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.

[78] Such appears to me to be the conclusion of Mr Allies in his learned work ("The Formation of Christendom," ii. chap. viii. 57), "Universality of false worship in the most diverse nations the summing up of man's whole history." I request attention, however, to the following passage, at page 382, which has an especial bearing upon my argument:--"No doubt the Greek mind had lived and brooded for ages upon the remains of original revelation, nor can any learning now completely unravel the interwoven threads of tradition and reason so as to distinguish their separate work. However, it is certain that in the sixth century B.C., the Greeks were without a hierarchy, and without a definite theology: not indeed without individual priesthoods, traditionary rites, and an existing worship, as well as certain mysteries which professed to communicate a higher and more recondite doctrine than that exposed to the public gaze. But in the absence of any hierarchy ... a very large range indeed was given to the mind, acting upon this shadowy religious belief, and re-acted upon by it, to form their philosophy. The Greeks did not, any more than antiquity in general, use the acts of religious service for instruction by religious discourse. In other words, there was no such thing as preaching among them. A domain, therefore, was open to the philosopher, on which he might stand without directly impeaching the ancestral worship, while he examined its grounds, and perhaps _sapped its foundations_. He was therein taking up a position which these priests, the civil functionaries of religious rites, _scarcely any longer_ retaining a spiritual meaning or a moral cogency, had not occupied."

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]

[79] Take for instance Mr J. S. Mill's peculiar views as to the status of women, "The law of servitude in marriage" ["Wives be obedient to your husbands," St Paul], he says, "is in monstrous contradiction to all the principles of the modern world" (p. 147). "Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law," _id._ But at p. 49, Mr Mill says, "The general opinion of men is supposed to be, that the natural vocation of a woman is that of a wife and mother." But he then adds (p. 37), "It will not do to assert in general terms that the experience of mankind has pronounced in favour of the existing system. Experience cannot possibly have decided between two courses, so long as there has only been _experience of one_. If it be said that the doctrine of the equality of the sexes rests only on theory, it must be remembered that the contrary doctrine also has only theory to rest upon. All that is proved in its favour by direct experience, is that mankind have been able to exist under it, and to attain the degree of improvement and prosperity which we now see; but whether that prosperity has been attained sooner, or is now greater than it would have been under the other system, experience does not say."

Take in illustration, again, the communistic schemes as against the institution of property. Now, although Christianity has realised all that will ever be possible in the way of communism in its religious orders, the communistic sects have always instinctively directed their first efforts against religion as against the basis of the social order of things which they attacked. This was forcibly brought out in certain letters on "European Radicalism," in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, October and November 1869, _e.g._ "all the contests on the three capital questions ('government, property, religion') which we are now engaged in, are but continuations of the _original divergence_ of opinion (before settled government), considerably modified, of course, under the influence of time, the various _traditional notions_ mankind preserves under the _name of beliefs_, and the whole stock of experience it has accumulated under the name of knowledge. So like, indeed, are the ancient and modern contests on these matters," &c.... (Letter I.) Again (Letter V.), speaking of our English socialist discussing "the necessity of building social edifices upon material, not religious grounds," the writer adds, that among continental socialists "no one thinks there of the possibility of matters standing otherwise;" and that in the socialist workshops of France and Germany it is well known "that the very basis of social radicalism requires the abandonment of all kinds of religious discussion, as matter of purely personal inclination, and the abolition of all kinds of privileges as incompatible with equality." [All this has been put out of date by the deeds of the Commune and the programme of the "International Society"--viz. "_The burning of Paris_ we _accept the responsibility of_. _The old society must_ and will perish."] The _Spectator_, December 1869, speaks still more explicitly:--"Infirm and crippled though she be, the Roman Church is still the only one who has the courage to be cosmopolitan, and claim the right to link nation with nation, and literature with literature. Such an assembly as the Council is, at least, an extraordinary testimony to the cosmopolitanism of the great Church which seems trembling to its fall; and who can doubt that that fall, whenever it comes, will be followed by a great temporary loosening of the faith in human unity--in spite of the electric telegraph--by a deepening of the chasm between nation and nation, by the loss of at least a most potent spell over the imagination of the world, by a contraction of the spiritual ideal of every church? This ideal, even Protestants, even Sceptics, even Positivists have owed, and have owned that they owed, to the Roman Church, the only Church which has really succeeded in uniting the bond between any one ecclesiastical centre and the distant circumference of human intelligence and energy. But if the consequence of the collapse of Romanism would be in this way a loss of power to the human race, think only of the gain of power which would result from the final death of sacerdotal ideas, from the final blow to the system of arbitrary authority exercised over the intellect and the conscience, from the new life which would flow into a faith and science resting on the steady accumulation of moral and intellectual facts and the personal life of the conscience in Christ--from the final triumph of moral and intellectual order and freedom. It would doubtless be a new life, subject to great anarchy at first; but the old authoritative systems have themselves been of late little more than anarchy just kept under by the authority of prescription and tradition; and one can only hope for the new order from the complete recognition that it is to have no arbitrary or capricious foundation."

