follows the official account (xix. 131, 7th ed.) In Alison, De Saluberry is called, by a clerical error, De Salavary—such, after all, is fame! saith Hyperion. Although his troops, raw levies, broke, and Colonel De Saluberry was virtually a prisoner when Colonel Macdonell came up to the support, it was through no fault of his disposition of his men—(Colonel Macdonell always spoke of him as an excellent officer, who behaved on the occasion in the most noble and intrepid manner).

The American troops at Chateaugay are variously stated at 7000 to 5700 (Alison says, “4000 effective infantry and 2000 militia, and 10 guns,” xix. 131). The British, 300 French Canadian militia, under De Saluberry; 600 under Colonel Macdonell, and some Indians, without artillery.

A full, but, Colonel Macdonell said, inaccurate account (from imperfect information) will be found in Mr W. James’ “Military Occurrences,” above referred to.

I extract the following passages, i. 307:—“The British advanced corps, stationed near the frontiers, was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel De Saluberry of the Canadian Fencibles, and consisted of the two flank companies of that corps and four companies of voltigeurs, and six flank companies of embodied militia and Chateaugay chasseurs, placed under the immediate orders of Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonell, late of the Glengarrys, who so distinguished himself at Ogdensburg. The whole of this force did not exceed 800 rank and file. There were also at the post 172 Indians under Captain Lamotte.” Colonel Macdonell’s account differed substantially. It has been already mentioned that he had brought up his troops by a forced march the night before, and held them under a separate command. I conclude with the following passage as bearing out Colonel Macdonell’s version:—“The Americans, although they did not occupy one foot of the ‘abatis,’ nor Lieutenant-Colonel De Saluberry retire one inch from the ground on which he had been standing, celebrated this partial retiring as a retreat.... By way of animating his little band when thus momentarily pressed” [Colonel Macdonell’s version was, that although the troops were driven back, Colonel De Saluberry literally “refused to retire one inch himself,” and virtually remained a prisoner until—] Colonel De Saluberry ordered the bugleman to sound ”the advance. This was heard by Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonell, who thinking the Colonel was in want of support, caused his own bugles to answer, and immediately advanced with two [‘six’] of his companies. He at the same time sent ten or twelve buglemen into the adjoining woods with orders to separate [‘widely’], and blow with all their might. This little ‘ruse de guerre’ led the Americans to believe that they had more thousands than hundreds to contend with, and deterred them from even attempting to penetrate the ‘abatis.’”

For the rest of the account I must refer my readers to Mr W. James’ “History,” as above; though, if a complete and accurate account of an engagement which probably saved British Canada were ever thought desirable, Colonel Macdonell’s commentaries (MS.) on the above and the official accounts, would afford valuable supplementary information.[5]

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TRADITION

PRINCIPALLY WITH REFERENCE TO

MYTHOLOGY AND THE LAW OF NATIONS.

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CHAPTER I.
THE LAW OF NATIONS.

The increasing number of essays, pamphlets, works, and reviews of works on speculative subjects, with which the literature of England at present teems, compels the conclusion that the public mind has been greatly unsettled or strangely transformed since the days when John Bull was the plain matter-of-fact old gentleman that Washington Irving pleasantly described him.

Remembering the many sterling and noble qualities whimsically associated with this practical turn of mind, it will be felt by many to be a change for the worse. But if old English convictions, maxims, and ways of thought have lost their meaning; if in fine it is true that the mind of England has become unsettled, it says much for the practical good sense of Englishmen that they should have overcome their natural repugnances, and should so earnestly turn to the discussion of these questions, not indeed with the true zest for speculation, but in the practical conviction that it is in this arena that the battle of the Constitution must be fought.

There is, as it has been truly observed,[6] “an instinctive feeling that any speculation which affects this” (the speculation in question being the effect of the Darwinian theory on conscience), “must also affect, sooner or later, the practical principles and conduct of men in their daily lives. This naturally comes much closer to us than any question as to the comparative nearness of our kinship to the gorilla or the orang can be expected to do. No great modification of opinion takes place with respect to the moral faculties, which does not ultimately and in some degree modify the ethical practice and political working of the society in which it comes to prevail.”

There is perhaps no question which lies more at the root of political constitutions, and which must more directly determine the conduct of states in their relations to each other, than the question whether or not, or in what sense, there was such a thing as natural law, i.e. a law antecedent to the formation of individual political societies, and which is common to and binding on them all.

It may be worth while, therefore, to examine whether a stricter discrimination may not be made between things which are sometimes confounded, viz.:—The Law of Nations and International Law, natural law and the state of nature; and even if the attempt at discrimination should fail in exactitude, it may yet, by opening out fresh views, contribute light to minds of greater precision, who may thus be enabled to hit upon the exact truth.

This view was partially exposed in an article which was inserted in the Tablet, September 28, 1861,[7] entitled “International Law and the Law of Nations,” and, all things considered, I do not think that I can better consult the interests of my readers, than by reproducing an extract from it here, as a convenient basis of operation from which to advance into a somewhat unexplored country:—

“It has been the fashion since Bentham’s[8] time, to substitute the phrase ‘International Law’ for the ‘Law of Nations,’ as if they were convertible terms. The substitution, however, covers a distinction sufficiently important.

“The ‘Law of Nations’ is an obligation which binds the consciences of nations to respect the eternal principle of justice in their relations with each other. ‘International law’ is the system of rules, precedents, and maxims accumulated in recognition of the eternal law. But as men may build a theatre or a gambling-house upon the foundations constructed for a religious edifice, and upon a stone consecrated for an altar, so has it been possible for diplomacy to substitute a system of chicanery for the simple laws which were intended to facilitate the intercourse of nations, and with such effect as in a great number of cases to place international law in contradiction with the law of nations—as, for instance, when in a certain case the law of nations says that it is wrong to invade a neighbour’s territory, international law is made to say that it is lawful to invade in such a case, because such-and-such monarchs in past history have done so.

“Practically the effect of the substitution is, that the sentiment of justice disappears, that wars which formerly were called unjust, are now called inevitable, so that good men, disheartened at the conflicting evidence of precedents, yield their sense of right and wrong, and defer to the adjudication of diplomatists. This is particularly satisfactory to the modern spirit which will admit nothing to be law which is superior to, and distinct from, that which the human intellect has determined to be law.

“But the sense of right and wrong in good men is that which gives its whole efficacy to the law of nations. There is nothing else in the last resort, to restrain the ambition and passion of princes, but the reprobation of mankind—nothing but the fear of invading that “moral territory”[9] which even bad men find it necessary to conquer, ‘dans l’ame des peuples ses voisins.’ On the other hand, the whole mass of precedents to which diplomatists appeal, which are rarely carefully collated with those which legists have accumulated and digested, is nothing but a veil which thinly covers the supremacy of might and the right of force.

“In fact, the conventional deference which is paid to them, is at best only the hypocritical homage which force is constrained to pay to justice before it strikes its blow.

“International law, therefore, as accumulated in the precedents of diplomatists, is a parasitical growth upon that tree which has its roots in the hearts of nations, and which may be compared to one of those old oaks under which kings used to sit and administer justice. It was a dream of Dodwell’s that the ‘law of nations was a divine revelation made to the family preserved in the ark.’ In the grotesqueness and wildness of this theory we detect a true idea. The law of nations is an unwritten law, tradited in the memories of the people, or, so far as it is written, to be found in the works of writers on public law, like Grotius, whose authorities, as Sir J. Mackintosh remarks, are in great part, and very properly, made up of the sayings of the poets and orators of the world, ‘for they address themselves to the general feelings and sympathies of mankind.’ It is in this that the Scriptural saying about the people is so true—‘But they will maintain the state of the world.’ And it is a just observation, that ‘the people are often wrong in their opinions, but in their sentiments rarely.’ You may produce state papers and manifestoes, written with all the dexterity of Talleyrand, and the lying tact of Fouché, but you will not convince the people. You have your opportunity. The Liberal press of Europe, at this moment, may be said to be in possession of the whole field of political literature; nevertheless, nothing will prevent its being recorded in history,[10] that Victor Emmanuel in seizing upon the patrimony of St Peter was a robber, and his conquest an usurpation.”

I have observed that International Law is the more appropriate term from Bentham’s point of view, and as Bentham is the most redoubtable opponent of natural right and the law of nations, I will quote him at some length:—

“Another man says that there is an eternal and immutable rule of right, and that that rule of right dictates so-and-so. And then he begins giving you his sentiments upon anything that comes uppermost; and these sentiments (you are to take it for granted) are so many branches of the eternal rule of right.... A great multitude of people are continually talking of the law of nature; and they go on giving you their sentiments about what is right and what is wrong, and these sentiments, you are to understand, are so many chapters and sections of the law of nature. Instead of the phrase, law of nature, you have sometimes law of reason, right reason, natural justice, natural equity, good order. Any of them will do equally well. This latter is most used in politics. The three last are much more tolerable than the others, because they do not very explicitly claim to be anything more than phrases. They insist, but feebly, upon the being looked upon as so many positive standards of themselves, and seem content to be taken, upon occasion, for phrases expressive of the conformity of the thing in question to the proper standard, whatever that may be. On most occasions, however, it will be better to say utility—utility is clearer, as referring more especially to pain and pleasure.”

In truth, although Mr Bentham indulges a pleasant ridicule, yet the ridicule and the thing ridiculed being eliminated, the fact that there is a belief in a law of nature remains untouched. It is probable, therefore, that appeals will be frequent to what is believed to be “the eternal and immutable rule of right,” “to the law of nature,” &c., i.e. each and every individual, all mankind distributively, so appeal, because there is a deep conviction among mankind, severally and collectively, that there is this eternal and immutable rule of right, blurred and obscured though it may be, or concealed behind a cloud of human passion and error: and most men, moreover, will have an instinct which will tell them when an individual is substituting his own ideas for the eternal and immutable law,—as, for instance, when at the conclusion of the sentence quoted, Mr Bentham seeks to substitute his own peculiar crochet, as embodied in the word “utility” (which may be used indifferently in the sense of the absolute or relative, the supernatural or the natural, the immediate or the remote utility), as synonymous with “natural justice,” “natural equity,” and “good order.”

So, again, when Mr Bentham comes to the discussion of “International Law,” after pointing out, very properly, that whereas internal laws have always a super-ordinate authority to enforce them, “that when nations fall into disputes there is no such super-ordinate impartial authority to bind them to conformity with any fixed rules,” Mr Bentham goes on to say, “though there is no distinct official authority capable of enforcing right principles of international law, there is a power bearing with more or less influence on the conduct of all nations, as of all individuals, however transcendently potent they may be, this is the power of public opinion.” Public opinion! not then of public opinion threatening coercion, for in that case we should have “a super-ordinate impartial authority binding to conformity with fixed rules,” but public opinion as a moral expression. If, however, you take from it the expression of right and wrong, of natural justice, and of the eternal and immutable law; if its expression is not reprobation, and, so to speak, a fore-judgment of the retribution of the Most High, but only dissatisfaction or the mere pronouncement of the inutility of the action, whatever it may be, what even with Benthamites can be its efficacy and worth? The vanquished say to their conqueror, the multitudes to their oppressor, this oppression is not according to utility. Utility! he replies, useful to whom? To you! Fancy the look of Prince Bismarck as he would reply to such an address. What are men if you take away the notion of right and wrong but “the flies of a summer?” How different was the expression of Napoleon after his ill-usage of Pius VII., “J’ai frissonè les nations.” Napoleon had a conscience,[11] and in his moments of calm reflection felt in its full force the reprobation of mankind.

When Bentham, still speaking of public opinion, adds:—

“The power in question has, it is true, various degrees of influence. The strong are better able to put it at defiance than the weak. Countries which, being the most populous, are likely also to be the strongest, carry a certain support of public opinion with all their acts whatever they may be. But still it is the only power which can be moved to good purposes in this case; and, however high some may appear to be above it, there are in reality none who are not more or less subject to its influence.”

Here Bentham is again in imagination gathering men together like the flies of a summer,—the force of their opinion depending on their numbers. But what, again, is the force of all this buzzing if it is the mere expression of “pleasure,” or “pain,” of satisfaction or dissatisfaction in the masses? Conquerors may not always be relentless, they may at times exhibit some sympathy with their fellow men; but as a rule they are so dominated by some one idea or passion, or at best are so absorbed in the interests of their own people, as to be deaf to such appeals. Prince Bismarck’s sentiments towards France during the late war are pretty well known; but it is said that after the conflict was over, and when France was in the throes of its terrible internecine conflict, he was asked, “What is your Excellency’s opinion of the present state of France?” he replied, “Das ist mit ganz wurst,” which is equivalent to “I don’t care two straws about it.”[12] How are men of this stamp to be affected by any exclamations of pleasure or pain? If on the contrary it is the voice of reprobation which they hear, and if in their case the saying “vox populi vox Dei” is felt to have its full application, there is then a public opinion expressed which is calculated to strike the conscience and inspire terror, and that is quite another matter.

De Tocqueville, from his own point of view, puts the argument in favour of natural justice very forcibly, and in a certain construction would express the identical truth for which I contend.

“I hold it to be an impious and an execrable maxim that, politically speaking, a people has a right to do whatever it pleases; and yet I have asserted that all authority originates in the will of the majority. Am I, then, in contradiction with myself? A general law which bears the name of Justice has been made and sanctioned, not only by a majority of this or that people, but by a majority of mankind. The rights of every people are consequently confined within the limits of what is just. A nation may be considered in the light of a jury which is empowered to represent society at large, and to apply the great general law of justice. Ought such a jury, which represents society, to have more power than the society in which the laws it applies originate.”—M. de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America”, ii. 151.

Although M. de Tocqueville’s view does not go to the full length of the argument, still, regarded in this light, the voice of the majority of mankind, or of any large masses of mankind, has a very different significance from what it bears in the writings of Bentham.

Let us now consider the doctrines of Bentham in their more recent exposition.

The Pall Mall Gazette, Oct. 6, 1870, says:—

“Laws have been described as definitions of pre-existing rights, relations between man and man, reflections of divine ordinances, anything but what they really are,—forms of organised constraint. It says little for the assumed clear-headedness of Englishmen, that they have very generally preferred the ornate jargon of Hooker, to the accurate and intelligible account of law and government which forms the basis of Bentham’s juridical system.”

It says much, however, for their strong political sense and sagacity. If this is the true and only description of law, it is tantamount to saying that law is force and force is law; in other words, that the commands of a legitimate government need not be regarded when it is weak, but that the enactments of power must always be obeyed, however it is acquired, and whether its decrees are in accordance with right or contrary to justice. It is a ready justification for tyranny, equally sanctioning the “lettres de cachet” of the ancient regime, and the proscriptions of the Convention, equally at hand for the National Assembly at Versailles, or for the Commune at Paris. But however much it may be disguised, it is the only alternative definition of law, when once you say that law is not of divine ordinance and tradition. If no regard is to be had to the definition of right, but the term law is to be applied to any adequate act of repression, there is in truth nothing but force. Yet why should force adequate to its purpose seek to cloak itself in the forms of law? I suppose the question must have been put and answered before; but the answer can only be because law is felt to import a totally different set of ideas from force.

It is necessary, more especially now that the utilitarian theory is dominant, to enter a protest according to the turn the argument may take, but in the end nothing more can be said than was said by Cicero in the century before our Lord:—

“Est enim unum jus, quo devincta est hominum societas, et quod lex constituit una; quæ lex est recta ratio imperandi atque prohibendi: quam qui ignorat is est injustus, sive est illa scripta uspiam, sive nusquam. Quod si justitia est obtemperatio scriptis legibus institutisque populorum, et si, ut iidem dicunt utilitate omnia metienda sunt, negliget leges, easque perrumpit, si poterit, is, qui sibi eam rem fructuosam putabit fore. Ita fit, ut nulla sit omnino justitia; si neque naturâ est, eaque propter utilitatem constituitur, utilitate alia convellitur.”—De Legibus, i. 15.

It is only upon this construction that the Law of Nations can be said to exist, as “there is no superordinate authority to enforce it.” It is accordingly asserted that the law of nations is not really law. But is not this only when it is regarded from the point of view of “organised constraint?”[13] If it is regarded as a divine ordinance, or even as under the divine sanction, then it is law in a much higher degree than simple internal or municipal law, for it more immediately and directly depends upon this sanction; and hence nations may more confidently appeal to heaven for the redress of wrong here below than individuals—seeing that, as Bossuet somewhere says, God rewards and chastises nations in this world, since it is not according to His divine dispensation to reward them corporately in the next.

More recently, however, the extraordinary successes and subversions which we have witnessed during this last year, have brought the Pall Mall Gazette face to face with problems pressing for immediate and anxious settlement; and in a series of articles it has discussed the question of the law of nations with much depth and earnestness.

I there observe phrases which I can hardly distinguish from those I have just employed. Combating Mr Mill’s view, the writer says:—

“Nobody knows better than he that International Law is not really law, and why it is not law; but he seems to have jumped to the conclusion that it is therefore the same thing as morality.... There cannot, in truth, be any closer analogy than that which we drew the other day between the law of nations and the law of honour, and between public war and private duelling.” [This is upon an assumption that there is nothing “essentially immoral in the code of honour,” as “to a great extent it coincided with morality.”] “But it differed from simple morality in that its precepts were enforced, not by general disapprobation, but by a challenge to the offender by anybody who supposed himself to be aggrieved by the offence. The possible result always was, that the champion of the law might himself be shot, and this was the weakness of the system. But this is exactly the weakness of international law, and the original idea at the basis both of public war and of private duelling was precisely the same,—that God Almighty somehow interposed in favour of the combatant who had the juster cause. There is clear historical evidence that the feuds which became duels were supposed to be fought out under divine supervision, just as battles were believed to be decided by the God of battles.”

I believe that if history could be re-written from this point of view that many startling revelations would be brought to light. It is with reluctance that I turn from the points upon which I approach to agreement with the writer, to those upon which we fundamentally differ.

And here I must remark, that “the accurate and intelligible account of law and government which forms the basis of Bentham’s juridical system”[14] (supra, p. 9), is not distinguishable from, and in any case ultimately depends upon, his theory of utility as a foundation, or, as his later disciples say, a “standard” of morals. Such a standard is the negation of all morality; and if it ever came to stand alone every notion of morals would be obliterated, because, being open to every interpretation, and incapable of supplying any definite rule itself, it would abrogate every other, and under a plausible form abandon mankind to its lusts and passions.

In the Pall Mall Gazette, April 12, 1871, an article entitled “Mr Darwin on Conscience,” discusses Benthamism with reference to Darwinism. There is a fitness in this which does not immediately appear.

The writer says:—

“What is called the question of the moral sense is really two: how the moral faculty is acquired, and how it is regulated. Why do we obey conscience or feel pain in disobeying it? And why does conscience prescribe one kind of actions and condemn another kind? To put it more technically, there is the question of the subjective existence of conscience, and there is the question of its objective prescriptions.”

I will avail myself of this distinction, and, setting aside the questions referring to the “subjective existence of conscience,” I will ask attention only to “its objective prescriptions.” Assuming, then, the operations of conscience in the individual man, there will necessarily also have been in the course of history some outward expression of this inward feeling in maxims, precepts, and laws, if not also reminiscences of primeval revelations and divine commands.

It will be true, therefore, to say, without touching the deeper question of the foundation of morals, that there has been a tradition of morals which cannot but have had its influence in all ages upon the “social feelings” in which, according to the Pall Mall Gazette, “it will always be necessary to lay the basis of conscience.” Now is this tradition of morals identical with utilitarian precept? If the tradition of morals is identical with “the greatest happiness principle,” then that principle was no discovery of Bentham’s,[15] neither can Benthamism be regarded as “the new application of an old principle.” Bentham in that case simply informed mankind that they had been talking prose all their lives without knowing it! Benthamism, however, in point of fact, is felt as a new principle precisely in so far as it discards the old morality. The question which I ask is, how does it account for these old notions of morality obtaining among mankind? How is it that mankind has so long and so persistently, both in their notion of what was good and their sense of what was evil, departed from the line of their true interests, as disclosed in the utilitarian philosophy? If the history of man is what the Scriptures tell us it was, the manner in which this has come about is sufficiently explained; and there is no mystery as to the notion of sin, the necessity of expiation, the restraints and limitations of natural desires, the excellence of contemplation, and the obligation of sacrifices and prayers. Now, if the history of mankind is not to be invoked in explanation, it is difficult to see how these notions should not conflict with any theory and plan of life based on a principle of utility.[16] It is not unnatural, therefore, that the utilitarians should turn to Darwinism and other such kindred systems for the solution of their difficulties.

The Pall Mall Gazette, April 12, 1871, says:—

“Between Mr Darwin and utilitarians, as utilitarians, there is no such quarrel as he would appear to suppose. The narrowest utilitarian could say little more than Mr Darwin says (ii. 393):—‘As all men desire their own happiness, praise or blame is bestowed on actions and motives according as they tend to this end; and as happiness is an essential part of the general good, the greatest happiness principle indirectly serves as a nearly safe standard of right and wrong.’”

Now, there is nothing in this reiteration of Benthamism which has not been thrice refuted by Lord Macaulay in the Essays above referred to. I append an extract more exactly to the point.[17]

I refer to it because it will be interesting to see how the argument looks in its application to Darwinism.

It will be seen that if the conditions of unlimited enjoyment anywhere existed, Lord Macaulay’s strictures would lose something of their force. If, indeed, there was superabundance and superfluity of everything for all in this life, then anything which conduces to the satisfaction of the individual would add to, or at least would not detract from, the sum of happiness of all mankind. But unless you can show this—if even the reverse of this is the truth—then “the greatest happiness” will be in proportion to the self-abnegation of those who possess more, or have the greatest faculties or facilities of producing more.

Now, if there is one view more prominent than another in Mr Darwin’s work, it is embodied in the phrase to which he has given a new sense and significance, “the struggle for existence.” In the midst of this struggle for existence, what is there in the greatest happiness principle to bind the individual to abnegation? Why should he postpone his certain and immediate gratification to the remote advantage of others, or of distant and contingent advantage to himself? If, on the other hand, he regards the transitoriness of the enjoyment, and balances it against the fixity and eternity of the consequences, the argument takes altogether different proportions, and the temptation to enjoyment is inversely to the intensity of the struggle for existence.

I will take another test of Benthamism by Darwinism, which will more exactly bring out the argument for which I contend. We have a traditional horror of infanticide which revolts all our best feelings and shocks our principles. But if Mr Darwin has demonstrated this struggle for existence existing from all time; if also we are disembarrassed from all advertence to another world; if, further, Mr Malthus, before Mr Darwin, has shown reason to believe that over-population is the cause of half the evils of this life, what is there in Benthamite principles which should prevent our sacrificing these unconscious innocents to the greatest happiness of the greatest number? Nothing, except the horror we should excite among mankind still imbued with the old superstitions! A person who did not hold to Mr Malthus’ views might demur; but a Malthusian, who was also a disciple of Mr Bentham, could only hold back because his feelings were better than his principles. A disciple of Mr Darwin’s would probably stand aloof, and would merely see in our notions an artificial interference with the working of his theory, preventing the struggle for existence going on according to natural laws. This seems to me to be almost said in the same article from the Pall Mall Gazette, from which I have quoted. Mr Darwin, in his “Origin of Species” (p. 249), has pointed out that “we ought to admire the savage instinct which leads the queen-bee to destroy her young daughters as soon as born, because this is for the good of the community.” And in his new book he says, firmly and unmistakably (i. 73), that “if men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think of interfering.” The Pall Mall continues—

“If, from one point of view, this is apt to shock a timorous and unreflecting mind, by asserting that the most cherished of our affections might have been, under certain circumstances, a vicious piece of self-indulgence, and its place in the scale of morality taken by what is now the most atrocious kind of crime; nevertheless, from another point of view, such an assertion is as reassuring as the most absolute of moralists could desire, for it is tantamount to saying that the foundations of morality, the distinctions of right and wrong, are deeply laid in the very conditions of social existence; that there is, in the face of these conditions, a positive and definite difference between the moral and the immoral, the virtuous and the vicious, the right and the wrong, in the actions of individuals partaking of that social existence.”

This is very well. It is so now, because of the traditional sentiments and principles which still retain their force—but how long will it continue?

I invite attention to the following passage from Mr Hepworth Dixon’s “New America” (vol. i. p. 312, 6th edition), which I must say struck me very forcibly when I read it. He narrates a conversation which he had with Brigham Young on the subject of incest:—“Speaking for himself, not for the church, he (Brigham Young) said he saw none at all (i.e. no objection at all). He added, however, that he would not do it himself,—‘my prejudices prevent me.’” Upon which Mr Hepworth Dixon observes—

“This remnant of an old feeling brought from the Gentile world, and this alone, would seem to prevent the saints (Mormons) from rushing into the higher forms of incest. How long will these Gentile sentiments remain in force? ‘You will find here,’ said elder Stenhouse to me, talking on another subject, ‘polygamists of the third generation. When these boys and girls grow up and marry, you will have in these valleys the true feeling of patriarchal life. The old world is about us yet, and we are always thinking of what people may say in the Scottish hills and the Midland shires.’”

Here, and in the previous extract, we seem to catch glimpses of what the morality of the future is likely to be, at any rate in such matters as infanticide and incest, if old notions are to be discarded, and men are left, in each generation, to no higher rule than their own individual calculation as to pleasure and pain, or to the prevailing sense or determination of the community as to what the conditions of utility may permit.

The nineteenth century is now verging on its decline, and of it, too, may we say that it has been better than its principles. Yet, in spite of its philanthropy, and its aspirations for good, the destructive principles which it has nursed are rapidly gaining on its instincts: and if we may not truly at this moment paint its glories, as they have been depicted, I think by Alexandre Dumas, as “the livery of heroism, turned up with assassination and incest,” is the time very remote when the description will apply?

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CHAPTER II
THE LAW OF NATURE.

But underlying the question of the law of nations, and determining it, is the question whether or not there is a law of nature—a rule of right and wrong, independent of, and anterior to, positive legislative or international enactment. To prevent misconception, however, as to the scope of the inquiry, it is as well that I should state that I am only regarding the law of nature as the law of conscience (by which the Gentiles “were a law unto themselves,” Rom. ii. 14), in so far as it has manifested itself in laws and maxims; and the question I am here concerned with is, whether in any sense which history can take cognizance of, there was a rule of right and wrong previous to legislative enactment?

At the first glance, the question would seem sufficiently disposed of by saying that men never were in a state of nature; which is true in this sense, that mankind never formed a multitude of isolated individuals, or a promiscuous herd of men and women. A totally different solution supposes a state of nature; but which, whether it depicts it as a golden age or an age of barbarism, still contemplates mankind in this state as a mere congeries of individuals, without law, or else without the necessity of law—in either case an aggregate of isolated individuals, eventually to be brought into the state of civil society by a social compact.

Now my intention is not to combat this view—which at the present moment may be considered to be exploded—but to account for it.

I think that I shall do something towards clearing up this mystery by pointing out that this latter solution, although in great vogue with the publicists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is traced beyond them to the classical times, and was derived by them through the tradition of the Roman law from Paganism. A theory of the lawyers, and a theory of the philosophers, concreted with a true but distorted fact in tradition in order to produce this belief, viz., that society was founded by a contract among men who were originally equal.[18]

I shall in a subsequent chapter state to what extent I believe it to be true that society was founded upon a contract, and also the way in which this impression was confirmed, from the actual circumstances of the formation of the early communities of Greece and Italy; and I shall then examine the true tradition, such as I believe it to be, of a state of nature associated with the reminiscence of a golden age, as contrasted with the distinct yet parallel tradition of a state of nature identified with a state of barbarism (vide [ch. vii.] and [ch. xiii.])

This latter tradition I believe to have been a recollection of that period of temporary privation after the Flood, when mankind clung to the caverns and the mountains (vide [p. 137]), until, incited by the example of Noah, they were brought into the plains, and instructed in the arts of husbandry by the patriarch; and the notion of the primitive equality[19] of condition I believe to have originated in the Bacchanalian traditions of the same patriarch.[20]

If we start with a belief in the primitive equality of conditions, the only way out of the mesh is apparently by a theory of a compact.

“From the Roman law downwards,” says Sir G. C. Lewis, “there has been a strong tendency among jurists to deduce recognised rights and obligations from a supposed, but non-existing contract. When an express contract exists, the legal rights and duties which it creates are in general distinct and well-defined. Hence, in cases where it is wished that similar legal consequences should be drawn, which come within the spirit of the rules applicable to a contract, though they do not themselves involve any contract, the lawyer cuts the knot by saying that a contract is presumed, that there is a contract by intendment of law, that there are certain rights and obligations “quasi ex contractu.” Thus the Roman law held that a guardian was bound to his ward by a quasi contract.”—Sir G. C. Lewis, “On the Methods of Observation, &c, in Politics,” i. 423; “On the Social Compact,” pp. 424–431.

