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MAN'S ORIGIN 
 
 DESTINY 
 
 SKETCHED FROM THE PLATFORM 
 
 PHYSICAL SCIENCES 
 
 J. p.'lesley. 
 
 Corporate Member of the National Academy of the U.S. — Mem. A. A. F. A S ■ 
 
 Mem. Am. Orient. Soc. — For. Hon. Mem. Am, Acad. A. and S.— For. Cor. Geul 
 
 S. London. — Assoc. Mem. Soc. Geol. du Nord. — Cor Mem. SS. Neufchatel 
 
 AND Emden.— State Geologist of Pennsylvania. — Senior Sec Am. Phil. 
 
 Soc. Philadelphia. — Prof. Geol. University of Pennsylvania. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 GEO. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET 
 
 1881. 
 
Copyright, 1868 and 1881, 
 By J. P. LESLEY. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Twelve years have elapsed since the appearance of the little 
 book which contains the first ten of the following lectures, and the 
 author still finds people now and then reading it and asking for 
 its republication at a price less unreasonable than that at which 
 the London edition \Aas sold. In the present edition I have ex- 
 punged the eleventh lecture, on " Arkite Symbolism," as unnecessary ; 
 and have carried out the original intention of the course by adding 
 six new lectures on " The Destiny of i\Ian." 
 
 The notes appended to the former edition ai-e here omitted, 
 because they were merely indicative of the progress made in various 
 branches of science, touching the history of man, during the two 
 years intei'vening between the delivery of my lectures and their 
 publication. To continue and complete such an appendix would 
 greatly swell the size of the volume ; and yet it would contain 
 nothing but fresh illustrations of the general view presented, with- 
 out materially modifying the integrity of the text, which is there- 
 fore reprinted from the stereotype plates, with only such corrections 
 as were called for by typographical errors. 
 
 The form of lecture is condemned by critics who admire an essay 
 or memoir conveying the same information and expressing the 
 same opinions in essentially the same language. There is no 
 good reason for this condemnation, except on tlie score of style ; 
 and the essay or meujoir must necessarily lack that ardor of feeling 
 and direct insistence of argument which characterize and fortify 
 the lecturer. Besides, I may frankly confess that I have neither 
 time nor strength to spend on the reconstruction of the literary 
 form of matter whose justification must be found in its substance. 
 
 For seven yeai's, since accepting the direction of the Second 
 Geological Survey of Penusyh^ania, I have laid aside scholarly 
 pursuits, and especially those philological and archa3ological studies 
 which, begining in 1834, continued to be the recreations of a busy 
 life till 1874. 
 
 Of course I have forgotten a thousand things which I would faiu 
 remember, and many a thread of original investigation, more or 
 less promising, has been irremediably broken. Buildings stopped 
 
iv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 in the process of erection fall back into ruins ; and the scholar 
 can claim no immunity from the operation of a natural law "which 
 sends the laggard to the rear. 
 
 But genuine loves never die ; and the old hobbies of a student 
 are installed in his affections like the statues of demi-gods in the 
 niches of a temple. And life is too anxious, too wearing, a struggle 
 with the actual, not to deserve some alleviation at the hands of 
 memory and fancy. The sobered soul sighs for its spent vacations, 
 and hopes and listens in vain for the hour to strike which shall 
 announce the beginning of leisure and the resumption of play. 
 
 However much this work might be improved by being rewritten 
 in better style, and with reference to later researches, 1 could 
 h; .Jly hope thereby to enhance greatly its power to produce the 
 effect it has already had, — the only effect ever intended for it, — 
 of stimulating one class of minds by certain new suggestions, 
 respecting the correlation of the physical sciences with the 
 history of mankind. 
 
 J. P. L. 
 Philadelphia, August, 1881. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The lectures contained in this volume were written in the sum- 
 mer of ISG.j, at a distance from the author's notes and library. This 
 will account for the paucicy of special references, observable through- 
 out the greater part of the book. 
 
 AVhen delivered in the lecture-room of the Lowell Institute, the 
 following winter, they were illustrated by numerous wall pictures, 
 tables of statistics, maps and diagrams of various kinds, only a few 
 of which are given as woodcuts in the text. 
 
 It is proper to add that, owing to the very judicious restriction of 
 time to one hour by the rules of the Institute, not much more than 
 the half of each lecture was read, except in the case of the last 
 two, which occupied four evenings; the course being courteously 
 extended by the honorable trustee to thirteen for that purpose. 
 The twelfth lecture was, therefore, never wi'itten out, and is com- 
 mitted for the present to the imagination of the reader, with the 
 suggestion, that it would better justify one portion of the title chosen 
 for the book than anything actually to be found between its covers. 
 
 Circumstances made it impossible to print the lectures at the 
 time they were delivered. Two years, in fact, have passed. New 
 and important discoveries in archaeology have intervened. A good 
 many paragraphs have been inserted, therefore, in the text, and 
 numerous foot-notes added. The simplicity of the original arrange- 
 ment has been lost. The separate subjects of the different lectures 
 have become, to a certain extent, confused; and portions of the 
 book take on the aspect of detailed discussion, suitable only to a 
 scientific memoir, while other portions retain their original charac- 
 ter of bird's-eye view. 
 
 The author never contemplated anything beyond a general sketch 
 of the present bearings of science upon the vexed question of the 
 origin and earliest history of man. But the question has many sub- 
 divisions. He intended the several lectures to be separate sketches 
 of these subdivisions of the field of discussion, mere introductions 
 to their proper study. His views are stated, therefore, in round 
 terms. Nothing is closely reasoned out. Much is left to the log- 
 ical instinct, and more to the literary education of the reader. 
 Reference is everywhere made to sources of information within 
 
^/ 
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 easy reach of all. Even the style of an essay has been avoided. 
 Tlie book is merely a series of familiar conversations iipon the cur- 
 rent topics of interest in the scientific world. 
 
 If its perusal start a single youthful mind upon the track of an 
 original investigation — as the j^erusal of Ilarcourt on tlie Deluge, 
 twenty years ago, opened before the author a new series of combi- 
 nations of the facts of history and science — or if, without any 
 deeper study of the facts alleged upon its pages, its general views 
 insj)ire a single reader with more reverence for science, less fear of 
 iresh opinions, a more intelligent curiosity about forgotten things, 
 which still are at their old work in the modern world, and with a 
 surer faith in the growth of human happiness, the author will be 
 more than satisfied. 
 
 Hut even the mere retrospect of the labors of men of science 
 upon the theme of this book has been so great a pleasure to him 
 that he cannot repress the feeling that others must enjoy it likewise. 
 
 J. P. L. 
 
 La Tour de Peitz, Vevay, Switzeblaio}. 
 Nov. 20, 18G7. 
 
 m 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE PAOB 
 
 I. On the Classification of tub Sciences. 1 
 
 II. On the Genius of the Physical Sciences, An- 
 cient AND Modern, 20 
 
 III. The Geological Antiquity of Man 43 
 
 IV. On the Dignity of Mankind 68 
 
 V. On the Unity of Mankind, 94 
 
 YI. On the Eakly Social Life of Man 122 
 
 VII. On Language as a Test of Eace 158 
 
 VIII. The Growth of Architecture 183 
 
 IX. The Growth of the Alphabet, 214 
 
 X. The Four Types of Religious Worship 253 
 
 XI. The Possible in Destiny, 295 
 
 XII. The Destiny of Man, 301 
 
 XIII. The Phy'SICAl Destiny of the Race. 321 
 
 XIV. The Social Destiny of the Race, 355 
 
 XV. The Future Economies of Mankind, 371 
 
 XVI. The Intellectual and Moral Destiny of the 
 
 Race, 397 
 
 Index 435 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 
 
 In considering how I can best open the subject of the 
 present course of Lectures^ I am reminded of a favourite 
 sarong of the greatest Lecturer that ever lived, and one 
 whose lightest recorded thought has sunk, with the weight 
 of a great principle of truth, into the consciousness of 
 modern times : — 
 
 • He that hath ears to hear, let him hear ! ' 
 
 One of the artists of New England told me that, in his 
 opinion, no man could successfully paint a tree, a deer, or 
 a dog, unless he first became one himself; unless he had 
 pursued and been pursued ; felt the freedom of the winds 
 and waters, and that intimate brotherhood and fellowship 
 with living things, which sharpens every sense to the 
 quick impressions of nature. Enthusiasm is the mother 
 of art. 
 
 Rus-sell Smith, certainly the master scenist of America, 
 built himself a cottage on the summit of the Alleghanies, 
 in the heart of the primeval forest, and brought down 
 from thence a friend, the finest elm tree in the world, 
 painting it, as large as life, upon the great drop-scene of 
 the Academy of Music in Philadelphia ; where it still 
 stands, spreading out its gigantic stem and splendid plume 
 against a background of blue sky; and every branch and 
 twig and leaf of it is real, for it was drawn in love. The 
 artist summered it and wintered it as his bosom friend, 
 
 1 
 
2 ON THE CLASSIFICATION [LECT, 
 
 until he knew how every vein of sap whicli fed it^ ran ; 
 until he could distinguish the voice of its particular folio.ge 
 fi'om the whole music of that wilderness^ as a nice ear 
 picks out and follows the part of some dear instrument in 
 an orchestra, until he could recognize afar off every scar 
 and moss-spot on it, as a lover can detect his heart's de- 
 light among a thousand other beauties at a ball. Love is 
 the law of knowledge ; and love is life in the beloved. 
 
 Rosa Bonheur in the cattle-yard ; Hinckley among his 
 dogs ; Church sailing through ice-bergs and drinking into 
 his soul the flaming northern skies ; Espy upon his house- 
 roof at Harrisburg watching live-long nights the forma- 
 tion and dissolution of clouds ; Agassiz and Desor in their 
 cave-house on the medial moraine watching through eight 
 successive summers the motions of the glacier of the Aai-; 
 Hammond for eighteen months weighing his meat and drink 
 to discover and explain the exact effects of whisky and to- 
 bacco upon the growth and decay of the living tissues of 
 the human body ; or that noble Frenchman, who, instead of 
 flying, like the rest, from the mysterious plague, or fight- 
 ing with it hopelessly and desperately because its nature 
 was unknown, rather chose to make love to it ; took it, 
 as Delilah took Samson on her lap, to shear his locks of 
 demon strength ; shut himself in with it ; watched the 
 progress of the disease in his own body ; recorded all its 
 symptoms ; explained its methods of attack ; discovered 
 its weak point, and gave with his dying hand to the world 
 a remedy : — such men as these teach us the noblest of all 
 arts — the art of Enthusiasm. 
 
 When the thinker becomes a speaker, he becomes an 
 artist. His audience can justly criticise his subject only 
 as they pardon his enthusiasm by sharing in it. He intro- 
 duces to your acquaintance his oldest and dearest friends — 
 thoughts, which to him are great thoughts, because they 
 have commanded his best years. He paints in words 
 before you the scenery of his soul's home ; a mingled 
 landscape, where the reason has ploughed and reaped by 
 day, and the fancy loitered and listened and made love by 
 night. He gives you water from a spring, the equal of 
 which, he fain would have you say, exists not anywhere. 
 He names you over all his orchard trees, and looks wist- 
 fully to see how their fruit hits your taste. He leads you 
 
1.] OF THE SCIENCES. 8 
 
 by his "well-worn paths of argument^ to points of view 
 which have become the dehght of his spirit ; seats you 
 where he has sat himself a thousand times entranced, and 
 mutely begs you to worship with him before his wondrous 
 Oberland. If he fails to inspire you with that delicious 
 enthusiasm, he loses your friendship, and you lose his. If 
 what to him are mountains of eternal truth, to you seem 
 mist and fog, nothing is gained, and everything is lost; 
 to you, the present effort ; to him, the entire past. The 
 teacher must be believed in — for the present moment, at 
 all events ; let the conclusion determine how justly. Cor- 
 diality is of more avail for the discoveiy and appreciation 
 of truth than curiosity. Only when all cried, lo Bacche ! 
 together, the god appeared. And even the Divine Lecturer 
 could only tell what the world already knew or was well 
 prepared to know. 
 
 We all, no doubt, have favourite sciences. We all, no 
 doubt, consider each one his own the flower and perfect 
 consummation of the intellectual world. Does not the 
 visible universe concentrate its glories in the individual 
 eyeball ? It is only by numberless shiftings of position 
 that the human mind can obtain a generous perspective of 
 all truths. Each science has its own domain, and is para- 
 mount lord within those limits. When it visits neighbour- 
 ing potentates, it may be received with all the honours ; 
 but, when seated, sits subordinate, and must hold its 
 sceptre with diminished dignity. The king is the first at 
 court, but the general is first in the field. And what are 
 king and general but no-bodies in the laboratory of Liebig 
 or Faraday ? And what are Liebig and Faraday but ex- 
 press packages to the mind of Captain Anderson in an ice- 
 fog off the banks ? Everything in its place, — everything to 
 its purpose : that is the prime law. That differentiates the 
 universe, gives it living activities, intense energies, precise 
 results, variety of beauties, individual worth. But all for 
 each and each for all, is God's grand spell upon his uni- 
 verse, by which he marshals its forces against disorder, 
 and establishes eternal harmony ; drawing slowly forth 
 his silken rainbow-coloured rilDbon from that mist of 
 threads which hovers behind the loom. This is the charm 
 of the science of the nineteenth century ; harmony in di- 
 versity ; multiplicity in unity. Never was the dissection 
 
4 ON THE CLASSIFICATION [lECT. 
 
 of single objects carried so far as by our special natural- 
 ists ; and yet tbe dreams of the ancients were not so 
 grandly universal as the panorama unrolled for contempla- 
 tion and elucidation by modern philosophers. 
 
 Yet there is being established, with all this, a real order 
 of precedency among our sciences. Some of them take 
 naturally a wider range than others : geology, for instance. 
 Some grow daily more and more departmental, functional, 
 and ancillary. 
 
 The history of empires is the history of science. Their 
 boundaries shift. Smaller states are absorbed into king- 
 doms. On the other hand, empires which have been in- 
 discreetly enlarged by an agglomeration of hostile or un- 
 sympathizing nationalities, fall asunder, and out of the 
 debris are instituted separate and almost independent 
 regimes. 
 
 I will speak of Geology as illustrating both these tend- 
 encies. At first it was like one of those wild tribes of Ger- 
 many that conquered the Eoman Empire. It was a rude, 
 undisciplined study of a few of the most prominent features 
 of the ground. But gathering strength as it developed 
 the observing faculties, and emancipating itself from its 
 aboriginal superstition of the Lusus Nattcrce, adopting the 
 purer faith in Cause and Effect, it conquered and subju- 
 gated, one by one, all the other branches of human know- 
 ledge. The dukes of this new Burgundy outshone and 
 outweighed their liege lords — kings and emperors. Its 
 later princes — Von Buch, De Beaumont, Murchison, and 
 Lyell, formed a splendid dynasty. The wealth of the whole 
 world of science flowed into its public treasury. The}^' were 
 even not afraid to wage war against the world of meta- 
 physics, and it seemed as though Church as well as State 
 would be absorbed into one great, upstart, irresponsible 
 despotism. 
 
 But how is it now? Geology, as an empire, exists no 
 longer. Instead, we see three kingdoms: thi'ee kingdoms 
 so separated, that no one who rules in the one is accounted 
 of the highest authority in the other two. 1st, We have 
 the science of Structural Geology, which may be said to 
 represent, somewhat, the old science before it was divided. 
 2nd, We have the science of Paleontology or Fossil Geo- 
 logy, which first succeeded to the power of the old empire, 
 
I,] OP THE SCIENCES. 5 
 
 and has for some time past been dominating, witli a toueli 
 of arrogance too, its structural neighbour. And 3rd, We 
 have the science of Chemical Geology, a new and rising 
 state, full of enterprise, and destined to absorb the con- 
 federate states, known, in scientific parlance, by the name 
 of Physics. 
 
 And yet these three are one. Nor can a student of na- 
 ture account himself well-bred unless he travels through 
 them all ; although he will accomplish nothing great unless 
 he naturalizes himself, and makes a home for himself, in 
 only one of them. But what will not then that home of his 
 become ! What a castle of intellectual strength ! What a 
 cloister of various learnings ! What a museum of antiqui- 
 ties ! What a rendezvous of the choicest spirits of the 
 age ! 
 
 Let me imagine myself for one moment a geologist, well 
 established in such a place, occupied with the study of the 
 formation of this earth, its sedimentary and metamorphic 
 and volcanic rocks, the faults it has committed, the plica- 
 tions and contortions it has endm-ed, the mineral veins 
 deposited in its fissures, the organic forms it has entombed, 
 its reservoirs of brine and oil, its burning mountains, its 
 earthquakes, its changes of sea level, its glaciers and mo- 
 raines, its golden gravel, its meteoric stones, its ossuaiy 
 caves and deposits of worked flints, its motions through 
 space, its influxes from the sun, its beginnings in eternity. 
 Can any theme be more capital, more universal ? Is any 
 science excluded ? Is any question impertinent ? Must I 
 not subpoena everything that lives, and that does not live, 
 before this case is through ? Has not every savant of the 
 Academy something to tell about it ? 
 
 The architect and civil engineer begin by relating their 
 experience of the choice of granites and clays, the weight 
 and strength of building materials. The miner and the 
 metallurgist recount me their latest improvements in rais- 
 ing, selecting, and reducing the various ores. The chemist 
 hangs upon my wall his nicest table of equivalents, and 
 explains me why the magnesian limestones were the^7's^ 
 ones formed. The zoologist and the botanist lay upon the 
 table, on each side of me, their latest enlarged and cor- 
 rected synopses of fossil and recent synonymes. The Arch- 
 deacon of Calcutta employs his heaviest mathematical sym- 
 
6 ON THE CLASSIFICATION [lECT. 
 
 bols in weighing for me the plateau of Central Asia, while 
 Thompson and Hennesy are calculating the maximum and 
 minimum possible thickness of the crust. With his new 
 automatic tide gauges, and with the waves produced hj 
 the earthquake of Simoda, Bache gets for me the mean 
 depth of the Pacific, while Darwin and Dana decide, from 
 the arrangement of their coral reefs, the number and direc- 
 tion of its belts of alternate elevation and depression ; Sa- 
 bine and De Struve report the progress they are making in 
 determining the earth's exact departure from a globular 
 form. Astronomers swarm about me with their specula- 
 tions upon cosmogony, and assign various reasons why the 
 earth^s nucleus is hot or cold, is fluid or solid, and why- 
 it must have sprung from the consolidation of a nebula, or 
 why from the conglomeration of an infinite number of 
 meteors. The Alpine Club petition for the pleasure of 
 my company on their next ascent of Mont Blanc; and 
 even Ruskin, the artist, insists on fixing me in a good 
 light, so that I may catch the genuine bedplate lines on 
 the precipices of the Arve, and never again make the ab- 
 surd blunder of mistaking the cleavage of the shists for 
 original stratification. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the poor geologist^s head is turned 
 by so much attention ? That he accounts his own par- 
 ticular science the summum bonum of truth ? Yet in 
 almost an equal degree may the physicist, the astronomer, 
 the naturalist, the arch^ologist, the metaphysician cheat 
 himself with the sweet delusion, that he sits at the centre 
 while others stand around. For let a soul, by purity, 
 patience, and love, tame but one science, and it will have, 
 like Una with her lion, the freedom of the whole forest. 
 
 What, then, is the real order of the sciences ? Or is 
 there such a thing ? Or is knowledge like a hollow sphere, 
 within which the soul of man feels itself floating between 
 equal attractions in all directions ? Is there any hierarchy 
 of the sciences ? Is it as noble to know, as ennobling to 
 determine, the number of rings constituting a genus 
 among myriopoda, as it is to discover the number of 
 vibrations corresponding to a given colour in the rainbow, 
 or the number of formations deposited with their suc- 
 cessive floree and faunae in all the ages from the Lawrentian 
 era to the present time ? Or, setting this aesthetic ques- 
 
I-J 
 
 OF THE SCIENCES. 
 
 tion on one side, can tlie liuman reason find no just ar- 
 rangement of the sciences, by which our ideas of progress 
 and development may be realized, and their natural sub- 
 ordination and interdependence so shown forth as to satisfy 
 our love of perspective ? 
 
 Others may answer this question in other ways. The 
 remaining time, which your politeness will allow to this 
 lecture, cannot perhaps be better consumed than in stat- 
 ing, as clearly as I may, the order which appears most 
 natural to me, when I attempt to classify the various de- 
 partments of human knowledge. And I find myself in a 
 manner compelled to make this preliminary statement, 
 since I have chosen for the subject of the present course 
 of lectures, ' the relation of the modern sciences to the 
 primeval history of man.^ 
 
 Do not imagine, from this title, that I intend to develop 
 in formal style, after the manner of the German meta- 
 physicians, a history of philosophy. I willingly leave that 
 immense task to the vivacious eloquence of Erdmann, 
 prince of Hegelians, and to the golden pen of Whewell, 
 vice-chancellor of induction. I have a much more special 
 design : to show how the bonfires we have lighted and are 
 feeding with fresh fuel every day, cast back their illumina- 
 tion through the forest and over the moors of history; 
 bringing out from the thick night and distance bizarre 
 but moving forms, progenitors of our progenitors a hun- 
 dred times removed ; lighting up their savage features, 
 not wholly bestial nor insane, not wholly destitute perhaps 
 of some angelic or Adamic excellence ; so that we may 
 specify some of those earlier forms of soul to which was 
 given this planet for a habitation, and be able to make out 
 the original nature of many things which gibber and 
 mowe at us through the dim past, as if they were super- 
 natural attachments to our history, evil genii, imperti- 
 nences and intrusions on the premises of our race, and 
 not amenable to any exorcism except that performed with 
 fasting and prayer. It is my firm belief that the time 
 comes for explaining the beginnings of human life upon 
 the earth; that if all the sciences can be brought to act 
 in concert they can do much towards already setting up 
 primeval archseology upon its future throne. I shall en- 
 deavour to show — I am sorry I can only do it sketch- wise 
 
8 ON THE CTASSIFICATION [lECT. 
 
 — how we can combine the results of the geologists, the 
 ethnologists, and the linguists, with the creations of the 
 priest, the poet, and the architect, to restore and re-colour 
 the faded, broken fresco-painting of the ages on the walls 
 of the temple of history. But to accumulate evidence we 
 must examine the value of each witness. And the first step 
 is to call the roll and swear them in by name and residence. 
 
 The earliest attempts to classify knowledge distinguished 
 between the natural and supernatural; between the phy- 
 sical and metapthysical ; between that which relates to 
 phenomena appreciable by the bodily senses, and that 
 which relates to the essence and power of things, the 
 moods of intellect, and the status and intentions of Deity. 
 Of the first-named distinction of the subject-matter of 
 human knowledge into the natural and supernatural I 
 may have occasion to speak at large in a future lecture, 
 because it has been much misunderstood. The second 
 distinction, viz. into physical and metaphysical, although 
 it maintains its importance, in a measure, to the present 
 day, is felt by every thinker to be so general and so 
 vague, so indistinct in the light of modern investigations, 
 that it remains in use only as a popular convenience for 
 common conversation. 
 
 The word physics, from the Greek verb fud, I grow, 
 means the science of nature seen under the conditions of 
 growth. But we need to introduce among the sciences of 
 nature^s growths the sciences of nature's /orces, with many 
 of which we have become experimentally acquainted. These 
 forces are no longer considered as outside of nature, or 
 above nature (^neiaphysical), they are no longer gods and 
 demons, but laws. In fact, modern science has trans- 
 ferred the name physics entirely to the discussion of this 
 class of sciences, including the knowledge and use of num- 
 bers and quantities. The word ' physics ' now means the 
 teaching of the growth-causing agencies : light, heat, elec- 
 tricity, galvanism, magnetism, gravity, &c. And the ut- 
 most to which the meaning of the word is ever extended 
 only takes in the application of the experimental know- 
 ledge of these forces to the sub-sciences of astronomy, me- 
 teorology, and geodesy. All true (pvins is now no longer 
 discussed as 'physics,' but as 'natural histoiy ;' the 
 growth of plants; the growth of animals and man. And 
 
I.] OF THE SCIENCES. 9 
 
 yet this growth is effected by a force which has not been 
 enumerated among the physical forces, and is not even 
 alluded to in the science of physics proper, viz. the form 
 force, the forvia fonnans of the schoolmen; that idea of 
 itself which every growing being has how it shall form 
 itself in growing. This has nothing (so far as we know) 
 to do with what we call mind, reason, instinct, or any of 
 those fruits of brain- structure or nervous organization, 
 which are the special objects of study of the intellectual 
 sciences ; but underlies and antedates them ; inasmuch 
 as the form-force even determines in each family, genus, 
 and species of beings, whether there shall be a brain or 
 not, and what rank its intelligence, reason, or instinct 
 shall take. 
 
 This living form-force is the true basis of the sciences 
 of natural history, 'distinguishing them from the science of 
 the imponderables, or the 'so-called physical forces of 
 space. 
 
 But there is also what may be called the dead form- 
 force, which acts (equally beyond our comprehension) 
 through the inorganic or non-growing world, producing all 
 kinds of crystals, minerals, and rocks ; determining their 
 shapes also, with as despotic a decree as that which fatal- 
 izes the shape of a tulip tree, or of the panther that 
 stretches himself in ambush along its branches. In fact 
 all the crystalline world is as much a ^ growing^ part of 
 nature as are the vegetable and animal kingdoms.* But 
 we suppose them to grow under the operation of the 
 purely physical forces only ; and therefore we place their 
 sciences of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology, between 
 pure physics and pure natural history. 
 
 In the historical development of all the sciences lies are 
 the beginnings of truth. That Helen, whose beauty set 
 the world at arms, began existence in a shape so hideous 
 as to be concealed for nine long months from every eye. 
 Criticism then, even the criticism of love, would have 
 been fatal to her. So has it been with each embryo 
 science. Hidden in the ignorance of Plato and of Aristotle, 
 in the so-called history of Herodotus and geography of 
 Strabo, were the germs of some of our grandest sciences ; 
 
 • See the beautiful sap-growth of Arragonite in the caves of Derby- 
 shire. — Q. J. Geol. Society, Lond. xxi. 
 
10 ON THE CLASSIFICATION [lECT. 
 
 ethnology, philology, sociology, theology ; the natui'es of 
 which being nobler than those of the physical and natural 
 sciences, inasmuch as they deal entirely with man, man's 
 soul and God, God^s providence and institutions for the 
 future, require longer to mature, and are therefore still 
 not so far advanced as they might be ; but in those early 
 days they were like the Hebrew poet's chaos, tohu-va-bohu, 
 without form and void. 
 
 Those tales of the Makrobioi, or long-lived happy patri- 
 archs ; of the Lotophagoi, nature's own epicures ; of Pig- 
 mies and Troglodytes ; of men with tails, and men with but 
 one foot, and that one iai'ge enough to be of use at noon 
 for an umbrella ; of Arimaspians and cannibal Massagetes ; 
 of satyrs and ogres ; of Niobe and Lot's wife, and whole 
 nations turned for their pride into marble statues ; of 
 Deucalion and Pyrrha, Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, 
 Cadmus and his dragon's teeth, Pelasgus, Dorus, and 
 jfEneas, and the numerous lying genealogies of nations, 
 accepted then as all-sufficient explanations of the course 
 of events preceding the times of their authors, and re- 
 jected by us as figments of the imagination, — were these 
 not the faint first flutterings of the unborn and yet un- 
 fashioned foetus, which has grown in course of ages to be 
 that thing of strength and beauty which we name ethnology, 
 the science of nations ? that queen regnant of the human 
 sciences, daughter of chronology, and mother of history, 
 whose two fair sisters sit at each hand of her — mythology 
 and archeeology — an imperial group ! 
 
 It is impossible not to feel that we are taking human 
 studies in their natural order. Fii-st, thoughts; then, things. 
 In the beginning was the Word ; then the Word was made 
 flesh, and dwelt among us. We must go backward, not 
 forward, to obtain the absolute ; for out of the abstract con- 
 ception comes forth the concrete reality. Before the uni- 
 verse was God was ; and with him dwelt the eternal and 
 immutable relations of number. Mathematics and Physics 
 give us th»! prime postulates of all creation. This is the 
 group of sciences which must necessarily lead the pro- 
 cession. 
 
 Then follow the incarnations of numbers and forces in 
 matter, giving us chemical and geological laws for the 
 
I.] OF THE SCIENCES. 11 
 
 creation of the lowest and oldest, the inorganic world. 
 Thus we have our second group. 
 
 Then come the organic sciences as a third group, carry- 
 ing up the scheme of Hfe to man. 
 
 Fourthly, we have the historic sciences ; discussing what 
 man's life has been, from his appearance on the planet 
 until now. 
 
 Then rise grave questionings — what man^s life ought to 
 be. From these questionings, begun by Pythagoras and 
 Plato long ago, and continued by philosophers of all ages, 
 a steadily thickening crowd (become at last so great that 
 we may affirm with truth, in this year of 1865, that all the 
 thinking men and women of Europe and America are in it), 
 there has been elaborated a new science. Sociology, the 
 doctrine of Right Society; or, rather, a fifth group of allied 
 sciences under the various names of Statistics, Finance, 
 Construction, National Defence, and Equity. Each of these 
 has its facts and its theories, its principles and its history 
 of practice. Mankind was made gregarious ; society has 
 always existed ; manufactures, commerce, war, and law 
 have always been, and must always continue to be, its four 
 methods of self-expression. No others can be named. On 
 their well-collated statistics must be established all our just 
 explanations of history, all our successful schemes of phi- 
 lanthropy, all politics that may escape reproach. Statistics 
 are the mathematics of Sociology ; and the Treadwells and 
 Stephensons, the Barings and Girards, the Napoleons and 
 Grants, the Blackstones and Marshalls of modern times, are 
 as much men of science, if not of as high a grade, as Pascal 
 and Descartes, Leibnitz and Newton, Peirce and Henry, 
 Bcrzelius and Dumas, Owen and Agassiz, in the so-called 
 World of science. To freight a Great Eastern with living- 
 souls for a land of liberty is a grander achievement of the 
 centuries than to transmit the price of American gold by 
 submarine telegraph to the Brokers^ Board in London, to 
 be used in behalf of vested wrono^s for back-holdincr the 
 progress of humanity. Nor is it to be doubted for a mo- 
 ment by a Boston audience, at the close of the Great He- 
 bellion, that the Atlantis of Plato was a crude boy's dream 
 compared with that splendid vision of a justified and sanc- 
 tified E-epublic, founded on the experience of the Saxon 
 
12 ON THE CLASSIFICATION [lECT. 
 
 race in a new world, equipped by all the arts and sciences, 
 instructed by Christianity _, and invested with liberty, pro- 
 phesied for the last thirty years by your own immortal 
 William Lloyd Garrison, and now almost fulfilled. In this 
 large workshop of the Free States of America, the whole 
 rolling stock of civilization is being reinvented, tested, and 
 started off afresh upon the track of history. In the schools, 
 and courts, and legislatures of these commonwealths, the 
 social sciences are rapidly attaining that nice precision and 
 that generous scope which already characterize the mathe- 
 matical, the organic, and historical sciences, with all of 
 which they are so closely allied. 
 
 And now, if I have not already wearied your patience, I 
 must instance still another— the last and noblest class of 
 all the group of the intellectual sciences. Those which I 
 have already described relate to the measurement of space 
 and time, to the attributes of matter, to the growth of 
 plants and animals, to mankind as part of the animal world, 
 and, finally, to mankind in masses, obedient to physical ne- 
 cessity and planetic circumstances. But these relate to 
 Ma7i. These teach the expressions of a supernatural na- 
 ture; of a spirit which we believe to be immortal, self- 
 conscious, self- studious, inventive and creative, open-eyed, 
 and tongued for speech, responsive to all mysteries, and 
 destined for all glories. 
 
 The base and platform of this pre-eminent group of 
 sciences is Language. Philology is the mathematics of 
 the soul, teaching us the rudiments of utterance. The 
 sciences of feeling are named Belles Lettres and the Fine 
 Arts ; Logic is the science of thought ; Ethics the science 
 of conscience. All these are old. Modern Christianity 
 has added two more to the list, the sciences of Education 
 and of Philanthropy. And, to make the whole complete, 
 we must end the long catalogue with the science of wor- 
 ship, that is, Heligion. 
 
 In order to refresh our memories, and keep perfectly 
 distinct these different groups, with their elements, I have 
 hung upon the wall the chart which you see before you. 
 It was a scheme constructed to classify the books of a 
 large and miscellaneous library. And for practical use its 
 different sub-divisions or classes were distinguished by the 
 primary colours of the rainbow, in their natural order from 
 
I.] OF THE SCIENCES. 13 
 
 red to violet. Tiie backs of the books were marked with 
 these colours, and the cards on which the titles of tne 
 books were separately catalogued were also of correspond- 
 ing hues. But you have probably already noticed that 
 instead of six classes,, the scheme upon the wall has eight ; 
 the first one, white, for science as such, or human know- 
 ledge in the general ; the eighth one, violet, containing but 
 one name, and one which I have omitted to mention in my 
 foregoing reraai'ks. It is not a science, properly speaking, 
 yet. But you will all perhaps agree with me that it ought 
 to be. We may, however, well despair of it when we remem- 
 ber that the greatest of fools, Boswell, wrote the most de- 
 lightful of biographies. Yet it is so far forth a science that 
 it stands apart from the rest ; dealing not with mankind 
 as animals, nor with mankind as a race, nor with mankind 
 in society; nor with man's life in the studio, in the lecture- 
 room, or in the church ; but with men, as men ; each mortal 
 by himself, sitting for his picture before the lens of Truth. 
 In its intensest form, as Autobiography, it is the science of 
 one^s self; the summation of knowledge, for God is un- 
 knowable, except as reflected in his image, man ; and 
 man^s individual life collates into a personal history the 
 entire circle of celestial and terrestrial phenomena, mimick- 
 ing like a falling raindrop the surrounding universe. 
 
 In all ages, since the invention of letters, attempts have 
 been made to immortalize the heroes and prophets of the 
 world by writing out their lives ; and most of the know- 
 ledge of the ancient world which remains to us, has de- 
 scended in the form of biography. The pictures which 
 forgotten scribes have painted of Moses, and Joshua, and 
 David, and Isaiah, and the Maccabees, are among the 
 most precious legacies of antiquity. What is more exciting 
 than the life of Pythagoras by lamblicus ? or more delight- 
 ful than Plutarch's Lives of noble Greeks and Romans who 
 had lived before his day ? Yet after all that scholars can 
 say of them, the biographies of the ancients were failures, 
 in comparison with the best of modern times, because of 
 the meagreness of ancient life, the diflSculties of inter- 
 course, and above all, the narrow range of ideas, owing to 
 the limited education of the writers. 
 
 In this, pre-eminently, the difference shows itself 
 between ancient and modern days. IVe skim the ocean and 
 
14 ON THE CLASSIFICATION [LBCT. 
 
 devour the landj collecting facts by steam and transmitting 
 them by telegraph. Thci/ consumed half their lives in a 
 few snail-pace journeys and baffling voyages, confined 
 within the compass of a thousand miles, a prey to terrify- 
 ing accidents, victims of unblushing falsehood and un- 
 bounded ignorance. • 
 
 The crowd of modern travellers and writers is so great 
 that every lapse from honest observation, every mistake of 
 eye or ear, every inept construction, every misquotation, 
 every false assumption, every distortion of word or deed 
 through pride or prejudice, every failure of appreciation by 
 stupidity, every undue exaggeration by affection, every 
 mistake of superstition, is sure to be corrected, almost as 
 soon as made. 
 
 But in those ancient days the lonely priest went plod- 
 ding on, year after year, reaching occasionally some 
 monastic home where he could find a week^s or a month's 
 repose, as a rare and welcome guest from foreign lands. 
 And there he heard, without the power or wish to criticise, 
 extraordinary tales, incredible to modern minds. None had 
 been there before him by whose judgment he could guide 
 his own belief. He wrote all down. And for a century, 
 perhaps for twenty centuries, no traveller would follow him 
 to verify or falsify his stories. You see how little chance 
 Sesostris, Cyrus, Zoroaster, or Lycurgus had to get their 
 biographies recorded properly. But even if the truth about 
 them could have been attained to, and even could we 
 summon them in person before our Niebuhrs, Macaulays, 
 Michelets, and Prescotts, to be cross-examined, on their 
 oath and honour, would not each of them be apt to answer 
 in the words of the knife-grinder : 'Lord ! Pve no tale to 
 tell, sir ! ' For the manifold relations which men of mark 
 and genius in the nineteenth century hold to all depart- 
 ments of art and knowledge, constitute the chief difliculty 
 in the way of writing their biographies. And at the same 
 time this diflBculty, well wrestled with, by men of equal 
 mark and genius, has carried up the tone of life-writing to 
 the pitch at which we have it. 
 
 Had there been an Edward Forbes in Plutarch's day, 
 we should have had a Wilson or a Geikie in Plutarch to 
 describe him. For Nature is the best Quarter-mastei', and 
 never hesitates to fill an order when it is properly red- 
 
 ^1 
 
I,] OP THE SCIENCES. 15 
 
 taped. But there could be no Edward Forbes in ancient 
 days for the same reason that there were no elephants 
 nor monkeys in the Jurassic age, nor pterodactyles in the 
 Devonian era, nor lepidodendra in Silurian times. All 
 things wait their turn. The genius of development is a 
 fine scene- shifter. The Demiurge works leisurely, and 
 hates to be hurried. Time is of no account, but circum- 
 stance is indispensable. A perfect Biography requires a 
 type Man. Men are just now beginning to write the Life 
 of Jesus, because the life of Jesus holds closer relationship 
 with the millennium than with the middle or the heroic 
 ages, and demands for its comprehension the knowledge 
 of universals, rather than particulars. The general work- 
 ing of his spirit upon and within the constitution of the 
 world, had to be, not tested, but testified by the experi- 
 ments of twice a thousand years before its all-embracing 
 applicability, its never-failing certainty, its infinite many- 
 sidedness could be assented to by science. Crichton must 
 visit all the courts and universities, and conquer in every 
 contest of etiquette or eloquence, before he can be called 
 the Admirable. And each of the centuries is itself a separate 
 court and university, at which the growing humanity takes 
 some new degree. 
 
 The true science of biography is professed by the great 
 novelists of the day. We see its growth in reading the 
 works of Goethe, and Scott, and Thackeray, and Victor Hugo, 
 and their thousand pupils in the divinest of all arts, the 
 picturing of human life. These are the teachers of the 
 nineteenth century. These are the books into which have 
 fallen the treasures of learning and wisdom of all the 
 ages. Christianity, honour, pohteness, wit, and humour 
 are taught now chiefly through novels. They are the 
 mirrors in which the many-sided power of the modern 
 world contemplates itself. Each man, each woman goes 
 to the novel now to get such glimpses of their inner life, 
 and their outward relations to nature and mankind, as 
 thrill them with emotions of pride and love, plunge them 
 in remorse, lift them again with hope, confirm their fresh- 
 born resolutions, and warn them against insidious dangers. 
 The good that Charles Dickens has done the world is in- 
 calculably great. I should rather be Charles Reade and 
 have written ' The Cloister and the Hearth,' than have 
 
16 ON THE CLASSIFICATION [LECT, 
 
 been Gibbon, and have written ' The Rise and Fall of the 
 Roman Empire/ One American city now is larger than 
 the whole Roman Empire was in the days of its splendour. 
 We must measure matter spiritually^ to get its just dimen- 
 sions. Compare Horace with Tennyson, or Cicero with 
 Sumner, or Augustus Cassar with Abraham Lincoln, if you 
 wish to see how the world has grown in the richness of its 
 relationships, and how the development of man as an 
 individual has kept pace with it. Barren enough would 
 be, even could it be written, the biography of an aboriginal 
 savage. 
 
 How far backwai-d we shall hereafter be able to trace 
 this law of human development it would be rash for me, 
 or for any other man, to say with dogmatism. Nor do I 
 desire to take up the vexed question here this evening. 
 The sciences which it has been the object of this lecture to 
 classify are not themselves sufficiently developed to settle 
 it. Mankind still wear too disagreeable a resemblance to 
 their apes, the quadrumana, to argue it. From that eleva- 
 tion which the Christian strives to reach, where the last 
 trace of hog and tiger and baboon will leave his nature, 
 and he shall rest, transfigured, at his Master's feet, and 
 feel himself a worthy friend of angels — perhaps he may 
 hereafter look down, without those uncomfortable emo- 
 tions "which even the fairest discussion of the origin of 
 man gives rise to now. Enough, that so far as written 
 history is concerned, and some dim glimpses into pre-his- 
 toric times can be obtained, the laAv of human progi*ess, of 
 social, mental and moral development is a great certainty 
 on which all our learned histories and philosophies are 
 based ; and without its clear and consistent recognition all 
 reference to the early ages of mankind Avill be mere los- 
 ing ourselves in Sorbonian bogs and Hercynian forests, 
 
 filled with 
 
 " Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, 
 Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire." 
 
 It is my intention in this course of lectures to attempt 
 to show how far the sciences, as they are now advanced, 
 succeed in throwing light upon the early history of our 
 race. I do not know that I need make any apology for 
 the choice of this subject in preference to one more strictly 
 
 1 
 
I.] OF THE SCIENCES. 17 
 
 professional : although it is by no means, in the language 
 of the world, a useful one. But I feel sensibly the tend- 
 ency of our times to utilitarianism and materialism. I 
 think it is wise sometimes to shut up shop and walk in the 
 twilight, and look up at the stars, or down upon the sea. 
 The end and object of all science is, not to print calicoes, 
 but to brighten up the face of man. And if the thought 
 of ages long ago can breed within the human heart one 
 sentiment of pious contentment with its lot, or one hope 
 of future happiness, or any increase of that faith which 
 believes that all things are well ordered and sure, and work 
 together for the good of those that love God, — that 
 thought of ages long gone by is useful. 
 
 But the mere attempt to reconstruct the past is favour- 
 able to our knowledge of the present. In no way can we 
 better judge of tools than by building with them. I pur- 
 pose in this course of lectures to test the temper of our 
 sciences to see if they will break on one of the hardest of 
 all subjects of discussion. In doing this we will pass in 
 review, as it were, their capabilities. This of itself will 
 well repay our time. 
 
 The chief charm of all such subjects as the one I have 
 chosen lies in a sort of super-naturalism which floats 
 about them like a haze ; tinting them purple and gold as 
 the air at sunset tints the distant mountain-tops. In our 
 daily life we feel the hardness and roughness of matter 
 until our souls are sore and faint. But when we turn to 
 the far distant past we feel this hard and rough material 
 world melting and mixing with strange fancies, pliant 
 laws, conjectural processions of events, cloudy possibili- 
 ties, and over all the bending form and earnest face of 
 the All-Father at His work. So sang the old Hebrew 
 bard : — ' I am Sophia ; I am the abstract wisdom ; I was 
 with Him in the beginning, when He laid the foundations 
 of the earth, and the morning stars shouted for joy.^ 
 
 The ancient histories, hke the primary rocks of the 
 North, are all rounded and polished and streaked and 
 beautified by the slow movements of the Recent over them. 
 We may find columbines here and there blooming in their 
 rifts. 
 
 It does us good to cultivate the grand superstitions 
 which are indigenous to that mountain-land. What is 
 
 2 
 
18 ON THE CLASSIFICATION [lECT. 
 
 sitper-stition but the posture of the human soul when it 
 stands erect aud treads brute matter underfoot. We talk 
 of our ^m^e?•- standings : Yes — but what of our owr-stand- 
 ings ? We men of science of the nineteenth century are 
 becoming too exclusively men of understanding. *■ I 
 will speak/ said Paul, 'I will speak with the understanding 
 and the spirit also.' 
 
 All I would say in this introductory lecture is this : that 
 I do not believe in a beginning without God, any more 
 than in an end without Christ; and therefore you may ex- 
 pect to hear me treat all the parts and details of the in- 
 vestigation into the early life of mankind on the earth, not 
 only by the rules of the Naturalist, but also in the spirit 
 of the Spiritualist ; and with a profound faith in Christi- 
 anity as the blooming of the century-plant. 
 
 The modern sciences conspire to prove that man is an 
 animal, and that his history is bound up with the zoolo- 
 gical developments of the remotest geological times. But 
 this does not injure the discussion of his sjjiritual faculties 
 and his immortal future. 
 
 The sciences agree in impressing us with man^s subjec- 
 tion to the physical laws which are so despotic over all 
 other departments of nature. But this need not blind our 
 eyes to the function of the Will ; to the laws of right and 
 wrong j the reality of responsibility, and the alliance of 
 the soul with superior natures, unseen as well as seen. 
 
 The sciences enjoy together a code of criticism, which 
 they make obligatory upon the student of the past j a code 
 too little known, too long neglected by the students of the 
 past. By this criticism we will find all written history 
 false or defective ; and all human language so overcharged 
 with the effete decomposition of ancient ideas and prac- 
 tices, as to make philology rather a barrier against, than 
 an avenue towards, the knowledge of antiquity. But on 
 the other hand, is that to overthrow our faith in the 
 sublime traditions which we have from those old times ? 
 The light of antiquity streams into our Church of the 
 Present through wonderful stained windows — and is all 
 the more ravishingly beautiful, and quite as useful for all 
 that. While we learn that no ancient Scripture is to be 
 believed, — we learn also that all ancient Scripture is to 
 be believed. When we turn towards the future we see as 
 
I.] OP THE SCIENCES. 19 
 
 tlirougli a glass darkly, but still we see ; and all tliebetterby 
 the nearer we bring our eyes to the glass that stops our 
 vision. So when we turn towards that other eternity, the 
 past, we see as through a glass darkly, but still we see ; 
 and all the better for the criticism which has been reduced 
 to such perfection by the labours of men of science in our 
 day. 
 
 I repeat then, that for the truthful and useful discussion 
 of the relations of the modern sciences to the early history 
 of man, it is necessary for your lecturer to believe as pro- 
 foundly in the essential and indestructible principles of the 
 Christian religion as in the axioms of Euclid or the law of 
 chemical equivalents. Nor has the slow progress of the 
 sciences of geology and comparative anatomy done more 
 to retard our knowledge of primeval antiquity, than has 
 the unchristian state of the theological and social sciences. 
 
 In my next lecture I will illustrate the difference be- 
 tween the ancient forms of knowledge and our modern 
 sciences ; and show how impossible it is, without the help 
 of a cultivated fancy, to investigate the natural history of 
 an age of human existence, over which an uncultivated 
 fancy bore entire sway. 
 
 In the third, the fourth, and the fifth lectures of the 
 course, I will treat of the antiquity, the dignity, and the 
 unity of the human race. I will devote the sixth lecture 
 to the social life of the ancients. The seventh lecture will 
 be on the orio'in of lano^ua^e. The eig-hth on the origin 
 of taste and the development especially of architecture. 
 In the ninth I will give you my theory of the origin of 
 letters j the invention of the alphabet ; and the nature of 
 those spiritual fancies which became concrete in the 
 mythological traditions of the world. My tenth lecture 
 will treat of the religious instinct, and its embodiment in 
 ceremonial worships. The eleventh will be devoted to what 
 I consider the most ancient symbolism of the priesthood. 
 
 If I make my views clear to an audience so exacting of 
 precision and completeness as this is sure to be, it will be 
 more than I dare to hope. But at all events I can give 
 you some faint sketch of the expanse of the knowable 
 which lies before the soul that reverently and lovingly un- 
 dertakes to question Heaven and Nature about the begin- 
 ning of its kind. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 ON THE GENIUS OP THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, ANCIENT AND 
 MODERN. 
 
 In the last lecture I gave you a classification of the 
 modern sciences in eight groups, the first group i-epresent- 
 ing science in the general; and the second group com- 
 prising the mathematical, exact or physical sciences proper. 
 
 My lecture this evening should show you the relations 
 of this second group to the early history of man. In other 
 words, should answer the question, how much information 
 the mathematicians, the astronomers, the meteorologists, 
 the geodcsists, or physical geographers, and the students 
 of light, heat, electricity, motion, &c., can give us respect- 
 ing the planting of human society upon the earth. 
 
 Not much. No ! not much. But yet a little. 
 
 Before I recount this little, I have something more, in- 
 troductory, to say respecting the right which modern 
 science has to speak at all upon this subject ; a right, as 
 you are probably well aware, denied ; denied by the pul- 
 pit; I mean, of course, by the uneducated and more ig- 
 noble part of the pulpit. Eor science has already won 
 stalwart champions from among the clergy ; and we less 
 seldom now are forced to listen to those storms of mingled 
 arrogance, absurdity, and bad taste, which formerly made 
 of the pulpit a very cave of Eolus ; those discordant de- 
 nunciations of dangerous novelties, through the loud up- 
 roar of which were ever to be more easily distinguished 
 than any other sounds the warning words of Paul to 
 Timothy : ' Keep that which is committed to thy trust, 
 avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of 
 science falsely so called, which some professing, have erred 
 concerning the faith.'' 
 
 A thorough-bred and noble-minded theologian will scorn 
 
ON THE GENIUS OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 21 
 
 to turn against himself this beautiful apostrophe of the 
 philosophic and great-minded apostle, this wide and ten- 
 der appeal to the fresh heart of Christianity to keep itself 
 from the intellectual idols of that day, the demoralizing 
 sophisms of Athens, and the crazy Gnosticism of Antioch 
 and Alexandria; — against liis own inner life; against 
 the education of the 19th century; against these ennobling 
 and refining sciences which have been born of Christianity 
 in her best estate and glorify her on earth as the spotless 
 robes of her elect will glorify her in the heavens. 
 
 Let us comprehend, then, before we go one step further 
 in this course, the difference between the so-called science 
 of the ancients, of which Paul spoke, and the sciences of 
 modern times, which he knew nothing about. 
 
 They differ in two respects, the most essential possible : 
 1, In their genius, or animus ; 2, In their method, or ap- 
 paratus. 
 
 1. The genius, or animus, of the ancient science was 
 essentially fanciful ; childish ; cared little for consistency ; 
 was inexperienced; preferred to believe; was impatient 
 of criticism ; had no 'purpose in its investigations ; no use 
 for their results. 
 
 The spirit of modern science is just the contrary; — 
 practical and manly ; at once critical and comprehensive ; 
 more disposed to deny than to affirm ; insists upon all 
 things being put upon their trial ; rejects even truth her- 
 self if she stammers before the court ; cross-examines 
 without pity ; insists upon absolute consistency ; is regard- 
 less of consequences ; takes nothing for granted; worships 
 cause and effect ; investigates always in the light of some 
 hypothesis, and applies every discovery instantly to use. 
 
 2. In the second point, of Method, the difference is 
 equally patent to observation. The method employed of 
 old was as fanciful as the spirit. The only intellectual 
 tool above the level of their senses, which the ancients had 
 to work with, was their quick and fertile imagination. 
 With this they reasoned. Their powers of observation 
 were fine, but they neither knew what to look for nor how 
 to correct false observations, nor how to combine what 
 they knew, so as to frame laws by which to carry on the 
 work. What little they got, the most of it was worthless ; 
 and what was valuable they soon lost. There was no con- 
 
22 GENIUS OP THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, [lECT. 
 
 cert among their sages. They washed the gravel, but 
 could not crush the quartz. They merely worked tho 
 out-crops of knowledge, because they had neither engines 
 for deep mining, nor railways to take away the ore, nor 
 furnaces wherein to bring the metal to nature, nor labora- 
 tories for assaying its purity. They wrote books, but 
 there were no reviewers. In a word, true science was as 
 impossible a product of the human mind so long as the 
 fancy fished and hunted through its primeval wilderness, 
 as commerce and luxury and art are impossible until the 
 invention of the axe, the plough^ the anvil, and the loom 
 cause the physical forest to disappear with its wild deni- 
 zens, and farmers, artisans, and townsmen to take their 
 place. 
 
 The whole story is told in one sentence, when we say 
 that modern science replaces Fancy by Experiment. Its 
 whole profession is inquisitorial. It tortures the dumb 
 truth. To say what you can prove is the only passport to 
 its favour. None of your suppositions, is the only response 
 it deigns to give the sciolist. It is harder on contractors 
 than any army-inspector at Springfield. It cares for no 
 expense in renewing and improving its machinery, and 
 keeps selling off its condemned material to charlatans. 
 'Be sure you are right; then go ahead,* is its favourite 
 saying. It may wink at the fancies or inaccuracies of a 
 favourite over-night, but woe be to him in the morning ! 
 With its whole soul modern science hates idols — those 
 that Lord Bacon classified, and all others, — and despises 
 hero worship. It encourages predictions as stimulants, 
 but murders the prophet whose vision comes not to pass ; 
 yet it has great patience when the prophecy is both very 
 new and very grand. 
 
 You will notice then that the great distinction between 
 ancient and modern science is this : that the former was 
 the product of undisciplined fancy, and the latter is the 
 prodvict of careful, repeated, and systematic experiment; 
 simply the difference between conjecture and knowledge. 
 For fancy and experiment are the two poles on which the 
 world of human knowledge turns. Or, to change the 
 simile, fancy is the steam which lifts the piston-rod of 
 intellectual progress ; experiment, the guides in which it 
 moves. 
 
 ^ 
 
II.] ANCIENT AND MODERN. 23 
 
 Now let me apply these ideas to the first member of the 
 group of mathematical sciences with which wo are dealing 
 to-night ; the science of numbers. It affords us a fine 
 illustration of the difference between ancient and modern 
 science. I do not speak just now of the aboriginal ideas 
 of numbers which the earliest tribes of men obtained in 
 their savage state. I shall speak of that directly. And I 
 use the term ' ancients ^ in its common sense, meaning the 
 classical ancients, of whose life and doings we have some 
 traditional history. 
 
 The ancients invented arithmetic and geometry, but the 
 moderns have possessed themselves of that all-powerful 
 apparatus of investigation, the differential calculus. The 
 ancients had a fanciful or superstitious reverence for num- 
 bers, believing them to embody an occult and feai-ful magic, 
 accordiug to which the universe was originally created, and 
 under the influence of which all life was thought to move. 
 The moderns love numbers, because by them they can work 
 out in a reasonable and precise manner both the darkest 
 and the noblest problems of creation — the distance of the 
 stars, the weight of the planets, the velocity of light, the 
 composition of matter, the progress of population, the rate 
 of insurance on life and property.* The mathematics of the 
 ancients- could produce nothing higher than astrology ; 
 that of the moderns has produced astronomy, meteorology, 
 geodesy. Its last and crowning triumph has been the 
 establishment of the law of the ' convertibility of forces,^ 
 by which we now know that not the smallest portion of the 
 universe is ever lost ; that motion, when it stops, becomes 
 so much light and heat ; that light and heat, when they 
 distribute themselves, supply to nature an equal quantity 
 of electricity or galvanism ; that galvanism becomes mag- 
 netism; and that magnetism gives place again to motion. 
 Did St Paul mean to say that all tlxis is ' science falsely so 
 called ' ? Is this the yycoo-t? that he denounced so vehe- 
 mently, as opposing itself to all that Jesus Christ had given 
 him to hold in trust until he should come again to judge 
 the world in righteousness ? I trow not. 
 
 Let me call up before your imagination that great vision 
 
 * The truthfulness, the reverence of exact statement and description, 
 which distinguishes tlie occidental from the oriental man, may be deduced, 
 perhaps, rather from this iutlueuce than from any other source. 
 
24 GENIDS OP THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, [lECT. 
 
 wliicL. stood to tlie ancient pliilosopliic world for tlie sum 
 of all speculatiou upon the Avay God made the worlds. It 
 was their yvccxns ; the doctrine of the Gnostic or Oriental 
 world. I leave you to judge yourselves how much science 
 there was in it ; and how wisely, seeing its intense, proud, 
 irreconcilable opposition to the Gospel of Christ, Paul 
 warned his followers not to be seduced from their holy 
 faith by it. In one form or other the whole matheniatico- 
 physical science of the ancient world consisted in this cos- 
 mogony. It stated its fanciful principles thus : — 
 
 1. That matter and spirit are the two hostile elements of 
 the universe. 
 
 2. That there can be no intimate intei'course between 
 the Absolute, pure spirit, God, and the Material, gross, 
 vile, sin-producing, chaotic, rebellious, and insane stuff out 
 of which bodies are made. 
 
 3. That therefore the universe must have resulted from 
 the existence and operations of energies or intelligences 
 holding an intermediate place between the Absolute and 
 the Material, filling up or bridging over the awful chasm 
 between God and Matter. 
 
 Upon these assumptions, and this comprehensive syllo- 
 gism, a thousand fanciful philosophers erected their cos- 
 mogonies ; like the cathedrals of the middle ages, all dif- 
 ferent, but all belonging to one style ; some smaller and 
 plainer, others imposing for their immensity, bewilderingly 
 complicated, and covered over with elaborate ornamenta- 
 tion. The central idea of all of them was that of emana- 
 tion. Eons came forth from the Divine essence as deftly 
 and numerously various as ribbons from a juggler's mouth. 
 Down slid the long Jacob's ladder, with an angel or arch- 
 angel standing upon every rung, until its foot touched 
 and rested firm upon the mass of crudity to be informed. 
 High at its summit stood, waving her wings, the Celestial 
 Sophia, and at its foot the Demiourgos or Creator of the 
 earth, the Jewish Jehovah, with face downcast, and brawny 
 arms, the Terrestrial Sophia always by his side. And this 
 was the most advanced philosophical statement of the 
 origin of men and things that the science of the ancients 
 ever succeeded in making; and modern science can detect 
 in it neither rhyme nor reason, because it was neither based 
 on observation, nor calculation, nor experiment. 
 
II.] ANCIENT AND MODERN. 25 
 
 Let me set before you now another and far different 
 picture. That was 'science falsely so called;' this is 
 true science. It may not be scientific truth, for its de- 
 monstration has not yet been completed. But it is true 
 science for all that ; because it is the product of a Fancy 
 disciplined, mathematical, experimental, and observant. 
 I allude of course to the Nebular Hypothesis. 
 
 The Nebular Hypothesis is to us modern naturalists 
 what the gnostic cosmogonies were to the cabbalists of 
 yore, and is illustrated in a perfect manner by the genius of 
 modern science. It has swelled rapidly to its present pro- 
 portions by insensible degrees ; by yearly accessions of 
 facts, discovered and recorded in the different departments 
 of inquiry. Its constitution is purely mathematical. 
 Grant its one postulate, — That space was originally full of 
 homogeneous matter obedient to the laws of physics — and 
 its whole argument follows logically to the close ; and it 
 accounts for everything we see and know about the visible 
 world. And this first postulate is strictly reasonable ; 
 even if it turn out in the end not to have been true ; for 
 1, It agrees with all experimental observation as thus far 
 made ; and 2, It is based upon a set of observations of its 
 own. I mean the observations of telescopic nebulte. 
 Nor can it be finally disproved and laid aside until more 
 powerful telescopes shall have been made to resolve into 
 separate stars the last remaining nebula. And even then 
 the a pnori possibility stands good. Saturn's rings will 
 continue to discuss the question with any comet that may 
 happen to drop in. 
 
 Emanation was the genius of the old cosmogony ; 
 Erolution is the genius of the nebular hypothesis. It 
 paints the universe as either at first created an infinite 
 mist of unequally distributed elemental atoms; or else as, 
 at stated intervals, becoming such. It sees great move- 
 ments beginning, or re-beginning, in this unformed but 
 living infinite ; centres of growing aggregation ; and tend- 
 encies towards those centres. It calculates the conse- 
 quences of these tendencies, and proves that great gyra- 
 tions must result fi'om them. It shows how the laws of 
 heat will bring about consolidation ; and how the laws of 
 motion will effect at first a ring and then a planetary- 
 system, in each vortex, throughout infinite space. Thus 
 
26 GENIUS OP THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, [lECT. 
 
 stars and suns, nebulae and comets, earths and their satel- 
 lites, appear upon the scene; each with its proper 
 motions j each destined to work out a diflferent history, 
 according to its circumstances. Then it takes up our 
 solar system, and calculates, and weighs, and keeps per- 
 petual watch upon it. It suspects the existence of an 
 extra member of the system, and by pure dint of numbers 
 finds it. It proves the molecular discreteness of Saturn^s 
 rings, and the aqueous character of the envelopes of 
 Jupiter and Mars. It invents the thermo-electric pile, and 
 proves that the sun's spots are not so hot as the rest of 
 its face, and that the body of the moon is as utterly cold 
 as space itself. It invents the spectroscope, and makes 
 out with it five of our metals in the sun, and two of them 
 in Sirius. Then it takes up our earth, and shows how 
 once it more than filled the entire orbit of the moon, first 
 throwing ofi" a ring which became our moon, and finally 
 condensing to its present form, a globe of lava, with a 
 crust of rock, a skin of water, and an envelope of air. 
 It sketches out the story of this crust: how its first flakes 
 emerged and joined, and were re-enforced and thickened 
 from below, compressed, turned up, re-melted and re-form- 
 ed : how a steady torrent of hot acid waters rained down 
 constantly upon all portions of this forming crust, disin- 
 tegrating it as fast as it was consolidated, and flying np 
 again in steam, to carry off its heat into surrounding 
 space: how in due course of time the seas became cool 
 enough to retain both their waters and the alkaline and 
 acid sediments which they brought into it : how the 
 chlorates and carbonates of the land changed partners 
 when they reached the sea, and formed the salt which 
 gives it sweetness, and the dolomite which made its an- 
 cient bed : and how, as time went on, changing the pro- 
 portions and relations of terrestrial elements, form after 
 form of life appeared, each suitable to the exact amount of 
 heat or cold, of light or darkness, moisture or drought, 
 acidity or alkalinity of its place of birth, and changing then 
 to something else, or something better, when it could no 
 longer live a life conformable to its own nature ; each form 
 superior to the one preceding it ; until at last man came, 
 to find a world grown firm enough to live on, cooled to the 
 temperate point, soiled, shaded, lighted, watered properly. 
 
n.] ANCIENT AND MODERN. 27 
 
 sprinkled with gold and precious stones, inlaid with iron 
 and brass, and Hoating through what is to him a finished 
 universe. 
 
 Have we not here a procession of realities, where before 
 we had a mist of dreams filled with the fantastic gibbering 
 of ghosts ? That is just the distinction between the ancient 
 Gnosis, and, in a less degree, all ancient knowledge, and 
 the modern sciences. 
 
 Let me now turn your attention to the same strong con- 
 trast between ancient and modern thought which the prac- 
 tical application of these cosmological ^dews exhibit. I 
 mean the application of the old Gnostic theories to the 
 practice of astrology, and the applications of modern astro- 
 nomical science to the discovery of the laws of climate, to 
 the practice of navigation, and to the measurement of land, 
 forming what we call the sciences of Physical Geography, 
 Navigation, Geodesy, and Civil Engineering. 
 
 The essential element of the contrast still is, that the one 
 is a system of fancy, the other a system of facts. The one 
 exercised habitually a cruel power over the lives of men by 
 its claims to magic; the other blesses mankind, not only 
 with the purest lessons of universal law and order, but with 
 comfort in the house, and safety on the sea. 
 