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]

[80] "It is, upon the whole, extremely doubtful whether those periods which are the richest in literature, possess the greatest shares, either of moral excellence or of political happiness. We are well aware that the true and happy ages of Roman greatness long preceded that of Roman refinement and Roman authors; and, I fear, there is but too much reason to suppose that in the history of the modern nations we may find many examples of the same kind" (F. Schlegel's "History of Literature," i. 373). See also the account of the corruption of morals in Rome in the Augustan period (Allies' "Form. of Christendom," I. Lect. I.) "It is curious to observe that the more eloquent, polite, and learned the Greeks became, in the same proportion they became the more degraded and corrupt in their national religion" (Godfrey Higgins' "Celtic Druids," 1829, p. 207).

[81] "Il n'y a, Messieurs, que deux sortes de repression possibles: l'une intérieure, l'autre extérieure.... Elles sont de telle nature que quand le thermomètre politique est élevé, le thermomètre de la religion est bas, et quand le thermomètre religieux est bas, le thermomètre politique, la repression politique, la tyrannie s'élève. Ceci est une loi de l'humanité, une loi de l'histoire." _Vide_ Disc. de Donoso Cortes (Marq. de Valdegamas), 4th January 1849; in which he pursues this remarkable parallelism throughout history.

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]

[82] Montalembert ("Disc. de Reception," 1852, Discours iii. pp. 614, 615, 621, 622) says of the Constituent Assembly of 1789--"It was the Assembly of 1789 which made the word revolution the synonyme of methodical destruction, of permanent war against all order and all authority.... It had that mania for uniformity which is the parody of unity, and which Montesquieu called the passion of mediocre minds.... In a word, the Constituent Assembly was wanting not only in justice, courage, and humanity, but it was also deficient in good sense. The evil which it created has survived it. It has made us believe that it is possible to destroy everything and to reconstruct everything in a day.... God has chastised it, above all, by the sterility of its work. It had had the pretence of laying the foundations of liberty for ever, and it had for its successors the most sanguinary tyrants who ever dishonoured any nation. Its mission was to re-establish the finances, the empire of the law, and it has bequeathed to France bankruptcy, anarchy, and despotism--despotism without even the repose which they have wrongly taken as the compensation of servitude. It has done more: it has left pretexts for every abuse of force, and precedents for any excess of future anarchy. [Montalembert could hardly have foreseen the last application of its principles which we have recently witnessed in Paris by the Commune, which, too, forsooth, was to have inaugurated a new era for humanity.] But it (this Constituent Assembly) founded nothing--Nothing! The ancient society which it reversed had lasted, in spite of its abuses, a thousand years."

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."

[83] From a purely philosophical point of view, why should these speculations of Mr Gladstone have been received "with more surprise and unfavourable comment" than any other "portions of his Homeric studies?"

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.