It is not difficult to see how such a fiction of the law would tend to give shape and system to the vague tradition as to the fact among the populace.

The way in which the philosopher came to his conclusion was somewhat more complex. It will have been seen that the notion of the state of nature and the social compact was, among the ancients, in the main, a figment of the imagination, and not a tradition. But there was also a tradition of a law of nature which did not at all correspond to a state of license, of equality, and of barbarism, such as the state of nature was conceived to be. It was, on the contrary, a law of decorum and restraint. What, then, the Roman probably meant by the law of nature was a reminiscence of a primitive revelation, or a tradition of the maxims of right and wrong by which men were guided in their relations to one another, when fresh from the hand of God—“a diis recentes”—when family life still subsisted, and before men had settled down into states and communities. It was not a law of nature as nature then was, but an aspiration after a lost rule of life, as after a higher standard, and an attempt to trace it back, through the corruption of mankind. Dim and uncertain as these notions were, they were not without their influence.

But their ideas as to the cosmogony were more shadowy still. When, then, in reasoning from a law of nature to a state of nature, mankind discovered that they knew or remembered nothing of their origin, or of the history of the human race, except indirectly through legendary lore, they then had recourse to the philosophers. These latter then did what philosophers incline to do in such cases of difficulty. They regarded the existing state of things, and finding it to be artificial, they, by a process of abstraction, resolved it into its elements, and, having thus reduced society into an assemblage of individuals, substituted their last analysis for the commencement of all things. In this analysis they found men, what historically and in fact they had never been, alike free, equal, and independent.

The theory of the social compact among men individually free and equal was in the main a fiction, started à posteriori to account for relations otherwise obscure, or, as Sir Henry Maine explains, to facilitate modifications which were felt to be desirable; and we cannot be astonished that Paganism should take this view, unless we are prepared to believe that the traditions truly embodying the history of the world were more direct, vivid, and potential than I suppose them to have been. It is at least remarkable, that in proportion as men lose their faith, they fall back, as if by some necessary law, upon some theory which directly or indirectly contemplates mankind as a collection of atoms; and if ever society should lose again the history of its origin, as would happen if ever infidelity were to gain complete ascendancy, it would return by the same processes to the same conclusion. But however sceptical individual minds may become, or however general may be the disposition to reject or ignore the scriptural narrative, the general framework of its statements is now too firmly embedded in the belief of mankind to be easily overthrown.

The notion of a social compact, in more recent times, obtained a certain credence[21] so long as the discussion was confined to Hobbes, Locke, and their disciples. And it must be borne in mind that this is a very taking theory, a ready and convenient starting point, and conformable to much that is true in history and politics. But it is long since exploded; and even the fervid advocacy of Rousseau, in an age peculiarly predisposed for its reception, could not secure for it even temporary recognition among mankind; and why? Because, whenever the discussion cools, men will inevitably ask each other the question, If such a compact took place, where shall we locate it consistently with the evidence recorded in Genesis? Remove the evidence in Genesis, and such a theory becomes at once a tenable and plausible conjecture.

As I shall have occasion, later on, to come into collision with Sir Henry Maine upon some points, I have the greater satisfaction here in invoking his testimony. This acute and learned writer (“Ancient Law,” p. 90) regrets that the Voltairean prejudices of the last century prevented reference “to the only primitive records worth studying—the early history of the Jews[22].... One of the few characteristics which the school of Rousseau had in common with the school of Voltaire was an utter disdain of all religious antiquities, and more than all of those of the Hebrew race. It is well known that it was a point of honour with the reasoners of that day to assume, not merely that the institutions called after Moses were not divinely dictated, ... but that they and the entire Pentateuch were a gratuitous forgery executed after the return from the Captivity. Debarred, therefore, from one chief security against speculative delusion, the philosophers of France, in their eagerness to escape from what they deemed a superstition of the priests, flung themselves headlong into a superstition of the lawyers.”

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CHAPTER III
PRIMITIVE LIFE.

The scriptural narrative seems to establish:—(1.) That human society did not commence with the fortuitous concurrence of individuals, but that, though originating with a single pair, for the purposes of practical inquiry it commences with a group of families—the family of Noah and his sons, together with their families, and whose dispersion in other families is subsequently recorded. (2.) That men were not primitively in a state of savagery, barbarism, and ignorance of civil life; but that, on the contrary, it is presumable that Noah and his family brought with them out of the ark the traditions and experiences of two thousand years, and, not to speak of special revelations, the arts of civil life and acquaintance with cities. (3.) That, although everything in the early state of mankind would have led to dispersion, and although there is mention of one great and complete dispersion, yet this dispersion of mankind was a dispersion of families and not of individuals.

In all our speculations, therefore, as to society and government, it is the family and not the individual whom we must regard as the elementary constituent.

Moreover, so long as family government sufficed, there was nothing but the family. The state would have existed only in germ (vide infra, [p. 341]), and would have remained thus inchoate even during that subsequent period when families were affiliated in tribal connection, though not yet coalesced into tribal union. It is my impression, that the period during which family government sufficed, continued much longer than is generally supposed; for, until the world became peopled and crowded, everything led to dispersion and the continuance of the pastoral state of life. From the necessities of pastoral life, mankind in early times could not have been gregarious—herds would have become intermixed, keep would have become short, the broad plains were spread out before them;[23] e.g. Gen. chap. xiii.—

“But Lot also, who was with Abraham, had flocks of sheep, and herds and tents. 6. Neither was the land able to bear them, that they might dwell together. 7. Whereupon there arose a strife between the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot; and at that time the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelt in that country. 8. Abraham therefore said, Let there be no quarrel. 9. Behold the whole land is before thee.”[24]

It is scarcely to be believed, that in such a state of society there would have been feuds, in the sense of inherited or hereditary quarrels, but at most contentions for particular localities; in which case the weaker or the discomfited party would have pushed on to other ground. There was no long contest, because there was nothing worth contesting. It has been noticed that only the highly civilised man, and the savage who has tasted blood, love fighting for the mere sake and ardour of the conflict. The simple barbarian does not fight until he is attacked, neither do the wild animals of the desert; their ferocity is limited and regulated by the necessity and the provocation. It is the exception, rather than the rule, for animals to fight among themselves. It is not in the nature of man or beast to fight without a reason. Accordingly, there is no such fomenter of war as war. Carver notices that the wars carried on between the Indian nations are principally on motives of revenge, and, when not on motives of revenge, their reasons for going to war are “in general more rational and just than such as are fought by Europeans, &c”—Carver’s “Travels in North America,” pp. 351, 297.[25]

The same tendencies, under similar circumstances, where the tribes were not crowded or in fear of warlike neighbours, was noticed among the Red Indians some forty years ago. Now, I suppose, instances would be rare.

“When a nation of Indians becomes too numerous conveniently to procure subsistence from its own hunting-grounds, it is no uncommon occurrence for it to send out a colony, or, in other words, to separate into tribes.... The tribe so separated maintains all its relations independent of the parent nation, though the most friendly intercourse is commonly maintained, and they are almost uniformly allies. Separations sometimes take place from party dissensions, growing generally out of the jealousies of the principal chiefs, and, not unfrequently, out of petty quarrels. In such instances, in order to prevent the unnecessary and wanton effusion of blood, and consequent enfeebling of the nation, the weaker party moves off usually without the observance of much ceremony.”[26]

Mr Grote in his “Plato”[27] says—

“There existed,” even “in his (Plato’s) time, a great variety of distinct communities—some in the simplest, most patriarchal, cyclopian condition, nothing more than families; some highly advanced in civilisation, with its accompanying good and evil, some in each intermediate stage between these two extremes. Each little family or sept exists at first separately, with a patriarch whom all implicitly obey, and peculiar customs of its own. Several of these septs gradually coalesce together into a community, choosing one or a few lawgivers to adjust and modify their respective customs into harmonious order.”[28]

In the situations, however, where the more powerful families had seized the vantage-ground, or established themselves in the richest and most coveted valleys, the tendency to consolidation and permanent settlement would have more rapidly manifested itself. As the tendency to family dispersion became restrained, and its scope restricted, disputes as to meum and tuum would have become more frequent as between families, some more central authority than the family headship would have been demanded for the protection, discrimination, and regulation of property. In these instances the state may be said to have arisen out of the expansion of the family into the tribes—the families, probably, never having ceased to dwell together in semi-aggregation; and, when greater concentration was required, they simply had to fall back upon the patriarchal chieftain. We seem to see a tradition of this in the Anax Andron.

But equally as regards the rest there must inevitably have come a time when, as the world became crowded, the same necessity of defending their possessions, would have caused families, among whom there was no affinity of race, to coalesce, intermix, succumb, and form communities and states.

These two modes of settlement into communities and states were, however, essentially dissimilar, and the basis thus laid would have remained permanently different. The one was the basis of custom, the other of contract; the one the settlement of the East, the other of the West; and it will be seen, I think, that whilst the one was more favourable to the conservation of traditions of religion and history, the other would have better preserved the tradition of right. These are points to which I shall return in a subsequent chapter, when I shall avail myself of the investigations of Sir Henry Maine.

This simple outline, however, of human history, conformable, as I believe it to be, with the scriptural narrative, conflicts with at least three theories now much in vogue. The first, which is substantially that of Sir John Lubbock, Mr Mill,[29] and Mr B. Gould, is thus conveniently summarised by Mr Hepworth Dixon.[30]

“Every one who has read the annals of our race—a page of nature with its counterfoil in the history of everything having life—is aware that, in our progress from the savage to the civilised state, man has had to pass through three grand stages, corresponding, as it were, to his childhood, to his youth, and to his manhood. In the first stage of his career he is a hunter, living mainly by the chase; in the second, he is a herdsman; ... in the third stage, he is a husbandman.... Then these conditions of human life may be considered as finding their purest types in such races as the Iroquois, the Arabian, the Gothic, in their present stage; but each condition is, in itself and for itself, an affair of development and not of race. The Arab, who is now a shepherd, was once a hunter. The Saxon, who is now a cultivator of the soil, was first a hunter, then a herdsman, before he became a husbandman. Man’s progress from stage to stage is continuous in its course, obeying the laws of physical and moral change. It is slow, it is uniform, it is silent, it is unseen. In one word, it is growth.... These three stages in our progress upward are strongly marked; the interval dividing an Iroquois from an Arab being as wide as that which separates an Arab from a Saxon.”

Now, in the first place, I must remark that the Iroquois and the Arab have never progressed;[31] neither does the Arab at the present show any signs of a transition to the third stage of necessary growth, nor does Mr Hepworth Dixon, although he gives some sound practical advice as to the best mode in which the red man is to be restrained, venture to suggest any mode by which he is to be reclaimed from the first to the third stage, either with or without a transition through the second stage of development. The conclusion therefore, one would think, would be inevitable that it is an affair of race and not of development. The Arab and the Iroquois, after the lapse of so many centuries, are still found with the evidences of primitive life strong upon them; and so, I imagine, we shall find it wherever we come upon a pure race of homogeneous origin. On the contrary, we shall find that mixed races, by the very law and reason of their admixture, have shown the greatest adaptibility, and, whenever circumstances were favourable, very rapid growth. Again, I very much question whether the three stages, or rather three phases of life were ever, as a rule, progressive; and whether, in the cases in which they might chance to have been successive, anything occurred in the transition at all resembling an uniform law of growth. It is very much more probable that the three were from the earliest period contemporaneous[32]—“and Abel was a shepherd, and Cain an husbandman” (Gen. iv.)—the determination of the sons to the avocations of shepherd, husbandman, and hunter respectively (the latter most probably being the last selected), being influenced by taste, character, and the division of the inheritance, the authority of the father, the geographical conditions of the route, and chance circumstances.

And this is the more confirmed when we consider that when once the hunter started on his career, he would have determined their avocation also for his posterity. At his death he would not have had herds of cattle to apportion to any one of his sons, and thus the taste for wild life, necessarily perpetuated, would be bred in the bone, as an indomitable characteristic of race, and the first hunter by choice would inevitably come to be the progenitor of generations of hunters by instinct and necessity.

The second theory depicts the opening scene of human existence as a state of conflict, which, it must be allowed, is perfectly consistent with the theory that it was one of savagery. The theory I am now combating was originally the theory of Hobbes; and I might have regarded it as now obsolete, were it not that it has cropped up quite recently in a most respectable quarter. Mr Hunter, in his charming work, “The Annals of Rural Bengal,” has a passage which, as I think, has been taken for more than it intends, though not for more than it expresses. Mr Hunter says, p. 89—

“The inquiry leads us back to that far-off time which we love to associate with patriarchal stillness. Yet the echoes of ancient life in India little resemble a Sicilian idyl or the strains of Pan’s pipe, but strike the ear rather as the cries of oppressed and wandering nations, of people in constant motion and pain. Early Indian researches, however, while they make havoc of the pastoral landscapes of Genesis and Job, have a consolation peculiarly suited to this age. They plainly tell us, that as in Europe so in Asia, the primitive state of mankind was a state of unrest; and that civilisation, despite its exactions and nervous city life, is a state of repose.”

It is plain that there is here question of restlessness rather than of violence; but grant that there was violence too, the account of Mr. Hunter when examined, so far from conflicting with, appears to me to fall exactly into, the lines I have indicated. Is not the scene, from before which Mr. Hunter lifts the curtain, the scene of that age following the dispersion (of which, p. 452, there is such distinct tradition in his pages), which is traditionally known to us as the iron age? The error, then, of Mr. Hunter is to confound the patriarchal with the iron age. It need not therefore cause surprise that in early Indian history we should hear of conflict, for it is just at the period and under the circumstances when we should consider the collision probable.

Mr. Hunter, indeed, speaks of the aboriginal races as mysterious in their origin. But from the point of view of Genesis, there seems to be no greater mystery about them than about their conquerors the Aryans. One representative, at least, of the aboriginal race, the Santals, retain to this day the most vivid traditions of the Flood and the Dispersion[33] (pp. 151, 452). Now, if there had existed any race anterior to the Santals, I think we should have heard of them. On this point we may consider Mr. Hunter’s negative testimony as conclusive, both on account of his extensive knowledge of the subject, and his evident predisposition (p. 109) to have discovered a prior race, if it had existed; and there is nothing to show that the same line of argument would not have applied to it if its existence had been demonstrated. It must be mentioned that besides their tradition of the dispersion, the Santals retain dim recollections—borne out by comparative evidence—of having travelled to their present homes from the north-east, whereas the Aryans came unmistakeably from the north-west.

Here, then, just as might have been predicted à priori, these rival currents of the dispersion met from opposite points, and ran into a cul de sac, from which, as there was no egress, there necessarily ensued a struggle for mastery.

Let us now regard the two people more closely.

“Our earliest glimpses of the human family in India, disclose two tribes of widely different origin, struggling for the mastery. In the primitive time, which lies on the horizon even of inductive history, a tall, fair-complexioned race passed the Himalaya. They came of a conquering stock. They had known the safety and the plenty which can only be enjoyed in regular communities.[34] They brought with them a store of legends and devotional strains; and chief of all they were at the time of their migration southward through Bengal, if not at their first arrival in India, imbued with that high sense of nationality, which burns in the heart of a people who believe themselves the depositary of a divine revelation. There is no record of the newcomers’ first struggle for life with the people of the land.”—Hunter’s Annals, p. 90.

Here we see the more intellectual, the more spiritual (p. 116), monotheistic (p. 115) Aryan race overpowering the black race which had earliest pre-occupied the ground, and which was already tainted with demon worship. This contrast invites further inquiry; but first let me clear up and direct the immediate drift of my argument.

If we estimate—taking the minimum or the maximum either according to the Hebrew or Septuagint version—the time it would have taken these populations, according to the slow progress of the dispersion, to have arrived at their destinations from the plain of Sennaar (Mesopotamia), the period may be equally conjectured to correspond with that which tradition marks as the commencement of the iron age, when the world was becoming overcrowded, and the increasing populations came into collision.

Neither is it a difficulty,[35] it rather appears to me in accordance with tradition, that if this surmise be correct, the earliest arrival in the Indian Peninsula should have been of those who took the longest route. For it is natural to suppose that the proscribed and weakest races, e.g. the Canaanitish, would have been the first to depart, and to depart by the north-east and west, the more powerful families having passed down and closed the south-east exit by way of the lower valleys of the Euphrates. These latter would have spread themselves out in the direction of India leisurely and at a subsequent period.

Following these lines of migration, the Aryan at some period came upon the black Turanian race (vide infra, [Chap. v.]); and Mr Hunter (p. 110) records the embittered feelings with which the recollection of the strife remained in tradition. Why should this have been? It might suffice to say, in consistency with what has already been advanced, that this was their first encounter, the first check in their advance.

Another solution seems to me equally ready to hand, and to solve so much more. But first, how does Mr Hunter account for this bitter feeling? He suggests contempt for their “uncouth talk,” “their gross habits of eating,” -will not this explain something of their animosity?

I must here remark that although scientific inquiry takes designations of its own, in order the more conveniently to express its distinctions, yet whether we accept the ethnological or philological demarcations of mankind, it is curious how inevitably, as I think De Maistre remarked, we are led back to Shem, Ham, and Japhet. And this is as true now after a half century of scientific progress, as it was when De Maistre wrote. Without asserting that the divisions may ever be distinctly traced with the minuteness of Bochart in his “Geog. Sacra,” I still say, that the broad lines of the traditional apportionment of the world, and the three-fold or four-fold division of the race indicated in Scripture, is seen behind the ultimate divisions into which science is brought to separate mankind, whether into Caucasian, Ethiopian, Mongol, with two intermediate varieties, as by Blumenbach; or into Australioid, Negroid, Mongoloid, and Xanthochroic, as by Huxley; or into Brace’s division into Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, and Hamitic. Behind these various systems, as behind a grill, we seem to see the forms and faces of the progenitors of the human race discernible, but their existence not capable of contact and actual demonstration, because of the intercepting bars and lattice work.[36]

I have spoken above of a three-fold and four-fold division as equally indicated in Scripture, and I think, from non-observance of this, the close approximation of these systems to Genesis is not sufficiently recognised. I refer to the three progenital races, and the Canaanite marked off and distinguished from the rest by a curse. I shall enlarge upon this point in another chapter ([Chap. v]).

I will only observe now that I do not venture to say that the Canaanite is co-extensive with the Turanian, which is more a philological than an ethnological division of mankind, or that their characteristics in all respects correspond.[37] I limit my argument now to indicating the correspondence between the Canaanite and the aboriginal tribes in India.

This correspondence I find not only in the features already noted—their blackness and their intellectual inferiority—but in their enslavement to the superior races of mankind whenever they came into contact and collision with them. Is not this everywhere also the mark of the Turanian race? are not these conflicts in primitive life always with the Turanian race? and are they not in Asia, as in Africa, in a state of subjugation or dependence?

At any rate, this is the condition in which we find the Turanian in India, so fully expressed in their name of “Sudras.”[38]

Against this literal fulfilment of Gen. ix. 25—“Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren”—as regards the Indian Sudra, the text in Gen. x. 19—“And the limits of Chanaan were from Sidon ... to Gaza ... even to Sesa”—may be objected. But I construe this text only to refer to Chanaan proper, and to be spoken rather with reference to the limits of the Promised Land and the Hebrews, than to the allocation of the tribes of Chanaan; for the text immediately preceding seems to me to have its significance—viz. Gen. x. 18,[39] where it is said in a marked manner, and of the descendants of Chanaan alone, “The families of the Canaanites were spread abroad.” But if we are to suppose the whole descent of Chanaan to have been confined between the limits of Sidon and Sesa, it could hardly have been said to have had the diffusion of the other Hamitic races, and the families of the Chanaanites will not have been “spread abroad” in any noticeable or striking manner. It appears to me, also, that it may be proved in another way. St Paul, Acts xiii. 19, says that God destroyed seven nations in the land of Chanaan, whereas Gen. x. enumerates eleven.

Again, Kalisch (“Hist. and Crit. Com. on Old Testament,” trans. 1858) makes it a difficulty against Gen. ix. that “Canaan should not only fall into the hands of Shem, i.e. the people of Israel, but also of Japhet” (i. 226).

A remote fulfilment of the prediction may be seen in the Median conquest of Phœnicia, and the Roman destruction of Carthage; but if I have truly indicated the order of events, it will be seen that it had already come about in the earliest times.

The text, indeed, of Gen. ix. 27—“May God enlarge Japhet, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan be his servant”—is so clear as almost to require some such fulfilment.

But the fulfilment is seen, not only in the degradation of Chanaan, but in the prosperity of Japhet;[40] and this is so correlative, that I shall still be enforcing the argument whilst connecting a link which may appear to be wanting, viz. the identity of Japhet with the more favoured nations of the world. The identity of the Indo-Germanic races with the descendants of Japhet may almost be said to be a truth “qui saute aux yeux,” but it may still be worth while to collect the links of tradition which establish it.

In truth, it appears to us a self-evident proposition, simply because tradition has familiarised us with the belief that Europe was peopled by the descendants of Japhet, and because philology has recently demonstrated the Indo-Germanic race to include this demarcation (together with Central and Western Asia); but I think that if we exclude the testimony of tradition, we should have difficulty in establishing the point either upon the text of Gen. x. 5, or from the evidence of philology.

That the race of Japhet spread themselves over the islands, and colonised the coasts of the Mediterranean, is the traditional interpretation of that text; and it receives confirmation, in the first place, in the tradition that “Japetus being the father of Prometheus, was regarded by the Greeks as the ancestor of the human race.”—Smith’s “Myth. Dict.” We have, I think, become familiar with such transpositions as “Deucalion the son of Prometheus,” and “Prometheus the son of Deucalion,” &c. Certainly Prometheus (vide Appendix to Chap. viii. [p. 180], and Chap. x. [p. 232]), supposing Prometheus to be Adam,[41] would naturally stand at the head of every genealogy; but Japetus, supposing him to be identified with Japhet as the particular founder of the race (after so distinct and definite a starting-point as the Deluge), would also, in his way, have claims to be placed at the head of their genealogy; and probably about the time that he began to be called “old Japetus,” and to be typical of antiquity, his claims would have been regarded as paramount, and Prometheus would have been accordingly displaced in his favour. This is conjectural, but must be taken as one link.

Well, the (Indian) Aryans also, according to Mr Hunter (“Rural Bengal,” 103), “held (Book of Manu and the Vishnu Purana) that the Greeks and Persians were sprung from errant Kshatryas, who had lost their caste”—i.e. from their own race. They are called in the same books Yavanas and Pahlavas. Now no one, I think, will call it a forced analogy to see in Yavana the name of Javan, the son of Japhet.[42] This I may call link the second.

But the Aryans, as we have seen, are one of the three or four primitive races to which both philology and ethnology lead us back. They are contrasted, on the one side, with the Semitic, and, on the other, with the Hamitic or Turanian race. We will assume, then, on the strength of the philological and scriptural lines being so nearly conterminous, that at least, looking from the point of view of Scripture, the Aryan may be identified with great probability as the Japhetic race. If, then, the Aryan is the Japhetic race in its elder branch—to which its later migration would seem to testify—we should exactly expect that it would designate a kindred but collateral race, not by the name of their common ancestor, but by the name of the progenitor from whom they were more immediately descended—not as from Japhet, but from Javan. Thus the links seem to join; and here I leave them, till there may chance to come some one who will gather up all the links in the chain of tradition, dislocated and dispersed by the catastrophes which have been consequent upon the derelictions of mankind.

The third view to which I wish to advert, is that put forward by Mr John F. M’Lennan in his “Primitive Marriage,” 1865, which also revives the theory of a savage state, and moreover professes to discover primitive mankind living in a state of promiscuity, little, if at all, elevated above the brute, and this during the long period which was required to develop 1. the tribe; 2. the gens; 3. the family.

It will be difficult for any one, who comes fresh from the perusal of Genesis, to realise the possibility of such a view being held; but, in truth, there is no view too grotesque for men in whose survey mankind appear originally on the scene as a mass of units coming into the world, no one knows how, like locusts rising above the horizon, or covering the earth perhaps like toads after a shower!

Yet Mr M’Lennan’s theory is virtually endorsed (vide infra) by Sir J. Lubbock, who refers to it (p. 60, note), as “Mr M’Lennan’s masterly work.” If, then, we must discuss the theory upon its merits, the objection which I should take, in limine, is that it is a partial generalisation from facts, irrespective of the historical evidence as a whole. There stands against it, of course, the direct evidence of the Bible, also there stands against it the researches of oriental archaeology, and, again, what Mr M’Lennan calls the “so-called revelation of philology,” which shows that mankind, in the period previous to their dispersion, “had marriage laws regulating the rights and obligations of husbands and wives, of parents and children.” This evidence he rejects because “the preface of general history must be compiled from the materials presented by barbarism” (p. 9), thus assuming barbarism to have been the primitive state.

Mr M’Lennan struggles vainly for universal facts on which to build, and seems to find one in what he has termed exogamy (i.e. marriage outside the tribe), combined with the capture of wives and the infanticide of female children within the tribe. Impossible! If this state of things had been universal, the human race would have exterminated itself long before “the historic period!” The theory necessarily supposes that some tribes were addicted to these practices, whilst others were not. Exogamy, therefore, is not a universal fact; but neither could endogamy have been, for “the conversion of an endogamous tribe into an exogamous tribe is inconceivable,” p. 146. But as Mr M’Lennan is as much constrained to choose between exogamy and endogamy as was Mons. Jourdain between poetry and prose, he apparently elects in favour of the universal primitive prevalence of exogamy, i.e. he supposes mankind to have commenced under conditions which would have ensured its proximate extinction.

Mr M’Lennan (p. 144) says, “the two types of organisation (viz. exogamy and endogamy) may be equally archaic;” but it is evident that he inclines to the opinion that exogamy is the more archaic; and his analysis at p. 142, commencing with “Exogamy Pure, No. 1, and continuing on to ... Endogamy Pure, No. 6,” is “the analysis of a series of phenomena which appears to form a progression” (141).

Moreover, the difficulties which I have just urged will immediately recur if we allow “the two types to have been equally archaic.”

The supposed exogamous tribes, according to the theory, enforcing the infanticide of female children, and not permitting marriage within the tribe, must have been wholly dependent upon the endogamous groups for their women. These latter groups must either have succumbed, and so have become speedily extinguished through the loss of their women (for they could not have acquired others who were not of their stock, without ceasing to be endogamous); or they must have resisted successfully, and even if the matter went no farther, the exogamous tribes must have died out or abandoned exogamy; or the endogamous tribes must have resisted and retaliated, in which case we should have this further complication that they themselves would have ceased to be endogamous, and without any reason or necessity for becoming exogamous; for with the seizure of the females of the exogamous tribes, or even, under the special circumstances, with the recovery of their own, the element of “heterogeneity” would have been introduced, and the system of endogamy would have been no longer true in theory, or possible in fact. All these results must have been immediately consequent upon the first collision, which from the very conditions of exogamy, must have occurred at the outset! Postulating exogamy, it must therefore rapidly have extirpated or absorbed every other system, and yet it could never have stood alone.

Mr M’Lennan himself allows that wherever “kinship through females, the most ancient system in which the idea of blood relationship was embodied” (148) was known, there would have been a tendency among the exogamous groups to become heterogeneous, and that thus “the system of capturing wives would have been superseded.”[43] In other words, exogamy would have become extinct. But if “kinship through females” was not discovered by the first children of the first mothers, how was it subsequently discovered? We are given no clue except that “the order of nature is progressive!”

This compels the remark that if Mr M’Lennan fails to prove that exogamy was universal, as a stage of human progress, or, to use a phrase of his own, “on such a scale as to entitle it to rank among the normal phenomena of human development,” there is nothing to exclude the likelihood of its being much more satisfactorily and directly traced as the result of degeneracy. Mr M’Lennan should clear his ground by demonstrating that the circumstances exclude the possibility of this conjecture.

On the contrary, and on his own showing, they would appear much more certainly to affirm it. Although exogamy is the earliest fact which he believes to be demonstrable by evidence, he assumes an initial promiscuity; and seems to see his way out of this initial promiscuity through the system of “rude polyandry” (when one woman was common to a determinate number of men unrelated) as distinguished from “regulated polyandry” (where one woman was common to several brothers). It must be noted that before these polyandrous families, if we may so call them, at first necessarily limited, could theoretically or in fact have become the tribal exogamous groups, many difficulties must be disposed of, and many stages traced, of which we are told nothing more than that we are “forced to regard all the exogamous races as having originally been polyandrous” (p. 226). That these families, if it is not an abuse of terms to call them so, could not have become tribal by grouping, Mr M’Lennan himself maintains, p. 232.