 Take a well-known example from the history of the 
 founding of the Christian Church. In the Acts of the 
 Apostles we read that, at Ephesus, an uproar threatened 
 tbe best part of its citizens with fire and sword for doubt- 
 ing that the stone, which the worst part worshipped, fell 
 from Jupiter. It would be hard to raise a riot now-a-days, 
 in Washington, by any story our astronomers could tell 
 about the great ring-meteorite which forms the central ob- 
 ject of attraction in the Museum of the Smithsonian Insti- 
 tution. Chauncey Wright calculated that five millions of 
 these bodies strike the outer stratum of our atmosphere 
 every day ; and that the major part of them, driven by 
 their own or the earth's velocity to various depths in it, 
 are triturated, smelted, evaporated, distributed by the 
 winds, and slowly settle to increase the size of the earth. 
 An occasional larger mass, becoming incandescent only on 
 its outside, throws ofi" a cloud of volatilized matter as it 
 passes through the atmosphere, and then resumes its dark, 
 cold flight through space — space that is full of such. Now 
 
28 GENIUS OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, [lECT. 
 
 and then one hits the earth in its orbit so fairly that it 
 succeeds in reaching the bottom of the atmosphere, and 
 buries itself in the soil, or in the broad expanse of the 
 ocean. In the old days of astrology men would have built 
 a temple over it, and organized a priesthood for its worship, 
 and regulated politics by its magnetic auguries ; but in our 
 days of astronomy, the finder cuts it up into pieces and 
 sells them for five dollars a-piece, to be labelled and stowed 
 away in cabinets with bottled tarantulas, Indian arrow- 
 heads, and coprolites from the chalk. 
 
 One perhaps is powwowed over at a meeting of the 
 Meteorological Society, where an interesting paper is i-ead 
 by Mr A. on the observed height, length, direction, ve- 
 locity, and luminousness of the meteor^s flight, as seen 
 from half-a-dozen small villages in different parts of the 
 country; and another piece may form the subject, per- 
 haps, at a meeting of the Chemical Society, of an equally 
 instructive paper by Mr B., showing the probable consti- 
 tution of the meteor, from a careful analysis of the frag- 
 ment ; disclosing the presence of so much iron, so much 
 nickel, so much schreibersite, with remarkable traces of 
 carbon; suggesting the possible existence of unknown 
 organisms, whether animal or vegetable the author cannot 
 say, upon the planetic body of which this meteor seems to 
 have formed a part. A third perhaps goes over to Vienna, 
 where, at a meeting of the Imperial Academy, the vener- 
 able Herr Hoffrath Haidinger draws attention to certain 
 impressions, as it were of human fingers, in the at-one- 
 time plastic mass, but only at one end, and shows that the 
 end so marked must have been the backside of the meteor 
 as it flew, behind which, as in a ship's wake just abaft the 
 rudder-post, an eddy of incandescent air and gases had 
 been formed, reducing the metal to plasticity and leaving 
 upon it these impressions ; at the same time he shows how 
 the solid banking up of the air in front of this frightful 
 projectile must have brought its forward career to a sud- 
 den stop, when the eartVs gravity would take efiect and 
 bring it, almost at a right angle, to the ground. 
 
 Such are the two diflerent ways in which ancient and 
 modern science would treat the objects of science, show- 
 ing always the same preponderance of a helpless and 
 therefore fearful fancy on the one side, and of a bold and 
 
 n 
 
II.] ANCIENT AND MODKRN. 29 
 
 powerful criticism on the other. The human race waa 
 placed upon the earth at the same disadvantage through 
 ignorance which prevents a traveller from sleeping the 
 first night he spends in a strange inn. The human heart 
 grows timid in the dark^ while familiarity with the obscure 
 "breeds contempt. The human race regard old heathen 
 terrors now with the same nonchalance with which a 
 family born under its roof hear noises in a haunted 
 house ; or rather -with that staunch, earnest, watchful in- 
 telligence with which an engine-driver walks round and 
 round his well-regulated and thoroughly comprehended, 
 yet tremendous machine. 
 
 You will not of course mistake my meaning so far as 
 to imagine that I contrast the ancient and the modern 
 worlds ! I am only contrasting the ancient gnosis with 
 modern science. Superstitions of the lowest kind still 
 fill the earth. I speak of the genius of the learned world. 
 The same uncultivated fancy keeps alive in our day, among 
 the uneducated classes and races of men, astrological and 
 all other ancient absurdities. They float daily to us across 
 the Atlantic, like cloud-rack, to be absorbed and made to 
 vanish in the clear, dry intellectual air, which, thank God, 
 we were born to breathe. The education of the world as 
 a whole has hardly yet commenced. It might well strike 
 us with astonishment to see a 2<?eZ/-educated world fight- 
 ing for slavery instead of for liberty, reeling with drunk- 
 enness, reekiug with squalid vice, roaring with obscene 
 profanity, as so much of ours does ! No, we are simply 
 considering the contrast between the intellectual condition 
 and habits of the philosophic world as it existed a few 
 thousand years ago, with what its intellectual habits are 
 now ; and what is the actual Christian value of the science 
 of nearly the entire population of these Northern States, of 
 Scotland, Switzerland, and Prussia, of the upper classes 
 in England, France, and Italy, and in fact of the wealthy 
 everywhere. 
 
 About six months ago a letter, addressed to me in Bos- 
 ton, reached me, I know not by what means, through the 
 OflSce in Philadelphia. It had been written by some 
 motherly body down in Maine, and enclosed an old one- 
 dollar bill. It gave the hoiir and minute of the woman's 
 birth, and begged me to retm-n the horoscope in diagram. 
 
30 GENIUS OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES^ [lECT. 
 
 with tlie prediction founded on - its figure. And in a 
 touching little postscript, as badly spelled and written as 
 tlie letter itself, she added the birth-date of her favourite 
 son, and begged me to include his fortune in her own. 
 
 Now it is a very curious question : on what principle the 
 notion of the government of human fortune by the stars 
 could have been so early, widely, and permanently estab- 
 lished. The idea of cause and effect, or of antecedence 
 and consequence, not to go into its metaphysical dis- 
 cussion, seems inherent in intelligence. Even the lower 
 animals exhibit it. The reason why our ponies are alarmed 
 at wheelbarrows and dummy engines is evidently because 
 they cannot comprehend how anything can go unless it be 
 preceded by a horse. They seem to be infected with the 
 same horror of the prodigious which we would tremble 
 under were we to observe St Denis marching off from 
 martyrdom with his head under his arm. Our savage an- 
 cestors never became intellectually reconciled to an eclipse 
 of the sun or of the moon because they could suggest no 
 benevolent cause for it ; it seemed to them like some 
 deadly swooning of a father or a mother, threatening 
 themselves with orphanage. The Avorship of the heavenly 
 bodies must have borne exact proportion to the daily and 
 nightly benefits they bestowed upon mankind. At the 
 equator the sur^ was an enemy, at the poles a friend. The 
 Arab addressed his praises to ' the great rock in a weary 
 land ' because it protected him from the solar rays. The 
 Scandinavian, on the contrary, watched the declining sun 
 from June to December with undisguised anxiety, erected 
 slanting dolmens to detect the first certainty of its ap- 
 proaching return ; and when assured that its face was once 
 more set towards their habitations, over which their enemy 
 the snow had already begun to heap itself, they dragged 
 the yule log to the hearth, and danced and sang and drank 
 the grand carouse of all the year, making the frozen air 
 resound with their Christmas carols under the mistletoe, 
 long before Christ was born, or a mass had ever been said 
 in honour of the Sun of Eighteousness. The celebrated 
 contest between sun-worship and pyramid- or water-wor- 
 ship which characterized a part of the monumental history 
 of Egypt was a conflict of sentiment between the equatorial 
 and the polar zones, the iconoclastic sun-worshippers 
 
II. J ANCIENT AND MODERN. 31 
 
 coming into the valley of the Nile from the mountains of 
 Armenia and the distant steppes of Scythia, at the close of 
 the 14th* dynasty, 2000 years more or less B.C., as tliey did 
 again under Cambyses about the year 500 B.C., and again, 
 to take permanent possession, as the Turks of the 13th f 
 century of the Christian era, long after the old sun-worship 
 had been exchanged for the rational religion of Mahommed. 
 
 In like manner the worship of the moon must have 
 sprung from that dependence on her lovely light which was 
 inevitable in an age of forests, when men had neither 
 lamps nor clocks to live by, and were surrounded by such 
 wild beasts as bows and arrows could do little to offend, 
 lions and tigers, hyasnas, auroxen, and the great horned 
 Irish elk, wolves and wild boars, and the immense cave 
 bear, the elephant, and the rhinoceros. 
 
 Without the waxing and waning moon man would have 
 taken no account of time ; no weeks, no months, nothing 
 but the long cycle of the year. The idea of sequence was 
 bound up with the moon ; she became the goddess of or- 
 der, made story-telling possible, and lovers' assignations, 
 and parliaments. On the worship of the moon the whole 
 Druidic system of law, as well as ceremonial, leaned ; and 
 when its canons were abrogated and its usages were sup- 
 pressed by Chi'istianity, they still continued to exist as 
 popular superstitions. The majority of farmers, to this 
 very day, regulate their planting and felling of timber, 
 their pruning and grafting, by the phases of the moon ; 
 while their wives in the kitchen would find all their yarn 
 untwist, and all their soap go back, unless they consulted 
 the almanac. 
 
 In one or two instances modern experimental science has 
 actually reinforced the ancient superstitious observance of 
 the moon. It is now well understood that young plants, 
 like human babies, must have plenty of rest. If they shoot 
 
 * Mariette (Aperju, &c., 1867) accounts for the lack of monuments of 
 the 15th and 16th dynasties by the invasion of the Hyksos. Bunseu 
 agrees that they came in with the 'ith king of the 13th dynasty, but they 
 did not become legitimate sovereigns until the 37th dynasty. See Renan, 
 quoted below at the beginning of the 6th lecture.) The actual solar disc 
 fanatic who did the mischief was jun-aten, who followed Thutmosis I. 
 , of the 17th dynasty, his mother being a foreigner. — Indigenous Races, 
 Gliddon, 1857, p. il6. 
 
 t The Turkish dynasty of Ottoman sultans commenced in 1258. 
 
32 GENIUb OP THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, [lECT. 
 
 up from the seed iu the waning of the moon they enjoy 
 the repose of long, dark nights ; if in the growing moon, 
 their young life, over-stimulated, perishes, or suffers dete- 
 rioration more or less. The latest observations make it cer- 
 tain that the sun-heat reflected from the full-moon^s face is 
 sufficient to dispel clouds, and it must modify, therefore, 
 notably the climate of the kitchen-garden. One of the 
 most brilliant astronomical discoveries of the last ten years 
 is that of the so-called Eleven-Year Cycle, during which 
 Jupiter aud the other planets alternately collect upon one 
 side of the sun, and then at other times disperse themselves 
 around it ; producing, in the one case, an abundant supply 
 of spots upon the sun's disc, with a corresponding lowering 
 of the climate of the earth ; and, in the other case, the dis- 
 persion and disappearance of spots, and a higher mean 
 temperature for the earth. 
 
 These are merely instances showing how the instinct of 
 man may sometimes anticipate the final deductions of his 
 reasoning faculties ; and we are thus taught to despise 
 nothing, not even the follies of superstition. 
 
 Still less ought we to despise the ancient worships of the 
 sun and moon, inasmuch as our own notorious irreligion is 
 due to an insensibility to the benefits which we receive all 
 the time and on all sides from Nature, caused by our mo- 
 dern mastership of Nature. The slave-holder feels no gra- 
 titude to his slave ; the magician cannot worship the devils 
 who do his bidding ; therefore I have always thought that 
 the poet only showed his ignorance of human nature and of 
 the tendencies of natural science, when he wrote — 'The 
 undevout astronomer is mad [' Ignorance has always been 
 the mother of devotion. The man who can hold the solar 
 system in his fist, and measure and weigh it with his scale 
 and compasses, and predict with accurate certainty what 
 its cha*nged aspect will be a hundred thousand years be- 
 yond the term of his own appointed career upon the earth 
 — this man may worship his wife, his emperor, his coun- 
 try's flag, his science, justice and honour, and the Great 
 God of the invisible universe ; but certainly not any hea- 
 venly object, nor even God on account of the mere wonders 
 of His sky. 
 
 But in old times it was not so. The procession of planets 
 went on to and fro with the myster)- and grandeur of a 
 
II.] ANCIENT AND MODERN. 33 
 
 procession of priests ; and was so worshipped. The myste- 
 rious pole-star was the savage man's best friend, and the 
 sailor's also. The dog-star, rising as the sun went down, 
 just when the blessed inundation of the Nile promised a 
 harvest for the coming year, came in of course for a large 
 share of Egyptian love and reverence. Shepherds of 
 Persia and Arabia had nothing else to do, whole nights, 
 whole years, whole lifetimes, but to watch and wonder at 
 the many-coloured, slowly-shifting stars. They saw the 
 satellites of Jupiter without a telescope ; and by dividing 
 up a few hundred revolutions of each satellite by the num- 
 ber of nights of observation, they could arrive at its rate 
 of motion to a minute of time. The strange diversity of 
 names given to the constellations, the utter absence of 
 any harmonious system in the zodiac or out of it, the 
 purely fanciful and oftentimes inexplicable groupings of 
 the principal stars, all go to show how many minds in 
 how many ages helped the old astrology to assume the 
 shape in which we know it now. 
 
 Comets were a terror to the ancients because their 
 shape suggested war, and their flaming glare pestilence, 
 rushing through the sky like warriors with dishevelled 
 hair, and always at some epoch of convulsion, either 
 during the invasion of some bloody conqueror, or at the 
 death of some great leader. Volcanoes were, for the same 
 reason, or rather by the construction of the same unin- 
 structed fancy, made the abodes of malignant deities, per- 
 sonifications of those forces of nature not yet subjugated 
 by man's intellect. High mountain-peaks, the inaccessible 
 thrones of ice and snow, sources of thunder and lightning, 
 avalanches, and devastating floods, became the homes of 
 other gods, the enemies rather than the friends of man. 
 But, above all, the all-devouring ocean inspired terror in 
 the human breast, and this teiTor generated some of the 
 \Wdest-spread superstitions connected with the ancient 
 mythologies. Serpent-worship and Siva-worship and 
 devil-worship in general can be distinctly traced to it, as 
 I will show in a future lecture. The ship which carried 
 man, and the stars which guided him across the trackless 
 sea, became personified into his favouring * deities, and 
 
 * ' If, most venerable man ! it is a disgrace and sin to forget God, it 
 is also a stain upon the virtue, and a dishonour upon the judgment, of 
 
 3 
 
34 GENIUS OP THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, [lECT. 
 
 thus astrology linked itself with physical geography, as 
 astronomy has done in our day to much better pui-pose. 
 
 Let me touch, in passing, upon the curious etymology of 
 the word ' star/ It is supposed to be explained by a 
 Sanscrit root signifying to stand, in Latin stare, alluding, 
 of course, to the immovable positions of the stars. But 
 the use of the star- shaped diagram in astrology suggests 
 another idea. The word for mountain is tor, expressed in 
 writing by a triangle, our letter D, the Greek A.* The 
 symbolic star with six points (for the heraldic star with 
 five points is not a star at all, but a mullet or spur), was 
 
 made by crossing two triangles )(\ , and called the Sacred 
 
 Tor, S'TOR, and was used thus, abundantly, by the ma- 
 gicians and cabbalists as the background or framework of 
 their horoscopes. It seems to be one of those numerous 
 implantations of a later astrological mythology upon an 
 older pyramid or mountain-worship with which I should 
 be loth just now to interrupt the subject of this lecture. 
 
 Confining our attention to the group of sciences to which 
 this lecture is devoted, it is plainly to be seen that their 
 utterly embryonic condition in ancient times, and the ab- 
 stract and cosmical character which they bear, make it 
 unlikely that we can get from them many concrete facts 
 respecting the earliest times of man. 
 
 I will begin with the science of Numbers. From what 
 we know of the notation of savage tribes of the present 
 day, we may infer with great certainty some of the intel- 
 lectual conditions of man's earliest residence upon the 
 planet. I leave to the next lecture the question how long 
 man has lived upon the earth. I take for granted also this 
 evening that his first appearance was in an undeveloped 
 condition of mind. The ideas of number which savages 
 of the present day possess are strangely limited : some of 
 the lowest tribes cannot count above three ; the Australians 
 
 any one, who has virtue and judgment, not to reverence you, who are a 
 very target of wonders, into which the stnrs, contending in your favour, 
 have shot all the arrows of tliejr gifts.' — Letter of Arretino to Michael 
 Angelo, in Perkins' Tuscan Sculptors, vol. ii. p. 50. 
 
 * See Kawlinson's picture of the hill Koukab ('the star') in his Baby- 
 lon (about page 140). See also the fact that sb, a star -j^ means not 
 only to adore, but & gate (or door). Bunsen, p. 537, Egypt, vol. i., 7th 
 determinative. 
 
 i 
 
n.] ANCIENT AND MODERN. 35 
 
 count only to foui', and after tliat all numbers are to them 
 merely Kauivol-Kauwol, 'many/ or Bungu Galang, Wery 
 many/ Many stop at five ; others count up to ten before 
 they begin again. The Sioux Indians, Dr Hay den tells 
 me, count upon their ten fingers and their ten toes, and 
 call that one man ; their first unit is therefore one, and 
 their second unit is twenty. Pliny Chase has discussed this 
 curious subject with great skill, to develope the funda- 
 mental ideas of the numbers on the basis of the names 
 which are given to them in many languages. He finds 
 that their very names show how feeble the mathematical 
 faculty of the savage must be. In some of these wild lan- 
 guages even the word for three means two and one ; four 
 means twice two ; five, three and two ; six and eight mean 
 the second three or the second four, &c. 
 
 Imagine, if you can, the barrier to mental development 
 which such an embryonic notation must be. Think of the 
 difference between making nine strokes, as the old Egyptian 
 had to do, and writing our Arabic numeral 9. Progress in 
 .mathematical machinery was at first very slow ; yet our 
 cypher 8 is merely a more convenient form of the old 
 
 ^^yP^^^^riii - ^^ some respects their notation seems 
 
 simpler than ours, as when they represented 10 by (j, 100 
 
 by (D, 1000 by ^ , 10,000 by ^, 1,000,000 by S) , and 
 
 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 by l£j. 
 
 But it was not really so ,• for nothing can excel the utility 
 and simplicity of our decimal system, unless it be a similar 
 system with a decimal of 8, or 12, or 16, instead of 10. 
 Ajiy advance in true physical science was impossible in 
 early times merely for want of some such counting machine. 
 The first ages of humanity were devoted to darkness be- 
 cause all numbers beyond a score or a hundred were alike 
 uncountable. In fact, there is a natural dislike to mathe- 
 matics in the untutored mind ; it brings too great a strain 
 upon the intellect. You remember the Arab Sheikas reply 
 to Layard's friend : — 'Although I have passed all my days 
 in this place, I have neither counted the houses, nor in- 
 quired into the number of the inhabitants. Shall we say, 
 
86 GENIUS OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, [lRCT, 
 
 Behold this star spinneth round that star, and this other 
 star with a tail goeth and cometh in so many years ? Let 
 it go ! God will guide it.' This of itself is sufficient to 
 explain the reckless chronologies of early days^ and the 
 unblushing coolness with which thousands of years were 
 lavished on the reigns (or life-times) of half-a-dozen genera- 
 tions. 
 
 And yet, the occurrence of those immense numbers at 
 the beginning of the Egyptian and Indian history hints to 
 us the existence of some profound consciousness of an im- 
 mense preceding antiquity residing in the ancient mind. 
 The old bards were aware that the race had been tens of 
 thousands of years upon the earth from considerations of 
 architecture and traditions, now lost, just as Ave have been 
 made aware of it by considerations of a geological nature. 
 Hence it was natural for them to make a rude calculation 
 of the precession of the equinoxes and fix the date of the 
 beginning of the Egyptian empire at 85,000 years. 
 
 Now it is in taking up such rude calculations of the an- 
 cients and making them more precise, and applying them 
 with a cultivated common sense, that modern Mathematics * 
 and Astronomy find a chance to employ themselves about 
 the question of the original conditions of our race. The 
 discussions over the zodiac of Denderah, although they 
 resulted in proving it to be a mere astrological diagram of 
 no astronomical value whatever, and therefore useless to 
 the historian, were still of use in opening up other and 
 more fruitful resources. The fables of antiquity are often 
 good ethnological guides, and some of these come within 
 challenge of this mathematic group of sciences. 
 
 Take for an example one of Kepler^s most happy hits. 
 It is rather too modern an instance, for it relates to an 
 event dating less than 2000 years back. But it is a fine 
 illustration of the treatment which the modern sciences 
 are prepared to give to any ancient record that may be 
 brought under their notice. Kepler was engaged in cal- 
 culating backwards the orbits of our two largest planets, 
 Saturn and Jupiter, when, to his astonishment and great 
 delight, he saw that one of their conjunctions, and one of 
 the very closest and most splendid that they had ever 
 had, happened, under the most favourable circumstances 
 for seeing it, precisely at the birth of Christ as given in 
 
II.] ANCIENT AND MODERN. 87 
 
 the books. Of course the legend of the star in the East 
 WHS at once c?-:plained in its most essential features. 
 
 In like manner, taking an example a few centuries 
 farther back, the recalculation of the eclipse of Thales has 
 become the starting-point of the chronologists in their 
 rectification of the old Greek tables. 
 
 Going back much farther, some of the most important 
 Eg}^tian dates have been obtained by calculating the 
 heliacal rising of Sirius and other stars watched by the 
 Egyptians on account of their connection with that vitally 
 interesting event to them, the beginning inundation of the 
 Nile. Much of that old mythology receives an easy ex- 
 planation in this way. 
 
 I have just alluded to the use made of the precession of 
 the equinoxes. A similar use is made of the ellipticity of 
 the earth^s orbit. A discussion is going on (at present) 
 respecting the effect upon old climates which a regular 
 variation in the shape of the orbit of the earth must have 
 produced. Laplace calculated the maximum and minimum 
 of this ellipticity, and commenced the calculation of the 
 length of time required to lengthen it out to its longest, 
 and then to reduce it to its roundest form. The subject 
 has been taken up lately by others to show that while 
 the corrected mean distance of the earth from the sun is 
 just now about 93 millions of miles, there must have oc- 
 curred, at enormous intervals of time, periodically, such 
 elongations and contractions of the orbit as to bring the 
 earth during one season of the year within 85 millions of 
 miles of the sun, and during another part of the year to 
 caiTy it oflf 105 millions. This extreme ellipticity, how- 
 ever, must take place in a different direction each time, so 
 that the closeness of the earth to the sun will sometimes 
 coincide with the summer of the northern hemisphere and 
 sometimes with its winter. When it coincides with sum- 
 mer, then the northern hemisphere must suffer the most 
 extraordinary variations of temperature, the absolute ex- 
 tremes of both summer and winter, during which it is hard 
 to see how human life could be successfully preserved 
 upon the earth. Such was the glacial epoch — all the 
 glacial epochs. On the other hand, when the earth re- 
 cedes farthest during summer, and approaches nearest 
 during winter in the northern hemisphere the amount of 
 
38 GENIUS OP THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES,, [lECT. 
 
 lieat received from day to day from the sun must be almost 
 invariable round the whole year. Then reigns perennial 
 spring. Then animal and vegetable life holds its millennial 
 holiday. Such was the carboniferous era^ — all the car- 
 boniferous eras. 
 
 I did not mean this evening to touch upon the geological 
 antiquity of man, reserving that for the next lecture, but 
 you will see at once that this astronomical question of 
 the ellipticity of the earth^s orbit bears directly and 
 heavily upon the date of man^s origin. If the last max- 
 imum ellipticity happened, say 100,000 years ago, causing 
 the last glacialism of the northern hemisphere, and if we 
 can find any facts connecting that glacial condition of the 
 earth with the remains of man, then the conclusions so 
 derived must influence other lines of inquiry. And yet it 
 is but one very little streak of light, mere candle-light, 
 which astronomy throws in among the shadows of those 
 Robin Hood and Robinson Crusoe days of mankind. 
 
 2. Another such glimmer of poor information is furnished 
 by Physical Geography, the marvellously zealous and pro- 
 ductive pursuit of which, within the present century bears 
 to the geography of the ancients abovit the same propor- 
 tions which the results of modern astronomy bear to the 
 dreams of ancient astrology. To feel the full force of this 
 comparison you need only lay upon your table the poor 
 little sketch-map of Ptolemy; then spread abroad upon 
 your floor the sheets of the Swiss, French, Swedish, or 
 British topographical surveys. In the former all is mon- 
 strous and confused, not a latitude or longitude correct ; 
 not a line or part of a line in any portion of it represent- 
 ative of truth ; the small is large, the large is small ; and 
 fancy fills up spaces where the scanty and untrustworthy 
 reports of travellers have failed. In the latter every moun- 
 tain-peak is established by a reference to some measured 
 base line ; every stream is traced with compass and level 
 up to its tiny rivulets; every man's possessions are de- 
 fined as if the entire map was but a recorded deed of 
 purchase ; his house, his garden, even the footpath which 
 has at its stile the warning sign-board ' beware of spring- 
 guns ' is laid down. Four miles beyond the walls of the 
 city of Bourges the geographers of France have erected 
 a pyramidal monument which marks, with true French 
 
II.] ANCIENT AND MODERN. 39 
 
 idealism but with French mathematical accuracy, the pre- 
 cise centre of France as it was before the annexation 
 of Nice and Savoy. At every mile along the southern 
 boundary of Pennsylvania, Mason and Dixon planted pillars 
 of stone which still remain. On the top of Mount Desert, 
 Wachusett, the Blue Hill in Milton, and a thousand other 
 eminences along the Atlantic seaboard, stand the remains 
 of the heliotropes of Hassler, Bache, and Borden, their 
 relative positions determined by hundreds of thousands of 
 observations, to tho fraction of a linear foot.* Russia and 
 India are being mapped with the same accuracy and par- 
 ticularity. Even the hideous deserts of Asia, and the 
 hitherto inaccessible interior table-lands of Africa, ai-e 
 falling into shape under the analytical studies which 
 Murchison and the men of the Loudon Royal Geographical 
 Society are incessantly making from the itineraries and 
 sketches and astronomical observations of Mann and Liv- 
 ingstone, Burton and Speke, and Grant and Barr, and the 
 brothers Schlagintweit, and a hundred other daring ex- 
 plorers, too many of whom have already paid the forfeit 
 of their enthusiasm with their lives. 
 
 We look in vain for any analogue of this accurate science 
 in ancient days. 
 
 It is true. Col. Vyse, Mr Turner, and the Astronomer 
 Royal of Scotland, Mr Piazzi Smyth, have published the 
 most remarkable things concerning the great pyramid of 
 Cheops. For, according to them, it must have been laid 
 out, not by Benjamin Franklin's great-grandson, but by 
 his great-grandfather 250 generations removed. They 
 find its base to be a precise aliquot part of the circumfer- 
 ence of the earth. They find all its proportions to be geo- 
 metrical and . astronomical. The angle of its sides, the 
 slope of its galleries, the distances from chamber to cham- 
 ber within it they show to be obtainable by compass and 
 scale. The granite chest in its central chamber they say 
 is no sarcophagus : it is a vast standard bushel, containing 
 
 * Eight hundred counties in the Northern States have been mapped 
 so as to show every house and the owner's name ; and a complete set of 
 these maps is preserved in the Library of the British Museum. 
 
 The whole valley of the Mississippi has been crossbarred by the sur- 
 veyors of the government of the United States at intervals of six. miles, 
 north and south, east and west. 
 
40 GENIUS OP THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, [LECT. 
 
 precisely four English quarterns of corn. And, more than 
 all, they think they prove that the builders of this gigantic 
 meter for all time must have come from a distance (per- 
 haps from Mesopotamia) in search of some such place as 
 Memphis, where the relations of latitude could come har- 
 moniously in among the other geometrical relationships 
 which were to be made constants for all science, in this 
 pyramid.* 
 
 However true all this may be, it goes but a short dis- 
 tance towards our purpose. It is certainly equally true 
 that no practical applications of such sequence, if it really 
 existed, was ever made in ancient times on any scale de- 
 serving of mention by a modern man. The maps which 
 ancient Hindu and Chinese books contain are caricatures. 
 The oceans, as we know them, were to the ancients a river 
 coiled seven times round the entire world inhabited by man ; 
 or, at best, a rim of water round an island continent, up from 
 which, and down again into which, the sun and heavenly 
 systems i"ose and sank from day to day. A few grand 
 thinkers had indeed concluded that the earth was not a 
 circular plate, but a globe hung in space : but nothing 
 came of this conjecture but that which was in its turn con- 
 jecture. The Chinese early knew the magnetic needle ; ■ but 
 not how to work out their geography with it, in combina- 
 tion with the telescope and spirit-level. Each traveller had 
 a different story to tell : the geographer was bewildered 
 with their contradictoiy reports. The skein could never 
 be unravelled because the beginning of it could not be 
 found ; for the sine qua non of modern topography is a 
 measured base to start with, and the ancients were not up 
 to that, although their Euclid is our God of Cambridge. 
 But Euclid is one of the moderns. 
 
 It is a very great pity that the ancient world has left us 
 no records of physical geography to compare with our own 
 observations. Had wo correct hypsometrical tables of the 
 heights of the Alps as they were 5000 years ago, what 
 light that would throw, not only upon the rate and amount 
 of the submergence or emergence of the European Conti- 
 
 * The beautiful application of physical science, in the double shape of 
 the magnesium light and the sensitive photographic plate to the elucida- 
 tion of the ancient nivsteries of the chambers and galleries of the great 
 pyramid should not be passed unnoticed. 
 
n.] ANCIENT AND MODERN. 41 
 
 nent, but upon the migrations of its early inhabitants. 
 Eight centuries ago, for instance, those dangerous passes 
 in the Alps, which the traveller now can hardly find a guide 
 to pilot him through, were common highroads of communi- 
 cation between the Swiss and the Italian villages. A suc- 
 cession of cold seasons lengthens all the Swiss glaciers 
 sensibly, and increases the privations of the mountaineers. 
 There was a time when the isolated glaciers of the Alps 
 formed one; covered the whole watershed; spread its edges 
 over the low lands, filled up the lakes, banked against the 
 Jura, and probably connected themselves with vast sheets 
 of ice and snow around the world, to the detriment, if not 
 to an almost complete destruction, of sections of the human 
 race. The science of Meteorology has much to teach us 
 on this subject. Then there are all the questions of climate 
 connecting themselves with the rise of mountains, the 
 formation of new sea-currents by fresh volcanic submarine 
 obstructions, and the spread and disappearance of great 
 forests, all of them determining some fresh investigation 
 into the earlier state of man both in historic and in pre- 
 historic times. 
 
 What we most miss and need are ancient records of 
 these physical changes. 
 
 Had we even a rough outline of the delta of the Nile 
 made no farther back than the twelfth dynasty of the pyra- 
 mid-builders, how much nearer we could come to the an- 
 swer of that vexed c{uestion whether Egypt was settled 
 from Asia or from Africa ; whether the black man or the 
 white man be the elder brother. If the Rig-Veda, instead 
 of being a jumble of ceremonial hymns to fire and water, 
 were a single tolerably well-constructed map of the valley 
 of the Ganges, and the country behind the Sunderbunds, 
 how much vain argument respecting the value of the Yug 
 chronology and the antiquity of the Turanian tribes of 
 the Ghauts and Deccan would have been saved ! All 
 science to become efficient must become comparative ; 
 this is its second stage. To settle the earliest history we 
 need the combined etforts of comparative geography, com- 
 parative zoology, and comparative philology. But compara- 
 tive geography, or, as we usually call it. Physical Geography, 
 which, after describing the present status of the earth^s 
 features, argues back to what they have been, and seeks 
 
42 GENIUS OP THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 
 
 out both tlie laws whicli governed the change, and the 
 effects which it pi-oduced upon living beings, especially on 
 man — Comparative Geography is, alter all, only one phase 
 of Geology. I will therefore close this lecture here, and 
 promise to take up in the course of the next the points 
 which have been just suggested. 
 
 I shall discuss the Geological Antiquity of Man, as proved 
 by his fossil remains, in connection with the relics of ex- 
 tinct animals ; the proofs we have of great geographical 
 changes during the human period ; the value of various 
 scales of years which geologists have endeavoured to apply 
 to the residence of man upon the earth, and the ground of 
 the now commonly accepted division of antiquity into three 
 definite periods — the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the 
 Iron Age. And I shall endeavour to make these questions 
 clear by diagrams to the eye, although I may not be able 
 to make their ansiuers wholly convincing to the judgment 
 of uy audience. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE GEOLOGICAL ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 
 
 The antiquity of mankind, — the dignity of mankind, — 
 the unity of mankind : — these are the three great prelimi- 
 nary questions of ancient history. Three separate sciences 
 take charge of them. The antiquity of mankind is a geo- 
 logical problem. The dignity of mankind in the scale of 
 nature is to be chiefly decided by zoology, or comparative 
 anatomy. The moot question of the unity or diversity of 
 the race begins the studies of the ethnologist. 
 
 All three questions have been settled for us, as you are 
 probably but too well aware, many centuries ago by that 
 ' science falsely so called •" Theology. And it really seems 
 to be a work of clear supererogation to commence the in- 
 vestigation again. Are we not assured that the world is 
 only about 6000 years old ? That man was made on the 
 sixth day of its existence ? Does it not stand so written 
 in the books of Moses ? Do we not also hioio that man 
 'was created upright before he fell, and of a grade but little 
 lower than the angels ; and that his spirit goeth upwards, 
 while that of the beast goeth downwards ? All this is too 
 distinctly written by holy men of old, who wrote as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost, to be called in question 
 for a moment. Even the smallest particulars are put at 
 the service of our curiosity to be received with implicit 
 faith : — how that God made one Adam first ; then cast him 
 into sleep, took from his side a rib and made a woman of it, 
 and how, from these twain, sprang all nations and peoples 
 and kindreds and tongues that dwell upon the surface 
 of the whole earth, white and black, yellow and brown, 
 dwarfish Esquimaux and gigantic Patagonians, woolly- 
 haired Melanesians and beautiful Greeks, Jews with great 
 noses and Chinese with cat-like eyes, upon every con- 
 
44 THE GEOLOGICAL [lECT. 
 
 tinent and in every remote island of the sea. The books 
 of Moses are beheved to inform us absolutely of the.se 
 facts, in language as unmistakably plain as we could 
 desire to have it; as plainly, in fact, as they inform us 
 that the earth was made three days before the sun, tlius 
 settling for us the nebular hypothesis, and various other 
 little difficulties of an astronomical nature which arise 
 out of the rotation of the earth and planets according to 
 the Copernican system. 
 
 It is surprising how indifferent men of science seem to be 
 to these great statements ! Thousands of preachers proclaim 
 them from the pulpit every Sunday in the year ; and 
 millions of communicants respond — Amen ! And yet our 
 men of science. continue sceptical, and call them, as the 
 apostles did, old-wives^ fables. They believe them in- 
 deed to be old Jew-legends so palpably heathenish and 
 contrary to all we now know that it is not worth while to 
 try to show their absurdity. But they add, more seriously, 
 that these old fables are no part of Christian theology; 
 that they have been foisted into the body of Christian 
 divinity to save the brains of the silly, to sustain the 
 prestige of the clergy and to excuse the vices of the 
 laity; and that they are already disappearing from the 
 public faith so fast under the influence of public school- 
 education that no especial notice need any more be taken 
 of them. It is a noteworthy fact that the books which 
 periodically appear in the shops upon the Harmony of 
 Science and Religion, or upon the Relations of Genesis to* 
 Geology, are wi-itten by clergymen ; and all of them in the 
 service of Jewish theology. All alike, men of science will 
 no longer even read them, but look w^ith as despairing an 
 eye upon those who write them as Christiana's party did 
 upon the man whom they found asleep upon the enchanted 
 ground. 
 
 ' And that place was all grown over with briars and 
 thorns, excepting here and there where was an enchanted 
 arbour, \ipon which if a man sits, or in which if a man 
 sleeps, it is a question, some say, whether ever he shall rise 
 or wake again in this world. Over this forest therefore 
 they went, both one and another, and Mr Greatheart went 
 
III.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 45 
 
 before, for tliat he was the guide; aud Mr Yaliant-for- 
 Truth came behind, being rear-guard. Now they had not 
 gone far, but a great mist and darkness fell upon them all. 
 Wherefore they were forced for some time to feel for one 
 another by words, for they walked not by sight. But any 
 one must think that here was but sorry going for the best 
 of them all ; but how much worse for the women and chil- 
 dren who both of feet and heart were but tender. They 
 went on till they came to where there was an arbour, 
 wherein lay two men whose names were Heedless and 
 Too-bold. Then the guide did shake them, and do what 
 he could to disturb them. Then said one of them, I will 
 pay you when I take my money. At which the guide 
 shook his head. I will fight so long as I can hold the 
 sword in my hand, said the other. At that one of the 
 children laughed.^ 
 
 Through this enchanted landmen of science have learned 
 to hurry on, without any longer even making such benevo- 
 lent but futile efforts to awaken the sleepers in its arbours. 
 Let us start fair this evening with the discussion of the 
 first of the three problems which I have mentioned, viz. 
 the geological antiquity of man. To do this we must make 
 up our minds to part company with the schoolmen. There 
 is no alliance possible between Jewish Theology and 
 Modei'n Science. They are irreconcilable enemies. Ge- 
 ology in its present advancement cannot be brought more 
 easily into harmony with the Mosaic cosmogony than with 
 the Gnostic, the Vedic, or the Scandinavian. It has 
 escaped fully and finally from its subjection to the Creed. 
 Sindbad has made the little red man of the sea, who sat 
 so long on his shoulders, tipsy with new wine, tossed him 
 to the ground, and crushed his wicked old head with a 
 stone. Sindbad is free. Geologists have won the right 
 to be Christians without first becoming Jews. 
 
 The arguments for any geological fact which is at all a 
 comprehensive one are gathered only by years of patient 
 and laboi'ious observation, not in the closet, but in the 
 field,. the cabinet and the laboratory. A thousand fruitless 
 journeys before success can crown the search ! A thousand 
 false hypotheses before the true theory is established ! A 
 thousand mistakes of observation published before they 
 can get corrected ! Consequently the literature of the 
 
46 THE GEOLOOICAL [lECT. 
 
 science is something enormous and appalling. Every new 
 step in advance, while it becomes in one sense easier, in 
 another sense becomes more difficult to mahe. Outsiders, 
 charlatans, t3'ros, sciolists, have no chance at all. They 
 must take eveiything on testimony. There was a time 
 when the Dean of Westminster in his study could be a 
 tolerable geologist. That time is past. No man who does 
 not go out and grapple with nature, wrestling with this 
 angel through the long dark night, receives the blessing 
 when the sun is up. The knight who will take initiation 
 into these mysteries must make his vigil on the floor of 
 the great church, equipped in full armour, fasting and 
 alone, chaste, silent, brave. It is impossible for a mere 
 reader of LyelPs Elements, or a mere listener to Sedge- 
 wick's lectures, to get that profound faith, that overpower- 
 ing conviction of the reality of former creations, and of 
 their incalculably great antiquity which is as natural to 
 the working field-hand in palaeontology as is his faith in 
 the good God or in his own past life. If I speak there- 
 fore dogmatically to-night, you will understand that the 
 great first truths of Geology have been so seen and touched 
 and tasted, that they are no longer speculations, but expe- 
 riences ; no longer objects of belief, but of absolute know- 
 ledge. Geology is not in its infancy ; it has reached a ripe 
 maturity. Its greater truths need no further testimony, 
 no more copious illusti'ation than they already have. And 
 it is only of such that I will just now speak. Doubtful 
 things will come up afterwards. 
 
 Before touching the antiquity of man, I must give you 
 a clear conception of the immense antiquity of the earth. 
 
 If you see a stone house a-building, you know that the 
 foundation walls were built first, and that the cut courses 
 must have been laid in an ascending order. You knoAv 
 this with absolute certainty. The most direct outside re- 
 velation from God could not make it plainer, nor add to 
 the force of your conviction. Nor could the worker of a 
 thousand miracles before your eyes shake this conviction 
 for an instant. Now Geology is the science of this cenvic- 
 tion applied to the crust of the earth, as an unfinished build- 
 ing of stone, the courses of which have been laid in suc- 
 cessive days. It has its Metamorphic foundations, its 
 Palaeozoic surbase story, its stately superstructure of Se- 
 
III.] ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 47 
 
 condary and Tertiary rocks, and its Volcanic pinnacles. 
 Tiie workmen with their tools are still upon its highest 
 scaffolding. The forms of Lapitha^ and Centaurs fill all 
 the metopes of its entablature. The pediment is even now 
 receiving its Olympic synod in low and high relief. Created 
 6O0O years ago, and in a single day ! You might as well 
 affirm that Coin cathedral was begun and finished before 
 breakfast yesterday. You might as well believe that 
 other oriental story of Aladdin's palace. 
 
 Three points claim especial attention. The first point 
 is the characteristic geological feature of super position. 
 The waters of the globe have been spreading one layer 
 of sand and gravel over another, one layer of mud over 
 another, one layer of limestone and marl over another, 
 without intermission, without haste, with the greatest re- 
 gularity, for many millions of years, until the whole thick- 
 ness of such aqueous sediments as are known to us, 
 amounts to no less than 16,000 fathoms, say 20 miles, from 
 top to bottom. And when we remember that what we call 
 the bottom of these sediments is no true bottom layer, 
 bat merely the lowest limit of our observations thus far 
 reached, we feel ourselves at liberty to carry back the era of 
 commencement to an indefinite distance. 
 
 The next point to be insisted upon is the division of the 
 time represented by this 20 miles of sediment into four or 
 five successive ages ; and the subdivision of each of these 
 ages into successive systems ; each system into successive 
 formations ; each formation into successive beds ; and each 
 bed into laminae or fine layers, no thicker in some cases 
 than a sheet of foreign letter-paper. All these different 
 ages are as well characterized by distinctive features as 
 the ages of architecture are by different styles. No tra- 
 veller thinks of disputing with a local archseologist while 
 he is showing him the curiosities and beauties of a cathe- 
 dral or abbey church, founded in one century, enlarged in 
 another, partially rebuilt in another, and restored and 
 beautified in his own day. There is no mistaking the 
 Roman age of the towers of Jumieges, nor the Norman 
 age of its roofless nave, nor the later date of its ruined 
 pointed Gothic choir. A glance is sufficient to decide that 
 the facade of the Chateau de Galliou could not have been 
 designed by any architect who lived when the baths oi 
 
48 THE GEOLOGICAL [lECT. 
 
 Nero were put up. So a glance from the stage-coacli is 
 sufficient for the experienced geologist to tell whether he 
 be riding through an old Laurentian or Huronian region, 
 or among Palaeozoic mountains, or over the later estuary 
 sands of the New Bed, or over the still more modern plains 
 of the Chalk and Greensand formations. And this char- 
 acterization of sediments of different ages is carried out in 
 nature so completely, and to such minuteness of detail, 
 that the good local geologist can recognize, by the very 
 surface soil and incidental shapings of the hill-sides, upon 
 what pai'ticular belt of one formation he is riding, whether 
 the rocks around him belong, for instance, to the Upper 
 coal measures, or to the Lower ; to the upper, the middle, 
 or the lower Silurian. You can easily imagine what an 
 impression of time this makes upon the thoughtful mind. 
 
 The Hebrew legend of the creation describes the separa- 
 tion of the waters fi-om the dry land as having been de- 
 termined by a creative act upon the third day, and fixed 
 for all time. The fact is, that no fxed relation of land and 
 water has ever been established for the surface of the globe. 
 From the beginning land and water have been exchanging 
 places. Every acre of the laud-surface of the earth which 
 geology has examined bears indubitable marks of having 
 been not simply overflowed, but actually created at the 
 bottom of the ocean. And it is needless for me to tell this 
 audience what proofs we have that every part of every coast 
 of every ocean is, this evening, while I say it, either rising 
 slowly from the waters, or sinking slowly into them. Can 
 any phenomenon enhance more highly than this our ideas of 
 geological time ? Yet when we come to feel the full force 
 of the terms Erosion, Denudation, as applied to the present 
 surface of the earth, by which, through the slow wear and 
 tear of centuries — millenniums — of fiery summer suns and 
 wintry frosts, sedate glaciers and mad torrents, trickling 
 rills and mouldering damps, sharp rootlets thrust in cracks 
 and lichens softening the toughest rock, the very Alps 
 have been wasted half away, and where once even mightier 
 Alpine ranges ran, now nothing but a continent of rounded, 
 grassy, forest-covered hills remains ; — still more, were I to 
 give you proofs at hand of the repetition of this work in 
 all the past ages of the world, and show you the wasted 
 outlines of hills and valleys in the inside of the crust itself. 
 
III.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 49 
 
 fossil erosions, hills and valleys embedded like bones and 
 shells under whole formations of rock sediment, — you 
 would begin to feel the overwhelming weight of geological 
 time, and be disposed to cry — ^Tis but another name for 
 an eternity. 
 
 I might illustrate this subject of erosion by many 
 beautiful instances, — such as ravines a thousand feet deep 
 through prismatic lava fields ; caves which were once but 
 one, now separated by a river with cliff walls ; fissures 
 filled with what was once rock-oil, afterwards dried into a 
 vein of bituminous coal, and now exposed to view on both 
 sides of a wide deep valley. If anything has taken time 
 it has been this mouldering down of the successive surfaces 
 of the planet. 
 
 The third point of prime importance is one that brings 
 us close to the subject of our lecture. Every geological 
 age has had its own different and special inhabitants, — its 
 successive creations of life-forms. Each geological system, 
 even each successive formation, has entombed the remains 
 of millions of zoophiles, plants and animals peculiar to 
 that particular stage of the earth's history, and to no 
 other. I say nothing now of any supposed progression of 
 ideas in the creative intelligence embodied in these forms : 
 this would come in better shape before us in the next 
 lecture. I argue nothing here for or against the theory of 
 instantaneous creation ; or the opposite theory of spon- 
 taneous development of one set of forms out of another. I 
 wish to confine your attention just now to the established 
 fact that no geologist can possibly mistake Silurian rocks 
 for Devonian, or Devonian for Permian, or Pei'mian for 
 Cretaceous, or Cretaceous for Postpleiocene, when he has 
 once caught sight of even only a small collection of their 
 fossils. Nature is no Brummagem manufacturer of old 
 Greek coins or Pharaouic scarabgei to be re-sold to travel- 
 lers at the foot of the Pyramids, or in the great hall at 
 Carnac. In fact, as if to prevent the possibility of such 
 deception, the truth-loving Creator has marked shells of 
 similar shapes,=i-' but of different ages, with such delicate but 
 unmistakable variations of detail, that we must stand more 
 and more amazed, not only at the infinite resources, but. 
 
 * E.g. the microscopic dentation discovered by Agassiz in the interior 
 lamellae of one of two shells in all outward respects undistiuguishable. 
 
50 THE GEOLOGICAL [lECT. 
 
 at the inflexible integrity of his skill. Surely lie designed 
 tliat men should not deceive themselves. 
 
 Do you not see what a mistake was made by the fine 
 old Hebrew poet who sang the Mosaic song when he 
 separated the creation of the land and waters from the 
 creation of the fish and air-breathing animals^ fixing the 
 former on the third day, and the latter on the fifth and 
 sixth ? But let us do him justice. His is a poem, not a 
 text-book. He could only see the phenomena of the world 
 iu the twilight of his times ; but his genius grasped them, 
 even thus half seen, in a poetic ordei wonderfully like the 
 actual. Nor was it possible for him to describe them 
 complicated as they are iu nature. With the same ample 
 grandeur, but without the horrors that surround the circu- 
 lar stages of Dante's Hell, he has resumed under seven 
 heads the wonders of the universe ; and the order of 
 ascending worth which they bore in his own mind tallied 
 with that which in the Divine idea compelled the suc- 
 cessive stages of development in the history of the earth. 
 
 Conceive now the illimitable stretch of ages upon ages 
 occupied in the production, establishment, increase, de- 
 cline, extinction, and substitution of these grand ranges 
 of successive worlds of vegetable and animal organisms, 
 all perfect in themselves, all differing from one another, 
 all harmonizing with the growing physics of the planet, 
 and leading slowly but surely up to man. Could God 
 have made all this at once ? I speak not of a puckish, 
 brutal Demiurge, fond of such practical jokes ; he could. 
 I speak of the Christian's God of truth, the loving ' Father 
 who is in heaven.' Would it not have been a flagrant 
 imposition upon intelligence, — a complicated and most 
 flagitious forgery ? Heaven could scarcely have devised 
 such a barmecide feast to set before the hungry intellect 
 of man. 
 
 Nor is the difliculty diminished by calling a day a thou- 
 sand years. We have in paleeontology the records of a 
 thousand ages. Many of the old limestone strata are en- 
 tirely made up of corals and their triturated debris. Some 
 of the old Devonian mud-rocks are mere masses of the 
 casts of brachiopods, of every size from the youngest to 
 the oldest. Some of the coal-measure shales are leaved 
 
lU.J • ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 51 
 
 like a book, and every leaf" glistens witli delicate fresh- 
 water shells. In the Deep-river basin of North Carolina 
 millions of fish-teeth lie packed away between two layers 
 of coal which lie but two feet apart. There are more than 
 a hundred beds of coal in a single coal-system, each of 
 which is the result of the growth of a peat-bog, swamp, 
 and forest of a separate age ; to say nothing of the many 
 fathoms of rocks which intervene between each one coal-bed 
 and the next in order over it ; during which long interval 
 of time the land must have been too deep beneath the 
 water level to permit of vegetation.* The fossil dung of 
 the fish which swam the seas during the deposition of the 
 chalk of England was so abundant that the farmers about 
 Cambridge collect it, as it is set free from the mother-rock 
 by denudation, and use it to manure their lands. 
 
 Professor Heer, of Zurich, has lately published in his 
 admirable Geology of Switzerland a minute history of one 
 single formation, only 36 feet thick, which he divides into 
 18 beds. It tells a striking story of change and time, 
 which we need only multiply by thousands to get some 
 adequate notion of the antiquity of the earth. 
 
 Until about 30 years ago the great geological question 
 for those who busied themselves with the higher problems 
 of life was this : Why do not the remains of man appear 
 among the fossil treasures of the earth ? Here the theo- 
 logians always had the geologists upon the hip. If the 
 earth is so old, they triumphantly clamoured, why does not 
 man share in its antiquity ? Show us a fossil human bone 
 — a fragment of his skull ; a single tooth will satisfy us, if 
 it be imbedded fairly in one of your fossiliferous rocks. 
 
 To this there was but one reply : Wait ! 
 
 The ethnologists, the archaeologists, the egyptologists 
 were in the same predicament, and shared to some extent 
 in the embarrassment of the palgeontologists. They had 
 
 * There are reasons, in my opinion, to believe that many of the inter- 
 vals, where they consist of sand, were rather raised above than lowered 
 into the water. The calamites, rooted at ditferent heights in the sandy 
 strata of the Glass Bay coast of Cape Breton, seem to argue in that di- 
 rection. Either emergence or submergence would necessarily put a stop 
 to a coal-bed's growth. Probably both explanations are equally admissible 
 in their proper places. 
 
62 THE GEOLOGICAL [lECT. 
 
 found human skeletons in ancient caves, mixed with bones 
 of animals, some of them foreign to the countries in which 
 the caves existed. But there was no date to be assigned 
 with any certainty to these ossuary deposits ; there was no 
 proof positive that they were not swept into these caves by 
 comparatively modern freshets. It was easy to assert, and 
 hard to disprove, that the caves were not the habitations 
 or at all events places of refuge for the early races of man- 
 kind, and that these fed upon the aninmls whose bones 
 were mixed with their own skeletons; or, on the other 
 hand, the caves might have been the dens of hyenas whose 
 bones were found in some of them in great numbers ; and 
 it was reasonable to suppose that these predatory creatures 
 might have added human victims to the other evidences of 
 their omnivorous rapacity. The whole phenomenon was 
 one of such complexity and difficulty that it required a long 
 examination. These caves were discovered one by one in 
 England, in France, in Sicily, in Brazil, in fact in all coun- 
 tries which contain limestone regions. They are very nu- 
 merous ; they differ much in the number, kind, proportion, 
 and condition of their fossils ; but they almost all agree in 
 one principal feature — their bones are preserved from at- 
 mospheric decomposition by deposits of carbonate of lime, 
 slowly introduced by the infiltration of waters through their 
 roofs, forming stalactites above, and a floor of stalagmite 
 which covers a red earth in which the bones are buried. 
 The hones of man wei-e rare couipared with those of other 
 animals ; but, on the other hand, the instances of the dis- 
 covery of marks of the j>rese^^ce o/" wrm were numerous, and 
 the number of stone and flint implements collected from 
 all the caves was very great. Yet it is not too strong an 
 affirmation, that after all the reseai'ches of Buckland and 
 Lyell, and Tournal and Schmerling, no one was satisfied 
 bow the thing would turn out ; what the age of the caves, 
 or of their contents, might be ; or what relation the human 
 relics really might bear to the remains of animals with 
 which they were intermixed, or to the geological sequence 
 of aqueous formations constituting the crust of the earth. 
 The individual explorers had their own opinions, but the 
 world of science watching their labours was not satisfied. 
 Buckland published his Reliquiae Diluvianae in 1823, in 
 which, he discussed the whole subject of organic forms 
 
ni.] ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 53 
 
 found in the caves, tlie fissures, and the gravel-beds of 
 England, and concluded that the human remains which he 
 had found therein were not so old as the accompanying 
 fossils. It was a theological conclusion, and was accepted 
 with dehghtf b}' the conservative science of England. In- 
 deed, it remained a shibboleth of geological oi'thodoxy in 
 England until about twenty years ago^* when the acceptation 
 of a new series of discovered facts on the Continent broke 
 down the bigotry of the British school, and a general 
 stampede of the younger geologists took place to the other 
 side of the question. 
 
 In 1828, that is, five years after the appearance of 
 Buckland^s book, two French gentlemen in the south of 
 France, MM. Tournal and Christy, examined and re- 
 ported on fbone caves atBize, and at Pondres nearNismes, 
 in the Valley of the Gard. They had found human bones 
 and teeth, fragments of pottery in two styles, pointed 
 bones and flint hatchets and arrow-heads, cemented in a 
 mud breccia loitli living land shells, and the remains of both 
 recent and extinct animals, such as the hyena, rhinoceros, 
 stag, antelope, goat, Lithuanian aurochs and Lapland 
 reindeer, the last of which is almost everywhere found 
 associated with the mammoth of France in ancient allu- 
 viums and cavern muds. These gentlemen also thought 
 they perceived unmistakable evidences of a time arrange- 
 ment or stratification of the remains such as quite set 
 aside the idea that the human relics were introduced 
 subsequently. J 
 
 But there were Bucklandites in France also. M. 
 Desnoyers pointed to the Druid tum/uli and dolmens of 
 the primitive inhabitants of Gaul, under which he had 
 found quantities of such flint hatchets and arrow-heads, 
 pointed bones and coarse pottery, mingled with the sacri- 
 
 * Althougli Priest M'Enery had early found fliut tools under stalag- 
 mite in Kent's Hole, near Torquay ; and Godwin Austen had published 
 in Trans. Geol. Soc. (vi. 1842) flints widely distributed in loam under 
 the Kent's Hole stalagmite. In 1858 the new Brixham Cave w^as ex- 
 amined by the Royal Society, and made Prestwich and Falconer antedi- 
 luvianists. 
 
 t Annales de Chimie et de Physique, p. 161, 1833, Christol. Notice 
 BUT les ossements humains des cavernes du Gard. Montpellier, 1829. 
 
 t Lyell, Antiq. of Man, chap. iv. 1863. 
 
54 THE GEOLOGICAL [lECT. 
 
 ficial bones of deer, slieep, dogs, wild boars, oxen, and 
 horses ; but no elephant, rhinoceros, hyena, tiger, or other 
 extinct species found in caves had ever shown that these 
 aboriginal Celts had been their contemporaries.* 
 
 In 1833 appeared the great work f of Dr Schmei'ling of 
 Liege, in Belgium, who had been devoting several years 
 to the exploration of forty caverns in the valleys of the 
 river Mouse, the stalagmite floors of which had never 
 before been broken up. Here, mingled indiscriminately 
 with extinct bear, hyena, elephant, and rhinoceros, and 
 modern beaver, cat, wildboar, roebuck, hedgehog, and 
 wolf, above them and below them; and in the same degree 
 of preservation in all respects he found the rolled and 
 scattered bones of men. None of the common marks of 
 burial were seen. None of the bones were gnawed, as if 
 by animals. No coprolites or fossil dung of predatory 
 beasts were found ; the caves had not been dens. The 
 osseous stratum was an undoubted aqueous deposit, 
 brought into the caverns through fissures communicating 
 with the surface. Thousands of snail shells, and one- 
 snake, a few fresh-water fish-bones and the bones of 
 several birds led to the same conclusion. 
 
 In the Engis cave, eight miles S.W. of Liege, fragments 
 of three human bodies (chiefly skulls) were found. The 
 now celebrated Engis skull lay buried, five feet deep, in 
 the mud beneath the alabaster covei-ing, along with a 
 rhinoceros tooth and reindeer bones. 
 
 In the Engihoul cavern opposite, remains of at least 
 three bodies were discovered, chiefly belonging to the arms 
 and legs. 
 
 The Chokier cavern, two and a-half miles S.W. of 
 Liege, afi"orded many fragments of thi. bodies and limbs of 
 bears, but skulls were rare ; in otliei caves bear- skulls 
 were numerous, and trunk and limb bones rai^e; at Goffbn- 
 taine all parts were in proportion. In the Chokier cave he 
 found a polished bone needle with a hole pierced through 
 its base for an eye. Another cut bone was found in the 
 
 * Desnoyer, Bull, de la Soc. Geol. ii. 252. And S. V. Caverne, Diet. 
 Univ. d'Hist. Nat. Paris, 18-15. 
 
 t "Recherches sur les ossements fossiles d^couveds dans les cavernes 
 de la Province de Liege, 1833-1834. 
 
m.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 55 
 
 Engis cave ; and rude flint instruments, distributed through 
 red loam, were common in all the other caves. 
 
 Mankind -were obviously then contemporary with the ex- 
 tinct carnivora and pachyderms. So much was certainly 
 made out. But still, it had not been proved that these 
 tropical creatures had ever lived in Europe. Schmerlinu,' 
 imagined therefoi-e (that panacea for all geological difficult- 
 ies) a cataclysm or deluge, of undetermined date, which 
 had swept their bodies over from Africa to bury them upon 
 the shores of the Northern seas. Whether they had first 
 been left as a diluvial deposit on the surface of the land 
 and afterwards found their way into the caves he did not 
 undertake to determine. And he still further puzzled the 
 whole question by asserting that among the various re- 
 mains of other animals he had found those of the South 
 American agouti, which however afterwards turned out 
 to be those of an extinct species of French porcupine. 
 
 Eight more years passed in fruitless speculation ; during 
 which the patient Belgian continued to be let down by 
 ropes from the top of the crags which make the valleys of 
 the Mouse the most picturesque in the world, and to crawl 
 on his hands and knees, pick in hand, through the drip- 
 ping caves and fissures which penetrate the Devonian 
 limestone in every direction ; visited by geologists and 
 archaeologists from all parts of Europe, who could only 
 tell him stories of si^nilar discoveries made by themselves 
 in other regions, but nothing new; nothing to shed light 
 upon his splendid cabinet; nothing to solve the riddle by. 
 Then Isis smiled upon her puzzled priests, lifted another 
 corner of her veil, and made a new suggestion. The 
 answer to the conundrum began to shape itself at last in 
 intelligible words. 
 
 It was now 1841, when an old antiquary, walking out 
 from his chateau in the little city of Abbeville, through 
 which the highway runs from Boulogne-sur-mer to Paris, 
 where it crosses the river Somme, watched one day work- 
 men shovelling gravel from the quarries on the heights 
 beyond the city walls. Among the fantastic forms of 
 flint which they threw out his quick, experienced eye 
 detected, as he thought, one that looked unnatural. He 
 picked it up ;ind looked at it more carefully. Could he be 
 mistaken ? Plad he not seen such in cabinets of anti- 
 
66 THE GEOLOGICAL [lECT. 
 
 quities ? The more lie looked at it the more lie was con- 
 vinced that it had been tampered with ; in fact, manu- 
 factured by the hands of man. Yet how could that be ? 
 He asked the workman to show him the exact spot from 
 which it had been shovelled. It was a bed of waterworn 
 and broken flints^ deep beneath the surface, covered by a 
 deposit of loam, several yards in thickness.* None of the 
 other flints showed the same marks. They were rounded, 
 except where broken across, knobbed like potatoes when 
 they grow in a bunch attached together, and coated with a 
 crust of dull white substance due to the decomposition of 
 their surfaces. The piece he held in his hand, on the con- 
 trary, was of a regular shape, chipped to an edge on both 
 sides, and brought to a point at one end by the loss of a 
 multitude of little flakes, such as no attrition or percussion 
 in running waters could possibly effect. The other end 
 was round and still retained the dull white crust which 
 characterized the unmanufactured flints among which it 
 had lain embedded. He took it home. He went into his 
 museum. He compared it with stone hatchets, arrow- 
 points, spear-heads, chisels, and pointed tools of various 
 kinds which he had got from the Druid barrows and dol- 
 mens of Normandy. There was no mistaking its resem- 
 blance to these works of human art, some of which were 
 more carefully prepared, and were even polished ; but 
 others of them were quite as rude as the one which he had 
 fouud.t 
 
 Here then was a discovery ! But he was enough of a 
 geologist to see all its difficulties. He must be still more 
 sure that it was a genuine inhabitant of that bed of flints 
 beneath the bed of loam. Nay, his specimen would be 
 laughed to scorn if he presented it to the learned world 
 by itself. All the world would say that he had dropped it 
 
 * For a section and description of this famous locality, see Lyell's 
 Ant. of Man, p. 135. See Prestwich's section of the valley in the 
 Journal of Geol. Soc„ London. For section of description of Menche- 
 court quarries see Proceedings of Amer. Phil. Soc., 1864. 
 
 t There are also deeper cavities flaked out for the ends of the thumb 
 and index finger to be noticed in many of these tools, while some are 
 shown in this way to have been used alternately or at pleasure by grasp- 
 ing either end. — See also Mr Ramsay's testimony, in Lyell's Antiquity of 
 Man. 
 
 m 
 
III.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 57 
 
 accidentally from his pocket in among the debris of the 
 quarry, even if politeness or good nature prevented a more 
 damaging insinuation. Perhaps some workman had 
 picked it up upon the surface of the ground, and dropped 
 it in the quarry. All cabinet collectors know liow often 
 specimens get into wrong boxes. All geologists know 
 how easy it is to mistake the situation of a fossil. He 
 must find more of them or say nothing more about it. 
 
