Boulanger, “L’antiquité dévoilée par ses usage,” (iii. 359), says, “Ce sont les mystères qui out tiré les hommes de la vie sauvage pour les ramener à la vie sociale et policée. Ces mystères étoient un composé de cérémonies religieuses ... leur origine remonte au temps des héros et des demi-dieux.”
[244] “Of all the different phases of civilisation, those which a nation must pass before it attains the highest grade of development, the first rude state is the most enduring and the most difficult to get over.”—Professor Nillson’s “Stone Age,” 191.
“The evidence of the transition from a stone to a bronze age among the Egyptians appears merely to be the use of a stone knife found in their catacombs, and used for the sacred incision into the dead, although they used bronze and iron knives for ordinary purposes, and whereas the stone knife was used by the early Hebrews in circumcision, and by the priests of Montezuma as instruments of human sacrifice.”—Wilson’s “Archæologia,” p. 29.
[245] It amounts to this, that we are requested first of all to discard and absolutely exclude all that we do know through direct historical evidence of our origin, and to determine it merely by scientific induction.
Sir J. Lubbock says in his introduction to Professor Nillson’s “Stone Age” (which is a summary of the whole question), “I have purposely avoided all reference to history, all use of historical data, because I have been particularly anxious to show that in archæology we can arrive at definite and satisfactory conclusions, on independent grounds, without any assistance from history; consequently regarding times before writing was invented, and therefore before written history had commenced” (p. xlii.) Compare with supra, [ch. vii.]
[246] “It must not be forgot to the honour of the Babylonians that they are acknowledged, by all antiquity, to have been the first who made use of writing in their public and judicial acts, but at what period it is not known.”—Goguet, “Origin of Laws,” i. 45.
Diodorus, however, says of the Egyptians (vide p. 48), “Menes without doubt has been esteemed the first legislator of Egypt, because he was the first who put his laws in writing. For before him Vulcan, Helius, and Osiris (vide ante, [p. 189]) had given laws to Egypt.”—Diod. l. 1, 17–18.
But also it must be recollected that the copper mines of Egypt were worked from the earliest period.
[247] But there are savages and savages; or rather there are savages who are strictly such, and savages who have still the germ of life and who are more properly distinguished as barbarians. Vide ante, [p. 285], De Maistre’s definition of the barbarian.
[248] I find curious testimony to the belief in M. Maupertius’ (Pinkerton, i. 252–4) account of an expedition of thirty leagues which he was induced to make into the interior of Lapland, by the accounts which he had received of a monument which the Laplanders “looked upon as the wonder of their country, and in which they conceived was contained the knowledge of everything of which they were ignorant.” In the end a monument was found bearing on it the appearance of great antiquity, and an inscription which M. Celsius, his companion (“very well acquainted with the Runic”), could not read. M. Maupertius indeed says, “If the tradition of the country be consulted, all the Laplanders assure us that they are characters of great antiquity, containing valuable secrets; but what can one believe in regard to antiquity from those people who do not even know their own age, and who for the greater part are ignorant who were their mothers.” Without supposing that the mysterious stone actually concealed any valuable and recondite knowledge, I am still struck by this attestation to the belief that antiquity shrouded such secrets; and if, which does not altogether accord with other accounts, the Lapps are as ignorant as they are here represented, then it would seem to be true that when mankind lose the knowledge of everything else, they still retain the tradition of their loss and the knowledge of their degradation. Concerning the superstitious veneration for stone arrow-heads very generally diffused, vide Mr E. T. Stevens’ “Flint Chips” (Salisbury, 1870, p. 89.)