The two systems which Mr M’Lennan distinguishes as “rude” and “regulated polyandry,” are so essentially different that I fail to trace the possibility of progression from one to the other. “Rude polyandry” is barely distinguishable from promiscuity, and not at all if we regard it as only promiscuity, necessarily limited through infanticide, or other causes destroying the balance of the sexes. The latter has peculiar features—arising in some way out of, and fixed in the idea of the relationship of brothers—an idea which it is just conceivable might arise directly out of a state of promiscuity—where theoretically the children might be supposed to be in contact with the mother only, but which the system of “rude polyandry,” by introducing conflicting and complicated claims, would immediately tend to weaken and obliterate.

Let us see, then, if we can trace the custom better on the lines of degeneracy.

If we start with the belief in the existence of many primitive ceremonies and regulations we may then suppose that in the downward progression to promiscuity, the stages of the descent will be traceable in the corruptions of these customs. Such surmises at least are as good as the contrary surmises of Mr M’Lennan.

Now, we have already seen[44] that Mr M’Lennan alludes to the law of Deuteronomy, which imposed the obligation of the younger brother marrying the widow of the elder—and it will, moreover, be seen (Mr M’Lennan, p. 219) that this was also prescribed in the law of Menu.

Whatever may be the true solution of this coincidence the least likely account would seem to be that they had both, under different conditions (different at any rate from the point of divergence, be it exogamy or polyandry), advanced to it independently and by similar stages. Such fortuitous coincidences would imply not merely a succession of similar developments, but also a corresponding succession of accidental circumstances.

If, however, the custom of the younger brother marrying the widow of the elder was of primitive institution (compare Genesis xxxviii. and the Code of Menu), the corruption of this custom into polyandry, in circumstances which may at any time have disturbed the balance of the sexes in the overcrowded East, though it revolts will not absolutely astonish us; whereas the converse, i.e. restriction to successive appropriation contingent upon widowhood, from a state of virtual promiscuity, is so uphill a reform and so contrary to probability that it requires some internal evidence of the stages, and some warrant in modern observation to make it plausible. None are given. For the fact that we find both the “rude” and the “regulated” form existing side by side cuts both ways;[45] and the discovery of a form of capture—the Rakshasa, among the eight forms sanctioned by the code of Menu, enforces our argument—it would exactly correspond to the military exemption among the Jews (Mr M’Lennan, p. 82), supposing we were able to read Deuteronomy xx. 10–14 in the same sense as Mr M’Lennan. In that case, therefore, it would be a departure from or relaxation of a rule laid down—a view which is confirmed when we find that the authority quoted (Dr Muir, “Sanscrit Texts,” the Ramayana) tells that “Ravana, the most terrible of all the Rakshasas, is stigmatised as a destroyer of religious duties, and ravisher of the wives of others” (Prim. Mar. p. 309), which testifies to degeneracy at some period; whereas if Mr M’Lennan’s view is true, this hero must be relegated to a time when the conception of “religious duties,” and even of other men’s “wives” were unknown.

We have seen (supra, [46]), that when mankind had got, we know not how, into tribal exogamous groups, “kinship through females would have a tendency,” and a moment’s consideration will show an immediate tendency, “to render the exogamous groups heterogeneous, and thus to supersede the system of capturing wives.” We ask why did they capture wives? Mr M’Lennan implies that their ideas of incest forbade marriage within the tribe.[46] Apparently, then, the groups must have been exogamous[47] previously to the time when they had attained to the knowledge of “kinship through females,” else “kinship through females” would from the first have operated to produce a state of things which would have rendered exogamy unnecessary and inexplicable. The corollary is curious; they must, therefore, have had the idea of incest before they had the idea of kinship through females!

That some tribes should have arrived at some such state through a perverted traditional notion of incest, would, on the other hand, perfectly fit into the theory of degeneracy.

I had intended to have pursued this subject, but the chapter has already run to too great length. As allusion however, has been made to Sir John Lubbock, I append an extract (see [p. 47]) from which it will be seen that his view, although equally remote from historical truth, has a greater à priori probability. Indeed, if we could only consent to start on the assumption of “an initial state of hetairism,” nothing would be more complete than the following theory:—

“For reasons to be given shortly, I believe that communal marriage was gradually superseded by individual marriages founded on capture, and that this led firstly to exogamy, and then to female infanticide; thus reversing M’Lennan’s order of sequence. Endogamy and regulated polyandry, though frequent, I regard as exceptional, and as not entering into the normal progress of development. Like M’Lennan and Bachojen, I believe that our present social relations have arisen from an initial stage of hetairism or communal marriage. It is obvious, however, that even under communal marriage, a warrior who had captured a beautiful girl in some marauding expedition, would claim a peculiar right to her, and, when possible, would set custom at defiance. We have already seen that there are other cases of the existence of marriage, under two forms, side by side in one country, and that there is, therefore, no real difficulty in assuming the co-existence of communal and individual marriage. It is true that, under a communal marriage system, no man could appropriate a girl entirely to himself, without infringing the rights of the whole tribe.... A war-captive, however, was in a peculiar position, the tribe had no right to her; her capturer might have killed her if he chose; ... he did as he liked, the tribe was no sufferer.”—Sir J. Lubbock’s “Origin of Civilisation,” pp. 70, 71.

I will only ask one question. At what period does Sir J. Lubbock suppose the custom of inheritance through females arose? This as nearly approaches a universal fact as any which Sir J. Lubbock adduces (vide p. 105, et seq.); and, on the point of its having been a prevalent custom, I can have no difficulty. Whenever through degeneracy man arrived at the state of promiscuity or communal marriages, such inheritance as there might be, in such a community, would only be claimed through females, as the paternity would always be uncertain (vide infra, [p. 129]). If, however, mankind commenced with communal marriages, inheritance and relationship through females would also have been from the commencement.

Let us now turn to Sir J. Lubbock’s theory, as expressed in the extract above, in which he shows us how marriage by capture would quite naturally have arisen out of the state of communal marriage. But if natural, it would have been natural from the commencement, quid vetat? There must then have been a system also in operation from the commencement, the inevitable tendency of which, by making paternity distinct and recognisable, would have been to substitute inheritance through males; and this system, by introducing a more robust posterity, would rapidly have gained upon the other system. Male inheritance, it would then appear, commenced and established itself at the outset, and to the displacement of inheritance through females. How, then, do we find traces of the latter custom so prevalent? From this point of view the more instances Sir J. Lubbock accumulates, the more he will excite our incredulity and surprise.

This theory again, equally with Mr M’Lennan’s, supposes mankind originally in a state of hetairism, in which case it is futile to talk of tribes and of marriage out of the tribe; for how did they emerge into this tribal separation out of the state of promiscuity? The difficulty gets more complicated since, ex hypothesi, after emerging from, they still remain within the tribal limits, in the state of hetairism. These preliminaries must be settled before the argument can be carried further.

The usual philosophic formula is, of course, at hand—these changes must have required an indefinite lapse of ages! Into this swamp we shall see one philosopher after another disappear, leaving a delusive light behind him! If we could only, Dante like, recall one of these philosophers to life, after he has passed into his state of Nirvana, we would ask, as in this instance, why, supposing the state of promiscuity, it would require an indefinite lapse of ages to pass from it, according to the conditions of Sir John Lubbock’s argument (i.e. to the state of exogamy); considering that, vide supra, “it is obvious that, even under communal marriage, a warrior who had captured, &c, would claim a peculiar right to her, and, when possible, would set custom at defiance.” Clearly, then, it only required the man and the opportunity.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.

The view at [p. 26] substantially coincides with the lines laid down by Blackstone (compare Plato; Grote’s Plato, iii. 337), which are the subject of Bentham’s attack, and to which the recent contributions of Sir Henry Maine to our knowledge in these matters would seem to run counter. Blackstone, “Comm.” i. 47, said— “This notion, of an actually existing unconnected state of nature, is too wild to be seriously admitted: and, besides, it is plainly contradictory to the revealed accounts of the primitive origin of mankind and their preservation two thousand years afterwards, both which were effected by the means of single families. These formed the first society among themselves, which every day extended its limits; and when it grew too large to subsist with convenience in that pastoral state wherein the Patriarchs appear to have lived, it necessarily subdivided itself by various migrations into more. Afterwards, as agriculture increased, which employs and can maintain a much greater number of hands, migrations became less frequent, and various tribes, which had formerly separated, reunited again, sometimes by compulsion and conquest, sometimes by accident, and sometimes, perhaps, by compact.... And this is what we mean by the original contract of society, which, though perhaps in no instance it has ever been formally expressed at the first institution of a state, yet, in nature, reason must always be understood and implied in the very act of associating together.... When society is once formed, government results, of course, as necessary to preserve and to keep that society in order ... unless some superior were constituted ... they would still remain in a state of nature.”

Bentham says of this passage from Blackstone, that “‘society,’ in one place, means the same thing as a ‘state of nature’ does: in another place, it means the same as ‘government.’ Here we are required to believe there never was such a state as a state of nature: then we are given to understand there has been. In like manner, with respect to an original contract, we are given to understand that such a thing never existed, that the notion of it is even ridiculous; at the same time, that there is no speaking nor stirring without supposing that there was one.”—Bentham’s “Fragment on Government,” p. 9 (London, 1823).

The previous and subsequent chapters ([ii.], [xiii.]), will be found to meet these strictures of Bentham, although not originally written with reference to them.

---

CHAPTER IV
CHRONOLOGY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF TRADITION.

To many it may seem a fundamental objection that my theory supposes a chronology altogether out of keeping with modern discovery; and I fancy there is a somewhat general impression that modern science has an historical basis, to which not even the Septuagint chronology can be made to conform.

This really is not the case; but assuming it to be true, I must still remark, that if facts of primeval tradition have been established, the long lapse of ages will only enhance our notions of the persistency of tradition; or if the lapse of ages is disproved, this conclusion will be in recognition of a truth to which tradition testifies.

I shall now proceed to establish that the strictly historical testimony, and the direct historical evidence, is strikingly concurrent in favour of the scriptural chronology, allowing the margin of difference between the Hebrew and LXX. versions.[48]

With this view I shall successively examine the chronology of the principal nations whose annals profess to go back to the commencement of things—the Aryan (including the Indian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman), the Babylonian, the Chinese, Phœnician, and Egyptian. Indian Chronology.—There was a time when the Indian (Aryan) chronology was believed to attain to the most remote antiquity of all, and this belief was sustained by the apparently irrefragable testimony of astronomical evidence. Who upholds this evidence now? On this head I must refer to Cardinal Wiseman’s seventh lecture (“On Science and Revealed Religion”), where the reader will find a clear and careful precis of the discussion on the subject between Bailly and Delambre, the Edinburgh Review and Bentley, to which I am not aware that anything of consequence has to be added.

If, on the other hand, we turn to what I am exclusively directing my attention—the strict historical investigation—we find that the cautious inquiries of such men as Sir W. Jones and Heeren concur in placing the Aryan invasion at the antecedently very probable date, from the point of view of Scripture, of some 2000 years B.C.

At the present moment the discussion takes the form of philological inquiry, and into the antiquity (upon internal evidence) of the ancient Sanscrit literature. In so far, therefore, as it is philological, it belongs to the indirect argument, which I am now excluding. In so far as the Sanscrit literature is historical, I have discussed the testimony which it brings in the preceding chapter. Professor Rawlinson, however, in his recent “Manual of Ancient History,” refuses to discuss the question, as he does not regard the Maha-Bharata and Ramayana as “trustworthy sources of history,” and commences his Persian history with the accession of Cyrus, previously to which he does not consider the Aryan migration and settlement to have been completed. Apart, then, from the peculiar line of argument to which I shall presently refer, it would appear that the Indian chronology, as reconstructed from history and tradition, falls easily within the lines, not only of the LXX., but of the Hebrew version.

The Indians, it is true (“Hales’ Chron.,” i. 196), themselves say that their history goes back 432,000,000 years. Although Hales gives a solution which may be deemed satisfactory, I think that, if considered in connection with the Babylonian computation, it will be seen that, though inexact in their figure, they are accurate in their tradition. The primary figure in their (Indian) calculation—432,000—is arrived at through the extended multiplication of the Chaldean sossos, neros, and saros, or of their own traditional figures corresponding to them (vide infra). In the Chaldean system (vide Rawlinson, “Anc. Mon.,” i.), 6 and 10 were employed as alternate multipliers. Thus a “soss” = 60 years (10 × 6), a “ner” = 600 (60 × 10), a “sar” = 3600 (600 × 6); and if the multiplication be continued, the next figure would be 36,000 (3600 × 10), next 216,000 (36,000 × 6). The Indian figure 432,000,[49] is made up of twice 216,000.

Professor Rawlinson (“Anc. Mon.,” i. 192) gives in detail, and endorses a remarkable eclaircissement of M. Gutschmid on the mythical traditions of Assyrian chronology. Babylonian Chronology.—Rawlinson says—

“Assuming that the division between the earlier and later Assyrian dynasty synchronises with the celebrated era of Nabonassar (747 B.C.), which is probable, but not certain, and taking the year B.C. 538 as the admitted date of the conquest of the last Chaldæan king by Cyrus, he obtains for the seventh or second Assyrian dynasty 122 years (747 to 625). Assuming, next, that B.C. 2234, from which the Babylonians counted their stellar observations, must be a year of note in Chaldæan history, and finding that it cannot well represent the first year of the second or Median dynasty, since in that case eleven kings of the third dynasty would have reigned no more than thirty-four years, he concludes it must mark the expulsion of the Medes and accession of the third dynasty (which he regards as a native dynasty). From his previous calculations, it follows that the fourth dynasty began B.C. 1976; between which and B.C. 2234 are 258 years, a period which may be fairly assigned to eleven monarchs. This much is conjecture ... the proof now suddenly flashes on us. If the numbers are taken in the way assigned, and then added to the years of the first or purely mythical dynasty, we get 36,000, equal to the next term, to the sar (saros, vide supra), in the Babylonian system of cycles.”

It will be more apparent in the following table from Rawlinson, i.e.—

			Years.	B.C.
Mythical		86 Chaldæans	34,800
Historical		8 Medes	224	2458
		11 [Chaldæans]	(258)	2234
		49 Chaldæans	458	1976
		9 Arab	245	1518
		45 [Assyrian]	526	1273
		8 [Assyrian]	122	747
		6 Chaldæans	87	625
			36,000

Chinese Chronology.—The Chinese, also—though, be it observed, the Chinese of modern date, according to Klaproth (“Mem. Relatifs. à l’Asie,” i. 405; Klaproth places the commencement of the uncertain history of China 2637 B.C., the certain history 782 B.C.),[50] in the first year of our era, but more systematically in the ninth century—forged a mythological history, which carried the empire back 2,276,000 years (another calculation, 3,276,000). He adds, however, that the Chinese themselves do not consider the Wai-ki, the authority for these statements, to be historical.

Again, if we allow ourselves to be entangled in certain astronomical disputations, the question may become complicated and confused; but the astronomical discussion must depend, in the end, upon a point which history must determine—i.e. whether the astronomical knowledge and observations referred to had come down in primitive tradition, or had been imported at a later date. Although it need not exclude a belief in a tradition of primitive knowledge of astronomy, yet the doubt will ever cause a fatal uncertainty in any calculations, since, if the knowledge, or the knowledge of the particular observations and facts, had at any time been imported, they might have calculated back their eclipses, as has been proved to have been done in India.

Let us then, excluding the purely astronomical calculations, closely scrutinise the evidence which tradition affords; for if we can discover tradition of “appearances of rare occurrence, and which are difficult to calculate, such as many of the planetary conjunctions,” they “must,” as Baron Bunsen observes (“Egypt,” iii. p. 389), “either be pure inventions, or contemporary notations of some extraordinary natural phenomena.” Baron Bunsen proceeds to say:—“One instance that may be cited is the traditional observation of a conjunction of five planets (among which the sun and moon are mentioned), on the first day of Litshin, in the time of Tshuen-hiü, the second successor of Hoang-ti. Suppose this should have been the great conjunction of the three upper planets which recurs every 794 years and four months, and to which Kepler first turned his attention in reference to the year of the nativity of Christ. It took place in the following years.

The one which occurred in historical times was in November, seven years B.C.; consequently the conjunctions prior to it occurred in—

	Yrs.	Mos.	Dys.
	794	4	12
	77	10	12
	7786	6	0
	7794	4	12
	71580	10	12
And the conjunction in	794	4	12
The time of Tshuen-hiü in	2375	2	24

According to the official Chinese tables, as given by Ideler, he reigned from 2513 B.C. to 2436 B.C.; but the dates vary to the extent of more than 200 years, and the year 2375 comes within the limits of these deviations.”

Baron Bunsen, we may then assume, has very skilfully brought back Chinese chronology to within two generations of Hoang-ti (supra). If we could further identify Hoang-ti with Noah, two patriarchal generations would bring us close to the date of the Deluge as fixed by the Septuagint, if we referred them, in the first instance, to the death of Noah.

Before proceeding to this identification, I must point to another chronological fact in Chinese tradition, which would give to this identification an antecedent probability. It was stated (Bunsen, “Egypt,” iii. 383) that Hoang-ti established the astronomical cycle of 60 years in the sixty-first year of his reign.

At p. 387, Bunsen says: "The scientific problem thus offered for our solution is the following—It is admitted that the Chinese, from the earliest times, made use of a sexagesimal cycle for the division of the year = 6 × 60 days (360 days), and they marked the years by a cycle of 60 years, running concurrently with the cycle of days. This cycle, therefore, must have been originally instituted at a time when the first day of the daily cycle coincided with the first year of the annual cycle, i.e. when they commenced on the same day. Ideler thinks it impossible to ascertain this, owing to the irregularity of the old calendar." We may ask, then, what year that could be named would so exactly satisfy these conditions as the sixty-first year of the reign of Noah after the Deluge?[51] Let us, moreover, consider how traditional this cycle of sixty years has been (p. 386),—“Scaliger made the remark that the twelve yearly zodiacal cycle, which is in use among the Tartars (Mongols, Mandshus, Igurians), the inhabitants of Thibet, the Japanese and Siamese dated from the earliest times. Among the Tartaric populations, however, this is a cycle of sixty years (12 × 5); of the Indians we have already spoken.”

It will have already been seen that the cycle of sixty years entered into the Chaldean system—viz. cycle of 60 years = a sossos, 600 years = a saros, 3600 years = a neros.

“Now when we find (Bunsen, p. 387) that six hundred years gives an excess of exactly one lunar month, with far greater accuracy than the Julian year, such a cycle must have been indispensable when that of sixty years was in use, and consequently must have been employed by the Chinese, or, at all events, have been known to those from whom they borrowed the latter. Josephus also calls six hundred years the great year, which may have been observed by the patriarch.”

And at p. 407, in summing up the general chronological result, he says:—

“a. ... The earliest Chinese chronology rests upon a conventional basis peculiar to itself, that of limiting the lunar year by a cycle of six hundred years, which is common to the whole of North Asia and the Chaldeans; and probably (as it is also met with in India) to the Bactrians also: this basis is historical.” “b. The communication took place before the Chaldees invented the cycle of six hundred years.”

From our point of view, believing that the Chaldees never invented the cycle but held to it traditionally, the above conclusion must be construed to mean that the “communication,” or diffusion of the knowledge, must have taken place before the lapse of the first six hundred years after the Deluge, which will be further confirmed by conclusion c.

“c. The Chinese observation is based upon the Babylonian gnomon,”

which appears to me tantamount to the admission that it took place, in the plains of Mesopotamia, previous to the Dispersion.

In arriving, then, at the sixty-first year of the reign of Hoang-ti, we are led up to such close proximity to the epoch of the Deluge, that the presumption that Hoang-ti was Noah would be strong, even if no other evidence was at hand to corroborate it.

It is with this supplementary evidence that I now propose to deal.

Although the tradition of the Chinese is remarkably accurate, up to a certain point, yet in the period beyond that point, where the confusion is manifest, there is no reason why we should not expect to find the same reduplications and amalgamations of ante and post diluvian traditions, which we have already found in the history of other nations.

Without attempting to unravel all complications, let us turn again to Bunsen (iii. 382), and setting aside Pu-an-ku, the primeval man who came out of the mundane egg and lived eighteen thousand years, and who has resemblances with the Assyrian Ra and Ana, and the Egyptian Ra, the son of Ptha (to whom thirty thousand are allotted, vide infra, [p. 97–100]), and Sui-shin, “who discovered fire,” and who is the counterpart of Prometheus (vide [p. 180]). Regarding Pu-an-ku, the cosmical, and Sui-shin, as the mythical tradition of Adam, we come to the historical tradition in the person of Fohi.

“I. Fohi the great, the brilliant (Tai-hao) cultivator of astronomy and religion, as well as writing. He reigned one hundred and ten years. Then came fifteen reigns. II. Shin-nong (divine husbandman); institution of agriculture; the knowledge of simples applied as the art of medicine.” [Compare pp. 210–214, Saturn, Bacchus, Æsculapius.] “III. Hoang-ti (great ruler) came to the throne in consequence of an armed insurrection (new dynasty), and was obliged to put down a revolt. In his reign the magnetic needle was discovered; the smelting of copper for making weapons;[52] vases of high art, and money; improvement in the written character, said to be borrowed from the lines on the tortoise-shell. It consists of five hundred hieroglyphics, of which two hundred can still be pointed out. He established fixed habitations throughout his dominions, and the astronomical cycle of sixty years in the sixty-first year of his reign (vide supra, [61]); musical instruments. It was in his time also that the fabulous bird Sin appeared. The empire was considerably extended to the southward.”—Bunsen, 382.

If we take Fohi as Adam, the fifteen reigns which follow will bear analogy with “the fifteen generations of the Cynic cycle” (vide Palmer i. p. 8, 23–37; also vide infra), and will correspond to the thirteen generations, viz. the ten antediluvian, and the three survivors (excluding Noah) of the Deluge in the Egyptian chronology (vide infra). Shin-nong, “the divine husbandman,” will be Noah, and Hoang-ti, Shem or Ham, or else the two will be reduplicate traditions of Noah. Compare the attributions of Hoang-ti with those of Hoa in the Assyrian tradition, p. 239. Certain statements regarding him—e.g. that he suppressed an insurrection, accord more nearly with epithets applied to Nin, the fish-god, whom I have considered a duplicate of Hoa (p. 201), e.g. “the destroyer of enemies,”—“the reducer of the disobedient,”—“the exterminator of rebels.” Compare with the Phœnician tradition, p. 211, of Saturn causing the destruction of his son Sadid by the Deluge. The appearance of the fabulous bird Sin, seems a reminiscence of the birds sent out of the ark, which is so frequent in tradition. Compare the mystery bird (the dove) in the Mandan ceremonies,—the worship of the pigeon in Cashmere,[53] &c. Other coincidences might be pointed if space allowed.

But analogous to the double tradition of the Deluge in Assyria in the persons of Hoa and Nin; and, again, by a distinct channel of tradition in Xisuthrus (vide [pp. 208, 209]), as in China, there seems to have been a similar reduplication in China in their kings Hoang-ti and Yao or Yu.[54]

Now under this Yao or Yu, according to Chinese tradition (preserved, moreover, in the inscription of Yu), there happened the Deluge, or a Deluge. But as there is a confusion between Hoang-ti and Yao, so there is between Yao and Yu. Bunsen, however, admits these latter to be identical.

But although Bunsen asserts the authenticity of the inscription (as also does Klaproth), he utterly scouts the idea that it is a tradition of the Deluge, and maintains that it is itself evidence of a local inundation. Let us see.

“All the confusion or ignorance,” says Bunsen (398), “of the missionaries [in this matter], arises from their believing that this event referred to the Flood of Noah, which never reached this country.” And (p. 406), he says the inundation in the reign of Yao had just as much to do with Noah’s flood as the dams he created, and the canals he dug, had to do with the ark. This is said with reference to the “short Chinese account of it published by Klaproth,” viz.—

“In the sixty-first year of the reign of the Emperor Yao, serious mischief was caused by inundations. The emperor took counsel with the great men of the empire, who advised him to employ Kuen to drain off the water. Kuen was engaged upon it for nine years without success, and was condemned to be imprisoned for life. His son Yu was appointed in his stead. At the end of nineteen years he succeeded in stopping the inundation, and made a report to the emperor upon the subject.”

Let us turn, however, from this later gloss to the inscription itself, translated by Bunsen, p. 399—

“The Emperor said, ‘Oh thou Governor of the four mountains of the Empire!

The swelling flood is producing mischief;

It spreads itself far and wide;

It surrounds the hills, it overflows the dams;

Rushing impetuously along it rises up to Heaven:

The common people complain and sigh.’”

—Vide supra, p. 396.

“The venerable Emperor exclaimed with a sigh, ‘Ho assistant

Counsellor! the islands great and small up to the mountain’s top;

The door of the birds and of beasts, all is overflowed together—

Is swamped: be it thy care to open the way, to let off the water.’”

He then says:—

“My task is completed; my sacrifice I have offered in the second month, trouble is at an end, the dark destiny is changed; the streams of the south flow down to the sea; garments are prepared; food is provided; all the nations have rest; the people enjoy themselves with gambols and dancing.”—(Compare Commemorative Festivals, infra, [p. 249]).

I should have thought that all these phrases pointed much more to a universal Deluge than to a local inundation. But Bunsen says (398)—

“The fact is fully proved both by the inscription and the work of Yu itself. The inscription was on the top of the mountain, Yu-lu-fun, in the district of Shen-shu-lu. Owing to its having become illegible in early times, it was removed to the top of an adjoining mountain.” ... “The former locality tallies exactly with the very interesting description of the empire in the time of Yu, which we find at the opening of the second book of the Shuking.” And Bunsen concludes, “It may be presumed after this verification, that in future nobody will seriously doubt the strictly epic description of the Shuking in the Canon of Yu,” as above.

So far from being impressed by the discovery of the monument on the top of the local mountain, as evidence of the local deluge, I can see in it only a memorial of the universal Deluge localised; and I cannot help considering it in connection with the worship of the tops of mountains, of which we shall find traces elsewhere (p. 244–46). Surely Baron Bunsen proves too much, and describes to us a deluge which must have been on the scale of the universal Deluge for all countries below the level of the mountain Yu-lu-fun. But, let it be said, that this description, so accordant with the description of the flood, was merely Chinese exaggeration. I here wish to point out two curious coincidences. What if we shall find works similar of those to Yao or Yu, ascribed to the original founders in Egypt and Cashmere? As in the first instance, I shall have to quote from Baron Bunsen himself, I am surprised that the coincidence should have escaped his observation.

“This is the account given of Menes [the first king of Egypt] by Herodotus—Menes, the first king of Egypt, as the priests informed me, protected Memphis by a dam against the river which ran towards the sandy chain of the Libyan Mountains. About 100 stadia above Memphis, he made an embankment against the bend of the river, which is on the south side. The effect of this was to dry up its ancient bed, as well as to force the stream between the two chains of mountains. This bend of the Nile, which is confined within the embankment walls, was very carefully attended to by the Persians, and repaired every year. For, if the river were to burst through its banks and overflow at this point, all Memphis would be in danger of being swamped. Menes, the oldest of their kings, having thus drained the tract of land by means of the dyke, built upon it the city now called Memphis, which lies in the mountain valley of Egypt. To the west and north he dug a lake round it, which communicates with the river—on the east it is bounded by the Nile—and afterwards erected in it a temple to Vulcan, a splendid edifice, deserving of especial notice” (ii. 48).

Bunsen fully endorses this account—“Herodotus, therefore, has recorded the following fact, that before the time of Menes the Nile overflowed the tract of country which he fixed upon as the site of his new metropolis” (p. 49 and p. 51). “There is no foundation whatever for Andriossy’s hypothesis that the story originated in the fact of the Nile having once run westward from the Pyramid mountains to Bahr Bela Ma (stream without water) and the Natron and Mareotic Lakes. Herodotus mentions an historical fact, and describes the work of an historical king. Andriossy’s hypothesis, if well founded, would belong to geology.” A sagacious and well-founded remark on the part of Baron Bunsen, but, as I submit, equally applicable to the work of Yao or Yu.