 For six long years Boucher de Perthes became as 
 sedulous a hanger-on about the quarries in the valley of 
 the Somme as any seedy old nobleman in the Quartier 
 Latin about the Luxembourg. And he was rewarded. As 
 the workmen advanced the headings of their pits and 
 opened back the flint bed which had the loam above it 
 and the solid chalk below it, the antiquary stood by (or his 
 servants for him when he was sick) and selected out the 
 manufactured flints one by one as they appeared. He feed 
 the workmen themselves to vigilance. When a flint in- 
 strument appeared they would leave it in its place and 
 send for the old crazy man, as they thought him, to come 
 from the city and take it out of its long resting-place him- 
 self. The number thus obtained was immense. At last 
 he could contain his knowleda;e no lono-er. He took a 
 thousand of them up to Paris and showed them to the 
 Academicians. But what did these men know ? It was a 
 favourite jest of a French wit that all the science of the 
 Royal Academy of France was. in the head of its 41st 
 member. It had but 40 members. Boucher de Perthes 
 was as much the old crazy man at Paris as at Abbeville. 
 
 In 1847 he published the first volume of his great book, 
 Antiquites Celtiques, in which he gave a full account of 
 his discoveries, calling them antediluvian, because they 
 were made in the bottom layers of what all geologists had 
 called the great Diluvium, or Diluvial Drift, taking their 
 terminology from the science of the 3Iiddle Ages, based 
 on the stories of the Sacred Scriptures of the Jews. His 
 account produced no impression. It was puzzling enough 
 to solve the riddle of the caves ; this man had proposed a 
 still more tremendous problem : how the remains of man 
 came to be buried in the rocks themselves. The easiest 
 way was to ignore the whole aflsiir. Some denied that the 
 tools were anvthing more than natural fragments. Others 
 
68 THE GEOLOGICAL [lECT. 
 
 denied that they were found 30 feet beneath the surface. 
 Elie de Beaumont, the disciple of Cuvier, and the head of 
 the geologists in France, reasserted Cu\aer^s opinion that 
 the old gravel-beds of the valley of the Somme had 
 slipped down the hill-sides to their present situation ; 
 therefore he did not care whether the flints were manu- 
 factured or not ; whether they were found 30 feet below 
 the surface or not. The quarries were only worked in 
 winter ; nobody in his senses would leave Paris in winter- 
 time to prove the assertions of a pro-vincial antiquarian 
 whose whole story was improbable, and if true would 
 upset all preconceived opinions. Even Dr Rigollet, who 
 lived in the same valley at Amiens, nol^ 30 miles from 
 Abbeville, and who had written in 1819 a memoir on the 
 fossil mammalia of the valley, took no pains to verify his 
 neighbour's facts for more than three years after the 
 Antiquites Celtiques appeared in press, but denied them 
 heartily, until he one day paid Boucher de Perthes a 
 visit and returned to his own home only to find similar 
 evidences of man's early existence in its immediate 
 vicinity ; nor did he publish his recantation for four more 
 years, after he had made a large collection for himself. 
 
 And so the matter rested. Boucher de Perthes went 
 on collecting specimens and enlarging and arranging his 
 cabinet, biding his time. It cam^at last. He was now the 
 great man of the day in geological archasology ; for, like 
 Linngeus, and Cuvier, and Lavoisier, and Hunter, he has 
 started one of the sciences on a new career. Let no man 
 doubt his own genius ! it is the suicide of immortality ! 
 
 The final impulse came at last, not from Germany the 
 land of abstract ideas, nor from France the land of wit 
 and mathematics, but from conservative, plodding, snob- 
 bish, prosaic old England the land of tardy, ungraceful, 
 but staunch, indomitable love of justice aiid the truth. 
 
 It had got to be now 1858, when the mouth of a new bone- 
 cave was discovered at Brixham,* five miles west of the old 
 Kent's Hole,t and the Koyal Society deputed its two most 
 
 * Three or four miles west of Torquay. 
 
 t One mile east of Torquay. In this cave Priest M'Encry had found 
 about 1830, in red loam under stalasrmite, mammoth, tichorine rhinooeros, 
 cave bear, &c. &c., with flint ; and LycU thinks he was only prevented by 
 his respect for Bnekland from expressing then his conviction that these 
 were 0')ntei)ii)orary fossils. (Note on p. 97 of Lyell's Aut. of Man.) 
 
 ^1 
 
III.! ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 59 
 
 famous diluvial fossil hunters^ Mr Prestwicli and Dr 
 Falconer (retui*ned from a glorious career in India and 
 now alas lost to us just as lie had become one of the 
 masters in our Israel) to examine it. They came — they 
 saw — and they were conquered. The united length of 
 five galleries cleared and examined was several hundred 
 feet. Their width nowhere exceeded eight feet. Some- 
 times they were filled to the very roof with gravel, bones, 
 and mud, the latter always covered with stalagmite, from 
 1 to 15 inches thick, itself sometimes containing bones, 
 e. g. a perfect antler of a reindeer and an entire humerus 
 of a bear. The loam or bone-earth under it was from 1 to 
 15 feet in depth. The gravel at the bottom contained no 
 rehcs, and was sometimes more than 20 feet in depth. 
 No human bones were found, but many flint knives, chiefly 
 in the lowest part of the red loam, one of the most perfect 
 having- 13 feet of bone-dirt over it, and some of them found 
 directly underneath the extinct forms embedded in the 
 stalagmite covering and therefore necessarily of an older 
 age. To add certainty to the date a perfect knife was 
 found close to and on a level with the left hind-leg of a 
 cave-bear, which had all its parts arranged in such complete 
 order that they must have been held together by the tis- 
 sues when they were floated into their resting-place be- 
 side the knife. 
 
 One more step taken and Boucher de Perthes was vindi- 
 cated and revenged. The step had to be taken. The ex- 
 plorers could not help noticing that the country about the 
 Brixham cave had suffered great changes to permit the cave 
 to be thus filled. The valleys had been lowered at least 60 
 feet since the introduction of the gravel to the cave. Then, 
 a strong stream ran throuo-h it rolling^ stones alono-. As 
 the waters became more quiet the red mud was deposited; 
 finally, the alabaster drippings had their day, interrupted 
 by recurrences of I'ainy eras of unknown duration. The 
 geological age of the deposit was therefore immense.* 
 
 Dr Falconer, shortly afterwards, on his way to Sicily 
 stopped at Abbeville and wrote to Mr Prestwich that 
 it was now high time to do something about the much-dis- 
 
 * See Lyell's discussion of the change of climate, based on the cliaraoter 
 of the Cyrena jinminalis, and of the change of sea level, Ant. Man, pp. 
 143, 177. 
 
60 THE GEOLOGICAL [lECT. 
 
 puted flints of Boucher de Perthes. Immediately a crowd 
 of people, John Evans, Mr Flower, Sir Charles Lyell, 
 Prof. Rogers, Mr George Pouchet, M. Gaudrv, M. Hebert, 
 Desnoyers, Quatrefages, everybody, now rushed down to 
 Abbeville, to St Acheul, to Pouen and to other places in 
 the valley of the Somme, to pick out flint implements with 
 their own hands from the diluvium. Soon a trade sprung 
 up between the quarrymen and travellers of all kinds. 
 The demand began to exceed the supply. The workmen 
 made experiments, and finding themselves as good as 
 savages, forged ancient knives with modern hammers out 
 of the diluvial flints. The cabinets of Europe and America 
 became stocked from Moulin Quignon and Menchecourt, 
 and the whole valley of the Somme fell once more into 
 disrepute. 
 
 But the whole thing was now un fait a<',compli. People 
 were at last convinced that man was no exception to the 
 fossil world. Englishmen who had fought so long against 
 the ante-diluvial age spread themselves through the libra- 
 ries of Oxford and Cambridge, and over the bogs and deltas 
 and downs of Great Britain, only to discover similar worked 
 flint deposits in diluvium with extinct animal remains in 
 many places themselves, and records of such discoveries 
 by others more than two centuries before. 
 
 A new impetus also was imparted to the exploration of 
 new caves, which is still carried on with unabated energy 
 and fine results. I have already tasked your patience too 
 severely this evening to impose upon you further even a 
 rude sketch of what these last seven years have produced : 
 the labours of Lartet in the south of France ; the discovery 
 of the Neanderthal skull ; the explorations carried on in 
 the lake villages of Switzerland; the cleaning out of a 
 great fissure in the Gibraltar mountain, and the curious 
 skeletons found therein ; the discovery of human bones in 
 the diluvium of Abbeville ; * the claim of Desnoyers to 
 
 • For the discussion on the jaw. see Quatrefages in the Contes Rendus 
 Lyell, Vogt, &c. In tlie Bullet. Soc. Geologique de France, xxviii., Nov., 
 Dec, 1864, p. 9.S, M. de Morcey refers to the discovery of the jaw, 28tli 
 March, 1863, and subsequent discoveries by Boucher de Perthes of others 
 at the base of tlie diluvium and in tlie top sand-layers. He adds that he 
 himself, with Dr Dubois and M. Butenx, saw others taken out from the base 
 of the deposit, July Ifith, 1864; and with Boucher de Perthes, Dubois, 
 and Rene Yion, Sept. 27th, 1864, a metacarpal bone and left index per- 
 
III.] ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 61 
 
 the determination of tertianj human relics far older than 
 the post-tertiary flint instruments of St Acheul and Abbe- 
 ville.* Some of these topics should come up again in my 
 next lecture on the comparative dignity of man. 
 
 But I cannot close to-night without making certain that 
 the gist of the question of man^s comparative antiquity 
 is clearly understood. It is not a question of a definite 
 number of years. No geologist pretends to fix an exact 
 date to any event in geology. It is one of the comparative 
 sciences, essentially so. The difference between tertiary 
 and post-tertiary counts for almost nothing in the entire 
 column of formations w^hich compose the crust of the earth, 
 as the tabular view next page will show. Yet it is immense, 
 enormous, shocking to the mind of man when applied to 
 his historic life on earth. It is considered a triumph of 
 discovery when we succeed in finding a reptile, or a fish, 
 or a plant in a subordinate formation only one degree 
 older tlia*n the oldest stratum in which as yet we have dis- 
 covered it. The whole creation has seemed as if creeping 
 backward — downward in the column of rocks, backward 
 in the ages — by such discoveries, annually nay daily 
 made by that busy crowd of lonely explorers whom, if we 
 had Uriels eyesight, we might see creeping and climbing 
 and hammering and picking and pocketing for home ex- 
 amination, note-book in hand, dispersed all over the civil- 
 ized, and here and there to be descried in the most remote 
 corners of the uncivilized, world. These men are poets, 
 working out the rhymes and the rhythm of that great 
 psalm of life which is to be sung in chorus when all work 
 is done ; when the young men will have much to say to 
 
 fectly preserved, ascribed by Gaudry to an adult man of ordinary size. 
 His whole paper, pp. 69—104, is full of interest; it is entitled, Note sur 
 les elements du terrain quaternaire aux environs de Paris, et specialement 
 dans le bassin de la Soninie ; par M. N. de Mercey. It is illustrated with 
 numerous excellent sections, &c. Also Troyon's L'liomme Fossile, p. 30. 
 * I say nothing of the human pelvis found at Natchez, and too confidently 
 accepted by Sir Charles Lyell (p. 200), because grave doubts still hover 
 about its authenticity. But while putting these pages to press the news 
 from Paris was received that at the meeting of the International An- 
 thropological Society in that city in August of this year, ' two memoirs 
 due to the Abbe Bourgeois and the Abbe Delaunay have established be- 
 yond doubt, that man was already in existence at tlie epoch of the Lower 
 Pleiocene.'— See also Lvell's discussion of the Lava Man of Denise (Ant. 
 Man, p. 194). 
 
62 
 
 THE GEOLOGICAL 
 
 [leoi. 
 
 >■ Post-tertiary. 
 
 LyelVs Tabular View of the Fossiliferous Strata.* 
 
 Recent 
 Post-pliocene 
 Newer-1 , 
 Older- J P^ 
 
 Upper-1 
 
 locene 
 
 miocene 
 
 Tertiary or Cainozoio. 
 
 ►Cretaceous 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 Lower-j 
 
 7 Upper- 
 
 8 Middle- [-eocene 
 
 9 Lower- J 
 
 10 Maestricht beds 
 
 TOT ' >wliite chalk 
 
 12 Lower- J 
 
 13 Upper- 1 
 
 14 Gault S-green sand 
 
 15 Lower- J 
 
 16 Wealden 
 
 17 Purbeck beds 
 
 18 Portland stone 
 
 19 Kimmeridge clay 
 
 20 Coral rag 
 
 21 Oxford clay 
 
 22 Great Bath-l 
 
 23 Inferior- 
 
 24 Lias 
 
 25 Upper- 
 
 26 Muschelkalk 
 
 27 Lower- J 
 
 28 Magnesian limestone or Permian 
 
 29 Coal measures 1 n i, -r 
 
 on /-I 1- -p T i. ^Carbomieroas 
 
 30 CarbomierouslimestoneJ 
 
 o ^ T ' i-Devonian 
 
 32 Lower-; 
 
 33 UPP<"-jsiIurian 
 
 6\- Lower- J 
 
 35 pPPor-|Q^j^^^,-.^^^^g^j,Q^i^j^ 
 
 3() Lower-J 
 
 38 Lower-}^^"^'^^*^^° 
 
 * Antiquity of Man, p. 7. 
 complete the column. 
 
 oolite 
 
 Secondary or 
 Mesozoic. 
 
 ■Jurassic 
 
 !>Triassic 
 
 Primary or 
 Palaeozoic. 
 
 The Uuronian and Laureutian are added to 
 
in.l ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 63 
 
 the propliets that will astonish them. And nothing will 
 more astonish them than what they shall hear sung of the 
 antiquity of the race which they belonged to, and glorified, 
 but which they imagined had been created only two or 
 three thousand years before their individual selves. 
 
 I said, no scale of years ! I must modify the expression. 
 I should have said no scale of years in a condition to be 
 used. Imagine a corps of detectives, belonging to the 
 secret police, excited by the news of the commission of 
 some masterpiece of felony, and stimulated by profes- 
 sional zeal, ambition, and the hopes of a large reward, who 
 have come upon the trail of the criminals, have found 
 traces of their work, have collected a little heap of letters 
 torn into minute fragments by the rascals, and are now 
 sitting round a table sorting the tiny shreds, all crumbled 
 up and half illegible with lying in the mud. See them 
 examine piece after piece and utter a suppressed exclama- 
 tion when they detect a part of a word that they can 
 recognize ! See them lay the ragged edges of a dozen of 
 them together and shift and turn them about until they fit 
 and form a larger piece ! See them hand their odd pieces 
 across the table to each other, that what one man cannot 
 use another may be more fortunate with ! Until the hours 
 go by, and the documents beg"in to assume a form, and 
 the handwriting begins to make sense, and the key is got, 
 and they break up the midnight party, tired, but jolly, 
 and masters of the evidence that shall hano- the rog-ues ! 
 
 Such, if you will believe it, is the condition of the scale 
 of years, which (originally, perfect and abundant evidence 
 of the work which sunlight and moon-attraction have 
 been doing on the surface of the earth) has been all torn 
 to pieces, defaced and covered up by the same cunning 
 sun and moon, — is now being picked up and washed and 
 put together and restored by the geologists. The rings 
 of bark in trees submerged in deltas ; the rain-drop, 
 worm-trail, footstep impressions left on the thin laminas of 
 tidal estuary mud ; the growth of peat in ditches cut for 
 fuel at the present day ; the wear and tear of basaltic 
 columns against which abut the arches of a Roman bridge ; 
 the number of lava currents and interveningf vegetable 
 moulds over buried cities ; the height of belts of teredo 
 holes around the columns of Jupiter Serapis at Baias; the 
 
64 THE GEOLOGICAL [lECT, 
 
 annual rate of emergence of well-known boulders in the 
 waters of ttie Gulf of Bothnia, and of submergence of the 
 missionary villages of Greenland ; * the measurement of 
 the three arches of black mould in the railway cutting 
 through the cone of the Tiniere in the Canton de Vaud, 
 the upper arch containing iron relics of the Roman age, 
 the middle arch containing bronze relics of the copper age, 
 and the lowest arch containing only hammers and arrow- 
 heads of the stone age, and calculated by Morlot to be 
 from 5000 to 7000 years old ; the rate of growth of suc- 
 cessive layers of cypress forests found in probing the plain 
 of New Orleans; the rate of growth of the concentric 
 coral reefs of Florida ; the annual rate of increase of the 
 Nile sediment obtained by many scores of borings, made 
 across the valley; the rate at which old Sanscrit books 
 inform us of the settlement of the valley of the Ganges, 
 and the filling up of the marsh lands of Bengal ; — all these 
 and many more are fragmentary shreds of a scale of years, 
 which we hope some day to put together so that we can 
 read and use it to determine the length of time between 
 the close of the tertiary era and the present day ; between 
 the close of the tertiary era and the glacial drift ; or if 
 nothing more, the date of the glacial epoch itself, previous 
 to which it seems that man existed on the earth. t 
 
 * Here would come in the whole subject of terrace formations, much too 
 extensive a theme to be meddled with in a lecture. See, for example, 
 those of Quain Clubbe, in Lyell's Antiquity of Man, p. 240. See also J. 
 r. Campbell's Frost and Fire, i. p. 357. Lond. 1845. Lyell's Principles, 
 XXX. cli. Chambers made the Quain Clubbe terraces respectively, 5G, 65, 
 and 155 above the sea ; but at Trondjim there is one 522 feet above sea- 
 level. According to Celsius and the ancient geographers, Scandinavia 
 was an island after the time of Pliny and before the 9tli century. (Lvell, 
 p. 52.) 
 
 t But Lyell seems to assert the contrary, when he says (Antiq. Man, 
 p. 241), 'This period [of continental ice], probably anterior to the earliest 
 traces yet brought to light of the human race, may have coincided \\ith 
 the submergence of England.' ' And the accumulation of the boulder-clay 
 of Norfolk, Sulfolk, and Bedfordshire ' (p. 218). On the other hand, it is 
 very evident from Heer's account of the XJtznach (Zurich) peat-coal 
 beds (in his Urwelt der Schweiz) occurring, as they do, between two 
 boulder-clay formations, that there were two separate glacial periods with 
 a modern climate period intervening. So too the Sahara seems, by 
 Desor's account of Mar^s's discoveries of fresh-water shells (planorbis) 
 92'"- down the artesian wells, to have been twice submerged, to correspond 
 with the two glacial eras. Desor shows by the New Zealand glaciers, 
 &c., the improbability of any nnkersul glacial era. 
 
Ill,] ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 65 
 
 In conclusion, I will adduce one more such fragment. 
 It is not only a remarkable example of the method to be 
 used, but to show you how well based our hopes must be. 
 It is, in fact, the latest, the finest, and if it were proved 
 genuine, an absolutely perfect demonstration of the great 
 antiquity of man. It is not in any of the books ; I trust 
 that IVI. Agassiz on his return from South America will be 
 able to set before us its full value. I obtain it through my 
 friend, Dr Henderson, of the United States navy, himself 
 an experienced geologist. But the actual observer of the 
 fact was a Naturalist of Eio Janeiro, Dr Ildefonso, formerly 
 well known to the scientific world. 
 
 Dr Ildefonso, with his amiable daughters, had been 
 amusing themselves for a number of years before Dr H.''s 
 visit, in exploring the stalagmite caves which are scattered 
 over a considerable region around the harbour of Eio. 
 He had obtained a multitude of fossils from a bone-clay 
 beneath the stalagmite floor, similar to that which charac- 
 terizes the ossuary caves of Europe. Among these fossils 
 I understand that he had found the vestiges of man. But 
 the important point lies here. The stalagmite deposit 
 over the bone-mud is not an amorphous and iri^egular 
 plate, as it necessarily must be in climates like ours where 
 rain falls at all seasons of the year and the dripping of 
 carbonated waters from the roof must needs be therefore 
 continual. The climate of the tropics is humid only half 
 the year and dry the rest. Consequently the alabaster of 
 Brazilian caves shows annual laminae of gTOwth analog-ous 
 to the ring-growth in trees. Now Dr Ildefonso asserted 
 that he and his daughters had repeatedly counted these 
 annual layers and found them number as high as twenty 
 thousand. 
 
 I leave you to draw the inference. Agassiz estimates 
 the age of some fragments of a human skeleton which 
 Count Pourtalos found embedded in a coral reef in Florida 
 at 10,000 years.* Dr Dowler estimates the age of a 
 human skeleton found beneath the fourth cypress forest at 
 New Orleans at 50,000 years. f The borings of Linant 
 
 * The southern half of the peninsula is post-tertiary, and Agassiz 
 says 135,000 years were needful for its formation. See Nott and 
 Guddon, p. 52. 
 
 t Types of Mankind, p. 352. 
 
66 THE GEOLOGICAL [lKOT, 
 
 Bey brought up works of Egyptian art from a depth of 72 
 feet, which M. Rosiere estimates at 30,000 years. If 
 Girard's estimate of the growth of the Nile mud be con- 
 sidered more correct, the burnt bricks found to the depth 
 of 60 feet below the surface in the borings of Hake Kyan 
 Bey must have been 14,000 years old. Yet these are mere 
 modern alluvions compaz^ed with the diluvium of Abbe- 
 ville. And this again can bear no comparison in antiquity 
 with the least ancient of the true tertiary strata. My own 
 belief is but the reflection of the growing sentiment of 
 the whole geological world — a conviction strengthening 
 every day, as you may with little trouble see for your- 
 selves by glancing through the magazines of current 
 scientific literature — that our race has been upon the earth 
 for hundreds of thousands of years. 
 
 In what condition I will endeavour to suggest in the 
 next lecture. 
 
 But as I have given a general scheme of formations on 
 page 62, and as I have referred repeatedly to the fossil 
 species with which the remains of man are found in the 
 ossuary cave mud and the diluvium, I shall add here the 
 latest classification of the subdivisions of the human epoch 
 based on contemporary animal remains, and given by Prof. 
 B. Eenevier, of Lausanne, in a note supplementary to the 
 posthumoiis work of M. Troyon, entitled L'honime fossile 
 and published in July of 1867. 
 
 M. Lartet distinguishes four ages of mankind : — 1. the 
 age of the great cave bear; 2. of the elephant and rhino- 
 ceros ; 3. of the reindeer ; 4. of the aurochs. 
 
 M. Troyon, following M. d^Archiac, describes in his 
 chapter of the four epochs of the age of Stone : — 1. the 
 epoch of the great bear; 2. the epoch of the mammoth; 
 3. the epoch of the reindeer; 4. the epoch of the Urus. 
 
 M. Renevier's scheme is as follows : — 
 
 I. Epoch Ant^-glacial, in which man was contemporary 
 with the Ele[ilias antiqiivs, Rhinoceros liemitoeclius, and 
 Ursus spelceus. During this period man has not been 
 proved to exist in the Alpine regions of Europe. 
 
 II. Epoch Glacial, during which man was contemporary 
 with the Elephas prirnigeniiis, Rhinoceros tichorldniis, Ursus 
 speJi-Pus, &c. Switzerland desert and covered with glaciers, 
 to the exclusion of man. 
 
in.] ANTIQUITY OP MAN. 67 
 
 III. Epoch Post-glacial^ during which man, contempo- 
 rary of the Ele^'has pnmigenius and Cervus tarandus, had 
 approached the Alpine countries as near as Schussenried 
 in Wurtemberg. 
 
 IV. Epoch Actual, during which man had penetrated 
 Switzerland, with the Cervus elaphus, Bus primigenius, &c., 
 and begun to construct plank villages on piles in lakes 
 which had the same water-level as at present. 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 
 ON THE DIGNITY OF MANKIND. 
 
 Man walks enveloped in the mystery of his own exist- 
 ence. How lie exists he knows not. Why he exists he 
 can only conjecture. What he is, is the last question ever 
 answered to his satisfaction^ by God, by nature, or by his 
 own heart. All philosophies have been poor inventions to 
 manufacture weak replies to it. To-night we stand as 
 helplessly aghast at our creation as if no generations had 
 preceded us. We look into each others' faces and wonder 
 how it comes that we are formed erect, intelligent ; while 
 things around us creep, or swim, or fly, speechless and 
 servile. 
 
 Out of this wonderment has sprung the science of Com- 
 parative Zoology. Anxious to know ourselves, we turn 
 from side to side to examine curiously the living creatures 
 in the world about us. Perhaps comparison with them 
 will teach us something. 
 
 Among the endowments of our human nature must be 
 numbered a keen sense of its own dignity. It is possible 
 that animals may enjoy and be benefited by a like con- 
 sciousness. Some of their actions intimate as much. You 
 remember the fable of the Artist and the Lion. 
 
 The artist showed the lion his last picture, a lion slain 
 by a man who stood in a conquering attitude over him. 
 ' It is a very fine painting,^ remarked the lion ; ' that is, 
 considering that the painter was a man ; but if we lions 
 were artists we should manage the subject more agreeably 
 to the truth and fitness of things ; the posture of the two 
 principal figures would be reversed.' 
 
 In ancient times apologue and allegory was the favourite 
 
ON THE DIGNITY OF MANKIND. 69 
 
 form of uttered wisdom. Euclid and ^sop ruled the 
 world of intellect together ; and were as truly the masters 
 of the masters of the portico and the grove as the child is 
 father to the man. The fable is a key to the transition of 
 man from a state of barbarism to a state of civilization. 
 It marks the joining line where the quick observant fancy 
 meets the reflecting intellect. The vivacity of nature is 
 not yet lost ; the majesty of knowledge is not yet quite 
 assumed. The poet, the philosopher has been born, but 
 the fimiculum' uteri is not yet cut. The fable is a constant 
 quantity in the Development Theory ; and rules as mightily 
 to-day among the Red Indians of America, and among 
 the boys of the public schools of Boston, as ever it did in 
 the days of Samson and Abimelech. 
 
 Necessity is the mother of that invention which we call 
 Natural History. Whatever the exigencies of the savage 
 life demand, that, of course, monopolizes all its energies 
 of observation. The Indian tribes of our North- West 
 when asked the name of any one of the thousand flowers 
 which bloom upon their prairies, answer simply, ' flower.' 
 They have but this one name for all of them, for all of 
 them are useless. But if you ask these savages the name 
 of any of their trees you will receive a score where we have 
 only one, for they employ a separate name for every slight 
 variety of every species of growing wood ; because their 
 very lives depend on knowing which will serve them best. 
 Consequently, the names they give describe utilities. It 
 is a mistake to suppose that savages have keener senses, 
 or superior powers of observation than the highly-educated 
 and moi'e intellectually endowed civilized man. For dis- 
 crimination is more the product of systematic language 
 than of eyesight. Yet, on certain sides, the sides of life 
 and death we may well call them, the unhappy savage 
 makes himself amazingly acute. His names for things 
 which interest him ai^e a study of precise description. 
 But he always seizes his victim by the hair of the head ; 
 he calls things only by their initials; therein he diflers 
 from our naturalist who must give Christian, middle, and 
 surname in full, and loves to add the title and address 
 besides. The savage lights up his subject with a flash ; 
 in the dark chamber of the pyramid, his living tomb, he 
 
70 ON THE DIGNITY [lECT. 
 
 walks by matchliglit, not by sunlight. But his match is a 
 magnesium wii*e ; and for the moment that it lasts it shines 
 forth like the sun itself. 
 
 When the Cherokees first saw the horse bestrode by 
 De Soto they were as much amazed as were the soldiers of 
 Fabricius when they first beheld the elephants of Pyrrhus. 
 But they named it instantly " the animal with a single 
 finger-nail.'^ Modern science has made no better general- 
 ization than this uniungulus. If there be a characteristic 
 posture for a frog or lizard the Algonquin will be sure to 
 show it on the bowl of his tobacco-pipe, the Mexican on 
 the temple sculptures in honour of his god. Ethnologists 
 have made great capital out of this. The oblique eye and 
 elevated ear of the Egyptian eflfigy is one of the archseo- 
 logical puzzles yet unsolved. 
 
 The same instantaneous play of instinct, through the 
 observant fancy of the deaf and dumb, sparkles upon the 
 whole surface of their poetic nomenclature. They catch 
 the slightest peculiarity of each individual for whom they 
 need a name and name him from it by some appropriate, 
 imitative, or descriptive gesture : — one from a mole in the 
 cheek ; another from his height or dwarfishness ; another 
 from always sitting cross-legged ; another from an habitual 
 pensiveness. We grade nations in the scale of civilization, 
 by this propensity. People who are given to gesticulation 
 when they talk, the Italians and the French for instance, 
 are set down as imperfectly cultivated nations ; for gesti- 
 culation when spontaneous is imitative, the supplement of 
 language, making its shortcomings good. The well-bred 
 gentleman has a quiet mien because in his position the 
 brain relieves the body of all responsibility ; because 
 abstract ideas take the place of concrete examples not 
 only in his solitaiy hours of thought but in his intercourse 
 with gentlemen. The highest conversation goes on by 
 hints, not by descriptions of things. The intercourse of 
 low-bred people and of the savage world of man in every 
 age must ever be the prosy iteration of details. 
 
 The development of the savage faculty of observation 
 under the tuition of our modern information makes the 
 technical naturalist, the describer of details, the mere 
 determiner and namer of species of animate and inanimate 
 things. This is the lowest order among men of science. 
 
17.1 OF MANKIND. 71 
 
 COBstituting a class which represents the savage or prim- 
 eval man iu the circle of the highest civilization ; a class 
 characterized also by two other well-marked traits common 
 to savages — an inordinate jealousy and love for personal 
 reputation in details — and a materialism, springing from 
 too close and too unintei-rupted dealings with liesh and 
 blood alone. Even the laws which this class of naturalists 
 discover are laws of form, and are soon personified by them 
 as the sole deities. 
 
 No student of nature is competent to be ennobled until 
 he has begun to reason largely upon his observations and 
 to put his well-bred fancy to its higher trials with courage, 
 hope, and modesty. The genuine man of science is like 
 the new spider which they are stud^'ing at the Cambridge 
 Botanical Gardens. It has two spinnerets. With one it 
 spins a coarse, strong, silvery-coloured thread which it uses 
 for the radii and stanchions of its Aveb. I'heu afterwards 
 with the other it spins a finei golden-coloured silk, with 
 which it fills-in all the intervals, and so completes the har- 
 mony and beauty of its web, establishes unity, and makes 
 a net for every kind of flies. We tie our observations 
 together with our theories. We strengthen science by dis- 
 cussing facts ; but we must reason on them or they bring 
 us in no food. And the food we need is not barren facts 
 for the understanding so much as noble fertile ideas for 
 the soul. 
 
 An entomologist who neither knows nor cares to know 
 the divine effusions of the Christian heart — who speaks 
 with contempt of all philosophy — scoffs at the mention of 
 the spiritual — hoots metaphysics out of the academy — and 
 is even petulant with his brother nomenclators if they ex- 
 press some natural aspirations of the human heart for freer 
 space than that afforded by the limits of a memoir on the 
 comparative anatomy of Holothuria Smensis or Spirlfer 
 semi reticulata — such a naturalist (and there are plenty of 
 them) is as ridiculous to the eye of science as is the clergy- 
 man who not only does not know but does not want to 
 know the normal number of legs in the fly that buzzes 
 about his sermon, or in the sedate old lady spider that 
 spins in the corner of his ceiling. 
 
 In nothing is the narrowing tendency of mere termino- 
 logical natural science more clearly seen in our day than in 
 
72 ON THE DIGNITY [leCT. 
 
 the copious and often heated discussions to which the 
 Development Theory as applied to man has given rise. 
 At the risk of being accounted either prosy or else unin 
 telligible I must endeavour to give some account of this 
 theory, which, whether right or wrong, is too important to 
 be overlooked, too noble to be despised, too nearly related 
 to the truth to be treated by friend or foe with anything 
 but the highest respect. It is, in fact, a supplement to the 
 Nebular Hypothesis. What that proposed to do for the 
 worlds in space, the solar system, our earth and its whole 
 inorganic constitution, this purposes to do for the organic 
 kingdoms, taking the subject of creation up where its 
 first chapter ends — where life begins. Together, the two 
 theories form one tremendous whole, one scheme of 
 thought, the highest reaching after transcendental truth 
 which the intellect of man has ever made. 
 
 The subject has been regarded from three points of view. 
 Three questions may be asked respecting the plan of 
 creation. One is a German question ; one is a French 
 question ; one is an English question. Let them come in 
 that order. 
 
 Hegel, the master of modern German philosophy until 
 recently — and to a greater or less extent all the rest of the 
 German metaphysicians — consider matter a mere pheno- 
 menon of mind. They believe, as Bishop Berkeley 
 taught, that all thiugs are ideas. They ask : What Plan 
 had the creative intellect within itself ? What was the 
 primeval order of the Creator^s thoughts ? They say : If 
 we can discover that, we need ask no more, for what we 
 look at is not real ; things are not what they seem ; 
 creation is the dream, the reverie, the phantasia of the 
 Infinite Intelligence. 
 
 Opposed to this transcendental school stands the po- 
 sitivism of Comte and his numerous followers, perfectly 
 characteristic of French thought, French life, French 
 taste, French science. According to this, we know what 
 we know because it is knowable fact, because the visible 
 universe is a great reality, because its actions towards us 
 are genuine and complete instruction. But of God and 
 his intelligence we know nothing. The plan of creation 
 is a catalogue of the actual sequences and consequences in 
 nature. 
 
rv.] OF MANKIND. 73 
 
 In England, that clear, wise, gentle writer of our day, 
 Herbert Spencer, is just now busy resuming all tliat a third 
 class of thinkers have been saying iu what may be called, 
 with some propriety an eclectic system ; somewhat uncer- 
 tain, as all eclectics must be ; but eminently practical, as 
 all Englishmen must also be. On the one hand, they deny 
 that we can learn the secrets of the Divine Will ; on the 
 other hand, they den}' that we can prove the truth of facts 
 as everlasting facts. They prefer to say that we can only 
 see with the eyes given us and reason with the logic of a 
 man. They demand only what is that best mode of organ- 
 izing our observations in a reasonable manner so as to 
 produce the most harmonious and satisfying system of 
 nature as it seems to us ; leaving the questions of reality, 
 certainty, divine intention, and all that, entirely out of 
 mind for the pi'esent. 
 
 You will not be displeased if I decline to enter more 
 deeply into explanations or discussions of these various 
 philosophic stand-points in a lecture devoted to a special 
 subject. It would be easy to point out the numerous absurd- 
 ities and inconsistencies which the uncommitted thinker 
 cannot be blind to in their advocates, even while he finds 
 himself bending more favourably to one than to another 
 according to the constitution of his mind and the subject 
 nature of his studies. Yet it is by the counterblasts of 
 these three great winds of doctrine that the waves have 
 been tossed so high about the double question of the 
 Nebular Hypothesis and Development Theory. The grand 
 debate is, on the one hand, whether God had any forth- 
 going, consistent, consecutive, advancing, and developing 
 plan in his own mind before he created the universe ; or 
 w^hether he fixed such a law of development in its nature ; 
 or, on the other hand, whether all such supposed plans are 
 merely in man^s eye ; the useful but vain endeavour of us 
 intelligent spectators to grasp the details of this divine in- 
 vention in some systematic mode, to avoid confusing our 
 own intelligence. If there be no plan except such as each 
 man can feign unto himself, science has nothing to do with 
 it. But if there be one, then science cannot rest until it 
 be made out precisely, completely. If it be in nature, 
 nature will show it by her works, or rather by her growth. 
 If it be in God, God will declare it, seriatim, by miracle or 
 
74 ON THE DIGNITY 
 
 [LBCT. 
 
 otlierwise. If it be in both, man cannot fail to learn it 
 sooner or later ; even if its most perfect comprehension be 
 reserved for higher intelligences. 
 
 You will say that this is all words ! words ! I grant it. 
 And yet this represents the first stage of the controversy; 
 and makes those who ofi'er ' divine plans ' for considera- 
 tion the enemies of those who deny all possibility of a 
 divine plan outside of the human mind. The hostility of 
 supporters of different divine plaxis towards each other has 
 a different foundation. One school accuses the other of 
 excluding God from nature; of refusing the Creator access 
 to his own creation. The other school retorts that it is 
 superstition, not reverence, to require the painful, toil- 
 some, endless supervision and revision of the Deity, if his 
 work be perfectly constructed at the outset, and full of 
 living, moving, renovating, growing forces, like a tree or 
 human brain. Between these combatants who can me- 
 diate ? None but Deitv itself. Science has no argument 
 paramount to close the lists or proclaim the victor. Science 
 is the study of phenomena, not of essences ; the measurer, 
 not the explainer of forces ; the observer, not the com- 
 prehender of the laws of nature. 
 
 But even when we abandon, as we must, all transcend- 
 ental considerations, and confine the subject strictly within 
 the pale of science, we still hear vehement debating. If 
 we ask men of science whether, when they examine the 
 universe, the world we live in, the life of the planet, they 
 discover traces of confusion and disorder, they answer 
 unanimously, No ! Everything works according to fixed 
 laws now ; everything seems to have come into being in an 
 orderly manner through all past ages. 
 
 But if we ask them what particular order, or plan, or 
 system can be made out according to which the progress 
 of events can be classified they begin at once to contra- 
 dict each other. 
 
 Remember that I am only speaking of the world of life, 
 of the organic forms of living beings. Setting aside 
 minor differences of view among botanists and zoologists 
 I will designate three principal divergent theories of the 
 development of life upon the planet, based all of them upon 
 that record which is written in the rocks, and which yoa 
 will find imperfectly described in the best and latest works 
 
IV.] OK MANKIND. 75 
 
 on geology. All agree, 1. That there is an evident progress 
 in the appearance of higher and higher forms upon the 
 plauot through the geological ages. All agrce^ 2. That 
 the exact epoch of the appearance of this or that form can- 
 not be made certain; first, because the record in the rocks 
 is itself not complete ; and, secondly, because our examin- 
 ation of the record is still less complete. New discoveries 
 every day teach us to be careful how we dogmatize about 
 one shell having been created before another, or about the 
 absolute non-existence of any bird during the previous 
 reptilian era, &c. All agree, 3. That a multitude of inter- 
 mediate or synthetic types (as they are now called) will be 
 discovered, making the series more complete, filling up 
 gaps between widely diS'erent kinds or genera, to say 
 nothing of species, of animals and plants. There have 
 lately been found, for instance, fossil horses with deer^s 
 feet, mammoths with the marsupial pouch, a lizard with 
 feathered wings and tail, showing how little prepared we 
 are yet to establish our schedule of organic forms. 
 
 But all agree, nevertheless, 4. That taking what has been 
 discovered altogether, there is a marked order in point of 
 time not to be mistaken. The most numerous fossils in 
 the earliest rocks are corals, sea-weeds, bivalve shells, and 
 such low forms of animated nature. In the formations 
 over those we find land plants and fishes of low forms in 
 vast dbundance. In still higher rocks we first find multi- 
 tudes of reptiles, and cephalopods among the shells. Still 
 later comes the age of birds ; later still that of the mam- 
 mals and deciduous trees ; last of all as a characteristic 
 feature, man. 
 
 All agree, however, 5. That this order of events is 
 general, not special ; and only appears on a grand sketch 
 from which a multitude of inconsistent or confusing or 
 doubtful details are left out. 
 
 Still all agi-ee, 6. To accept this general system of devel- 
 opment as a rude, rough whole ; a kind of blocking out 
 the statue ; and that it must mean something. 
 
 But now for what it means. Now they begin to disagree 
 coming to particulars. 
 
 The first debate arises over the question of the solidarity 
 of the system. One party contending that there is no 
 hreah in it. The other party takes exactly the opposite 
 
76 ON THE DIGNITY [lECT, 
 
 ground^ contending that there can be no real connection in 
 it ; that the breaks in the line are infinite ; that they are 
 patent to every eye, and form in fact the very basis of the 
 science of geology. Mr Agassiz has gone so far as to as- 
 sert that two fossils, although exactly similar to the human 
 eye, cannot be of the same species if they are found in 
 different formations however near ; and he has applied 
 the same canon to the subject of different localities in one 
 age, affirming that two shells, although to all appearance 
 of the same species, cannot be in reality the same if found 
 on both sides of the Atlantic* On the other hand, Mr 
 Darwin, following up the arguments of Lord Monboddo, 
 M. Lamarck, and Mr Chambers, and followed in his turn 
 by Grey, and Huxley, and other first-class botanists and 
 zoologists, — Mr Darwin has astonished the world with the 
 opinion, that there can be no radical disconnection between 
 any two living beings ; and that all geological gaps would 
 be filled up and bridged over with intermediate forms if 
 our search after them were but sufficiently shrewd and pro- 
 tracted. He asserts in fact, that nature started with the idea 
 of simple cell-life, which gradually increased, combined, im- 
 proved, and perfected itself through an infinity of forms of 
 plant and animal, until we see all things as they stand and 
 move to-day. Monboddo and Lamarck indeed gave fan- 
 ciful accounts of this extensive and mysterious process ; 
 applying their theories chiefly to the case of man, to ex- 
 plain why he had left the trees or the shore, and how he 
 had lost his tail. To the great naturalist of the Pacific 
 Ocean belongs the honour of organizing in a reasonable 
 manner this side of the qviestion. It has therefore come 
 to be known by the name of the Darwinian hypothesis as 
 well as by any other. I must refer you to his own descrip- 
 tion of that theory of ' Natural Selection,' by which he 
 tries to account for the transition steps along the line of 
 change, and to explain the sudden and frequent breaks 
 which are apparent in its course. It is a great thought, 
 and deserves the honours heaped upon it. And all allow 
 that it is true if kept within the regions of variety. But 
 whether it be true for actual specific differences, and tliere- 
 fore for changes of genus, family, or class, there are vehe- 
 
 * Mr Conrad, who not two years ago opposed this view as extravagant, 
 now seems inclined to acquiesce in it as probably correct. 
 
IV.] OF MAXKIND. 77 
 
 ment disputings. And I can see no mode of settling tliem 
 if we cannot take nature in the very act of exchanging one 
 species for another, or converting one species into another. 
 
 The second subject of debate respects the unity of the 
 system. Is there but one series; or ai'e there several 
 parallel series of organic forms ? 
 
 The Immortal Cuvier established the grand quaternion 
 of tjrpes which all modern comparative zoology virtually 
 accepts. He divided the animal world into Radiata or 
 creatures constructed as if branching out from a centre 
 in several directions, like star-fish, — Articulata, creatures 
 constructed by addition lengthwise, like the worms, — Mol- 
 lusca, creatures with two parts symmetrically fitting along 
 a vertical line, like the clam, — Vertehrata, creatures with a 
 backbone, or, as Agassiz would have it, with two parts 
 unsymmetrically fitting along a horizontal line. 
 
 The question then comes up, whether between these 
 four plans on which all animals are made there can be 
 discovered any logical distinction as to worth or dignity. 
 The radiates, it is true, are all low creatures. But among 
 the articulates we find the bee ; and among the molluscs 
 the cuttlefish, both of them creatures of high breeding and 
 intelligence. The great development of brain indeed be- 
 longs exclusively to the vertebrates; but so far as we 
 can see, there was yet no inherent impossibility in the at- 
 tachulent of such a brain to any radiated or annulated body. 
 In fact, the backbone of a vertebrate is itself an annulated 
 system, giving off nervous branches from a series of gangli- 
 onic nodes. It is argued then with some plausibility, that 
 these four capital types of animal creation have no com- 
 parative dignity in themselves; and that that is an idio- 
 syncrasy of man. They are each and all perfectly and 
 beautifully adapted to their circumstances, — the mollusca 
 to the waters, the articulata to the air, the vertebrata to 
 the land, and the radiates to the planes and lines where 
 air and land and water meet. It ought not, therefore, to 
 be expected that one or other of them should take pre- 
 cedency in the creation either in respect to government 
 or in respect to seniority. In other words, the earliest 
 dawn of life should show us at the same time molluscs 
 inhabiting the sea, insects in the air, vertebrates on land, 
 and radiates where land and water meet. 
 
78 ON THB DIGNITY [lECT. 
 
 Now how stand the facts ? In the Potsdam sandstone, 
 the rock at the base of the Lower Silurian system, and the 
 oldest rock in which fossils have been found in both variety 
 and abundance, there are multitudes of corals and seaweed, 
 multitudes of worms and trilobites, multitudes of bivalves 
 and univalves, and the foot-prints, at least, of vertebrate 
 animals, which make the representation of all the four 
 kingdoms complete. 
 
 If there has been a Darwinian development of animal life 
 upon the planet, then it looks as if it had been carried out 
 along four lines rather than one. Four stand-points of creat- 
 ive energy must have been assumed ; four startiugs out of 
 life must be accounted for ; four mysteries, four miracles, 
 four beginnings of creation, to be developed instead of one I 
 But where all is mystery and miracle additions are hardly 
 noticeable. It becomes Mr Darwin's business, then, not only 
 to suggest some plausibly rational mode by which one spe- 
 cies could gradually or suddenly pass the short interval 
 which separates it from another ; his explanation must suf- 
 fice to bridge the awful chasms which have always kept 
 these four great plans of structure separate along the lines 
 of their development. He must show us how an animal of 
 radial growth could be developed into one of linear growth. 
 Nay, he must fill up the immense interval between the 
 plant and the animal ; and, finally, the chasm between the 
 atom of carbon or hydrogen, and the nucleated cell of albu- 
 men or fibrin. He must explain the genius of life itself before 
 he can make his law of natural selection stand for anything 
 more than a beautifully-worded description of the ills that 
 all flesh falls heir to when it is born upon this planet. How 
 it is born upon the planet is another matter and remains 
 unexplained by his hypothesis. We do not get rid of mira- 
 cles by chasing them back along the ages to the starting- 
 point and concentrating them there. A line of battle is 
 not necessaidly vanquished and annihilated when it is rolled 
 up by an attack upon one flank, when there is a reserved 
 force at the other end. 
 
 You see, this train of argument attacks not so much the 
 special statements of the Darwinian hypothesis, as its very 
 foundiitions. It says to Mr Darwin, My dear sir, you have 
 four times as much to do as you thought you had. You 
 must nut imly explain how a man came from a monkey. 
 
IV.] OF MANKIND. 79 
 
 and a monkey from a squirrel, and a squirrel from a bat, 
 and a bat from a bird, and a bird from a lizard, and a lizard 
 from a fish ; but you must suggest some possible means of 
 transforming a vertebrate fish out of a shell fish, or out of 
 a jelly fish, or out of a lobworm or trilobite ; then you must 
 go on to show us how the first trilobite, or the first coral 
 animal, or the first rhizopod was obtained by your process 
 of natural selection out of still earlier vegetable species. 
 Xay, you cannot even stop there. You must explain the 
 very first appearance of living tissue out of the inorganic 
 elements of dead matter. The world is not a unit ; it is 
 like the magic ivory balls of the Chinese shops, globes 
 within globes, worlds within worlds — all visible through 
 the holes in each other's peripheries. 
 
 Now what is the Darwinian answer to this objection, de- 
 rived from Cuvier's four-fold classification of the animal 
 kingdom ? This : — Cu^der may not have made an abso- 
 lutely perfect classification. There may be intermediate 
 forms, which we cannot yet be certain where to place; 
 which, when discovered, will fall as naturally under one 
 plan as under another. We are not yet quite sure that 
 there are just four distinct and sharply defined lines of 
 living type-form ; we are not sure that nature lays out her 
 work in lines at all. She is not as linear, at all events, as 
 our Hterality would have her be. 
 
 There is a just tendency in the new schools to establish 
 rather a circular classification. The great disciple of Cuvier, 
 whom you have had the good fortune to attach to your 
 own city and university, and whose impulse all American 
 sciencehas been feeling now for twenty years, has elucidated 
 the four types of animal life and their common appearance 
 at the beginning in lectures which he has delivered in this 
 room. I have not the courage even to saunter through 
 the meadows which he owns. I refer you to his own 
 masterly arguments. He is a vehement anti-Darwinian. 
 But even against this master of the subject I must warn 
 you. He has great opponents. And the most recent dis 
 coveries are also against him. There have lately been dis- 
 covered infinitely older fossils than tftose I just now al- 
 luded to in the Potsdam sandstone. I hold in my hand a 
 specimen of the oldest fossil in the world ; and lo, it is a 
 rhizopod, a creature belonging to the very lowest forms of 
 
80 ON THE DIGNITY [lECT. 
 
 life. It is true these lowest forms are peculiarly fitted for 
 preservation in the fossil state ; others of higher form may 
 have co-existed with them and been destroyed. But when 
 we see these lowest of all known forms standing alone at 
 the very beginning of time, and man, the highest and 
 noblest form, appearing at the end, and an unmistakable 
 gradation, always uinvard, through the long ages, and 
 along all the four lines of plan — what open mind can help 
 imbibing, if not the Darwinian doctrine, at least the spirit 
 of the Theory of Development ? 
 
 But this leads me to the third head of the discussion : 
 the always upvmrd direction of the development of life- 
 forms. This also has not been left unquestioned. One of 
 the most popular and powerful thinkers that geology ever 
 owned was the lamented Hugh Miller. Large-minded 
 and erudite, trained by patient personal investigation in 
 the field, with a great brain and a great love of truth, he 
 was also a religious enthusiast, bigotedly orthodox in the 
 sense of Geneva. His views therefore as a speculative 
 geologist were peculiar, but none the less worthy of con- 
 sideration, for they insisted upon the introduction of such 
 exceptional phenomena as the advocates of the Develop- 
 ment Theory were too much inclined to ignore. He op- 
 posed the theory; and upon the ground that it was not 
 complete ; that not only were there breaks in the series of 
 hfe-forms which could not be got over, but actual reversals 
 of direction. He argued for a law of development actually 
 downwards, or backwards, as well as for a law of develop- 
 ment forwards and upwards. It is true that he made the 
 law of degeneracy subordinate; but he still insisted that 
 it was not exceptional, but universal, and included in the 
 other. His notion was, that life advanced not in an ob- 
 liquely rising straight line but in a succession of higher and 
 higher parabolic curves. Each type as a whole he allowed 
 to be nobler than the type preceding it, but not in every 
 part or throughout its whole career. He preferred to 
 imagine each type beginning below the maximum dignity 
 of the type preceding it; then rising forward to a maximum 
 dignity superior t# that of the type preceding it ; then 
 falling away, degenerating and decaying to extinction. 
 He instanced our varieties of fruits and the rise and decay 
 of families of men as examples of this law subject to 
 
IV.] OP MANKIND. 81 
 
 inspection in our day. Including size and number among 
 the elements of dignity he showed how the fossil Irish elk 
 excelled in size and strength any now-existing ruminant ; 
 how the cave-bear, the aurochs, the mammoth, the Siva- 
 lensian turtle, the dinodon, each and all excelled the bears 
 and oxen, elephants, turtles, and kangaroos of the present 
 day ; how the m^osses of the coal-measures were as large 
 as our trees; the frogs of the middle secondary age as 
 large as modern elephants. Each age, said he, has been 
 indeed an advance upon the previous age, and has brought 
 forth new illustrations and finer ones of the Creator's 
 skill. But each age has had its own superior glories not 
 to be dimmed by any exhibitions of a later date. Each 
 type has been quite perfect in itself, was made entirely 
 suitable for the time and place of its creation ; rose up to 
 power ; took full possession of its whole inheritance ; grew 
 to its utmost size; completely did its work; but when its 
 time was past fell off and withered ; grew small and weak 
 and perished to give place to the next type, ordained to 
 a like destiny. The appearance of man upon the earth, 
 clad in beauty, armed with dominion, but after a time of 
 glory falling from his first estate and becoming savage 
 and degenerate, seemed to his eyes a natural illustration 
 of this law. And in like manner he would explain the 
 coming of Christ at the end of the old dispensation ; and 
 the rise of the Christian Church followed by its decay. In 
 the same spirit he anticipated a millennium, and the appear- 
 ance of angelic men perhaps to fall in tarn like Lucifer 
 and all his angels. 
 
 Geoloo'ists read Huo^h Miller's book with as much de- 
 light as do other people. But they do not accept his 
 Theory of Development ; the facts on which it was ap- 
 parently based, when critically examined, do not sustain 
 it. And every geologist must feel that such a theory could 
 never have been suggested by a summary of all known 
 facts relating to the subject to any mind not prepossessed 
 by a certain set of theological ideas. It was the last 
 struggle of orthodoxy against natural science embodied in 
 geology. Orthodoxy may well be proud of its advocate 
 and apotheosize his memory; but no cause could be 
 won so. 
 
 I would not dare to go into a detailed discussion of the 
 
82 ON THE DIGNITY [lECT. 
 
 doctrine of development this evening. The literature of 
 the subject is already copious, learned, well and clearly- 
 argued, and within easy reach of every one who feels 
 desirous to arrive at some conclusion. I have only aimed 
 at stating the question, and suggesting that it is an open 
 question not only between theologians and geologists but 
 between one class of men of science and another, and that 
 it ought to be no bugbear in the path of generous and 
 truthful minds. 
 
 The aim of the Creator seems to be to fill out all the 
 possible details of his great plan^ to realize all possible 
 plans, modes, conditions, forms, powers, accidents, and 
 relations. The highest artist wears the least mannerism. 
 Infinite variety is the clue to the labyrinth of the universe. 
 Infinite variety is in fact the only law of natural history 
 as yet fully and completely established to the satisfaction 
 of the mind of the naturalist. It has been made the law 
 of every individual life. 
 
 First let us look within. Does not our education pro- 
 ceed by alternate synthesis and analysis of perceptions ? 
 We collect facts ; we combine and compare them ; we 
 perceive their likeness, and discover what we call laivs. 
 Then we take these synthetic laws, and go to work again, 
 seeking new illustrations and confirmations of them. In- 
 stead of that we perceive exceptions and denials. We learn 
 to contrast and discover difierences; we analyze, or separ- 
 ate, or tear to pieces what we had put together and con- 
 solidated. We have to do it. We find that bad bricks 
 have got into our wall ; inharmonious tints have been 
 chosen for our pattern. We build, we weave again, now 
 more successfully. Thus we advance ; thus we enrich our 
 life, the world, and history. 
 
 Turning our eyes again towards God, do we not see 
 Him at the same kind of alternate synthetic and analytic 
 creation ? Herbert Spencer calls it the law of Difierentia- 
 tion j and shows u^ how the forces of matter first aggre- 
 gate and then disintegrate the solid parts of the world, 
 condensing the gases, combining the bases, dissolving the 
 salts, crystalizing the deposits, tearing down the moun- 
 tains, building up the valleys, alternately consolidating and 
 dispersing, an-anging and disturbing, forming and re- 
 forming, until that variety has been produced which char- 
 
TV.] OP MANKIND. 83 
 
 acterizes the present state of things. He shows how the 
 present variety of human society has been accomplished 
 on the same principles; the endless variety of art, of 
 thought. 
 
 But we are only concerned now in seeing how truly the 
 law holds good in Natural History proper. Whether we 
 suppose one or another classification best, it all comes to 
 this in the end : every nook and cranny of the world has 
 got itself somehow filled with living forms, all fashioned 
 agreeably to the circumstances of the place of their exist- 
 ence. As these circumstances vary infinitely, so must the 
 living forms.* If there, be an apparent advancement and 
 ennoblement of living forms through the ages, it must be 
 dependent in some reasonable manner upon some slow ad- 
 vancing movement in the physics of the globe with which 
 the living forms must stand in amicable harmony. In 
 geology therefore there must be some explanation for all 
 the phenomena of palasontology. If man did not exist 
 until quite recently, we must conclude that the earth was 
 not prepared for him till recently. And so of all the other 
 and lower creatures. This teaches us the needlessness of 
 any transcendental treatment of the developmeut theory ; 
 and the wisdom of those who keep the discussion of it 
 down to pure Natural History facts. 
 
 One of the most remarkable and important consequences 
 of the law of Differentiation bears directly upon the his- 
 tory of Man. Differentiation is not only the production of 
 variety, but the production of rtmltltude. Both are de- 
 pendent (but in different ways) upon the bewildering net- 
 work of cross acting physical forces which support and 
 also destroy life. If these physical forces actuall}'' j^roduce 
 living forms, we see at once that they must generate them 
 in multitudinous crowds. If they do not, but only sus- 
 tain them and destroy them, we see that the Creator was 
 under a physical necessity to place in existence great mul- 
 titudes of living forms if he desired any of them to con- 
 tinue to exist. This is true not only respecting the mul- 
 
 * If there be 90 per cent, of carbonate of lime in the sea, there must 
 be a vast over-proportion of infusorial forms to appropriate it, while 
 a corresponding proportion of infusorial life of another kind appropriates 
 the remaining 10 per cent, of silica. (See Jukes' Manual, p. 134, 135, f.) 
 
84 ON THE DIGNITY [lECT. 
 
 titude of individuals, but respecting the multitude of 
 varieties or species. 
 
 What do we see, then, when we look around us ? First, 
 as to the multitude of individuals. There are supposed, 
 indeed, to be a thousand millions of human beings on the 
 earth : but this is nothing. There are a thousand millions 
 of mosquitoes in a single swamp. Bach female fish pro- 
 duces a million of young fry per annum. Is this a law of 
 life ? Yes ! but it is still more a law of death. The final 
 cause of this fecundity must be discovered rather among 
 the destroying agencies of nature than among its sustain- 
 ing hai'monies. We notice, therefore, that those animals 
 are most prolific whose individual lives are least secure ; 
 and these are what we call the lowest forms of life. We 
 call them so because daily wholesale destruction gives us 
 the sense of waste and consequently of woi'thlessness. 
 These are the forms which would exist during the earlier 
 and more adventurous days when quaking lauds and hiss- 
 ing seas and steam-filled skies made the vexed earth a 
 most unnatural mother ; quite unsafe to trust her with 
 children of a riper nature than corals and sea- weed. 
 
 What is true of the multitudes of individuals is equally 
 and for the same reason true of the multitudes of specific 
 forms. Each species has a hahitat and is fitted to it. The 
 development theory supposes the hahitat to have fitted up 
 its own specific forms. Whether that supposition be true 
 or false matters little ; the fact remains unchanged in 
 either case that each change of circumstances causes, or 
 necessitates, or is accompanied by, some specific differ- 
 ence. Now if an animal can only change its nature to 
 suit a change in its circumstances it need not perish. 
 But this is a high faculty, scarcely exercised by any plant 
 or animal excepting man and a few of the mammalia which 
 keep about him. Even these exert the power of adapta- 
 tion so imperfectly that they are sure to perish in the long 
 run when taken from one climate to another; and man 
 himself can only accomplish the immense feat of per- 
 manent migration at the risk of individual destruction, and 
 by calling to his help the whole physical, intellectual, and 
 spiritual worlds to be his body guards. 
 
 Nature grants the right of selecting its own food to 
 every creature that consents to remain within the limits of 
 
lY 1 OF MANKIND. 85 
 
 its own habitat. There and there only nature has provided 
 exactly for the demands of its stomach, and its stomach is 
 the wise guardian of the interests of the rest of its consti- 
 tution. Liberty is perfect,, because the necessary and the 
 pleasant can be secured by the mere exercise of will. Mi- 
 crration must destroy or at least limit this freedom of the 
 will. The animal that invades territory destined to sup- 
 port the life of other animals unlike its own finds poisons 
 when it seeks for meat, and must endure the consequences. 
 'Tis now a choice of evils. The right to roam and choose 
 at its own sweet will is gone. The will is now subjected 
 bv a judgment rendered anxious and unhappy by self-evi- 
 dent want of harmony between its suffering desires and 
 nature's strange provisions. To this law all animals must be 
 subjected which attach themselves to man. But in the high- 
 est degree it is the key to the development of man in history. 
 The wider the migration, the greater the embarrassment, 
 the keener the suffering ; the more subjected the will, the 
 more unfolded the intellect and passions ; for hunger is 
 fierce and cunning, while satiety is unobservant as an oyster 
 and gentle as a lamb. 
 
 Thus it happens that every possible slightest shade of 
 variation in the conditions of existence must be a trump 
 of doom, or else must be provided against in the plan of 
 the Creation by some equally subtile variation in the 
 organs of life. This is the only explanation for that in- 
 credible number of specific forms distinguishable among 
 the lowest ranks of animated nature. Think of it ! A 
 German entomologist has made out 820 species of insects 
 preserved in the pieces of amber which form his cabinet, 
 all of them, mites, gnats, mosquitoes, proboscidians or 
 sucking flies, who met their fate by sticking fast in a gum 
 which exuded from trees of tertiary age, growing in moist 
 low places sheltered from the wind. Of all these species 
 only 30 were such as now belong to the mosquito tribes of 
 Europe ; 100 were species which we have at present living 
 in America ; but not one out of the whole 820 was like any 
 of the numerous species of mosquitoes known in the south 
 of Africa. 
 
 Think again of the numberless species of corals belong- 
 ing only to one age. Mr Sydney S. Lyons' cabinet of 
 Devonian and Silurian crinoids at Louisville, in Kentucky, 
 
86 ON THE DIGNITY [l.KCT. 
 
 magnificently furnished as it is with genera and species, 
 gives but a faint conception of the multitudes of separate 
 beautiful forms which specify the various physical condi- 
 tions under which that family of the radiated animals has 
 struggled so bx'avelyj but often so unsuccessfully, to con- 
 tinue to exist. 
 
 But as we approach our own times, and a quieter bosom 
 gives suck to worthier embodiments of the wisdom of the 
 divine, more self-sustaining, more adaptable to circum- 
 stances, more hardy, more migratory, or more inventive, 
 we see how these countless multitudes become more moder- 
 ate swarms, vast herds become small flocks, flocks turn 
 to single pairs. Life has grown safe. A genus need no 
 longer put forth its hundred specific forms, like tentacles, 
 to cling withal to the tempestuous earth. Instead of one 
 bear for the summer and another for the winter, one bear 
 will do for both provided he may hybernate. One set of 
 birds for north and south will be enough, if you will teach 
 them to migrate twice every year. Let man be but a 
 single species, yet if you give him a mind to be his own 
 tailor, shoemaker, house-carpenter, shipbuilder, farmer, 
 and gunsmith, he may inhabit the whole earth from pole 
 to pole. This is the great argument for unity of species 
 in the case of man ; a subject, however, to be taken up in 
 my next lecture. We are speaking now of the dignity of 
 man ; and of the likelihood that his numbers will be small 
 in inverse proportion to his powers of resistance to those 
 fatal forces of surrounding life, beneath the blows of which 
 all meaner images of God have been in past times over- 
 thrown and utterly destroyed. 
 
