“No language could possibly have been invented, either by a single man, who could not have extorted obedience, or by many who would not have made themselves understood to each other.... But I would wish, before concluding this subject, to recommend to your notice an observation which has always struck me. Whence comes it that in the primitive language of every ancient people, we find words which necessarily suppose a knowledge foreign to these people? Whence, for instance, have the Greeks, three thousand years ago at least, found the epithet ‘physizoos’ (giving or possessing life), which Homer sometimes gives to the earth?.... Where have they taken the still more singular epithet of ‘philomate’ (liking or thirsting for blood), given to this same earth in a tragedy? (Euripides, Phœn. v. 179). Æschylus had alluded before ‘to the earth drinking the blood of the two rival brothers, the one slain by the other.’[237] Humboldt (‘Monum. des Peuples Indigènes de l’Amerique,’ Paris, 1816) has said: ‘Many idioms which at present belong only to barbarous nations seem to be the remains of rich and flexible languages, which indicate a high culture.... But tell me, I pray you, how it entered the heads of the ancient Latins, at a time when they were only acquainted with the arts of war and of tillage, to express by the same word the idea of prayer and of punishment? Who taught them to call fever the “purifier,” or the “expiator”?’[238] Would not one say that there was here a judgment, a veritable knowledge of the cause, by virtue of which the people affirmed the name so justly? But do you believe that these sorts of judgments could possibly have belonged to a time when they scarcely knew how to write, when the Dictator dug his garden, and in which they composed verses which Varro and Cicero no longer understood?... The Greeks had preserved some obscure traditions in this regard—[Mr Gladstone has shown them to be neither few nor obscure],—and who knows if Homer does not attest the same truth, perhaps without knowing it, when he speaks of certain men and certain things ‘which the gods called after one manner, and men after another?’”—Count Joseph de Maistre, “Soirées de St Petersbourg,” i. Deux: Entretien.[239]
Against this view of De Maistre, which I consider to be indirectly sustained by the testimony of all antiquity, stands the theory of Sir John Lubbock. There is the constant historical tradition and testimony of the human race on one side, and there is the history of “Pre-historic Times” on the other. Nevertheless, I venture to say, that the author of “Pre-historic Times” only takes up with man at the point where De Maistre leaves him.
Of course I do not seek to detach Sir John Lubbock from the evidence he has collected; neither do I forget that he is the representative of an opinion and a school; at any rate, that there is an opinion of which he is the most conspicuous exponent.
So far as my limited acquaintance with the special subjects with which Sir John Lubbock deals extends (and with these I am only indirectly concerned), he appears perfectly straightforward and candid; and, moreover, I must acknowledge my obligations to him, for he has written with remarkable breadth and ability; and it is with the aid of the interesting matter which he has accumulated,[240] expressly in disparagement of tradition, that I venture to undertake to reinstate it in honour.
Neither do I wish to ignore that Sir John Lubbock’s main argument is the geological argument derived from the discovery of the fossils and implements in the drift. But on this point I beg to be allowed to say a word in protest.
As a geologist Sir John Lubbock may be entitled to rely mainly upon the geological evidence of a palæolithic age;[241] but as an ethnologist dealing with history and writing on the subject of tradition, his argument, however incontrovertible he may deem it, sinks to the second rank; and secondary I shall take the liberty of considering it. On the same grounds, though I think with more reason, that Sir J. Lubbock seeks to be relieved from “the embarrassing interference of tradition” (“Pre-historic Times,” p. 336), I protest, when tradition is the subject-matter of the discussion, against a geological argument being brought to take the ground from under our feet!
In the first place, I beg to urge that if Sir J. Lubbuck’s argument be well founded, Professor Rawlinson’s reconstruction of Assyrian history cannot be true. Now I assume that the one order of facts is as well established as the other.
If Professor Rawlinson takes back Assyrian history and corroborates history and tradition by the evidence of recent excavations to B.C. 2234, identifies the Erech of Scripture with the Huruk of the cuneiform tablets and the modern Urka; similarly identifies the other three cities of Nimrod; and, finally, identifies Nimrod himself as Bil-Nipru; and if, further, bronze implements are found (Rawlinson, i. 101, 123, 211), along with flint doubtless (but this was common throughout the bronze age, as Sir John himself admits), at an early period;—and bronze, though comparatively rare, yet exists among the very early Assyrian remains—there seems no good reason to suppose that the knowledge of metals, which we know (Gen. iv. 22) to have existed before the Deluge, and which the construction of the ark presupposes, was ever lost.
A stone age, exclusive of metals, common to the whole world and to all mankind, is therefore an untenable hypothesis according to the testimony of history. If it existed anywhere it must have been only partially, locally, and contemporaneously with this traditional knowledge of metals, which seems to be historically proved.[242] I may at least be permitted to believe in the accuracy of Professor Rawlinson’s conclusions, and to regard them as the verdict of history: and if the historical arguments so pronounce, why should the geological or palæontological argument override it? Is not history supreme on its own ground—and if Scripture is always found in perfect consistency with history, is it not as much as in strictness we should have a right to expect? “Tradidit mundum disputationi eorum” (Eccles. iii. 11).
Now, secondly, as it happens that bronze is only a combination of copper and tin in certain proportions, and as neither existed on the spot (in the Mesopotamian valley), it is a curious question how they could have hit upon the discovery through actual experiment. Tin, for instance, is only found in Cornwall, Banca (between Sumatra and Borneo), Spain, Saxony, and Siberia. Now, how did it enter the heads of even these wise Chaldæans to go to these distant countries in search of this metal unless they knew beforehand through tradition, that if procured along with copper it would produce the useful amalgam they sought? True, it might have been brought to them through commerce, but in that case there must have been some other race more advanced in civilisation than themselves. If the Phœnicians, much the same argument will recur. If some race in the countries where tin was procured, where is it now? If it exists it must be represented by some race at present or historically known to have been in a state of barbarism. This, however, at this stage of the argument, would be too precipitate an admission of degeneracy!