Merely noting that, if the above work was really carried out by Menes, and it would have been, from the point of view of Genesis, so carried out at a period contemporary with that of Yao or Yu—and, moreover, conceding to it in any case (I mean the work of Menes) a certain historical basis—let us dispassionately compare both with the passage from Klaproth, which I shall now extract. It is taken from the Sanscrit History of Cashmere.[55]

Klaproth says:—

“The Hindoo history of Kashmir assures us that the beautiful valley which forms this kingdom was originally a vast lake, called Satisaras. This account is also agreeable to the local traditions of this country. It was Kasy’apa, a holy person who, according to the Hindoo historians, caused the waters which covered this valley to escape. He was the son of Marichi, the son of Brahma. The Mahometan writers call him Kachef or Kacheb, and many of them pretend that he was a god, or a genius, and servant of Soliman, under whose orders he effected the drying up of Kashmir. To execute this task he made, near Baramanleh, a passage across the mountains, through which the water passed.... The territory, recovered in this way by Kasy’apa, was also peopled by this holy man, with the assistance of the superior gods, whom he brought for this purpose from heaven, at the commencement of the seventh manwantara, or that in which we are now.” Klaproth adds:—“We must therefore suppose that Kashmir has been subjected to the same periodical revolutions as the other parts of the world, if we would reconcile this date with the ordinary chronology.”[56]

It must, I think, be conceded that we have now before us three very similar accounts of works undertaken with reference to the reclamation of inundated land. All are undertaken by the first founders of their respective kingdoms—kingdoms widely separated and inhabited by people of diverse race—and all, more or less, contemporaneously. The Egyptians and Kashmerian have points in common as to their mode of reclamation, whilst the Chinese and Kashmerian have still more in common with the narrative in Genesis.[57]

Four solutions occur to me as possible. Either they were obscure or perverted traditions of the Deluge, or their works were traditions of similar works effected by Noah after the Deluge; or these works were actually carried out upon the precedent and model of similar works effected by Noah; or they were fortuitous coincidences.

Upon either of the three former conclusions, it will be shown that traditions of the Deluge, direct or indirect, exist both in Egypt and China, where it has been so confidently asserted that no tradition is to be found; and in the latter case, what is more especially to my purpose, a tradition which brings Yao into relation with Noah and Hoang-ti.

In conclusion, I must remark that when it is urged that there is no tradition, or but slight tradition, of the flood in Egypt, we have a right to reply that there is no country where we should have so little reason to expect it. If there is any country where we should think it likely that the reminiscences of the Deluge would be effaced, it would be in a country periodically subject to inundations, where the people are annually made familiar with its incidents, and where its recurrence is not to them a cause of alarm, but a matter of expectation and joy.[58]

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CHAPTER V
CHRONOLOGY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SCIENCE

Although the testimony of history is definite and decisive as to the chronology of the world, within the limits of a few hundred years, there is a general assumption, in all branches of scientific inquiry, that man must have existed many thousand years beyond the period thus assigned to him. Lyell speaks of “the vastness of time”[59] required for his development, and Bunsen, as we have seen, requires twenty thousand years, at least, between the Deluge and the nativity of our Lord: and wherefore this discrepancy? Because of a fundamental assumption—not merely hypothetical for the convenience of inquiry—but confident and absolute; an assumption which, so far as the argument is concerned, is the very matter in dispute—that man must have progressed and developed to the point at which we see him.

At the same time, the actual chronology cannot be altogether ignored, and some cognisance must be taken of the facts which history presents to us; and it is this unfortunate exigency, interrupting the placid course of development, which not unfrequently lands scientific inquirers of the first eminence in difficulties from which it will take an indefinite lapse of time to extricate them; ex. gra., Bunsen, in his “Egypt,” iii. 379, says—

“It has been more than once remarked, in the course of this work, that the connection between the Chinese and the Egyptians belongs, in several of its phases, to the general history of the world. The Chinese language is the furthest point beyond that of the formation of the Egyptian language, which represents, as compared with it, the middle ages of mankind,—viz., the Turanian and Chamitic stages of development.”

The conclusion of philology (vide also Brace’s “Ethnology,” p. 114) is, therefore, that the Turanian or Chamitic grew out of the more inorganic and elementary Chinese.

Now, let us compare Lyell’s conclusions with Bunsen’s. Lyell equally believes (“Principles of Geology,” ii. 471) “that three or four thousand years is but a minute fraction of the time required to bring about such wide divergence from a common parent stock, ‘as between’ the Negroes and Greeks and Jews, Mongols and Hindoos, represented on the Egyptian monuments.”

At the same time, he endorses Sir John Lubbock’s view, and pronounces, upon what appears to me very light and insufficient grounds (ii. 479), that “the theory, therefore, that the savage races have been degraded from a previous state of civilisation may be rejected:” and by implication that the civilised races have progressed from the savage state may be affirmed.[60]

I have, then, only to assume one point that Sir C. Lyell will concede, the order of progress or development to have been from black to white, and that he will pay us the compliment of being the more favoured race.

But of all the races that are akin to the Mongol or Turanian, the Chinese are the whitest, and most nearly approach the European in colour.

How many years, then, may we suppose that it took the Chinese to progress from the black state of the Egyptian? as many, let us conjecture, as it took the Egyptian to progress linguistically from the state of the Chinese or Mongol!

This is one instance of the entanglement in which the theory of progress, pure and simple, from a parent stock will involve us. The obvious mode of escape would be to deny the unity of the human race, a conclusion which would at once land us in the darkness of a still lower abyss, and convert our processes from being scientific in form and hopeful of result, into empirical and aimless conjectures. For either the theory is started that the various races of mankind were created separately, in which case we fly into the face of the only account we have of creation, and also of the multiform testimonies which history and science bring to attest this truth, and we, moreover, debar ourselves from falling back upon any uniform theory applicable to the whole human race; or if, without advertence to creation, we suppose mankind to have been variously developed, here again we shall equally find ourselves cut off from the application of any uniform historical theory, equally unable to account for or to exclude the testimony of history, and in the end reduced to the evidences, whatever they may be worth, of certain real or fancied analogies.[61] At this point, the historical inquiry will be virtually abandoned, and the records of the past merged in the phenomena of life, will be considered only in the light of some pantheistic or materialistic theory, or, so far as it is distinguishable, of some theory of evolution.

I am no longer concerned with any of these theories the moment they discard the historical element; and I shall, accordingly, return to the theory of Sir John Lubbock, which is honestly based upon it.

When all is said, I cannot make out that Sir John adduces any argument in favour of the antiquity of the human race which does not resolve itself into the contrast between our civilisation and the degradation of savages; and that the time which must have elapsed to bring about this transformation is measured by the fact that the negro, of the “true Nigritian stamp,” appears upon the Egyptian monuments, at least as far back as B.C. 2400. “Historians, philologists, and physiologists have alike admitted that the short period allowed in Archbishop Usher’s chronology could hardly be reconciled with the history of some Eastern nations, and that it did not leave room for the development either of the different languages or of the numerous physical peculiarities by which various races of men are distinguished.”[62] As no facts in the history of Eastern nations are adduced, I shall consider that this part of the argument has been sufficiently disposed of in the preceding chapters, and if they had been adduced, I venture to think that they would have been interpreted by the latter part of the sentence, and would have been incompatible with the chronology, only because they did not allow sufficient time “for the development,” &c. Of this sort of fact, I admit, nothing stronger can be adduced than the case of the negro on the Egyptian monuments, only I wish to direct attention to the different aspect these facts will bear when the theory of progress is not assumed as an infallible proposition. Moreover, as Mr Poole, whom Sir J. Lubbock very candidly quotes, points out, in the interval between this and 2400 B.C. we do not find “the least change in the negro or the Arab; and even the type which seems to be intermediate between them, is virtually as unaltered. Those who consider that length of time can change a type of man, will do well to consider the fact that three thousand years give no ratio on which a calculation could be founded.” So that if Arch. Usher had expanded his chronology so as to take in the twenty thousand years Bunsen requires, it really would not appreciably have affected the argument. Sir J. Lubbock, indeed, says (p. 477)—“I am, however, not aware that it is supposed by any school of ethnologists that ‘time’ alone, without a change of external conditions, will produce an alteration of type.” “Let us,” he continues, “turn now to the instances relied on by Mr Crawford. The millions, he says, of African negroes that have, during three centuries, been transported to the New World and its islands, are the same in colour as the present inhabitants of the parent country of their forefathers. The Creole Spaniards ... are as fair as the people of Arragon and Andalusia. The pure Dutch Creole colonists of the Cape of Good Hope, after dwelling two centuries among black Caffres and yellow Hottentots, do not differ in colour from the people of Holland.” [The strongest case is, perhaps, that of the American Indians, who do not vary from a uniform copper colour in north or south—in Canada or on the line.][63] In these instances, Sir J. Lubbock says:—“We have great change of circumstances, but a very insufficient lapse of time, and, in fact, there is no well authenticated case [he does not, however, advert to the case of the Indians, which seems to satisfy both conditions] in which these two requisites are united,” ... and adds, “there is already a marked difference between the English of Europe and the English of America;” but is full allowance made here for admixture of race? and, also, is his instance to the point? Is not the difficulty rather that, whereas climate, food, change of circumstances have (for, I think, the balance of the argument is on that side), in many ways, modified other races (though whether to the extent of destroying the characteristic type, may be open to question), the negro has resisted these influences, and has remained the same negro that we find him 2400 B.C.? Consider that it is only a question of degree, and that it is merely true that the negro has resisted these influences more persistently than other races.[64] Still the contrast is not the less startling when we find the negro in the same relative position, and with the same stamp of inferiority, that we find indelibly impressed upon him four thousand years ago? It is a case which neither the theory of progress, nor the theory of degeneracy, seems to touch.

But it is a case which De Maistre’s view exactly solves. Now, however much we may rebel against De Maistre’s theory, that the early races of mankind were endowed with higher and more intuitive moral faculties than ours, and, whether or not, we accept his dictum that great punishments pre-suppose great knowledge, and reversely, that higher knowledge implies the liability to great punishments, I do not see how we can refuse to consider the matter, so far as to see whether the view solves all the difficulties of the question. It is not the first time that the blackness of the African race has been connected in theory with a curse; but De Maistre’s theory throws a new light on the malediction—whether it be the curse of Cham or of Chanaan, or whether both were smitten, according to different degrees of culpability: and I maintain, further, that it is adequate to the explanation of the phenomena, that it does not clash with history, and that it is sustained by tradition.

Nevertheless, I apprehend that this view will be as much combated from the point of view of scriptural exegesis, as of scientific speculation.

Yet the curse of Cham, or of Chanaan, affecting all their posterity, ought not in reason to be more revolting even to those who have never realised what sin is, than the narrative of the fall of Adam and Eve with its direful consequences. The theory seems perfectly conformable to Scripture, and to what we know of the secrets of the Divine judgments. The picture of Cham, or Chanaan, stricken with blackness, does not present a more sudden or more terrible retribution to the mind than the Fall of the Angels. How many thousand years did it take to transform Lucifer into Satan? or the primitive Adam into the Adam feeling shame, and conscious of decay, want, and the doom of death?

On the other hand, blackness, from the commencement, has been associated with evil. To this it may be replied that this is the sentiment merely of the white races—a natural prejudice of colour, an ex parte deduction; and to this argument, if such is the view really taken by the black races, and if no consciousness can be detected of their degradation amongst themselves, I see no other reply than this, That since, ex hypothesi, they are black because they are cursed, the tradition of this curse would be more naturally preserved by the white races than by the black. But is there no consciousness of this inferiority in the true negro? Without looking at the matter from the same point of view, I may appeal to Captain Burton’s statements on this point as to a fully competent, if not the highest, authority that can be quoted on points of African travel. In the first place, he notices “the confusion of the mixed and the mulatto with the full-blooded negro. By the latter word I understand the various tribes of intertropical Africa, unmixed with European or Asiatic blood” (“Dahome,” ii. 187); and p. 193, “I have elsewhere given reasons for suspecting, in the great Kafir family, a considerable mixture of Arab, Persian, and other Asiatic blood:” and as to the particular point in question, he says (p. 200), “The negro will obey a white man more readily than a mulatto, and a mulatto rather than one of his own colour. He never thinks of claiming equality with the Aryan race except when taught. At Whydat, the French missionaries remark that their scholars always translate ‘white and black by master and slave.’” P. 189, “One of Mr Prichard’s few good generalisations is, that as a rule the darker and dingier the African tribe, the more degraded is its organisation.”[65] I find a very similar testimony in Crawford’s “Hist. of the Indian Archipelago,” i. 18. He says, “The brown and negro races of the Archipelago may be considered to present, in their physical and moral characters, a complete parallel with the white and negro races in the western world. The first has always displayed as great a relative superiority over the second, as the race of white men have done over the negroes of the west.” Yet at p. 20 he says, “The Javanese, who live most comfortably, are among the darkest people in the Archipelago, the wretched Dyaks, or cannibals of Borneo, among the fairest.” It must be noted, however, that the Javanese have also preserved something of primitive tradition—e.g. their marriage ceremony. And, moreover, it is not at all essential to the argument to prove that the negroes are the most degraded race. Let it be said that they have had their curse, and that the sign of the curse is in their blackness—this is merely equivalent to saying that they are cursed pro tanto; but it by no means follows that other races have not fallen to lower depths, and incurred a deeper reprobation.[66]

Among the Sioux Indians, and in the isle of Tonga (Oceanica), I find trace of the tradition of blackness as a curse, and I should think it likely that other instances might be discovered. The former (the Sioux), in their reminiscences of the Deluge, relate, “The water remained on the earth only two days (for the two months during which the Scripture says it was at its height), at the expiration of which the Master of Life, seeing that they had need of fire, sent it them by a white crow, which, stopping to devour carrion, allowed the fire to be extinguished. He returned to heaven to seek it. The Great Spirit drove it away, and punished it by striking it black.”—“Annales de la Prop. de la Foi,” l. iv. 537; Gainet, i. 211.

In Tonga, the tradition is connected with this history of Cain:—

“The god Tangaloa,[67] who first inhabited this earth, is this Adam. He had two sons, who went to live at Boloton.... The younger was very clever. Tonbo (the eldest) was very different; he did nothing but walk about, sleep, and covet the works of his brother. One day he met his brother out walking, and knocked him down. Then their father arrived at Boloton, and in great anger said, ‘Why has thou killed thy brother. Fly, wretched man; fly. Your race shall be black, and your soul depraved; you shall labour without success. Begone; you shall not go to the land of your brother, but your brother shall come sometimes to trade with you.’ And he said to the family of the victim, ‘Go towards the great land; your skin shall be white; you shall excel in all good things.’”—Gainet, i. 93.[68]

Cardinal Wiseman (in his “Science and Revealed Religion,” lect. iii.), says, with reference to Aristotle’s distribution of mankind into races by colour:—

“There is a passage in Julius Firmicus, overlooked by the commentators of Aristotle, which gives us the same ternary division, with the colours of each race. ‘In the first place,’ he writes, ‘speaking of the characters and colours of men, they agree in saying,—if by the mixed influence of the stars, the characters and complexions of men are distributed; and if the course of the heavenly bodies, by a certain kind of artful painting, form the lineaments of mortal bodies; that is, if the moon makes men white, Mars red, and Saturn black, how comes it that in Ethiopia all are born black, in Germany white, and in Thrace red?’”—Astronomicon, lib. i., c. i., ed. Basil. 1551, p. 3.

Now this passage seems to me to have a still further significance in the words I have italicised, with reference to the argument I have in hand. It transpires, therefore, that the ancients had the notion that Saturn made men black, which provoked the natural query, why then are only the Ethiopians black? That it should ever have been supposed that the distant Saturn, astronomically regarded, should have had such an influence is preposterous, but if the mythological personage, Saturn, ch. x., has been sufficiently identified with Noah, and the deification of the hero in the planet (comp. pp. 159, 161) probable, the notion that he made men black, must be the tradition of the event we are considering.

I have elsewhere traced the fulfilment of the text which says that Canaan shall be the “servant of servants to his brethren;” but as the following extract from Klaproth, in evidence of the same, has also its significance with reference to the point I am now considering—viz. the curse of blackness—I prefer to give it a place here:—“Sakhalian oudehounga est expliqué en Chinois par ‘Khian chéon,’ et par ‘li chu,’ ce qui signifie les ‘têtes noires’ et le ‘peuple noir,’ expression par laquelle on designe la ‘bas peuple’ ou les ‘paysans.’ Cette une expression usitée dans plusieures pays Asiatiques ainsi qu’en Russie.”—Klaproth, “Mem. Relatif a l’Asie;” vide strictures on Pere Amyot’s “Mandchou Dict.”

In the oldest books of the Zendavasta, virtue and vice are personified as white and black. “The contrast between good and evil is strongly and sharply marked in the Gâthâs.... They go a step further and personify the two parties to the struggle. One is a ‘white,’ or holy spirit (spentô mainyus), and the other, a ‘dark’ spirit (angrô mainyus). But this personification is merely poetical or metaphysical, not real.”—Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” iii. p. 106. The contrast, however, between good and evil, as white and black was the genuine expression of their idea or tradition. (Hung. ap. Bunsen, iii. p. 476, admits, at least in one instance in the Gâthâs, “an angra (‘black’) is put in opposition to the white, or more holy spirit.”)

Mr Hunter (“Rural Bengal,” p. 114) says of the primitive Aryans in India—“The ancient singer praises the god who ‘destroyed the Dasyans and protected the Aryan colour” (Rig. Veda., iii. pp. 34–39), and “the thunderer, who bestowed on his white friends the fields,” &c. Whatever obscurity may attach to the latter passage, there can be no doubt of the abhorrence with which the singers speak, again and again, of “the black skin,” ... e.g. “the sacrificer poured out thanks to his god for ‘scattering the slave bands of black descent.’”

Although I believe the idea was traditional and had reference to the curse, I will concede that it might have arisen primarily in the contrast of night and day, light and darkness. But does this settle the question? On the contrary, fortified with this explanation, I return to my argument with those, who say that blackness is a mere prejudice of race, and that it is not demonstrable that it is the sign of a curse, or the mark of inferiority. Does not Nature herself proclaim it, in her contrast of light and darkness? Day and night, I imagine, would be recognised as apt symbols of error and evil as opposed to truth and goodness, even among the black races, irrespective of any consciousness or reminiscence of their degradation. Accordingly, the deeds of evil in Scripture are spoken of as the “works of darkness.” It may be, therefore, that the idea of blackness as a curse is derived primitively from its association with the darkness of night; but the fact remains that blackness is connected in our minds with a curse,[69] and there is the further fact that a black race exists, and has existed during four thousand years, with this mark of inferiority upon it (compare sup. ch. [iii]. [ix].) But a point of some difficulty remains to be determined—viz. what precisely was the race which came under this ban. Was it the whole descent of Ham, or only the posterity of Chanaan ?

Hales, in his learned work on chronology (i. p. 344), discusses this question. He says that, whereas—

“Even the most learned expositors (Bochart and Mede) have implicitly adopted the appropriation of the curse of servitude to Ham and his posterity.” Yet “the integrity of the received text of prophecy, limiting the curse to ‘Canaan’ singly, is fully supported by the concurrence of the Massorite and Samaritan Hebrew texts, with all the other ancient versions except the Arabian; and is acknowledged, we see, by Josephus and Abulfaragi (sup.), who evidently confine the curse to Canaan—though they inconsistently consider Ham as the offender, and are not a little embarrassed to exempt him and the rest of his children[70] from the operation of the curse—an exemption, indeed, attested by sacred and profane history; for Ham himself had his full share of earthly blessings, his son Misr colonised Egypt, thence styled the land of Ham (Ps. cv. 23), which soon became one of the earliest, most civilised, and flourishing kingdoms of antiquity, and was established before Abraham’s days (Gen. xii. 14-20), and in the glorious reign of Sesostris ... while Ham’s posterity, in the line of Cush, not only founded the first Assyrian empire, under Nimrod, but also the Persian (?), the Grecian (?), and the Roman (?) empires, in direct contradiction to the unguarded assertion of Mede [that ‘there hath never yet been a son of Ham that hath shaken a sceptre over the head of Japheth.’] How, then, is the propriety of the curse exclusively to Canaan to be vindicated?—evidently by considering him as the only guilty person ... upon the very ingenious conjecture of Faber, that the ‘youngest son’ who offended was not Ham, but Canaan—not the son, but the grandson of Noah. For the original, ‘his little son,’ according to the latitude of the Hebrew idiom, may denote a grandson, by the same analogy that Nimrod.... this (the former) interpretation is supported by ancient Jewish tradition, ‘Boresith Rabba,’ sec. 37, recorded also by Theodoret ... the tradition, indeed, also adds that Ham joined in the mockery, but for this addition there seems no sufficient grounds.”

There is, however, the tradition, and, moreover, a distinct tradition that Ham was black. Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, in his “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,” i., says—

“The Hebrew word Ham is identical with the Egyptian Khem, being properly written Khm, Kham, or Khem, and is the same which the Egyptians themselves gave to their country in the sculptures of the earliest and latest periods” (261). Egypt was denominated Chemi (Khemi), or the land of Ham, “as we find in the hieroglyphic legends; and the city of Khem, or Panopolis, was called in Egyptian Chemmo, of which evident traces are preserved in that of the modern town E’Khmim” (260). “Besides the hieroglyphic group, composed of the two above alluded to (260), indicating Egypt, was one consisting of an eye, and the sign land, which bore the same signification; and since the pupil, or black of the eye, was called Chemi, we may conclude this to be a phonetic mode of writing the name of Egypt, which Plutarch pretends was called Chemmia, from the blackness of its soil” (263). “Chame is black in Coptic, Egypt is Chemi, and it is remarkable that khom or chom is used in Hebrew for black or brown, as in Gen. xxx. 32–40.”—Id.

Here then, at any rate, the name of Ham or Cham is curiously associated with blackness, and must have been so associated from the commencement of Egyptian history. I leave it to the Egyptologist to decide whether the presumption is stronger that the name of Egypt, identical with that of Ham, was originally derived from the blackness of its soil, or from the blackness of him whose name was identical with it (“the land of Ham” being both the scriptural and Egyptian appellation), more especially when “the eye” (apparently a personal or historical, not certainly a geographical allusion) was used as an equivalent hieroglyphic symbol for land.[71]

Here, as in other instances, if we follow the strict lines of tradition, it seems to me that we shall escape all the difficulties which are usually alleged against it. It will result then that, although according to the text of Scripture, the curse of servitude was limited to the posterity of Chanaan; yet, seeing that the criminality was common to Ham and Chanaan, according to the tradition referred to, and as is, moreover, implied in the marked manner in which Scripture (Gen. xviii. 22) indicates Cham as “the father of Chanaan,” it is presumable that, if blackness was the concomitant of the curse, it extended to both Ham and Chanaan, and, by implication, to their posterity, but then after the curse. As Chanaan, according to the tradition, was then a boy, all his children would have been affected by the curse; but does it follow that all Ham’s descent was involved in the malediction? This would be to suppose a retrospective curse, for which the only analogy would be the hypothesis that if Adam had sinned after the birth of Cain and Abel, they and their posterity would also have incurred the guilt of original sin. Now the sons of Ham were (Gen. x. 6) “Chus and Mesram and Phuth and Chanaan,” i.e., Chus and Mesram and Phuth were the elder brothers of Chanaan, and therefore not the children of Ham after the pronouncement of the curse. If, then, we find the children of Mesram dark, but without the negro features or the blackness of Canaan; if “Sesostris, his descendant, was a great conqueror;” if Nimrod, the son of Chus, was a powerful chieftain, and the founder of the Assyrian empire; if nothing is known of the posterity of Phuth beyond the conjecture that they were the Lybians—in a word, if the descent from these three sons does not bear out the evidence of the curse, can it be said to militate at all against the hypothesis of the curse of Ham as well as of Canaan?

Moreover, if there are differences among the black races which may present difficulties, would not the knowledge that there may have been a posterity of Ham, born after the curse,[72] go far to remove them? Hales, indeed, assumes that “Ham himself had his full share of earthly blessings; his son Misr colonised Egypt,” &c. (as sup.); but this prosperity, as he indicates it, is only seen in the prosperity of his three sons, whom I assume to have been exempt from the curse. It must be remembered, however, that the occult science of the Cainites was said to have been preserved by the family of Ham, and, as we have seen, the taint was in the race.[73]

I am very far from claiming for these theories any special ecclesiastical countenance and authority. I have already intimated my opinion that, on the whole, they would be as much opposed from the point of view of scriptural exegesis as from that of unbelief. It will be said, for instance, that there is evidence in Scripture of the curse of Canaan, but no proof that blackness was the concomitant effect of the curse; and certainly it is not Scripture which affirms this, but only tradition.

To those who admit the curse, but deny the consequences which tradition attributes to it, I would oppose an almost identical argument with that which accounts for all differences in the human race by geographical location. I do not know where this argument is more forcibly put than in Latham’s “Ethnology.” There it is seemingly demonstrated that certain conditions, not merely of colour, but moral and intellectual, are the inseparable accompaniments of geographical location. Grant it, pro argumento, but I am arguing now upon the scriptural evidence, and with one with whom I assume I have a common belief in its inspiration.

It is true, then, that the curse of blackness is not recorded, but the distribution of the races is at least implied: Deut. xxxii. 8, “When the Most High divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, he appointed the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel;” and Acts xvii. 26, “And hath made of one all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times, and the limits of their habitation.” (The Prot. version translates, “Having appointed the predetermined seasons and boundaries of their dwellings.” Vide Hales’s Chron., i. 351, who adds that this was conformable to their own allegory “that Chronos, the god of time, or Saturn, divided the universe among his three sons.”)[74]

If, then, the different races of mankind, according to their merits or demerits, were apportioned to, or miraculously directed or impelled to, respective portions of the earth, which necessarily superinduced certain effects, is not the curse as apparent in its indirect operation as it would have been in its suddenness and directness?

This consideration must, I think, bring those who raise scriptural difficulties against the theory to the admission that blackness was a sign of inferiority, and that certain races were either smitten with, or were predestined to, in consequence of culpability, this degradation.

This, I admit, is no reply to those who argue from the evidence of the Egyptian monuments. But the evidence from the monuments, so far from embarrassing my conclusion, seems absolutely to enforce it. If, indeed, the evidence from the monuments did not stare one in the face, we might fall back upon the line of argument which I have just indicated, and whilst recognising in their blackness the operation of a curse, trace it in the lapse of centuries and the influences of the torrid zone. But they are recorded as being black on the earliest monuments known to us, and within a few centuries of the Deluge. The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable, that they were so from the commencement, which exactly hits in with the tradition of the curse of Canaan.

Such, from his own point of view, is the conclusion of Sir J. Lubbock (“Prehistoric Times,” p. 478)—

“If there is any truth in this view of the subject (p. 478), it will necessarily follow that the principal varieties of man are of great antiquity, and, in fact, go back almost to the very origin of the human race. We may then cease to wonder that the earliest paintings on Egyptian tombs represent so accurately several various varieties still existing in those regions, and that the Engis skull, probably the most ancient yet found in Europe, so closely resembles many that may be seen even at the present day.”

The following conclusion of Mr Wallace also exactly coincides with De Maistre’s view.

Lyell, in his “Principles of Geology” (ii. 471) says—

“Wallace suggests that at some former period man’s corporeal frame must have been more pliant and variable than it is now; for, according to the observed rate of fluctuation in modern times, scarcely any conceivable lapse of ages would suffice to give rise to such an amount of differentiation. He therefore concludes, that when first the mental and moral qualities of man acquired predominance, his bodily frame ceased to vary.”

But, although science in its own way may arrive at approximations to the truth, yet, if the traditional solution be true, assuredly it is not a solution which will be reached by any merely scientific process; and therefore, if it should be the truth, the ethnological difficulty will remain an enigma and embarrassment to the learned in all time to come.

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CHAPTER VI
PALMER ON EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY.

Having probed the chronologies of India, Babylonia, Phœnicia,[75] China, &c, and having found that one and all, when touched with the talisman of history, shrink within the limits of the Septuagint, and even of the Hebrew text, we come, perforce, to the conclusion, that there is one nation, and one only, which presents a primâ facie antiquity irreconcileable with Holy Writ—viz. Egypt.

This impression is sustained by the knowledge, somewhat indefinite and in something disturbed, that the Egyptian tradition had always attributed a fabulous antiquity to the dynasties of its kings, and that these dynasties have been marvellously resuscitated through the discovery which has enabled us to decipher the inscriptions on their tombs and monuments.

My reader need not fear, however, lest I should plunge him into the chaos of hieroglyphics; not, indeed, that much has not been rescued from the abyss, and that there is not good expectation of more to come, but when once it is established, as we may now consider to be the case, that many of these dynasties were cotemporaneous, and not successive, an uncertainty is introduced which again reduces the chronology to primitive chaos, although floating objects in it, the débris of tombs and dynasties, remain clearly distinguishable, and, in point of fact, have been perfectly identified. If we had no other evidence, I should feel irresistibly drawn to the dictum of M. Mariette (ap. Mgr. Meignan, “L’Homme Primitif,” p. 391), “Le plus grand de tous les obstacles à l’établissement d’une chronologie égyptienne regulière, c’est que les Egyptiens eux-mêmes n’ont jamais eu de chronologie.”

I shall, on the contrary, from another point of view, attempt to show, not only that they had a chronology, but that this chronology has actually been re-discovered and re-constituted.

In the conviction that this is the case, and that it is not sufficiently known that it is so, I shall devote some space to an abstract of Mr William Palmer’s “Egyptian Chronicles” (1861), in which it appears to me that this exposition and solution is to be found.