 It is this ability of man to protect himself against nature 
 that aSbrds us an explanation of the paucity of his remains 
 as fossilized. For, in the first place, as I have just ex- 
 plained, the race of man has been a scanty race. And, in 
 the second place, the individual man has been a cuyming 
 fellow, always on his guard : foresighted against the ma- 
 licious tricks and brutal damages of nature ; wisely sus- 
 picious of the quagmires and quicksands in which the 
 stupid mammoths were entombed ; prompt to devise ex- 
 
IV.] OF MANKIND. 87 
 
 pedients for recover}^ in disaster^ and, above all, able to 
 form leagues for mutual life insurance. Yet with all his 
 superior advantage nature was sometimes too much for 
 him. As I narrated in my last lecture, men have been 
 fossilized just like inferior brutes. As the eruption of 
 Vesuvius in Pliny's days caught a few sleepers and a 
 sick man or two when all the rest of the inhabitants of 
 Herculaneum and Pompeii made good their escape ; so in 
 an age immensely older than the pyramids, a torrent of 
 volcanic mud captured one of the flying aborigines of cen- 
 tral France, part of whose skeleton is now in the museum 
 of Le Puy. The crater from which *he torrent came be- 
 longs to a group the fires of which have been extinct since 
 the days when the rhinoceros and lion were at home in 
 western Europe before the glacial epoch. 
 
 The care which men have always taken to secure the bodies 
 of their relatives and friends from decay has been the chief 
 cause of their utter disappearance from the earth. Reli- 
 gious veneration has produced the same effect in ages when 
 dead bodies were burned instead of bm-ied. The supersti- 
 tious dread of being devoured by wild beasts after death 
 has caused many races to suspend their corpses in baskets 
 from the boughs of trees, ensuring speedy dissolution. 
 Yet the buried bones of ancient heroes, as we have already 
 seen, have been occasionally exhumed by floods and swept 
 into caves and buried again in a broad common alabaster 
 sarcophagus in the most effectual manner. 
 
 In spite, then, of the paucity of human beings to be fos- 
 silized, and in spite of the care which they have always 
 taken not to be fossilized, they have not always escaped 
 fossilization. But the conditions under which human fos- 
 silization became possible were so hard to realize that every 
 case was an exception to that law which has made the strata 
 of the earth so many cemeteries of the past, so many 
 museums for the present. Every new discovery of a fossil 
 human bone of ancient date is a sort of natural miracle 
 wrought specially for science. 
 
 In studying out mane's role in the great drama of the 
 Development of Animal Life we depend greatly upon 
 these precious relics of his existence in an older era than 
 the present. But in determining man's relative dignity 
 in the o-rand scale of animal life we have other and abund- 
 
88 ON THE DIGNITY [l,ECT. 
 
 ant materials for thought. That scale not only ascends 
 through all the ages, but stands to-day before us. The 
 earth is still crowded with the representatives of most of 
 the departed forms. Details are changed, but Natural 
 History continues still the same. Man can be classified by 
 what he is, as well as by what he has been. If we need 
 see all that he can be, we need but travel from land to 
 land, from city to countiy, from continent to island, from 
 field to forest, from mountain to desert, from the ice-fields 
 of Greenland to the jungles of India and the swamps of 
 the gulf of Guinea; everywhere some new variety of man 
 will offer itself for ©ur examination, — surrounded by as 
 various forms of lower life with which to be compared. 
 
 In spite of all this wealth of opportunity zoologists have 
 found it a most dij0&cult task to give an adequate and satis- 
 factory definition of the animal called Man. 
 
 ' Linnaeus led the way in this field of inquiry by compar- 
 ing man and the apes in the same manner as he compared 
 these last with the Carnivores, Ruminants, Eodents, or 
 any other division of warm-blooded quadrupeds. After 
 several modifications of his original scheme, he ended by 
 placing Man as one of the many genera in his Order 
 Primates, which embraced the apes and lemurs, and also 
 the bats ; for he found these last to be nearly allied to some 
 of the lowest forms of monkeys. But all those modern 
 naturalists who retain Linnseus's ordel' Primates, agree to 
 exclude the bats (cheiroptera), and most of them class 
 Man as one of the families of this order Primates.^* 
 
 Blumenbach (following Linnaeus in 1779) proposed, on 
 the other hand, to separate Man entirely from the Mon- 
 keys. He called the latter ' fourhanded ' quadnimana. 
 His definition of Man was short and simple enough : 
 animal, erectum, himanum. Buffon had used the same 
 terms in a somewhat different way 13 years before. 
 Cuvier used them again 12 years later. He placed the 
 apes, monkeys, and lemurs together in one grand order, 
 and man in another order by himself. 
 
 In spite of the authority of these four great names, 
 modern zoologists have preferred to make man standalone, 
 not indeed as an order, but simply as a family. Professor 
 
 • Lyell, Aut. of Man, ch. xxiv. 
 
IV.] OF MANKIND. 89 
 
 Huxley * even repudiates the very term quadrumanous. 
 He tajkes the ground that the hind extremities of monkeys, 
 apes, and lemurs, bear no true resemblance at all to the 
 hand of man. ^J'hey are in all respects not hands but feet. 
 On the other side he affirms that there is no anatomical 
 difference of type between the hand of a gorilla and the 
 hand of a man. The hand of the gorilla is merely clum- 
 sier, heavier, and furnished with a shorter thumb. The 
 foot of the goi-illa he shows to possess also the three char- 
 acteristic features of the human foot : 1. By the same 
 arrangement of the tarsal bones ; 2. By the presence of 
 the same short flexor muscle and short extensor muscle of 
 the digits ; and, 3. By the presence of the same peculiar 
 muscle called the feronceus longus. The only difference 
 which can be mentioned is merely formal, viz. that the 
 great toe of the gorilla is more movable than man's. In 
 fact, there would be, according to this, less difference 
 between the extremities of man and the gorilla than 
 between those of the gorilla and orang-outang ;t and yet 
 others of the monkey tribe have still more widely diver- 
 gent extremities. 
 
 In like manner a comparison of the teeth of man with 
 those of the apes and monkeys has failed to establish them 
 in separate orders. ' The number of teeth in the gorilla 
 and in all the Old World monkeys, except the lemurs, is 
 32, the same number as in man. The general pattern of 
 the crown of the tooth is also the same. All the American 
 apes, however, have 38 teeth. The only real distinction 
 between the jaw of the apes and the human jaw consists 
 in the fact that the eye-teeth of the apes project almost 
 like tusks.' 
 
 If we institute a like comparison as to other portions of 
 the frame we are led to the same results. There are 
 sometimes remarkable differences between one human race 
 
 * lluxley's third ' Lecture ou the motor organs of man compared 
 with tliose of otlier animals,' R. School of Mines (March, ISBl), embo- 
 died in his 'Evidence as to man's place in Nature.' \\'illiams and 
 Norgate, Loudon, lS6i. [In Lyell, Ant. of Man, ch. xxiv.] 
 
 ■\ The thumb of the orang differs by its shortness and absence of any 
 special long flexor muscle from that of a gorilla more than it ditfers from 
 that of man. The carpus of the orang and of most of the lower apes 
 contains nine bones; that of a chimpanzee, gorilla, and man, only eight. 
 
90 ON THE DIGNITY. [lECT. 
 
 and another. Two years ago, Dr Broca, the Secretary of 
 the Anthropological Society of Paris, was good enough to 
 show me nearly 100 human skeletons which he had recently 
 procured from a cave of the Stone age, discovered by an 
 English gentleman in preparing a park for his new country- 
 house about ten leagues north-east of Paris. Dr Broca 
 pointed out to me one striking peculiarity in the anatomy of 
 the arm-bones of this ancient race. There was a round 
 foramen pierced through the thin curtain of bone which 
 connects the two processes at the elbow. He assured me 
 that he had examined hundreds of arm-bones obtained from 
 cemeteries of the Merovingian age, but none of them ex- 
 hibited this hole. Nor is it to be found in the modern 
 human skeleton, except among the Hottentots. But it is 
 a characteristic mark of the ape and monkey anatomy. 
 
 There is a fourth ground of comparison. If we can 
 learn nothing from the hands, the feet, the teeth, the bones, 
 cannot we succeed better by comparing the shape and the 
 size of the skull with its containing brain ? Professor 
 Dana, of New Haven, dissatisfied like the rest with all other 
 tests, finds refuge in this. He thinks he has established 
 for the whole i^nge of life-development a common law, 
 which he names the law of Cephalization. All animal 
 forms are worth precisely their weight of brain. Man is 
 the noblest creature because in him the digestive and the 
 locomotive systems become at last subordinate to the per- 
 ceptive and the reasoning faculties. I cannot give you the 
 details of his ingenious reasoning. The tendency of zoology 
 has for a long time been to this conclusion. But even 
 here there appears no distinction of kind but only of 
 degree. 
 
 Owen, in 1857, unable, as he says, to appreciate or con- 
 ceive of the distinction between the psychical phenomena 
 of a chimpanzee and of a Boschisman, or of an Aztec with 
 arrested brain-growth, proclaimed his return to Blumen- 
 bach^s and Cuvier^'s old classification, making man a 
 separate sub-class, based upon three cerebral characters. 
 Owen's assertion was that man differs from the three 
 mammalian classes, represented by the ape, the beaver, 
 and the kangaroo, — 1. in the overlapping of his cerebral 
 hemispheres forward so as to cover the olfactory lobes, and 
 backward so as to cover and quite conceal the cerebellum. 
 
IV.] OP MANKIND, 91 
 
 when looked down upon from above : 2. In the presence 
 of what is called the ' posterior horn of the lateral ven- 
 tricle ; ' and, 3. In the addition to the hind lobe of each 
 hemisphere of what is called the '^ hippocampus minor. '^ 
 
 Upon the publication of this theory a storm arose. It 
 was shown that Owen's picture of the brain of a chimpanzee, 
 which he took from a Dutch work, printed in 1849, and on 
 which he based his comparison, was worthless, because it 
 had been drawn from a shrunk specimen. M. Gratiolet, 
 ' the highest authority in cerebral anatomy of our age,' 
 showed by new drawingsf from fresh specimens, that no 
 such distinctions between the brain foi-ms of man and the 
 chimpailzee could at all be made out. The human brain 
 which he dissected was that of a Bushwoman exhibited in 
 London. He showed that the human and the simian 
 brains, however convoluted in man, however smooth in the 
 marmoset, instead of having Owen's distinctions, have four 
 grand characters in common ; 1. a rudimentary olfactory 
 lobe; 2. A posterior lobe, not uncovering, but completely 
 covering the cerebellum ; 3. A well-defined ' fissure of 
 Silvius ; ' and, 4. A posterior horn in the lateral venti-icle. 
 
 To settle the dispute which, upon this, broke out afresh 
 fifteen genera of Old World and New World apes and 
 monkeys dying in the Zoological Gardens of London 
 were dissected ; representing almost all the forms in dis- 
 pute, from that of the chimpanzee the next to man, to 
 that of the lemur farthest removed from man. The con- 
 clusion arrived at from these and from other Continental 
 examinations which were made at the same time was, that 
 Owen's distinctions had no foundation in point of fact. J 
 
 Nothing remains but the superior volwnie of the human 
 hraiji, 1. Absolutely, i. e. when compared with the volume 
 of the ape's bi-ain ; and, 2. Relatively, i. e. when we com- 
 pare the brain of a man with the bulk and weight of his 
 body ; and the brain of an ape with the bulk and weight of 
 its body. 
 
 Now Professor Huxley says that, so far as he is aware, 
 
 _ * Owen, Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond., vol. viii. p. 20. Archencephala was 
 his new sub- class name. (Lyell, Ant. Man, xxiv. p. 48 i.) 
 
 t The false and true drawings are placed opposite each other in 
 Lyell, pp. 482, 483. 
 
 X See Rolliston's summary on p. 489 of Lyell. 
 
92 OK THE DIGNITY [lECT. 
 
 no human adult cranium contains less than 62 cubic inches, 
 and that the most capacious gorilla skull measured no more 
 than 34^; a difference between them of say two to one — a 
 tremendous dilSerence ! The difference between the small- 
 est human skull measured by Morton, viz. 63 cubic inches, 
 and the largest human skull, which measured 114, is also 
 something tremendous — nearly two to one. If volume of 
 brain then be the criterion, the mathematical statement 
 of man^s relation to the ape will be expressed by the series 
 
 114 : 63 : 34^. 
 But the series will not be complete until we add the size 
 of the smallest gorilla adult skull yet measured, which was 
 24 cubic inches. It is, you see, a descending sef'ies, and 
 nothing more — 114 : 63 : 34| : 24. We may add, however, 
 still lower figures, and keep very nearly the same propor- 
 tions from among the crania of the lower orders of apes. 
 
 Language is no criterion, for every animal has a language 
 of its own. The sense of the ridiculous is possessed by 
 brutes, who laugh with their eyes, or tail, if not with their 
 whole face as man does. The faculty of worship in itself 
 is no distinction ; for the devotion of a dog to his master, 
 of a lover to his mistress, of a Christian to his Saviour, of 
 an angel to his God, has the same essential root so far as 
 we can see. Susceptibility to improvement is not peculiar 
 to man ; nor the natural law by which there occurs an he- 
 reditary accumulation of acquired powers. This also, and 
 all the before-mentioned criteria are only available for a 
 difference in degree, but not for a difference in kind, distin- 
 guishing man above the rest of the creation. 
 
 When we notice the intelligence of the dog and the ele- 
 phant whose t3rpe of brain is more remote from man, and 
 see how they manifest the possession of the moral faculties, 
 displaying, as they do, the sense of shame, of justice, of 
 loyalty, of compassion, we find out how little distance our 
 reasoning can go ; how imperfect are our data, how myste- 
 rious are the functions of all brain matter, how temperate 
 we ought to be in entertaining convictions in regard to the 
 relationship of man to other animals, how sound and high 
 our hope of self-improvement should become, and what 
 grandeur resides in the Apostle^s words — ' forgetting the 
 things that are behind, and pressing forward to those that 
 are before.' 
 
rv.] OF MAXKIXD. 93 
 
 Here, as in so many other similar cases, science is en- 
 tirely at fault — Rasselas sitting at the foot of the wall 
 that suiTOuilds his happy valley. I think I can see 
 around me in society sufficient evidences that man is a de- 
 veloped monkey. But what of that ? Shall a wise man 
 kill himself for shame because his ancestor, ten generations 
 back removed, was hung for felony ? What does it con- 
 cern us that our naked and painted forefathers danced their 
 devilish orgies round shrieking victims set on fire in towers 
 of wicker-work, making- night hideous and the angels hide 
 their faces in pity, horror, and disgust! I confess, for my 
 own part, aside from all considerations of actual science, I 
 like to see every tub stand upon its own bottom. This 
 pride of civilization seems to me the pride of parvenus. 
 If mankind were oi-iginally apes, they have at all events 
 acquired the right to be so no longer, The ape-like skull 
 of the Stone age has been replaced by the skull of the poet, 
 the philosopher and the statesman. Let us be satisfied; 
 Christ has come. I only wish that I could present before 
 your eyes as a worthy close to our train of thought to-night 
 a picture of some aboriginal savage of the Stone age, and 
 then, in divine contrast to its humiliating ugliness and base 
 brutality, a copy of that immortal statue of the highest 
 type of man, the Christ of Dannecker. I see you love, 
 like the old Greeks to adorn your city and honour your 
 great men with statues : why have you not indulged your- 
 selves in the joy of having always before your eyes the 
 wonder of the age — the greatest statue of the greatest 
 Being of all ages ? St Petersburg has obtained a copy of 
 it in marble. Why should Boston be behind St Peters- 
 burg ? It is worth an annual pilgrimage to Stuttgard to 
 behold it. Such majesty ! such tenderness ! such intellect 
 and wisdom in the brow and face ! Such grace and beauty 
 in the form seen through the flowing robe ! Of more than 
 mortal size, it seems no more than man — no less than all 
 the blessed gospels say of him ! the flower of the long de- 
 velopment ! the very incarnation of the Deity. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 ON THE UNITY OF MANKIND. 
 
 We are now to consider wliat light the modern sciences 
 can throw upon the question of the oneness or the many- 
 ness of mankind. 
 
 It has been common to use with great looseness of 
 meaning the terms race, family, species, in their appHca- 
 tion to mankind. 
 
 The ' race of man ' is contrasted with the animal races 
 and the race of angels — the word race being the English 
 form of the Latin word radix, root, and implying a common 
 origin to all the human inhabitants of this planet. 
 
 The ' human species ' is an expression even more common 
 in late hterature than the ' human race,' but quite as in- 
 definite. The word species in Latin {specto, spy, &c.), 
 like the word speech (sprecheri) in English, has reference 
 to the expression of the inner nature outwardly upon the 
 face and form so that it can be understood and sympa- 
 thized with. 
 
 The "^ human family' is an expression merely implying 
 the common interests of mankind as against the forest 
 and the flood, wild beasts and hostile elements ; while it 
 includes the ideas of possible fraternity, consanguinity, 
 intermarriage, and fellowships of every spiritual grade. 
 When the apostle wrote ' for of one blood he hath made 
 all the dwellers upon earth ' he shared the indefinite no- 
 tions of that and every other age, and expressed his Chris- 
 tian philanthropy in the usual way, quite sufficient for his 
 purpose. 
 
 Our inquiry is of another order. Science is obliged to 
 restrict words to one meaning. At the outset of a mathe- 
 matical discussion the value of x is unknown ; but at the 
 close of it the value of x is made out lo be some one 
 
ON THE UNITY OF MANKIND. 95 
 
 certain quantity, and no other. We have aot yet made 
 out the value of x in the discussion of species. We still 
 use the terms race and family in a loose way. We talk of 
 the various races of mankind — the black race, the white 
 race, the yellow race, the red race. We even subdivide 
 these, and speak of four or five black races, i. e. the Caribs 
 of S. Amei'ica, the blacks of Northern Africa, the blacks of 
 Southern Africa, the Negrito race of the Andaman islands, 
 and the Milanesians of the Eastern Archipelago. Some- 
 times our subdivisions become small and numerous ; e. g. 
 we divide the white race into the Arian and Shemitic 
 branches ; and then subdivide the Shemitic branch into 
 the Hebrew, the Arabic, the Coptic, the Phoenician, and 
 other races. Ethnologists, therefore, differ in their classi- 
 fication of human races so much, that the number ranges 
 from three to thirty. The questions which start up for 
 their consideration are questions of detail, and the word 
 race has in common ethnology got to confining itself to 
 these details. 
 
 But it carries a larger significance ; it has the same 
 scope with the word species, with this difference : viz. that 
 the word species reminds us of other animals beside man 
 and excites the question of their possible consanguinity 
 with him ; while the word race excites only the question 
 of one man^s relationship to another. 
 
 My lecture this evening will therefore deal with these 
 two subjects : race and species ; or, in other words, with the 
 distinctions of human races, and their origins. I state it 
 in this form, so as to get rid of the transcendental discus- 
 sion of species pier se, which would absorb the whole even- 
 ing and lead us to no results after all. And I take them 
 in this reversed order of time because I do not believe in 
 a priori science. We must take existing facts first and 
 argue back from them«to what has been fact in times past. 
 
 But before investigating the facts of the case, I must 
 state the condition of our apparatus for the investigation. 
 Taking the sciences in their order : what means do they 
 afford us for determining the unity of the human race ? 
 
 From the group of the mathematical sciences we get our 
 calculations of the increase of human population ; our 
 knowledge of the relations estabhshed between physical 
 geography and human migrations ; and between climate 
 
96 ON THE UNITY [lECT. 
 
 and character. We get also certain wonderful glimpses 
 into the mystery of change of organic form, which, whether 
 retained by the Creator in his own hand, or deposited by 
 him as an efficient cause in nature, is in any view you 
 may take of it the great central subject of this investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 From the group of the inorganic sciences we receive the 
 discussion of facts only hinted at in the last lecture ; the 
 fossil remains of primeval men and of contemporaneous 
 animals, and, moreover, our ideas of time. 
 
 From the organic sciences we get our laws of species- 
 variation ; laws which rule over both kingdoms^ the veget- 
 able and the animal, and therefore over man. Compara- 
 tive anatomy, describing its collections, defines for us the 
 limits of similarity and dissimilarity between the fossil 
 species and those now existing; between the monkey 
 tribes and the tribes of mankind ; between the skulls found 
 in the bone-caverns, and the skulls of Casper Hauser and 
 Daniel Webster ; between the skeleton and the skin of 
 Hottentots and of Englishmen. 
 
 From the historical sciences, of which Ethnology is one, 
 we get those facts which, on the one hand, teach the per- 
 manence of those great distinctions upon which our largest 
 classification of human races is founded ; and, on the other 
 hand, teach those easy and rapid modifications of the human 
 form and features, through civilization or decivilization, 
 which may well make us liberal in our judgments both 
 towards those who insist upon one Adam from whom all 
 blacks and whites, yellow men and red men have descended, 
 and also towards those who insist upon the generation of 
 man from the ape. Herewith come in those volumes of 
 archeeological suggestions ; pictures of men and dogs upon 
 the tombs of the Pharaohs ; images of ancient Hindu and 
 Chinese deities ; skeletons of Greeks and Romans, Gauls 
 and Finns buried in tombs and tumuli of every age back 
 through the Modern, the Ii-on, the Bronze, and the Stone 
 periods. Surely we ought to be able to come to some con- 
 clusion, however modestly, as to whether mankind is and 
 has always been of one race ; and whether there are signs 
 of a transition from degraded ape-like forms up to the 
 noblest figure of a man. But the list of our opportunities 
 is not yet complete. 
 
v.] OF MANKIND. 97 
 
 From the social sciences we get statistics, not only of 
 the present, but of the past conditions of hnman life ; we 
 see how the aris and arms of men have come into existence 
 and been improved, increased, and perfected, in striking 
 parallelism with human form and human intellect ; part of 
 that development of the idea of man, which itself forms 
 but a part of a still grander development of the idea of 
 universal nature. The study of ancient commerce reflects 
 light upon the theory of migrations, and helps to distin- 
 guish the characteristics of races. The study of ancient 
 war is, in fact, the tracing of migrations as they became 
 accomplished facts, influencing mixtures of races, and ex- 
 plaining the reappearance of Mongol faces in Western 
 Pennsylvania. By the study of ancient law (as the mag- 
 nificent book of Maine, just published, proves) we get 
 laws of natural selection, which even Darwin hardly 
 dreamed of; by which races were subdivided, and new 
 forms contracted for, to become permanent in after times. 
 
 Lastly, from the intellect nal sciences, we learu : 1. how 
 to distinguish the races of mankind through language, 
 and to track them in their later marchings and counter- 
 marchings across the continents and seas; 2. how to dis- 
 tinguish races by their fine arts, their ethics, their wor- 
 ships ; bat above all, 3. we get some clear notion of man^s 
 relation to the brute, and are thus enabled to introduce 
 into the purely materialistic discussion of the development 
 theory, based on fossils and on comparative anatomy, 
 those higher considerations which naturally and properly 
 must have most weight with sensible, religious. Christian 
 people. 
 
 The last condition of mankind, namely, that in which 
 we see it now existing, resembles the last condition of the 
 rock-crust of the earth, namely, that in which we see it 
 constituting the deltas and the valley-terraces of existing 
 rivers. What is this condition ? It is one of disintegra- 
 tion, confusion, intermixture. Examine a handful of the 
 gravel which comes in daily from Roxbury to be dumped 
 into the Back Bay, and say whnt are its constituent ele- 
 ments ? and where they oi'iginated ? Pebbles of quartz, 
 of porphyry, of micaslate, of gneiss, of syenite, white, 
 black, red, green, and blue are there ; tell me their several 
 ages, their ancient starting-points, the course of the ice- 
 
 7 
 
'98 ON THE UNITY [lECT. 
 
 berg, the glacier, or the cuirent whicli brought them to 
 the quarry. The data exist. Guyot has traced the ancient 
 moraines of Switzerland back to the existing glaciers, and 
 thus to their mother peaks among the Alps. Nature 
 writes out in full all her family trees. With care you can 
 interpret them to a certainty. A labourer collecting 
 cobble-stones at the falls of the Delaware near Trenton 
 for the pavements of Philadelphia may wonder how this or 
 that one can happen to differ so widely from those about it. 
 A^anuxem, or Conrad, or James Hall would tell him by 
 certain marks upon it that it was a piece of coral ; that it 
 grew originally in what is now the valley of the Mohawk ; 
 that ice and rain had carried it down the whole course of 
 the river Delaware from Cooperstown to tide ; and that 
 the pebbles, among which it lies are red sand-stones of a 
 later age from Newtown, quartzites of an older age from 
 Easton, blue slates from the Water Gap, iron-stones from 
 Milford, and copper- slates from Port Deposit. 
 
 Modern cities are the gravel-banks of humanity. Dis- 
 integrated races of mankind are drifted into them. Of the 
 600,000 inhabitants of Philadelphia, a rude one-tenth have 
 been brought to it on those pitiless ice-bergs, the slave- 
 ships, from the southern continent of the old world and 
 represent all the principal subdivisions of the hlach races. 
 A second tenth has been supplied by Suabia, Switzerland, 
 Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Hungary, and other native 
 lands of the Sclavonic race. A third tenth has come from 
 Northern Germany and Scandinavia, and represents the 
 Teutonic race, in its two branches. A fourth and fifth are 
 Gelts, from Ireland and Wales, the west of Scotland and 
 the north and west of Fi-ance, mixed in with Celt Iberians 
 of Spain and Italy. The rest are lowland Scotch and 
 English, a mongrel people made up of Celtic Britons, and 
 1'eutonic Franks and Saxons, Scandinaviau Normans with 
 Slavic, Finnish, Tartar and Shemitic streaks of blood. 
 The Shemitic race is represented by thousands of Jews. 
 And on the wharves are seen Cooleys fi-om India and 
 China, Malays from Singapore, and Canakas from Hawaii. 
 
 Two opposing laws work mightily and incessantly over 
 the ethnology of such a place. One is the law of viixture, 
 tending to obliterate all distinctions of race and to produce 
 .new types ; the other is the law of segregation, tending to 
 
v.] OF MANKIND. G^" 
 
 draw the individuals of each stock together and to repro- 
 duce those original distinctions. 
 
 Under the first law, and by the intermarriage of the 
 black race with the whites^ we have mulattoes of every 
 grade of colour, stature, and facial angle. Whether an 
 improvement be the consequence men are not yet agreed. 
 The circumstances have not yet been favourable for settling 
 that question, nor will be until black and white can mix 
 on terms of reasonable equality, each bringing to the 
 other its own peculiar characteristics in full and free de- 
 velopment. With regard to the races not so widely separ- 
 ated by nature or by circumstances improvement by in- 
 termixture is an established truth. In middle Pennsylvania 
 and Virginia for example, wherever intermarriage has 
 taken place between North- Irish presbyterian Saxons and 
 the families of the old Swope and Hessian emigrants, a 
 magnificent mongrel breed of people fills the valleys of the 
 Susquehanna, Juniata, and Potomac, with frames of steel 
 and brains of flame, the stuS" of which heroes, poets and 
 philosophers are made. No one can avoid observing the 
 rapid improvement of the Celtic race in the United States 
 wherever it is free to cross itself with Teutonic blood. 
 Let all due weight be given to the other elements of pro- 
 gress, superior food, superior labour, superior education, 
 still we cannot fail to recognize the crossing of the breeds 
 as the chief hope of the nation. Civilization is the flower 
 of migration. Every great history has sprung from some 
 barbaric invasion. A new humanity follows every deluge. 
 Arts and learnings are the electric lights about the wire- 
 points where two races approximate. One kind of blood 
 is metal to the acid of another : mix them in generous 
 proportions and you have Harems calorimeter on a cosmical 
 scale; you can burn up with it the past or electrotype 
 with it the future. When the eS"ervescence ceases the 
 Creator walks away ; the apparatus is useless until it is 
 charged anew. 
 
 By the law of segregation, on the other hand, the Ger- 
 mans of Philadelphia have drawn ofi" into the north- 
 eastern quarter of the city, and made a Frankfort-on-the- 
 Maine of it. The blacks have appropriated the southern 
 wards and made a Timbuctoo of them. The Irish cluster 
 about their churches, the Jews about their synagogues^ 
 
100 ON THE UNITY [lECT, 
 
 without need of legislative enactments. The west end of 
 one of the finest streets in Cincinnati is formed by rovvs of 
 palaces, built since the middle of the war, and all inhabited 
 by Jews. The principal Quaker families of Philadelphia 
 still reside in Arch-street — a beautiful meeting-house a 
 mile long and so monotonous that you might turn it end 
 for end, or upside down, and nobody should perceive the 
 difference. 
 
 But when groups of tourmaline or spinel segregate in 
 the old or metamorphic rocks they are signs of age or 
 long stagnation. A city with established quarters of dis- 
 tinct nationalities cannot improve at the same rate with a 
 city like Chicago or St Louis where confusion of races 
 pervades the place. Arch-street was long an iron bar 
 between its legs to the city of William Penn. The pro- 
 hibitory tariff which the south so long laid against the im- 
 portation of Yankee blood was that which made Charles 
 Sumner^s speech so dreadfully true. The Indian tribes of 
 North America fossilized themselves by isolation ; and now 
 they perish because they cannot marry into a stronger 
 family. In the earlier ages of mankind this law of segre- 
 gation ruled despotically. And why ? Because it is the 
 law which guards the individual life, without regard to the 
 improvement of the race. That other law of disintegra- 
 tion and intermixture patronizes the improvement of the 
 race and disregards the life of the individual. What do 
 the forces of civilization care for the happiness or misery 
 of the individual coal-miner that furnishes fuel for its 
 steam-engine, or the sailor who brings it over the sea, or 
 the engine-driver who is smashed on the experimental trip, 
 or the factory girl, or the telescopic-lens grinder, or the 
 Lord Premier who commits suicide, or the First Consul 
 who eats his broken heart at St Helena ? Nothing. 
 Christianity, indeed, sympathizes with each and at the 
 same time with all, and thus observes both laws, and em- 
 ploys them both for the happiness of the individual and 
 for the progress of the race. But Christianity is a recent 
 device of the Deity. Our theme antedates it a million 
 years, if Desnoyer^s tertiary bones were really scratched 
 and split by the hands of men. 
 
 Questions to-night will come up such as these : Of what 
 race of men are Desnoyer's tertiary human bones the 
 
v.] OF MANKIND. lUl 
 
 vestiges ? In what street of Paris or Boston will you tiud 
 their present representatives ? Was it that primeval race 
 which afterwards fashioned the flint implements buried in 
 the post-tertiary diluvium of Abbeville ; and those found 
 in the bone-caverns of Belgium? Was it the race whose 
 skeletons lie mouldering in the tumuli of the Stone period 
 here or there ? Is it one of the great existing races of 
 the present day ? How many existing races really are 
 there ? How can we distinguish them apart now that they 
 are so intermixed ? And if we can distinguish them apart, 
 can we also arrange them in any hierarchy or natural order 
 of mutual excellence ? Are any of them essentially and 
 incurably bestial ? Can there be established any rational 
 connection between the lowest races of mankind existinof 
 now and the oldest skulls and skeletons ? Can we in any 
 way make these an intermediate link between the Christian 
 gentleman and the abominable chimpanzee ? 
 
 These questions have been discussed by many writers, 
 and been taken up in almost every order. Each writer has 
 given greater prominence to one or other of them accord- 
 ing to the special nature of his studies. Perhaps the clear- 
 est statement of them has been made by Carl Vogt, Pro- 
 fessor of Comparative Anatomy in the Academy at Geneva, 
 in a series of lectures delivered at Neuenburg in one of the 
 valleys of the Swiss Jura and published in two volumes at 
 Giessen, in 186 4-. His collection of facts down to the 
 most' recent discoveries of last year is comprehensive. 
 His searching criticism of the various and opposite 
 opinions held still by men of science illustrate the whole 
 subject. His reputation as an anatomist is of the highest 
 rank. His independeuce is as a-ilmirable as his scientific 
 method is clear and straightforward. Whether his classi- 
 fication of the human races will fare better than those of 
 his predecessors or not, the strong ground of his general 
 conclusions, I think, cannot be shaken. They are not in 
 fact his conclusions ; they are the provisional sentiments 
 of a large number of the leaders of science for the 
 moment produced by the sum total of our information up 
 to date, and subject of course to constitutional amendment 
 according to law. As such I offer them for your con- 
 sideration this evening. 
 
 I stated in general terms in my last lecture that no dif- 
 
102 <^N THE UNITY [lECT. 
 
 ference could be made out between man and the monkey 
 as to the ground-plan of their forms. Their hands are 
 planned like human hands, their feet like human feet, their 
 brains like human brains, their jaws and teeth like human 
 jaws and teeth, and so of all other parts of their organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 The same, of course, can be asserted respecting the dif- 
 ferent races of men ; they are all built upon one plan. K 
 this makes them all of one race, then it becomes also 
 necessary to assert that men and monkeys are of one race 
 because they are built upon a common plan. 
 
 The differences which do exist, both between men and 
 monkeys and between one race of men and another, as 
 well as between one race of monkeys and another, are 
 differences in the development of this ground-'plan common 
 to all. Take the idea of the skull for an instance : it may 
 be more ape-like or more man-like ; it may be brachy- 
 cephalic, i. e. short for its width, or dolichocephalic, i. e. 
 long for its width ; it may have a low, retreating fore- 
 head, or a high, erect forehead ; it may show a perfectly 
 symmetrical curve when seen sidewise or endwise, or it 
 may be lumpy and knobby like a laurel root ; it may be 
 high and pointed ; or immensely developed behind the 
 ears ; or all brought forwards over the eyes ; or bulging 
 over the ears sideways ; it may be marked by ridges and 
 crests, fore and aft and from side to side. All these differ- 
 ences you are accustomed to meet in your daily walks ; and 
 these same kinds of differences you would see if you ex- 
 tended your walks to the forests of the tropics. The sub- 
 ject is one of degrees, or rather one of details. Just as, 
 to use one of Vogt's illustrations, when an architect is 
 showing his scholars the essential unity of plan which re- 
 sides in all Gothic domes he explains the various ways in 
 which the idea of this plan is unfolded in the different 
 cathedrals of Europe. 
 
 And so of all other parts of the human organism as of 
 all other members of the Gothic edifice. We cannot take 
 one part as our criterion ; we must take the whole animal, 
 the whole man. The shape of the skull is very important, 
 because very changeable, and because skulls are attainable 
 when no other vestige of man remains to be examined. 
 But the shape of the limbs, the colour of the skin and 
 
v.] OP MANKIND. 103 
 
 eyes, the growth of the hair — in a word, the entire aspect 
 of the person must, in the end, decide for us his affinities, 
 and enable us to fix those Hmits of variation which con- 
 stitute a race. A.ny other method of classification would 
 be empirical and not natural. * 
 
 To show you how careful we must be to take every part 
 of the phenomenon into consideration, and to give you an 
 additional illustration of the delicacy and shrewdness of 
 modern methods of investigation^ I will adduce a couple of 
 facts connected with the measurement of human skulls. 
 It does not necessarily follow that small skulls contain 
 feeble brains, nor that small brains in one century may not 
 become larger in another century. 
 
 The action of the brain seems dependent upon its folded 
 surface. Wagner has shown by the following table that 
 women^s brains weigh less than men's, but that their sur- 
 faces when unfolded and spread out equal or exceed those 
 of men : — 
 
 Number. 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 
 5. 
 
 6. 
 
 7. 
 
 8. 
 
 9. 
 10. 
 11 
 12. 
 Man, 1499 gramms weight and 2489 of surface. 
 Woman, 1254 „ „ 2498 of surface. 
 
 It is possible thus to explain the small head and womanly 
 intellectuality of the Hindu race.* 
 
 Another such fact is one that Brocaf discovered by his 
 measurement of skulls obtained from two Parisian grave- 
 yards as old or older than the time of Philip Augustus, i. e. 
 of the twelfth century. It goes to show that the average 
 
 • Vogt, vol. i. p. 137. t Ibid. pp. 106, 108. 
 
 
 Weight in 
 
 Convex surface in 
 
 r. 
 
 gramms. 
 
 IGClmm of great squares. 
 
 (Dirichlet) 
 
 1520 
 
 2553 
 
 (Fuchs) 
 
 1499 
 
 2489 
 
 (Gauss) 
 
 1492 
 
 2419 
 
 (Hermann) 
 
 1358 
 
 2406 
 
 Man 
 
 1340 
 
 2451 
 
 }} 
 
 1330 
 
 2309 
 
 }} 
 
 1273 
 
 2117 
 
 Woman 
 
 1254 
 
 2498 
 
 (Hausmann) 
 
 1226 
 
 3065 
 
 Woman 
 
 1223 
 
 2272 
 
 yt 
 
 1185 
 
 2300 
 
 Mikrocephalus 
 
 ! (idiot) 300 
 
 896 
 
104 ON THE UNITY [lEcT. 
 
 size of the skull of the same race may increase in the 
 course of time. 115 of these skulls from one graveyard 
 gave the mean size of 1461.53 cubic centimetres; 117 
 skulls from another graveyard gave 1409.31 cubic centi- 
 metres; while that of 125 skulls of paupers^ buried in a 
 modern Parisian cemetery (1788 — 1824) in spite of the 
 debasing influences of poverty measured 1484.23. 
 
 Morlot in comparing the shape and size of a multitude 
 of ancient Helvetian skulls which he examined, with the 
 skulls of their descendants the Genevese of the present 
 day, comes to the same conclusion and ascribes the im- 
 provement to the influence of Christianity. 
 
 Great discussion has been had over this matter of change 
 in the form of the human skull, on the one side under the 
 influence of favourable circumstances, and of unfavourable 
 circumstances on the other. The factitious reputation 
 which the English Pritchard acquired came from his 
 assiduous collection and collation of supposed examples of 
 the degeneracy of people through misfortune, and of the 
 improvement of other people through good fortune. His 
 instances of the Turks, of the Jews, of the Irish are well 
 known. He thought that facts warranted him in assert- 
 ing; that the bow-lee^o-ed and savao-e-featured horsemen of 
 Independent Tartary had become in two or three centuries 
 the straight-legged handsome aristocrats of Constanti- 
 nople. That the white Jews of Palestine had become under 
 an Indian sky the black Jews of Madras. That the tall, 
 stout, clever Irish of Meath, when driven by the English 
 from their farms to huddle half- starved in mud-huts in the 
 south-west corner of the Green Isle, became in a few 
 generations the ugly, low-browed, meagre-limbed, pot- 
 bellied, brutal creatures whom the famine drove in crowds 
 to this country and whose well-fed children now constitute 
 a class of our society not at all inferior to any other as far 
 as physical and mental development is concerned. 
 
 This story of the Irish has been again taken up by one 
 of the most exact ethnologists of our own da}', M. Quatre- 
 fages of Paris. I will give it in his own words : — 
 
 ' When the British suppressed the Irish rebellions of 
 1649 and 1689, great crowds of native Irish were driven 
 out from Armagh and the south of county Down, in one di- 
 rection, into the mountains between Flews and the sea, 
 
v.] OF MANKIND. 105 
 
 and in the otlier, into Leitrim, Sligo, and Mayo. From 
 tliat time on, these people suffered the evil influence of 
 hunger and ignorance, those two great spoilers of man- 
 kind. Their descendants may be easily distinguisfied at. 
 the present day from their relatives left in Meath in good 
 estate. They are marked by open, protruding mouths, 
 projecting teeth, and fletschendern gums, high cheek- 
 bones, suppressed noses, and bai-barous foreheads. In 
 Sligo and northerc Mayo, two centuries of wretchedness 
 have stamped themselves upon the whole bodily constitu- 
 tion, within and without, furnishing us with an example of 
 human degeneration through known causes, so instructive 
 for the future, as to compensate for the misery of the past. 
 Their mean height is about 5 ft 2 inches ; they are thick- 
 bellied, crook-legged, like mis-begotten children ; clad in 
 rags they go about, the ghosts of a once full-sized, well- 
 bodied, and courageous people. In other quartei'S of the 
 island where this same Irish race has suffered no such 
 lamentable miseries, it furnishes the fairest examples of 
 human strength and beauty, not only physical but intel- 
 lectual also. Yet this account, which makes one's hair 
 bristle with horror, is sufficient to show how easily it can 
 be lowered to a level with, and be made to show all the 
 characteristics of, the lowest negro races, the most aban- 
 doned Australian tribes.' 
 
 I have selected from a great many o'thers and given you 
 in full this description of a case, which has made perhaps 
 the profoundest impression upon the imagination of eth- 
 nologists, because it will not only make the question before 
 us plain but will show how differently different investi- 
 gators conclude their inferences from the same facts. 
 
 Pritchard, and his numerous old-school followers, see in 
 this history only a fine example of man's susceptibility to 
 chauge, and they prove by it and other like examples that 
 satiety and hunger, heat and cold, field-life and forest-life, 
 mountain-air and sea-air have been ample means for 
 changing the descendants of the first pair, Adam and Eve, 
 or of the second pair, Noah and Anna, into all the black, 
 white, yellow, and red descriptions of mankind which now 
 inhabit the globe. But in order to maintain this theory 
 they are obliged to ignore or explain away a multitude 
 of adverse facts going to show that this capacity of man 
 
lOG ON THE UNITY [lECT. 
 
 for change is so limited that any race subjected to ad- 
 versity beyond a certain point not only degenerates but 
 perishes entirely, like any other kind of animal. 
 
 This opposite view has been taken up with the same ex- 
 cessive advocacy and want of logical balance by Dr Knox 
 and his school, who go to the extent of maintaining that 
 no migration is possible ; that the number of original 
 human races is very great ; that each of them was created 
 to occupy a certain definite area and can occupy no other ; 
 that any translation of it from that area to another is 
 necessarily fatal ; and that the degeneration of the Irish 
 vagabonds from Meath was as certain a premonition of 
 extinction as the degeneration of the European emigrants 
 to these United States must end in the extinction of our 
 race, unless it be enabled to drag out a Hngering existence 
 here by large and constant accessions of fresh hfe from 
 Europe. 
 
 Such speculations are not scientific. We call Pritchard 
 an old fogy ; we call Knox a crazy fellow. We must not 
 only have alleged facts, we must have actual facts, sifted, 
 analyzed, weighed, and measured, before we can begin to 
 see our way through such a world of mystery as is this 
 question of races. This sifting of facts is what character- 
 izes the ethnology of the last few years. 
 
 You will ask, what opinion does Quatrefages entertain 
 of the case which he cites so eloquently, and as if he fully 
 coincided with Pritchard^s cherished sentiments ? Be not 
 surprised when I tell you that he doubts the facts them- 
 selves. He quietly asks if it be not possible that the two 
 classes of Irish peasantry thus contrasted, the one de- 
 graded to a level with Australians, the other allied to the 
 most favoured Caucasians, ever really had anything to do 
 with each other. ' No,^ says he, ' the Irishman of Meath 
 alone represents the old stock, he has remained at home, 
 he has remained unaltered. The Irishman of Flews, on 
 the contrary, placed in other circumstances, has changed 
 himself and formed a new race out of the old one, in har- 
 mony with its unhappy surroundings. There are therefore, 
 now two races in these neighbouring counties.^ 
 
 And what has Vogt, again, to say to this ? Vogt smiles 
 at Quatrefages' ingenious, subterfuge. Supposing the 
 details of the Irish story to be true, how does it affect the 
 
v.] OF MANKIND. 107 
 
 question of the radical distinction between the skull of a 
 white Celt and the skull of an Australian negro ? Who 
 has examined the skulls of these degraded Irishmen of 
 Flews, and compared them in the hght of the latest science 
 with the skulls of the Irishmen of Meath their alleged 
 cousins on the one side to make out the differences, and 
 with the skulls of Australians on the other side to make 
 out the resemblance ? Has Pritchard ? Has Quatrefages ? 
 Has Broca ? Has Morton or Bachman ? Has Scherzer and 
 Schwarz ? Has Busk, or Camper, or Welcker, or Von 
 Baer, or Virchow, or Lucae, or Gratiolet, or Huschke, or 
 Aiken Meigs, or anybody ? Nobody ! Then what does our 
 actual knowledge about it amount to after all ? To nothing. 
 There being no competent witnesses the case is ruled out 
 of court. 
 
 We might spend much time in showing how all the old 
 and well-established points of controversy are broken off 
 in pretty much the same manner by want of proper pre- 
 liminary criticism. In the Turkish case, for instance : 
 who knows how much of the old Turkoman element still 
 lingers at Constantinople ? And where did the Turks 
 obtain mothers for their children but from the population 
 of the empire which they spent more than one lifetime in 
 overthrowing ; to say nothing about the mountain beauties 
 of the Caucasus. 
 
 In the case of the black Jews of India : who does not 
 know that the black Jews of Abyssinia boast that they are 
 the descendants, not of the patriarchs, but of the Queen 
 of Sheba ? Their Judaism is therefore a superstition over- 
 laid upon their blood, and cannot be adduced in proof 
 that their Israelitish blood has ever changed even by the 
 thousandth part of an atom of iron. 
 
 Take the case of the negroes in America, of which Lyell, 
 and Reiset, and Reclus have written so glibly; and who 
 knows anything with certainty about it ? A land indeed 
 of darkness and of the valley of death. We must wait 
 until the negroes take up the question themselves ; until 
 a truth-telling census gives us facts; until a thorough 
 and searching discrimination has been exercised. Men 
 pretend to say that the negro race has been marvellously 
 modified by mere change of habitat, by new climates, soils 
 and foods ; or as they are sometimes inclined to fancy, by 
 
103 ON THE UNITY [i.ECT. 
 
 mysterious or, at least, unknown agencies. Reclus asserts 
 his positive knowledge of the fact that as a race the 
 negroes have advanced one-fourth way towards the form 
 and appearance of the whites. Reiset opines that the 
 ])ure-blooded Africans of the Antilles retain their native 
 character, only weakened. Some writers confidently insist 
 that the negro skin is not so black, his nose not so small, 
 his forehead higher, his lips thinner than they used to be. 
 Even if it were possible to discover and prove all this to 
 be true what would it signify when we consider the con- 
 sistent and universal profligacy of the whites who have 
 lived among them and have been their absolute masters ; 
 when we consider the immense variety of thick and thin 
 lipped, high and low browed, large and small nosed tribes 
 in Africa from which the dreadful sum of all that evil was 
 made up ; and lastly, when we consider the operation of 
 the internal slave trade, that Virginian pudding-stick 
 stirred by the hand of Mammon for ever mixing up these 
 various original and derived ingredients together, to pro- 
 duce a chaos of results before which any man, were he 
 not a Charleston clergyman or a foreign tourist, would 
 stand awe- struck and silent. 
 
 Lastly, take our own Yankee case. Listen, if you can 
 without indulging in a hearty laugh, to the following de- 
 scription by Pruner Bey of the results of European emi- 
 gration to America. ' Already, after the second genera- 
 tion,' says this shrewd observer, ' the Yankee shows the 
 features of the Indian type. Later still, his lymphatic 
 system becomes reduced to the minimum of its normal de- 
 velopment. The skin grows dry as leather ; the warmth 
 of the complexion and the ruddiness of the cheeks are 
 lost — exchanged, in the man, for a clayey tint; in the 
 woman, for a sickly paleness. The head grows smaller, 
 round or even pointed, and covers itself with straight, 
 dark hair; the neck elongates, and one can see a great 
 development of muscle in the cheek and jaw. The temples 
 deepen ; the cheek-bones grow massive ; the eyes sink 
 into deep orbits and lie close together. The iris is dark ; 
 the glance grows piercing and wild. The long bones be- 
 come still longer, especially those of the upper limbs, so 
 that gloves of a peculiar shape, with very long fingers, 
 are manufactured in France and Eno^land for the American 
 
v.] OP MANKIND. WJ 
 
 market. The inner holes of these bones become narrow ; 
 the nails grow Hght, long, and pointed ; the woman^s pel- 
 vis approximates in shape to that of the man.' ' And 
 thus/ adds Quatrefages, ' the Anglo-Saxon type in America 
 has become changed and a new white race has sprung out 
 of the old English race to which we may give the name of 
 Yankee race/ 
 
 Now all this to one accustomed to see the beautiful 
 women of New England and the fine-looking men of the 
 middle States is sheer nonsense. Every intelligent citizen 
 of the United States has travelled enough to know that 
 the picture which Pruner Bey has given us represents no 
 such general reality as to be of the least ethnological im- 
 portance. It is a picture of individual heads, faces^ and 
 forms which contrast strongly with other and widely dif- 
 ferent heads, faces, and forms among whom they live, and 
 moreover, such as may be seen all over Europe. There is 
 not even a well-marked class of society in the United 
 States to answer the description. And as for a Yankee 
 race, no such thing exists in the sense assigned to the 
 word by these authors. Even in New England there are 
 recognized nearly half a dozen varieties of man. I could 
 take you to a valley in Pennsylvania, fifty miles long by 
 live miles wide, crossed by an invisible ethnological line, 
 north-east of which the inhabitants are stout, strong- 
 headed, handsome descendants of north Irish Presby- 
 terians ; while south-west from it the inhabitants are 
 Awmish descendants of Swiss mountaineers, equally good- 
 looking in their way. Behind this valley, and on the 
 summit of the Alleghany mountains 2000 feet above the 
 sea. Count Galitzin established his colony of Polish 
 Catholics, and their monastery is still in use, and so is 
 their cathedral. Twenty miles farther north, in the heart 
 of the forest, is the settlement of a wealthy Englishman. 
 Thirty miles fai-ther north, still deeper in the forest and 
 on still higher ground, spread out the fields of St Mary's, 
 tilled by over ten thousand French Catholics. Forty miles 
 noi'th-east of this and in the centre of the great forests of 
 the Sinnemahoning Ole Bull founded his unhappy colony 
 of Swedes. Forty miles to the north of this again would 
 bring us to the settlements of the Connecticut men up on 
 the head waters of the Alleghany river ; and an equal dis- 
 
110 ON THE UNITY [lECT. 
 
 tance to the south would return us among the descendants 
 of the race which inhabited the Black Forest and the 
 Vosges. 
 
 Go from State to State and such facts will face you 
 everywhere. You may draw two lines across the State of 
 Ohio so as to cut it into three regions, each with a separate 
 ethnological development^ distinct in appearance, in their 
 manners and customs, in peculiarities of language and in 
 their religious habits. 
 
 But what is that Anglo-Saxon race concerning which 
 we have heard so much and to which no one has yet suc- 
 ceeded in giving a form ? Vogt well says that it has no 
 existence ; Max Miiller confirms the statement, if it 
 needed confirmation. It is a chaos of races, this so-called 
 Anglo-Saxon race. And so is the population of the United 
 States a chaos of races ; an ethnological moraine, or gravel 
 terrace, or delta deposit, to recur to the illustration already 
 used. We cannot yet learn from it anything respecting 
 those great laws of human variation which, sooner or later, 
 will be discovered. 
 
 What the other sciences wait for is this ; that ethnology 
 should adopt some correct method of investigation. It 
 has been well said that ofttimes a proper method of in- 
 vestigating is a grander and more useful discovery than 
 any which the investigation itself may yield. For the 
 discovery of a right method is so much absolute abstract 
 science accomplished, involving as it does the knowledge 
 of principal truths in their prime relations ; whilst the dis- 
 coveries which result from an investigation are commonly 
 themselves mere isolated facts ; and facts are good for no- 
 thing until they are synthetically converted into laws. 
 
 Now the difficulty of devising a proper method for ethno- 
 logical research arises from the fact that there are two oppo- 
 site tendencies in nature — the one towards differentiation or 
 individualization, the other towards integration or gener- 
 alization. Nature is for ever at war with herself, pulling 
 down with one hand Avhile building up with the other. 
 She obeys blindly the law of Christ not to let her left 
 hand know what her right hand doeth. She keeps races 
 separate ; she mixes them together. She gives to man an 
 intense love of home, a powerful associative principle, the 
 rage of 1(we, the fire of friendship, the pride of country. 
 
y.] OF MANKIND. Ill 
 
 the bigotry of worsMp, the jealous guardianship of property 
 — all this to develope the family and preserve the local 
 type. On the other hand, she inspires the soul with a 
 thirst for change, with curiosity concerning the distant and 
 the new, with the love of conquests, with the hopes of 
 betterment — all these to develope the powers of the indi- 
 vidual man, and at the same time to spread out population 
 as widely as possible. 
 
 These are at home with the natural law that offspring 
 should bear the characteristic features of both father and 
 mother. And if this were the only law of inheritance it 
 would be easy enough to make out the exact forms and 
 limits of each race, for its individuals would be alike. 
 But there is another law in force, by which each child 
 inherits only a Hmited selection of the characteristic 
 features of father and mother ; and one child more of one 
 and another child more of another. One child takes on 
 the physical form of the father with the mental character of 
 the mother ; another child reverses the order and resem- 
 bles the father in mind and the mother in body. This 
 latter law, therefore, modifies and confuses the former, 
 establishing individual variety in the midst of stirpal uni- 
 formity. But in doing so it also provides a potent means 
 for bringing into the history of a family a more or less 
 complete divergence from the original type ; in fact, the 
 production of a new race out of an old one. Were this 
 the only law ethnology would be an impossible science. 
 Utter confusion would attend the history of human life. 
 
 But a third law has been moreover discovered. It is 
 called in the natural history of the lower creatures the 
 law of alternate generation, by which the jelly-fish begets 
 a star-fish and the star-fish in turn begets a jelly-fish. 
 This law is strangely powerful over human character. 
 I think that as a rule a child is more likely to resemble 
 its grandparents than its parents. By this law hereditary 
 diseases like scrofula and insanity and mental and bodily 
 peculiarities of every kind appeal*, lie hid, and re-appear 
 in a series of alternate generations. This is in fact that 
 conservative force in nature which strives perpetually 
 against abnormal variation, and insists upon a return to 
 the old idea. This is the-mysterious under-current by 
 which Mongol heads and faces are forced to the surface of 
 
112 ON THE UNITY [lECT. 
 
 some Teutonic or Celtic stream. I have seen profiles in Phi- 
 ladelphia which might have been copied from the alabas- 
 ter tablets of Khorsabad — pure Assyrian faces, no doubt 
 the product of Hebrew blood descended through forty 
 centuries from Ur of the Chaldees. 
 
 The power of this preserving force of type, whatever 
 may be its nature, stamps the great areas of the earth^s 
 surface with those unmistakable generalizations to which 
 no amount or intensity of individual variation can make us 
 blind. It is the genius of the race. On the oldest monu- 
 ments of the Pharaohs the pictures of different kinds of 
 dog ai-e recognized by any child as the pictures of the dogs 
 with which he plays to-day. The pictures of the Negro, 
 the Jew, the Egyptian, the Scythian are perfect likenesses 
 of the Nubians, Fellahs, Jews, and Turks of to-day. There 
 you may see, portrayed in colours 6000 years old, the same 
 slave-traders driving down the same slave coffles as in the 
 same valley of the Nile to-day. If all the races of mankind 
 are variants by the law of variation from the form of Noah 
 or of Adam, then how infinitely remote must have been the 
 time when Noah or Adam lived. On the other hand, if 
 the law of constancy in form has kept the races apart from 
 the beginning, how numerous must be the list of actual 
 human races ; how closely must they have been confined 
 to their respective centres of ci'eation ; and how difficult 
 it becomes for ethnology to devise any efficient and reliable 
 method of research for explaining the mixture of races in 
 the more civilized portions of the earth ! 
 
 Let me fix your attention for a moment on this curious 
 map of France, published in the memoirs of the Royal 
 Asiatic Society many years ago. It exhibits the depart- 
 ments of the French empire, each overspread with a dif- 
 ferent shade of colour and marked with a certain cypher. 
 This map affords a brilliant example of ethnological method. 
 You are perhaps aware that the French, as a people, are 
 mulattoes ; but a general observation like that advances us 
 scarcely a step in true science, although it may be quite 
 sufficient to stifle the clamour which slaveholders have 
 raised against the possibility of ' miscegenation.'' It is in 
 the highest degree desirable to know in what sense and to 
 what extent the French people are mulattoes ; in what pro- 
 vinces and departments they are most dark, and in what 
 
I 
 
 v.] OF MANKIND. 113 
 
 other proviuces aud departments they are most white. 
 If we could discover by some accurate uiethod -say by 
 that of perceutao'es — some law of increase of the d:\rk 
 element in French blood in some one direction and of the 
 white element in some other, we should come into posses- 
 sion of means for tracing the mixture to the former seats 
 of a dark race in the first direction or on that side of 
 France ; and of a white race whose seat was in the other 
 direction on the opposite side of France. Now that is pre- 
 cisely what this map enables us to do. You observe how 
 the percentage-shades form belts running across the king- 
 dom from N.W. to S.E., and how the darker belts are 
 those upon the S.W. or Spanish side, while the lighter 
 belts are on the N.E. or towards Germany. Until this 
 map was constructed it was supposed that the abori- 
 ginal population of France was to be sought for in the 
 central region of the Cantal and the mountains of Auvergne. 
 But you see how steadily and equally the aboriginal dark 
 or ' brown ' race of France as it is called has been pressed 
 down from the Rhine and the Channel towards the Bay 
 of Biscay and the Pyrenees. You see how the increase of 
 its mixture with the fair German race has been in propor- 
 tion to the distance from the Rhine. As for the wliite 
 race it of course belonged to central Europe, and was 
 either Sclavic or Teutonic, perhaps both, certainly in part 
 Teutonic. But the dark race with which it mixed — what 
 shall we thiuk of it ? Where shall we find it pure ? The 
 map suggests the only answer to these questions. The 
 colour deepens to a maximum where the Pyreneau 
 mountains meet the sea. These mountains are the home of 
 three divisions of one race, speaking three dialects of one 
 language called the Basque; a language possessing no 
 well-proven affinities with any European tongue ; but sug- 
 gesting some resemblances with the language of the Finns, 
 a people perhaps related to the same circumpolar race to 
 which the Esquimaux belong. These Basques are sturdy 
 mountaineers and have never been driven from their homes ; 
 but their mountains stood with their feet in the sea, and 
 the Basques became great fishermen ; the Cabots found 
 the banks of Newfoundland covered with their boats, and 
 it is said that they sold cod by name in the markets of 
 Hambursr and Ha\Te before Columbus made his first vov- 
 
114 ON THE DNITY [LECT. 
 
 age. The native word is not 'Basque' but 'Escamara;' 
 almost identical with Esquimaux. The west end of Brittany 
 is peopled by a frag-ment of this same race preserved in the 
 same manner among rocks and in the surf, but who have 
 exchanged their language for a Celtic dialect. St Malo was 
 celebrated in the middle ages for its breed of sailors who 
 shared with the southern Basques iu the fisheries of La- 
 brador. Another and exceedingly small fragment of this 
 mysterious and most ancient brown race exists in Ireland 
 in the shape of a group of hamlets on the northern shore 
 of Galway bay ; the people intermarry among themselves 
 and have little in common with the Celtic population of the 
 country. Now if we track the brown race southward we 
 find it as a modifying element in all the Spanish peninsula, 
 especially among the Sierras and in secluded Portugal. 
 Whatever was its mixture with the Celtic blood of France 
 it formed with Celtic blood the entire humanity of Spain 
 and hence the name which the Romans gave it, Celt Iberia. 
 If we take this latter name Iberia and compare it with 
 a multitude of others — I will not weary you with the de- 
 tails — we arrive at the conclusion that in the brown race of 
 western Europe we have a division of the great aboriginal 
 Berber race of northern Africa ; a conclusion which it 
 would have been impossible for the best ethnologist to 
 have advanced with any confidence until some such method 
 of investigation had been adopted as this map illustrates.* 
 Not by suppositions and conjectures but only by a 
 rigorous self-denial of the imagination and by restricting 
 it to its proper function, the invention of true methods of 
 investigation, can the questions be answered which eth- 
 
 * But after such investigations have been made, these direct observa- 
 tions are of value. For example, in 18G2, MM. Martins, Desor, and Escher 
 de hi Linth studied the Berbers in their native liaunts. ' The Sufites,' 
 writes Desor, ' are genuine Berbers, and, as such, white with black hair, 
 lilsi' the southern Europeans ; and were it not for their burnus Martins 
 mi!:;lit have rc(X)gnized them for a troop of scholars from some viUage 
 of Provence or Languedoc. But one thing drew our attention, the very 
 extended form of the head ; they are true longheads (dolicho-cephaloi), as 
 one sees chiefly only so well yjronounced from the ancient graves ; the 
 face is angular and thin, the teetii vertical and beautifully white like those 
 of all these peoples. The body is lank, and capable of marvellous endur- 
 ance.' (Letter to Liebig, p. 29.) I say nothing here of the superb l rain 
 of argument coming out of the recent rescarclies into the dolmen or Druid 
 architecture of Europe and Africa. 
 
V. I OF JIANKJND. 115 
 
 nologists are askiug of each other respecting similar mix- 
 tures of the white and black racer in other parts of the 
 world ; iu India and Burmah, for example, where also the 
 aboriginal element seems to have been black, and to have 
 been mixed first with yellow Tiiranian blood from the north- 
 east, and afterwards with white Arian blood from the north- 
 west. Were this a course of lectures on Ethnology proper 
 I would gladly take up these questions oue by one. But 
 I must occupy the few minutes I have left in sketching out 
 the direction which the inquiry takes in bearing upon 
 the connection of the present races with those of the Stone 
 or Diluvial age and with the ape and monkey tribes. 
 
 The most nobly organized races are the most migratory, 
 because they have the faculties of self-protection in the 
 highest state of efl&ciency. The white Shemite,the Arab 
 merchant, traffics in person every year from Morocco to 
 Singapore. He has imjirinted his alphabet, his cipher, his 
 unitarianism upon a belt of the earth^s surface extending 
 from the Senegal and Gambia to Lake Baikal. He has 
 ennobled by mixture with his own blood the Khoord, the 
 Nubian, the Berber, and the Celt. How far back this be- 
 ginning of his influence would go, if we could follow it, 
 we cannot yet make out. But what is true of this sub- 
 division of the great white race is true of the white race 
 as an entire whole. It has mowed a broad historic swath 
 along the temperate zone, subjugating, proselyting, ele- 
 vating the darker and poorer races which had previous 
 possession of the earth, the less mixed and fragmentary 
 remains of which we find among the mountains or on pro- 
 montories or in islands in the sea. 
 
 North of the belt of this historic white race lies the 
 nearly undisturbed population of the Arctic zone. To the 
 south of it dwell enormous separated masses of black men. 
 I omit all mention here of the red Indians of America so 
 as not to complicate the subject.* 
 
 * De Gobineau, in his ' Essai sur I'inegalite des Races Humaines,' 
 Paris, 1853 (Phil. Lib.), devotes the 16th chapter of vol. i. to a descrip- 
 tion of the characteristic features of the three type races ; but adds that 
 at the earliest date we see them they were not pure, and that now thev 
 have been mixed a hundred times. (See foot-note to Lecture p. 184.) 
 
 The Melanian variety, he says, is at the bottom of the scale. The 
 animal form of its pelvis fixes its destiny from the moment of conception. 
 