[84] In one way, nothing is so uncertain as tradition, and, moreover, tradition is rarely positive and direct, but, on the contrary, prone to concrete into strange, fragmentary, and distorted shapes. As an instance, we may take the tradition which Genesis attests,--When Abraham's hand had been stayed by the angel from the sacrifice of Isaac, ... "He called the name of that place 'The Lord seeth.' Whereupon, even to this day it is said, '_In the mountain the Lord will see_.'"--_Gen._ xxii. 14.

In illustration of the mode and manner of tradition, is the anecdote of Mr Hookham Frere, who states, that when the Maltese talk without reserve upon religious subjects, they say, "Everybody knows that Adam was the first man, but we alone know that he possessed fishing-boats;" which Bunsen says "Can be nothing but a Phoenician reminiscence."--"Egypt," iv. 215, the reminiscence of the legend of the Fisherman. Compare the Fisherman and his wife in Grimm's "Popular Stories from Oral Tradition."

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]

[85] _Vide_ "Bryant's Mythology," ii.

[86] After the exposition of his own theory, Mr Grote says--"It is in this point of view that the myths are important for any one who would correctly appreciate the general tone of Grecian thought and feeling, for they were the _universal mental stock_ of the Hellenic world, _common to men and women, rich and poor_, ignorant and instructed, they _were in every one's memory and in every one's mouth_, while science and history were confined to comparatively few. We know from Thucydides how erroneously and carelessly the Athenian public of his day retained the history of Pisistratus, only one century past; but the adventures of the gods and heroes, the numberless explanatory legends attached to visible objects and _periodical ceremonies_, were the theme of _general talk_, and every man unacquainted with them would have found himself partially excluded from the sympathies of his neighbours."--_Hist. Greece_, i. p. 608; comp. _infra_, ch. xi.

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.

[87] "Ancient Law," p. 117.

[88] "Pour trouver le veritable objet de ces dernières solemnités, dont les motifs sont compliqués, nous nous attachons à analyser leur cérémoniel et à chercher l'esprit de leurs usages; et cet esprit achève de nous faire reconnaître l'objet que nous n'avions d'abord qu'entrevu ou soupçonné, quelquefois même il nous développe encore la nature des motifs étrangers et mythologiques, et ces motifs se trouvent pour la plûpart n'être que des traditions du _même fait_ qui ont été ou corrompués par le temps, ou travesties par des allégories."--Boulanger, _"L'Antiquite devoilée par ses Usages"_, i. 31.

[89] _Vide_ other lines of tradition indicated in B. iii., C. iii., of De Maistre, "Du Pape."

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.

[90] Sir J. Lubbock, Intro. to Nillson's "Stone Age," xii.

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]

[91] _E.g._, Mr Grote says, in his Introduction, that through the combination and illustration of scanty facts, "the general picture of the Grecian world may now be conceived with a degree of fidelity which, considering our imperfect materials, it is curious to contemplate."

The Duke of Argyll ("Primeval Man," p. 24) says--"Within certain limits it is not open to dispute that the early condition of mankind is accessible to research. Contemporary history reaches back a certain way. Existing monuments afford their evidence for a considerable distance farther. _Tradition has its own province still more remote_; and latterly geology and archæology have met upon common ground--ground in which man and the mammoth have been found together."

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.)

[92] Gibbon ("Decline and Fall," i. 353) says, "But all this well-laboured system of German antiquities is annihilated by a single fact, too well attested to admit of any doubt, and of too decisive a nature to leave room for any reply. The Germans, in the days of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters, and the use of letters is the principal circumstance which distinguishes a civilised people from a herd of savages, incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory ever dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge." Compare with Coleridge, _infra_, p. 122; Ozanam, _infra_, ch. xiii.

[93] Eusebius ("Ecclesiastical Hist.," ch. xxxvi.) says, speaking of St Ignatius--"He exhorted them to adhere firmly to the tradition of the apostles; which, for the sake of greater security, he deemed it necessary to attest by committing it to writing." I do not remember to have seen this quoted in testimony and proof of ecclesiastical tradition.