Mr Palmer at least has brought the Egyptian chronology (upon the system of the Old Chronicle) to so close a reconciliation with Scripture (upon the basis of a collation of the Septuagint and Josephus), that we have a right to compare any Egyptologist making an attempt to advance into the interior to the monuments, whilst disregarding it, to a commander leaving an important fortress in his rear.[76] As Mr Palmer takes his stand upon the Old Chronicle, and as the Old Chronicle has been in considerable disrepute with Egyptologists (Bunsen, i. 216), I do not see that I can adopt a better plan of bringing the whole subject before the reader, than by confronting Mr W. Palmer’s discovery and exposition with Baron Bunsen’s strictures on the Old Chronicle.

Bunsen (i. 214–217) says (the italics are mine)—

“‘The Egyptians,’ says Syncellus, ‘boast of a certain Old Chronicle, by which also, in my opinion, Manetho (the impostor) was led astray.’ ... The origin of this fiction is obvious. Its object, as well as that of the pseudo-Manetho, is to represent the great year of the world of 36,525 years, or twenty-five Sothic cycles. The timeless space of the book of Sothis becomes the rule of Vulcan.... The number fixed for the other gods, 3984, is quite original; perhaps it may not be mere accident that it agrees with the computation of some chronographers for the period from the Creation to B.C. The dynasty of the demigods reflects the same judicious moderation as in the scheme of the pseudo-Manetho (214½). Then comes a series of corruptions of the genuine Manetho, i.e., of the Manetho of the thirty historical Egyptian dynasties. He is, however, confounded with the Manetho of the Dog-star, and hence it is that the fifteen dynasties of Manetho are called the fifteen dynasties of the Sothiac cycle. But how is the number 443 to be explained? Is this entry to be understood in the same sense as the similar one in Clemens, namely, that the first fifteen dynasties comprehended the 443 years prior to the beginning of the last cycle, consequently prior to 1322? or is it simply taken, with a slight alteration by Eusebius, to the fourteenth and fifteenth dynasties (435)? The following dates for the length of reigns are in the gross evidently borrowed from Eusebius.... In the sequel, there is no more reckoning by dynasties, but seventy-five generations are numbered, in order to make up the 113 of Manetho. So palpable is that,.... Lastly, the dates and numbers ... are brought into shape by various arbitrary expedients; but Eusebius on all occasions appears as the authority.... As the dates of the individual dynasties now run, 184 years are wanting to make up the promised 36,525 years. It is scarcely worth while to inquire where the mistake lies.” He finally pronounces the Old Chronicle to be the compilation of a Jewish or Christian impostor of the third century, or later.

As Mr Palmer has not directly adverted to this passage from Bunsen in his “Egyptian Chronicles,” I will give an extract from a letter which I have received from Mr Palmer on the subject, which will clear off some of the tissues of confusion into which the strictures of Baron Bunsen have got entangled.

“I assert, in the first instance (there being nothing whatever to the contrary), that we have the Old Chronicle in a perfectly genuine form, i.e. in the text of Syncellus and Africanus, but by no means in Bunsen; and further, that it really is, and they from whom we have it tell us it was, the oldest Greco-Egyptian writing of the kind current in the time of Africanus.... Bunsen pronounces the Old Chronicle to be the compilation of a Jewish or Christian impostor of the third century (‘Eusebius appearing on all occasions as the authority,’ &c) In the Old Chronicle, as given by Syncellus and Africanus, there is nothing whatever borrowed from Eusebius; but Eusebius has borrowed from and altered the Old Chronicle, so as to suit his own sacred chronology. The ‘Book of Sothis,’ too, has worked up and altered the Old Chronicle, with which it is by no means to be identified.... But I deal with three so-called Manethos—viz. (1.) the original Manetho of Josephus and Eratosthenes, who had only twenty-three historical dynasties of his total of thirty dynasties (the Old Chronicle, from which he took the number of thirty, having twenty-nine historical and one [that of the sun god] unhistorical); (2.) the Manetho of Ptolemy of Mendes, which is the Manetho of Africanus, who has thirty-one dynasties, all pretending to be historical; and, lastly, the Manetho of the ‘Book of Sothis,’ used by Anianus and Panadorus (to which last alone Bunsen’s ... mention of ‘fifteen dynasties of the Dog-star’ refers).... If any figures in the Manetho of the ‘Book of Sothis’ of the fifth century A.D., are borrowed from Eusebius, there is nothing in this, Eusebius himself having used and altered the Old Chronicle before, just as the author of the Book of Sothis or Anianus may have used Eusebius and the old chronicle. But I am not now dealing with the question of fact, whether Eusebius’ figures were so followed or not.... When Bunsen says, ‘Perhaps it may not be mere accident that the figures 3984 agrees,’ &c; he should have said rather that some ‘chronographers’ ‘agree’ ‘with it,’ and perhaps so agree not by accident. I do not remember whether any one, or who in particular, of modern chronographers agree with it; but certainly if any do, it is quite by accident. The number 3984, as given by the Old Chronicle to Chronos and the other twelve gods, has no relation whatever to any reckoning of the year of the world to Christ; and a chronologer might as well adapt his sum of years from the Creation to Christ, or to any other fanciful number, as to this. The truth is, that with the shorter numbers of the Vulgate, many chronologers have made out sums of about four thousand years, some rather more, some less.”

In the somewhat lengthened extract which I have made (sup. [p. 94]) from Bunsen, four figures (3984, 217, 443, and 184) will have struck the eye, which baffle even Bunsen’s penetration, and only make twice confounded what was confused before. But what if these four figures should all be accounted for? and, when accounted for, fitted into the chronology so as to be in keeping, not only with the other figures of the Chronicle, but also with the systems of Manetho and Eratosthenes, as exactly as “the key fits the wards of the lock?” (vide infra, [p. 332]), will not the matter begin to wear a different aspect? When the figures are shown to be imbedded in all the different systems which have been transmitted to us, will it then be said that the figures “are evidently borrowed from Eusebius?” But, in fact, it is also demonstrated by internal evidence that the Chronicle, as we have it, must be referred to the date 305 B.C.

This, then, is how the argument stands; but it is a matter of some difficulty to compass Mr Palmer’s elaborate argument, and I cannot attempt to do more than to indicate its most salient points.

Premising that the Sothic cycle (a period of 1461 vague, or 1460 fixed sidereal years) was connected by the Egyptians with their recurring periods of transformation and renovation (“common to the mythologies of Egypt and India”), and also that two such periods (1461 × 2) = 2922 corresponded with the antediluvian period, or rather with the sum of the lives or reigns of the antediluvian patriarchs, inclusive of survivors of the Deluge, with something added in order to throw the whole into cyclical form, all which is shown in detail in “Egyptian Chronicles,” i. 23–37, I may now proceed to Mr Palmer’s analysis of the scheme of the Old Chronicle, which is thus given by Syncellus, “probably from the Manetho of Africanus” (Palmer’s “Egypt. Chron.,” i. 7):—

“There is extant among the Egyptians a certain Old Chronicle, the source, I suppose, which led Manetho astray, exhibiting xxx dynasties and again cxiii generations, with an infinite space of time (not the same either as that of Manetho), viz. three myriads, six thousand five hundred and twenty-five years—1st, Of the Aeritæ; 2dly, Of the Mestræans; and, 3dly, Of the Egyptians,—being word for word as follows:—

[Dynasty I. to XV. inclusive of the chronicle of the gods]:—

Time of Phtha there is none, as he shines equally by night and by day [but all generations being from him]
[First dynasty] Ἥλιος [i.e. Ra, the sun-god], son of Phtha, reigned three myriads of years,	30,000
Then [Dynasty II. to XIV. inclusive, and generations II. to XIV. inclusive] Κρονος [or Χρονος], i.e. Seb], and all the other xii gods [who are the Aeritæ perhaps of Eusebius and Africanus], reigned years	3984
Then [Dynasty XV.] viii demigod kings [the Mestræans of Eusebius and Africanus] reigned [as viii generations but one dynasty], years	217
And after them xv generations of the Cynic cycle were registered in years	443
Then Dynasty XVI. of Tanites, generations viii, years	190
Then Dynasty XVII. of Memphites, generations iv, years of the same generations	103

After whom there followed—

Dynasty XVIII. of Memphites, generations xiv, years of the same generations	348
Then Dynasty XIX. of Diospolites, generations v, years	194
Then Dynasty XX. of Diospolites, generations viii, years of the same generations	228
Then Dynasty XXI. of Tanites, generations vi, years	121
Then Dynasty XXII. of Tanites, generations iii, years	48
Then Dynasty XXIII. of Diospolites, generations ii, years of the same generations	19
Then Dynasty XXIV. of Saites, generations iii, years	44

Besides whom is to be reckoned—

Dynasty XXV. of Ethiopians, generations iii, years of the same generations

44

After whom again there followed—

Dynasty XXVI. of Memphites, generations vii, years of the same generations

177

And then after—

Dynasty XXVII. [Here the designation, generations, and years are purposely omitted; but the years are implied by the sum total, which follows below, to be certainly	184]
Dynasty XXVIII. of Persians, generations v, years of the same generations	124
Then Dynasty XXIX. of Tanites, generations , years	39

And, lastly, after all the above—

Dynasty XXX. of one Tanite king, years
Generations cxiii, years	36,525

Sum of all the years of the XXX. Dynasties, three myriads, six thousand five hundred and twenty-five (Kings 1881 years).”

These 36,525 years, when divided by 1461, the Sothic cycle (as noted by Syncellus), give the quotient xxv. We need not digress into the conjectural reasons why twenty-five such periods were taken, rather than any other number. We will be content at starting to see in its relation to the cycle evidence of the purely fictitious character of its myriads of years, and a clue to the significance of the indication, “after them xv generations of the Cynic cycle,” &c.

Mr Palmer (i. xxiii.) says, that the question which first suggested itself to him was—

“To what Sothic cycle are these 443 years or xv generations said to belong?” [for there was the doubt whether there was any real Sothic cycle at all.] “For a Sothic cycle is not merely a space of 1461 Egyptian years, but it is that particular space of 1461 such years, and that only, which begins from the conjunction of the movable new year or Thoth, with the heliacal rising of Sirius, fixed to 20th July of our Gregorian calendar for that part of Egypt which is just above Memphis.... For the author of a chronicle ending with Nectanebo, or at any date between the Sothic epochs, 20th July B.C. 1322 (the known commencement of a cycle), and 20th July A.D. 139, ‘the Sothic cycle,’ could only mean the cycle actually current” [i.e. B.C. 1322 to A.D. 139 = 1461].... “After this discovery, if the perception of a truism can be called a discovery, it followed naturally to observe further that in constructing a fanciful scheme ... ending at any other date than a true cyclical epoch, the first operation ... must be to cut off all those years of the true current cycle which were yet to run out, below the date fixed upon, and to throw them back so that they might be reckoned as past instead of being looked forward to as future. This, then, was what the author of the Old Chronicle had done; and, with an ironical humour common among the Egyptians, he had told his readers to their faces the nature of his trick, ticketing and labelling the key to it (the 443 years) and tying it in the lock, or rather leaving it in the lock itself.” Counting, then, back 139 years of the 443 “from the 20th July A.D. 139 to 20th July B.C. 1, and 304 more from 20th July B.C. 1, we come to 20th July in 305 B.C. (if the years be fixed, sidereal, or solar years), or to 8th November 305, if they be (as they really are) vague Egyptian years” (305 B.C. being the year in which Ptolemy Lagi assumed the crown).

[For the discrepancy between this date and the conquest of Ochus, “at which the series of the Chronicle ostensibly ends,” vide “Egypt. Chron.,” p. xxiv.]

Let the reader now return to the scheme of the chronicle (sup. [p. 97]). The analysis of the whole sum, 36,525 years, gives 30,000 years (to the sun), + 3984 (to xiii gods), + 217 (to viii demigods), + 443 (to the Sothic cycle), + 1881 to kings from Menes to Nectanebo (the last native sovereign).

So far we have only 1881 years, corresponding to an historical period, + 443 of the cycle thrown up. It has been previously noted, however, that 2922 (two Sothic cycles) correspond to the antediluvian and patriarchal period (i. 37). The intricate part of the scrutiny will be found in the discrimination of the 2922 years (which, with 217 + 1881, make up the sequence of human time, A.M., to Nectanebo) from the figures 3984 years in the analysis above.

For the full and scientific discrimination, I must refer the reader to “Egyptian Chronicles,” i. 17; but for a simple demonstration, we may take the historical figures as above—viz. 2922 + 217 + 1881, added to the figures thrown in to complete the cycle (vide infra), viz. 341 + 483, all which figures = 5844, and deduct them from the whole cyclical number thus—

36,525

5,844

30,681

Now, reverting to the scheme of the Chronicle, we shall see the round number 30,000 years (being as it were an Egyptian month, in thousands of years instead of days) apportioned off to the sun-god. To obtain this round number, the fractional number 681 would have to be detached, and there being at hand the cyclical number 2922 years (two perfect Sothic cycles), any number in reason of fractional remainders might be added to it, since with the symmetrical nucleus, the agglomeration would always be recognisable by the initiated, i.e. by the priests. The 681 years were therefore added to 2922, and also the 341 fictitious years (“to make time from the beginning to run in the form of Sothic cycles”) were added, because there they would cause no confusion; “whereas if they had been added to the 217 years of the demigods, no one could any longer have distinguished the original fraction.”

We thus collect, therefore, those various figures into the sum which was the figure of difficulty—viz. 3984 (681 + 2922 + 341 + 40), the forty years included having merely reference to the point at which the current Sothic cycle was thrown up—being the years intervening between the flight of Nectanebo in B.C. 345, and the coronation of Ptolemy Lagi in B.C. 305.

Upon his own method, based upon Josephus, who follows in the main the Septuagint (“on a principle of compromise such as all readers, whatever may be their system, may agree in accepting provisionally, and as an approximation”), Mr Palmer (i. 22–29) brings the Scripture A.M. to B.C. 1, to a synchronism of “five years four months” and some days, with the Egyptian computation.

But the same key is made to unlock all the systems of Egyptian chronology, and in the course of his two volumes of close and learned investigation, Mr Palmer demonstrates that “Manetho, Eratosthenes, Ptolemy of Mendes, Diodorus, Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius, Anianus, Panodorus, and Syncellus, have, either of themselves or by following others, transferred dynasties, generations, and years of the gods and demigods of the Chronicle, and even fifteen generations of Ptolemies and Cæsars, as yet unborn at the date of the Chronicle, to kings after Menes.”

Let the above scheme of the Chronicle be compared, for instance, with the scheme of Diogenes Laertius (which Mr Palmer conjectures, upon intrinsic evidence, to have been transmitted through Aristotle).

Diogenes Laertius’ whole figure is 48,863 years, which contains for its fictitious part thirty times 1461 = 43,830, which, being deducted from

48,863,

43,830

5,033

leaves 5033 for “true human time.” Now 5033 years are equal to those 2922 years + 217 years + 1881 years, which alone in the Chronicle belong properly and originally to the xiii gods and viii demigods and the last xv dynasties of the kings from Menes to Nectanebo, with only thirteen surplus years, i.e. from the conquest of Darius Ochus to Alexander; “seemingly to the autumn of B.C. 332, when he first entered Egypt.”

Here I might conclude my outline of Mr Palmer’s scheme, so far as is necessary to the vindication of the Chronicle as against Bunsen, were it not for the remaining figure (all the others, if the reader will refer back, have been accounted for)—viz. 184, to which Bunsen refers.

This figure is shown to correspond with the 184 years of the Hyksos or Shepherds (i. 134, 135, et seq., 155, 285, 299). Dynasty XXVII., to which the 184 years in the Chronicle are attributed, has been displaced from between Dynasties XVII. and XVIII. of the Chronicle, and its 184 years are “restored to their true place and to the Shepherds by Manetho,” and are given “by the Theban priests, i.e. by Eratosthenes, suppressing the Shepherds, to the kings of Upper Egypt.”

As regards Manetho (i. 284) “having, besides the 1881 years of the Chronicle, 1674 additional years of kings, of which (22 + 217 = ) 239 only are in themselves, though not in their attributions, chronological, and having given of these 1491 (which are thrice 477 and 60 over) to his six early dynasties of Lower Egypt (and sixteen inconvenient years he isolated between his Dynasties XIV. and XV., so as to include them in his Book i.), he gave to the three early dynasties of Upper Egypt no other unchronological years than two complementary sums, the one of 43 (to the first), and the other, of 124 years, to the second of the three dynasties, that these same sums might both coalesce with the remainder of sixty years belonging to the sum of the six dynasties of Lower Egypt, so as to make with it, or rather to indicate, the one of them the sum of 103, the other the sum of 184.”

Vide table, [p. 285].... Sum of six dynasties of Lower Egypt, 1491. But this sum 1491 is equivalent to

190 + 103 + 184	= 477
190 + 103 + 184	= 477
190 + 103 + 184	= 477		But 60
	(1431 + 60)	= 1491	43
	(1431 + 60)	+ 43 =	103
	(43 of Dyn. XIV. of Upper Egypt.)
	(1431 + 60)
	124
	184	(124 of Dyn. XV. of Upper Egypt in Book ii.)

The place of the 184 years of the Shepherd Dynasty will be seen as clearly in the analysis of Eratosthenes’ scheme F. in “Egyptian Chronicles” (i. 299), and if I had space I should like to give it in extenso, because it is upon his 1076 from Menes to XVIII. Dynasty, that Bunsen mainly relies for his fundamental theory (Bunsen’s “Egypt,” ii. xvi.) As the confutation of Bunsen does not enter into Mr Palmer’s plan, I think it worth while to add, that these 1076 years are thus made up 477, the true historical length of the epoch (from Menes to XVIII. Dynasty), as we know from the chronicle (vide Palmer’s supra), hence the significance of this figure in table above, + 443 of the cycle added, + 156 of Dyn. XVIII. encroached upon[77] for the symmetrical purpose displayed in scheme F, in which scheme it will be seen that the 184 years of the Shepherds again enter as a constituent part.

But as I am merely indicating the scheme, and not elaborating the argument, I must here part company with Mr Palmer. If, however, any one wishes to examine the question more in detail, and seeks to know in what manner the years in the above scheme are apportioned among the different generations and dynasties, he must take up with Mr Palmer at i. p. 300. My purpose is sufficiently answered by establishing that a scheme exists, if not irrefutable, at least up to this unconfuted, which perfectly harmonises the scriptural with the Egyptian chronology.

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CHAPTER VII
THE TRADITION OF THE HUMAN RACE.

“Tradition reveals the past to us, and consequently it reveals to us also the future. It is the tie which binds the past, the present, and the future together, and is the science of them all. If we possessed the memory of mankind, as we do that of our personal existence, we should know all. But if we have not the memory of mankind, does not mankind possess it? Is mankind without memory, without tradition?... There is no nation which does not exist through tradition, not only historical traditions relative to its earthly existence, but through religious traditions relative to its eternal destiny. To despise this treasure, what is it but to despise life, and that which constitutes its connection, its unity, its light, as we have just seen?... When God spoke to men His Word passed into time ... Happily tradition seized upon it as soon as it left the threshold of eternity; and tradition is neither an ear, nor a mouth, nor an isolated memory, but the ear, the mouth, and the memory of generations united together by tradition itself, and imparting to it an existence superior to the caprices and weakness of individuals. Nevertheless, God would not trust to oral tradition alone ... Symbolical tradition was to add itself to oral tradition by sustaining and confirming it ... The five terms constituting the mystery of good and evil: the existence of God, the creation of the world and of man by God, the fall of man, his restoration by a great act of divine mercy, and, lastly, the final judgment of mankind ... and that which oral tradition declared, symbolical tradition should repeat at all times and in all places, in order that the obscured or deceived memory of man might be brought back again to truth by an external, a public, an universal, all-powerful spectacle. [Lacordaire is speaking principally with reference to sacrifice and the sacrifice of Mount Calvary.] ... Each time that oral tradition underwent a movement of renovation by the breath of God, symbolical tradition felt the effects of it. The sacrifice of Abel marks the era of patriarchal tradition; the sacrifice of Abraham marks the era of Hebrew tradition; the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the final and consummating sacrifice, marks the era of Christian tradition.... Such is the nature of tradition, and such its history. Tradition is the connection of the present with the past, of the past with the future; it is the principle of identity and continuity which forms persons, families, nations, and mankind. It flows in the human race by three great streams which are clearly perceptible—the Christian, the Hebrew, and the patriarchal or primitive; in all these three it is oral and symbolical, and whether as oral or symbolical it speaks of God, the creation, the fall, reparation and judgment.... Without occupying ourselves with the question as to whether Scripture was a gift from above or an invention of men, we see that there exists two kinds of it—human and sacred scripture. I understand by human scripture, that which is considered by men as the expression of the ideas of a man; I understand by sacred scripture that which is venerated by nations as containing something more than the ideas of a man.... There are in the world an innumerable quantity of books, nevertheless there are but six of them which have been venerated by nations as sacred. These are the ‘Kings’ of China, the Vedas of India, the Zend-Avesta of the Persians, the Koran of the Arabs, the Law of the Jews, and the Gospel. And at first sight I am struck with this rarity of sacred writings. So many legislators have founded cities, so many men of genius have governed the human understanding, and yet all these legislators, all these men of genius, have not been able to cause the existence of more than six sacred books upon earth!... Every sacred book is a traditional book, it was venerated before it existed, it existed before it appeared. The Koran, which is the last of the sacred writings in the order of time, offers to us a proof of this worthy of our thoughtful attention. Without doubt, Mahommed relied upon pretended revelations; however, it is clear to all those who read the Koran, that the Abrahamic tradition was the true source of its power.... The same traditional character shines upon each page of the Christian and Hebrew books; we find it also in the Zend-Avesta, the Vedas, and the Kings of the Chinese. Tradition is everywhere the mother of religion; it precedes and engenders sacred books, as language precedes and engenders scripture; its existence is rendered immovable in the sacred books ... a sacred book is a religious tradition which has had strength enough to sign its name.... The sacred writings are, then, traditional; it is their first character. I add that they are constituent, that is to say, they possess a marvellous power for giving vitality and duration to empires. Strange to say, the most magnificent books of philosophers have not been able to found, I do not say a people, but a small philosophical society; and the sacred writings, without exception, have founded very great and lasting nations. Thus the Kings founded China, the Vedas India, &c... Look at Plato ... how is it that Plato has not been able to constitute, I do not say a nation, but simply a permanent school? How is it that communities totter when thinkers meddle with them, and that the precise moment of their fall is that when men announce to them that mind is emancipated, that the old forms which bound together human activity are broken, that the altar is undermined and reason is all-powerful? Philosophers! if you speak the truth, how is it that the moment when all the elements of society become more refined and develop themselves, is the moment of its dissolution?”—From Père Lacordaire’s “Conferences.” Conf. 9 and 10. (Tran. H. Langdon; Richardson, 1852.)

I should also wish M. Auguste Nicolas’ “Etudes Philosophiques sur le Christianisme”—particularly lib. I. chap. v., “Necessite d’une revelation Primitive;” and lib. II. chap. iv., “Traditions universelles”—to be read in connection with the following chapter. I did not become acquainted with M. Nicolas until after the chapter was concluded. I have, however, fulfilled my obligations in the above extract from L’Abbe Lacordaire, which lies more au fond of my view than the chapters referred to in M. Nicolas. I also wish to direct attention to a remarkable article in the Home and Foreign Review, Jan. 1864, entitled “Classical Myths in relation to the Antiquity of Man,” signed F. A. P.

Tradition, in the sense in which we have just seen it used by Lacordaire, in what we may call its widest signification, is not limited to oral tradition, but may be termed the connection of evidence which establishes the unity of the human race; and, with this evidence, establishes the identity and continuity of its belief, laws, institutions, customs, and manners (Manners, vide Goguet’s “Origin of Laws,” i. 327–329). The more closely the tradition is investigated, the more thoroughly will it be found to attest a common origin, and the more fully will its conformity with the scriptural narrative be made apparent.

Now, although in all ages there have been men of great intellect who have held to tradition, it may be stated as one of those truths, qui saute aux yeux, and which will not be gainsaid, that the human intellect has been throughout opposed to tradition, has been its most constant adversary, equally when it was the tradition of a corrupt polytheism, as when it was the tradition of uncontested truth; and so active has been this antagonism, that the marvel is that anything of primitive tradition should have remained.

Hence arose the divergence between religion and philosophy—a divergence which, as it seems to me, is inexplicable from the point of view of those who believe that, in the centuries which preceded the coming of our Lord,[78] religion simply was not, had ceased to be; unless we suppose that a tradition of the antagonism had survived, which would still partially disclose how it came about that when religion had ceased to be (pro argumento), or had become corrupt, philosophy, which then (ex hypothesi) alone soared above the intellect of the crowd, did not, and could not become a religion to them, infra, pp. [142], [145], [146].

And the history of this antagonism seems to be, that the human intellect has ever had, and now more confidently than ever, the aim and ambition to substitute something better than the revelation of primitive tradition, and the experiences of the human race.

It is quite conceivable that human life and human institutions might have been arranged upon some scheme different from that of the divine appointment; and although we may believe that any such scheme would result in ultimate confusion and the final extinction of the human race, it is still theoretically possible that the experiment might have been made.[79]

Here comes in, with its full significance, the great saying of Lacordaire’s—“Order I compare to a pyramid reaching from heaven to earth. Men cannot overthrow its base, because the finger of God rests upon its apex.”

If the finger of God did not so rest, there is no assignable reason why this pyramid—this incubus, as some would call it—which goes back, stone upon stone, to the primitive ages, should not have been overturned, and some system purely atheistical, purely material, purely communistic, substituted for it. But I believe that no democratic organisation, however extended among the masses, will overthrow the established order of things, so long as the possessors of property, the upper classes, are true to the objects for which property was instituted.

Considering how much man has effected in the material order, and considering also the varied intellectual faculties with which he is endowed, it strikes one as strange, as something which has to be accounted for, that he has been able to effect so little in the moral order. It is the same whether we regard the action of the intellect upon the individual man, or upon society. And from this latter point of view it is so true, that it is more than doubtful whether those epochs in which man has attained the highest point of intellectual and material civilisation, are not those also in which he has reached the lowest depths of immorality;[80] and in which—having touched the lowest point of corruption—the human intellect is unable to devise any better plan for the government of mankind, than the repression of despotism.[81]

But if the human intellect cannot prevent or control corruption, cannot it disenchant vice of its evil, and so counteract its effects? Is there no new conception of virtue with which to allure mankind? No second decalogue which will attract by its novelty, or convince by logical cogency and force? The Comtists, I believe, have a scheme for setting all these things right. But what portion of mankind do they influence? They are at present formidable only as may be the cloud on the horizon, nor have they found sympathy even where they might have had some expectation of finding it. If there was any separate section of mankind which might have given them countenance, it would, one would think, be the rationalist section, whose principles would disincline them to regard old modes of thought with undue partiality. It is from this quarter, if I mistake not, that the unkindest cut has come, and that it has been said that “the latter half of Comte’s career and writings is the despair and bewilderment of those who admire the preceding half;” yet in this latter half he only aimed at converting rationalism from a negative to a positive system. But, allowing that a system of some sort might thus be constructed, can positivism be defined as more than the system of those who are positive by mutual consent and agreement without faith or certainty, and who are the more positive in proportion as they recede from Catholic truth and tradition. We, however, who believe in the identity of Catholicism and Christianity, may still appreciate Professor Huxley’s definition of positivism, viz.—“Catholicism minus Christianity.”[82]

Can any one adduce a more typical representative of the clear, powerful, penetrating intellect of man than Voltaire! Voltaire, moreover, had the aim and ambition (“ecraser l’infame”) to obliterate the tradition of the past; yet can there be a better example of the impotence of the intellect in the moral order? Does it not seem startling that, when the human intellect, as in the case of Voltaire, should be able to detect with so much acumen, so much wit, what is wrong, that it should be wholly struck with sterility when it attempts to tell us what is right, to reveal to man any truth in the moral order not traditionally known to them. And if the disciples of Voltaire have occasionally, in spasmodic efforts, attempted this, it has not been in the manner of Voltaire; it has been in the spirit of eclecticism, of reconstruction out of the elements of the past—that is to say (with pardon, if the phrase has been used before), an attempt to create, out of the elements he would have spurned, edifices which he would have derided.

Now, the pretension of the human intellect is quite contrary to this experience. It claims to have progressively elevated mankind out of a state of primitive barbarism, to have indoctrinated them with the ideas of morality which they possess, to have humanised them, and thus affirms the converse of the theory of tradition which it pursues with much unreasoning and implacable animosity.

