FOOTNOTES:

[1] I refer to a vivacious but one-sided article on ‘The Sword,’ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, May 1881.

[2] The Past in the Present, &c. (Edinburgh: Douglas, 1880.)

[3] Frederick the Great declared that an army moves like a serpent, upon its belly. According to Plutarch, the snake was held sacred because it glides without limbs, like the stars. Fire, says Pliny (Nat. Hist. vii. 57, and xiii. 42), was first struck out of the stone by Pyrodes, son of Cilix—silex, or flint, the match of antiquity; and hence it was called πῦρ; and Vincent de Beauvais explains: ‘Silex est lapis durus, sic dictus eo quod ex eo ignis exiliat.’ It is the Sanskrit शिल (shila), a stone, both words evidently deriving from a common root, shi or si. The ‘religiosa silex’ of Claudian (Rapt. Proserp. i. 201) was probably a block of stone like those representing Zeus Kasios, the Paphian Venus, not to mention the host of stones worshipped in Egyptian and Arab litholatry, and the old Palladium of Troy transported to Rome. ‘Prometheus,’ who taught man to preserve fire in the ferule, or stalk, of the giant fennel, was borrowed by the Hindus and converted into Pramantha. ‘Pramantha,’ however, is the upright fire-stick, first made by Twastu, the Divine Carpenter, who seems to have been a brother of Ἑστία, the Hearth; and hence it has been held to be the male symbol. According to Plato, πῦρ (whence pyrites = sulphuret of iron), ὕδωρ, and κύων are Phrygian words; and evidently they date from the remotest antiquity. Pir (sun-heat) is found even in the Quichua of Peru, and enters into the royal name ‘Pirhua.’ The French and Belgian caverns prove that striking fire by means of pyrites was known to primitive man.

[4] There are still races which are unable to kindle fire. This is asserted of the modern Andamanese by an expert, Mr. H. Man, Journ. Anthrop. Inst. Feb. 1882, p. 272. The same was the case with the quondam aborigines of Tasmania.

[5] This Adam Primus was of both sexes, the biune parent of Genesis (v. 3)—‘male and female created He them;’ hence the pre-Adamites of Moslem belief. The capital error of Biblical readers in our day is to assume all these myths and mysteries as mere historical details. Men had a better appreciation of the Hebrew arcana in the days of Philo Judæus.

[6] I have noted his labours in the list of ‘Authorities.’

[7] Chap. iii. p. 43, translated for the Hakluyt Society by Clements R. Markham, C.B. (London, 1869). It is regretable that a senile Committee of exceeding ‘properness’ cut out so much of this highly-interesting volume. The Spaniard travelled in a.d. 1532–50, published the first part of his work in 1553, and died about 1560. Readers who would study the most valuable anthropological parts of the book are driven to the French translation quoted by Vicente Fidel Lopez (Les Races Aryennes du Pérou, p. 199. Paris, Franck, 1873).

[8] We need not go to the classics, Greek and Roman, for the idea of metamorphosis. It is common to mankind, doubtless arising from the resemblance of beast to man in appearance, habits, or disposition; and it may date from the days when the lower was all but equal to the higher animal.