[94] Goguet ("Origin of Laws," i. 29) says--"The _first laws_ of all nations were composed in verse, and sung. Apollo, according to a very ancient tradition, was one of the first legislators. The same tradition says that he published his laws to the sound of his lyre; that is to say, that he had set them to music. We have certain proof that the first laws of Greece were a kind of song. The laws of the ancient inhabitants of Spain were verses, which they sung. Tuiston was regarded by the Germans as their first lawgiver. They said he put his laws into verses and songs. This ancient custom was long kept up by several nations."

E. Warburton ("Conquest of Canada," i. 214) says--"The want of any written or hieroglyphic records of the past among the Northern Indians was to some extent supplied by the accurate memories of their old men; they were able to repeat speeches of four or five hours' duration, and delivered many years before, without error, or even hesitation; and to hand them down from generation to generation with equal accuracy.... On great and solemn occasions belts of wampum were used as aids to recollection ... when a treaty or compact was negotiated."

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.

[95] _Vide_ H. N. Coleridge ("Greek Classic Poets," p. 38-42), in speaking of the "Dionysiacs, the Thebaids, the Epigoniads, Naupactica, genealogies, and the other works of that sort," p. 44, he adds--"Just as in the Indian and Persian epics, in the Northern Eddas, in the poem of the 'Cid,' in the early chronicles of every nation with which we are acquainted, one story follows another story in the order of mere history; and the skill and fire of the poet are shown, not in the artifice of grouping a hundred figures into one picture, but in raising admiration by the separate beauty of each successive picture. _They tell the tale as the tale had been told to them, and leave out nothing._"

[96] According to the account which the Chinese themselves give of their annals, the works of Confucius were proscribed, after his death, by the Emperor Chi-Hoangti, and all the copies, including the Chu-King, were recovered from the dictation of an old man who had retained them in memory.

"The great moralist of the East" himself, Confucius, asserted--"that he only wrought on materials already existing." _Vide_ Klaproth ap., Cardinal Wiseman, "Science and Rev. Religion," ii. p. 49.

In the article in the _Cornhill Magazine_, Nov. 1871, containing the valuable collection of Dravidian (South Indian) folk-songs, it is said, p. 577, that "they are handed down from generation to generation, entirely vivâ voce, and from the minstrels have passed into public use."

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]

[97] The Duke of Argyll ("Primeval Man," p. 30) says--"Knowledge, for example, or ignorance of the use of metals are, as we shall see, characteristics on which great stress is laid" (by the advocates of the "savage theory"). "Now, as regards this point, as Whately truly says, the narrative of Genesis distinctly states that this kind of knowledge did not belong to mankind at first.... It is assumed in the savage theory that the presence or absence of this knowledge stands in close and natural connection with the presence or absence of other and higher kinds of knowledge, of which an acquaintance with metals is but a symbol and a type. Within certain limits this is true."

[98] Presuming total ignorance of writing--its invention at _any_ period seems to me much more marvellous than the discovery of printing after the invention of writing. For the rest we have seen that writing was known at an early period to the Chaldæans and Egyptians, and probably to the Chinese and Japanese, and to the Medians (ch. xii.) Plutarch tells us that a law of Theseus, written on a column of stone, remained even to the time of Demosthenes.

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."

[99] Phil. Hist.

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]

[100] Burke ("Regicide Peace,") says--"The practice of divorce, though in some countries permitted, has been discouraged in all. In the East polygamy and divorce are in discredit, and the manners correct the laws."

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]

[101] This was written before the appearance of Sir J. Lubbock's chapter on "Marriage," in his "Origin of Civilization," to which reference is made at pp. 51, 52.

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]

[102] A tradition of the constellations, a proof from tradition that they were so named in the ante-diluvian period.

[103] Sanchoniatho's "Phoenician History," by the Right Rev. R. Cumberland. London, 1720, pp. 2, 3, 23, _et seq._ Eusebius, Præpar. Evangel. lib. i. cap. 10.

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 Phoenicia 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]

[104] _Vide_ Grote, i.

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]

[105] This chapter was written before I became acquainted with Mr Palmer's "Chronicles of Egypt" (_vide_ ch. vi.) If the reader will refer to chap. i., he will there find a learned and exhaustive exposition of the ages of Sanchoniathon, identifying them with Scripture on the one side, and Egyptian tradition on the other.