116 ON THE UNITY [leiT. 
 
 These i-aces seem to be as different in species as wolves 
 and tuxes differ from jackals and dogs. There is abso- 
 
 (A Vicnchjeu d'esprit.) It never leaves the limits of restricted iatel- 
 lectuality. But it is no brute, pure and simple, this nef^ro with narrow, 
 retreating forehead, carrying in the middle skull indications of certain 
 grossly powerful energies. If its thinking faculties are middling, or re- 
 duced to nothing, it possesses in desire, and therefore in its will, aterrible 
 intensity. Many of its senses are developed with a vigour unknown to 
 the two other races,* especially the senses of taste and smell. i5ut pre- 
 cisely on the avidity of its sensations lies the stamp of its inferiority. 
 All aliments are good for it ; nothing disgusts, nothing repulses it. 
 (I'runer, i. 183.) Its lust is to eat, to eat excessively, with fury. No 
 carrion is unworthy of its stomach. Its lust for gross odours accommo- 
 dates itself to tliose most odious. To these chief traits is added an un- 
 stable humour, a fixless variability of sentiment, annulling the distinction 
 between vice and virtue for this race. Tlu; very rage with which it pursues 
 the ol)ject which has put its sensitivity into vibration and intlained its 
 cupidity, is a gauge for the prompt appeasing of the one and the rapid 
 forgetfulness of the other. Lastly, it values as little its own life as 
 another's. It kills to kill ; and so this human machine, so easy to set in 
 motion, is, in the presence of suifering, of a cowardice taking refuge in 
 death, or of a monstrous impassibility. 
 
 The yellow race presents the antithesis of all this. The cranium pro- 
 jects in front. Large, bony, salient often, developed well in height, ver- 
 tical over a triangular face, wherein the nose and chin have none of those 
 gross and rude projections of the negro. A tendency to obesity, though 
 not a special trait, recurs more frequently in the yellow than in the other 
 races. Little of physical vigour; dispositions to apathy; none of those 
 strange moral excesses so common to the blacks. Feeble desires ; a will 
 obstinate rather than extreme ; a taste perpetual but tranquil for material 
 pleasures ; rarely gluttonous, but with more choice of aliments than the 
 nei^TO has. In all this, a tendency to mediocrity ; a comprehension quick 
 en(jugh, but neither elevated nor profound (quoting Carus, Weber Ung. 
 etc., p. 60) ; a love of the useful ; respect for law ; conscious of the ad- 
 vaiitages of a certain dose of liberty ; a practical race, in the narrow 
 inc.iuing of the word ; no dreamers nor lovers of theories ; inventing 
 lift le, but able to appreciate and adopt what serves its turn ; their desires 
 lini ted to living as softly and eomniodiously as they can: a populace and 
 small bourgeoisie, which every civilizer should choose for the basis of 
 his society ; but not to give society nerve, beauty, or action. 
 
 The white race has reflecting energy, or energetic intelligence ; the 
 sense of the uselul in a larger, higher, more courageous, more ideal sense : 
 a perseverance in plain view of obstacles, able to find means for removing 
 them out of the way ; with a greater physical power ; an extraordinary 
 inst inct for order, not only as tlie gauge of peace and rest, but as the in- 
 dispensable means of conservation ; and yet a well pronounced taste for 
 liberty, even in extreme ; a declared hostility to that formal shn-py 
 Chinese organization, as well as to a haughty despotism, the only l)ridie 
 for the blacks. The white men are distinguished by a singular love of 
 life, prized more because put to its proper uses by them. Their cruelty. 
 
▼.] OK MANKIND. 117 
 
 lutely no reason for supposing them to be of one species 
 except an absurd legend ascribed to an ancient Shemitic 
 law-giver and preserved among a number of similar 
 legends of various dates, inconsistent with themselves, 
 with each other and with the legends of surrounding 
 nations. The legend of Adam and Eve makes all man- 
 kind descend from Cain first and Seth afterwards, and yet 
 says that Cain obtained his wife before Seth was bom, and 
 in a country whither he had fled from Adam and Eve the 
 only other human beings at that time on the earth. 
 Then the descendants of Seth ai-e made to live each one 
 a thousand years, and when the earth was peopled, partly 
 by a crossing of the human stock with angelic blood, the 
 work of the Creator was entirely spoilt and had to be 
 begun again; the x^Lntediluvians were all destroyed; and 
 Noah and his family became in their turn the sole progeni- 
 tors of all our present races. As one of Adam^s 'three 
 sons was murdered by his brother, so one of Noah's three 
 sons was cursed by his father and his descendants handed 
 over into bondage to the descendants of the other two. 
 Of this most orthodox adventure a most diabolical handle 
 has been made to justify the enslavement of the black 
 race by the white. This hotchpotch of old Hebrew legends,, 
 niiide sacred to our hearts by lectures from the pulpit and 
 recitations at the mother's knee — this tissue of absurdity 
 called the biblical history of the origin of mankind, is ab- 
 solutely the sole and entire argument for not considering 
 tho human races as much distinct in kind and origin as are 
 the llama and alpaca, or the vicuna and alpaca, or the 
 springbok and the goat, or the hare and the rabbit, or the 
 American bison and the European cow, or the wolf and 
 
 when exercised, is couscious of its own excesses, a sentiment very proble- 
 matical among the blacks. Yet they find reasons for leaving this occupied 
 existence witliout a murmur — for honour, first, which under slightly va- 
 rious names has occupied an enormous place in their ideas since the be- 
 ginning of the race. Honour and its fruit, civilization, are not known to 
 the yellow and bhick races. But this intellectual superiority is matched 
 by an inferiority in their sensations. The white race is far more poorly 
 endowed in sensual faculties than the other two. It is, therefore, less 
 solicited and absorbed by corporal action, although its structure is 
 remarkably more vigorous. (Martins says the European surpasses the 
 black in the intensity of the nerve fluid. Reise in Erazilieu, i. 259.) 
 
 Here Gobineau has his tertiary and quaternary mixtures of these three 
 grand semndary types. 
 
118 ON THE UNITY [lEOT. 
 
 the dog, or the dog and the jackal, or the camel and the 
 dromedary ; for all these acknowledged species not only 
 breed together but produce under certain conditions 
 fertile offspring.* 
 
 The Swiss naturalists thought that they had estabhshed 
 four well-defined types of Helvetic skulls : the Sion type, 
 rather long, and low in the crown ; the Hohberg type, with 
 a pent-roof shape; the Dissentis type, bullet-headed, or 
 square as it is usually called ; and the Belle-air type, of so 
 mixed a character that it was soon discarded. The other 
 three are still under discussion. The Sion type is identi- 
 fied by the German naturalists as that of the Hiigel-graber 
 or gi-ave-mounds of the valley of the Ehine ; and the Hoh- 
 berg type (once supposed to be Eoman) with that of the 
 Reihen-graber skulls. The Sion type is common in the 
 caverns of Belgium and elsewhere. But in the caves of the 
 south of France appears another type, a small round head 
 like that of the Laplander's ; and this is the head associated 
 with the rein-deer and other animals of that remote epoch. 
 Pruner Bey therefore, in the congress of 1867 at Paiis, 
 insisted strenuously upon the necessity for recognising 
 this small round head as the earliest type of man known 
 to us. But Professor Vogt objected that the round foi-m 
 is theoretically the most perfect of all forms, giving most 
 weight and least superficial exposure ; but he especially 
 recalled to view the fact never to be forgotten that the 
 low Neanderthal skull (with others of a similar but not so 
 excessively degraded a form) is equally ancient, and of a 
 wholly opposite type. If the Hyperborean race followed 
 (or led) the rein-deer to the south during the coming on 
 of the glacial period there must have been some other race 
 also already in the field, to meet and perhaps to disappear 
 for a time before it, and then perhaps to reappear after the 
 worlds of ice had melted and the Arctic zone had retreated 
 within its polar circle. The encomiums lavished on the 
 Engis skull are not only a little extravagant (for although 
 it is finely shaped, it is not large), but its exact age also 
 has never been satisfactorily determined. If however it 
 be both very ancient and also Caucasian, then it establishes 
 a third superior ancient race ; or, much more probably, 
 
 * Vogt, vol. ii. 216. The only case of sterility, well autheuticated, u 
 that of the mule proper, the offspring of the horse and ass. 
 
▼.] OP MANKIND. 119 
 
 it merely proclaims the eternal possibility of individual 
 greatness even in the worst of times. 
 
 I account it probable, then, that the races of mankind 
 have always been distinct ; and that they probably made 
 their appearance on the planet successively ; perhaps the 
 black and meagre races first and the white races last. It 
 would not be strange also to find their history running pa- 
 rallel with that of the apes and monkeys. For it is not to 
 be denied that in the three types of manlike ape, viz. the 
 orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, the three principal 
 divisions of the family of apes have found their last and 
 highest development. Whether we split up the orangs 
 and the gorillas into separate species, or only recognize 
 in them varieties like those which separate the affiliated 
 races of mankind, it is certain that each of the three man- 
 like ape-forms presents its own characteristic manlike 
 feature. The chimpanzee approaches man more closely in 
 the form of the skull and in the character of its teeth. 
 The orang approximates the human ideal especially in the 
 construction of its brain. The gorilla resembles man rather 
 in the make of his extremities. Neither one of the three 
 can be said to stand absolutely nearer to man than the 
 other two. All three strive to reach the human ideal, but 
 on different sides of the common development. The orang, 
 says Gratiolet, stands at the head of the family of gibbons 
 and baboons on account of the size of its forehead, the 
 relative smallness of its backhead and the development of 
 its upper lobes : in other words, it has a better developed 
 gibbon brain. The chimpanzee shows unmistakable anal- 
 ogies of brain, skull, and face with the makaken, and 
 especially Avith the magot, and stands in the same well- 
 developed relation to the makakos and pavians that the 
 orang does to the gibbons and baboons. The gorilla is a 
 mandrill by force of similar analogies, by its lack of tail, 
 its breadth of breast-bone, its singularity of gait, walking 
 npon the back or outer side of its two last finger-joints. 
 There has been, then, an unmistakable, threefold, and 
 parallel development of the ape ideal, along three historic 
 lines from three original family groups.* I do not myself 
 see what forbids us from supposing that the process of 
 
 * See Schroder van der Kolk and Vrolik's fivefold resemblance inVogt, 
 iL283. 
 
120 ON THE UNITY [LECT. 
 
 development went on to the production of those human 
 forms of an acknowledged want of beauty and spirituality, 
 of an acknowledged ape-like appearance, which we find 
 populating the very regions of the chimpanzee, gorilla, 
 and orang, viz. the brutal black races of tropical Africa, 
 and the negritoes of Anderman and New Holland. 
 
 The objection I know is at hand that there are no in- 
 termediate forms existing between those man-like apes 
 and these ape-like men. But I think the force of this ob- 
 jection is broken by sevoial considerations. And first, by 
 the consideration that such intermediate forms need not 
 for the sake of the argument exist in masses or tribes. 
 Individuals scattered all over the world, through all the 
 human races, with low foreheads, small brains, long arms, 
 thin legs, projecting task-like teeth, suppressed noses, 
 and other marks of arrested development; to say nothing 
 of millions of idiots and cretins produced by the same 
 arrest in every generation of mankind, sustain the argu- 
 ment. 
 
 Then, secondly, we must consider that such intermediate 
 forms may have existed in immense numbers and tlren 
 disappeared, for all we know to the contrary. Nay, mul- 
 titudes of them may exist in the fossil state still undis- 
 covered. Yogt has well observed that 20 years ;igo 
 not a single fossil ape had been made out. During these 
 20 years nearly a dozen have been found. One year ago 
 no intermediate form between the schlankaffen and maka- 
 V-^n was known ; now w? have the whole skeleton of on<\* 
 Such intermediate types are continually turning up. 
 
 And, thirdly, Ave must keep in mind most carefully that 
 skulls have been found in caves which would have been 
 undoubtedly assigned to apes had not other parts of the 
 skeleton been found at the same time compelling the 
 anatomist to assign them to some ancient form of humanity ; 
 precisely as in the instance of the fossil ape discovered in 
 Oreece, by its skull it would have been pronounced a pure 
 baboon, had not its limbs been those belonging to a 
 species of makaken. 
 
 And, fourthly, when we compare the cave and lake and 
 diluvial skidls as yet discovered with the skulls of the Aus- 
 tralian natives (accepted as the most degraded or apelixe 
 * Vogt, ii. 279. 
 
v.] OF MANKIND. 121 
 
 race now living on the earth), the resemblance in most 
 cases (setting the Engis skull aside) is so extraordinary 
 that we may bo reasonably excused for suspecting that the 
 early races of mankind were farther removed in the order 
 of development from the noblest races now existing than 
 the apes are removed from them. 
 
 Let us praise God for our place in this procession of 
 mysteries. If natural history sht)uld hereafter teach the 
 truth of our descent from these inferior beings Christianity 
 wiil always teach humility. Let us comfort our pride by 
 remembering that everything has been good and perfect 
 in its day and generation. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 ON THE EARLY SOCIAL LIFE OP MAN. 
 
 The tree is known by its fruit. We have been con- 
 sidering man as a being ; henceforth we are to regard him 
 as a worker : first, as a social being, a worker in brass and 
 iron, a maker of boats and bridges, an inventor of weapons, 
 and a framer of laws ; then, as an intellectual being, a 
 poet or maker j9a.r excellence, an artist, a philosopher, a 
 priest. 
 
 It is not as easy to distinguish races by degrees of facial 
 angle as by grades of civilization. Perhaps we have a 
 right to say : as only some races of animals are tamable, so 
 only certain races of mankind are civilizable. As the car- 
 nivora love blood, and the ruminants and pachyderms love 
 foliage and grass, so do some races of mankind love tents 
 and waggons, while othei's prefer cities and ships. But 
 after all our efforts to include these social tendencies 
 among the anatomical or physiological characteristics of 
 mankind they recoil upon us as mere harmonies of man 
 with nature. So long as large areas of the earth's surface 
 consist of desert sands or grassy plains so long will there 
 be nomade races to inhabit them ; mountains will breed 
 mountaineers ; deltas grow cities. The fishing rates do not 
 seek the seashore, they are pi-oduced by it. The forest 
 gives birth to the hunter as it does to the deer and wild- 
 boar after which he stalks. 
 
 If this be so, and if forests have disappeared frum civil- 
 ized lands by the agency of man, it follows, that when 
 the earliest races of mankind appeared they appeared in 
 the form of fishing and hunting savages, the form most in 
 harmony with the physical condition of the greater part 
 of the earth's surface at tliat time. There were no doubt 
 then as now natural paradises existing here and there 
 
ON THE EAKLY aOClAL LIFE OF MAN. 123 
 
 wherein some section of a single race would take on a 
 quicker civilization than elsewhere. But he must be blind 
 who cannot detect the traces of that long, hard, desperate, 
 bloody, cruel, demon-like conflict between the earhest 
 men and all the adverse powers of the air and earth — a 
 conflict in which all the advantage was on nature's side — 
 but the victory on man's, because the genii of mind came 
 to his relief. 
 
 All civilization comes of work. The race that will not 
 work cannot get civilized. Yet mere work is not a civil- 
 izer. Leisure is indispensable. The French- Canadian 
 works from four in the morning until six and seven at 
 night, but his civilization is not high. Civilization is like 
 navigation. It makes all the difference in the world 
 whether there be a current with you or a current against 
 yovi. In the tropics and at the poles the powers of nature 
 are too many for man. If he barely sleep he will do weU. 
 So also in the early ages, even in the temperate zone, man- 
 kind needed reinforcement. The black race which can- 
 not advance under the equator any more than can the 
 pigmy race around the pole, civilizes itself when it is 
 transferred to the 40th parallel of latitude provided there 
 be given to it a chance to work. The progress of the 
 black race in the United States under all its disadvantages 
 has been respectable. Give it the freedom of the plough, 
 the anvil, and the loom, that is the right to enjoy the 
 results of varied and honest labour, and you will give it 
 the enjoyment of so much leisure afterwards as the high- 
 est civilization needs. 
 
 No race has ever yet consented to work for nothing 
 cheerfully. All the sense of justice man has comes trom 
 resistance to that attempt. If the reconstruction of South- 
 ern society is to be a success it can be so only on condi- 
 tion that the white man share the soil, the shop, the 
 schoolroom, and the forum with the black. That the 
 black race is willing to buy civilization at its natural 
 price, that is with work, has been demonstrated. But to 
 show you how delicate a test of justice work can be I will 
 tell you a story which a friend of mine, an engineer upon 
 a Southern railroad, told to me. ^ 
 
 A railroad was projected through the swamp-lands of 
 Florida. Slaves were hired from the planters of Georgia 
 
124 ON THE EARLY [lKCT. 
 
 to do the work. A day's task for every man was measured 
 with a ten-foot pole. The slaves rose early and by work- 
 ing diligently could complete their tale of work by two or 
 three o'clock and have the rest of the day for their auiuse- 
 ment. They soon discovered this advantage and threw 
 their whole soul into the business. Before noon nothing 
 was to be seen but the flying dirt ; afternoon nothing but 
 song and dance and general cheer. This was too good to 
 last. The avaricious contractors made new poles, 18 inches 
 instead of 12 to the foot. The day's task was unaccount- 
 ably lengthened by an hour or more. The blacks could 
 ofter no explanation and made no resistance, for the 
 work was still within the range of cheerful diligence. 
 Another month passed by and a third set of poles were 
 distributed. The foot had now become 14 inches long 
 and the day's task lasted until sunset.* The defrauded 
 labourers, seeing that there was no use struggling with an 
 unjust despotism, returned to plantation-habits, shirked 
 all the work they could, lost heart and fell back into that 
 barbarism the essence of which consists in giving up the 
 soul a prey to the forces of nature. The contractors had 
 overshot their mark ; and so one of these monuments of the 
 high civilization of the nineteenth century served only to 
 remind the spectator of the aboriginal condition of the 
 races of mankind before they had learned to hope to better 
 their miserable plight. 
 
 Rain, hail, and snow, and the furious piercing north 
 wind were the slave-drivers of that age. The perpetual 
 growth of the forest and the rapid increase of wild ani- 
 mals were the measuring-rods which mysteriously length- 
 ened out their task. No wonder that despondency grew 
 out of ignorance, and barbarity out of despair. It is hard 
 to comprehend the possible beginnings of civilization in a 
 wilderness of forests and mountains, pelted with storms 
 and horrible with the cries of wild beasts. Yet such waa 
 
 * The difference in Hie tasks, it should be remembered, is to be estimated 
 in cubic measure. 
 
 One cubic foot 12 x 12 x 12 = iV28' 
 „ „ measure 18 x 1.3 x 13 = 2197, nearly 28 per cent. more 
 
 than a true cubic toot. 
 One cubic measure 14 x 14 x 14 = 2794, nearly 60 per cent, more 
 
 than a true cubic foot. 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LlfK OF MAN. 125 
 
 Europe dowu to a recent date, i.e. to within a few centu- 
 ries of tlie Christian era. Such was all North America 
 two hundred years ago with the exception of a few river 
 bottoms, a few glades and a few estuary marshes on the 
 seacoast. In Europe also such places early became refuges 
 and nurseries for man. It is therefore in the open plain 
 of Languedoc, on the borders of the delta of the Rhone, 
 and on the great chalk basin of central and northern 
 France and southern England that relics of the most 
 ancient races have been chiefly found. Bat even here 
 they are commingled with the remains of tigers and 
 hyenas, wild boars and bulls, the bear, the wolf and the 
 doer, and even of the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and 
 the elephant, in such numbers and of such a size as to tell 
 a plain story of the most savage existence. When we re- 
 member that the only weapons which the men of the cave 
 had at their command were fire, and the bow and arrow, tlie 
 riint hatchet fastened to its wooden handle with a willow- 
 withe or a shrunken piece of deer-skin, or the pike pointed 
 ^vith a reindeer prong or a wild boards tusk ; and that the 
 (mly farming implement they knew of was a paddle of 
 flint, chipped thin and broad and worked by hand without 
 ;i. handle, our wonder grows how civilization could have 
 found a time and starting-point. 
 
 It was no doubt in order to avoid their natural 
 enemies the Avild beasts, and perhaps also to defend 
 themselves against each other, that some tribes whose 
 hunting-grounds lay neighbouring to lakes betook them- 
 selves to a peculiar mode of life. They planted upright 
 logs in the lake bottom, supporting them with heaps of 
 scones, and lashing them together with wicker-work. On 
 these they laid a wooden platform communicating with 
 the shore by a wooden bridge or causeway. On this 
 platform stood their wigwams. Here the women and 
 children were comparatively safe when the men were on 
 sliore hunting, or farming or at war. On the edges of the 
 platform they sat to fish. In the centre of each wigwam 
 pex'liaps was a layer of earth to cook their fish upon. 
 Trap-doors in the village floor received the ofial, the bones 
 of animals after the marrow had been extracted, fragments 
 of broken pottery, the waste of spoiled nets and ruined 
 weapons. Hundreds of the sites of these villages have 
 
126 ON THE EARLY [lECT. 
 
 been recently discovered* in the lakes of Switzerland, 
 Bavaria, and Austria, and thousands of such relics of their 
 domestic life, but as yet only two skulls. t It is, therefore, 
 certain, that these people were not habitual cannibals ; for 
 in that case human skeletons would be abundant. It is 
 equally evident that they either burned their dead or 
 buriodthem onshore. That both these customs were pur- 
 sued at different times we have good evidence. It is 
 remarkable that the oldest skull yet found in these lake- 
 dwellings presents us again with all the low-type features 
 of the Neanderthal cranium ; great ridges over the orbits 
 of the eyes, a suddenly retreating forehead, and extremely 
 small capacity. It contained what seems an undeveloped 
 brain; but yet it could not have been (as some were in- 
 clined to consider the Neanderthal cranium) the skull of an 
 idiot. These people were far from being idiots. They 
 were only animals. The essential difference between an 
 idiot and an animal consists in this fact : the idiot, like 
 the unborn foetus, is not aware of his relations to sur- 
 rounding nature; his life goes on chemically, not con- 
 sciously ; the animal on the contrary is wide-awake to his 
 position and its demands. Indeed, the quickness and 
 many-sidedness of this self-consciousness is the nicest scale 
 we have by which to grade the animal creation. Behold 
 the deer for instance ; how alive to every sound and 
 motion ! how skilful to hide ! how prompt to fly ! And 
 yet I have myself stood for half an hour by my transit 
 instrument in the woods of the Towanda Mountains, wait- 
 ing until my men cut out a line down the long steep slope 
 into a valley , and during all this time I have seen a deer 
 stand motionless watching the brilliant spot of light which 
 the sunbeams through the trees made on the brass cylinder 
 of my telescope not fifty paces distant, unaware of my 
 presence and unconscious of danger. In vain, says the 
 poet of old, is the net spread in the sight of any bird. 
 The consciousness of its relations is not complete in any 
 
 * Beginniug with the dry winter of 1853-4, Meiien, on Lake Zurich. 
 
 t One (mentioned in Rutimeyer's Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der 
 Schweitz, p. 181. Basel, 1861), at Meiien, ou Lake Zurich, early stone 
 period, called by Prof. His an intermediate type between the long and 
 short-headed forms ; and. therefore, not like the small round beads of the 
 Danish pent-inosses ; the othiT loiuid by Desor, 1861, and referred to in 
 the text. 
 
n.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 127 
 
 animal ; but it is more complete in some than in otliei-s. 
 The horse is superior to the deer; yet the horse rushes 
 into not out of a burning stable. The ape is superior to 
 all animals below man, because his powers of observation 
 have more scope, his comprehension of emergencies is 
 more logical ; he shows an inventive genius harmonizing 
 with this higher degree of self-consciousness, and hence 
 he more perfectly imitates the brutal customs, the virtues 
 and the vices of mankind. The difference between the ape 
 and the civilized man lies in the limitation of the conscious- 
 ness of the ape to his physical and passional relationships 
 to nature ; while the self-consciousness of the civilized 
 man deals also with the subjects of abstract thought and 
 with the invisible and eternal worlds.* But this is the 
 precise distinction between the cave or lake-dwellers of 
 early Europe and the Londoner or Bostonian of to-day; 
 and thus we are returned once more to the idea of the 
 affiliation of the apes with mankind in the early stages of 
 its existence. 
 
 That these old lake- dwellers were in no respects idiotic 
 is evident from the very nature of the case : a race of 
 idiots could no more continue to exist than unborn chil- 
 dren could. But their handicraft is still more conclusive 
 evidence. In the museum of M. Troyon of Lausanne I 
 had the pleasure of examining a piece of a door, half- 
 burned, consisting of three boards two of which lay side 
 by side but not rabbited together ; the third board crossed 
 the other two at right angles to hold them together ; but 
 instead of being nailed or pegged fast to them, it was as 
 regularly dovetailed into them as a carpenter of our days' 
 would have done it. I saw also among these curious 
 objects pieces of twisted thread and knotted net. Their 
 clothes were probably of skins, and loom- weaving was as 
 yet unknown, but specimens of plaited cloth have been 
 found. I saw needles of bone to sew with ; and pieces of 
 charred baked bread in the form of flat round cakes ; and 
 grains of wheat and barley. The small wild apple and 
 pear of the Swiss woods have also been dredged up, wild 
 plum-stones, and beech and hazel-nuts in great abund- 
 ance. 
 
 • I will return to this subject in the beginning of the Tenth Lecture. 
 
128 ON THE EARLY [LECT. 
 
 How pleasant it would be to have a dinner-scene of 
 those days by Teniers, or a page of table-talk by Cole- 
 ridofe ! What a contrast would it present to the Bound 
 Table of Arthur and his paladins ! or to a d^jeinier at 
 the Maison Dore in 1865 ! The table can be seen, with its 
 dish, in the Museum of the Irish Academy ; but whei-e are 
 the guests ? It was discovered in a peat-bog in County 
 Tyrone, ten feet beneath the surface. The table and the 
 dish were each scooped out of a solid piece of wood, 
 apparently fir. An oblong table, with its ends curved in- 
 ward, and set on four short legs four and a half inches 
 high, truncated cones connected at their bases by a low 
 rim in which are two cord holes ; and an oval dish four or 
 five inches deep, in its edge two holes answering to the 
 two holes in the rim of the table, and probably slung to it 
 on the back in travelling. Beside the dish lay a large heap 
 of hazel-nuts, probably an autumnal hoard just gathered 
 foi' winter's use. Perhaps they were uproariously enjoy- 
 ing their repast when interrupted by the rush of some 
 carnivorous beast scattering their merriment.* 
 
 How long the ages were during which these lake-dwell- 
 ings were inhabited we do not know. We know that they 
 existed still in the days of Herodotus ; and the Swiss 
 antiquaries believe that those of Neville and Chavanues 
 in the Canton de Yaud continued to be dwelt on to the 
 VI til century after Christ. There are sufiicient evidences 
 in the articles found to distinguish them as of very diti'er- 
 ent ages. The iron age of the Romans is represented ; 
 the preceding age of bi'onze ; and a still more ancient age 
 • of stone, perhaps going back to the times succeeding the 
 retreat of the Swiss glaciers. We cannot tell therefore 
 at what time wild apples, plums, and berries were ex- 
 changed for wheat and barley bread; nor when the skins 
 of beasts were replaced by plaited cloth. The best scale 
 of years we have is got from Rutimeyer's list of the 
 animals on which these ancients fed, and especially by the 
 marked change from wild to domestic flesh. In all of the 
 lake-dwelling deposits, even the oldest, we find the bones 
 of the domesticated ox, sheep, goat and dog; and inter- 
 mixed with these in various localities bones of the horse 
 and nss, bones of the elk and stag, the roe and fallow-deer, 
 
 * O'Calliglian, Proc.Geol. and P. S., W. ]i. Yorksliiio, p. 315,1863-4. 
 
VT.] SOCIAL LIFE OP MAN. 120 
 
 the ibex and the chamois, the bison and wild bull, the 
 small swamp-hog and the great wild boar, the wolf and 
 fox, the bear and the badger, the marten, polecat, ermine, 
 and weasel, the otter and the beaver, the hedgehog, 
 squirrel and fieldmouse, the wildcat and the hare, tho 
 frog and the tortoise, tlie wild swan, goose, two kinds of 
 ducks and fifteen other kinds of birds. All that contained 
 marrow are found split open : this is invariably the case 
 with those of the bull and bison. In the most ancient 
 villages, like those of Wangen and Moosseedorf, the 
 evident predominance of bones of the wild stag and roe 
 over those of tame cattle show a decided preference of the 
 chase to a more civilized mode of life ; the tame pig is 
 wanting, goats outnumber sheep, the fox was an habitual 
 dish. 
 
 ^\^len the bronze age opened, the Lithuanian aurochs or 
 bison (bos bison, bos priscus) ceased to be eaten * and the 
 savages began to tame the great wild bull (bos urus, or 
 priuiigenius) which Cassar describes as still existing in his 
 day, tierce, swift, and strong, and scarcely inferior to the 
 elephant in size ; in its tamed state its bones became some- 
 what less massive and heavy, and its horns somewhat 
 smaller. At this time they added to the common dog, which 
 seems to have been their companion from the beginmng,t a 
 new large hunting dog ; and with it a small horse, which 
 however must have been veiy rare among them. By this 
 time the elk and beaver had become extirpated ; and the 
 fox had ceased to be a fashionable article of diet. 
 
 In looking over this list it seems very remarkable tha\' 
 two animals are absent from it which we should have sup- 
 posed almost the very first to be discovered. Of the hare 
 only one single fragment of a bone has as yet been found ; 
 and we can only explain its absence by Caesar's account 
 of the holy horror with which the Britons of his day re- 
 garded it and with which the Laplanders, who represent 
 the ancient hyperborean race in Europe, still regard it. Of 
 the domestic cat also there is not a trace until we come 
 down to the very youngest villages, those assigned to the 
 Vlth century. + And this again is in curious harmony with 
 
 * Protected by Czars in one Lithuanian forest, to the present day. 
 t The oldest of man's gods, the Anubis of Egypt. 
 j Lyell, Ant. of Man, p. 26. Desor's Palafittes- Smithson, Cont. 18t)t'. 
 
 9 
 
130 ON THE EARLY [lBCT, 
 
 tiie fact that no trace of tlie cat exists on the most ancient 
 monuments of Egypt.* 
 
 The absence of the reindeer, on the other hand, is merely 
 an evidence of the far inferior antiquity of these lake- 
 dwellings to those remains of man which have been found 
 in the caves of France, 
 
 I have said enough to give you a picture of long middle 
 stages in the primeval history of European humanity in 
 Switzerland. But it is necessary to say a few more words 
 about its phases farther north. Let us look for a moment 
 at a more inhospitable region. Let me ask you to keep in 
 mind that in every age, no matter how far back we go, we 
 find men living everywhere ; living under different circum- 
 stances, but living everywhere. I shall say something in 
 due time about migrations. But I wish you to observe 
 just now that theories of migration are the most unsatis- 
 factory products of science. In days preceding the oldest 
 migrations of which we can obtain any glimpse the entire 
 surface of the earth seems to have been just as completely 
 settled as it is to-day. In the Stone age, while the 
 Helvetian aborigines were platting cloth and cooking 
 domestic cattle on elaborately constructed platforms in the 
 lake-waters of the south a race of utter savages were 
 sitting around fires on the shores of the Baltic with not 
 a single domesticated animal to call their own except the 
 dog, and that a smaller species ; gnawing the flesh and 
 splitting the marrow-bones of wild bulls now extinct, of 
 foxes, wolves, and lynxes, red-deer and roes ; beavers long 
 since extinct, and seals now very rare; with penguins and 
 capercailzies, both now extinct in Scandinavia. But I am 
 wrong to call them uffer savages, for they had already 
 learned the art of boat-building, f and were bold fishermen, 
 as we can see by the bones of hei'ring, cod, and flounders 
 which are found among the mounds of kitchen trash which 
 line the shores and mark their haunts. But they were not 
 
 • Mariette's Researches. Renan's article in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, April, 1S65. 
 
 t Rude canoes scooped from trunks are often found in British peat- 
 bogs, sometimes with thei^ short clumsy paddles, and in rare instanees, a 
 rope of moss or heather, attaclied to a stone close by. showin;^ the primi- 
 tive mode of anchorage. A very perfect specimen lately discovered in the 
 valley of the Aire, is in the museum at Leeds. But such canoes are of 
 aU ages. (O'Callighan, Proc. Geol. Pol. S. W. R. York. 1863-4, p. 314. 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN, 131 
 
 cannibals. No human bones make these heaps horrible. 
 In spite of the over-confident assertion of Mr John Craw- 
 ford who said in a recent debate upon the carnivorous 
 Esquimaux that so far as his researches went they were 
 the only exception to the fact that the ancestors of every 
 race of man had been at one time or another cannibals. 
 The occasional eating of human flesh by shipwrecked 
 mariners does not make a British nation a race of canni- 
 bals.* Skulls have been disinterred from peat-bogs and 
 from graves believed to be of the same period — which 
 skulls are small and round, with massive bones above the 
 eyes resembling those of the pigmy race of modern Lap- 
 landers. The skulls of the bronze and iron ages found in 
 tlie upper layers of the Danish peat-bogs are both longer 
 and larger, and belonged no doubt to a race that invaded 
 the Baltic regions afterwards. 
 
 We have the means at hand for reconstructing in imagin- 
 ation the three different conditions of those northern 
 lands during their inhabitation by three successive races. 
 Taking the last first — in Roman times the Danish isles 
 were covered with a magnificent forest of beech, which still 
 exists. This is the tree of the iron age. Its logs are 
 abundant in the topmost layers of those peat-bogs which 
 are so numerous in the north, and in which the skeletons 
 of lost men with large long skulls are sometimes found 
 with iron arms and implements. Beneath these top layers 
 lie others deeper down, but how much older we know not, 
 the logs in which are all of oak. Oak was the forest of the 
 age of bronze. In the peat-layers no iron is found, and 
 very few skeletons ; because the people of that age burned 
 their dead and buried their ashes in urns beneath grave 
 mounds. How many thousands of years this age of oak 
 woods and funereal fires stretched backward we know not. 
 But behind it lie the vaster ages of the stone period. The 
 lowest layers of peat contain neither logs of beech nor logs 
 of oak; their embedded trunks are chiefly of Scotch y?/'. 
 
 * Proc. R. Geog. Soc, Jan. 23, 1805. Kane and others have testified 
 to the improvidence of the Esquimaux, and to their actually starving in 
 midwinter when calm weather and the neap-tides permit the sea to freeze 
 over, and the walrus have to seek water iu the offing. In 18.54-5 they 
 were compelled to eat their dogs, but not a case of cannibalism is known 
 to have occurred among them. — But see facts stated in Lecture X. 
 
132 ON THE EARLY [lECT. 
 
 The savages of those remote times lived in the true Cira- 
 liierlan darkness of the pines ; and their relics are the long 
 heaps of oyster-shells, cockles, and other edible molluscs, 
 plentifully mixed in with the remains of quadrupeds, Lirds 
 and fish the catalogue of which I have already given you. 
 Scattered throughout these heaps are found flint knives 
 and instruments of bone and horn, coarse potsherds, char- 
 coal and cinders, but not a trace of either iron or bronze. 
 Yet the polish given to the stone knives and hatchets show 
 that even this ancient age is not so infinitely remote from 
 ours either in time or in barbarism as that of the peojjle 
 of the diluvium and earlier caves, to say nothing of possible 
 relics in the tertiary deposits.* 
 
 See how all. civilization is relative. As we look down 
 these slopes of a foregone eternity deeps yawn in deeps, in 
 each a deeper still. 
 
 See also on what delicate threads of evidence such demon- 
 strations hang. A single herring-bone in a hundred acres 
 of oyster-shells — a single file-scratch on a golden torque 
 I'ound in a Druid barrow, tells the whole story. It is the 
 master-trick of genuine science ; Agassiz constructing the 
 whole fish from a single scale ; Leverrier detecting the 
 skulking Neptune by a ripple in the orbit of Uranus. But, 
 as I have said already, the method must be sound, the 
 starting-point well known, or the result will be a lie. 
 What I have given you this evening are the well-estab- 
 lished and universally accepted results of many years of 
 careful investigation by all the archeeologists of northern 
 Europe, led by such masters as Worsse, Nilsson, Steenstrup 
 and Thompson, Wilson and Lubbock f and Busk, and with 
 all the resources of geology at their command. Hundreds 
 
 * The oyster is no longer to be found in the Baltic shores ; and the 
 periwinkle {cardium rduJp) which still grows there is a variety dwarfed by 
 the brackishness of the Baltic water since the ocean was shut out from it 
 by the gr;idual rise of the Scandinavian jieninsula, at the observed raie of 
 two or three inches in a century. The absence from these kitchen heaps 
 (if the niainnioth and rliinoceros is not so extraordinary as is that of the 
 aurochs and reindeer, for the first two may have become extinct at an ear- 
 lier period in this latitude. 
 
 t See Moriot's .Mem. in Bull. Soc. Vaud, vi. "l<^nn. Lausanne; trans- 
 lated in 8th contrib. Smith. Inst., Washington, and abstracted by Lyell 
 in Ant. Man, p. 8. 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 133 
 
 of peat-bogs have been searched, tliousands of tumuli have 
 been opened, miles of shell-heaps have been explored, and 
 that beneath the jealous criticism of all Europe. In the 
 sober judgment of well-informed men this much may be 
 considered settled : that a general advance in civilization 
 is perceptible in the past history of man during what may 
 be roughly stated as the stone, the bronze, and the iron 
 periods, or, if you prefer to call them so, the ages of tlie 
 pine, the oak, and the beech woods ; that the men of the 
 stone age were savage hunters and fishermen, of small 
 stature and low intellect; that the men of the bronze age 
 came in from other lands bringing with them the know- 
 ledge of metallurgy, a taste for beauty and religious feel- 
 ings which led them to burn their dead; and that the men 
 of the iron age were of still another race and country, 
 large of stature, long-headed warriors, with iron swords 
 and iron ploughs, builders of forts and ships, restless in- 
 vaders, fond of state, accumulators of property, oppressors 
 of the ancient peoples, and the natural progenitors of the 
 Berseckers and Jarl kings who in the years of written 
 history conquered the west and south of Europe and laid 
 the basis broad for the eminent civilization of our modern 
 times.* 
 
 Will any one be so far influenced by the prejudices of 
 scholastic education as to insist on a reversal of this order 
 of civil development ? Will any one maintain that man- 
 kind, although at first created in some Eden a little lower 
 than the angels, full of strength and beauty and endowed 
 with supernatural intelligence, lords of the fowl and the 
 brute, tilling the soil and adorning their homes with beau- 
 tiful works of art, were nevertheless compelled by wrath 
 divine against a mythical sin to wander out towards the in- 
 hospitable north, fell into want and misery and lost their high 
 prerogatives, aband'med their genei'ous habits, forgot their 
 faculties, grew savage, and became at last the wretched 
 outcasts whose remains are mingled with the bones of ex- 
 tinct beasts and fishes of the sea on the Scandina^'ian 
 shores ? Let such a one remember that so far as our 
 knowledge of history goes, so far as all the facts have been 
 
 * Nat. Hist. Review, 1861, &c. And two volumes published 1865, 
 'Prehistoric Times.' Williams and Norgate, Loud. 2 Vols. See 'West- 
 minster Review,' July, p. 126. 
 
134 ON THE EARLY [lECT. 
 
 collected no single instances of such a degradation can be 
 cited in support of such a theory. Men, so far as we know, 
 have always increased their stock of knowledge and power 
 instead of losing it. The law of invasion has been a law 
 of development. Races have always elevated and ennobled 
 each other. Their wanderings have been like the steps of 
 a conflagration, the farther it goes the fiercer it burns. 
 The Persian love of flowers becomes a national mania 
 when transplanted to the icy banks of the Neva. The 
 smelting of copper once discovered in Armenia could no 
 more be forgotten in Sweden and Norway than the love 
 of Christ can become extinct in California. A race may 
 die out, but not its ideas ; except by giving place to truer 
 truths and lovelier lovelinesses. . Civilizations to be edu- 
 cated may be forced to make the tour of the world ; but 
 they are not rolling stones that gather no moss. The 
 mariner's needle of the distant east may have to wait a 
 thousand years before it finds a box and dial-plate in Italy; 
 but sooner or later it will be rectified for iron ships upon 
 the Atlantic. It maybe the year of our Lord 1862 before 
 Blake and Pumpelly shall teach the miners of Japan how 
 to make a blast with their own gunpowder ; but do you 
 suppose those islanders will ever, to the end of time allow 
 that splendid trick to be again forgotten ? Has not the 
 wh(3le movement of the human race been from the poles 
 towards the equator ? From ice and darkness and misery 
 towards the sunlight and the grape ? Have we a single 
 fact to show that the movement was ever in the other 
 direction ? Science cannot resign to a theological con- 
 jecture. Until incontrovertible facts are oSered as an 
 argument against it we must continue in our reasonings 
 to follow the course of nature as we know it, and say that 
 bai'barism everywhere on earth preceded civilization ; and 
 accept the order of the Danish peat-bogs as the symbol of 
 the order of the aboriginal development of the races of 
 mankind. 
 
 'As has been truly observed,' says Mr Lubbock in a 
 speech before the E. Geographical Society,* ' man, in the 
 earlier times of which we have any relics, appears to have 
 been not only a savage, but a savage living under Arctic 
 
 * Jan. 23, 1865, p. 61 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 185 
 
 conditions/ Therefore the accounts which Kane and Rosa 
 before him Lave given us of the isolated race of Esquimaux 
 living on the west coast of Greenland between the two 
 great prongs of the Humboldt glacier and so completely- 
 cut off from the rest of the world that they would not be- 
 lieve Ross when he said he had come to them from the 
 south — are of surpassing interest to us. These Arctic 
 Highlanders contend with nature for a chance to live under 
 the extremest disabihties. They have no boats, and there- 
 fore cannot follow their food when it migrates. They have 
 uo fish-hooks, and therefore cannot live on fish. They have 
 neither bow nor arrow, and therefore to them the herds of 
 i-eindeer which range unmolested on the barren uplands at 
 the base of the great glaciers, the Sernik Soak or great Ice- 
 wall as they call itjwhich hems them in, are valueless. ^They 
 have never been seen to partake of a single herb, or grass, 
 or berry grown upon the shore,' says Osborne,* ' and of 
 vegetables and cereals they have of course no conception.* 
 No other people on earth are known to be so entirely carni- 
 vorous. Kane calls them an expiring race , but he furnishes 
 for the support of this assertion no good evidence. As Ross 
 found them in 1 81 8 Kane saw them in 1854 ; only they had 
 become friendly instead of being hostile to their visitors. 
 Without driftwood, except a fragment of wreck at rare in- 
 tervals, and with only a small supply of meteoric iron and 
 a few wrecked iron hoops, they could make no weapons 
 but bone knives, bone harpoons, and bone lances with 
 which they attack and kill white bears and seals and wal- 
 ruses with the help of dogs. With nets they catch in 
 summer vast numbers of the delicious little auk or penguin. 
 They have in use the identical form of skin-scraping tools 
 which have been found so abundantly in the diluvial and 
 cave deposits of Europe, flat on one side, convex on the 
 other, round at one end and pointed at the other. But 
 as supplies of meat in such cold countries can be preserved 
 for a long time we may find in these carnivorous habits of 
 the present Esquimaux a new and more satisfactory ex- 
 planation of the vast numbers of animal skeletons which 
 are found in the old caves, if we suppose the ancient in- 
 habitants of Europe to have been an Arctic and carnivorous 
 
 * Jan. 23, 1865, p. 50. 
 
loG ON THE EARLY [LECT. 
 
 race.* In spite of all the disadvantaoes of their situation, 
 ' all who have seen these people describe the men as square 
 built, hearty fellows, deep-chested, bass- voiced, and merry- 
 hearted ; and the women, good souls, as tender and symp i- 
 thetic in their quaint way; for it^s not every European mother 
 who would lend a nice warm babe to make a soft pillow for a 
 weary traveller, as the ladies of Etah did ; and fair enoug-h 
 to win the hearts of some on board of the Advance. 
 Kane's faithful hunter Hans abandoned him for love of 
 Shanghu^s pretty daughter, who had nursed him when 
 wounded in a walrus hunt. These people live as far north 
 as 80°, and there are indications that Esquimaux settlements 
 may even be found at the very pole.f 
 
 In strong contrast with the well-authenticated, well-com- 
 pacted, and in all respects sober mass of information which 
 the northern antiquarians have put at our disposal stand 
 the isolated and ill-confirmed reports of tertiary men such 
 as those of the Abbe Bourgeois and M. Desnoyers ; and 
 also the extraordinary theories of enthusiasts like MM. 
 Brouillet and Meillet, based upon — mistakes. But when 
 w^o remember the wild conjectures to which Phoenician 
 letters on the Grave-mound amulet in western Virginia 
 gave rise, and the numerous forgeries of Oriental human 
 relics in our Western States which have been repoi-ted from 
 time to time, it is not unuseful to observe how such aber- 
 rations may be possible even to the most advanced science 
 of Europe. These gentlemen have lately published an ac- 
 count of certain bone-caves in Poitou J from which they 
 have obtained animal remains similar to those found in 
 
 * Kane and others found that the Esquimaux kill the walrus rapidly 
 in the spring, and heap their bodies on the shore, piling rocks over the 
 hea)), while they kill more ; but like all savages, they are so thoughtless 
 that these caches putrif'y in the summer ; for they never seem to think of 
 making them in the ice-caves of the adjacent glaciers. All this proves 
 how tenacious human life is. Kane says that tiie Arctic winter temper- 
 ature stood for three months at— BO*^ to 75" Fahrenheit. But liuman life 
 is tenacious of the earth only wlicre animal life is so ; the enormous walrus 
 suckles its young in midwinter at 77° lat. ; so do the herds of seals feed- 
 ing en fish. But the walrus seems to feed on sea-weed alone. At any 
 rate the glacial period in Europe could no more extirpate the cave-dwell- 
 ing race than the Arctic winters can the Esquimaux. (Proc. R. Geog. 
 Soc, p. 65, Jan. U, 1865.) 
 
 t l{eiterated by Mr C. R. Markham, Proc. Geog. Soc, Jan. 23, 1865. 
 
 j iSee Westminster Review, July, 1865, p. 121. 
 
VI."] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 137 
 
 other caverns in France, scratched and marked by man. 
 On some of them arc Sanscrit letters, not so arranged 
 however as to be pronounceable in words or syllables; 
 and two of them are scratched upon a bone representing 
 a phallus. From these assumed Sanscrit letters they con- 
 clude that the cave-people of France were emigrants from 
 Asia; that the written language of Arya was of enormous 
 antiquity ; that the probable date of the relics is 24,000 
 years B.C. ; that at that time there occurred one of those 
 periodical cataclysms which desolate the earth and drive 
 the races to and fro ; that another, taking place about 
 14,000 B.C., was the debacle produced by the breaking up 
 of the antarctic polar ice ; and that a third was brought 
 about in 2350 B.C. by a similar breaking up of the ice- 
 cope around the Arctic pole. 
 
 Unfortunately for this fine theory M. Pictet of Geneva, 
 pronounces that these letters, although actually Sanscrit, 
 have been unskilfully selected from one of the more modern 
 forms of that alphabet ! Setting aside however the stu- 
 pidity of the forgery, the hypothesis judged upon its own 
 merits, melange as it is of scientific and unscientific ele- 
 ments, can hardly hold together long enough for us to 
 look at it. We might almost as well accept the Greek 
 or Hebrew fables of a universal deluge; a phenomenon 
 which we well know to be physically impossible ; for the 
 most tremendous rain-fall does not exceed six inches per 
 hour and so completely desiccates the atmosphere that it. 
 can last but a short time; whereas, even if it continued in 
 full force for forty days and nights the entire amount 
 would only be some 6000 inches, or 500 feet. If all the 
 aqueous vapour in the atmosphere were to be condensed at 
 once it could not elevate the sea level by 50 feet. Nor is 
 modern science aware of the existence of any ' fountains, of 
 the great deep ' to be broken up to supplement the defi- 
 ciency. And if, as some have been willing to suppose, the 
 divine hand could have pressed down some one area of the 
 crust of the earth so as to permit the ocean to rush in and 
 cover it, the only consequence of that would have been to 
 drain off extensive areas elsewhere and thus increase the 
 amount of land left dry. 
 
 When we introduce the idea of cataclysms therefore 
 into ethnology we must carefully limit theiir magnitude 
 
188 ON THE EARLY [lECT. 
 
 and define their causes, wholly irrespective of the fanciful 
 or allegorical stones of the ancient poets ; remembering 
 moreover how the ignorance of men predisposes them to 
 enlarge and dignify their personal and local misadventures 
 into universal disasters to the human race. 
 
 Too great a cataclysm would extirpate nations instead 
 of transferring them from one domain to another. We 
 must lessen the cause if we wish to produce the required 
 effect. Had the melting of the Swiss glaciers been the 
 sudden result of the instantaneous emergence of the Sahara 
 desert and the immediate creation of the Sirocco winds 
 the aboriginal population of Europe would have been 
 swept by a double deluge into the surrounding seas. But, 
 as we know, the African portion of the ancient Mediter- 
 ranean was cut off from the European portion of it so 
 slowly by the gradual accumulation of gravel bars between 
 the Carthaginian and Cyrenian coasts, and the drying up 
 of the African waters must have been a process so de- 
 liberate and so apart from any noticeable change of level as 
 to land and sea, that the melting of the glaciers may have 
 occupied the lifetime of a generation of cave-dwellers, and 
 produced no change of cHmate nor of soil to which they 
 were not amply competent to adapt themselves. 
 
 Truth needs a good perspective. A hill looks always 
 steeper from its foot or from its summit than when we 
 are upon its sides. So the foreshortening of time, re- 
 garded with a backward glance, piles up the thousand 
 minor incidents of some slow change into one mighty 
 crisis, and we stand amazed and terrified at the possibilii^'' 
 of the recurrence in our day of what were it really to 
 happen would no more trouble us than any of the ordi- 
 nary common-place experiences of life. 
 
 It is not a general deluge then, it is an ordinary inun- 
 dation which mankind has to fear. A freshet, as we call 
 it, a famine, a pestilence, a murrain in their flocks and 
 herds, the loss of timber by the conflagrations of a year of 
 drought — these are real cataclysms of human history ; pro- 
 ducing poverty and desperation, exciting insurrections 
 against established governments, bursting into a blaze of 
 civil war, and ending with the expulsion of the unfortunate 
 to seek and settle upon other lands. When once the im- 
 pulse is established in some distant and perhaps unheard- 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 189 
 
 of portion of tlie population of tlie world it propagates 
 itself from tribe to tribe and from race to race, those be- 
 hind precipitating themselves upon those in front, and those 
 attacking having the usual advantage over those attacked, 
 until a whole continent is ethnologically shifted forward 
 one degree, while some pre-eminently vigorous stock may 
 have even penetrated through half of the moving mass and 
 planted itself in the very heart of an entirely alien race. 
 Such was the case of the hyperborean Hungarians, now 
 surrounded by Sclavonians ; and such was every way the 
 case with the establishment of the Vandals in northern 
 Africa, of the Saracens in Spain and southern France, of 
 the Turkomans in Greece, and of the Hyksos in ancient 
 Egypt, who probably crossed, like the Turks of modern 
 days, the whole of central Asia, from the northern borders 
 of the Chinese empire. 
 
 We are too apt to regard political revolutions as the 
 work of politicians. Far from it. Websters and Calhouns 
 are merely maggots in the fermenting cheese, bred of it, 
 and feeding on it, but not much more than illustrations of 
 its liveliness. We must find the causes of political revo- 
 lutions in the masses of the people. Fat folks love ease 
 and hate the clash of arms. The wolves of the Pyrenees 
 descend into the villages not until they are gaunt-ribbed 
 and hollow-eyed with famine. Throw multitudes out of 
 employment, — it is like dipping a handful of cotton-wool 
 into sulphuric acid ; you turn it into gun-cotton, and any 
 spark will explode it so as to tear your hand in pieces. 
 Thus are governments destroyed. 
 
 Look at any good chart of the region of China around 
 the capital city of Pekin. You will notice there the course 
 of the mightiest river in • the world, the Yello^ Piver, 
 Hoang-ho, which drains the central parts of Asia. You 
 will notice also a range of mountains (running north and 
 south directly in its path to the gulf of Pechele), which one 
 of our geologists, Mr Pumpelly, believes to have been 
 elevated at a recent date. Through this range the river 
 once passed directly to the sea by what is now the bed of 
 another river, the Pei-ho. But by a subsequent re-eleva- 
 tion of this mountain- chain the great river, turned at a right 
 angle southward, has been compelled to seek along the west- 
 em foot of the ridge its passage 350 miles farther south 
 
140 ON THE EARLY [LECT. 
 
 than the gap tlirout^h which it used to go before. Here it 
 turns east, goes through, aud takes its unobstructed way 
 to the Vellow Sea. The country between the mountains 
 and the sea is a low plain traversed by numerous ancient 
 river-beds, a vast delta which the river has been slowly 
 and steadily reclaiming from the ocean for no one knows 
 how long. In old Chinese municipal records many of the 
 ancient cities which now stand miles and even leagues 
 back from the shore are described as seaports with good 
 harbours when they weie first built. You will also notice 
 a high mountainous promontory projecting from the middle 
 of the delta into the sea; this was an island once. The 
 delta has been formed around its western end by the Yel- 
 low River changing its bed alternately to the right and to 
 the left with a motion precisely like that of the head of a 
 silkworm when spinning its cocoon. At the last meeting 
 of the National Academy at Northampton, Mr Pumpelly 
 exhibited a chart of this delta, constructed for him by a 
 learned Chinese scholar whom he employed to search the 
 historical records of the province, so that he could lay 
 down the different courses which the mighty stream had 
 taken under the different dynasties of Chinese emperors, 
 debouching alternately on the two sides of the central 
 promontory. There is a Chinese story, that after a deluge 
 which destroyed mankind the great king, Yu, first em- 
 peror of the first dynasty, B.C. 2100, built dykes to confine 
 the river to its then existing bed. This care of the Yellow 
 River became the hereditary p#licy of all succeeding em- 
 perors, a sine qua non for any dynasty however powerful. 
 For, as the river filled up its bed until its sui"face level 
 stood 50 and 60, and as the Jesuits say even 90 feet above 
 the surrounding country, the least remissness threatened 
 incredible calamities. The delta was exceedingly fertile ; 
 its population was the densest in the world; its level 
 surface could afford no shelter from destruction were the 
 banks to break ; flight might save individuals but in 
 a state of utter destitution, for the highlands were a hun- 
 dred miles away ; the flocks and herds would surely perish ; 
 and the river, swollen for the occasion, would plough a 
 broad, deep avenue of annihilation through the sites of 
 towns and cities to its new mouth upon the farther side 
 of the peninsula. In the face of all these torrors, and they 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 141 
 
 were no iraaginations, for they had been repeatedly realized, 
 the goverumeut officials would periodically grow careless 
 and venal ; the misappropriation to themselves of taxes 
 levied to keep up the banks allowed those banks to be- 
 come slowly weaker at every point, until some winter of 
 uncommon snow upon the mountains would be followed 
 by a late spring of uncommon heat ; the river would sud- 
 denly overtop its insufficient banks and spread destruction 
 over the whole delta. The destruction of life alone, to this 
 over-populated region, although appalling, would be rather 
 a blessing than a curse. Enghsh ships have been known 
 to steam up all the way from Whampoa to Canton through 
 a sheet of dead bodies like drift ice after such an inunda- 
 tion of the Canton river. But the worst terrors of the 
 event lay in the millions of unburied, puti'ifying corpses 
 covering the fields; the starving myriads, women and 
 children; and the desperate ferocity of armed brigands, 
 wifeless, and childless, and houseless, and landless, and 
 moneyless, moving from the scene of wrath and woe out- 
 ward in all directions to spread disturbance through 
 surrounding provinces. To suppress these armies of vaga- 
 bonds armies of regulars and volunteers had to be em- 
 ployed, which only increased the evils of the land. Con- 
 tinual fighting turned the robbers into warriors, and the 
 imbecility of the decaying dynasty which had been the 
 original cause of failure in the river-dykes, became now 
 the cause of its military overthrow. The records of China 
 show that these changes in the course of the Yellow River, 
 happening at regular intervals of three or four centuries, 
 have corresponded with as many imperial revolutions. We 
 need not doubt that some of these revolutions, commenc- 
 ing at the Yellow Sea, have set in motion waves of war and 
 wandering which never stopped until they broke upon the 
 Atlantic coast. 
 
 But we are not to think that a millionth part of the 
 water follows the wave. The form advances, but the equi- 
 librium must be maintained. Persons, families, armies 
 migrate ; but not the race. Were this not true we should 
 see to-day the cat-eyed Mongol tethering his horse on the 
 lands of western France. Hang up a row of ivory balls ; 
 strike the first one ; what happens ? Do they all rush 
 forward in a heap ? No, the last one only flies ; the rest 
 
142 ON THE EARLY [lECT. 
 
 remain in place. Thus the races of mankind have in the 
 main retained their original seats by virtue of an elasticity 
 inherent in all organized society even of the lowest grade ; 
 yet propagating tidal waves of agriculture, commerce, 
 mechanics, arts, politics, and religion from east to west, 
 fusing the different races practically into one. 
 
 There are other less striking but more powerful phy- 
 sical causes of the out-wanderings of races; such as the 
 change of fertile countries into deserts, or of salubrious 
 into pestilential air. But the physical sciences have not 
 yet made these causes indisputably clear, and history has 
 not preserved sufficiently plain records to enable us to 
 judge of the events. Two instances of such, however, 
 may be cited as well worthy of consideration. 
 
 There is a range of desert country stretching across the 
 map of the old world from the Atlantic shores of northern 
 Africa, by Egypt and Arabia, Persia and Independent 
 Tartary to the Chinese Wall. Its drought and conse- 
 quent sterility connect themselves with certain grand and 
 constant currents of the atmosphere ; as also do those 
 similar but more restricted deserts lying on each side of 
 the Andes and the Rocky Mountains in America. 
 
 But the removal of forests also has much to do with the 
 production of desert lands ; for the forests modify the 
 rain-fall. The Kalahari desert in southern Africa is gain- 
 ing in extent, its rivers drying up, as Mr James F. Wilson 
 says, because of the indiscriminate felling of timber by the 
 natives and colonists combined ; the land once occupied by 
 the frugal, thrifty Hottentots is now possessed by wasteful 
 Caffros ; and iron axes are in everybody's hand where 
 formerly an iron axe was a great rarity. Thus even an 
 improvement of the highest value in the arts may give oc- 
 casion for a fatal wrong to a portion of mankind. 
 
 Mr Cyril Graham has shown that the anciently populous 
 region of Hauran, to the east of Damascus, full of the ruins 
 of great cities, became the uninhabitable desert it now is 
 from the same cause. Generals Humphreys and Abbot 
 of the United States army have demonstrated in the case 
 of the Mississippi what Sir Roderick Murchison asserts 
 of the Volga, that its volume of water has diminished by 
 the settling and clearing of the upper country. The 
 French revolution let loose the axe in the Pyrenees, and 
 
yi.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 143 
 
 the people were fast turning the south of France into a 
 desert, when Napoleon restored the ancient law to protect 
 the woods. Colonel Balfour has shown how the replanting 
 of trees in India has re-opened its lost springs. Lord 
 Stratford de RedclifFe tells us that after speculators had 
 obtained permission to cut the forest of Belgrade the 
 contract had to be annulled ; for the reservoirs at Con- 
 stantinople in consequence began to fail.* How much of 
 the spread of the Arian race was due to the formation of 
 the Persian deserts, and that of the Hebrew race to the 
 new sterility" of Syria and Palestine, are curious questions 
 for the cultivators of almost every branch of physical 
 science to take some part in settling satisfactorily. 
 
 There is still another class of causes affecting the migra- 
 tion of races to illustrate the nature of which it is only 
 needful to refer to the alleged destruction of the Indians 
 of the United States by a universal pestilence previous 
 to the appearance of the English colonists at Plymouth 
 Rock ; and to that less apocryphal destruction of the same 
 ill-fated race subsequently by syphilis and smallpox and 
 scarlet fever and fire-water imported among the tribes 
 from the homesteads of the whites. 
 
 But as nature never repeats herself, so every migration 
 that has ever taken place in history, or before history, had 
 features of its own ; varying as it did from aU others in its 
 force and velocity, in its brilliancy, in its scope and out- 
 spread, in its influence for good or evil, and therefore in 
 its consequences at the present day. 
 
 From the background of written history, two great mi- 
 grations stand out pre-eminent — one which afi'ected the 
 religious development of the human mind, and one, in- 
 
 * Proc. R. Geog. Soc, p. 106. May, 1865. Dr Livingstone, however, has 
 refused his assent to this explanation. He vouches, indeed, for the facts, 
 and gives instances of the drought of springs in his own garden, and names 
 old water-beds, now dry, stiU called ' rivers ' by the natives; but he ascribed 
 the phenomenon to the rise of the western edge of the continent to a 
 higher level above the sea, and to the production of fissures, like that of 
 the Victoria Falls, draining interior lakes, changing their levels, and 
 making humid winds dry. Dr Kirk objects that wood in Central Africa 
 is abundant on the Zambesi, and that there is an average amount of popu- 
 lation, but insufficient to extirpate the forest, only using wood for fuel. 
 He is, therefore, inclined to ascribe the dryness ul' Southern as well as 
 Northern Africa to atmospheric currents. 
 
144 ON THE EARLY [lECT 
 
 augiiratiug the new era of universal liberty and Christian 
 philanthropy : — the migration of the Abrahamic race into 
 Palestine, two thousand years before the advent of Christ; 
 and the emigration of Anglo-Saxon colonists to the ISew 
 World and to Australia. Of the latter it is not here the 
 place to speak; but the other is more closely connected 
 with our subject as it relates directly to the earliest civil- 
 ization of the globe. I do not myself believe with entire 
 confidence in the personal existence of the Jewish patriarchs. 
 For you will find in the old Hindoo mythologies the names 
 of Abram, Isaac, and Judah i-anged in a similar order and 
 connection. Brahma's son Ikswaka was the great-grand- 
 father of Yadu.* The Hebrews of Palestine were but a 
 single twig of that wide-spreadiug branch of the Shemitic 
 tree which had its original seats in central Asia, and mi- 
 grating southward and westward over Persia, Mesopotamia, 
 Arabia, and Syria entered Egypt under the name of 
 Hyksos. We read in Genesis that Abram came from Ur of 
 the Chaldees, which all the Fathers have considered to be 
 Edessa or Orfa in the western division of northern Meso- 
 potamia, nine miles from the Euphrates,t but which the 
 excavations of the British consul, Mr Taylor, have shown 
 to be in the south, near the junction of the Tigris and 
 Euphrates. J 
 
 We are also told in the book of Numbers (xiii. 22) that 
 Hebron, the city of the Hebrews, and the head-quarters of 
 the Abrahamites, was built by them seven years before 
 Zoan, or Tanis, in Egypt, where are now to be seen the 
 masterpieces of Hyksos architectui-e. 
 