The Saturday Review (July 24, 1869), in reviewing Mr Gladstone’s “Juventus Mundi,” says—“Mr Gladstone is doubtless well aware that there was no portion of his Homeric studies which was received with more surprise, or with more unfavourable comment, than his speculations on what he described as the traditive and the inventive elements in the Homeric mythology.”[83] In consequence, Mr Gladstone says he has endeavoured to avoid in his more recent work “a certain crudity of expression.” The Saturday Review, however, says—“That ‘the crudity of expression’ here referred to seems to have been corrected and modified to some extent by disguising the process of argument by which it was sustained, and by the adoption of a lighter touch and slighter treatment of the subject than in the former book. But the theory itself, we believe, remains the same.”

I may assume, then, that the passage which I have elsewhere quoted from Mr Gladstone, and laid as the basis of my argument, still has his countenance and support, in spite of the manifest antagonism it has provoked. And this passage, I venture to think, acquires fresh light and an accession of force when placed in juxtaposition with the parallel passages from De Maistre and Dr Newman. These passages will present no difficulties to the believer in the Bible. How far the view is sustainable, with reference to the more recent conclusions in chronology, I shall consider in another chapter; but, assuming that it is not chronologically disproved, there is no intrinsic impossibility which will debar belief.

The general probability of tradition being thus avouched,[84] I proceed to examine certain statements that have been made as to its necessary variability, and as to the uncertainty and indefiniteness of its utterances.

In the first place, as to its variability, it is true that tested by the experience which we possess of the persistency and exactness of family and local traditions, tradition in the broader sense which I have indicated may appear to be of little value. I have elsewhere attended a closer argument on this point in reply to Sir John Lubbock ([ch. xii.]), but I may also make what appears to me, as regards this matter, a sufficiently important distinction.

Family tradition is so confused, because at each remove in each generation, it is necessarily crossed through marriage with the traditions of another family. These may be either rival or irreconcileable. But this remark will apply with much less force, it will only secondarily and accidentally apply at all to the common traditions, the inheritance of all families starting from a common origin. If these traditions acquired some dross through the intermarriage of families, they will, on the other hand, through the very action of intermarriages, have been more frequently compared, more vividly, therefore, kept in remembrance, and more recognisable in their distortion, because the distortion is more likely to have been in the way of super-addition of what was thought congruous and supplemental. And this seems to me to meet Mr Max Müller’s objection in the Contemporary Review for April 1870. “Comparative philology,” he says, “has taught again and again, that when we find exactly the same name in Greek and Sanscrit, we may be certain that it cannot be the same word;” for we here see reason why and how these traditions have been specially protected against the natural action and law which it is the peculiar province of philology to trace.

I say this more especially with reference to the etymology in Bryant’s and other kindred works, which it is now the fashion to set aside with much hauteur; and I assert it without impugning in any way the results of modern philological inquiry, extending, of course, over a much wider field than the writers of the last century could embrace. But I do contend, that when the discussion has reference to the common progenitors of the human race, or the incidents of primitive life—for instance, the names of the ark, and what I may call its accessories, the dove and the rainbow[85]—a certain probability of identity may be presumed in such sort that it may chance that the probabilities of tradition must be held to override the conjectures, and in some cases even the conclusions of philology.[86]

I incline, moreover, to the belief that the fidelity and persistency of local tradition is greater than is generally supposed. Sir H. Maine[87] says—“The truth is, that the stable part of our mental, moral, and physical constitution is the largest part of it, and the resistance it opposes to change is such that, though the variations of human society in a portion of the world are plain enough, they are neither so rapid nor so extensive that their amount of character and general direction cannot be ascertained.” This establishes a presumption, at any rate, in favour of tradition, although I admit that the quotation from Sir H. Maine does not go further than point to a tradition of usages; but I contend that a tradition of usage would enable us, after the manner of Boulanger,[88] to disclose “L’antiquite devoilée par ses usages,” and to establish the main points and basis of the history of the human race, e.g. the Fall, the Deluge, the Dispersion, the early knowledge and civilisation of mankind, the primitive monotheism, the confusion of tongues, the family system, marriages, the institution of property, the tradition of a common morality,[89] and of the law of nations.

This inquiry might no doubt form a department either of scriptural exegesis, universal history, or of ethnological research; but, in point of fact, its scope is too large practically to fall within such limits; whereas, if it were recognised as a separate branch of study, it would, I venture to think, in the progress of its investigation, bring all these different branches of inquiry into harmony and completeness. And I further contend, that the conclusions thus attained are as well-deserving of consideration as the conclusions of science from the implements of the drift, or as the evidence of “some bones, from the pliocene beds of St Prest, which appear to show the marks of knives;”[90] which are adduced in evidence of a Palæolithic age. So that, when on one side it is said that science (meaning the science of geology or philology, &c) has proved this or that fact apparently contrary to the scriptural narrative, it can, on the other hand, be asserted that the facts, or the inferences from them, are incompatible with the testimony of the science of tradition. The defenders of Scripture will thus secure foothold on the ground of science, which, when properly entrenched, will stand good against the most formidable recognizances or assaults of the enemy.

I cannot help thinking that some such thought lurks in the following passage of Cardinal Wiseman’s Second Lecture on “Science and Revealed Religion” (5th Edition, p. 73)—

“Here again I cannot but regret our inability to comprehend in one glance the bearings and connections of different sciences; for, if it appears that ages must have been required to bring languages to the state wherein we first find them, other researches would show us that these ages never existed; and we should thus be driven to discover some shaping power, some ever-ruling influence, which could do at once what nature would take centuries to effect; and the Book of Genesis hath alone solved this problem.”

No doubt a greater general acquaintance and power to grasp—or better still, an intuitive glance—with which to comprehend “the bearings and connections of different sciences,” would tend to circumscribe the aberrations of any particular science; but the special intervention which appears to me destined to bring the various sciences into harmony, will be the elevation of the particular department of history or archæology which has to do with the traditions of the human race as to its origin into a separate and recognised branch of inquiry; and I am satisfied that if any portion of that intellect, which is cunning in the reconstruction of the mastodon from its vertebral bone, had been directed to the great lines of human tradition, that enough of the “reliquiæ” and vestiges of the past remain to establish their conformity with that “which alone has solved this problem—the Book of Genesis;” and which, apart from the consideration of its inspiration, will ever remain the most venerable and best attested of human records.[91]

It is much too readily assumed that traditions must be worthless where no records are kept. Gibbon,[92] I think, was the first who took this position. To this I reply, that although records are valuable for the attestation, they are not guarantees for the fidelity of tradition.[93] I do not assert that the tradition is more trustworthy than the record; but that, when mankind trust mainly to tradition, the faculties by which it is sustained will be more strongly developed, and the adaptation of society for its transmission more exactly conformed. In other words, tradition in ancient times seemed to flow as from a fountain-head, and the world was everywhere grooved for its reception. We may take in evidence the strange resemblances in mythological tradition in various parts of the world on the one hand, and on the other the oral tradition of the Homeric verses; the frequent concourse of citizens, and at recurring festivals of the surrounding populations, to listen to their recital. And not only was there oral tradition in verse, but all public events were recorded in the attestations of the market-place. When a treaty was ratified it was commonly before some temple, or in some place of public resort, and its terms were committed to memory by some hundred witnesses; and in like manner was the recollection of other public events and memorable facts preserved.[94] (Vide Pastoret’s “Hist. de la Législation,” i. 71; also, account of “Annales Maximi” in Dyer’s “Rome,” xvii.)

Yet, although during long periods oral transmission was for mankind the main channel of tradition, it must not necessarily be concluded that writing was unknown, and was not employed for monumental and other purposes. What strikes one most forcibly in contemplating these ages, is the contrast between their intellectual knowledge and their mechanical and material contrivances for its application. During these centuries in which the 30,000 hexameters of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” were transmitted in memory, by repetition, at public festivals, oral tradition was doubtless employed, because during this period “paper, parchment, or even the smoothed hides, as adapted for the purposes of writing, were unknown.”[95] This, whilst it certainly is in evidence of the paucity of their available resources, at the same time establishes the retentive strength of their memory,[96] and their intellectual familiarity with great truths.

And this seems to me the sufficient reply to Sir Charles Lyell’s somewhat captious objection, that if the intellectual knowledge of the primitive age was so great, we ought now to be digging up steam engines instead of flint implements.

Every age has its own peculiar superiority, as hath each individual mind—non omnia possumus omnes—and it is as reasonable to object to an age of philosophic thought, or of intuitive perception, that it was not rich in the wealth of material civilisation, as it would be to object to Plato or Shakspeare, that they did not acquire dominion over mankind; or to Alexander, that he did not excel Aristotle; or to Sir C. Lyell, supposing geology to be certain, that he did not anticipate Darwin, supposing Darwinism to be true. And if it should be more precisely objected that, if in those ages there was the knowledge of writing for monumental purposes, we ought at least to find monuments,[97] I say that the onus probandi lies with the objector to prove the invention or introduction of writing in the interval between the age of Homer and the age of Pericles, as against us who believe in its primeval transmission; or to show that its introduction was more probable at this latter period than at the former.[98]

Schlegel says[99]—

“I have laid it down as an invariable maxim to follow historical tradition, and to hold fast by that clue, even when many things in the testimony and declarations of tradition appear strange and almost inexplicable; or, at least, enigmatical; for so soon as, in the investigations of ancient history, we let slip that thread of Ariadne, we can find no outlet from the labyrinth of fanciful theories and the chaos of clashing opinion.”

I propose to give a few instances of tradition, casually selected, which appear to me to be in illustration of this dictum of Schlegel’s.

Take, in illustration, the question whether mankind commenced with the state of monogamy. Not that there is any obscurity on this point in the Book of Genesis. It is indeed sometimes loosely said that we find instances of polygamy in patriarchal times; but, as our Lord said, it was not so in the beginning; and the Book of Genesis exhibits mankind as commencing with a single pair, and subsequently as re-propagated through a group of families, all represented to us at their commencement as monogamous. But if this highest testimony is discarded, and men gravely discuss whether or not they commenced with a state of promiscuity, the argument from tradition will go for as much as the argument from the analogy of circumstances and conditions as inferred from the existing state of savages, since this state, from our point of view, must have been the result of degeneracy.[100]

I must, moreover, contend that the practice of monogamy, in any one case, must weigh for very much more than the practice of polygamy in ten parallel instances; because the natural degeneracy and proclivity of man in his fallen state is in this direction.

And also, polygamy is much more naturally regarded as the departure from monogamy, than the latter as the restraint of, or advance out of, a state of promiscuity.

It may further, I think, be maintained that monogamy—in the way of separation with a single woman by reason of strong love or preference—would be the more probable escape from the state of promiscuity than through the intermediary and progressive stage of polygamy.[101]

Now, I need scarcely say, that the opponents of monogamy can show no instance of an advance out of the state of promiscuity either to monogamy or polygamy. But they can point to certain communities in ancient and modern times in a state of polygamy.

Either, then, they must have degenerated into this state from the primitive monogamous family system, or they must have arrived at the stage in growth and progress out of a state of promiscuity.

Does tradition give any clue out of this labyrinth? To simplify the question, I will consent to appeal to the identical tradition to which the advocates of an original promiscuity direct our attention.

Mr J. F. M’Lennan, who, in his “Primitive Marriage,” 1865 (vide supra), apparently describes mankind as originally in a state of promiscuity, subsequently limited by customs of tribal exogamy and endogamy, in a recent article in the Fortnightly Review (Oct. 1869), “Totems and Totemism,” sees further evidence of his theory in the following traditions from Sanchoniathon:—

“Few traditions respecting the primitive condition of mankind are more remarkable, and perhaps none are more ancient, than those that have been preserved by Sanchoniatho; or rather, we should say, that are to be found in the fragments ascribed to that writer by Eusebius. They present us with an outline of the earlier stages of human progress in religious speculation, which is shown by the results of modern inquiry to be wonderfully correct. They tell us for instance that ‘the first men consecrated the plants shooting out of the earth, and judged them gods, and worshipped them upon whom they themselves lived, and all their posterity, and all before them, and to these they made their meat and drink offerings.’[102] They further tell us that the first men believed the heavenly bodies to be animals, only differently shaped and circumstanced from any on the earth. ‘There were certain animals which had no sense, out of which were begotten intelligent animals ... and they were formed alike in the shape of an egg. Thus shone out Môt [the luminous vault of heaven?], the sun and the moon, and the less and the greater stars.’ Next they relate, in an account of the successive generations of men, that in the first generation the way was found out of taking food from trees; that, in the second, men, having suffered from droughts, began to worship the sun—the Lord of heaven; that in the third, Light, Fire, and Flame [conceived as persons], were begotten; that in the fourth giants appeared; while in the fifth, ‘men were named from their mothers’ because of the uncertainty of male parentage, this generation being distinguished also by the introduction of ‘pillar’ worship. It was not till the twelfth generation that the gods appeared that figure most in the old mythologies, such as Kronos, Dagon, Zeus, Belus, Apollo, and Typhon; and then the queen of them all was the Bull-headed Astarte. The sum of the statements is, that men first worshipped plants; next the heavenly bodies, supposed to be animals; then ‘pillars;’ ... and, last of all, the anthropomorphic gods. Not the least remarkable statement is, that in primitive times there was kinship through mothers only, owing to the uncertainty of fatherhood.”[103]

The fragments of Sanchoniathon here referred to are found at earlier date than Eusebius, having been copiously extracted by Philo (vide Bunsen’s “Egypt”).

Sanchoniathon was to Phœnicia what Berosus was to Assyria; that is to say, the earliest post-diluvian compilers of history when tradition was becoming obscure. Let us scrutinise his testimony. We are here told “that the first men consecrated the plants shooting out of the earth, and judged them gods.”... “Next they relate, in an account of the successive generations of men, that in the first generation the way was found out of taking food from trees.” Here, I submit, that we have plainly and unmistakably a tradition of that first commencement of evil, the first man and woman plucking the apple from the tree, thinking they would become as gods (Gen. iii. 4, 5), ... “and the serpent said ... for God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof ... and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

Then follows the succession of ages (vide infra, [ch. xiii].), of which there is a curious parallel tradition in Hesiod and Apollodorus, and partial correspondences in the traditions of India, China, and Mexico (infra, [ch. xiii].).[104]

It will be noted, however, that whilst running into the tradition of Hesiod on the one side (in Hesiod and in the Chinese tradition there is trace of a double tradition, ante and post-diluvian), Sanchoniathon still more closely runs in with the narrative of Genesis on the other, thus connecting the links of the chain of tradition.[105]

In the succession of ages we have in outline the history of mankind in the ante-diluvian period—the Fall, supra—followed in the succeeding age by a great drought—[compare this tradition with the following passage in Fran. Lenormant’s “Histoire Ancienne,” i. p. 5, 2d ed., Paris 1868—“and when geology shows us the first ante-diluvian men who came into our part of the world, living in the midst of ice, under conditions of climate analogous to those under which the Esquimaux live at the present day ... one is naturally brought to the recollection of that ancient tradition of the Persians, fully conformable to the information which the Bible supplies on the subject of the fall of man, ... which ranks among the first of the chastisements which followed the fall, along with death and other calamities, the advent of an intense and permanent cold which man could scarcely endure, and which rendered the earth almost uninhabitable.”[106]] It is to this period, and the short period immediately following the Deluge (vide ch. ii. [p. 21], and infra, pp. [136], [137]), that I am inclined to trace the notions of a primitive barbarism—compare, for instance, the facts which Goguet, in his “Origin of Laws,” i. p. 72, adduces in proof of his progress from barbarism, with the above tradition of the Persians recorded by Lenormant.

Goguet says—“The Egyptians, Persians, Phœnicians, Greeks, and several other nations (vide his references, p. 72), acknowledged that their ancestors were once without the use of fire. The Chinese confess the same of their progenitors.... Pomponius, Mela, Pliny, Plutarch, and other ancient authors speak of nations, who, at the time they wrote, knew not the use of fire, or had only just learned it. Facts of the same kind are attested by several modern relations.” Let this latter statement be compared with infra, pp. [136], [137].

In the third age we are told—“Light, Fire, and Flame (conceived as persons) were begotten,” which looks like a tradition of Vulcan, Tubalcain, &c. (vide [ch. xii]. infra); and “in the fourth, giants appeared;” while in the fifth, the corruption of mankind is indicated, as is declared in Genesis vi. 4: “Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men and brought forth children,” &c, ver. 12, “and when God had seen that the earth was corrupted (for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth), ver. 13, He said to Noe,” &c. “It was not till the twelfth generation that the gods appeared that figured most in the old mythologies,” says Mr M’Lennan, quoting Sanchoniathon, or what is believed to be his testimony. I trust that this fragment of tradition may be remembered in connection with what I have written in chapters [viii.], [ix.], [x.][107]

“The sum of the statements” then, so regarded, is to confirm the tradition of the human race as recorded in Genesis, that they sprang from three brothers and their three wives, forming three monogamous pairs who accompanied their father Noah into the ark, with his wife; and who again were more remotely descended from a single pair.

If, then, in the two most ancient traditions of which we have any record, we find concordance on some points and divergence on others, the circumstance of identity at all is so much more startling than the occurrence of discrepancy, that it will fairly be taken to warrant the presumption of a common origin; and this conformity will also be naturally claimed in support of our narrative as against the other on the points of disagreement, which will then be set down to the corruption of that which is deemed the most ancient and authentic. For those, therefore, who believe the Bible to be the revealed Word of God, and even for those who regard it as the most ancient record, the coincidences with Sanchoniathon will afford a striking testimony; whereas the coincidence of the fifth age of Sanchoniathon with Genesis (chap. vi. 1, 2, 4) and the tradition of Hesiod, must be an embarrassment to those who seek in this tradition evidence that what was characteristic of the fifth age, was true of the preceding and pristine ages.

To take a second instance, more exactly in illustration of the quotation from F. Schlegel, supra, [p. 124], there is no such barrier to tradition (regarded retrospectively) as the notion, if we accept it, which crept over many nations, that they were “autochthones.” Like the sand-drifts known to geologists as dunes, such notions, if they had been received absolutely, would have involved all tradition in a general extinction. But as the dunes, when minutely measured and submitted to calculation, have afforded the best evidence in favour of what may be called the diluvian chronology, so will this notion that men sprang out of the soil in which they dwelt, when analysed, contribute fresh evidence to the truth and persistence of tradition. But first of all, will any one start with the theory—that any nation that had this notion about itself—the Greeks, for instance, were really autochthones? There is, then, simply a confusion of ideas, a difficulty which has to be unravelled; but seeing that the Greeks notoriously believed themselves to be autochthones, it becomes an obstruction in the main channel of tradition, and it is especially incumbent upon us to consider the facts.

In the “Supplicants” of Æschylus—and I am not aware that the notion crops up at earlier date—Pelasgus is introduced as saying—

“Pelasgus bids you, sovereign of the land,

My sire, Palæcthon, of high ancestry,

Original with this earth; from me, their king,

The people take their name, and boast themselves

Pelasgians.”

—v. 275.

Here the high descent, and the origin from the soil, the ancestry referred to in the same breath with the allusion to his sire, “original with this earth,” strikes one as incongruous. And the incongruity appears still greater when we recollect that Pelasgus is the person whom all historical evidence proves to have been the first settler in the country; it being also borne in mind that the term “autochthones,” whether in a primary or a secondary sense, is always applied to the supposed aboriginals of the country, and therefore excludes the hypothesis of any more primitive colonisation.[108]

But if we regard it as a corruption of the tradition that man was created out of the earth (“for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,” Genesis iii. 19), does not this solve all difficulties? The extension of the knowledge that they were created out of the earth, to the notion that they were created out of this or that particular clay, is not violent. Is it not this same Æschylus[109] who has the allusion “to the earth drinking the blood of the two rival brothers, the one slain by the other.” It will be seen at [p. 175], that the Mexicans believed that the first race of men were created “out of the earth,” and “the third out of a tree,” a reminiscence of the creation, and of the fall, the intermediate event being probably the creation of Eve. In like manner, the Red Indians have a tradition that they were created out of the red clay by the Great Spirit; and to go to another part of the world, the supposed aboriginal tribes of China were called Miautze, or “soil children.”[110]

This testimony must be connected with the phrase so startling in the seventh ode of the fourth book of Horace, “pulvis et umbra sumus,” and with the text in Genesis iii. 19, “for dust thou art.”[111] It may possibly be said that this is merely matter of every day’s experience. But it is precisely at this point that we must ask those who dispute tradition to discard tradition. Do bodies—so far as the exterior senses tell us—return to dust, or to other forms of life? If it is true that we return to dust—Scripture apart—it is tradition and not experience which attests it, and yet so common is the belief, that it might readily pass as the result of common observation.

So general a tradition that man was created, and created out of the ground,[112] is so completely in accordance with the text of Genesis, that one can hardly see what more can be demanded; yet Catlin says[113]—“Though there is not a tribe in America but what has some theory of man’s creation, there is not one amongst them all that bears the slightest resemblance to the Mosaic account.” Catlin instances the traditions of the Mandans, Choctaws, and the Sioux—1st, The Mandans (who have the ceremony commemorative of the Deluge referred to, [ch. xi].), believe that they were created “under the ground.” 2d, The Choctaws assert that they “were created crawfish, living alternately under the ground and above it as they chose; and, creeping out at their little holes in the earth to get the warmth of the sun one sunny day, a portion of the tribe was driven away and could not return; they built the Choctaw village, and the remainder of the tribe are still living under the ground.” The Iroquois, however, believe that they “came out of the ground,” which is identical with the Greek notion of their being “autochthones” (vide Colden, ii. 103), where one of their chiefs speaks thus—“For we must tell you that long before one hundred years our ancestors came out of this very ground.... You came out of the ground in a country that lies beyond the seas.” Now, even if we consent to detach the Iroquois tradition, there is still in both the Mandan and Choctaw tradition, a common idea of their having come from “under the ground,” which seems to me the tradition that they were created out of the ground at one remove. To this it would seem the Choctaws have super-added their recollection of some incident of their tribe, possibly that they were an offshoot of the Esquimaux, or were at one period in their latitude and lived their life, which would be in accordance with the theory of their migrations from Asia by Behring’s Straits. 3d, About the Sioux, the third instance of contrariety adduced by Catlin, it seems to me that there is no room for argument, the Sioux having the tradition referred to above, that the Great Spirit told them that “The red stone was their flesh.” To these three instances Mr Catlin adds—“Other tribes were created under the water, and at least one half of the tribes in America represent that man was created under the ground or in the rocky caverns of the mountains. Why this diversity of theories of the Creation if these people brought their traditions of the Deluge from the land of inspiration?”[114]

Now, just as the tribes who said they were created “under the ground” implied the same tradition as those who said they were created out of the ground, so, too, the tribes who said they were created “under the water” probably held the tradition that the creation of the race preceded the Deluge.

The tradition which connects the creation with “the rocky caverns of the mountains” is more recondite—may it possibly be a recollection of the commencement of civil life after the Deluge, when Noah led them, according to tradition, from the mountains to the plains?

M. L’Abbé Gainet says (i. 176)—“The Lord repeated four times the promise that He would not send another deluge.... The children of Noah were long scared by the recollection of the dreadful calamity.... It is probable that they did not decide upon leaving the ‘plateaux’ of the mountains till quite late. Moreover, caverns have been found in the mountains of the Himalaya, and in many other elevated regions of Asia, which they suppose to have been formed by the first generations of man after the Deluge. The works of the learned M. de Paravey make frequent mention of them.” This tradition is supported by the lines of Virgil referring to Saturn (vide infra, [p. 210]).

“Is genus indocile, ac dispersum montibus altis

Composuit; legesque dedit.”—Æn. viii. 315.

I give these suggestions for what they may be worth.[115] Truly, where some see nothing but harmony, others see nothing but diversity. Only to put it to a fair test, I should like to see Mr Catlin or some one else group these various traditions round any one tradition which they believe to be at variance with the revelation of Genesis, and which, at the same time, they happen to consider to be the true one. It must be conceded that in one way the facts accord with Mr Catlin’s theory—contradicted, however, by other evidence (infra, [ch. xi].)—that the Indians were created on the American continent. But upon any theory that they were not created at all, but existed always in pantheistic transformation, or had progressed from the monkey, or had been developed in evolution from some protoplasm, is not the tradition incongruous and inexplicable?

To take another instance. The Hindoos had a fanciful notion that the world was supported by an elephant, and the elephant by a tortoise. Nothing can be imagined more incongruous and grotesque. Yet Dr Falconer has recently discovered, in his explorations in India, a fossil tortoise adequate to the support of an elephant. The incongruity then of the tradition disappears; its grotesqueness remains. I cannot help thinking, however, that it may have been the embodiment in symbol, or else the systematisation of the confused medley of their tradition of the order, i.e. of the sequence of days of the creation (vide [Appendix] to this chapter).[116]

I have alluded, [p. 199], to the tradition preserved by Berosus, that Oannes, whom I identify with Noah, left writings upon the origin of the world, in which he says, “that there was a time when all was darkness and water, and that this darkness and water contained monstrous animals.” Here, perhaps, two distinct traditions are confused; but is not the tradition of animals so much out of the ordinary nature of things as to be called monstrous sufficiently marked to make us ask if the discovery of the skeleton of the “megatherium” ought to have come upon the scientific world as a surprise? Might they not have anticipated the discovery if they had duly trusted tradition?

Other instances might doubtless be adduced. My present object is merely to suggest that there may be truths in tradition not dreamt of by modern philosophy. If the human intellect were as capacious as it is acute, we might then listen with greater submission to its strictures upon tradition; because then we might at least believe that its vision extended to all the facts. But in truth, no intellect, however encyclopædic, can grasp them all. Indeed, knowledge in many departments is becoming more and more the tradition of experts, and must be taken by the outside world on faith. How many facts, again, once in tradition, but at some period put on record, lie as deeply shrouded in the dust of libraries as they had previously lain hidden in the depths of ages? Who will say what facts are traditional in different localities? Barely do we move from place to place without eliciting some information strange and new. Who again will say what ideas are traditional in different minds? Barely is there a discussion which provokes traditional lore or traditional sentiment which does not bring to light some such thought or experience, re-appearing, like the lines in family feature, after the lapse of several generations.

Whenever, then, mankind is called upon to discard its traditions at the voice of any intellect, however powerful, is it unreasonable to demand that some cognizance should be taken of these facts.[117]

Let us now, returning to the tradition we have more especially in view, ask this further question,—What could the human intellect have done towards the regeneration of the race if there had been no revelation and no tradition?

It is not often that unbelief is constructive and supplies us with the necessary data with which to furnish the answer. But recently a work which is said to embody considerable learning has appeared, entitled, “The Origin and Development of Religious Belief,” which is written “from a philosophic and not from a religious point of view;” in which “the existence of a God is not assumed, the truth of revelation is not assumed,” and “the Bible is quoted not as an authoritative, but as an historical record open to criticism.”—Mr Baring Gould, “Origin and Development of Religious Belief,” preface, 1869.

Here then, if anywhere, we are likely to get the solution from the point of view of unbelief.

At p. 119, Mr B. Gould thus summarises his views:—

“Religion, as has been already shown, is the synthesis of thought and sentiment. It is the representation of a philosophic idea. It always reposes on some hypothesis. At first it is full of vigour, constantly on the alert to win converts. Then the hypothesis is acquiesced in, it is received as final, its significance evaporates. The priests of ancient times were also philosophers, but not being able always to preserve their intellectual superiority, their doctrines became void of meaning, hieroglyphs of which they had lost the key; and then speculation ate its way out of religion, and left it an empty shell of ritual observance, void of vital principle. Philosophy alone is not religion, nor is sentiment alone religion; but religion is that which, based on an intelligent principle, teaches that principle as dogma, exhibits it in worship, and applies it in discipline. Dogma worship and discipline are the constituents, so to speak, the mind spirit, and body of religion.”—“Origin and Development of Religious Belief.” By S. Baring Gould, M.A. Rivingtons, 1869. Part i., p. 119.

Here it is said that “religion is the representative of a philosophic idea. It always reposes on some hypothesis.” This philosophic idea may be that there must necessarily be a Creator. But also it may not be, for “the existence of God is not assumed” (vide [preface]). If it is not, then, according to this definition, religion may be the representative of any philosophic idea (i.e. any idea of any philosopher), even that which may be diametrically opposed to the existence and goodness of God.[118] But if, on the other hand, the existence of God is this primary philosophic idea, then all other philosophic ideas must succumb to it. It is a point which you must settle at starting in your definition of religion.

What follows seems to assume that some individual, or some set of individuals, at a period more or less remote, evolved the idea of God and religion out of their own consciousness; but that, as the descendants of these individuals had not the same intellectual vigour, the conception lapsed,—“their doctrines became hieroglyphs of which they had lost the key.” Nothing can be more conformable to the theory of tradition;[119] but from the point of view of Mr Baring Gould, what was to forbid other individuals broaching fresh conceptions? Is there, however, any instance known to us? Is there any instance of a religion not eclectic or pantheistic (the one being the mere revivalism or reconstruction of the elements of former beliefs, and the other their absorption), any religion “based on an intelligible principle,” heretofore unknown to mankind, rising up and obtaining even a temporary ascendancy among mankind? No; mankind, even in the darkness of Paganism, persistently distinguished between religion and philosophy, priests and sophists—though intellectually so much alike—and this I consider to be a master-key to the history of the past (ante, [p. 109]).