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.

[106] Is not this the meaning of the cxlvii. psalm, in the expression, "ante faciem frigoris ejus quis sustinebit"? Does not the psalm recount to the Jewish people, in rapid allusions, all that God had done for them, in contrast to the chastisements that had befallen other nations; and if it is objected that there is no allusion to the Deluge, unless in its indirect and beneficial influences, in the words, "flavit spiritus ejus et fluent aquæ," I reply that to the survivors, the Deluge, regarded largely, and in its permanent effects, was no calamity, but the commencement of a new and more favoured era.

Goguet says--"The Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians, 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]

[107] Compare ch. xiii. The successive ages of Hesiod, more especially the lines describing the iron age, parallel to the tradition, _supra_, "that in the fifth age _men were named from their mothers_."

"No fathers in their sons their features trace, The sons reflect _no more_ their father's face; The host with kindness greets his guest no more, And friends and brethren love not as of yore." --HESIOD.

President Goguet ("Origin of Laws," i. 21,) had noticed the ancient allusions to "kinship through mothers," and his statement that "women belonged to the man who seized them first.... The children who sprang from this irregular intercourse scarce ever knew who were their fathers. They knew only their mothers, for which reason they always bore their name." For this statement he also quotes Sanchoniathon, ap. Eus. p. 34, as his principal authority. But Sanchoniathon's statement, as we have seen, refers to the ante-diluvian period, in which it is borne out by Genesis vi. 4.

There is one fact adduced by Goguet (i. 43), viz. that the _Assyrians_ had an analogous ceremony which must be decisive for us, though not, perhaps, for Mr M'Lennan, that the custom of seizure was ante-diluvian, since the commencement of the Assyrian monarchy in the times immediately following the flood, is one of the best established foundations of history. _Vide_ Genesis and Rawlinson.

"This race of _many languaged_ man." To any one who rightly grasps the bearing of the argument, the appositeness of this quotation will, I think, be rather strengthened than diminished by the evidence that the lines of Hesiod plainly refer to post-diluvian times (_vide_ ch. xiii.)

"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]

[108] The Phoenician cosmogony seems to me to clinch the argument. There (_vide_ Bunsen, Egypt, iv. 234), "_The son of Eliun_ is called by Philo, Epigeios or _autokhthon_, 'the earth-born,' primeval inhabitant. By the latter of these expressions we have no doubt that Adam-Tadmon ('the Kadmos of the Greeks,' p. 195), the first man, the man of God, is implied" ("Eliun, _i.e._ Helyun, God the Most High," p. 232).

There is an analogy in their confused tradition of the creation. "Eudemus says, according to the Phoenician mythology, which _was invented by Môkhos_, the first principle was æther and air; from these two beginnings sprang Ulômos (the eternal), the rational (conscious) God" (Bunsen, iv. 179). Bunsen, (178) adds, "as regards Môkhos the thing is clear enough; the old materialistic philosopher is matter, and that in the sense of primeval slime." [Whence it has been suggested that we derive our word Muck, Môkh, or Môkhos.] This beginning Bunsen considers (p. 179) "a philosophising amplification of the simply sublime words of Genesis: 'The earth was without form, and void, and darkness was over the face of the waters.'" Here we see the human reason hampered by the tradition that confused matter or chaos was somehow at the commencement, and with the conflicting tradition and conclusion of the intellect that it was, and must have been, created by a power superior to matter ("In the beginning God created heaven and earth"), emancipating itself, so far as to identify the Creator with the æther and air, as nearer the conception of a pure Spirit, and personifying matter, and so shunting it aside as the "inventor of the mythology."

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]

[109] _Vide_ De Maistre (ch. xii.)

[110] Max Müller, "Chips," &c., ii. 274. The Titans were also said to be "earth-born." Bryant (iii. 445) says Berosus gives the following tradition of the Creation. Belus after deification being confounded with the Creator, as we have seen Prometheus,