 You remember that Isaac had a legendary brother Esau, 
 the father of the Arabian nomades. 
 
 We must not judge this people by the Jew sutlers in 
 the army of the Potomac ; nor by the three-crowned liat- 
 pedlers, crying ' O'Clo' ! ' along the slums and stews of 
 
 * Icswaca, Sarya (the sun), Soma or Chandra (the moon), Yadu (Judah), 
 Chahuman, Pramara, &c. Ant. Radjpoot MSS. A Sanscrit edition ijives 
 Icshwaca, Soma, Yadu, Pramara, &c. MSS. Index, H. 20. 
 
 f Callirrhoe in Pliny, v. 21 ; Antiochia ; Justinopolis ; and supposed 
 to be the ark (ereck) l.-s of Gen. x 10. Two days' journey S.E. of it is 
 Charraj (Harran),the [ruv (llarnui) i^" of Gen. xi. 31, xii. 5, xxvii. 43, 
 xxviii. 10, xxix. 4; 2 Kings xix. 12; Isaiah xxxvii. 12, and Ezekiel 
 xxvii. 23. Here Crassus was defeated. 
 
 X Proe. Geog. Soc. 1865, Jan. 9, p. 39 
 
71.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 146 
 
 London. We must seek it in its native place, where it is 
 a king. Not crouclied against the walls of tlie mosque of 
 Omar at Jerusalem, but on horseback in the desert, swing- 
 ing the scimitar or hurling the lance of the Saracen ; or 
 in the professor's chair at Cordova, translating, expound- 
 ing, and enlarging all the philosophies of foregoing ages. 
 We must regard those fine processions of tall, grave, long- 
 robed merchants entering the villages of Liberia and Sierra 
 Leone; each man a judge of righteousness, incapable of 
 levity or meanness, noble in speech and conduct, and propa- 
 gating the faith of Islam to-day with the same zeal with 
 which their fathers fought for it a thousand years ago. 
 Study the Arabs in the Indian Ocean, on the islands of 
 Java and Sumatra, surrounded by other races — Malays, 
 Hindoos, Negroes, and Chinese — and you will not only 
 acknowledge their superior blood, but remark their con- 
 sciousness of this superiority. To this Arab or typical 
 Hebrew Shemite the old prophecy gives the tent; and the 
 Hamite and the Japhetite are to come into it to serve him. 
 Arabs are the commercial masters of the tropics. Hebrews 
 rule the politics of every government in Christendom by 
 slips of paper from their counting-rooms. They have 
 stamped their religious conceptions upon the written his- 
 toiy of half the globe. They have afforded to the world 
 its noblest thinkers, its grandest poets, its most fiery 
 orators, its sweetest musicians, its largest-minded mer- 
 chants, and its most absolute martyrs to patriotism and 
 conscience. Whence came then this grand race, and 
 where did it make its first appearance in history ? 
 
 The recent discoveries of M. Mariette, perhaps the ablest 
 and most successful of all explorers in the valley of the 
 Nile, have conferred upon ethnology two inestimable boons. 
 First, he has opened up a world of monuments relating to 
 a part of Egyptian history about which we knew nothing, 
 and the most interesting part of all — the earhest. And 
 secondly, he has dispelled the last shades of doubt 
 which hung about the authenticity of Manetho's lists of 
 kings. His discovery of the monuments of the early 
 Memphite dynasties will become important to us here- 
 after when we discuss the architectural ideas of the ear- 
 liest men. 
 
 But the second point is of importance here. For M. 
 
 10 
 
146 ON THE EARLY [l.ECT. 
 
 Mariette, by placing it beyond dispute that the list of 
 Egyptian dynasties and kings which Manetho gives us is 
 not only genuine but constructed in the ordinary manner 
 in which all governmental or official lists are constituted, 
 viz. by taking only the legitimate sovereigns of the whole 
 realm, and each one only for that time dui-ing which he 
 reigned the acknowledged legal monarch — has put an end 
 to all attempts to shorten the Egyptian chronology upon 
 the supposition that many of Manetho's kings and even 
 dynasties were contemporaneous — attempts made of 
 course solely in the interest of the Rabbinical age of the 
 world. The 6th dynasty, for instance, it was long supposed 
 reigned at Elephantine in southern Egypt while the 7th 
 was reigning with independent powers at Memphis in the 
 north. But M. Mariette has disinterred monuments of 
 both those dynasties on the sites of both their capitals, viz. 
 at Elephantine in Upper Egypt, and at Sakkara near Mem- 
 phis at the head of the Delta. Each dynasty therefore 
 must have ruled over the whole kingdom ; and conse- 
 quently the two dynasties could not have been contempo- 
 raneous. 
 
 In like manner the 13th dynasty which had its seat 
 at Thebes must have preceded the 14th dynasty which 
 had its seat at Xois, because from the colossal statues of 
 its kings discovered at San near Xois it must have reigned 
 there also. 
 
 For 1700 years before Christ, that is, from the end of 
 the 17th dynasty, that of the Hyksos, onwards, the his- 
 tory of Eg3'pt is well known ; and in all this length of re- 
 cord Manetho has been found correct ; he has not doubled 
 any reign by inserting a contemporaneous ruler before or 
 after it. We have no right therefore to suspect him of 
 having committed this blunder in the earlier portion of his 
 list. But such a blunder could only be intentional ; and 
 he could have had no prejudice to serve by such a wilful 
 sacrifice of truth in favour of a long chronology. His 
 reputation is but just recovering from the load of obloquy 
 which the Jews and their disciples the Protestant chrono- 
 logists have heaped upon it, for no better reason than that 
 they think they must make the history of all nations upon 
 earth draw up its knees to lie within the child^s cradle of 
 the Hebrew scriptures. Father Jerome tells us how the 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 147 
 
 Eabbis of Tiberias doctored these Hebrew scriptures 
 by slipping back the birth of the firstborn of each of the 
 antediluvian patriarchs one hundred years upon his 
 father's life, in order to bring the birth of Christ at the 
 year 4000 of the world's creation, instead of at the year 
 6000. He tells us that their motive was to take the millen- 
 nium argument out of the Christians' mouths. For the 
 early Christians claimed against the Jews that Jesus must 
 be the Messiah because he had come according to 
 prophecy current among the Jews themselves at the dawn 
 of the great Sabbath, the seven thousandth year. Wlien 
 we reject Manetho^s list we do it in behalf of the Jews 
 who chuckle at our simplicity; and we do it also in the 
 face of the old Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures, the 
 chronology of which is 2000 years longer than that of King 
 James' translation, showing us how the trick of the Jews 
 was played. 
 
 One of the most satisfactory evidences we have that 
 Manetho did not double either his dynasties or his reigns 
 is the fact that the hieroglyphic lists of kings, especi- 
 ally the new list lately discovered at Abydos, contain a 
 multitude of kings' names which do not appear on 
 Manetho's list at all.* During the rule of those fierce 
 strangers, the Hyksos, there were several native dynasties 
 maintaining a precarious existence in various sections of the 
 valle}' of the Nile ; but the great historian, true to his 
 principle that kings de facto were the only kings de jure, 
 refuses to insert in his list the names of these little native 
 pretenders; he engrosses only the names of the Hyksos 
 monarchs although foreigners and tyrants in his list of the 
 17th dynasty, because they really reigned. f 
 
 A learned lady of England has exerted herself to prove 
 
 • Consult not only Manetho, but Eratosthenes, and the tablets of 
 Abydos, of Thebes, and of Sakkara, and the papyrus of Turin. The grand 
 temple at Abydos just discovered by Marietta, presents a new list, 
 analogous to those we have already had, but admirably preserved. It is 
 of the time of Sethos I., 1400 B.C. Sethos has selected 77 names of pre- 
 decessors to make up his list, which ends like those of Manetho, and the 
 Turin papyrus with Menes and Atothis. Touthmes III. (1500 B.C.) 
 makes offerings to 61 predecessors, on the tablet in the Imperial Library 
 at Paris (Kenan). 
 
 t Renan, Revue des Deux Mondes, April, 1865, p. 664. Mariette's 
 Apergu. 
 
148 ON THE EARLY [lECT. 
 
 that these mysterious intruders into Egyptian history, the 
 Hyksos, were the same people who are called in the early 
 Hebrew writings the Susim (Hak-Sus, meaning ' king of 
 the Susim'), a mighty nation first heard of as inhabit- 
 ing the Hauran country, south of Damascus, and east of 
 the Upper Jordan. Whether this be true or not, the first 
 appearance of these nomades seems to be described upon 
 the walls of the tombs of Beni Hassan, built under the 
 12th dynasty, nearly 3000 years B.C. There the traveller 
 beholds for the first time the pictures of processions of 
 patriarchs with great eyes and aquiline noses,* coming with 
 their wives and little ones, their poor utensils and instru- 
 ments of music, to request the governor of Egypt to give 
 them lands to dwell in, to escape a famine in their own. 
 It is the story of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph told by 
 Egyptians ; the first pacific modest appearance of that ter- 
 rible race which was to throw all Asia afterwards into dis- 
 order, take possession of the land that succoured it and 
 finally give the human race the grandest, the holiest and 
 the most enduring part of its history. 
 
 The distinguished Egyptologist, Dr Brugsch, and an 
 advocate for the authenticity of the Mosaic account of the 
 Exodus, states the accordance of the monuments with that 
 account in a much better and more conclusive manner than 
 Hengstenberg has done, and introduces into its scenery 
 fresher tints. One chapter of his charming little book 
 Aus dem Orient is entitled ' Moses and the Monuments,' 
 and in this chapter he resumes all that the hieroglyphics 
 are as yet known to teach about the Hebrews. Tanis, the 
 Hyksos capital, called hieroglyphically hauar, Avaris, was 
 besieged and taken by the first king of the 18th dynasty. 
 Its Pharaohs eiFected the conquest of Asia, planting their 
 furthest triumphal obelisks on the borders of Armenia, and 
 returned with armies of captives to build innumerable 
 monuments along both banks of the Nile. Pictures remain 
 
 * But the Hyksos are described as red haired and blue eyed, which 
 gives origin to the theory that they were the earliest appearance of the 
 Gothic or Scandinavian race of the Iron age. Renan remarks that the 
 Hyksos monuments arc at San, Tanis, or Zoan, o^.'^s*? -jyii, which was 
 founded seven years after Hebron, according to Numbers xiii. 22. 
 Hebron was held by 1?T.^. (auimn) '?» (ssi) and ''?\rt (glmi) the sona 
 (■'iS-') of Anak (pJJ'n). Here again we have Susim. 
 
TI.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 149 
 
 to US of these captives drawing water, treading clay, 
 spreading out and piling up their tales of bricks to build a 
 temple with, under the supervision of Egyptian figures 
 armed with rods. The 19th dynasty had for its first three 
 kings, Ramses I., Seti I., and Ramses II., the great 
 Sesostris, who reigned 66 years, and pushed his conquests 
 north, east, south, and west. To guard his frontier against 
 the Hittites of Palestine he forced his native Hyksos serfs 
 and foreign military slaves to build a chain of forts across 
 the isthmus of Suez, of which the principal were Ramses 
 and Pithom (Pachtura, Pelusium), names mentioned in 
 Exodus i. ii. as built by Hebrews under the tyrannical 
 oppression of a Pharaoh (Theban per-aa, Memphite 
 pliEK-AO, means high house, or sublime porte), who knew 
 not Joseph. One of the papyri of the British Museum, of 
 the date of Ramses II. (1250 — ISOOb.c, Anastasi, iii. p. 1) 
 is a description, by a scribe named Pinebsa to his master 
 Amenemaput, of the aspect of things in and around the 
 new city Ramses, — of the entrance into it of the great 
 Pharaoh, — and of the petitions for relief against their 
 overseers, "which they thronged about him to present. 
 Another papyrus reads : ' Sum of buildings 12, by people 
 brought from their residences to make brick in the city ; 
 they made their tale of bricks daily, without stopping 
 until finished. Thus the task given me by my master has 
 been accomplished.'' These conscripts were not Egyptians ; 
 they were called apuru, Hebrews. They ai-e often men- 
 tioned on the stones and in papyri as at work, guarded by 
 ^lazai, the Libynn gendarmerie of Egypt. In a papyrus of 
 the Ley den Museum, an employe of Ramses II. Kauitzir, 
 reports to his upper scribe Bakenptah : ' May my lord be 
 pleased with my execution of his assigned work, as follows : 
 distribution of food to the soldiers, and to the Hebrews 
 dragging stones for the great city Ramses Meiamoun the 
 truth-loving, under the oversight of police chief Amena- 
 man. I gave them food monthly, according to my master^s 
 excellent arrangement.^ A second papyrus in the same 
 museum is written by one Keniaman to his superior, the 
 Katena or general Hui : ' I have fulfilled my lord^s orders 
 to give food to the soldiers as well as to the Hebrews who 
 drag stones, &c.^ In the rock valley Hamamat, along 
 which the great commercial route of Egypt from Coptos 
 
160 ON THE EARLY [lKCT. 
 
 on the Nile to Berenice on the Red Sea, is an inscription 
 describing the quarry work done by 9000 men, among 
 whom was a squad of 800 Hebrews under escort of Mazai 
 police, who had bi'ought the poor devils probably all the 
 way from Goshen in the Delta. 
 
 Now if the Hebrews^ story of their own wrongs and of 
 their deliverance is to be believed, we must suppose Joseph 
 to have come down into Egypt under one of the Hyksos 
 kings of the 17th dynasty, a Shemite like himself. When 
 the native Pharaohs suppressed the Hyksos government 
 they oppressed the Hyksos colonists who remained forming 
 perhaps nearly the whole population of the eastern wing of 
 the Delta. Moses was born say in the sixth year of 
 Ramses II., 300 years after Joseph's day. In his tenth 
 year Ramses entered his new city, built with Hebrew 
 hands. Add to the remaining 60 years of his reign the 
 20 years which his son Menephtha reigned, and we get 
 the 80 years of age which Moses had when he led his 
 people forth. 
 
 Ramses II., like Cgesar and Napoleon afterwards, was 
 always in trouble, sitting on a throne planted -over mines 
 which any moment might explode. He made an ' extradi- 
 tion treaty ' with Chetasar, king of the Hittites, who bound 
 himself to return to Egypt all fugitive Hebi'ews found in 
 Palestine ; and the same fearful policy might have actually 
 gone the length of an edict of universal male Hebrew child- 
 murder in view of the eventuality which the Hebrew 
 Scripture thus expresses : ' for when a war arises, they may 
 join our enemies and fight against us, and escape out of the 
 land.' Ramses and his successor added to this fierce 
 oppression a religious seduction; they instituted an 
 ostentatious worship of the sun-god Baal of the Shemite 
 race. Ramses presented his own colossus (now in the 
 Berlin Museum) to the temple of the sun in Zoan, where, 
 says the poet of Psalms Ixxviii. 12, 43, Jehovah (by Moses) 
 ' showed his wonders.' Menephtha built no temples, but 
 inscribed his own name on his fathers' monuments with 
 the title ' Worshipper of Sutech-Baal of Tanis,' and cut the 
 image of Baal on the back of one of his own colossi with 
 the figure of his son worshipping before it. 
 
 The name Moses is now identified with the Egyptian 
 MAS or MASSU, meaning ' the child,' a name borne by many 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LIFE OP MAN. 151 
 
 personages of that age, one of whom is entitled on a monu- 
 ment of the reign of !Menephtha ' Viceroy of Ethiopia ; ' 
 and this inscription probably gave rise to the assertion of 
 Josephus that Moses, when a young man, led an Egyptian 
 army into Ethiopia to besiege Meroe and married the 
 princess Tharbe out of gratitude for her assistance in 
 entering that city. The Hebrew story makes him the 
 adopted son of Eamses* daughter, and says that he was 
 learned in all the customs of the Egyptians, as in fact 
 might be inferred from the Hebrew ceremonial which 
 bears his name, and the restricted monotheism which 
 idealizes all the writings going by his name ; for in the 
 roll of the dead deposited in Egyptian graves God is not 
 named, but only designated as the nuk pu nuk, ' I Am 
 what I Am,' precisely the title "^ Jehovah' of the Pentateuch. 
 
 At this point, however, all alliance between the monu- 
 ments and the Mosaic story ceases. Several centuries 
 elapse before the Sheshonk of the 22nd dynasty appears 
 in Hebrew history as the Shishak who besieged Jerusalem. 
 Of the Exodus, of the wanderings in the wilderness, of the 
 settlement in Palestine the monuments say not one word. 
 Coming directly from the land of hieroglyphic writing upon 
 stone, and learned in the art, — leading a people who had 
 not only had memorial sculpture before their eyes all their 
 lifetime, but had themselves built up the walls and set the 
 statues, steles, and obelisks which bore descriptions of 
 every public event, is it not an incredible supposition that 
 Moses should have wrought such wonders, traversed such 
 a length of roiite, encamped beneath the granite cliffs of the 
 peninsula, aud in the defiles of Mount Hor so many years, 
 without leaving a trace of his existence, a line of writing, 
 a letter, a scratch to authenticate his story, not even the 
 two tablets on which he is said to have inscribed his deca- 
 logue ! There are thousands of rude figures in the val- 
 ley Mokatteb, and in other ravines descending from 
 Mount Serbal, and they have been studied carefully by a 
 multitude of scholars, under the strongest temptation to 
 make them out Mosaic, but it has not been done. No 
 Egyptologist can speak with patience of Mr Forster's 
 book. 
 
 Our faith is always in degrees. We believe in Alfred 
 more than in Arthur, — more in the Gracchi than in 
 
152 ON THE EAELT [lECT. 
 
 Eomulus and Eemus. Time and distance liave gi-eat 
 dominion over historic faitli. Alexander is to us a real 
 personage ; we believe in Socrates not quite so clearly, but 
 yet more confidently tlian in Lycurgus ; in Lycurgus moi-e 
 than in Cadmus ; in Cadmus more than in Hercules ; and 
 not at all in Jupiter and Semele. But time is but a single 
 element in the constitution of the credence that we give to 
 past events, and not at all the most important one ; other- 
 wise Ramses II. would not be to the mind of scholars of 
 the present day as solid a reality as Caesar or Napoleon. 
 
 Time goes for nothing when we have contemjwranj docu- 
 ments. These are the legitimate masters of our faith. In 
 their absence there must always be more or less of anarchy 
 in history, more or less doubt mixed with our faith. 
 Eamses as Sesostris, that is, before his monuments were 
 discovered, was the fanciful hero of a Greek fable — quite 
 on a par with Hercules. The traveller who deciphers 
 Bonivard's signature on the stone column to which he was 
 chained in the Chateau of Chillon, — or the half-finished 
 couplet of Byron at the top of the Giralda of Seville, — who 
 stands alone in the desert of Murgab, before the marble 
 fragment which bears the winged relief of the old Persian 
 ting and reads the words : ' I am Cyrus the king, the 
 Achsemenian,^ — or who catches a glimpse of some noble 
 record in the valley of the Nile, such as that of the an- 
 cient governor of Lycopolis : ' Never have I taken the child 
 from the mother^s breast, nor the poor man from the side 
 of his wife,' — he feels the full meaning of the term contem- 
 jporary testim-ony hy means of momiments. 
 
 But there is a third element of history which regulates 
 the other two, and by which we criticise and limit the 
 value of contemporary monuments, — it is the vraisemblable, 
 A tale told by the mountain (tel) itself cannot be believed 
 unless it represents events as flowing in that self-same cur- 
 rent of the commovpJace in which our lives flow on. The es- 
 sential sameness of the manners and customs of mankind — 
 the long-enduring unchangeableness of the social life of 
 man — the steadfastness of man's relationships to nature — 
 must not be violated, or we cannot believe. Even when 
 Sesostris was a myth like Hercules there was this dift'er- 
 ence : the story of Sesostris was extraordinary but proba- 
 ble were there but records left ; but that of Hercules 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 153 
 
 would be incredible however many monuments were left. 
 
 Now, judging the Mosaic story by these canons, in which 
 all agree, we find it of an age far antedating all precise 
 history, — we find it utterly unsupported by contemporary 
 monumental records, — and we feel it to be a splendid series 
 of incredibilities from first to last. His birth, his miracles, 
 his exodus, his converse with Jehovah, and his mysterious 
 disappearance, — all stamp the history with an indelible 
 character of myth which not a single discovery of any 
 branch of science has yet repaid the endeavour to efiace. 
 
 In less degree — in a far less degree — but still in essen- 
 tially the same mode the legends of the Jews of a date 
 previous to the reign of Solomon are utterly unhistorical, 
 although the stories of the Judges are probable enough. 
 Nothing prevents us from identifying the Hebrews of the 
 monarchy as descendants of the Hyksos race, nor from 
 supposing that the Mosaic records were inventions of a 
 later age, based on a mixture of Hyksos traditions, Arabian 
 poetry, Zoroastrian mythology and genuine Egyptian and 
 Assyrian monumental history. Nothing prevents us from 
 concluding that the Egyptian inscriptions record merely a 
 local and temporary eddy through the isthmus of Suez of 
 that master flood of migration which, starting from the 
 centres of Arianism about the Hindu Koosh in Afghan- 
 istan, and allying itself originally with the movements of 
 the Children of the Sun and the Children of the Moon in 
 north-western India, spread itself over Palestine and 
 Syria and Arabia, and then through the dispersion of the 
 Jews into all the countries of the modern world ; a migra- 
 tion which, as I have said, is the most important of all that 
 have occurred since man was placed by his Creator on the 
 earth. 
 
 But in an anthropological sense the history of the He- 
 brews is of far inferior importance when compared with that 
 of the early Egyptians, for of this last we have a world of 
 contemporary documents and therefore the most precise 
 information. It is to the earliest monuments of Egypt 
 that we must turn for pictures of the social state of a 
 race of men standing in the boldest contrast with all that 
 we know by inference from the relics of the diluvium and 
 the cave deposits and the palafittes of the social state of 
 fe,r more ancient and more savage races, living under less 
 
154 
 
 ON THE EARLY 
 
 [lect. 
 
 CHART OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 
 
 Ancient Empire: 
 Thinis Dynasty 
 Thinis 
 Memphis 
 Memphis 
 Memphis 
 Ele^ihantine 
 Memphis 
 Memphis 
 Heliopolis 
 Heliopolis 
 
 lasted 1940 years (? Manetbo.) 
 Menes. ") Pyramid of Cochom6. 
 
 )► Monuments rare. 769 years. 
 
 Cheops. Pyramids. Ait Siuai (Wady Magara). 
 
 Tombs at Saqqara. 
 Nitocris ; Apappus. 
 
 rMomiments wanting. 436 years. 
 
 I Egypt perhaps overrun by toreigners. 
 
 I The end of the old writing, religion, 
 
 L civil service, &c. 
 
 Middle Empire : lasted 1361 years (? Manetho). 
 
 Thebes 
 
 Thebes 
 
 Thebes 
 
 Xosi 
 
 Entef 
 
 Entef 
 
 San 
 
 XI. Entef, Mentouhotep. i 
 XII. Osortasen, Ameiiemha. j 
 
 XIII. Nofrehotep, Sebekhotep 
 
 XIV. Nothing known of tliis 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Beni Hassan. Lake Moeris. 
 60 kings, 463 years. 
 At its close commenced 
 invasions of the Hyksos, lasting 400 years ; 
 ended with the establishment of the Hyksos. 
 
 XVII. Saites (Hyksos). Colossi. Sphinxes. 
 
 Classic Empire. 
 
 Thebes 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Thebes XIX. 
 
 Thebes XX. 
 
 Thebes; San. XXI. 
 Tell-basta XXII. 
 San XXII I. 
 
 Sa'is 
 Sais 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Amosis (Ahmes). Amenophis. Thoutmes. Queei 
 Hatasou. Thebes illustrated. Asia conquered 
 Sun worship introduced by Khou-en-aten. 
 
 Ramses I. Seti. Sesostris (Pentaour). Menephtha 
 
 Ramses III. (Sea fight.) Asiatic influences. 
 
 Priest dynasty at Thebes. Manetbo's kings at San. 
 
 Sheshonk (takes Jerusalem): Egypt a part of Asia. 
 
 Twelve barons divide Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt 
 becomes a province of Soudan. 
 
 Bocchoris, reigning six years, the only king. 
 
 Sabacon(Cush) conquers Egypt. 50 years. Tahraka. 
 
 Psammiticus, the Libyan ? Greek mercenaries. 
 Periplus of Africa. Canal of Suez reattempted. 
 
 Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires. 
 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Sais 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Mendes 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Sebennytes 
 
 XXX. 
 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Alexandria 
 
 XXX II. 
 
 Alexandria 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Alexandria 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Caujbyses. Darius. 121 years. 
 Wars witii the Persians. 
 Wars with the Persians. 
 
 Nectanebo 1. Last king expelled by the Persiani 
 Darius III. Six years. 
 Alexander I., II. 
 
 Ptolemies, Cleopatra, Berenice, Arsinoe. 
 Roman proconsuls. 
 
VI.] SOCIAL LIFE OF MAN. 156 
 
 favourable auspices for health of body, peace of mind, and 
 growth in huroan culture. This picture I will now endea- 
 vour to place before your eyes. 
 
 But to make the matter as plain aa possible I must put 
 it in a graphical form and show by a chronological chart 
 the true relationship in point of time between the Hyksos 
 episode and the beginnings of Egyptian civilization. This 
 chart will show the four great empires of Egypt, beginning 
 with that of the Pyramids and ancient tombs of Memphis, 
 5000 years B.C. And you will notice at a glance that the 
 17th dynasty, that of the Hyksos, comes midway in the 
 column between the time of that ancient empire with its 
 oldest of earthly monuments and our own day. Perliaps 
 3300 years preceded the fall of the Hyksos dynasty, and 
 3500 years have succeeded it. 
 
 Such has been the history of Egypt. Seven thousand 
 years have passed since the fourth king of the first dynasty 
 built the first pyramid of Cochome, the first which greets 
 the traveller going forth into the desert from the gates of 
 Cairo.* Yet, even then, Egypt was an old country; its 
 people civilized ; its architecture grand in idea and perfect 
 in execution ; its statuary as natural as any group of 
 Rogers' statuettes; its language not only formed but re- 
 duced to writing ; its agricultural life rich with oxen, asses, 
 dogs and monkeys, antelopes and gazelles, geese, ducks 
 and swans and slaves of Numidia. But the horse and the 
 camel of Arabia were wanting ; they knew nothing either 
 of the elephant or the giraffe of Africa ; the sheep of Eu- 
 rope and the poultry of China are nowhere to be seen ; nor 
 had the house cat yet assumed her witch-role on the hearth. 
 
 * In bis paper on the A.ntiquity of Man, read before the last meeting 
 of the Ethnological Section of tlie British Association, meeting at Dundee, 
 August, 1867, Mr C'rawfurd, who is a believer in the multiple origin uf 
 our race, adopts ChampoUeon's date for the beginning of Egyptian history, 
 9000 years before Christ, and argues for an immensely older history, upon 
 the ground that language, civilization, letters, arts, agriculture, and the 
 domestication of animals are slow processes. Too much stress, however, 
 must not be laid upon this consideration, for wheu genius speaks the times 
 obey and hasten to realize its propositions, and to fuitil its prophecies. 
 Sir J. Lubbock, although an advocate of the unity of origin, agreed with 
 him upon the point of the antiquity of Egyptian civilization, and the 
 necessity for previous ages of emergence from the savage life of the cave- 
 dwellers. 
 
166 ON THE EARLY [lECT. 
 
 But these people at the beginning of written history had 
 no ships for commerce, and could not have introduced 
 what existed around the shores of the Mediterranean, or 
 along the Indian Ocean. But what did then exist ? The 
 rest of mankind seem to have been savages, without cats 
 also. Probably neither the horse, nor camel, nor elephant, 
 nor sheep, nor pheasant had yet been tamed, at all events 
 not within reasonable reach of these rich farmers of the 
 Nile. That they enjoyed a happy, peaceful, and sometimes 
 a jolly life is easy to see, for the walls of the Memphite 
 tombs are covered with pictures of feasts, and games, and 
 dances, and boat tournaments, such as amuse the populace 
 of Paris in July ; there you see poets chanting verses, and 
 dancing girls with hair tressed up with plates of gold. 
 But you may look around in vain for the symbols of any 
 kind of warfare. Not a trace of military life is visible on 
 any monument previous to the 12th dynasty : and very 
 little trace of religion. How the dynasties were founded, 
 or how they were overthrown, or changed, we cannot 
 learn ; nor how the priests, if any then existed, turned an 
 honest penny. The deity had neither name nor image. 
 Osiris was unknown. The dog Anubis is the only guardian 
 of these primeval mansions of the dead, the first deity as 
 the first friend of man. We can make out only the signs 
 of a purely patriarchal civilization in a land of peace and 
 plenty. Each tomb is built by each farmer for his eternal 
 residence. His efiigy is seen in it, surrounded by the 
 pictures of his wife, his children, his servants, his scribes, 
 his dogs and green monkeys and his household goods. 
 And all this 3000 years before Solomon built his temple on 
 Mount Moriah, or the Assyrian his palace on the platform 
 of Koujunjik. 
 
 We may speculate upon the assertion that the Egyptians 
 of the delta of the Nile sailed up the Adriatic and settled 
 the delta of the Po, then crossed the Alps and descended 
 to settle anew upon the delta of the Rhine, from whence 
 they seized on all the smaller deltas of the British islands. 
 We have nothing but fancy to guide us in determining 
 how far the older civilization of the Egyptians modified the 
 influence of the great emigrant race — the Phoenician — in 
 forming the civilization of Europe. We have no sufficient 
 demonstration of any such influence radiating from ancient 
 
VI. SOCIAL LIFE OP MAN. 157 
 
 Egypt, except in matters of religion, and through the in- 
 termediation of other races, of which more hereafter. For 
 the present let me leave impressed upon your imagina- 
 tions one clear image — the contrast, the marvellous con- 
 trast between the two pictures I have drawn. On the 
 one hand we have this picture of peace and plenty among 
 the ancient landholders of the valley of the Nile. On the 
 other hand we have that picture of want and warfare 
 dominating the life of the wretched savages in the pine- 
 woods of Scandinavia, and standing for the condition of 
 the human race or rather of all the other human races 
 existing at that ancient epoch outside of the valley of the 
 Sphinx. 
 
 Yet such a contrast still exists in all its grim integ-rity 
 upon the earth. Compare the palaces and parks of Eng- 
 land and New England with the wigwams of the west or 
 the negro cabins of the south ; with the utter homelessness 
 of the Hottentot and Australian in the one hemis])here, or 
 the wretched reflection of primeval barbarism among ^'■les 
 miser ables'''' in Paris or in London. And so the world 
 hoards up its old letters, although they can only be re-read 
 with shudderinsjs and tears. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 ON LANGUAGE AS A TEST OF RACE. 
 
 The subject of tlie language of man will engross our 
 attention this evening. 
 
 Those who believed in the origin of all the human races 
 from a single pair found the question of the probable lan- 
 guage spoken by that pair and their immediate descendants 
 considerably simplified. The fathers of the Church took 
 for granted that the language of the oldest writings which 
 the Church accepted as sacred and divine was the language 
 in which Adam and Eve addressed each other in Paradise. 
 When the critics of a later age began to find reasons for 
 believing that the Mosaic records had been compiled from 
 the most worthy scraps of the most ancient written tradi- 
 tions, it only strengthened the claims of the Hebrew to be 
 the language of the antediluvian patriarchs. 
 
 But when the science of comparative philology was dis- 
 covered the special students of certain special languages, 
 in their enthusiastic devotion to their special studies, 
 began to put in other claims for this high honour and to 
 dispute the pre-eminence of the Hebrew, contending that it 
 must have suffered so many changes no one could tell what 
 it had been in the beginning. 
 
 As the learned world woke up to an appreciation of the 
 beautiful structure and great antiquity of the Sanscrit 
 many were disposed to consider that sacred language of 
 southern Asia the mother language of mankind. 
 
 Then came the Egyptologists with their monumental 
 letters and improved chronology, antedating that of the 
 Hebrews by several thousands of years. They proved that 
 the Coptic language, although allied to the Hebrew, was in 
 fact the language of the Pharaohs before Abram had come 
 
ON LANGUAGE AS A TEST OF RACE. 159 
 
 out of Ur of the Chaldees. Coptic must therefore have 
 been the .-^peech of Paradise. 
 
 There were soane to demand for the Armenian language 
 the credit of being the oldest in the world. And there have 
 been most learned Welshmen to parade the fact that their 
 British mother tongue could afford a reasonable etymology 
 for every one of its own words in proof that it alone could 
 be the aboriginal speech of the world. 
 
 But the progress of the science of comparative philology 
 has extinguished one by one, all these absurd pretensions 
 even without the necessity of a reference to the goodness 
 of the foundation on which they rested, viz. the truth of 
 the legend of a Paradise and a first human pair. 
 
 But although the science of comparative philology has 
 been able to extingmsh the claims set up by each individual 
 language to be that which the earliest people on the earth 
 spoke, it has not been able, on the other hand, to point 
 out what was the original language. We are just as far 
 removed to-day from knowing that as we ever were. 
 
 Comparative philology is one of the most beautiful and 
 attractive of all the modern sciences. It 'is fresh and 
 vigorous. It has an immense coterie of disciples and many 
 masters. It has conquered a large territory and set up a 
 splendid throne. It makes advances every year. It has 
 established laws which are unshakable. It is a world of 
 truth ; no one doubts it. It is, in some respects, fully the 
 equal of the other sciences. But in saying thus much we 
 have said all we dare to say. 
 
 In other and very important respects, the science of com- 
 parative philology is young and raw, undiscipHned and 
 disorganized ; or rather, rising as it has like a Phoenix 
 from the ashes of its predecessor out of the cinders of what 
 was known in the middle ages as the science of Language, 
 it still retains, involved in its constitution, quantities of 
 that unorganized magma all the elements of which it is 
 bound some day to reduce to perfect order. In this 
 respect it is far behind the so-called physical and natural 
 history sciences. Some of its most important principles 
 have yet to be settled. Some of its grandest questions 
 have hardly been announced. Its doctors still pursue the 
 most opposite methods. Its books are not only full of 
 irreconcilable contradictions; they do not yet state any 
 
160 ON LANGUAGE. [lECT. 
 
 grand body of universally accepted facts out of which fresh 
 investigations can deduce acceptable generalizations. 
 
 The true principle for a correct classificaticm of the lan- 
 guages for instance has not yet been established. Philo- 
 logists have indeed worked out a number of fine groups, 
 and settled to some extent their boundaries. They can 
 talk to you about the Indo- Germanic family, and show you 
 how it is broadly distinguished from the Shemitic family 
 on the one side, and from the Tartar family on the other. 
 They can separate the Teutonic languages from the Celtic 
 and classic groups on the one side, and from the Slavonic 
 group on the other. They can distinguish the southern 
 or Teutonic from the northern Gothic or Scandinavian 
 sub-families. They can designate seven or eight chief 
 subdivisions of a single language like the French. They 
 can go much farther even than that, and count up its patois 
 or local variations until they reach an incredible number.* 
 And all this amounts to something certainly. It repre- 
 sents a vast amount of hard work. But it does not repre- 
 sent as yet a law of classificatiun. There is no established 
 and accepted classification of the four or five thousand lan- 
 guages of the earth. There is even the greatest difference 
 of opinion among philologists as to the true principles 
 upon which we are to decide whether a language actually 
 belongs and why it must be considered as belonging to 
 one group rather than to another. Some base the classifi- 
 cation upon the grammar : others upon the dictionary. 
 The science of comparative philology is now in the same 
 ' state in which comparative zoology was before the days of 
 Cuvier when the bats were classed among the birds 
 because they lived by flying in the air; and cetaceans, 
 whales, seals, walruses, &c. with fishes although they 
 breathed the air and suckled their young; and lemurs 
 with squirrels instead of with the monkeys where they 
 actually belong. 
 
 And, in fact, we may as well say at the outset that all the 
 great questions which have come up for settlement in the 
 other older and maturer sciences come up again in some 
 analogous form for settlement in this young raw science of 
 
 * See the variations on the words 'deux fils'in the Transactions of the 
 Antiquarian Society of France (C. 9. 13). 
 
711.] AS A TEST OF RACE. 161 
 
 comparative philology. And how indeed could it happen 
 otherwise ? For the things which we call words are 
 organic things like animals and vegetables. They have 
 roots and branches. They grow and decay. They have 
 fixed laws to govern their existence, like all other beings. 
 They do not leap from our mouths helter-skelter, as the 
 toads and jewels dropped from the mouths of the daughters 
 of the cruel stepmother in the fairy tale. They are not 
 accidentally created. We are not their voluntary creators. 
 They breed in us and issue from us, not only from our hps 
 but from our brains, by laws as regular and permanent as 
 those which govern the conception and birth of broods of 
 fishes, birds or serpents. Language therefore must be a 
 department of natural history. New expressions or idioms 
 appear upon the face of human society just as new species 
 and varieties of animals and vegetables have successively 
 made their appearance upon the surface of the earth and 
 in the waters of the sea. And words and languages perish 
 and are preserved in the history of literature precisely like 
 those fossil forms of extinct plants and animals which we 
 study in the geological deposits of the past. 
 
 With the great fundamental principles of natural history 
 therefore which we have had before us already more than 
 once during the course of these lectures we have again 
 to deal to-night. Philology finds the same lions in 
 its path to the House Beautiful which have frightened 
 the other sciences that have preceded it in pilgrimage. 
 
 In the first place, there is the great possibility of spon- 
 taneous production, or equivocal generation as the natur- 
 alists call it. Mr Crosse took certain mineral matter, 
 boxed it up carefully so as to exclude the air, heated it so 
 as to destroy all germs of previous life, and sent for many 
 weeks a perpetual current of galvanism through it so as 
 to arouse the dormant powers of organic life. The result 
 was, as he declares, that living insects made their appearance 
 in great numbers. But the rest of the world doubts the 
 fact ; a few only believe. Now what say philologists as to 
 the possibility of a similarly spontaneous origin of a word 
 out of the raw stuff" of thought ? Some affirm that new 
 words are continually appearing in all languages like Mr 
 Cressets acari. Others, on the contrary, stand by the old 
 doctrine that like breeds like and that all living forms 
 
162 ON LANGUAGE [lEOT. 
 
 must come from germs or living cells which are already 
 organized nuclei of vital forces, or rather, in the language 
 of the schoolmen, vital forms, formce forvKintes. Such 
 philologists affirm therefore the necessary previous exist- 
 ence of linguistic roots, and believe that all words must be 
 developed out of roots ; that the great business of phi- 
 lologists is to investigate roots in languages, to restrict the 
 number of these roots in any language to the smallest 
 quantity, and to compare the roots of different languages 
 together so as to obtain a true classification. A school of 
 oologists exists therefore as really in the science of com- 
 parative philology, as in that of comparative zoology. 
 
 But when you come to consider these roots or germs of 
 words you find nothing in the shape of a settled principle. 
 Some philologists consider all the roots of words as originally 
 verbal, such as : to be, to go, to strike, to cut, to breathe. 
 Others restrict this verbal character to a. few roots, and call all 
 the rest nouns out of which verbs have been made. Some 
 consider the root of a word reached when it is reduced to 
 three letters ; others despise roots which consist of more 
 than two letters. But nothing tells more plainly against 
 the existence of any well-made-out law than the different 
 number of roots to which difierent philologues reduce a 
 given language. The Sanscrit for instance is said to have 
 500 or 600 roots. But Kraitsir, before he died, had re- 
 duced the number, in his own opinion, to a little over 200. 
 Haldeman thinks no language can show more than 300. 
 
 But the great question is about the spontaneous gener- 
 ation of these germs, or roots. Then, at what age in the 
 history of man did they appear ? Were there a certain 
 number of aboriginal roots spoken by the tertiary, post- 
 tei'tiary, or stone-age men ? or have word-roots been 
 making their appearance all down through history, one 
 at a time, or in groups, sufficiently numerous to institute 
 new branches of language, or new languages ? Then again, 
 by what law of life did the roots of words get created at 
 first? or by what law do they continue to get created ? 
 And if there be such a law of life for these word-roots 
 does it include in itself a law of permanence, and a law of 
 universality, i. e. does it secure the creation of a given 
 root- word in all languages ; and then, does it secure the 
 continued existence of that root-word to the end of time ? 
 
VII.] . AS A TEST OF RACE. 163 
 
 Or, on the contrary, is there a law of change, by which no 
 original root-word has been able to maintain its integrity, 
 but has fallen from its first estate and become depraved ? 
 or, to state in other words this last question, do we find 
 raging in this science of comparative philology the same 
 warfare respecting ' a law of development ■" by which one 
 word-form-species gradually changes to another, and so 
 one language to another, by old roots dying out and new 
 roots striking in to the common soil ? 
 
 Let me take up two or three only of these questions, and 
 state what I think is wanting to the science of philology 
 to place it on a footing to do something for us in our in- 
 vestigations into the early history of the human races and 
 their migrations. For^ at present, in spite of the high 
 pretensions of its disciples, I do not think that we get any 
 ethnological light from Philology wortb speaking of ; but, 
 on the contrary, I think that in the position which the 
 science occupies it casts a deep -shadow ofobscurit} upon 
 the whole subject of the human races. Whatever else 
 therefore T must hurry over or omit to-night for want of 
 time, or to avoid confusing your attention, this one thing 
 I wish to make clear, my reasons for believing that the 
 method of philologists must be amended and to a great 
 extent re-modelled before we can get rid of some of the 
 grossest errors in ethnology or really obtain a complete 
 view of the relations which the human races hold to one 
 another and to the present state of things. 
 
 The origin of language may be regarded either, 1. as a 
 supernatural revelation of a language already perfect to 
 the first human beings; or, 2. as a power of language given 
 to the first human beings in addition to all their other pe- 
 culiar faculties as human beings ; or, 3. as merely a superior 
 human development of a general power of language (or 
 faculty of expression) possessed by the whole animal world, 
 inherent in fact in the constitution of all animated beings 
 as well as man. 
 
 The first of these modes of conceiving the possible origin 
 of language as a divine revelation was almost universally 
 adopted by heathen philosophers and Christian theologians 
 to a very recent date, and is still indulged by those whio 
 believe in Adam and Eve in Paradise. Although the most 
 natural way of understanding the old legend that Jehovah 
 
164 ON LANGUAGE [lECT. 
 
 brought to Adam all the birds and beasts and creeping 
 things that he might give to each of them its name would be 
 to suppose existing in Adam's mental constitution a myste- 
 rious faculty of representing what he saw and knew by 
 audible sounds intelligible to his wife and children. 
 Science, however, can take no note of the supernatural 
 unless it becomes natural and takes the oath of allegiance 
 to nature. Nature itself is too supernatural to require any 
 additions from the realms of human ignorance. And 
 moreover, if there were more aboriginal human races than 
 one there would be needed as many repetitions of the 
 same revelation of language ; unless to each race a different 
 language were revealed ; in which case the confusion of 
 tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel would have 
 been anticipated. 
 
 The second and third modes of conceiving of the origin 
 of language are the modes now adopted by men of science. 
 And they only differ in degree according to our views of 
 the relative dignity of man and the brutes. All philolo- 
 gists are more or less disposed to place among the natural 
 attributes of man a faculty for expressing himself and ex- 
 pressing the outside world also in appropriate words. 
 
 Some go farther and say, that this faculty for vocal 
 utterance of mental feeling is common to man with the 
 brutes; tbat the brutes are not brutes, i. e. mutes; that the 
 animals all have parts of speech ; and that man has the 
 faculty of speech only and simply because he is one of the 
 animals. His faculty is larger and finer than theirs be- 
 cause his brain is larger and finer than theirs ; because his 
 mental, moral, and spiritual nature is more angelic; because 
 his senses deal with a larger world and his tastes are 
 refined by civilization. But, however his poetry may soar, 
 and his eloquence burn, and his prayers go up as accept- 
 able incense before Him that sitteth upon the throne, and 
 before the Lamb, these glorious phenomena of thought 
 made flesh in language are as closely and eternally related 
 to the bleating of the flocks and the warbling of birds as 
 the infinite scope and sweep of solar systems in the heavenly 
 spaces are closely and eternally related to the spiral flight 
 of a bee when the hunter liberates it from his box in a 
 dingle of the forest to guide him on to rob its hive. 
 
 It makes no difference to the main question of the origin 
 
til] as a test of race. 165 
 
 of language whetlier man takes the animals into partner^ 
 ship or not, provided he considers his faculty of language 
 constitutional. 
 
 But now we approach the difficulties. How is human 
 language constitutional ? 
 
 It may be asked in reply : How is taste constitutional ? 
 How is conscience constitutional ? How is any one of the 
 bodily senses constitutional ? The schoolmen have an- 
 swered this as they have answered the other question, by 
 saying that conscience is a gift from God. Eeligious peo- 
 ple get over a similar difficulty by preaching and praying 
 for a change of heart. The old philosophers went farther 
 and very logically, when they made Taste a supernatural 
 revelation ; and we retain a fragment of their superstition 
 in our popular use of their word Genius^ by which they 
 understood a veritable divine possession, analogous (but 
 opposite) to diabolical possession. But no one has gone 
 so far as to make our bodily senses supernatural. We let 
 the physiologists alone and wait patiently for their newest 
 and best descriptions of how these faculties are constitu- 
 tional. In like manner we read Paley and Locke, and 
 Kant and Comte and Sir William Hamilton, and Mill and 
 Spencer and all the rest of the psychologists, to get the 
 latest and clearest and most consistent views of the con- 
 stitutionality of our higher powers, taste or the faculty of 
 liking, conscience or the faculty of judging, worship or 
 the faculty of serving. ^VTiy, then, should we not hear 
 Schlegel and William von Humboldt and Max Miiller 
 describe the latest and best modes of conceiving how lan- 
 guage, or the faculty of self-utterance, enters as a har- 
 monious part into the human constitution ? 
 
 I say modes and not mode of conceiving, because these 
 highest philologists are not agreed. There are four 
 theories of the way in which a constitutional tendency to 
 language in man may work itself out and produce words, 
 or if you please roots, or germs of words. 
 
 Without asking you to take my names as perfectly de- 
 scriptive of these four methods, but only as sufficiently 
 suggestive to make my descriptions plain, I will call 
 these four ways : — 
 
 1. The method by imitation. 
 
 2. The method by interjection. 
 
166 ON LANGUAGE rLECT. 
 
 8. The method by sympathy. 
 
 4. The method by invention. 
 
 The first theory of the formation of words, by vmitation, 
 supposes that men were originally children or if you please 
 monkeys with superior vocal organs capable of reproducing 
 all the sounds of nature which fell upon the ear ; and that 
 they necessarily called the dog- ' bow/ and the cow ' moo/ 
 and the sheep *baa/ before they could discover their-pro- 
 perties and invent other and higher names. You are 
 aware that the ancient grammai'ians termed the whr)le 
 class of such imitations ' onomatopoeic ' words, and that 
 this term is still in constant use. Our boys are taiight at 
 school that such words as hiss, rattle, clatter, splash, and 
 many others, are natural attempts to make language out of 
 the noises of nature. And it is no doubt so. All lan- 
 guages have this kind of words. Everybody betakes him- 
 self to imitation when he hears a new sound in nature 
 which has not before been named.* But, on the other 
 hand, it is curious to see how little resemblance exists be- 
 tween the names of a natural sound in diiferent languages. 
 It is as if the ears of different races heard these sounds 
 differently. To understand why, let any one listen to 
 some inarticulate sound — for example, the roar of a bull — 
 and observe how circumstances alter its character, — how 
 it is one thing when near, and another when far away, — 
 how one might think at this moment that it sounded hko 
 low, at that moment like ko, at another like moo, at a 
 fourth as if it had no consonantal beginning, at a fifth as if 
 it had a consonantal ending, &c. It is impossible that all 
 human language should have arisen from so meagre and so 
 indefinite a stock of primary imitations of natural noises. 
 To say nothing of the necessary expression of purely 
 mental creations — the intransitive verbs to be and to hare, 
 for instances — and a hundred other equally aboriginal and 
 indispensable words in every language, for which no sound 
 in nature ever could have stood as model. 
 
 The second theory, that of intetjection, provides for the 
 
 * I have a little cousin three years old who began to call a pencil re^ 
 (rech), and has continued to do so ever since. I Icnow of no other origin 
 for this word th.ui an attempt to imitate the harsh scratch of a slate 
 pencil on a slate, although his parents are not aware that it bad such an 
 orisrin. 
 
VII.] AS A TEST OP RACE. 167 
 
 dijSiculties wliicli are raised in tlie way of accepting the 
 theory of imitation. It is supposed by many that the 
 rational soul of man struggled into speecli as the Chris- 
 tian enters the kingdom of heaven, by violence. That at 
 first the communication of man witli nature and with his 
 fellow man was like that of the animals, and like that of 
 idiots, by cries and yells, by groanings and sighings, by 
 rude attempts at varied musical notes, by hissings and 
 mutterings and murmurs, gradually getting modulations 
 of their own and falling into series under the government 
 of the memory and the judgment as these became culti- 
 vated by exercise. Certainly there are interjections in all 
 languages, ohs ! and ahs ! for wonder and admiration and 
 complaint. But when we compare the interjections of 
 different languages, we soon perceive that there exist but 
 half-a-dozen which can be called universal, or could serve 
 as a starting-point for language. The moment this narrow 
 charmed circle is past all uniformity ceases and some 
 other law of word-making must be supposed to interfere. 
 What resemblance, for instance, can be traced between the 
 English interjection alas ! and its Gennan synonym 
 leider', The English wo .' is the same as the Latin vae f 
 (pronounced wai), but the French helas ! has not the least 
 likeness to the Pennsylvania-Dutch autscli ! If there be 
 an interjectional common language for mankind then it 
 must be so beclouded by differences in the vocal organs, 
 in the passions, and in the mental experiences of the differ- 
 ent races, and its root-words must have suffered so much 
 change, that all attempts to use it as a guide in ethnology 
 must prove futile. At the same time, the interjectional 
 efforts of the soul in the direction of language cannot be 
 lost sight of in attempting to explain some of the mys- 
 teries and curiosities of literature, as I will have occasion 
 hereafter to show. And Dr Kraitsir was perhaps nearer 
 the truth than many of us imagine, when he taught that 
 the native interjections of the voice went forth from the 
 mouth under the influence of a genuine entente cordiale 
 or permanent good understanding between, first, the 
 body of man and his mind, and secondly, between the 
 mind and surrounding nature. 
 
 For the third theory of language, then, I use the term 
 tymjoathy. Dr Kraitsir's interpretation of it is only one 
 
168 ON LANGUAGE [lECT. 
 
 of several. Other philologists describe it and illustrate it 
 in somewhat diiferent ways, but they all come to the 
 same thing in the end. Now the nature of this sympa- 
 thetic relationship existing between man and nature is 
 perfectly mysterious, and we may well be prepared for 
 complete mysteries in its vocal manifestations. The first 
 formation of language must be a great mystery on any 
 theory. But it is a phenomenon no stranger than the 
 newborn child's knowing how to suck. When I give you 
 one or two illustrations of Dr Kraitsir's views, then you 
 will remember how deep into nature these magic influences 
 penetrate ; and how the automatic adjustment of the 
 crystalline lens of the eye to objects of sight according to 
 their distance from us is as inexplicable an act of the 
 brain as any automatic adjustment of the tracheae to the 
 objects of conversation. 
 
 To see then how an act could be expressed in a word, 
 let us take for an example the act of going out. What is 
 the going to be referred to ? Dr Kraitsir answered : to 
 the breath; and what the out ? Answer : to the mouth. If 
 now we can make the breath perceptible to the ear, first 
 while still within the mouth, and then after it has issued 
 from the mouth, and if we can give our auditor a clear idea 
 of these two things in connection, we shall have expressed 
 ' going out.' Let us then first make a noise in our throat, 
 i. e. pronounce the guttural k ; then let us make a noise of 
 wind issuing from our lips, or rather issuing from between 
 the tongue and the teeth, i. e. pronounce the sibilant s. 
 The word for going out will then be simply the two letters 
 k-s, pronounced together, ks. This is the actual Latin 
 word ex, out of. 
 
 If you wish a more complicated instance, I will give you 
 Kraitsir's favourite example, which always made me smile 
 I confess, but which furnishes a very perfect example of 
 the mode in which this theory of the sympathetic formation 
 of language applies its principles. 
 
 How can we imagine that the human mind would act 
 upon the larynx and mouth so as to give an outsider the 
 idea of abstract solidity, matter, body ? A body is matter 
 in three dimensions, vertical, horizontal forwards, and 
 horizontal sideways. Now the organs of speech consist 
 chiefly of the throat, the tongue, and the lips ; the first is 
 
Til.] AS A TEST OF RACE. 169 
 
 vertical, the second horizontal forwards, and the third 
 horizontal sideways. If we take, therefore, a guttural, a 
 lingual, and a labial, we can with these three sound the 
 three dimensions of matter, i. e. express the idea of a body 
 in the general. Thus: — K"E"P, co/^us, the Latin word for 
 body. From this word can now be formed nouns, verbs, 
 adjectives, adverbs, &;c., expressing modifications of this 
 idea of solid body, ad libitum ; such as grijy, grab, grave, 
 engrave, &c. 
 
 The difficulty in tlie way of acceptiug such a system of 
 etymology is exactly the objection we feel to letting 
 children drive a fast horse — it will run away with them 
 and smash everything to flinders. All the most accom- 
 plished philologists of our day, all the patient and success- 
 ful investigators into the historical etymologies of words — 
 beginning with Jacob Grimm, the father of the modern science 
 of comparative philology, and including such men as Bopp 
 and Pott and Schott, and Kahlgren and Rochrig, Halde- 
 man, Whitney, Max Miiller, Ernest Renan — set their faces 
 dead against what they consider to be only a revival of the 
 wild vagaries of the fanciful philologists of past times, 
 from the old Cratylus of Greece to the new Cratylus of 
 Oxford, the Evanses, the Pocockes, the Davises, the 
 Cannes, and a host of other names, most erudite and in- 
 genious people, but working on the old and false system 
 of mere analogy, a system which we dare not now return 
 to because it would be subversive of all the laws of 
 letter-variation and word-derivation which have got them- 
 selves established and illustrated within the last thirty 
 years as fully as any of ih.Q laws of physics or natural 
 history. 
 
 K you wish to see how the old system of etymologies is 
 abhorred and repudiated by the masters of the new system 
 of linguistic mutation and derivation, I would refer you to 
 the second series of Max Miiller's Lectures on Language. 
 He is particularly severe upon the first two theories which 
 I have enumerated — the method by imitation, which he 
 calls the ' bow-wow theory,' and the method by interjec- 
 tion, which he calls the ' pooh-pooh theory.' Speaking of 
 the first or bow-wow theory he says, ' the onomatopoeic 
 theory goes very smoothly as long as it deals with cackling 
 hens and quacking ducks ; but round that poultry yard 
 
170 ON LANGUAOB [l«CT. 
 
 there is a dead wall, and we soon find that it is behind that 
 wall that language really begins.* 
 
 To illustrate the ridiculous excess to which the second 
 or pooh-pooh theory may be driven by its ignorant advo- 
 cates he recites from the Honolulu newspaper, the Polyne- 
 sian, of 1862, an etymology of the Hawaian word Hooiaioai, 
 to testify, viz. from five roots hoo-o-ia-io-ai, meaning causa- 
 tion, interjection, pronoun definite, rapid and thorough 
 movement resulting in realization and completion, — or in 
 English words, mahe that completely out to be a fact, 
 Hooiaioai ; testify to its truth. Nothing could well be more 
 ridiculous. And yet our libraries are filled with old 
 volumes on language containing literally myriads of etymo- 
 logies as ridiculous and more ridiculous than that. 
 
 To take another class of etymologies from the list of 
 proper names of persons in the Hebrew Scriptures : when 
 their compilers explain the change from Abram to Abra- 
 ham by the announcement that he was to be the father of 
 many nations because in the Hebrew of Solomon^s day ah, 
 rah, and am were the three words for father, many and 
 people without reference to the fact that his original con- 
 nection was with central Asia and its languages, why should 
 we accept their etymology ? How evidently has the story 
 of Sarah's laughter been inserted in the legend of Isaac's 
 birth in order to support the etymology of his name from 
 the Hebrew verb to laugh ! The explanation of the name of 
 Moses : '^ because he was drawn out of the water,' — are we 
 to prefer it to that of the monumental Egyptian proper 
 name mas, which means a child? or must we seek still other 
 fanciful resemblances to other Egyptian roots ? All such 
 etymologies \insupported by well-known facts capable of 
 comparative investigation it is a waste of time to quote, 
 and a drawback if employed in the study of ancient history. 
 The method is a false one — radically false. 
 
 But let us not be frightened away from our dinner of 
 honest mutton chops or noble roast beef because French 
 cooks can deceive the traveller with ragouts of cat when 
 he calls for hare. A Cuvier will eat his cat with gx-eat 
 nonchalance, and hold up one of the bones to the landlord 
 after dinner, remarking with a siuile that his hare must 
 have been a most singular specimen, having an anatomy 
 analogous to the carnivores. 
 
vn.] AS A TEST OF EACE. 1 71 
 
 When a transcendental philologue constructs an etymo- 
 logy for such a word as bersil, the Hebrew word for iron, 
 out of the Hebrew verb pe>-es, to pierce or cut and a sup- 
 posed determinative final letter I meaning through, the 
 conclusion is as empirical and unscientific as fanciful and 
 untrustworthy as when the ancient Talmudists derived 
 hersil from the initial letters of the names of Ja-cob^s four 
 wives Bilhah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Leah. But when a com- 
 parative philologist, obeying the canon of modern science 
 that ' no scripture is oi private interpretation,' takes up the 
 study of all the names of iron in various languages, and 
 as one of a whole group of metals, and perceives, first, that 
 when reversed the Shemite name for iron is the Indo- 
 Germanic name for another of the metals, silher ; and 
 secondh', that its first syllable, her, is also represented 
 by the Latin word for gold, aur, the Gemnan haar, the 
 English bullion, the French hague (originally halg, a golden 
 ring), and other similar analogues, — and that the second 
 syllable, sil, has similar relationships with cesel, cJialkos, 
 &c., &c. ; he is on the high road to some valuable result, 
 which his investigations will be sure to reach if patiently 
 and carefully pursued. 
 
 The question is not what etymologists who are ignorant 
 of or indiiferent to Grimm^s laws of mutation have done 
 with the roots of language ; but the question is, how did 
 the roots or germs of language originate ? Miiller himself 
 distinguishes between these questions. ' There is o'iie class 
 of scholars,^ he says, ' who derive all words from roots 
 according to the strictest rules of comparative grammar, 
 b'it who look upon the roots, in their original character, as 
 either interjectional or onomatopoeic. There are others 
 who derive words straight from interjections and the cries of 
 animals, and who claim in their etymologies all the liberty 
 the cow claims in saying inooli, booh, or ooh, or that man 
 claims in saying / ooh,fi, pfui. With regard to the former 
 theory, I should wish to remain entirely neutral.^ It is 
 onl}'^ the latter that he opposes. He does not pretend to 
 say how much of the language of the first savages of the 
 earth consisted of imitative cries and interjections ; but of 
 this he is quite sure, that the historical languages of after 
 times obey laws of mental growth and rational a,rrange- 
 
172 ON LANGUAGE [UECT. 
 
 ment whicli ure our only guides througli tlie forest of 
 etymology. 
 
 Professor Pott even denies that tlie root-words of lan- 
 guages ever were words — spoken words. He thinks that 
 they are mere abstractions obtained by our analysis of 
 languages now spoken. He says, if they existed at all in 
 early ages they existed merely as dim, vague, floating, 
 formless ideas in the savage brain, and came out in that 
 ancient savage speech sometimes in one form sometimes 
 in another, at the whim of the speaker or the promptings 
 of the moment.* 
 
 But Miiller cannot take so German a view of roots. He 
 has imbibed in Oxford too much of the practical genius of 
 the English. He leaves the ghosts of words behind him, 
 with all the other ghost faith of his fatherland. He thinks 
 the ancient roots of words were the first actual words in 
 use ; but then, they were used without any grammatical 
 definition. ' I think,' says he, ' that there was a stage in 
 the growth of language, in which that sharp distinction 
 which we make between the difi'erent parts of speech had 
 not yet been fixed, and when even that fundamental dis- 
 tinction between subject and predicate on which all the 
 parts of speech are base^ had not yet been realized in its 
 fullness, and had not yet received a corresponding outward 
 expression.''t He refers to languages at the present day in 
 this germinal condition. In Chinese, for instance, ly means 
 an ox, a plough, and the act of floughing ; ta means great, 
 greatness, and greatly. In Egyptian an'h meant life, living, 
 lively, and to live.^ Other languages are seen just coming 
 out of this first stage into a second, where the root is 
 retained, and another root is attached to it to show the 
 mental distinctions. In the Polynesian dialects any verb 
 may be used unchanged as a noun or adjective by adding 
 kua or particles of aflBrmation, and ko or particles of the 
 agent. § In our own English we speak in the same way; 
 we say make, make-r, make-iiig. Miiller gives a still more 
 striking illustration from the language of children, that 
 
 * Etymolog. forschungen, ii. 95. in Miiller, p. 95. 
 t Second Series of Lectures, p. 95. 
 X Bunsen's Egypt, i. 324, in same. 
 § Hale, p. 263, in same. 
 
VII.] AS A TEST OF RACE. 173 
 
 world of perennial savagery , that fountain of antiquity 
 welling up for ever at our feet. And let me here assure 
 you that some of the finest laws of comparative language 
 have been discovered by watching the speech of children. 
 Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He hath ordained 
 pi-aise. And he who thinks that he can settle the laws of 
 moraUty, or of reason^, or of language without the closest 
 and most patient investigation of infants and young people 
 will never become a master in any of the schools of the 
 future, — of that he may rest well assured. 
 
 What then is the process of forming word-roots in the 
 mouth of children ? A child says ' up ! up ! ' meaning, ' I 
 want to get up on my mother^ s lap.' In his mind noun, 
 verb, adjective are completely confounded and form an 
 ideal unit. It will be months or years before he can 
 separate the subjective I from the objective motJiei''s lap, 
 or the want from the action of getting up into it. 
 
 But, after all, we do not get an idea of the origin of this 
 word nj), which stands for so much. Our children take it 
 from ourselves. We got it from our English ancestors ; 
 they from their Saxon forbears. How far back it can be 
 traced we do not know. We know of no sound in nature 
 of which it could have been an imitation. We know of no 
 explosion of feeling to produce such an interjection. It 
 would be hard for Dr Kraitsir to devise a spiritual explana- 
 tion of its sympathy with what it represents, whether as 
 up, upward, or upon; and if he could, the explanation would 
 not stand good for its correspondences in other languages, 
 such as auf in German, su in Italian, or avoo in Greek.* 
 And what is true of this word is true of all other unimita- 
 tive and uninterjectional roots, the world round, and the 
 aofes throuo-h. 
 