There is a further point which Mr Baring Gould must settle. Religion may be theoretically regarded as an affair of growth, progressive, or as an affair of revelation, or something so nearly counterfeiting revelation as to arise spontaneously; but it cannot well be both. Now, in the pages of Mr Baring Gould it appears at one time “springing into life” (p. 109), and, as in the passage above, analogously to a conception in the mind:—“At first it is full of vigour, constantly on the alert to win converts;” at another, “as a conception slowly evolved;” then all at once “a living belief, vividly luminous” (p. 109). Again (p. 110), “Religion does not reach perfection of development at a bound; generations pass away, before,” &c; and (p. 329) we find that in all primitive religions the idea of God is the idea of a devil, or (id.) “that the first stage in the conception of a devil is the attribution of evil to God,” which is different, inasmuch as it supposes man to start with the knowledge of God, and is, moreover, inconsistent with what is said at page 113:—“The shapeless religion of a primitive people gradually assumes a definite form. It is that of nature worship. It progresses through polytheism and idolatry, and emerges into monotheism or pantheism.” Of course this is said upon the assumption that the primitive man was barbarous. But however remote from the fact, it is theoretically as conceivable that man should worship nature as an ideal of beauty and power, as that he should regard it from the first as an apparition of terror; or, in other words, that taking nature-worship for granted, Mr Max Müller’s view of it, viz.:—“He begins to lift up his eyes, he stares at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it? He opens his eyes to the winds, and asks them whence and whither? He is awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and Him whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily pittance of his existence, he calls ‘his life, his breath, his brilliant Lord and Protector’” (Chips, i. 69, apud B. G., 139),—is as likely to be the true one as Mr Baring Gould’s,[120] viz.:—“At first man is ... antitheist; but presently he feels resistances.... The convulsions of nature, the storm, the thunder, the exploding volcano, the raging seas, fill him with a sense of there being a power superior to his own, before which he must bow. His religious thought, vague and undetermined, is roused by the opposition of nature to his will” (p. 137).

Mr Baring Gould postulates, I am aware, the lapse of several generations for the evolution of these ideas. But there is nothing in Mr Baring Gould’s statement of the progression or development of the conception of the Deity among mankind which might not pass in rapid sequence through the mind of the primitive man,—call him “Areios,” if you shrink from close contact with history, and refuse to call him Adam. Why then the indefinite lapse of time? why the progressive advance of the idea through successive generations of mankind? Why, except that the primitive barbarism must be assumed; and because (p. 239), “in the examination of the springs of religious thought, we have to return again and again to the wild bog of savageism in which they bubble up.” But if the savagery was so great, the perplexity how man ever came to make the first step in the induction is much greater than that, having made it, he should proceed on to make the last.

It is certain that reason can prove the existence of God and His goodness, and this knowledge evokes the instincts of love and worship. It is true also that man has a conscience of right and wrong, and that among its dictates is a sense of the obligation of love and worship. Still this will not account for the existence of religion in the world. Much less will Mr Baring Gould’s theory of an induction by mankind collectively, spread over several centuries, account either for the notion or for the institution.

Neither, apart from direct or indirect revelation, would it prove more than that man was religious, though without religion; capable of arriving at the knowledge of God’s existence, but without any knowledge how to propitiate him; seeking God, but not able to find Him.

Therefore, Mr Baring Gould truly says—“Philosophy alone is not religion.” Philosophy, as we have seen, may prove the existence of God. But religion, from the commencement of the world, has conveyed the idea that there is a particular mode in which God must be worshipped. Here philosophy is entirely at fault. Mr Baring Gould again truly says that “dogma, worship, and discipline are the constituents, so to speak, the mind, spirit, and body of religion” (p. 119). But he goes no further, and does not explain how it came about that mankind in all ages have adhered with singular pertinacity to the notion that religion could teach that on which philosophy must perforce be silent. Has not the greater intellect ever been on the side of philosophy? Nay,[121] in the epochs in which intellectual superiority was undeniably on the side of philosophy, did the populace go to the academy or to the oracles? If the human intellect had originally framed the ritualistic observances, which bore so strange a resemblance in different parts of the world; if human sagacity had originated the idea of sacrifice (and wherefore sacrifice from the point of view of human sagacity?); if philosophy had revealed to them the religious conceptions which they retained, and had been able to define the relation of man to the Divinity—would not mankind, in all ages, have had recourse to its greatest intellects for the solution of its doubts, rather than to the guardians of an obscure and corrupt tradition? The question no doubt is complicated with the evidence as to demonolatry; but the extent to which this prevailed only enforces the argument against Mr Baring Gould, to whom, apparently, the demon (p. 135) is not a real existence, but only the embodiment of a phase of thought, and must seriously embarrass those who attribute the regeneration of man from savagery to intellectual growth and natural progress.

But demonology apart, what would have countervailed against the superiority of reason and the intellectual prestige of the world except a belief in a tradition of primitive revelation? What else will account for the different recognitions of philosophy and religion—priests and sophists? What else would have prevented mankind from resorting in their difficulties to where the greatest intellect was found?

At page 134, this truth seems to gain partial recognition in the pages of Mr Baring Gould:—

“In conclusion, it seems certain that for man’s spiritual well-being, these forces (‘the tendency to crystallise, and the tendency to dissolve’) need co-ordination. Under an infallible guide, regulating every moral and theological item of his spiritual being, his mental faculties are given him that they may be atrophied, like the eyes of the oyster, which, being useless in the sludge of its bed, are re-absorbed. Under a perpetual modification of religious belief, his convictions become weak and watery, without force, and destitute of purpose. In the barren wilderness of Sinai there are here and there green and pleasant oases. How come they there? By basaltic dykes arresting the rapid drainage which leaves the major part of that land bald and waste. So in the region of religion, revelations and theocratic systems have been the dykes saving it from barrenness, and encouraging mental and sentimental fertility” (p. 134).

It is impossible that we should quarrel with this illustration, it is so exactly to our point. Is it not another way of affirming the position which I maintain against Sir John Lubbock? ([ch. xii.]) May not we, too, take our stand upon these “oases” of tradition, which “revelations” and “theocratic systems” have formed, and ask what the human intellect has been able to achieve for the spiritual cravings of man in the waste around?

Mr Baring Gould, indeed, says (p. 61):—

“A power of free volition within or outside all matter in motion was a rational solution to the problems of effects of which man could not account himself the cause. Such is the origin of the idea of God—of God whether many, inhabiting each brook and plant, and breeze and planet, or as being a world-soul, or as a supreme cause, the Creator and sustainer of the universe. The common consent of mankind has been adduced as a proof of a tradition of a revelation in past times; but the fact that most races of men believe in one or more deities proves nothing more than that all men have drawn the same inference from the same premises. It is idle to speak of a ‘Sensus Numinis’ as existing as a primary conviction in man, when the conception may be reduced to more rudimentary ideas. The revelation is in man’s being, in his conviction of the truth of the principle of causation, and thus it is a revelation made to every rational being.”

Grant that it is so, there is nothing here which militates against our position, which is this,—not certainly that there is not a revelation of God in man’s being, made to every rational creature, but that there has been an express revelation superadded to it; and that it is not true that “the common consent of mankind to the existence of God has been adduced as a proof of a tradition of a revelation in past times,” but that the mode and manner of the consent attests the fact of tradition and the fact of revelation. But what have we just heard? That there is a revelation of God’s existence in man’s nature, i.e. in each man’s nature—“it is a revelation made to every man’s nature.” Then the indefinite lapse of time demanded for the evolution of the ideas, which we have just been combating, is not after all necessary. “Habemus reum confitentum.”

But inasmuch as the consent of mankind is only “to one or more deities,” it is only so far a testimony to the existence of God as it is shown that polytheism arose out of the corruption of this belief; and, moreover, by no means proves “that all men have drawn the same inference from the same premises,” even if it were possible to reconcile this statement with what is said at page 113—“The shapeless religion of a primitive people gradually assumes a definite form. It is that of nature-worship. It progresses through polytheism and idolatry, and emerges into monotheism or pantheism” (vide infra).

At this point I should wish to put in the accumulation of evidence which L’Abbe Gainet has collected to prove that monotheism was the primitive belief.[122] When this evidence is dispersed, it will be time enough to return to the subject.

In any case, we may fall back upon the following testimony in Mr Baring Gould:—

“It is the glory of the Semitic race to have given to the world, in a compact and luminous form, that monotheism which the philosophers of Greece and Rome only vaguely apprehended, and which has become the heritage of the Christian and Mohammedan alike. Of the Semitic race, however, one small branch, Jewdom, preserved and communicated the idea. Every other branch of that race sank into polytheism (vide supra).... It is at first sight inexplicable that Jewish monotheism, which was in time to exercise such a prodigious influence over men’s minds, should have so long remained the peculiar property of an insignificant people. But every religious idea has its season, and the thoughts of men have their avatars.... It was apparently necessary that mankind should be given full scope for unfettered development, that they should feel in all directions after God, if haply they might find Him, in order that the foundations of inductive philosophy might be laid, that the religious idea might run itself out through polytheistic channels for the development of art. Certainly Jewish monotheism remained in a state of congelation till the religious thought of antiquity had exhausted its own vitality, and had worked out every other problem of theodicy; then suddenly thawing, it poured over the world its fertilising streams” (p. 259).[123]

From all this it results that, so far as the testimony of the Semitic race is concerned (which, by the by, a concurrence of tradition points to as the oldest), the human race did not “emerge into monotheism,” but “sank into polytheism;” that monotheism was their belief from “their earliest days,” and their language bearing testimony to the same, shows also that it was primitively so. It moreover results, that although mankind may have been allowed to sink into polytheism, as a warning or a chastisement, it certainly could not have been “in order that the foundations of inductive philosophy might be laid;” for it is quite apparent from this extract that the induction was never made that man did not “emerge into monotheism;” but that having “exhausted its vitality,” and “worked out every problem of theodicy” in the way of corruption, it received monotheism back again from the only people who had preserved it intact.

At any rate, monotheism came to it ab extra, and before polytheism had attained the “full scope of that development” which was necessary for the perfection of art!

But Mr Baring Gould having a perception that this admission (although he has not apparently seen its full significance) is fatal to his theory, hastens to unsay it at page 261, “Whence did the Jews derive their monotheism? Monotheism is not a feature of any primitive religion; but that which is a feature of secondary religions is the appropriation to a tribe of a particular god, which that tribe exalts above all other gods.” In support of this view, Mr Baring Gould quotes certain texts of Scripture—Isa. xxxvi. 19, 20 (i.e. words spoken by Rabsaces the Assyrian), and Jos. xxiv. 15, “But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord, you have your choice: choose this day that which pleaseth you, whom you would rather serve, whether the gods which your fathers served in Mesopotamia [query, an allusion to the idolatry in the patriarchal households? Gen. xxxv. 2, “the gods” being of the same kind with “the gods of the Amorites”], or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.“ One would have thought this text too plain to be cavilled at. Is not the Lord whom Josue invokes the same Lord who (Gen. i. 1) “in the beginning created heaven and earth,” and who said to Noah (Gen. vi. 7), “I will destroy man whom I have created, from the face of the earth;” and who (Exod. iii. 2) appeared to Moses in a flame of fire in the bush which was not consumed; and to whom Moses said, “Lo, I shall go to the children of Israel, and say to them, The God of your fathers hath sent me to you; if they should say to me, What is His name? what shall I say to them? (ver. 14), God said to Moses, I am who am: He said thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, He who is hath sent me to you.” When or where has monotheism been more explicitly declared? Is there any phrase which the human mind could invent in which it could be more adequately defined? And when God speaks as “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob,” is it not as if He would say, I am not only the God who speaks to the individual heart, but who is also traditionally known to you all collectively through my manifestations and revelations to your forefathers? Compare Matt. xxii. 32. Inter alia, Mr B. Gould also instances such unmistakable orientalisms as “‘Among the gods there is none like unto Thee, O Lord,’ says David, and he exalts Jehovah above the others as a ‘King above all gods.’” Where, then, may we ask, is the monotheism, “the glory of the Semitic race,” to be found, if not in the time of David?

The proof which follows is more clinching still—

“Jacob seems to have made a sort of bargain with Jehovah that he would serve Him instead of other gods, on condition that He took care of him during his exile from home. The next stage in popular Jewish theology was a denial of the power of the Gentile gods, and the treatment of them as idols. Tradition and history point to Abraham as the first on whom the idea of the impotence of the deities of his father’s house first broke. He is said to have smashed the images in Nahor’s oratory, and to have put a hammer into the hands of one idol which he left standing, as a sign to Nahor that that one had destroyed all the rest.”

Unfortunately for this view—according to the only authentic narrative we have of the facts, Gen. xii.—Abraham must have preceded Jacob by at least two generations!

I think that, after this, we may fairly ask Mr Baring Gould, who is learned in medieval myths, to trace for us more distinctly the notion of the chronicler who had a theory that Henry II. lived before Henry I.

With this passage I shall conclude this chapter, merely observing, that if any department of study existed which had for its special object the investigation of tradition,[124] it is simply impossible that a work (clever in many respects) such as that of Mr Baring Gould should ever have been written.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII.

Cardinal Wiseman (“Lectures on Science and Religion,” ii. 228–232), in speaking of what was characteristic of most Oriental religions—a belief “in the existence of emanated influences intermediate between the divine and earthly natures,” is led on to give an account of the curious Gnostic sect, the Nazarians—“The first of these errors was common, perhaps, to other Gnostic sects; but in the Codex Nasaræus we have the two especially distinguished as different beings—light and life. In it the first emanation from God is the king of light; the second, fire; the third, water; the fourth, life.” I wish to note that, whether or not their notions as to emanations originally meant more than the act of creation, a tradition as to the successive order of the creation seems clearly embodied in the text. God created first of all light; then the sun (the firmament) is fire (the distinct creation of the light and the sun in Genesis is so marked as to create a special difficulty in the cosmogony); then water; then life, in beasts, birds, reptiles, &c; lastly, man. Comp. with supra, [p. 138], and with the above legend of Michabo.

“A Slavonian account of Creation.—The current issue of the Literary Society of Prague includes a volume of popular tales collected in all the Slavonian countries, and translated by M. Erben into Czech. We extract the shortest—‘In the beginning there was only God, and He lay asleep and dreamed. At last it was time for Him to wake and look at the world. Wherever He looked through the sky, a star came out. He wondered what it was, and got up and began to walk. At last He came to our earth; He was very tired; the sweat ran down His forehead, and a drop fell on the ground. We are all made of this drop, and that is why we are the sons of God. Man was not made for pleasure; he was born of the sweat of God’s face, and now he must live by the sweat of his own: that is why men have no rest.’”—The Academy, Feb. 12, 1870.

I wish also to examine, in greater detail than I should have had space for in a note, how far the case of the Samoyeds bears out Mr Baring Gould’s theory of the development of idolatry from its grosser to its more refined manifestations, or of the progress of the human race from barbarism to the light of religion and of civilisation.

Mr Baring Gould says, p. 136—

“‘When a Schaman is aware that I have no household god,’ said a Samoyed to M. Castren, the linguist, ‘he comes to me, and I give him a squirrel, or an ermine skin.’ This skin he brings back moulded ‘into a human shape.’ ... ‘This Los is a fetish; it is not altogether an idol; it is a spirit entangled in a material object. What that object is matters little; a stump of a tree, a stone, a rag, or an animal, serves the purpose of condensing the impalpable deity into a tangible reality.’ Through this coarse superstition glimmers an intelligent conception. It is that of an all-pervading Deity, who is focussed, so to speak, in the fetish. This deity is called Num. ‘I have heard some Samoyeds declare that the earth, the sea—all nature, in short—are Num.’ ‘Where is Num? asked Castren of a Samoyed, and the man pointed to the blue sea: but an old woman told him that the sun was Num. The Siethas, worshipped by the Lapps, had no certain figure or shape formed by nature or art; they were either trees or rough stones, much worn by water. Tomæus says they were often mere tree stumps with the roots upwards.”[125]

It is curious to contrast this recent account of the Samoides with an account, apparently well informed and discriminating, in 1762. Pinkerton, i. 522—“The religion of the Samoides is very simple.... They admit the existence of a Supreme Being, Creator of all things, eminently good and beneficent; a quality which, according to their mode of thinking, dispenses them from any adoration of Him, or addressing their prayers to Him, because they suppose this Being takes no interest in mundane affairs; and consequently, does not exact nor need the worship of man. They join to this idea that of a being eternal and invisible, very powerful, though subordinate to the first, and disposed to evil. It is to this being that they ascribe all the misfortunes which befall them in this life. Nevertheless, they do not worship, although much in fear of him. If they place any reliance in the counsels of Koedesnicks or Tadebes (the ‘Schamans’ referred to above), it is only on account of the connection which they esteem these people to have with this evil being; otherwise they submit themselves with perfect apathy to all the misfortunes which can befall them.” “The sun and moon, as well, hold the place of subaltern deities. It is by their intervention, they imagine, that the Supreme Being dispenses His favours; but they worship them as little as the idols or fitches (fetishes) which they carry about them according to the recommendation of their Koedesnicks.” gives a similar account of the Lepchas), have lapsed, apparently through sun-worship, to a state of Pantheism, if not Fetishism.

Of the Tongusy, a people who, if not kin to the Samoides, have an analogous worship—(“They are altogether unacquainted with any kind of literature, and worship the sun and moon. They have many Shamans among them, who differ little from those I formerly described.”—Bell’s “Travels in Asia, Siberia”)—Bell, travelling in Siberia, 1720, says—“Although I have observed that the Tongusy in general worship the sun and moon, there are many exceptions to this observation. I have found intelligent people among them who believed there was a Being superior to both sun and moon, and who created them and all the world.” If, then, we may connect the Tongusy with the Samoides, it would appear that whereas Mr Baring Gould (i.e., Castren) finds the latter sunk in Fetishism, they were, the one in 1762, the other in 1720, the worshippers of the sun and moon, joined with the knowledge and tradition of the true God still subsisting amongst them.

F. Schlegel (“Phil. of History,” p. 138) says—“The Greeks, who described India in the time of Alexander the Great, divided the Indian religious sects into Brachmans and Samaneans.... But by the Greek denomination of Samaneans we must certainly understand the Buddhists, as among the rude nations of Central Asia, as in other countries, the priests of the religion of Fo bear at this day the name of Schamans.” Compare Professor Rawlinson, “Ancient Monarchies,” i. 139, 172. (Vide infra, p. [163], [164], [205].)

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CHAPTER VIII
MYTHOLOGY.

Since all antediluvian traditions meet in Noah, and are transmitted through him, there is an à priori probability that we shall find all the antediluvian traditions confused in Noah. I shall discuss this further when I come to regard him under the aspect of Saturn.

As a consequence, we must not expect to find (the process of corruption having commenced in the race of Ham, almost contemporaneously with Noah) a pure and unadulterated tradition anywhere; and I allege more specifically, that whenever we find a tradition of Noah and the Deluge, we shall find it complicated and confused with previous communications with the Almighty, and also with traditions of Adam and Paradise.

But inasmuch as the tradition is necessarily through Noah, and in any case applies to him at one remove, it does not greatly affect the argument I have in hand. There is a further probability which confronts us on the outset, that in every tradition, with the lapse of time, though the events themselves are likely to be substantially transmitted, they may become transposed in their order of succession. We shall see this in the case of Noah and his posterity. The principal cause being, that the immediate founder of the race is, as a rule, among all the nations of antiquity, deified and placed at the head of every genealogy and history. “Joves omnes reges vocârunt antiqui.” Thus Belus, whom modern discovery seems certainly to have identified with Nimrod, in the Chaldean mythology appears as Jupiter, and even as the creator separating light from darkness (Rawlinson, “Ancient Monarchies,” i. 181; Gainet, “Hist. de l‘Anc. et Nouv. Test.,” i. 120). But Nimrod is also mixed up with Jupiter in the god Bel-Merodach. In more natural connection Nimrod—(“who may have been worshipped in different parts of Chaldea under different titles,” Rawlinson, i. 172)—Nimrod appears as the father of Hurki the moon-god, whose worship he probably introduced; and, what is much more to the point, he appears as the father of Nin (whom I shall presently identify with Noah); whilst in one instance, at least, the genealogy is inverted, and he appears as the son of Nin. Thus, too, Hercules and Saturn are confounded, just as we find Adam and Noah confounded (“many classical traditions, we must remember, identified Hercules with Saturn,” vide Rawlinson, i. 166). Also in Grecian mythology Prometheus (Adam) figures as the son of Deucalion (Noah), and also of Japetus (Japhet); and so, too, Adam and Noah, in the Mahabharata, are equally in tradition in the person of Manou (vide Gainet, i. 199), and in Mexico in the person of the god Quetzalcoatl (vide infra, [p. 326]).

Before, however, pursuing the special subject of this inquiry further, it appears to me impossible to avoid an argument on a subject long debated, temporarily abandoned through the exhaustion of the combatants, and now again recently brought into prominence through the writings of Mr Gladstone, Dr Dollinger, Mr Max Müller, and others—the source and origin of mythology.[126]

Now, here, I am quite ready to adopt, in the first place, the opinion of L’Abbé Gainet, that every exclusive system must come to naught, “que toutes les tentatives qu’on ai faites pour expliquer le polythéisme par un système exclusif tombent à faux et n’expliquent rien.”

Yet, whilst fully admitting an early and perhaps concurrent admixture of Sabaism,[127] I consider that the facts and evidence contained in the pages of Rawlinson will enable us to arrive at the history of idolatry by a mode much more direct than conjecture. The pages of Rawlinson prove the identity of Nimrod and Belus, and his worship in the earliest times. On the other hand, there has been a pretty constant tradition[128] that Nimrod first raised the standard of revolt against the Lord; and the erection of the tower of Babel seems to show a state of things ripe for idolatry. Here recent discovery and ancient tradition concur in establishing hero-worship as among the earliest forms of idolatry. But further, the Arab tradition of Nimrod’s apotheosis, analogous to the mysterious and miraculous disappearance of Enoch (vide infra, [p. 192]), suggests how hero-worship might become almost identical with the worship of spirits, which L’Abbé Gainet inclines to think the first and most natural mode. If there was a tradition among them that one of their ancestors was raised up to heaven,[129] why may they not have argued, when their minds had become thoroughly corrupted, that their immediate ancestor, the mighty Nimrod, had been so raised? and when one ancestor was deified the rest would have been deified in sequence, or according to their relationship to him. What, again, more likely than that, when through the corruptions of mankind the communications of the Most High ceased, they should turn to those to whom the communications had been made, at first perhaps innocently in intercession, and, as corruption deepened, in worship?[130]

L’Abbé Gainet, in another part of his work, draws attention to the worship of ancestors in China, and asks whether the idols of Laban had reference to more than some such secondary objects?

It will be recollected that it was precisely the extent to which this veneration was to be considered culpable which was the subject-matter of the unfortunate disputes between certain religious orders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (vide Huc’s “Chinese Empire,” and Cretineau Joly’s “Hist. de la Com. de Jesus,” vol. iii. chap. iii., and vol. v. chap. i.) Indeed, among the Semitic races it may never have degenerated into idolatry. Still it appears to me that weight should be attached to this tendency, more especially in primitive times, when the recollection of ancestors who had been driven out of Paradise, to whom direct revelations had been made, and who were naturally reputed to have been “nearer to the gods” (Plato, Cicero[131]), would have been all in all to their descendants. Then, again, as we have just seen, there was the tradition among them of one man who had been carried up into heaven, and accordingly, when hero-worship culminated in the deification of man, we are not surprised to find it taking the form of this apotheosis as in the identification of Nimrod and Enoch.

This tendency to idolatry through hero-worship seems to me so natural and direct, that I think, apart from the facts à priori, I should have been led to the conclusion that it was the actual manner in which it was brought about.[132] It is not denied, on the other hand, that there always has been a tendency to nature-worship also; and, indeed, there is probably a stage during which every mythology will be found to have come under its influence. But the inclination at the present moment is unmistakably to an exclusive astral or solar system. The point of interest which excites me to this inquiry is simply to determine the value of the historical traditions which may lie embedded in these systems; and I shall be content to find them, whether or not they form the primary nucleus, or whether only subsequently imported into, and blended with, solar mythology. It is easy to conceive how a mythology embodying historical traditions could pass into an astral system. In this case incongruity would not startle; but it is difficult to imagine a pure astral system which would not be too harmonious and symmetrical to admit of the grossness, inconsistency, and incongruity to which the process of adaptation would inevitably give rise, and to which hero-worship is inherently prone. As Mr Gladstone says (Homer, ii. 12):—

“There is much in the theo-mythology of Homer which, if it had been a system founded on fable, could not have appeared there. It stands before us like one of our old churches, having different parts of its fabric in the different styles of architecture, each of which speaks for itself, and which we know to belong to the several epochs in the history of the art when their characteristic combinations were respectively in vogue.”

Mr Gladstone (passim) victoriously combats the theory of nature-worship as applied to Grecian mythology; but it appears to me that his argument and mode of reasoning would apply with tenfold effect to the Chaldean mythology, where there is a likelihood at least that we shall view idolatry in its early commencements. I consider that this view is borne out by the following passage from Professor Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” i. 139:—

“In the first place, it must be noticed that the religion was to a certain extent astral. The heaven itself, the sun, the moon, and the five planets, have each their representative in the Chaldean Pantheon among the chief objects of worship. At the same time it is to be observed, that the astral element is not universal, but partial; and that even where it has place, it is but one aspect of the mythology, not by any means its full and complete exposition. The Chaldean religion even here is far from being mere Sabeanism—the simple worship of the ‘host of heaven.’ The ether, the sun, the moon, and still more the five planetary gods, are something above and beyond those parts of nature. Like the classical Apollo and Diana, Mars and Venus, they are real persons, with a life and a history, a power and an influence, which no ingenuity can translate into a metaphorical representation of phenomena attaching to the air and to the heavenly bodies. It is doubtful, indeed, whether this class of gods are really of astronomical origin, and not rather primitive deities, whose characters and attributes were, to a great extent, fixed and settled before the notion arose of connecting them with certain parts of nature. Occasionally they seem to represent heroes rather than celestial bodies; and they have all attributes quite distinct from their physical and astronomical character.

“Secondly, the striking resemblance of the Chaldean system to that of the classical mythology, seems worthy of particular attention. This resemblance is too general and too close in some respects to allow of the supposition that mere accident has produced the coincidence.”

The evidence in the “Ancient Monarchies;” seems to me to decide the point, not only for perhaps the earliest mythology with which we are acquainted, but also for the Grecian mythology, which has generally been the ground of dispute. It is curiously in illustration, however, of the common origin of mythology, that the mythology of Greece should be equally well traced to Assyria and Egypt. As evidence of the theory according to the Assyrian origin, let us turn, for instance, to Professor Rawlinson’s identification of Nergal with Mars. It is true he appears as the planet Mars under the form of “Nerig,” and he also figures as the storm-ruler; but can anything well be more human than the rest of his titles?

“His name is evidently compounded of the two Hamitic roots ‘nir’ = a man, and ‘gula’ = great; so that he is ‘the great man’ or ‘the great hero.’ His titles are ‘the king of battle,’ ‘the champion of the gods,’ ‘the strong begetter,’ ‘the tutelar god of Babylonia,’ and ‘the god of the chase.’... We have no evidence that Nergal was worshipped in the primitive times. He is just mentioned by some of the early Assyrian kings, who regard him as their ancestor.... It is conjectured that, like Bil-Nipru, he represents the deified hero Nimrod, who may have been worshipped in different parts of Chaldea under different titles.... It is probable that Nergal’s symbol was the man-lion. Nir is sometimes used in the inscriptions in the meaning of lion, and the Semitic name for the god himself is ‘aria,’ the ordinary term for the king of beasts both in Hebrew and Syriac. Perhaps we have here the true derivation of the Greek name for the god of war ‘Ares’ (Αρης), which has long puzzled classical scholars. The lion would symbolise both the hunting and the fighting propensities of the god, for he not only engages in combats, but often chases his prey and runs it down like a hunter. Again, if Nergal is the man-lion, his association in the buildings with the man-bull would be exactly parallel with the conjunction which we so constantly find between him and Nin in the inscriptions”[133]—Rawlinson, i. 172–174.

I must draw attention also to the remarkable absence here of all the monotheistic epithets we shall find attached to Ana, Enu, and Hoa.[134]

Let us now turn to the theory which is most in the ascendant, and which professes to see in the old mythological legends only the thoughts and metaphors of a mythic period.

This theory, which was Mr Max Müller’s in the first instance, being not only exclusively drawn from the conclusions of philology, but also exclusive in itself, cannot be anywhere stronger than its weakest point.