 Have we no explanation, then, for the origin of the great 
 body of aboriginal root-words, and for the numerous pri- 
 mary monosyllables which we use every day? I must re- 
 peat what I said at the beginning of this lecture, that the 
 
 * The sound of uj) {ad, pronounced ap) is employed by the Germans 
 to express the very opposite sense of dotcn. The French have no word 
 at all corresponding to the English up, for their en hattt is the English on 
 high ; and their sus is never used but in composition. That curious ex- 
 ample of ' polar meanings,' au dessus and au dessous, is repeated in a wholly 
 different form in the German azy'and ab. 
 
174 ON LANGUAGE [lECT. 
 
 science of language is in its infancy. But still we are not 
 wholly helpless. You remember that I enumerated four 
 theories of the origin of words ; but I have described only 
 three thus far : the method by interjection, the method by 
 imitation, and the method by sym; athy. Each of these 
 methods is available for some words ; and the method by 
 sympathy plays an important part in the construction of 
 large sections of the historical languages, as I may perhaps 
 make clear hereafter, in discussing the formation of the 
 alphabet. But I must now describe to you the fourth 
 theory, or the method by invention. 
 
 It is denied by many philologists that a new word is ever 
 invented. If by this be meant out of the head, as we say, 
 that is, without any reference to existing words and things, 
 it may possibly be true, although I doubt it. But if it be 
 meant that no new words have ever been deliberately con- 
 structed and put into circulation by intelligent human be- 
 ings, words which had no connection with the organic 
 development of language, I think that all human experi- 
 ence, certainly all literary history, proves the contrary. 
 Nay, I think that I can show that the majority of the words 
 now used by civilized people are inventions or modifications 
 of purely invented words. Nay more — and this is the princi- 
 pal thought which I wish this lecture to leave impressed 
 upon your minds — there is a vast, a dominant element in 
 language which I call the bardic element, because it con- 
 sists of words invented by bards (poet-historians and poet- 
 priests of old times), by d-ruids if you like that title better — 
 an element which has superseded and overgrown the more 
 ancient and savage elements of language just as the oak 
 forests of the Bronze age superseded the pine forests of 
 the Stone age, and as the beech woods of the Iron age 
 superseded the oak forests of the Bronze age — an element 
 produced by the cultivation of the civilized intellect ; an 
 element of religious, moral, and social terminology, which 
 now forms the chief and almost the sole bond of communion 
 between the various languages of the earth. And philolo- 
 gists have so far ignored, despised, or overlooked this ele- 
 ment as to throw, as I have said, a profound shadow over 
 the early history of man, and a well-entertained suspicion 
 upon the best conclusions not only of linguistic ethnology' 
 
VII 1 A8 A TEST OF RACE. 175 
 
 but of their own science of comparative grammar itself.* 
 1 sLall attempt nothing more this evening than to illus- 
 trate these assertions, trusting to the incidental topics of 
 the remaining lectures of my course for something like a 
 reasonable demonstration. 
 
 The great efibrt of linguistic science has been to prove 
 that the present races of men came from one original race 
 by showing how all languages now spoken by these races 
 can be traced back to root-words which must be supposed 
 to have formed one original language. I have already 
 said how many difficulties start up in the way of any such 
 showing, and how little prepared our system of linguistic 
 principles is for such an undertaking. But furthermore, 
 lano-uage is the utterance of man^s spiritual nature. It 
 must therefore be commensurate with that nature. It must 
 vary as that nature varies. It must grow with its growth. 
 We see the process of development of language parallel 
 with the development of mind in every child. Every child 
 drops the first language it has learned to speak and takes 
 a new and better language suited to its advancing years. 
 Again, the language of the boy is exchanged afterwards for 
 the language of the man, when observation, reading and so- 
 ciety have enlarged the mind still farther. f See how the 
 turgid style of the poetic youth disappears before the solid 
 matter-of-fact style of the man of business. See how the 
 Johnsonian polysyllabic Latiuism of five-and-tweuty gives 
 place to the nervous Saxon monosyllables of fifty. How 
 smooth and fluent are Carlyle's first pages ! how harsh and 
 unreadable his later books ! On the other hand, see Edmund 
 Burke give up his chaste and simple early English for 
 flowery and fantastic periods in his later years. All lan- 
 guage is a daguerreotype of the soul. It is inconceivable 
 that the men of the Bronze age, even if they were lineal 
 descendants (which they probably were not) of the men of 
 
 * Prof. Whitney, in his lectures on Linguistic Science delivered at the 
 Smithsonian Institution, in March, 1864, says, ' It has quite recently been 
 found that language is the principal means of ethnological investigation, 
 of tracing out the deeds and fates of men during the pre-historic ages,' &c. 
 All this ought to be true, but it is not yet true. 
 
 t The boy swears in Basque, by Jingo ! {Jinco, Basque for God), and the 
 man in Greek, by Jove ! 
 
176 ON LANGUAGE [leCT, 
 
 tlie Stone age could have spoken the saiae language with 
 that of their ancestors. Later civilizations must have in- 
 stituted still different languages. All language is in a 
 state of flux. Savage languages^ as has been often asserted, 
 change rapidly from generation to generation. Our north- 
 west Indians, we have been assured, could not comprehend 
 their great grandfathers if now alive, and hardly their own 
 grandfathers.* Nothing but writing down a language 
 can save it from destruction. Nay, that will not do it. 
 The Hebrew is gone; the Sanscrit is gone; the ancient 
 Syriac is gone; the Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian are 
 all gone ; and all we know of these mammoths of past mind 
 we learn only from scattered fragments of them fossil- 
 ized in parchment or in stone. Look at the changes which 
 English has sustained since Magna Charta was engrossed. 
 Nothing but printing will save a language from decay. 
 Stop the growth or prevent the change of mind and you 
 can stop the growth and prevent the change of language. 
 Printing does this in part. Printing fossilizes mind. The 
 newspaper is an epidemic of paralysis. When 30,000,000 
 of people wake up in the morning together, sit down to 
 their breakfast at the same hour, call for 5,000,000 of copies 
 of the same column of telegraphic despatch-news printed 
 over-night, and one half of them make their remarks upon 
 the news in the same democratic terms, and the other half 
 in the same aristocratic terms, the good God has arrived 
 at the end of his individual creations. Individuality is 
 gone. One language at least is fixed. 
 
 Now, if in all times this law of the growth and change 
 of language in dependance upon the elevation of man's 
 life out of savagery by civilization and of the development 
 of his intellect by culture has been in action, how absurd 
 is it for philologists to suppose that they can recover by 
 the examination of either present grammars or present 
 vocabularies the primeval languages of the Stone age; or 
 determine the alliances of pre-historic tribes ; or trace the 
 migrations and intermixtures of these tribes from one side 
 to the other of the globe ! All those primeval languages 
 are buried up deep underneath a mass of pre-historic lan- 
 
 * This was positively denied, however, by one of the first missionaries 
 of the Hudson Bay stations, who told me he formulated the noi tlicrn 
 languages, and found them rich and harmonious and almost invariable. 
 
VII.] AS A TEST OP RACE. 177 
 
 guages, which in their turn have been overlaid by the 
 old historic tongues, which in their turn have been over- 
 laid by the dialects now spoken. As well might the geo- 
 logist expect to make out the litholog}'" and structure of 
 that inaccessible primeval crust which we must believe to 
 exist beneath the Laurentian system the base of which we 
 have never yet seen. As well might he expect to study 
 the old Silurian and Devonian limestone^ slate and sand 
 deposits by analyzing the cretaceous and tertiary marls 
 and clays which have succeeded and replaced them in the 
 present surface. The philologist is even worse off than the 
 geologist ; for there are no Laurentian or Huronian or 
 Silurian mountains of language outcropping from and 
 overhanging the more modern tide-water plains of literary 
 history. The oldest language we have any chance to study 
 is the Egyptian, a language of only 8000 years' standing, 
 and therefore in geological phrase a quaternary deposit be- 
 longing to the present order of things, a language already 
 civilized, full of the terms of home and farm life, capable 
 of moral and religious expressions, and so nearly akin to 
 English in its staple that I might have taken from it my 
 illustration of the word 'up/ a few minutes ago instead 
 of from the English, for the Egyptian word was ' ap ! ' 
 
 When Professor Whitney therefore — one of the best 
 philologists of the new school now living, and an honour 
 as he certainly is to the science of comparative grammar — 
 asserts, as he did in his Smithsonian lectures of last year, 
 ' that it has been recently found that language is the prin- 
 cipal means of ethnological investigation, of tracing out the 
 deeds and fates of men during the pre-historic ages,' I 
 demur emphatically to the allegation. I do not believe it. 
 Unless hj pre-historic ages he means merely the ages which 
 immediately preceded the opening of monumental and lite- 
 rary history; unless he is willing to exclude entirely from 
 the discussion that immense, back-stretching line of ages 
 during which the human races were unlettered, unhistoric, 
 uncivilized and undevout, all record of which is lost beyond 
 redemption by philology and only to be recovered as a 
 part of the geological history of the earth and its inhabit- 
 ants by the combined efforts of the geologists, the palee- 
 ontologists, zoologists and archaeologists who have it 
 entirely and justly in their charge. The philologists have 
 
 12 
 
178 ON LANGUAGE [lbCT. 
 
 nothing whatever as yet to do with it. Nor will they have 
 until among the fossil remains of primeval men some trace 
 of letters shall be discovered. If for instance, bones in 
 some Poitou cave be really found scratched with Sanscrit 
 letters, then let philologists step in and join the conclave. 
 But even then language will not be, as Professor Whitney 
 says, ^the p incipal means of ethnological investigation.'' 
 
 The great mistake made by the new school of linguistics 
 is in supposing that there is no fourth theory of language; 
 no fourth way in which words originated : viz. by actual 
 invention ; no part of language which encrusts and conceals 
 the organic structure. The fact is, mankind may be 
 divided into two parts, like the body and its skin. Rich- 
 ardson says that the characters in his splendid old novel of 
 ' Sir Charles Grandison ' are men, women, and Italians. 
 History sa^'s that the characters in its drama of human life 
 are men, women, and priests. Philologists of Professor 
 Whitney's school busy themselves entirely about the men 
 and women, but forget all about the priests. 
 
 There is a language peculiar to every bird and beast. 
 There was a language peculiar to eveiy human race. 
 There is a dialect charactei'istic of each village, township, 
 city, province of each nation, of each tribe of men now 
 living. These are great studies for the philologist. 
 They can be separately analyzed, and they can be com- 
 pared together. Their individual histories can be worked 
 out to a certain distance back, as far as there are any 
 literary records. They can be grouped, and to a certain 
 extent — a very moderate extent — classified. They even 
 afford stuff for most ingenious and pei-fectly scientific and 
 trustworthy conclusions, such as Grimm's laws of mutation 
 and derivation. But they will not make of the philologist 
 a trustworthy ethnologist. Why ? 
 
 Because there is something else which he forgets to 
 study, which he refuses to believe in. There is a language 
 of priests. Because this language of priestcraft exists in 
 among local dialects and national languages. Nay, be- 
 cause it is so interfused with them as to form a component 
 part of their constitution. Every language of modem 
 times is stamped with this priest-language all over on the 
 outside, is full of it inside, in its flesh and in the marrow 
 of its bones. No anatomical preparation to be seen in a 
 
•VII,] AS A TEST OF T?ACE. 179 
 
 museum is more completely streaked and analyzed to the 
 eye by the red substance of injection than is the English, 
 the French, the Arabic, the Hindu, the Zingali, the Bur- 
 mese, the Japanese, the Tasmanian injected and confused 
 with a priestly language to the eye of the philologist who 
 will consent to recognize its existence. 
 
 What this priestly language is, and how it seems to 
 have originated, and why it is thus disseminated through 
 all the various languages which are spoken by tLe various 
 races of mankind, I shall endeavour to explain in my next 
 two lectures on architecture and on the alphabet. But 
 you will agree with me that if such an element can be 
 proved to exist in various languages it must have the 
 effect of greatly confusing and mystifying philologists who 
 ignore its existence. And still more, if this element com- 
 mon to many languages is in fact the principal or pre- 
 dominant one of the elements which constitute their 
 vocabularies, you can imagine how it must obliterate the 
 original distinctions between languages and render the 
 task of tracing the descent of races and their migrations 
 previous to the introduction of this priestcraft almost if 
 not entirely hopeless. 
 
 Here I should properly end the lecture of this evening; 
 but a few words, before we part, on the classification of 
 languages found in the books. The text books of philology 
 distinguish languages as of three kinds: — 1. The mono- 
 syllabic, 2. The agglutinate, and, 3. The inflected. 
 
 The first kind are those which speak each word-root by 
 itself, pi'eceded and followed by other word-roots, each 
 carrying its own idea in full, and leaving the hearer to find 
 out the grammatical relation between them by his own 
 wits, or by some accent or emphasis or musical modulation 
 of the speaker^s voice. The specimen of this kind usually 
 given is the Chinese. 
 
 The second or agglutinate varieties of language combine 
 the monosyllables which grammatically belong together 
 into polysyllabic words, like the Saxon words for-bear, 
 cart-horse, and into fixed grammatical idioms like to he, to 
 do, to insist, according unto, &c. And this process can be 
 carried on to any extent. Words which have been com- 
 pounded of three or four words can be contracted to 
 monosyllables and then compounded anew, as an economi- 
 
180 ON LANGUAGE [lECT. 
 
 cal family can live three days on a single round of beef by 
 rehashing it with other portions of their meals from day 
 to day. I may find occasion to illustrate this boiling-down 
 and cooking-up process in language hereafter. Its phe- 
 nomena are very curious and instructive. 
 
 The third class of languages, the inflected, are so called 
 because their words are not served up pure and simple, 
 alone or in courses, but garnished with prefixes and affixes, 
 which are as variable as Soyer's recipes. The old gram- 
 marians called these variations ' cases,' or fallings-ofif from 
 the upright simplicity of the word-root; and they gave 
 names to these cases, nominative, genitive, dative, &c., for 
 the purpose (apparently) of rendering it as difficult as pos- 
 sible for the grammar-school boys of Boston to pass their 
 examination at Harvard. Our own grammatical grand- 
 fathers in their wisdom saw fit to transplant that bar- 
 barous Greek paradigm into an English soil, where nothing 
 but the hop-pole support of the birch rod has ever availed to 
 keep it in sickly existence. Yet we still teach our wonder- 
 ing babes to poll-parrot ' nominative, a man,' ' genitive, of 
 a man,' ' dative, to a man,' ' accusative, a man,' ' vocative, 
 oh man ! ' ' ablative — non est inventus ' — although the whole 
 genius of our language, which belongs to the second or 
 agglutinate class, cries shame so audibly that the babes 
 themselves have heard it. English ' cases ! ' there are no 
 such things ! In Latin and Hebrew and Sanscrit inflec- 
 tional forms have been dread realities. How such a bui*- 
 den could have been borne by the educated classes at 
 Rome and Athens and Jerusalem it is hard to compre- 
 hend. Some philologues have doubted that the Latin of 
 the schools ever got spoken by any class below Hortensius 
 and Cicero. But when we turn to our North American 
 Indians and see how complicated the grammatical com- 
 binations and inflections of their dialects have been, we 
 may believe that the very shepherds of Ephraim knew how 
 to use the seven forms of the Hebrew verb — kal, he cuts; 
 niphal, he is cut ; piel, he cuts hard ; pual, he is cut hard ; 
 hiphil, he causes to cut ; hophal, he is made to cut ; and 
 hithpael, he cuts himself — as glibly as the oldest rabbi of 
 the Bagdad or Tiberias schools. In fact, there is no limit 
 to the ability of an ediicated boy in the direction in which 
 that education goes. Some of the most difficult languages. 
 
 II 
 
VII.] AS A TEST OF RACE. 181 
 
 completely artificial and admirably adapted for variety 
 and precision in their use, are tte languages of savage 
 tribes existing at the present day. There is no good 
 reason therefore for denying that the most ancient men of 
 the oldest Stone periods had languages as complicated and 
 as inflectional as any now known to exist, and with a 
 vocabulary commensurate with the variety of things by 
 which they were surrounded and of actions which their 
 life gave birth to. 
 
 It is not to be admitted for a moment, that we must 
 trace back the existing languages to theii' word-roots and 
 suppose these word-roots to have constituted the early 
 language or languages of man. We have no hberty to 
 suppose that the earliest languages were monosyllabic. 
 As I have said before, it is not at all established that lan- 
 guages become monosyllabic as we trace them backward. 
 On the contrary, there are many things to show that the 
 tendency of all languages is to grow more and more mono- 
 syllabic in the course of time, that is, in the direction 
 towards our day, not backward towards the beginning. It 
 is not proved that ^ China and Further India,' as Prof. 
 Whitney and many others with him maintain, ' are occu- 
 pied by races whose languages are monosyllabic because 
 they have never grown out of that original stage in which 
 Indo-Gerraanic speech had its beginning.' * The great 
 Orientalist, Abel Remusat, even refuses to admit that the 
 Chinese is entirely a monosyllabic tongue, and instances 
 such compound words as tsiang-jhi, woi-kman (Zimmer- 
 mann), and fschung-sse, bell-master, to justify his doubts. 
 Beste shows that there are only 100 real monosyllabic 
 words out of 8000 which the Chinese scholars use ; and 
 although he thinks that the old Chinese was monosyllabic, 
 he shows that the modern has 15 kinds of composition. 
 Ampere condemns the doctrine of Chinese monosyllabism 
 based merely on the ground of single characters. Abel 
 Remusat shows how the Chinese terminal -jan in adjectives 
 is exactly equivalent to the terminations -ment in French 
 (from mens, mentis), and -lich in German. Plath explains 
 how early introduction of Chinese monosyllabic writing 
 prevented the rise of grammatical inflexions ; and while 
 maintaining that the meanings of affixes remain apparent, 
 * P. Ill, Smith Rep., 1863. 
 
182 ON LANGUAGE AS A TEST OP EACE. 
 
 gives iiiuny instances of one root retaining many meanings, 
 instead of receiving new meanings by affixes.* 
 
 I have shown in a paper read before the American Phi- 
 losophical Society of Philadelphia not long ago and pub- 
 lished in their Proceedings, that when one classifies the 
 names which have been given by people speaking many 
 diSerent dialects and languages to some one common and 
 famihar and unmistakable object in nature, such as wind, 
 or fire, or a stone, or the human head, or hand, this remark- 
 able result is obtained : namely, that every organic utter- 
 ance and shade of utterance possible to the human organs 
 of speech, labial, lingual, dental, nasal, and guttural, has 
 been employed to express the self-same object. I pursued 
 the inquiry only through two or three hundred of the 
 several thousand dialects and languages of the present or 
 comparatively modern days ; and yet in this small and 
 hap-hazard collection it is perfectly apparent, that while in 
 one country an object may be called ha, in another it will 
 be called da, in a third la, in a fourth na, in a fifth ga ; in 
 others ap, at, ar, an, ah ; in others har, or dar, or lar, or 
 nar, or gar ; in others dah, or nal, or pad, or lag ; in others 
 other combinations of these elements will be in use in the 
 form of a simple monosyllable ; in others a more complicated 
 system of dissyllables or trissyllables will exist ; and here 
 and there long words will have grown up out of one or other 
 of the original simple elemental organic sounds ; — and all 
 these forms are in existence and in daily use in one age ; 
 and all these numerous modifications of utterly diverse 
 lingual elements are in constant employment to express 
 one thing, and that one thing a simple, unmistakable ob- 
 ject of nature aflFecting the senses of all mankind alike. 
 
 I will close this lecture, then, by stating again and upon 
 this new basis my conviction that most of the generaliza- 
 tions of the science of Comparative Philology — those which 
 take hold of all the larger problems of human history, the 
 origin of languages, the migrations of nations, the diversity 
 of races, the development of mythologies — are as yet grand 
 failures ; and that a much more thorough-going method, a 
 much profounder synthesis of facts is needed to lead us to 
 the desired end of our researches in this field. 
 
 * See his theory at the bottom of paj^e 216, Sitzungbe : R. Bair., Acad. 
 1861, II. iii., and top of p. 217. On ihc Tone Speech of the old Chinese 
 with two pages of radicals, 161 in number (p. 212). 
 
LECTURE Vm. 
 
 THB ORIGIN OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The Fine Arts preceded Belles Lettres in the order of 
 time as well as in the order of a philosophical classification 
 of the Intellectual Sciences. Men knew how to build be- 
 fore they knew how to write. You may be surprised that 
 I interpolate this lecture on Architecture, between my last 
 lecture on Language and my next lecture on Literature. 
 But I follow the order of nature. The soul of man en- 
 dowed with language utters itself first in sculpture and 
 painting, then in literature, then in moral and beneficent 
 deeds, and finally in acts of worship, — successively em- 
 ploying higher and higher faculties upon better and nobler 
 materials. In the first stages of his savage existence man 
 wasted most of his time and energies waiting on nature ; 
 watching patiently for the rise of a trout, or for the 
 approach of a deer. Much of this time was whiled away 
 in reverie. The hunter lived an inner life of mere per- 
 ception ; a continual stream of paltry observations flowed 
 through him, having merely leaves and twigs, spiders and 
 butterflies, occasional startings of bird and beast and 
 glimpses of the outside sky and distant landscape for 
 their only objects. This was no miserable life ! It would 
 be maligning the Divine Creating Charity to suppose it. 
 It is the life of all animals — and they are all happy. So 
 were the early races of mankind. So are all men yet. 
 Come we to speak of Happiness we speak of that which 
 Grod has made universal. It is a synonym for Life. 
 Therefore we call God good. And the young man who 
 leaves Harvard or Yale to tramp through the woods of the 
 AUeghanies with a transit over his shoulder or a level-rod 
 in his hand will soon leam how happy his first ancestors 
 must commonly have been ; and why the grave and me- 
 
184 THE ORIGIN OF [lIICT. 
 
 lanckoly Indians (as we call tliem in our ignorance) are so 
 full of fun and frolic at all times when not subdued by 
 hunger, fear or drunkenness. 
 
 Now^ the first and most natural and easy language of 
 this animal happiness, after gesticulation, is sculpture. 
 Hence all active savages amuse themselves with whittling. 
 Witness all our boys, and all the grown-up boys of our 
 Western country. The practice has been universal to all 
 races, through all ages, from the beginning. It is the 
 origin of sculpture^ which in its turn made literature pos- 
 sible; for one of the oldest forms of writing which we 
 know, the Irish Ogham character, was whittled out on 
 sticks ; and the early Egyptian characters were cut in 
 stone. The tendency to employ the hands while the body 
 rests is greater in cold climates than in hot ones ; and 
 therefore we should expect to find eai'lier traces of sculp- 
 ture in the temperate zones. But sculpture is absolutely 
 universal, and commenced with the appearance of man 
 upon the earth.* 
 
 The earliest traces of it which we have (as yet) dis- 
 covered, are on the scratched bones of the diluvium and 
 
 • The ingenious author of Essai sur I'lnegalit^ des Races Humaines, 
 M. A. de Gobineau (Paris, 1853, Phil. Lib., vol. i. p. 356), has a theory th;it 
 the artistic geuius was equally foreign to the natures of the three great 
 type races, yellow, white, and black, into which he divides mankind ; and 
 that it did not make its appearance until the white and black race mingled. 
 ' Thus, also, by the birth of the Malay variety there sprang from the yel- 
 low and black races a family more intelligent than its double parentage ; 
 and again, from the alliance of the yellow and the white there issued 
 means very superior to the populations purely Finnish, as well as to the 
 Melanian tribes. I do not deny it,' he continues, ' these are good results. 
 The world of arts and noble literature result from mixtures of blood, in- 
 ferior races ameliorated, ennobled . these are marvels to applaud. The 
 small are elevated. But, alas, the great at the same time are abased, and 
 this is an irreparable ill not to be compensated. From the mixture of 
 race come also refinements of manners, ideas, faiths, especially sweetenings 
 of the passions and desires. But these are transitory benefits ; and if 1 
 must recognize the fact that the mulatto, of whom one can make a lawyer, 
 doctor, merchant, is better than his negro grandfather, wholly uncultivated 
 and good for nought, I must avow also that the Bramans of primitive 
 India, the heroes of the Iliad, and those of the Schahnameh, the warriors 
 of Scandinavia, all phantoms so glorious of races the most beautiful long 
 since vanished, offering an image of humanity more brilliant and more 
 noble, were especially the agents of civilization and grandeur more active, 
 more intelligent, more sure than the mixed peoples, mixed one hundred 
 times of the present epoch, and yet already they were not pure.' 
 
VI II. J AECHITECTUKB. 185 
 
 the cave-mud deposits. Many of these are merely marks 
 left by the flint tools with which the savages removed the 
 flesh from the surface of the bone, but some are indubi- 
 tably patterns of the fancy, scratched in that dolce far 
 niente mood in which a savage digests his dinner. Some 
 are actually cut into imitative shapes. The most interest- 
 ing specimens of Stone-age art which I have ever seen are 
 those of roots preserved in the cabinet of M. Bouclier (\' 
 Perthes at Abbeville.* They were found in the peat-bogs of 
 the river-bottom, and are therefore of less extreme an- 
 tiquity than the flint instruments of the diluvium. But 
 they are old enough, heaven knows ! and very curious. 
 They are in the form sometimes of men, with straddling 
 legs and arms ; sometimes of ducks, or snakes, or frogs. 
 But whatever shape it may be, some artificial addition has 
 been made to it by the joking savage to increase its like- 
 liness and to express his appreciation of its oddity, or per- 
 haps we ought to add, in his eyes, to its beauty. For 
 when we see how evidently, how inexpressibly lovely to 
 the enthusiastic little mother-heart of one of our baby 
 daughters her dirty, black, old, hideous doll can be we 
 may believe that, to the art sentiment just sown and hardly 
 yet sprouting in those aboriginal savage souls a black 
 forked efiigy of humanity with the addition of a cut with 
 a flint knife for a mouth, and a peck on each side of its 
 head for two eyes would represent Venus the goddess of 
 lovehness, if not indeed Jupiter the awful thunderer. 
 There is a good deal of accounting for tastes — when we 
 consider circumstances. 
 
 The next stage in sculpture was probably imitations in 
 stone of the marks of wet feet and hands. These would 
 first be made at river fordings, and afterwards on the tojis 
 of look-out mountains. Such sculpturings are described 
 in books of travels all over the world. The savage crosses 
 a stream by swimming and dries his dripping body on 
 some sun-lit rock. Then he waits for his companions, or 
 for his prey, or for his enemy. Meanwhile he pecks away 
 at one of the damp footsteps on the rock. Others notice 
 what he has left undone and finish it. The footprint 
 becomes a permanent landmark. Some battle there in 
 
 * The sculptured bones of the caves of the Dordogne had not been 
 found when this was written. 
 
186 THE ORIGIN OP [lECT, 
 
 subsequent days shall make it famous. Some deified hero 
 shall be propitiated there by sacrifices. The footprint 
 becomes a symbol of worship. You have all heard of the 
 two footprints sculptured on the summit of Mount Olivet 
 and worshipped by pilgrims as the marks left when Jesus 
 sprang into the sky at his ascension. There is another 
 footprint of Jesus preserved on a stone in the Mosque v»f 
 Omar, at the extremity of the eastern aisle.* At Poitiers, 
 in France the traveller may see two footprints of the Lord 
 upon a slab enshrined in the south wall of the church of St 
 Eadigonde, made when he stood before her to inform her 
 of her coming martyrdom. 
 
 The prints of the two feet of Ishmael are preserved on a 
 stone in the temple of Mecca which tradition says was the 
 threshold of the palace of his father-in-law, the king of the 
 Dhorhamides.f Others say that they are the prints of his 
 father Abraham's feet when IshmaeFs termagant wife 
 drove the old patriarch away from the threshold of her 
 husband's house. 
 
 On the top of the highest mountain in Ceylon are the 
 prints of Adam's feet. There are two immense foot- 
 prints, 200 feet apart, on the rocks of Magdesprung, a 
 village in the Hartz mountains of Germany, which tradition 
 says were made when a huge giantess leaped down from 
 the clouds to save one of her beautiful maidens from the 
 violence of a baron of the olden times. J The holiest object 
 in the great temple of Burmah is the so-called footprint of 
 Gaudama, seven feet long, divided into compartments and 
 sculptured in an extraordinary manner in the fashion of an 
 astrological charm. 
 
 j\ly purpose is not to lead you into the dark chambers of 
 heathen imagery. I might not be able to explain at all to 
 your satisfaction this disposition of the human race to 
 worship the human foot and everything belonging to it, 
 though I have my theory for it. We will stick to our 
 subject which is sculpture and its origin. 
 
 But I wish I could transport this audience to a moun- 
 tain top where I stood one day last spring and show them 
 a specimen of savage sculpture of the most primeval type. 
 
 * F. 33, 21, 4 index. 
 
 t WeU's Legends of Moh mmed, 36, 23 h. t 32, 2. 
 
VIII.] AECHITECTURE. 187 
 
 It is a broad-backed, flat-topped mountain in western 
 Pennsylvania, the westernnidst of those which compose 
 the Alleghanies. It is cleft from summit to base, a depth 
 of 1300 feet, by a narrow gorge through which flows roar- 
 ing on towards the west to join the Ohio one of the 
 fairest rivers in the world, the Youghioghany. On the 
 southern brow of this gorge, looking down fearfully into 
 it, and also looking In-oadly out over all the western 
 country with a sweep of horizon taking in the blue 
 distance of the Pittsburg hills, there is a table of bare 
 sandstone rock. The people call it as the Indians did 
 before them the Cows' rock. The road runs over it ; and 
 the tracks of wheels are scratched upon it. But ages 
 before old Heckewelder's daughter was born the first 
 white child west of the Alleghany mountains, the Indian's 
 trail went over this same rock. And here the red men, 
 weary with the hot and long ascent, rested themselves ; 
 pitched pebbles down into the abyss of the river gorge, 
 and looked out over the illimitable forests of Westmoreland 
 county to catch the distant smoke of the fires of their 
 tribes. And while they sat they cut those fanciful figures 
 in the face of the rock Avhich still remain, half obliterated 
 by the wheels of the white man's waggons, but still kept 
 clean by the rains. There you may see the cloven foot of 
 cows or bufialo, and human feet, and three-toed marks of 
 birds, like Deane's and Hitchcock's ornithichnites, and 
 wa\nr)g snakes, and others not so easy to decipher. I went 
 to see the place hopiug that the imagination of the farmers 
 had misled them and that the works would prove to be 
 the casts of fossils ; but there was no mistaking their arti- 
 ficial character.* 
 
 In the same way the human hand is stamped and cut 
 upon a thousand clifi's and on the walls of temples. It was 
 a favourite subject of art in Central America. You know 
 it was used by the Roman legions as a 'sacred standard. 
 
 * Similar, more numerous, and more })erfectly executed rock sculptur- 
 ings, covering the stoss sides and backs of some granite islets, in the hed 
 of the Susquehanna river, at Safe Harbour, below Columbia, in Pennsyl- 
 vania, have been piiotographed and described, from plaster casts taken of 
 them by Prof. Thomas Porter, the president, and other members of the 
 Linnean Society, at Lancaster, and jjublished recently in the Proceedinga 
 of the American Philosophical Society at Pliiladelphia. 
 
188 THE ORIGIN OF [lECI, 
 
 Tlie two hands of man were his two great gods, his pro- 
 viders, his defenders. In the Thracian mythology they 
 were the Cabiri, the great gods workers, and their children 
 were the ten dactyloi, or fingers. Then, when men in old 
 times grew tired of worshipping their own hands they 
 began to worship the uplifted hand of the bard-priest 
 blessing them and of the bard-baron crushing them. 
 Afterwards its beauty seized upon the sesthetic sense of the 
 artist, and men drew it and sculptured it for its own sake 
 rather than for what it had accomplished. When the pope 
 sent a commission to Michael Angelo to examine his 
 ability he refused to be examined; but, seizing a piece of 
 chalk he drew a human hand so boldly and with such 
 grace and such expression that no further question could 
 be asked; and so he built St Peter's.* Finally science 
 drew the hand, and proved by it in a Bridgewater Treatise 
 that there must be an all-wise and beneficent Creator. 
 
 Such is the history of all the fine arts. — There is an 
 insensible graduation of art for imitation into art for 
 ornament. The tools of one age become the amulets of a 
 succeeding age ; as in the case of the Swiss flints. The 
 phallus found in the Poitou cave was either an idol or an 
 amulet. The ladies of Rome wore such as breastpins in 
 , the Augustan age. The miniature hand lies as a paper- 
 weight on modern tables and as a tablet on the wristlace 
 of our ladies. The selection of odd forms of roots by the 
 people of the Abbeville bogs is paralleled by the selection 
 of bizarre laurel-root walking-sticks by modern young men. 
 And the same love of the rare and beautiful which sets so 
 high a value on the emerald and diamond now, caused the 
 Stone ao-e savas'e to strins; too-ether round his neck the 
 flonting bits of amber which he saw and to perforate and 
 hang about his loins beautiful small shells. The same 
 feelings induced, the Druid warrior to wrap a golden torque 
 around his arm that induces an underbi'cd American to 
 set three California nuggets in his shirtstuds. The per- 
 petual scai'ch for proper and perfect slingstones must have 
 cultivated to the highest pitch and at the earliest periods 
 man's faculty for form and colour in the materials of art. 
 
 * See the story in detail, in Grimm's Life of Miehael Angelo, Bunnet's 
 translation, vol. i. pp. 158—160. (Little and Brown, Boston, 1SG5.) 
 
VIII.] AnCHITECTURE. 189 
 
 Some of tlie works of sav^agcs strike us with astonisliment, 
 such as the perforation of the precious stones by the in- 
 habitants of Central America. But we must remember 
 that the savage was never in a hurry ; time was not money 
 then ; and what was made was kept and valued long. The 
 ivory work of the Chinese is quite as wonderful. 
 
 But wh^ should we waste time with the earlier stages of 
 man's effort to express his appreciation of the forms of 
 nature ? We have in architecture the summation of all his 
 efforts ; the trial of his matured powers ; the efflorescence 
 net only of his taste for form and colour but of his sense of 
 grandeur and sublimity, of his ideas of the invisible powers 
 by which he is surrounded, and of his hopes of future hap- 
 piness. 
 
 I wish to confine this lecture chiefly to a discussion of 
 the rise and meaning of ancient architecture. And I shall 
 use the term architecture in its most ancient and not in its 
 more modern sense. No two meanings attached to the 
 same word could well be more different. To the imagina- 
 tion of a man of the 19th century the word architecture 
 conjures up a splendid vista of roofs and towers with 
 battlements or spii-es, castles and churches, palaces and 
 stores with marble fronts and decorated windows from the 
 pavement to the eave ; parliament houses and city hall? in 
 parks laid out for public recreation ; hotels of a thousand 
 separate rooms ; vast railway stations, each blocking up 
 the end of some wide avenue, one exit of the city with 
 long hanging vaults of wood and iron under which inter- 
 minable trains of cars may load and unload thousands of 
 travellers ; factories, mountainous piles of furnace-stack 
 and hollow archways, girt with gigantic flues and capped 
 with curious brickwork, black iron cylinders vomiting fare, 
 and taller chimneys smoking in the upper air; bridges 
 like spider-webs and viaducts with wonderful arcades 
 spanning the streams ; observatories crowned with domes 
 like eastern mosques ; theatres and halls for music with 
 organs seeming like the slumbering winds of Eolus wait- 
 ing to rouse the world ; great, many-storied public schools, 
 each with its tide of life ebbing and flowing with tumultu- 
 ous regularity four times each day as if they were the 
 ventricles of a great nation's heart : all these and innumer- 
 able private residences and villas urban and suburban, in 
 
190 THE ORIGIN OP [lECT. 
 
 streets,, on hill-tops^ and beside the shore, or buried in 
 sweet vales ; all these combine to make up architecture 
 now. 
 
 In ancient times it was not so, 'J'he so-called ancients, 
 Greeks and Romans of the times of Christ, only 2000 years 
 ago, they had their architects for triumphal arches, aque- 
 ducts, bridges, forts and palaces, as well as for religious 
 .shrines. Even the Assyrians and Babylonians of an age a 
 thousand years earlier built palaces as well as temples ; if 
 their palaces were not indeed their only temples, as their 
 kings were named after and worshipped for their gods. 
 But in the real old ancient times preceding all those really 
 modern or grandly mediaeval histories, I mean the times 
 of ancient Egypt, the times when British Stonehenge and 
 the Armorican Caruak and the North African cromlechs 
 and the Cyclopean walls of Italy and Greece were built; 
 in those old days there was nothing but religious architec- 
 ture. The people lived in tents or cottages. Their kings 
 were merely chieftains, heads of tribes, living among 
 their people like Arab sheiks, or like the kings in Western 
 Africa. How many ages from the beginning passed before 
 the building of temples began, we cannot know. All be- 
 fore the rise of architecture was an age of unconscious art, 
 mixed with uncertain superstitions ; an age of fetichism 
 with its vulgar sorceries, like those which form the sole 
 religious ceremonies of our Esquimaux ; and with its rude 
 stone idols, wooden painted posts, sacred trees, haunted 
 mounds and amulets. 
 
 The original root of all architecture can be found in the 
 sepulchral mound. The Druid barrow or the Tartar tumu- 
 lus became first the pyramid, then the propylon of the 
 Egyptian temple, then the pagoda of India and China and 
 finally the Parthenon and Pantheon of Greece and Italy. 
 The pyramids of Nubia and Egypt, with one exception 
 and that one not undisputed, ai'e undoubtedly the Mausolea 
 of the early Pharaohs ; while all the other primeval Egyp- 
 tian monuments are private tombs. The earlier Egyptian 
 temples were avowedly erected in honour of deceased 
 monarchs by their sons. The custom was transplanted 
 from the soil of the valley of the Nile to all surrounding 
 lands. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor 
 was one of the wonders of the world. No trace of it re- 
 
VTIT.j ARCHITECTURE. 191 
 
 mains. But the vast tomb of Massinissa in Numidia 200 
 yards in diameter and the tomb of Hadrian at Rome still 
 challenge the admiration of mankind. But why select ex- 
 amples here and there when the grave-mounds of forgotten 
 princes covered the entire surface of the earth, and furnish 
 to our antiquaries their oldest and most precious curiosi- 
 ties. Nor is it needful to go back to the youthful days of 
 Mitzraim to study fragments which escaped the iconoclastic 
 hammer of Cambyses only to be submerged by the Libyan 
 or Arabian sands. The greatest living empire of the world 
 is to-day practising and illustrating throughout its 16 pro- 
 vinces, each one a mighty kingdom in itself, that architec- 
 ture of ancestor worship which, having antedated, will 
 survive and swallow up all other works of men. The tombs 
 of the Ming dynasty near Pekin show that the self-same sen- 
 timents and ideas continue to rule the human heart and 
 direct the artistes hand which called into magnificent ex- 
 istence five thousand years ago the Colossi of AlniSimbil 
 and the Necropolis of Thebes, A thousand things in Chi- 
 nese life impress the traveller strangely with the devotion 
 of the entire nation to these tender and reverential tastes 
 and feelings for the dead. To the father nothing is refused. 
 The most acceptable present that a son can make him is a 
 coffin. He knows that death will be no bar to his advance- 
 ment in honours, for the merit of his child will illuminate 
 his name. Nobility is not prospective but retrospective in 
 the Central kingdom. The hero's deeds, the sage's wisdom, 
 the statesman's success ennobles not his descendants but his 
 ancestry. The degenerate barbarism of Europe has sub- 
 stituted the sordid interests of property for gratitude and 
 piety. 
 
 Ancestor worship, or the homage which the living offer 
 to the dead, is not only the most extensive but the only uni- 
 versal form of religion upon the earth, and the oldest of 
 which any traces remain in early history. It was natural, 
 therefore, that the first tomb should be the first temple, 
 and vice versa. That desire to live which was given to 
 mankind in common with the other animals as a safeguard 
 to his life contained within it germs of thought and senti- 
 ment which were in process of time developed into a thirst 
 for immortality. This caused the living to erect their own 
 tombs ; and civilization has done little to chancjje the 
 
192 THE ORIGIN OF [lECT. 
 
 ancient custom. True^ circumstances may render indi- 
 viduals reckless, and if long enough adverse and charged 
 with sufficient misery may even obliterate from families 
 and tribes the acquired instinct of ancestral worship. 
 Livingstone represents the Makololo as totally careless 
 about the bodies of their dead and hostile to every re- 
 membrance of their past existence.* Yet such are rare ex- 
 ceptions to the general rule. 
 
 In ancient days the father was not only the giver of life 
 but the lawgiver who could order it away. Abraham sa- 
 crificing Isaac to Jehovah, or sending away Ishmael and 
 his mother into the desert ; Jephthah paroling his daughter 
 for a month ; the king of Moab slaying his first-born on the 
 city wall in sight of the hosts of Israel : — we read these 
 stories so often that they cease to make their natural im- 
 pression on us. The ancient father was in fact both family 
 priest and king ; and when he died he became the family 
 deity. The chief of a tribe was but the greater father of a 
 larger family ; and when he died a grander fane arose in 
 homage of his power and virtues. I am not one of those 
 who entertain the theory that all the deities of ancient 
 times were monarchs or benefactors or emigrratins" chief- 
 tains deified. No ! the worship of a man ceased with the 
 generation who succeeded him, as only one pope at a time 
 can occupy the sarcophagus over the doorway in St Peter's. 
 But nevertheless there is no denying or mistaking the 
 combined action of the two causes which I have just named 
 upon the rise of architecture, viz. the man^s own desire for 
 an eternal mansion, and the honours which his children 
 voted him. 
 
 The most ancient specimens of architecture whose date 
 we know are certain tombs of Memphis which M. Mariette 
 has recently uncovered from the sands of the great plain, 
 on the edge of which stand their next descendants in 
 architectural age, the pyramids. These tombs were built 
 originally like the houses of a city in rows, separated by 
 narrow streets, some of which are cul-de-sacs or courts. 
 The tombs themselves have all one form, that of a small 
 pylon or truncated pyramid ; the facade, or front towards 
 
 * See Livingstone's curious account of ' hiding the dead ' on the Zam- 
 besi. 
 
VIII.] ARCHITECTURE. 193 
 
 the street, decorated with long prismatic mouldings, ter- 
 minate iu lotus leaves tied together by the peduncles. 
 This is M. Kenan's description and he refers for illustra- 
 tion to Lepsius' Denkmaeler aus ^gypten und .^thiopien, 
 prem. part, pi 25, 26. You will hereafter see the import- 
 ance of this ornamentation to a correct theory of archi- 
 tecture ; but at present let me continue the description 
 of these interesting monuments. The door of each tomb 
 is very narrow, and never in the centre of the front. Over 
 it is cut the hieroglyphic guitar, a cylindrical drum or 
 tabret, carrying the name of the dead. Here he lives for 
 evermore, always at home. It is his ' everlasting home,* 
 the very term the old Egyptians used to designate a tomb. 
 And the interior arrano^ement ao^reed with this idea. It 
 was arranged for the reception of his surviving friends on 
 certain days of the year. Therefore in the oldest times — 
 at the extreme dawn of history — the first — absolutely the 
 first scene which is presented to our eyes is precisely 
 that which the modern traveller beholds when ho visits on 
 All Souls' Day the Parisian cemetery of Pere la Chaise, 
 or the tombs of the Ming dynasty near Pekin. Ancestral 
 worship was the first and will be the last religion of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Entering now one of these old Memphite tombs one sees 
 engraved upon the walls the master of the house in the 
 bosom of his family ; his wife, his children, his servants, 
 his scribes, his household furniture around him. His own 
 portrait in bas-relief occupies the post of honour and is 
 commonly repeated in several places; while a large stele 
 or obelisk-like pyramid gives his titles and sometimes 
 his biography, his characteristic traits, even his infirmities, 
 to ensure the continuance of his personality. How strong 
 must have been the lust for immortality which ruled the 
 breasts of those old people ! I mentioned in a former 
 lecture with what detail the agricultural habits and man- 
 ners, tools and animals of this primitive Egyptian race 
 was given in these family picture-galleries ; and how no 
 trace of war or of religion is apparent in them. 
 
 This we must dwell on here a little, not to discuss the 
 origin of the religious sentiment or its realization in wor- 
 ship, to which I shall devote a future lecture, but for the 
 
 J3 
 
194 THE ORIGIN OF [lKOT. 
 
 bearing of the fact upon the theory of architecture. In 
 these tombs we find, I say, no trace of those chapters of 
 the ritnal of the dead, which under subsequent dynasties 
 of kings and priests in Egypt came at last to constitute 
 the obHgatory ornamentation of all tombs.* In the an- 
 cienter times of the Memphite tomb-builders the deity 
 seems to have had neither name nor image. The dog 
 Anubis, on whom the trinitarian spirit of a later date be- 
 stowed three heads, the Cerberus of Greek mythology, 
 appears indeed upon the walls as the guardian or watch- 
 dog of the tomb. But where is Osiris — that special 
 funeral god of the later dynasties ? For these more ancient 
 Memphite ' everlasting homes ' he has as yet no existence. 
 They are in no respects funereal chapels consecrated to a 
 divinity. Death is the only deity acknowledged here. 
 We are in the rear of all mythologies ; behind the curtain 
 the drama of religion has not yet commenced. We are 
 still in the primeval age of man's existence upon earth 
 before the birth of kingdoms and priesthoods as we know 
 those things ; yet also at the end of that great age, just 
 when it is about to breed another age and pass itself into 
 its ' everlasting home.'' 
 
 Bvit we have here true architecture and the fine arts 
 
 * ' The tombs of Memphis are all dated in the six first dynasties ; and 
 without this they would still indicate their relative age by their style and 
 the order of their ideas. Compare them with the grottoes of Beni Hassan 
 (2500 B.C.) where the ideas are the same, death the only deity of an eter- 
 nal home, a grand, gay chamber alive with pictures, but with neither 
 superstitions nor terrors. Then compare them witli the tombs of Biban- 
 el-molouk, near Thebes (1500 B.C.), and see the sudden and complete; 
 change ! A. Christian and a pagan tomb could not more differ. The dead is 
 no longer at home ; a pantheon of gods have usurped his place; images of 
 Osiris, and chapters of the ritual cover the walls ; graved with a care as if 
 the world must read them, and yet shut up in everlasting darkness, but 
 supernaturally powerful. Horrible fictions, the foolishest vagaries of the 
 human brain. The priest has got the better of the situation ; these 
 death-trials are good alms for him, he can abridge the poor soul's tor- 
 ments. What a nightmare is this tomb of Scthos ! How far we have got 
 from the primeval iaith in death and survivance after it, without the cere- 
 monial of the priest, or long list of names divine, ending in sordid super- 
 stition. One of our Gothic cathedrals differs less from one of the tomb.s 
 on the Appian Way than do the old tombs of Sakkara from those which 
 fill the strange valley of Biban-el-molouk.' (R^nan.) 
 
Till.] ABCHITECTURE. 195 
 
 already born ; nay more, already perfect m one of their 
 careers. 
 
 Nothing, in fact, would so thoroughly dispel the scep- 
 ticism of religious people respecting the antiquity of man- 
 kind as a good examination of these monuments. They say 
 themselves that they belong to the first dynasties of Egypt, 
 and yet their construction is as perfectly beautiful as if 
 they bore over their doors names of the monarchs of the 
 18th or 22nd dynasties 2000 years later of date. What is 
 so astonishiug, so bewildering, is this : that art and archi- 
 tecture when ice see it first is in its full maturity. The 
 painting, carving and building-arts (to judge by these 
 Memphite tombs) have had apparently no infancy. And 
 it is only by turning from Egypt to other lands, and from 
 these wonderful treasures preserved beneath the sand to 
 the Cyclopean walls, to the circles of standing stones and 
 to the Drnid l)arrows that we are reminded of those vast 
 stretches of time before Memphis and its people had ex- 
 istence, ages of night and wandering for races of mankind 
 whose only monuments were some stray boulder poised 
 npon a hill, or some smooth rock beside a stream on 
 which they could engrave a few rude effigies ; — races 
 which have all perished without one name engraved in 
 legible characters ; without one shrine to keep alive the 
 remembrance of a single deity. 
 
 But were vve to dogmatise in this fashion about the early 
 and sudden blooming out of Egyptian art or Chinese 
 civilization as if they were created perfect and had no be- 
 ginning simply because we can find no records of such 
 beginning we must forget that a record is impossible 
 without a scribe to make it. Mankind without arts have 
 no means of recording the history of their arts. Ai't is a 
 self-recording instrument indeed, but not until it is itself 
 completed. And when we examine the Egyptian record a 
 little closer we can perceive in it a confession of improve- 
 ment and progress which relieves us of historical embar- 
 rassment. If Mariette can say of the fourth dynasty that 
 its opening reigns yield us prodigies of an unexampled 
 civilization, unexampled at that moment in the workl, a 
 society definitely constituted, a development of art at a 
 height hardly to be topped by the most brilliant epochs 
 afterwards, and an architecture elegant, he must add that 
 
196 THE ORIGIN OF [lECT. 
 
 all this marks a sudden and extraordinary movement the 
 cause of which is hidden from our research ; and we must 
 remember that three dynasties had preceded, numbering 
 as many centuries as have elapsed between the Norman 
 conquest and the present day ; time enough one would 
 imagine for the growth of all the arts and all the 
 sciences. 
 
 It is admirable to see with what fidelity the builders of 
 the Memphite tombs did all their work. It reminds one 
 of the enthusiasm of the builders of the Middle Ages. And 
 yet M. Mariette has distinguished in the early tombs of 
 Egypt three classes. The most ancient, like that of Amten, 
 exhibit art and literature in process of formation, the 
 hieroglyphs widely separated (clair-seme) and in relief. 
 Rude forms abound. The statues are thick and short, with 
 all their anatomical details exaggerated. The second class, 
 the best example of which is Ti's tomb at Saqqarah, are 
 better placed, with hieroglyphs less boldly striking and 
 more harmoniously grouped, making the text more legible. 
 The alphabetic element begins little by little to substitute 
 itself for the syllabic, which forms so lai-ge a part of the 
 older legends. Ascending genealogies become rare. The 
 foi'mulee of invocation are addressed to Anubis alone. 
 The third class, contemporary with the 6th dynasty, begin 
 to show the name of Osiris, and the formula of justifica- 
 tion, in text more lengthened out, with beautiful forms of 
 prayer and biographical recitals to vary a little the mo- 
 notony of representation. In these, and in the tombs of 
 the second class of the time of Ti, are found those beautiful 
 and smoothly worked-out statues, with visage round and 
 smiling mouth, fine nose, large shoulders and stout limbs 
 which form so numerous and precious a collection in the 
 Boulaq Museum. And in these tombs are also found those 
 enormous monolithic steles cut into the form of a facade of 
 which the Museum has so rich a collection also. These 
 are, then, the three stages of the oldest Egyptian art. 
 Then came a long break, perhaps the Dark Ages of the 
 ancient empii'e. We pass down through five more centu- 
 ries to the 11th dynasty, when a Renaissance appears, with 
 Isis for its deity, and marks which cut it off" from any di- 
 rect inheritance from the art that had preceded it by so 
 long an interval. The steles, formerly square at top, have 
 
nil.] ARCITITKCTURE. 197 
 
 now become rounded. The hieroglyphics have a particu- 
 lar awkwardness resembling not at all those of the tombs 
 of the 3rd dynasty. The sarcophagi are also different, 
 and colours are in vogue. Then comes the splendid age 
 of obeli.skSj colossal statues, grand grotto-temples, and all 
 that make the borders of the Nile and Thebes the wonder 
 of the world. 
 
 I once enjoyed the rare opportunity of getting upon 
 the roof of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris in company 
 of the architect to whom was intrusted the superintend- 
 ence of its restoration under Louis Philipe. After I had 
 feasted my eyes upon that glorious panorama — which I 
 think is finer from this point of view than from the top 
 of Notre Dame — I occupied myself with the bits of carving 
 which surround the pinnacles of the buttresses and which 
 are entirely invisible to persons in the street, — hundreds 
 of leaves and flowers and delicate morsels of fretwork^ 
 which no eye had seen for centuries, even since the stone- 
 cutters had hoisted the blocks unchiselled to their places^ 
 and yet as nicely wrought as if they were intended for 
 the doorway in the porch. And I could not help asking 
 myself the question. When will our architects get such a 
 conscience as those old masons had?* And I wondered 
 also when the time would come for a public taste impatient 
 of our meretricious sham shop-fronts on Chesnut-street or 
 Broadway, showing their ragged edges and unfinished 
 cornice-ends and soft brick side walls up and down the 
 street as shamelessly as harlots in the evening flaunt their 
 tawdry. 
 
 The old Memphite tombs were built to last, and to last 
 beautiful. They were to be homes always. They bore no 
 resemblance at all to our family tombs crowded with 
 coffins, hideous with mildew and fungous vegetation, 
 generating horrors of the imagination to be surpassed 
 only by those which breed within the modern so-called 
 Christian doctrine of eternal damnation. There is nothing 
 to suggest the Columbaria or pigeon-cote burial-places of 
 the Hebrews, Phoenicians and Christians of the Roman day; 
 nor those vast catacombs in which whole consfres-ations 
 
 n • • • • O O 
 
 of believers in a future life were laid away to sleep together 
 
 • See Kenan's beautiful description of this perfect conscientious art, p 
 673 (Revue des Deux Mondes, 1st April, 1865). 
 
198 THE ORlCIN OF [lECT. 
 
 until the archangels trump should wake them up together 
 for the judgment-day. 
 
 The Egyptian farmer^s soul lived all alone in his ' eternal 
 mansion/ Each tomb was individual. Except in some 
 few cases even the wife had no admission with her husband 
 to it. He was satisfied with her picture among those of 
 all his other domestic animals. Except on the solemn 
 anniversary the narrow door was shut, and darkness ob- 
 literated the pictures except to the departed ghost. He 
 was supposed to regale himself wnth the offered fruits and 
 cooked food which his friends left in his chamber. Some 
 of these touching proofs that love and veneration have 
 always swelled the human bosom have remained there un- 
 touched all those thousands of years until M. Mariette 
 opened once more the doors. 
 
 But the prime point for our reflection is the fact that 
 there is nothing of the tomb about these tombs ; they are 
 houses — homes. They feared but one thing — disturbance. 
 With what horror must the ejection from his tomb have been 
 contemplated by the old man of the Nile ! The possible loss 
 of his hereditary lands could not more shock an English 
 nobleman. To be turned out and sent adrift homeless 
 for ever, a poor ghost unable to build but once and never 
 more ! Imagine his feelings in view of such an irreme- 
 diable and infinite calamity ! I believe that these Egyptian 
 sentiments, entertained as they were by all the early races 
 of mankind, were the originals of all those superstitions of 
 Hades and haunted places and uneasy spirits which 
 exist to-day. How diflfei-ent the dying Christian's thoughts ! 
 To him there is no isolation in the tomb. He sees 
 heaven opened, and flies to join the great congregation of 
 the first-born in the kingdom of the Lord who rules the 
 heavens and the earth under the new dispensation. And 
 as the old Egyptians had the idea of immortality, so even 
 the cave-dwellers of the south of France must have been 
 led by it to make their burnt-oflerings to the dead, as M. 
 Lartet has shown. The peculiarity of Christianity consists 
 in the fact that it was both life and immortality which were 
 brought to light by Jesus Christ. 
 
 The care with which the body of the dead was preserved 
 in a sarcophagus,* and the care with which the sareo- 
 
 * The sarcooliagus is an immense cube of granite or white marble, the 
 
VIIT.] ARCHITECTURE. 199 
 
 phagus was concealed in a chamber of its own nearly 100 
 feet underground, approached by a well sunk in the thickest 
 part of the masonry^ and then by a horizontal gallery so 
 arranged as to make it extremely difficult to discover the 
 whereabouts of the sarcophagus — all show how dreadful 
 an idea the profanation or disturbance of his body must 
 have been to the living Egyptian.* To derange his repose 
 was to compromise his eternal salvation. How his body 
 was to share in his soul's immortality pei'haps was never 
 a clearly formulated dogma in the Egyptian creed, if there 
 was such a creed. But mummification became afterwards 
 one of the fine arts and combined sculpture and painting 
 with all the most shameless tricks both of priestcraft and 
 of trade. It would be a perfect farce to tell you of the 
 shrewd devices of the Egyptian undertakers in a later age, 
 to say nothing of the grim mistakes which have been made 
 in lecture-rooms in this country. I remember when a 
 mummy-case purporting to be that of a Pharaoh's daughter 
 was solemnly opened and unwrapped before a crowded 
 audience ; I think Mr Agassiz was present and took part 
 in the proceedings ; the case contained the body of a boy, 
 and nobody has ever been able to explain the misad- 
 venture except on general principles — that the Egyptian 
 undertakers were great rascals. 
 
 In the earliest times there were also images made of the 
 deceased, but they were exquisitely well done, and the 
 sole intention seems to have been to preserve the personal 
 identity of the departed, to make sure that his ownership 
 of his own ' everlasting home ' could always be identified 
 that no false claimant might ever eject him from it. These 
 images are now found concealed in little wells in the masonry 
 of the tomb. The number of them already collected is 
 
 walls of which are sometimes decorated with prism-shaped reeds 
 (rainures), and other ornaments analogous to those of the fai ade of the 
 torab. 
 
 * The same spirit presides over the queer construction of the pyramids. 
 Each was the inaccessible, eternal home of a king. Their entrances were 
 never in the middle of a side, and carefully sealed up. The galleries 
 within were filled with rocks, from the tumbling in of the root's, after 
 accomplishing which the workmen escaped by curiously constructed shafts 
 of exit. These precautions were so successful that the chamber of Cheops 
 was not reached by any explorer until the days of Caliph Mamoud, 5000 
 years and more after it was built. (Kenan.) 
 
200 THE ORIGIN OP [l-ECT. 
 
 very great. Some are of wood, some of granite, some of 
 marble. One, to be seen in the IMuseum of Charleis X* 
 represents a scribe, executed with the minute finesse of a 
 
 * Museum of Boulaq. Some are in the Louvre. ' It is ugly, common, 
 vulgar assuredly, but nothing ever came up nearer to the intention of the 
 maker. It is an unequalled prodigy, this wooden statue of the Museum 
 of Boulaq, to which the fellahs gave unanimously, on its discovery, the 
 name of Scheickh-el-bilad, "The Village Sheik." It is the statue of a 
 certain Phtah-se, cousin to the king. His wife's statue was found near 
 it. The expression of na'if contentment spreading itself over the smiling 
 figures of these two good folks is plain enough to see. One would call 
 them two Dutchmen of the times of Louis XIV. One may not doubt, 
 looking at these statues, that before the period of royal despotism and 
 sumptuonsness, Egypt had an ej)Och of patriarchal liberty. The pomp- 
 ous olhcial art of the Thouthmes and the Kameses did not lower itself to 
 represent such bouhommie any more than the artists of Versailles bent 
 down their dignities to paint "Magots" (boobies, puppies). In fact 
 these two astonishing morceuux are of the 4th or .5th dynasty. Will you 
 say that here we have primitive art starting on its career with such mi- 
 nutiae? Consider fir.st, I pray you, that Egyptian art was not at its 
 debiit hut in its perfection tiien. What is most extraordinary in this 
 civilization is, that it had no infancy. We seek in vain for an archaic 
 period of Egyptian art. In architecture that is easy enough to under- 
 stand, for it finds the means of accomplisliing its desires commonly much 
 sooner than the plaster arts can do it. But for sculpture to divest itself 
 of all rudeness and awkwardness centuries are requisite. Greece, Italy of 
 the middle ages, prove it. But such a statue as that of Chephren, of 
 which 1 shall- soon speak, and all the statues of the ancient empire, are 
 not at all in the style of a middle age. They have a definite style of 
 their own. Viewed as to the measure of the nation's genius, they could 
 not be done better. Egypt in this, as in so many other things, contradicts 
 the laws we assign to the Indo-Germanic and Shemitic races. She begins 
 her career, not in myth, in heroism, in barbarism. She is a China, born 
 mature, almost dtcreitit, having always had that air at once of inl'amy and 
 age which her monuments and her history reveal. The divine youth of the 
 Yavanas (lonians, Yavanasdones, the youths, Juvenes) was ever unknown 
 to her. That she started with realism, with platitude, does not amaze 
 me more than that she started with good sense, good domestic economy, 
 the right sense of worthy farmers, knowing exactly the number of their 
 geese and asses. We are not here on the soil of Homer and Phidias ; we 
 are in the land of clear and ra))id conscience, but limited and stationary. 
 Solon's priest of Sais thought himself sarcastic when he said, " You Greeks 
 are babies ; there are none old among you; you are all young in spirit :" 
 but it was the profound error of a narrow-minded conservative, proud of 
 that which marked his own inferiority. It is permitted man not to be 
 always young, but it is needful to have been young once. These intelligent 
 guardians of dead letters could not see what made the force and beauty of 
 Greece, as many a heavy spirit of our days thinks that he has exhausted 
 language against France when he has affixed to her name the epithet of 
 revolutionary.' — Renan. 
 
Tin.] ARCidTECTDEE, 201 
 
 perfect realism which refers us to more ancient times 
 when savages criticised tlie forms of nature with no aesthetic 
 sentiment but with the interest of life and death. Hence 
 we have in these images an ethnographic precision like 
 that of Chinese or any other cultivated but unideal art. 
 
 Let us reflect a moment. "Wherein does the savage of 
 primeval times most differ from the philosophic citizen of 
 modern Boston ? Is it not in this — that life and nature 
 and art and thought were to the savage man all in detail ; 
 but to the civilized are in the general ? As the savage 
 spent his time alone, spearing one fish^ luring one bird, 
 trapping one animal, whittling out one arrow at a time, 
 measuring the ground with single paces, skulking from 
 tree to tree and stopping behind each — so all natural and 
 primitive art must be detailed, precise, and characteristic 
 of siuorle individual forms and movements. We on the 
 contrary, we civilized people, live in crowds. Our cities 
 are aggregates of houses, even with walls and roofs in 
 common. Our furniture is made by machinery and shovel- 
 led into our life by the million. We have lost all idea 
 of distance in miles and furlongs, like the Irish woman 
 from Boston who refused to believe that she had arrived 
 at the West Newton station-platform, protesting that '^if 
 sheM ha^ known it wasnH any further than that she'd ha* 
 walked." All our thinking now is done in generals. Science 
 is merely generalization. Hence our art has become ab- 
 stract also. The feeble attempts of the Pre-Eaphaelites 
 only show how utterly disagreeable to the genius of our 
 day would be a return to the individualization and charac- 
 teristic detailed particularity of the first stage of Egyptian 
 art ; when every man built his own tomb and every image 
 in it was an exact, unflattering, conscientious portrait of 
 himself. 
 