If it is shown in the instance of one primary myth, that it was the embodiment of an historical legend, or theological belief, the whole ideal structure of a mythic period must collapse; for the rejection of eclecticism in any form, which would embrace a Biblical or euhemeristic interpretation of the myths, is at the foundation of Mr Max Müller’s idea, and, indeed, would be incompatible with the theory of a mythic period such as he conceives it.

The connection of Nimrod with Nergal in the Assyrian mythology, of Nergal with their planet Nerig, and of the Semitic name of the god “Aria;” with the Greek Ἀρης and the Latin Mars, must, I think, form a chain of evidence destined to embarass Mr Max Müller and Mr Cox: for, apart from the numerous points of contact of the Assyrian and Egyptian with the Greek mythologies, it can hardly be contended that there was a mythic period for the Aryan which was not common to the whole human race.

It would be natural to suppose, that a mythology which was generated in a mythic period—which was the invention of mankind in a peculiar state of the imagination—would have been developed in its fulness and completeness, like Minerva starting from the brain of Jupiter, and would have borne the evidence of its origin in the symmetry of its form. Mr Max Müller, on the contrary, seems to yield the whole position, in what, from his point of view, looks like an inadvertent phrase, that “there were myths before there was a mythology” It is not that the view is not true, or that it is inconsistent with his analysis of the myths, but that it is so perfectly consistent with ours! Incongruity, such as would come from the confusion of separate myths, would be no difficulty for us; but it is hard to understand how mere fragmentary legends—sometimes attractive, but more frequently repulsive and revolting, having no hold on what is nearest the heart of a people, the traditions of its past—should have been so tenaciously preserved for so long a time under such different conditions in various countries.

Solar legends, spun out of confused metaphors, seem an inadequate explanation, unless we also suppose idolatry of the sun. In that case, the mythology, in so far as it was solar, would precede the myths; in other words, the myths would be radiations from a central idea. That in the day when mankind prevaricated after this fashion, and committed the act of idolatry in their hearts, everything, from the phenomena of nature to the remote events of their history, would come under the influence of a new set of ideas may be easily conceived.

At such a period—and the commencement of these things at least was not impossible in the days when, in the spirit of mistrust or defiance, men drew together to build the city and tower in the plain of Sennaar (Shinar)—much of what Mr Cox supposes to have been the common parlance of mankind becomes natural, and a mythic period within these limits conceivable.

But such a theory would not necessarily be exclusive of other forms of idolatry—as, for instance, the worship of ancestors—whilst it might clear up obscure points in the evidence which tends to establish the latter.

The theory, however, must embrace many shades and gradations—from the Hamitic extreme to the protomyths, which in time obscured the monotheism of the Aryan of ancient Greece, and of the Peruvian Incas. ([p. 304.])

This would seem, unless they ignore all difficulties, a better standpoint for those who think, through the application of the solar legends, “to unlock almost all the secrets of mythologies;;” and any theory connected with the sun and sun-worship has this advantage, that it can be extended to everything under the sun!

It is sufficiently obvious that no system can be held to have settled these questions, which, if there were myths before there was a mythology, does not appropriate these antecedent myths, or exclude counter explanations; and it is equally clear that there can have been no mythology of which the solar legends were the offspring, if the legends embody thoughts which transcend the mythology; and no mythic period if they testify to facts and ideas incompatible with its existence.

Allowing for a certain confusion arising out of “polyonomy,” this sort of confusion, if there were nothing else, ought not to baffle the ingenuity of experts like Mr Max Müller and Mr Cox. Such complications should be as easily disentangled as the superadded figures in Egyptian chronology (vide [chapter vi.]) when the key has been found.

But does Mr Max Müller profess to have brought the various legends into harmony? On the contrary (ii. 142), he frankly admits—“Much, no doubt, remains to be done, and even with the assistance of the Veda, the whole of Greek mythology will never be deciphered and translated.”

I have no wish to push an admission unfairly, but this appears to me fatal as regards the argument with which I am dealing.[135] If there are myths which never will be deciphered, this must be because they have had some non-astral or non-solar origin, which I consider to be almost equivalent to saying that they must have had some pre-astral origin. What that precise origin was I think I have been able sufficiently to indicate in italicising the subjoined sentences from Mr Max Müller. If these enigmas can be shown to be strictly local and Grecian, cadit quæstio; but if they are common to other mythologies, and these the oldest, I must say they have the look of antecedent existence. At any rate, like those inconvenient boulders in the sand and gravel strata, they require the intervention of some glacial period to account for them.[136]

I have already hinted that a further consideration appears to me to incapacitate the theory of nature-worship, in any of its disguises, from being taken as the exclusive, or even the primitive form of idolatry, or of perverted tradition; and it is this,—that all the explanations, even the most ingenious, even those which would be accounted “primitive and organic,” have their counter explanations, traceable in the corruptions of truth and the perversions of hero-worship. Take, for instance, the name Zeus, which is in evidence of the primitive monotheism, and which stood in Greece, as Il or Ra in Assyria, for the true Lord and God, and which has its equivalents in Dyaus (“from the Sanscrit word which means ‘to shine’;”); Dyaus-pater (Zeus-pater), Jupiter; Tiu (Anglo-Saxon, whence Tuesday); and Zia (High German)—vide Cox’s “Mythology.”

What more natural than to associate the Almighty with the heaven where He dwelt? Mr Max Müller (“Comparative Myth.,” “Chips,” ii. 72) says—“Thus Ζευς, being originally a name of the sky, like the Sanscrit Dyaus, became gradually a proper name, which betrayed its appellative meaning only in a few proverbial expressions, such as Ζευς ὕει, or sub Jove frigido.” Taking this passage in connection with what is said (p. 148, of Welcker)—“When we ascend with him to the most distant heights of Greek history, the idea of God as the Supreme Being stands before us as a simple fact. Next to the adoration of one God, the Father of heaven, the Father of men, we find in Greece a worship of nature.” I conclude that Mr Max Müller means, as Mr Cox means, that the names, Zeus or Dyaus, was applied to the one true God, whose existence was otherwise and previously known to them.[137] At starting, therefore, we find that the language borrowed from nature was only called in to give a colouring and expression to a previously known and familiar truth; and here, too, we also see the commencement of incongruity. The simple idea of the heavens might have been harmoniously extended by the imagination; but, complicated with the idea of personality, it gave birth to the awkward and incongruous expression, “Ζεύς ὕει, or sub Jove frigido,” a phrase which never could have been originated by the Grecian mind, unless the personality of Jove had been the idea most prominently before the mind. But if the knowledge of the Deity, or even the conception of the personality of Zeus was operative in the mythic period, it must have been operative to the extent of embodying what was known or recollected of his dealings in love and anger with mankind, in the legends which they wove, and also of blending them with the confusions which “polyonomy;” occasioned. The introduction of this element would seriously embarass Mr Cox, and would give to Mr Gladstone’s explanation an “à priori;” probability.

Take, again, the following passage from Mr Max Müller (p. 107)—“The idea of a young hero, whether he is called Baldr, or Sigurd, or Sigrit, or Achilles, or Meleager, or Kephalos, dying in the fulness of youth—a story so frequently told, localised, and individualised—was first suggested by the sun dying in all his youthful vigour, either at the end of a day, conquered by the powers of darkness, or at the end of the sunny season, stung by the thorn of winter.”

Here is a myth evidently very widely diffused. Let it be interpreted by what is told us at p. 108—

“Baldr, in the Scandinavian Edda, the divine prototype of Sigurd and Sigrit, is beloved by the whole world. Gods and men, the whole of nature, all that grows and lives, had sworn to his mother not to hurt the bright hero. The mistletoe alone, that does not grow on the earth, but on trees, had been forgotten, and with it Baldr was killed at the winter solstice....

Baldr, whom no weapon pierced or clove,

But in his breast stood fix’d the fatal bough

Of mistletoe, which Lok, the accuser, gave

To Hoder, and the unwitting Hoder threw;

’Gainst that alone had Baldr’s life no charm.“

“Thus Infendiyar, in the Persian epic, cannot be wounded by any weapon.... All these are fragments of solar myths.” One hardly likes to disturb such illusions. Solar myths! well, allow me at least to repeat the history which seems to me so very like this myth. Many centuries ago, in a beautiful garden which a concurrence of tradition places somewhere in Central Asia, a man, the first man of our race, framed according to the “divine prototype,;” dwelt beloved by the whole world. God and the angels, and the whole of nature—all that grows and lives, were agreed that nothing should do him harm. One fruit or growth alone—the mistletoe it may have been—something that does not grow on the earth, but on trees, was excepted; and it was told to this man, whose name was—but we will not anticipate—that on the day on which he touched this fruit he should die the death. It so came about that the accuser, whom some call the serpent, had previously handed it to his companion, and his unwitting companion gave it to him. He took it, and he died. Against that fatal bough his life had no charm. No weapon pierced or clove him; for Baldr—I should say Adam—was invulnerable, as was Achilles and Meleager, except in one single respect.

I believe that instances might be indefinitely multiplied. I shall content myself, however, with the following, which I think will be generally considered among the happiest illustrations of nature worship.[138]

“And as it is with this sad and beautiful tale of Orpheus and Euridike (Euridice). [The story of Euridice was this—‘Euridice was bitten by a serpent, she dies, and descends into the lower regions. Orpheus follows her, and obtains from the gods that his wife should follow him if he promised not to look back, &c’ It reads to me like a sad reminiscence of Adam and Eve.] Mr Max Müller proceeds—‘so it is with all those which may seem to you coarse, or dull, or ugly. They are so only because the real meaning of the names has been half-forgotten or wholly lost. Œdipus and Perseus (vide [Appendix]), we are told, killed their parents, but it was only because the sun was said to kill the darkness from which it seemed to spring.’”[139]

But why is darkness called the parent of the sun, and not rather light the parent of darkness? and why not a contrary legend founded on this surmise? Is it merely accidental that the metaphor is not reversed?

Compare the above speculation of Mr Max Müller’s with the following passage from Gainet, “Hist. de l’Ancien. Nouv. Test.,” i.; “Les Souvenirs du genre Humain,” p. 79:—

“Chaos was placed at the commencement of all things in the Phœnician cosmogony (Euseb. Præp. Evan. l. i.), as in that of Hesiod (Theog., p. 5). The latter calls upon the Muses to tell him what were the beings that appeared first in existence, and he replies—‘At the commencement of all things was Chaos, and from Chaos was born Erebus and dark night.’

“Thus, in the order of existence, as in the order of time, there is a concurrence of profane tradition to place night before day. This is the reason why the Scandinavians, the Gauls, the Germans, the Kalmucks, the Numidians, the Egyptians, and Athenians, according to Varro and Macrobius, count their days, commencing with sunset and not with sunrise.”

Curiously enough, in another chapter on a different subject, Mr Max Müller enables me to clinch this argument against himself. In an article on the “Norsemen in Iceland,” he says—in proof of the genuineness of the Edda—“There are passages in the Edda which sound like verses from the Veda.” But what are these verses from the ends of the earth which are identical? Let us listen—

“’Twas the morning of time

When yet naught was,

Nor sand nor sea were there,

Nor cooling streams;

Earth was not formed,

Nor Heaven above;

A yawning gap there was,

And grass nowhere.”[140]

Under these conditions, I think it will be conceded that there was also darkness—and therefore, that the tradition of the precedence of chaos and darkness is confirmed.

“A hymn,” continues Mr Max Müller, “of the Veda begins in a very similar way—

“Nor aught, nor naught existed; yon bright sky

Was not, nor Heaven’s broad roof outstretch’d above,

What cover’d all? what shelter’d? what conceal’d?

Was it the waters’ fathomless abyss?;” &c

Mr Max Müller adds, “There are several mythological expressions common to the Edda and Homer. In the Edda, man is said to have been created out of an ash tree. In Hesiod, Zeus created the third race of men out of ash trees, and that this tradition was not unknown to Homer we learn from Penelope’s address to Ulysses—“Tell me thy family from whence thou art: for thou art not sprung from the olden trees, or from the rocks;” (Max Müller, ii. 195).

The tradition about the ash tree in Hesiod, Homer, and the Edda,[141] is curious but inexplicable: the general drift of the tradition may be determined by the recollection of two facts—that man was created, and that a tree was inseparably connected with his history from its earliest commencement. But I have quoted the passage more especially with reference to its confirmation of the extract from Gainet, which attests the wide-spread tradition—so exactly in accordance with the cosmogony of Scripture—that Chaos was at the commencement of all things, and that darkness existed before light.[142] I conclude by asking why this should be? When we are in the midst of solar and astral systems and legends, it seems natural that a theory of cosmogony should commence with light rather than darkness—at least, as well that it should commence with light as with darkness. But no, the universal tradition seems against it. Much more strange is this if we connect the solar and astral legends with any system of Sabaism. These considerations make it plain to me that the solar and astral legends embodied anterior traditions.

I think Mr Max Müller will at least recognise them as spots on the disk of his solar theory, and which must ever remain obscure to those who refuse the light of Scripture and tradition.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII.

“ŒDIPUS, PERSEUS.”

Here again, the explanation of Mr Max Müller, “si non vrai est vraisemblable,” and yet I cannot help seeing that the legends of Perseus and Œdipus may just as well be supposed to embody primitive tradition. Let us read the histories of Œdipus and Perseus in the light of the tradition concerning Lamech (Gen. iv. 23, 24). “And Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah ... I have slain a man to the wounding of myself, and a stripling to my own bruising. Sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for Cain, but for Lamech seventy times sevenfold.” The note to the Douay edition says—“It is the tradition of the Hebrews that Lamech, in hunting, slew Cain, mistaking him for a wild beast, and that having discovered what he had done, he beat so unmercifully the youth by whom he was led into that mistake that he died of the blows.” Œdipus was the son of Laius, who had supplanted his brother. Œdipus was exposed to destruction as soon as born, because his father had been warned that he must perish by the hand of his son,—but was rescued and brought up by shepherds. Hearing from the oracle of Delphi (the tradition is of course localised), that if he returned home he must necessarily be the murderer of his father, he avoided the house of Polybus, the only home he knew of, and travelled towards Phocis (from west to east by the by). (Comp. with infra, [p. 194.]) He met Laius, his father, in a narrow road. Laius haughtily ordered Œdipus to make way for him, which provoked an encounter, in which Laius and his armour-bearer were slain. Other circumstances, either separate traditions of the same event, or distinct legends, are no doubt mixed up in the narration, but still four facts remain as a residuum available for the comparison.

Œdipus was the son, as Lamech was the grandson, of one who supplanted his brother, both kill their respective progenitors, and in the casual encounter in which in both instances the tragedy occurred, two persons were slain. In this there is a fair outline of resemblance.

In the legend of Perseus, certainly the legend is more indistinct, et, in one point, that he inadvertently killed his grandfather, the coincidence is perfect. And it must be borne in mind that it is not a question of absolute but of comparative resemblance—in fact, a choice between a mythical or an historical, an astral or a scriptural solution, and when you come to degrees of relationship, the astral or solar explanation becomes more attenuated at each remove,—“the father of the sun;” may be metaphorically intelligible, but the grandfather of the sun!

I see further trace of the tradition of Lamech in the Phrygian legend of Adrastus, somewhat confused in the tradition of Cain, and in some points reversed. Adrastus, the son of the Phrygian king, had inadvertently killed his brother, and was in consequence expelled by his father and deprived of everything. Whilst an exile at the court of Crœsus, he was sent out with Prince Atys as guardian to deliver the country from a wild boar. Adrastus had the misfortune to kill Prince Atys while aiming at the wild beast. Crœsus pardoned the unfortunate man, as he saw in this accident the will of the gods, and the fulfilment of a prophecy, but Adrastus killed himself on the tomb of Atys (Herod. i. 35; Smith, “Myth. Dict.”)

Now let us take up the proof at another point. Will any one refuse to see in the following tale from the “Gesta Romanorum,”[143] at least a mediæval corruption of the legend of Œdipus:—“A certain soldier, called Julian, unwittingly killed his parents. For being of noble blood, and addicted as a youth frequently is to the sports of the field, a stag which he hotly pursued suddenly turned round and addressed him—‘Thou who pursuest me thus fiercely shall be the destruction of thy parents.’ These words greatly alarmed Julian.... Leaving, therefore, his amusement, he went privately into a distant country ... where he marries. It chances that his parents come into that country, and in his absence were received kindly by his wife, who, ‘in consideration of the love she bore her husband, put them into her own bed, and commanded another to be prepared elsewhere for herself.’ In the meantime, Julian returning abruptly home and discovering strangers in his bed, in a fit of passion slays them. When he discovers the parricidal crime he exclaims—‘This accursed hand has murdered my parents and fulfilled the horrible prediction which I have struggled to avoid.’”

Now, I submit that this is not a greater distortion of the classical stories of Œdipus, Adrastus, &c, than are the classical legends of the biblical traditions of Cain and Lamech.

For further trace read Bunsen, iv. 235, also, 253, 254. Mr Cox (“Mythology of Aryan Nations;”) says:—“The names Theseus, Perseus, Oidipous, had all been mere epithets of one and the same being; but when they ceased to be mere appellatives, these creations of mythical speech were regarded not only as different persons, but as beings in no way connected with each other.... Nay, the legends inter-change the method by which the parents seek the death of their children; for there were tales which narrated that Oidipous was shut up in an ark which was washed ashore at Sikyon,” p. 80. Sicyon was the oldest Greek city. Compare [p. 157] of this ch., and ch. on [Deluge]. This was merely the traditional record that the tradition was preserved in the Ark, and subsequently emanated from Sicyon.

II. PROMETHEUS AND HERCULES OR HERAKLES.

I have elsewhere ([p. 202]) alluded to the confusion of Prometheus, as the creator of man, with Prometheus, the first man created. But the most curious instance of reduplication is the further confusion of what I may call the human Prometheus, with his deliverer Hercules,—Hercules and Prometheus both in different ways embodying traditions of Adam! Prometheus is the Adam[144] of Paradise and the Fall, Hercules is Adam the outcast from Paradise, with his skin and club sent forth on his long labours and marches through the world. But how can Hercules, who frees Prometheus from the rock, be the same as Prometheus who is bound to the rock? If, however, we are entitled to hope that Adam in the labour of his long exile worked off the sentence and expiated the guilt on account of which Adam, the culprit, was sentenced, may we not accept this as an adequate explanation? Is it a forced figure that he should be said to unbind him from the rock, to drive off the vulture which preys upon him, and thus finally liberate him?

This disjunction of Adam and separate personification in the two periods of his life, before and after the Fall, will accord well enough with the addition in some legends of a brother Epimetheus, and I submit that this explanation is as good as that (vide Smith’s “Myth. Dict.”) which regards the legend as purely allegorical, and Prometheus and Epimetheus as signifying “forethought;” and “afterthought.”

The travels of Hercules, it must be confessed, as traditionally recorded, are somewhat eccentric. But are they explicable on any solar theory? He begins by travelling from west to east; he then proceeds south, and although he traverses Africa westward, he diverges abruptly to the north, from which he proceeds south, and ends as he began by travelling from west to east. All this, however, is perfectly explicable if we are prepared to admit Bryant’s (“Mythology,” ii. 70) historical surmises, and to go along with him so far as to believe that the tradition was mainly preserved through Cuthite or Chusite channels. We can, then, see a probability in the conjecture that the descendants of Chus, in preserving the tradition of the travels of Hercules (Herakles), superadded or substituted the scenes and incidents of their own wanderings, after they had settled down in the place of their final location.

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CHAPTER IX
ASSYRIAN MYTHOLOGY.

“But surely there is nothing improbable in the supposition, that in the poems of Homer such vestiges may be found. Every recorded form of society bears some traces of those by which it has been preceded, and in that highly primitive form, which Homer has been the instrument of embalming for all posterity, the law of general reason obliges us to search for elements and vestiges more primitive still.... The general proposition that we may expect to find the relics of scriptural traditions in the heroic age of Greece, though it leads, if proved, to important practical results, is independent even of a belief in those traditions, as they stand in the scheme of revealed truth. They must be admitted to have been facts on earth, even by those who would deny them to have been facts of heavenly origin, in the shape in which Christendom receives them; and the question immediately before us is one of pure historical probability. The descent of mankind from a single pair, the lapse of that pair from original righteousness, are apart from and ulterior to it. We have traced the Greek nation to a source, and along a path of migration which must in all likelihood have placed its ancestry, at some point or points, in close local relations with the scenes of the earliest Mosaic records: the retentiveness of that people equalled its receptiveness, and its close and fond association with the past, made it prone indeed to incorporate novel matter into its religion, but prone also to keep it there after its incorporation.

“If such traditions existed, and if the laws which guide historical inquiry require or lead us to suppose that the forefathers of the Greeks must have lived within their circle, then the burden of proof must lie not so properly with those who assert that the traces of them are to be found in the earliest, that is, the Homeric form of the Greek mythology, as with those who deny it. What became of those old traditions? They must have decayed and disappeared, not by a sudden process, but by a gradual accumulation of the corrupt accretions, in which at length they were so completely interred as to be invisible and inaccessible. Some period, therefore, there must have been at which they would remain clearly perceptible, though in conjunction with much corrupt matter. Such a period might be made the subject of record, and if such there were, we might naturally expect to find it in the oldest known work of the ancient literature.

“If the poems of Homer do, however, contain a picture, even though a defaced picture, of the primeval religious traditions, it is obvious that they afford a most valuable collateral support to the credit of the Holy Scripture, considered as a document of history. Still we must not allow the desire of gaining this advantage to bias the mind in an inquiry, which can only be of value if it is conducted according to the strictest rules of rational criticism.”—Gladstone on Tradition in “Homer and the Homeric Age,” vol. ii. sect. i.

Having laid, as I think, in what has been premised in the last chapter, grounds for a presumption that primitive traditions may be shrouded in the ancient mythology, I proceed to seek traditions of the patriarch Noah among the inscriptions and monuments of the Chaldæans; for then we shall find ourselves in a period when the results of modern archæological science are in contact with the events and incidents of primitive patriarchal life recorded in Scripture; and, in seeking them where we shall best find them, in the able and discriminating pages of Rawlinson, we shall at least feel that we are treading on safe and solid ground.

The deities in the Chaldæan Pantheon are thus enumerated by Professor Rawlinson—

“The grouping of the principal Chaldæan deities is as follows:—At the head of the Pantheon stands a god Il or Ra, of whom little is known. Next to him is a triad, Ana, Bil or Belus, and Hea or Hoa, who correspond closely to the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune. Each of these is accompanied by a female principle or wife.... Then follows a further triad, consisting of Sin or Hurki the moon-god, San or Sanci the sun, and Vul (or Yem, or Ao, or In, or Ina, according to various readings of the hieroglyphics) the god of the atmosphere (again accompanied by female powers or wives).... Next in order to them we find a group of five minor deities, the representatives of the five planets, Nin or Ninip (Saturn), Merodach (Jupiter), Nergal (Mars), Ishtar (Venus), and Nebo (Mercury). [The bracket indications are Rawlinson’s.]... These principal deities do not appear to have been connected like the Egyptian and classical divinities into a single genealogical scheme” (i. 141).

In a note at p. 142 it is said, “These schemes themselves were probably not genealogical at first ... but after a while given to separate and independent deities, recognised in different places by distinct communities, or even by distinct races;” (vide Bunsen’s “Egypt,” iv. 66; English Tran.)

Now to this opinion I venture unreservedly to adhere, and I connect it with the statement (id. i. 72), that “Chaldæa in the earliest times to which we can go back, seems to have been inhabited by four principal tribes. The early kings are continually represented in the monuments as sovereigns over the Kiprat-arbat, or ‘Four Races’ (vide supra, [p. 30]). These ‘Four Races’ are sometimes called the Arba Lisun or ‘Four Tongues,’ whence we may conclude that they were distinguished from one another, among other differences, by a variety in their forms of speech ... an examination of the written remains has furnished reasons for believing that the differences were great and marked; the languages, in fact, belonging to the four great varieties of human speech, the Hamitic, Semitic, Aryan, and Turanian.” Compare pp. [39], [40.]

If it is allowed that there may have been mythological systems corresponding to these divers nationalities, we may fairly conclude that the deities above enumerated may not necessarily have been different deities, but the same deities viewed in different lights, or included in duplicate in the way of incorporation, or in recognition of subordinate nationalities. If, therefore, I find the representation of Noah in any one of these deities, is there not a prima facie probability that I shall find the reduplication of him in others? I consider, at least, that I shall have warrant for thus collecting the scattered traditions concerning the patriarch who stands at the head of the second propagation of our race.

But first as to the god Il or Ra—

IL OR RA.

The form Ra represents, probably, the native Chaldæan name of this deity, while Il is the Semitic equivalent. Il, of course, is but a variant of El, the root of the well-known biblical Elohim, as well as of the Arabic Allah. It is this name which Diodorus represents under the form of Elus, and Sanchoniathon, or rather Philo Biblius, under that of Elus, or Ilus. The meaning of the word is simply “God,” or perhaps “The God;” emphatically. Ra, the Cushite equivalent, must be considered to have had the same force originally, though in Egypt it received a special application to the sun, and became the proper name of that particular deity. The word is lost in the modern Ethiopic. It formed an element in the native name of Babylon, which was Ka-ra, the Cushite equivalent of the Semitic Bab-il, an expression signifying “the gate of God.”

Ra is a god with few peculiar attributes. He is a sort of fount and origin of deity, too remote from man to be much worshipped, or to excite any warm interest. There is no evidence of his having had any temple in Chaldæa during the early times. A belief in his existence is implied rather than expressed in inscriptions of the primitive kings, where the Moon-god is said to be “brother’s son of Ana, and eldest son of Bil or Belus.” We gather from this, that Bel and Ana were considered to have a common father, and later documents sufficiently indicate that that common father was Il or Ra.”—Rawlinson, i. p. 143.

If in the Il or Ra of the Chaldæans the primitive monotheism is not revealed, I do not see how it can be discerned in the Zeus of the Greeks. We have the same god in the same relation in the Scandinavian, or at any rate in the Lapland mythology. Leems (“Account of Danish Lapland,” Pinkerton, i. 458) says—“Of the Gods inhabiting the starry mansions the greatest is Radien, yet it is uncertain whether he is over every part of the sidereal sky, or whether he governs only some part of it. Be this as it may, I shall be bold to affirm that the Laplanders never comprehended, under the name of this false god, the true God; which is obvious from this, that some have not scrupled to put the image or likeness of the true God by the side of their Radien, on Runic boxes.”[145] If, however, of their gods “the greatest was Radien,” they would not have placed the true God by his side until they had become acquainted with the true God, or until they had come to commingle Christianity and Paganism; but then would they not have placed “Ra;” by the side of the true God as His counterpart? I am assuming that “Radien;” means simply the god Ra, as I suppose Mr Max Müller would recognise “dien;” as cognate to “Dyaus” ... “Dieu.”

Yet it has been opposed, in limine, to M. L’Abbe Gainet’s valuable chapter on the “Monotheisme des Peuples primitifs,” “that he does not meet the specific assertions of historians such as Rawlinson, who finds idolatry prevalent among the Chaldæans on their first appearance on the stage of history.”

I must submit, however, that although the discovery of idolatry at this early period may appear to disturb the particular theory, yet on closer examination it will be found to sustain L’Abbe Gainet’s argument, on the whole, by sustaining the truth of tradition upon which his main argument reposes; for the idolatry which we find is intimately bound up with the worship of Belus, identified with Nimrod, whose rebellion against the Lord has always been in tradition, and is according to the more accepted interpretation of the sacred text. The discovery of idolatry, therefore, under the particular circumstances, is exactly what we should expect, and affords a remarkable confirmation of the fidelity of tradition.

Moreover, there are Chaldæans and Chaldæans, as we have just seen in Rawlinson (sup. [p. 184]), and as will be made more evident in the following passage from Gainet’s “Monotheisme,” &c.

“It is sufficiently agreed, says Lebatteux (Mem. Acad. t. xxvii. p. 172), that the Babylonians recognised a supreme being, the Father and Lord of all (Diod. Sic. l. ii.) St Justin Cohortat. ad gent. Eusebi. Prep. Evan., l. iii. Porphyry (Life of Pythagoras) cites an oracle of Zoroaster, in which the Chaldæans are coupled in encomium with the Hebrews for the sanctity of the worship which they paid to the Eternal King. These are the words of the oracles—The Chaldeans alone with the Hebrews have wisdom for their share, rendering a pure worship to God, who is the Eternal King.”—Gainet, iii. 408.

The pure monotheism here alluded to may have been preserved in Chaldæan families of Semitic origin, but the extract I have just given from Rawlinson seems to prove that the knowledge was preserved also, dimly and obscurely, among the predominant Chaldæans of Hamitic descent. This will be more apparent from the monotheistic epithets attached to the three next deities.