 One more reflection before we proceed. The science of 
 the fine arts is the science of beauty, taste, an apprecia- 
 tion of the fitness of things, harmony, proportion, sym- 
 metry or rhyme, and alliteration or rhythm — that law of 
 all laws in the Cosmos, the law of pulsation, vibration or 
 paroxysmal repetition. Now, why do we never expect taste 
 from a savage; and why do we count taste among the prime 
 c iteria of good-breeding? Ethnologists have laid down a 
 rule for themselves in estimating the relative antiquity of 
 
202 , THE ORIGIN OP [lECT. 
 
 their discoveries. If the objects which they find are pohshed, 
 they consider them comparatively recent ; if ruder, more 
 ancient ; if very rude, primeval. But what right have 
 they to establish such a canon ? Are there not bad masons 
 a plenty laying up tumble-down walls to-day ; and miser- 
 able sculptors cutting thousands of horrible tombstones 
 for Mount Auburn and Laurel Hill which they expect the 
 world to call fine monuments ? What is the ground for 
 this distinction between rude and polished art ? I will 
 tell you. The savage has bad taste, because taste is that 
 faculty which deals with the true relationships of things. 
 Knowledge therefore cultivates Taste ; and the savage is 
 ignorant. Not the knowledge of things in detail, but of 
 things in their relationships. Nature deals in what we call 
 delicate touches, and these require sharp eyes to see — 
 loving, patient, educated eyes. This is why sorrow refines 
 the soul. Sorrow is ejection from self into the world's 
 wretchedness ; the hurling of the soul from its vantage 
 tower of isolation down upon the hard pavements and 
 among the hostile crowds below. Sorrow, disaster, teaches 
 men strange bed-fellows, enlarges their comprehension of 
 the worlds in which they live and so refines them. But 
 even this source of refinement the savage has not ; for his 
 sorrows are solitary ; his woes annihilate him like thunder- 
 bolts ; he perishes too easily ; there are no ameliorations 
 in his lot ; his taste continues hard, for he has nothing 
 about him but the raw stuff of nature, inexorably cruel to 
 him, playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse, and 
 only now and then grimly laughing at him through some 
 odd antic or queer shape of the animal or vegetable king- 
 dom. His imitations therefore of nature must be gross, 
 rude and individual. He has had neither eyes to discover 
 nor tools to imitate those combinations of force and form 
 which constitute nature ; still less the taste to feel those 
 delicate ideals of all forms, those Ariels of the tempest of 
 this earth-life, floating high before the soul, and beautiful, 
 and musical as beautiful. These are the spirits of our 
 architecture. These were the genii of Phidias and Prax- 
 iteles, the Prosperos of that magic Isle of Art, at whose 
 command sprang up the divine porticoes of the Parthenon — 
 that Miranda of the Island; and the throe thousand statues 
 of the Olympium at Elis — that synod of all man's exquisite 
 
v'lTl.l ARCHITECTURE. 203 
 
 irnaginations, that symposium of all forms of streugth and 
 beauty realized in marble, ivory and gold. 
 
 But even Greece was not well bred enough to compre- 
 hend the grander combinations of a later day. It needed 
 the marriage of the Classic and Teutonic races to produce 
 the Gothic cathedral. And when the time was fully come, 
 and that wondrous world of reeded piers and skyey arches, 
 buttresses and pinnacles, towers and spires, in combination, 
 like the solar system, or the framework of the Christian 
 church, rose above the grave of Ambrose bishop of Milan, 
 see how those three thousand deities of ancient Greece 
 rose too from their old seats in Elis and flew to perch 
 upon its pinnacles. Painters came journeying from every 
 side of Christendom to hang their histories of angels, 
 saints, and martyrs on its piers. Musicians choired for 
 ever in its chapels as naturally as nightingales collect 
 among the copses of the Rhine. Kings, dukes and mer- 
 chants built between its buttresses their tombs, or decor- 
 ated shrines to their tutelary saints with offerings of every 
 precious stone and work of art whatever they could find 
 or buy or steal to save their wretched souls. Emperors 
 hung up along its vaulting naves the tattered ensigns of 
 their vanquished enemies. Pilgrims returned from Holy 
 Land and poor pale women convalescing from some des- 
 perate malady, placed there their shell and scrip or votive 
 wax light or bouquet of artificial flowers. In times of war 
 and pestilence the multitude from the surrounding country 
 rushed to the cathedral church as their sure ark of safety. 
 God shut them in. The deluge might rage outside; but 
 they were safe. They called it therefore going into the 
 temple Nave, from navis, the Latin word for ship. The old 
 Greeks had the same name for a temple, Naos, because 
 naus was the Greek for ship. Architecture was to the 
 ancients not the building of arches but of arks, into whicli 
 the suffering crowds might be led when troubles rose upon 
 the earth and men despaired of living. 
 
 Around the cathedral the whole religious hierarchy 
 organized itself. On one side stands the baptistry by 
 which the ark is entered spiritually. On the other stands 
 the chapter-house where laws are made to govern the 
 church and regulate its services. A covered way in one 
 di"ection leads to the archbishop's palace, full of noble 
 
204 THE ORIGIN OP [lECT. 
 
 guests from every land. In the other direction stretch 
 the cloisters of recluses, automata by which the ceremonial 
 goes on with all the rhythmical steadiness of planetary 
 motion ; or learned men who keep alive the old traditions 
 of it ; or charitable men busy about the hospitals and at 
 bedsides, almoners of the Church's charities, or preachers 
 to the poor and hard-worked million. Then in its vaults 
 we have more relationships — these with the past; sarco- 
 phagi of founders, builders, restorers, rulers of the Church ; 
 the relics of the saints ; caskets of precious jewels ; boxes 
 of gold and silver plate, rich vestments, wealth bequeathed 
 for the care of its roof and walls and all its numerous uses. 
 If we ascend its staircase we may find within its roof a 
 little village of carpenters, masons, plumbers and glaziers 
 always occupied in keeping the vast edifice in good repair, 
 — for it is mortal like other things in this world, and if 
 unwatched would fall piecemeal and crumble (like some 
 tall cliff or mountain cedar) into the dust again from which 
 it rose. Happy the ancient Memphite tombs over whom 
 the sonsy sands were spread like a bed of snow in winter 
 to protect the grain for spring. 
 
 I have given you this picture of the architecture of what 
 we misname ' the Middle Ages ' (but which are, as to the 
 whole world-history of man,, the modern times in which we 
 actually live) in order to show that the development of art 
 consists in these complex relationships ; that a cathedral 
 temple has gTown up like a mountain mass, by the addi- 
 tion of layer upon layer, formation upon formation, all 
 different and yet closely related ; by successive additions 
 of great ideas — ideas bred of civilization, of many super- 
 imposed civilizations; ideas produced by the conflux of 
 human interests ; correlated ideas of state policy, religious 
 sentiment and family interests. And as it required the 
 varied experiences of many ages and many races to com- 
 bine in one great monument the parts of a cathedral, so it 
 requires in the spectator a life rich in these ideas to 
 appreciate and admire such a monument. 
 
 The traveller must have travelled much, read much, 
 been greatly conversant with human things ; swept with 
 his own experience through a wide circle of adventures ; 
 grasped the meanings of many social and political pheno- 
 mena, and undergone great revolutions in his own soul — 
 
VIII.] AECHITECTURE. 205 
 
 or he will walk through the solemn aisles as a brute beast 
 grazes heedlessly among tbe grandest and most beautiful 
 scenes in nature. If he be a narrow bigot, he will look on 
 all the symbolic devices around him as a vulgar raree-show 
 and scoff at the great temple as a house of idols. If he be 
 a petty shopman, he will mereh^ price in his own sordid 
 mind the money value of the golden censer and the marble 
 tomb. If he be a mere political economist he will murmur 
 at the vast and useless expense of walls and arches, 
 towers and pinnacles, as Judas Iscariot did of old when 
 the woman broke her alabaster box of precious ointment 
 to pour its contents upon Jesus' feet. If he be a mere 
 statesman and a democrat, he will bluster over the despotism 
 of priests, the selfish pride of princes and the beggarly 
 self-indulgence of the monastic orders. If he be a mere 
 painter or sculptor uninstructed in the greatest thoughts 
 of all ages, he will occupy his narrowed taste in paltry 
 criticisms upon this or the other work of art ; carp at the 
 architrave mouldings, complain of the want of symmetry 
 between the more ancient Norman nave and the more 
 modern pointed Gothic choir or draw detracting compari- 
 sons between the facade of this and of some other temple 
 which he fancies rather. None but a noble mind enlarged 
 by the influx of all the past can comprehend a great cathe- 
 dral and the genius of its architects. 
 
 A savage cannot do this. He is stupified by the incom- 
 prehensible. The cockney Englishman — the raw Ameri- 
 can grown suddenly rich by some infernal speculation — 
 such men tramp through Europe like the Goths and 
 Vandals from the forests of ancient Germany. They read 
 no story in its monuments. They sail up the Nile, and 
 although its granite walls are covered with writings these 
 are blank hieroglyphics to such eyes. It is not seeing 
 much that gives man taste or knowledge : it is seeing the 
 relationships of things. Better see a few fine specimens 
 and analyze and comprehend their relationships than see 
 all things with an unenlightened, unreflecting eye. Napo- 
 leon said it in his famous sentence : ' Soldiers ! forty 
 centuries look down on you from the pyramids.' The 
 Anglo-Saxon calls that bombast. No ; none but a Napo- 
 leon would have thought of such an apostrophe. The past 
 reflects itself in the world's monuments. It is the com- 
 
206 THE ORTGIN OP [lKCT. 
 
 monest event to hear a stupid Englishman pride himself on 
 his nonchalance for ruins. Why ? because he is ignorant 
 of history; he sees no true relation between a crumbling 
 ruin and his own well-upholstered drawing-room or 
 smoking-room or billiard-room at home. And yet had not 
 those ruins been he had never been the comfortable, care- 
 less, arrogant, impertinent Anglo-Saxon gentleman he is. 
 
 I have heard this story told of a New England clergyman ; 
 perhaps some of you may have heard it told of some one 
 else j it may be true or false ; but it illustrates what I 
 mean to say. Prying about the island of Malta to discover 
 the scene of St PauPs shipwreck he noticed an English 
 officer standing in a doorway and addressed him with the 
 question : ' Pray, sir, can you inform me where the Apostle 
 Paul was shipwrecked?^ ' Ha ! ' was the fierce and quick 
 response. The brother meekly repeated the question : 
 'Can you tell me where Saint Paul was shipwrecked ?' ' No, 
 sir ! we want none of your damned conundrums here ! ' 
 The soldier had probably never heard of the event so full 
 of interest to the clergyman ; or if he had, had never 
 thought of modern Malta being the Melita of Scripture 
 history. In fact, all history is a conundrum to such men. 
 Savages have no history at all. 
 
 Everything in mind, in taste, in generosity, in liberty 
 of one^s own soul, depends upon the view we get of great 
 relationships. This is why the highest prospects please us 
 least in travelling. The view from the summit of Mount 
 Washington is far inferior to the views we get from many 
 of the lower summits of the White Hills. We see an im- 
 mense panorama, but reduced to one dead level and re- 
 moved from accurate inspection. We must get some 
 standing-point whence we can see the true construction of 
 things. Con-struction, not structure only. We must be 
 able to tie this and that together, glance up as well as 
 down, get many vistas in many directions ; see how the 
 snow feeds the glacier and the glacier breeds the river 
 and the river waters the vale and the vale debouches on 
 the plain. 
 
 The finest view I know of in the United States is from 
 the summit of Penobscot Knob from which you look down 
 upon the valley of Wyoming. You see the whole geology 
 of the region at a glance — the Third Anthracite coal 
 
VI 1 1.] ARCHITECTURE. 207 
 
 basin with it? rim of congloincrate — the long canoe of 
 the Upper Devonian mountain inclosing it on each side 
 and at the ends — outside of which spread out the Middle 
 Devonian valleys. Far to the north stands the great wall of 
 the Alleghanies, mth the edge of the First Bituminous coal 
 basin ou its summit. As far to the south the Beaver- 
 Meadow mountains spread themselves against the sky, 
 bearing up the basins of the Second Anthracite Coal Field. 
 Through a bold gorge you see the broad sheet of the 
 Susquehannah river come winding superbly in among the 
 corn-covered plains of Kingston in one direction and 
 sweeping majestically out again through a second gap to- 
 wards the west ; then for the third time striking across 
 the canoe between grand cliffs it passes on towards the 
 sea. Close by, in the centre of the fertile fields of the val- 
 ley, glitters the beautiful little city of Wilksbarre. Be- 
 yond it, on the Kingston side, a small grey monument 
 rises to mark the place of the old story of the Indian mas- 
 sacre and brings to mind the verses of the poet Campbell. 
 On the same northern bank of the river, a little farther 
 down, you may perceive where men have opened up an 
 Indian graveyard in grading for a grand trunk railway to 
 connect the mines and carry off their produce to New York. 
 A hundred collieries with their tall chimneys and huge 
 breakers (those curious institutions peculiar to Americafi 
 collieries) remind you of the genius of the present day. 
 The hum of many trains fills the air. Just at your feet 
 burrows a deep ravine, with a fine water-fall ; and on a 
 plot of grass beside it is a pic-nic party of smart shop- 
 keepers and pretty girls who claim descent from the Con- 
 necticut settlers four generations back. Passenger cars are 
 being dragged up by three incline-planes to a water-shed 
 four hundred feet below you. But, see ! A thunder gust 
 is coming up, bred in the Buffalo mountains which bound 
 the far-off western horizon. It spreads its great black 
 wings to the right and left, laying its thundering bosom 
 on the Wyoming mountain as it rushes on towards you. 
 You stand upon a natural plate of rock on which you notice 
 marks not made by man, nor by the common elements — 
 long, parallel, straight lines — diluvial scratches they are 
 called. You may observe they point across the valley, be- 
 yond the city and the river and the monument precisely 
 
208 THE ORIGIN OF [lECT. 
 
 towards the gajo in the Schickshinny Mountain opposite, 
 through which the river breaks at CarapbelFs Ledge. A 
 geologist will tell you that these scratches were made by 
 glacial ice coming from Canada. Ihe glacier^ entering by 
 that gap, must once have crossed and filled the valley and 
 so flowed on, southward, over the mountain top on which 
 you stand. And this, of course, innumerable years before 
 the Red man had discovered how to harvest maize upon 
 those bloody flats. 
 
 But, tell me ! were the Indian to return and seat him- 
 self upon this eminence, would he see all this ? Or, would 
 a Hebrew dealer in old clothes ? Imagine a savage hap- 
 pening here when all beneath his eye was an unbroken 
 wilderness, before a ship had crossed the Atlantic or a 
 lump of coal had been inflamed; and then imagine Sir 
 Charles Lyell, or Henry D. Rogers, or James Hall, or Sir 
 William Logan assembling there around him a knot of 
 geologists, politicians, historians, engineers, artists and 
 poets ; Longfellow and Emerson, Bancroft and Hildreth, 
 Trautwine and Haupt, Bierstadt and Church, Charles Sum- 
 ner and Wendell Philips, Treasurer McCulloch and Chief- 
 Justice Chase — if you would comprehend how wholly the 
 sentiment of the beautiful and sublime depends for its ali- 
 ment upon the knowledge of relationships : and then you 
 can also comprehend how the architecture of our modem 
 days, how the grand architecture of any past age which 
 had one, needed times and revolutions and the unfoldiug^^ 
 of all human passions and the realization of all human 
 ideas to have an existence even in possibility. 
 
 Savages have no art, no architecture, because they have 
 no eyes except for food and danger ; because they take 
 things seriatim, each unrelated to the rest. Two senti- 
 ments inform the savage mind : death and the love of 
 parents. These pi'oduced the earliest art. Their ancient 
 gods were things which threatened death, and persons 
 who bestowed and protected life. Ancestor worship, 
 therefore, or the burial and after- worship of the parent by 
 the child, and of the chief or petty king by his tribe or 
 subjects, constituted the first of all religions ; and tombs 
 gave origin to all architecture. 
 
 I have made this long digression for the purpose of clear- 
 ing the way to some correct theory of architecture ; with 
 
VI n.] ARCIIITKCTURE. 209 
 
 no iutention, however, of dogmatizing against other more 
 or less accepted theories which do not seem to me so pro- 
 bable, but which, nevercneiess, ciaim more than a passing 
 notice ; although I think that I can show that, while they 
 draw attention to some important points in the history of 
 architectuix^, and to a certain extent explain some stages 
 of its historical development, they offer no sufficiently 
 broad explanation for the great mystery of its original in- 
 ception in the human mind. 
 
 The first of these sub-theories, as they may be called, 
 supposes that the natural caves of the earth have furnished 
 the first and principal suggestions of architecture. Those 
 who adopt this theory point to the fact that the most 
 famous ancient shrines of India, such as those at Elephan- 
 tine and Ellora, are rock-temples, artificial excavations, or 
 oi'namented caverns ; and that many of the ancient monu- 
 ments of Egypt are tomb-temples constructed by driving 
 horizontal caverns into the rock-walls of the Nile; and 
 that most of the ancient temples of Greece and Rome 
 were perfectly dark cells, square, or oblong, surrounded 
 by columns ; mere imitations in the open air of the dark 
 rock-temples of India and Egypt. The body of a Grecian 
 temple is called its cella. But it is not a certain fact that 
 the rock-temples of India are its most ancient edifices ; the 
 topes of the Jains are probably some of them much older. 
 We have lately been informed of the existence of temples 
 built in the open air near Memphis much older than all the 
 known cave-temples of Upper Egypt. In China we have 
 no evidence of any such antiquity in the case of rock- 
 temples ; and in Europe and Africa all the most ancient 
 Druid monuments are either barrows or ranges of stand- 
 ing stones set up in the open air. If then we can discover 
 .->ome other and better reasons for the darkness of the Greek 
 and Roman temple ceJla, the theory of which we speak 
 loses its principal support. Here Geology comes to our 
 aid and tells us that the earliest places of human sepulture 
 were natural caves, ceiled up to eternal darkness. After- 
 wards, when men became partially civilized, they ex- 
 cavated artificial caverns for tombs ; but left them un- 
 adorned. At the next stage of human life upon the planet 
 these cave-tombs were ornamented first by painting, and 
 afterwards by sculpture more and more elaborate. At a 
 
 14 
 
210 THE ORIGI\ OF [lECT. 
 
 still later age mankind began to erect tombs in the open 
 air, especially on plains, near the great cities, far from any 
 rock-walls or mountain-sides, and still they built them 
 dark. Thus we arrive at those great monuments, the 
 pyramids. To these, at length, they added porches and 
 porticoes, such as you see in front of the Second Pyramid. 
 And, finally, these porticoes suggested the construction of 
 temples separate fi-om the tombs ; and thus the compli- 
 cated and elaborate system of more modern architecture 
 took its rise. 
 
 The second theory which I will mention has fewer advo- 
 cates. It supposes that the idea of grand architecture 
 arose in the human mind from beholding those great ranges 
 of natural basaltic columns which are common in volcanic 
 countries. The advocates of this theory are obliged to 
 rely almost entirely upon the classic styles of architecture 
 for its support. They point to Doric and Ionic faQades, 
 and the splendid, peristyle temples of Greece and Italy. 
 But it is only necessary to call to mind that the earliest 
 temple of which we know, namely, that one lately opened up 
 by Mariette, at a distance of 30 yards south-east from the 
 great sphinx, has magnificent ranges of columns in its in- 
 terior. That it was built by the king I have named, 
 Chephren, the third king of the 4th dynasty, and therefore 
 almost at the opening of ancient Egjrptian history, is 
 proved by a multitude of facsimile statuettes found in a 
 well attached to it, all of them stamped with the name of 
 that monarch in a cartouche ; in fact, the earliest specimens 
 of sculptured figures, with dates upon theui, yet dis- 
 covered. It is built in the form of the letter T, and its 
 immense roof is sustained by two rows of huge, square pil- 
 lars of rose granite along the nave, supporting an archi- 
 trave of alabaster; while a third row of similar pillars 
 runs along the middle of the transept. Its immense age 
 and the unsophisticated manners of that earliest day are 
 signalized by the severity, the methodistical simplicity of 
 the whole interior. Not an ornament, not a letter is to be 
 seen ; and it confirms an incidental assertion of Strabo, 
 that in Egypt there used to be temples of a barbarous 
 style, supported by rows of columns, and wholly unorna- 
 mented. I will explain, in a future lecture, his epithet 
 * barbarous.' 
 
VIII. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE. 211 
 
 The rock-temples of India also, although of far inferior 
 antiquity, are supported within by rows of columns elabor- 
 ately sculptured. "Why should we suppose the early archi- 
 tects were necessitated to copy the rare instances of fine 
 basaltic escarpments, when the necessity for pillars to sup- 
 port a roof arises immediately from the enlargement of 
 the cave. The transition from columns within to columns 
 without the temple is the easiest imaginable. But we will 
 find other reasons for rejecting this theory when we come 
 to consider the idea of the column itself, which stood to 
 the ancient mind for a symbol, quite apart from the temple. 
 The column was a divine statue, — a deity. It was so in 
 all the early ages, to all the ancient peoples ; and it was 
 magnificently so employed, with finer aud finer effects, as 
 mythologies were born and married to each other. The 
 standing stones of the Druids ; the Lot's Wives and 
 Weeping Niobes of the poets ; the straight processions of 
 deity-headed pillars at Carnac ; the range of eight Doric 
 columns before the Parthenon ; and the circles of twin- 
 columns in chuiThes of a later age, were all generated 
 from the myth of men and women turned to stone, termini 
 and Caryatides, gods and priests, standing gigantic and 
 solemn, in orderly silence, within or around the temple of 
 the deity. The proofs of this assertion are too voluminous 
 to lay before you at the end of a lecture ; but no true 
 generalization upon ancient art would be half complete 
 without its distinct recognition. 
 
 There is a third theory which I must allude to briefly, 
 because it has obtained many supporters in England, 
 especially since the discovery of the Lydian and Carian 
 monuments in the early part of this century. It supposes 
 that all ancient architecture originated in an enlargement 
 to public purposes of the private cottage. The theory 
 depends almost entirely on Grecian art for its illustrations, 
 and therefore is of very limited scope, neglecting most of 
 the architectural records of Asia and Africa and Western 
 Europe. It relies upon the form of the Grecian pediment, 
 and the ornamentation of its architrave. The Greek 
 builder was under the necessity of roofing his temples 
 against a northern sky. Snow fell in Greece, and the 
 pitched roof and over-hanging eaves were necessaries. 
 These were supported by horizontal beams, like a fisher's 
 
212 THE ORIGIN OF [lECT. 
 
 hut ; the ends of the beams stuck out, and were split by 
 the weather ; the rain-drops stood in beads below their 
 edges ; hence the Grecian triglyph ornaments ; they were 
 mere representations of the beam-ends and rain-drops in 
 stone. Just so you will see long dental shadows cast from 
 the alternate projecting tiles upcm the side walls of the 
 houses in Southern France, and then these shadows imi- 
 tated in stone ai'ounc^the eaves of the Cathedral Church of 
 'l^oulouse. But suppose all this true, it is only the history 
 of one part of the ornamentation of one style of architec- 
 ture, and that of a very recent age. The great Doric 
 temples at Pfestum are supposed to have had no roofs, and 
 yet they had end pediments. Besides, the pediment itself 
 is a religious symbol, apart from all necessity for a roof. 
 It represented the pyramid, as the column represented the 
 obelisk. In the pediment the Greeks placed the statues 
 of their gods. It was their Olympus. But the Greek gods 
 were men of a still older time, and the Greek pediment 
 had come to be the Olympus of their gods, only because 
 the previous pyramids had been the tombs of kings. And 
 so with the architrave under it. It was not the string- 
 piece of a house, laid on the top of a wall to sustain the 
 roof; it was a separate and ancient symbol by itself; it 
 replaced in the modern Greek art the far more ancient 
 flaring cornice and cord-moulding of the Egyptian temples. 
 In fact, all these theories, based upon the local styles of 
 Greece, have lost their credit with archgeologists since the 
 discovery of the so-called ' proto-doi'ic ^ style of Egypt. 
 The Greeks got all the essential ideas of their Doric archi- 
 tecture from the ancient Egyptians ; and all the variations 
 of it which are called Ionic from the ancient Babylonians 
 and Assj^rians. This is now so well made out that it is a 
 generally accepted truth. 
 
 The last and fourth theory of the rise of architecture 
 which I need mention is still more local in its application 
 than the preceding, and therefore as a general theory still 
 less acceptable. It supposes that the first idea of grand 
 aichitecture came from the woods; from overhanging trees 
 forming long, lofty vistas to the eye, closed at the farther 
 end with interlacing boughs and leafy tracery. Behold a 
 Gothic church ! See how its piers arise on either hand 
 like mighty trees ! See how the ribs meet over-head ! 
 
VIII.] AKCHITECTUKE. 213 
 
 See the west window with its hundred mullions ! What 
 can be more evident than that the architect had trod the 
 forest aisles, and built them o'er again in stone! It is a 
 pity to retire from such a phantasy. Nor need we. The 
 last of all architecture must not only include all that went 
 before it but involve new elements of beauty. The free- 
 masons of Germany and France were princelike poets, and 
 they introduced into the grim conventional grandeurs of 
 the Egyptian art and into the cold perfect chastity of 
 Grecian art sweet humours and warm blood fresh from 
 the heart of nature. They were Christians ; while their 
 Grecian ancestors were pagans ; and the old Egyptian fore- 
 runners of all were dwellers in the tombs. They broke up 
 the massive piers into reedy clustered columns and shot 
 their branching tops into mid-air to meet in bunches of 
 foliage. They covered up the faces of the damned old 
 gods of the box-shaped capitals with leaves and flowers 
 80 that the tender bosoms of their children might not heave 
 with terror as they passed them by in advancing towards 
 the altar where the Lamb of God was taking away the sias 
 of the whole world. They let into the dark old tomb-like 
 temple all the heaven of the sky, all the warmth of the sun 
 with healing in its beams; and painted the clerestory with 
 a universal rainbow ; promising by all the angels, saints 
 and martyrs in those windows that wrath should be for- 
 gotten. Then they went forth and built tall towers; and 
 from their tops shot spires far into heaven, covered like- 
 wise with angels and with roses ; and hung therein whole 
 chimes of bells to drive away all evil and shower down 
 in music the blessings of the upper and eternal spheres. 
 
 Thank God for these cathedrals ! And for their loving- 
 hearted, large-souled, Caucasian Christian architects. Thev 
 builded on the ruins of foregoing styles, out of the genius 
 of foiegoing days; but in the new dispensation of a su- 
 perior beauty and a diviner truth. 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE GROWTH OF THE ALPHABET. 
 
 Men must liave lived a long time upon the earth before 
 they invented an alphabet. It is a wonderful product of 
 the senses, the fancy and the understanding co-operating. 
 Its use by any people proves that that people has been 
 civilized. If this be true now, it must have been true at 
 the beginning. Thinking men set so high a value on 
 letters that they have been disposed to deny man's genius 
 the ability to invent them, and have therefore affirmed that 
 God gave Adam letters in Paradise. But the genius of 
 man, as it grew and developed its resources, was capable 
 of all things necessary. If the creative plan, revealed in 
 other parts of the creation, was to find its consummation 
 in the development of human life through all its stages, 
 upward to the highest civilization, then the germs of liter- 
 ature were planted early, and appeared in due time. The 
 only questions modern science feels called upon to ask are: 
 how ? in what forms first ? and afterwards ? 
 
 I said, in my last lecture that the first efibrts of man- 
 kind to express the assthetic sentiments were made in the 
 direction of sculpture and architecture, under the guidance 
 of certain obscure ideas which I did not attempt then to ex- 
 plain. This I attempt to-night, because these same obscui-e 
 ideas became openly and plainly embodied afterwards in 
 literature. They decided in fact the shapes of the first 
 letters, and the modes adopted by the earliest sculptors and 
 architects for giving a plainer meaning to their images and 
 temples. What I mean to assert is that the art of letters 
 grew out of the arts of sculpture and architecture, and that 
 we have no trustworthy clue through the mysteries of the 
 
THE GROWTH OF THE ALPHABET. 215 
 
 origins and growths of alpliaLets until we liavc learned to 
 comprehend the mysteries of primeval architecture. 
 
 The first architects were beyond all doubt those religious 
 teachers who civilized and intellectualized the races to 
 which they belonged. Philology teaches us this much, if 
 nothing more. The Greek word for a poet, 7rotr/r/;s, in- 
 volves the Greek verb itoi€lv, to make or build. But the 
 word poet is the same as the word bard, and the Hebrew 
 word for cutting, carving, making, creating, was Bara. 
 So the old northern name for a poet, s-kald, is repre- 
 sented by the ancient Egyptian words 8-kar to cut,* and 
 s-xav to make. The old Egyptian word hak to carve, be- 
 came in time the Latin /ac-{o, and the German and English 
 wach-en. The high priest of Rome was called its ponHfex 
 maxhmis, or chief builder of arches or bridges. f 
 
 But there are other strange combinations of these func- 
 tions of the priest and the temple-builder. The oldest 
 Druid temples we know of are circles of stones. The 
 Greeks called circles kvkKol, dropping the r. The word 
 seems to have been originally kir-kir, or KeA-xeA. ; for in all 
 languages the letters r and / are confounded and exchanged 
 one for the other. Now the oldest of all architectural 
 edifices throughout the Mediterranean countries, except 
 Egypt, are old walls and ruined buildings of immense 
 stones, called Cyclopean. I cannot go into the discussion 
 of the nature of the Cyclops, but I think it can be proved 
 that they were the representatives in fable of the wild 
 Druid priests of the circles of standing stones, like Stone- 
 henge, from which we get our word for church, or kirk. J 
 In archaic Grecian times all the poets before Homer and 
 Hesiod were grouped into one class, representing a hoar 
 antiquity. They were known as the kvkXlk (cyclic) poets, 
 the poets or bards of the circle. The earliest of them all 
 was called Arctinus, or the Arkite. Their themes were 
 exclusively Arkite ; their poetry is described by the Greeks 
 
 * Com])are English 'to scar;' Welsh mountain-sides, scars. 
 
 t v^ /is. to sing, a bard. Man squatting, wrapped up. Sarcophagus 
 5ri of anx-iiepi. British Museum. Bunsen's Ideograph, 104. 
 Compare Hs-iri, Osiris, and his picture, Ideograph, 130. The judge is 
 still more strongly marked than the poet. He sits in a bath of water, ^jg^ 
 He is called stm, meaning judge, one who hears truth. D. 34. Ideo-^^V 
 graph, 97. In Ideograph 27, the panther skin replaces the water, ^ay 
 
 t See the whole discussion from Bozzei in Lempriere. (B. 52. 32.) 
 
216 THE GROWTFI OP [lECT. 
 
 of a later day as rude, like tliat of the Welsh bards ; their 
 style was Egyptian-like in its stiffness and severe sim- 
 plicity. Their sphere of thought was bounded by the 
 magic circle of primeval mythology ; their line vanishes 
 into the dim background of Graeco-Asiatic literature ; one 
 of them, called the Ethiopian, sang of Memnon. They 
 wore entirely different from the poets who sang the wars 
 of Greece : the historians, comedists and love-songwriters 
 of a later age. To the Greeks of Plato's day their poems 
 corresponded to the Psalms of David in our sacred Scrip- 
 tures, or to the hymns of the Eig-Veda in the Hindu Scrip- 
 tures. When the Homeric scholiasts quoted them they 
 simply said ev kvkK(^ Aeyet, ' as it is written in the circle,' 
 just as the apostles quoted the books of the Old Testament 
 saying, ' as it is written in the prophets.' 
 
 Proclus thus describes the ancient Epic cycle. I give a 
 free translation of his words : ' The Epic cycle is deduced 
 from a mixture of heaven and earth, from which came three 
 hundred-handed sons, and three Cyclopses. It briefly dis- 
 cusses gods and other fabulous things, and contains some 
 history. It is ended by the labour of many poets at the 
 murder of Ulysses by his unconscious son Telegon. Its 
 hymns are still studied, not for the sake of virtue, but for 
 the good order of its facts. And it preserves the names 
 and countries of its bards.' 
 
 Let me give you one of those ancient sagas — the story 
 of Pelops, ' In Sipylus in Phrygia there once reigned a 
 wicked king Tantalus, son of Jupiter ; he had two children, 
 Pelops and Niobe. At first the gods were his friends and 
 feasted at his house ; but he committed two great sins, for 
 which he was sent to hell, where he remains standing up 
 to his lips in water unable to obtain a drop to quench his 
 raging thirst, while a great rock suspended over his head 
 threatens every moment to fall and crush him. His prime 
 offence was that of divulging to tnortals the secrets of the 
 gods which he heard at his own table. His second offence 
 was the diabolical trick which he played upon his Olympian 
 guests in cooking his own boy Pelops and serving him up 
 as a ragout to see if their omniscience would discover 
 Avhat it was they ate. Mercury restored the boy to life, 
 but could not recover his shoulder, which had been alr(>ady 
 eaten. So he made the boy a new shoulder of ivory. His 
 
IX.] THE ALPHABET. 217 
 
 fresh beauty now ravislied the heart of Neptune, who 
 carried him in his own golden chariot to the top of 
 Olympus, until the rest of the enraged deities after a furi- 
 ous knock-down and drag-out fight in the royal dining- 
 hall had settled his father^s hash; then he was carried 
 back to rule in his father's stead. His descendants for 
 three generations reigned in Argos ; that means the Pelo- 
 ponnesus (Pelops' ship, or Pelops' isle). And his bones 
 were afterwards taken to Troy and became the Palladium 
 of that unhappy town. His sister Niobe had all her 
 childien killed by Diana, and she herself was turned into 
 stone and still sits weeping on a mountain in Phrygia.' 
 
 There is no disputing the theory that in all the items of 
 this story (and it is only an example of the whole class of 
 Cyclopean poems) there rules a reference to some original 
 history like that which the Hebrew poets have embodied in 
 the story of Xoah and Mount Ararat. Tan-tal-us repre- 
 sents the Tor, or mountain, submerged to its very lips. 
 The stone above his head is the ark about to touch the 
 mountain-top. Tantalus is in Tartarus ; is in fact the same 
 as Tartarus, the place of Torture, the cavern in the 
 mountain, the home of mysteries and horrors and woes, 
 the hoUe, hole, or hell of the Germanic nations. Niobe, the 
 daughter of the mountain, is again the ark, turned to stone; 
 her name, Niob, is the Egyptian word 0e/3 the ark of 
 Osiris, and the Hebrew word Theba, Noah's ark. The 
 Greek Taueus, a mountain, is the Arabic tel or tol, a 
 mountain. But the Shemitic nations wrote all their words 
 backward from right to left, and so this word tol becomes 
 lot, whose wife (her name is no where given) was also 
 turned like Niobe to stone. Pelops, Niobe's brother, was 
 the Noah of the story. First, his fother offered him up to 
 the gods, as the Brahma of the Hebrews offered up his 
 son Ikswaca (Isaac). Neptune, or the rising deluge, canned 
 him up in the golden car (the ark) to the top of Olympus, 
 until his father was destroyed, that is, until the Ararat was 
 sunk to his very lips in the hell of waters. Then he was 
 restored. His descendants reigned in Argos ; they were 
 priests of Arkism. He himself became the divinity of the 
 Tor, the city of Troy. And so on ad infinitum et ad nau- 
 seam. 
 
 I did not intend to introduce the subject of mythology 
 
218 THE GROWTH OP [lECT. 
 
 SO early in this course of lectures. It will claim our 
 attention fully hereafter. But I am forced to it, in 
 order to state clearly the true theoiy of architecture and 
 the true origin of the alphabet. Architecture began with 
 imitations of Tantalus and Niobe and Pelops in stone. 
 Architecture began in attempts to build pyramids like 
 Ararat, and to place upon their summits shrines of worship 
 and houses of God symbolical of the ark. For this purpose 
 islnnds were especially selected because they were sur- 
 rounded by the sea. Sometimes even they were said to float, 
 as in the case of Delos (tel). The marshes of inundated 
 deltas, the level sealike expansions of the desert sands, were 
 equal favourites for building places. Where water could not 
 otherwise be obtained tanks were dug, and in their centres 
 pyramids and temples were erected. Especial use was 
 made of every natural peak of rock around which tlae 
 fluvial mud of some great river, like the Ganges, Euphrates, 
 Nile, or Rhone, had settled; and on these the traveller is 
 sui-e to see the ruined temples and monasteries of the old 
 religions converted now into Christian churches, wherever 
 Christianity has taken possession of the ground.* 
 
 Old books on architecture are full of definitions of this 
 or that fityle. Until recently none but the so-called classic 
 styles were recognized as genuine architecture. All else 
 was merely barbarous. The classic styles were those of 
 Greece and Rome — Doric, and Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, 
 and Composite. But when Bruce and Belzoni discovered 
 Doric columns in Upper Egypt, and Layard and Lassen 
 Ionic capitals on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, 
 writers on architecture began to take larger views of the 
 subject. When Daniels published his magnificent plates 
 of the Pagodas of India, and Kingsborough and Stephens 
 made known totheworld the Egyptian-like edifices of central 
 America ; when other travellers had brought to notice the 
 monuments of Thibet and China, the immense statues and 
 Cyclopean walls of the Pacific islands, and the Druid 
 Tolmens of the Sahara desert, — then it became possible 
 for Fergusson to write on architectural science a text-book 
 
 * The pyramid of Cheops is said to be built on such a rock. Another, 
 a ledge of rock in situ, is seen in the floor of the Mosque of Omar, St 
 Michael's Mounts. See the St George's of the Delta of the E,hone, &c., 
 and those back of Aries. 
 
a.] 
 
 THE ALPHABET. 
 
 219 
 
 as far in advance of old Vitruvius, as Lyell's Principles 
 and Dana's Geology are in advance of the local classifica- 
 tions of Werner, or of Eaton's Manual. 
 
 Still the great primal principles of architecture, in my 
 opinion, have not been clearly stated by any writer. We 
 are bewildered by an ever-increasing multitude of pictures. 
 We must give up for a moment the study of these details 
 and take a more distant and summary view of the great 
 edifices of the world, if we are to detect the aboriginal 
 principles of architecture. 
 
 Let us select a Chinese or Thibetan temple, a Hindoo 
 pagoda, an Egyptian propylon, and a Norwegian church, 
 and set them side by side before us. Now the question 
 arises, are there any prime or essential features common 
 to them all ? If there be, these common traits must give 
 us some clue to the universal meaning of architecture, and 
 therefore to its aboriginal ideas. 
 
 I will not delay you in the answer to this question. 
 Look at these pictures and you have the evidence before you. 
 
 Fig. 1. Thibetan, Hindu, Egyptian, and Norwegian 
 temples. 
 
 Fig. 2. An Egyptian 
 hieroglyphic. 
 
 These buildings — in their dates and situations so remote 
 from one another, in their details of ornamentation so 
 diSerent from each other — show, nevertheless, one commou 
 plan. Each of them consists, as you see, of two chief mem- 
 bers — a lower and an upper. The lower member is a 
 square pyramid ; the upper member an over-hanging box. 
 All the original or religious architectures of the world have 
 been framed upon this plan. And I leave it for yourselves to 
 judge if it be not the plan you would expect the ancieut 
 priesthoods to adopt if we be permitted to suppose that 
 the first great fact of human history was some such grand 
 catastrophe as that of Noah's flood. The lower member of 
 the plan would represent the Ai-arat ; the upper member 
 would represent the ark that rested on its summit. 
 
 But subdivision is the universal primary mode of growth, 
 as all oologists well know. Every germinal cell first elou- 
 
220 THE GROWTH OP [lECT. 
 
 gates and then parts in the middle to form two, which in 
 turn elongate, separate, and form four. These four form 
 eight, and so on through eternity. Thought, too, obeys 
 this law of matter. The first mythology must be, in course 
 of time, extended and bisected, like all other living things. 
 The creation is an apothecary\s counter ; heresy is its 
 golden spatula. 
 
 We must investigate the rise of some great schism in 
 mythology which produced also a great first schism in 
 architectural ideas, resulting in a two-fold historic develop- 
 ment of the original plan. 
 
 While the single pyramidal pile, with the single shrine 
 upon its apex, continued to be in China in Thibet and in 
 India the type of the religious edifice, there arose in 
 Egypt, and spread throughout the European world, a du- 
 plicated type of temple — two mountains side by side, two 
 arks upon their tops. The earliest Egyptian monuments 
 are single ; those of the middle and later empires are 
 double. Two vast propylasa tower side by side to form 
 the portal of that immense group of courts and shrines 
 which we call the temple of Karnak at Thebes. 
 
 In modern times the Christian cathedrals were built 
 upon this plan, but with a difierence. Instead of the 
 twin towers being themselves capped with two arks, a 
 single ark or nave was placed between them. Look at the 
 huge square Roman towers at the west end of the Abbey 
 of Jumieges near Rouen ; at the great west-end Norman 
 towers of William the Conqueror's abbey-church for men 
 in Caen ; at the Gothic towers of Notre Dame in Paris ; at 
 Wrongs west towers of Westminster; at all the most 
 celebrated cathedrals of western Europe, some of which 
 have been completed during our own lives. It is the plan 
 of Christendom. 
 
 What explanation now has history, or natural history, to 
 ofi"er of this singular departure from the original type of 
 temple ? Does it mark the origin and growth of that nice 
 festhetic function of the mind which we call symmetry ? 
 Is it related to the rise of those obscure but natural specu- 
 lations of the old mythologists, w^hich resulted in the spread 
 of Phallic worship, and which duplicated all the gods of 
 pjgypt and Greece, and laid the foundation for the early 
 speculations of philosophers respecting the male and female 
 
«.] 
 
 THE ALPHABET. 
 
 22i 
 
 elements of force in nature ? or does it stand in evidence 
 of the first attempts of the human intellect to oppose 
 dualism to unity, and satisfy the human soul with a philo- 
 sophy that shall explain the origin of evil without detract- 
 ing from the goodness of omnipotence ? At all events, 1 
 think I can convince you it was no mere accident. 
 
 Perhaps, if we could discover why the Hebrew story of 
 the deluge, written in southern Syria, went to the borders 
 of the Caspian Sea, to Armenia, to select a mountain for 
 its scenery we might solve the riddle. The Armenian 
 Ararat (see Fig. 3) is an extinct volcano, rising directly 
 
 Fig. 3. Mount Ararat in Armenia. 
 
 from the surface of an immense plain to the distinguished 
 height of 13,000 feet. 'Jlie plain is itself 3000 feet above 
 the sea ; all the upper part of the mountain is therefore 
 within the limits of perpetual snow. But it is not a singli 
 cone ; it is grandly duplicated; and in the notch betwe^.. 
 the cones tradition says the ribs of the old ship still sleep; 
 but woe to the mortal who attempts to reach its dreadful 
 resting-place ! 
 
 The cones are of unequal height, one being 13,300, the 
 other only 9500 feet above the bed of the Araxes flowing 
 through the plain. ' Nothing can be more beautiful than 
 its shape,' writes Morier, * or more awful than its height. 
 All the suri'ounding mountains sink into insignificance 
 when compared to it. It is perfect in all its parts; no 
 hard rugged feature ; no unnatural prommences ; every- 
 thing is in harmony, and all combine to render it one «,f 
 the sublimest objects in nature.' And we may well add. 
 
222 THE GROWTH OF [LECT. 
 
 one of the most terrib.e. It is a slecpiug lion. In the 
 earthquake of 1840, which lasted from June until Septem- 
 ber, masses of rock and ice were thrown from the upper 
 cones 6000 feet at a single bound, covering portions of the 
 plains below with desolation.* 
 
 It seems to have been this splendid object that cap- 
 tivated the fancy of the human race as it moved westward 
 along the historic belt of emigration. Mount Masius, 
 the Damavend, Mount Meru, the Sufued Koh,t Adam's 
 peak in Ceylon,:}: and all those other typical diluvial sum- 
 rai^o of central and eastern Asia were but single peaks, 
 and satisfied the transcendental idea of a mountain. This 
 double cone of Ararat (or the two Ararats, as they are 
 called,) produced a ripple in the stream of tradition, divided 
 it, and gave birth to the second grand order of dupHcated 
 architecture. § 
 
 There must have been among the early masons the same 
 diversity of natural tempei'ament as now exists among their 
 representatives. One class would be idealists and cla,^m 
 that the true prototype and divine original was the moun- 
 tain idea in its absolute unity. Another party, more 
 sensuous and literal, and perhaps more artistic, would de- 
 vote themselves to the expansion of that first idea, and 
 to the imitation of the actual Ararat, producing all their 
 forms in double series. Thus even the Druid barrow came 
 to be elongated and furnished with a peak at either end ; 
 for it is scarcely disputed now that the long barrows are of 
 a later age than the round mounds. Thus also, in Italy 
 the pediment was split into two, and the urn was placed 
 
 * See Major Voskoboinikof's report iu the Athenceum for 1841, p. 157 ; 
 quoted in Kitto, mb voc. 
 
 t Or White Mouutain, on the road to Peshawur and Cabul. Opposite 
 it is Noorgill, or Koouer, a toweriuj^ hill. Here the Affghans set the 
 Ark. (Burue's Travels ill Bokhara, i. p. 117.) 
 
 t Tlie Samaritan Pentateuch gives in Gen. viii. 4, Sarandib, which is 
 the Arabic name of Ceylon. 
 
 § 'j-iis 'The mountains of Ararat.'' It is nowhere a Bible name for a 
 mountain. Gen. viii. 4. See only elsewhere 2 Kings xix. 37 ; Is. xxxvil, 
 38; and Jer. ii. 27. ll must have been east of Mesopotamia; see Gen. 
 xi. 2, and Kitto's fine argument. In the Sibylline verses tiie mountains of 
 Ararat are in Pi-ygia; Airafita in Phrygia was called by Greeks Ki^iioro^, 
 the Ark, becaus'' enclosed by three rivers in the shape of an ;irk. 
 
IX.] THE ALPHABET. 223 
 
 between its peaks, instead of on the summit of the pedi- 
 ment. (See Fig. 4.) 
 
 Fig. 4. The Pediment, split to receive the Urn ; and the Hour-glass. 
 
 We are now prepared to speak of ' styles/ and to study 
 architecture in detail. 
 
 Every race, almost every nation, developed the Arkite 
 plan, whether single or double, in a separate style : a style 
 of its own, or a composition of the st_yles of its neighbours 
 and of preceding ages. Nothing human remains un- 
 changed except fundamental ideas. The whole effort of 
 nature is to put forth buds and branches on every side, so 
 as to realize an idea to the utmost. Nature has no sympa- 
 thy with our purist prejudices. She is no quaker. She 
 never grows cold and stupid. She is never consistent ; 
 she is always ready to go back and begin again, as water 
 when stopped by some obstruction finds new channels 
 that suit it quite as well. Every style has had its own 
 particular and peculiar beauties ; and every style has 
 begun in simplicity and grown composite ; or become de- 
 graded, as we choose to say. Every original symbolical 
 form has been taken up by the apprentices of the master- 
 mason who invented it, and been elaborated and intens- 
 ified and repeated and varied in all possible ways, and 
 combined with other symbols, until its personal identity 
 has become lost amid the crowd of similar forms; until its 
 nature has been perverted and its meaning contradicted 
 and its eminence exchanged for degradation, and its 
 beauty bartered for some cheap utility. 
 
 As in eastern lands the slave becomes sultan, and the 
 sons of princes have their eyes put out and become beggars 
 in the streets, so in architectural styles the fisher's skiff 
 lias risen to be a cathedral, and the pyramid of Cheops 
 sunk to become the chamfered point of a graveyard obelisk. 
 
 It was in obedience to this oi-ganic law of redupli- 
 cation and variation that the primitive symbolism of 
 
224 THE GROWTH OP [lkcT. 
 
 architecture developed itself. You remember the story of 
 the Apostle Paul and the silversmiths of Ephesus, whose 
 trade was to make shrines for the great goddess Diana. It 
 is understood by antiquarian schohirs that these shrines 
 were small portable models of the Ephesian Temple, perhaps 
 intended for private oratories, like those plaster shrines 
 of the Virgin Mary which good Roman Catholics buy 
 every day to place upon their dressing-tables or mantle- 
 pieces. So in the earliest times the more celebrated 
 monuments of architectural magnificence were thus re- 
 duced for private devotion. 
 
 The same desire to duplicate the symbol provoked the 
 manufacture of ornaments in the shape of temples ; orna- 
 ments not only for the person, but for the temples them- 
 selves. A modern instance of this application of art is to 
 be seen in York minster, in the centre of which, and hung 
 midway between the vaulted ceiling and the floor, or 
 rather I should say supported in that position by an 
 arch-like partition in the church called a rood loft, is seen 
 the great organ, a model of the cathedral itself. Just so, 
 in ancient times, the idea of a truncated pyramid snpport- 
 insT an ark-like cornice was thinned down to the idea of a 
 square column supporting a box-shaped capital. 
 
 We must start all architecture from the Pyramid ; as we 
 must draw from Ararat, or some other sacred mountain, the 
 source of all mythology. R R ~ B R ^^^ *^® *^^^ Egyptian 
 or hieroglyphic name for a pyramid. All architecture was 
 in its beginnings bar-bar-ous, that is, pyramidal. The term 
 was afterwards extended in its meaning by the Greeks to 
 include all other objects foreign to their refined tastes and 
 their artistic religion. They called the Thracians, the 
 Phrygians, the Syrians barbarians, although in many 
 respects more advanced in civilization than themselves, not 
 because these nations committed savage acts or erected 
 less magnificent monuments than the Greeks themselves, 
 but because these nations, in their religious architecture 
 and in their superstitious rites, preserved a large measure 
 of that Arkite or pyramidal mythology which took its 
 name from the pyramid or BAE-BAR of old Egypt.* 
 
 * nipwiiig (homo) 5e tariKar'EWaSa yXioffttnv KaXbg Kayct^oi;. Kerod. 
 LI. 143. Uhlniann, in his De V'eteruin Egyptorum lingua et litteris. 
 
[X.] THE ALPRABKT. 225 
 
 The same origin is to be assigned to the obelisk, tho 
 Egyptian name of which, however, was T)(N. Some have 
 talked absurdly enough about its being a repi-esentation of 
 the forthputting powei* of nature. Others have supposed 
 it an invention of the fire-worshippers to represent a tlame. 
 But the first appearance of fire-worship in Egypt dates 
 back no farther than the 17th dynasty, and soon became 
 a detested heresy; while there are obelisks of the 12th 
 dynasty. 
 
 The obelisk was merely a portable, or idealized, or ad- 
 junct pyramid. It stood isolated in front of the pyramidal ^ 
 propylon. When the propylon was duplicated the obelisk 
 was duplicated also. All obelisks are terminated above in 
 a genuine minute pyramid. 
 
 The same origin is to be assigned to the solitary 
 column in other lands, or to th.e pairs of columns, like those 
 which stand before the rock-temples of India. Solomon 
 made two to stand before his sanctuary in Jerusalem, 
 calling the one Boaz and the other Jachin. And the Jews 
 were accustomed to plant two trees in every garden to re- 
 present these columns. 
 
 We reach next in order of development the arcade. 
 The Egyptians had already used it for their inside galleries 
 and temple-halls. The Greeks and Romans, obliged to 
 roof their sacred edifices, placed it outside, underneath the 
 gable end or pediment; increasing the number of columns 
 from four to six and eight, and finally carrying whole 
 ranges of them around the temple cella. The pediment 
 
 p. 31, suggests tLat Herodotus was led to this etymology by the Egyp- 
 tian (or Coptic) expressious 0p<ujo«, pulcher, /i»jt, Justus esse. But I think 
 it quite possible that Herodotus rather gave the Egyptian sentiments re- 
 specting the pyramid, as tlie oldest, most sacred, best, and most beautiful 
 thing in the world. On page 27 Uhlmann thinks, from the fact that the 
 
 Egyptian pj/ramus is in Arabic f*ji>, that the p^ is no essential part of the 
 
 word, but only the Coptic article; while pa(xa is the Egyptian M'ord for 
 height, as it is in Hebrew (Kirch. Scala. M. 49). Compare Rossii Etym. 
 -^gypt. 159. Kitto's Bibl. Diet. Other etymologies have been proposed, 
 such as 7r-o8po/3«, sepulchre of kings, but the subject is still in the dark. 
 Comparative philologists, however, will agree with me that nvpiiid is 
 directly convertible into (3ap-l3ap, or vice versa, and that in the absence of 
 any universally accepted etymology for wvpafiig, tlie Egyptiiui synonyme 
 given in the text above is perfectly good ground for a new theory to stand 
 upon. 
 
 15 
 
220 THE GUOWTH OP [lECT. 
 
 whicli thej supported was but another pyramid elevated in 
 the air. The words ijyramid and pediment are the same 
 in their alphabetic elements. It was in the tympanum 
 of the pediment that the Greeks assembled the images 
 of their Olympic deities.* The whole roof of the Grecian 
 temple, although so different in outside form, was, in the 
 general plan, identical with the upper or ark member of 
 the structure. The Eomans, not content with this, went 
 one step farther and placed upon the peak of tlie pediment 
 an URN. 
 
 I must stop for a moment to enforce the argument I am 
 pursuing with a definition of this remarkable word. We 
 think that it is merely the Latin urna, which has become 
 the property of all the Eomanic languages. But, in fact, 
 the Latins received it from the East. It is nothing more 
 or less than the Hebrew name for the Ark of the Coreyiant 
 AEN (]~i}«}). But we can go still farther back. It was the 
 Egyptian name for the cartouche. 
 
 Now the cartouche is an oval enclosure containing the 
 hieroglyphic letters which make a royal name. The 
 Pharaoh in his sarcophagus or urn Avas symbolized by his 
 name in its cartouclie or ARN. The Romans merely applied 
 the word to express a coffer of peculiar shape made to 
 preserve the ashes of the dead. The modern urn is the 
 lineal descendant of the symbolic sarcophagus of Osiris, 
 and of the ark of Noah. 
 
 Look at its peculiar shape (Fig. 4). It consists of a com- 
 bination of the same two members, the ark upon the 
 mountain top, which I before described as constituting the 
 essential parts of every piece of architecture. This urn 
 the Romans placed upon the top of the temple pediment. 
 
 Architects have capped the temple with a dome to du- 
 plicate and make more eminent the representation of the 
 mountain, and have placed on top of this a lily, a pine apple, 
 a lantern or citpola, to represent again the ark. The Mo- 
 hammedans have chosen the more appropriate ship symbol 
 of the crescent. 
 
 The same compound symbol is seen inside the churches 
 of Christians in three forms : first, in the altar (al-tor, 
 the mountain) and upon it the communion cup ; secondly, 
 
 * Compare tlie c;ip on tlir head of Perseus, ornamented with figures 
 of tlie deities. 
 
3X.] 'HK ALPHABET. 227 
 
 in the baptismal font upon its spreading sculptured base ; 
 and thirdly, in the pulpit, with its ark-like box, from which 
 the preacher prophesies, and with its quaintly-carved stem 
 below. Its very name puljAt is convertibly identical with 
 pyramid and pediment. 
 
 I leave a fruitful theme, capable of infinite and delight- 
 ful illustration, as any one may see who enters one of the 
 mor .rn Catholic churches built under the supervision of 
 the Jesuit priests, where, especially about the sanctuary, 
 symbol is piled on symbol, each one the mere repetition of 
 the other, until the eye is wearied with confusion and the 
 taste disgusted with excess. 
 
 Let us o-o back again to earlier times when moderation 
 and simplicity still kept the symbolic shape of ornaments 
 sharply cut and easy to be recognized. Let us take for a 
 good specimen to study, the Doric column. 
 
 The Doric Style, so called, was not invented by that 
 small tribe of Grecian people called the Dorians. As I 
 have already stated, it is found in Lower Egypt in archi- 
 tecture of great antiquity. It would almost be just to say 
 that the Dorians were called after it. They were worship- 
 pers of the Tor; and the Doric column became in their 
 hands the purest, simplest, noblest and most beautiful of 
 all the forms that the architectural idea has ever assumed. 
 Look at it. Poets and painters have vied with each other 
 in exhausting the vocabulary of admiring epithets to de- 
 scribe its severe simplicity, its exquisite symmetry, its 
 grac'-ful majesty, the charm of its lights and shadows, the 
 sererity of its unconscious strength; the delicacy of its 
 capital, yielding to the pressure above, yet sustaining the 
 crushing weight; and the vertical contrast to the horizontal 
 architrave of its fluted shaft, rising out of the expanded 
 marble floor of stilobate like an island-mountain from the 
 placid surface of the sea. For that is just what it was 
 meant to represent. Therefore the Doric column has no 
 base. And therefore, also, the Doric column is channeled 
 like a mountain with valleys. The Doric channels are the 
 ravines descending to the water; their shape is quite differ- 
 ent from that of the Ionic or Corinthian flutes. 
 
 Remember that we are dealing with a product of the 
 fancy ! Eemember, also, that the early fancy of mankind 
 was a heated fancy, and had lost none of its fire in the time 
 
228 
 
 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 [lect. 
 
 of Pericles. It was a religious fancy, an unscientific fancy, 
 an enthusiastic fancy, a fancy sticking at nothing by which 
 it could reach its symbolistic ends. At all events, it was 
 no modern, materialistic, cynical, critical, mechanical, 
 steam-engine building. Wall-street or State-street jobbing 
 fancy. All the history of art tells us that it was finer than 
 our judgment of it. 
 
 I have already mentioned the literal exchange of L for 
 R all over the world, and the fact that the Greeks and 
 Phoenicians said tor and zur where Arabs said tol and 
 TEL for mountain. So the Greeks named the shaft of their 
 Toric column otuAtj (s-tol), from which we get our English 
 word style, through the little column-like pencil with which 
 the scribes wrote upon tablets of wax.* Is not this a curi- 
 ous illustration of our proposition that the men of letters 
 in old times were the architects? But I will give you now 
 a still more curious and significant coincidence. 
 
 The favourite Bg3"ptian hieroglyphic form of the letter 
 A was a fenther, plume or quill. f It stood at the begin- 
 
 Fifr. A; lU; Goddess Ma; Truth; Crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. 
 
 ning of all words the first sound in which was A. But a 
 jackal holding a feather was the emblem of a acnbe. On 
 the head of a sitting goddess the upright feather meant' 
 historic tndh. MA, the goddess of truth, had two featheis 
 on her head ; as the shrine had two obelisks before it on 
 which were written its history. The double letter, A A, was 
 originally, therefore, written with two feathers, which, how- 
 ever, in time came to stand, in the later alphabet, for the 
 letter I, or rather the diphthong lU, as in the word Judfea. 
 Observe the coincidence ! The Coptic Kord A A means to 
 hiiild. And the old Egyptian name for an edifice is simply 
 A, the single letter A. The scribe and the architect were 
 one. The temple-wall and the chisel which cut those im- 
 mortal hieroglyphics into its surface were one. The 
 
 • The S initial stands for san. Sacred. 
 
 t See Bunscn, p. 556 and 561, and Ideography, No. 174, 173. (Fig. 
 6, above.) 
 
iX.] THE ALPHABET. 229 
 
 mountain, tol, became a carpenter's tool; the column 
 dwindled to the engT-aver's style ; but the soul that lived 
 and spoke in all of them never changed ; it was the same 
 throughout the series. 
 
 We have been occupied with but one part of the Doric 
 column, the shaft or style ; let us now look at the other 
 member of it, the capital. There are etymologies con- 
 nected with this also. I have said more than once that 
 the words tol and tor were the same : here is another 
 proof of it. King James's version calls the capitals of 
 Solomon's two columns chapiters. You will find no ety- 
 mology of capital in the books except in the form of a 
 reference to the Latin capnt a head, capitalis principal. 
 But capitalis will not explain that other equally Arkite 
 word the name of the Roman capital, that citadel which 
 contained its native gods, its treasures, its recorded laws 
 and the heart's love of the great Republic. Every city of 
 any note in the ancient world had a similar citadel, the 
 home of its tutelary deities. And what was such a citadel 
 called ? An arlc — of course : ARX. And the records 
 which it secured — what were they ? — ARChives. 
 
 The capitol of a column, then, is the cap of its tol, or 
 style; the ship upon the mountain-top. And it was pre- 
 cisely in the Doric order of architecture, the shaft of which 
 represented the mountain idea with most precision, that we 
 have a capital most simply and purely representative of the 
 shi]). When I thus identify cap with ship, it is only what 
 is done every day in using words similarly allied, one of 
 which retains and the other has lost the initial s : such as 
 ciqt and s-coop ; the farmer calls his cap-like bee-hive a 
 x-cap ; the sailor calls the master of his ship a s-Jcipper ; 
 and the little boat from shore a s-hiff. 
 
 The word cv.i signifies holdinor or containinsr; and in 
 such modern words as coop the form of the vessel is not at 
 all essential to the meaning. A hencoop is not at all 
 cup-shaped, but yet acts the part of a receptacle. And 
 even the Latin cap-io, I take or hold, suggests no form. 
 But at the beginning the form was essential to the mean- 
 ing. The Hebrew word for the pa/??^ of the hand, there- 
 fore, was CAjp {'S]2), because it throws itself into the form of 
 a cup to receive anything. Many names of sacred shrines 
 like the Kaaba of Mecca, and the profane little Kaabahs 
 
230 THE GROWTH OP [lECT. 
 
 wiiicli our young- ladies find so convenient, are traceable to 
 the same root which gave the ship its name. 
 
 Going- back beyond the Hebrew use of the word cap we 
 get still clearer light upon its origin ; for the arm stretched 
 upward in prayer or oblation, with the palm of the hand 
 turned upward, is one of the commonest sights upon the 
 monumental walls of Egypt. Look at it for a moment 
 (Fig. 6), and see how the Arkite imagination would seize 
 upon this living symbol, this Doric column done in flesh 
 and blood. The Hebrew word for arm was dro or toe 
 (yii).* The hand lifted in prayer was therefore a true 
 caph-tor, or capital. There is one very remarkable ideo- 
 graph on the Eg} ptian monuments which can be explained 
 in no other way than by reference to these facts. It 
 Bunsen'sNo. 99 (Fig. 6), a man kneeling and hold-\ 
 mg up a basin, with the pronunciation n'ham, and 
 the meaning to save. What has the holding up of a 
 basin to do with salvation ? Nothing, unless there 
 be a reference to the great salvation of Arkite mythology. 
 
 Observe now how our English word arm fits into all this. 
 In drawing your attention to it, I am not digressing ; but 
 on the contrary leading on directly to the main subject of 
 this lecture, which I am impatient to enter upon in a more 
 systematic manner; but all these preliminary details were 
 necessary and will come of use. First, let me once more 
 insist upon the identity or interchangeability of the liquids 
 L and R. Secondly, you must accept Grimm^s law as 
 equally true, although I cannot stop to prove it in exfenso, 
 that the labial letters B, P, F, V, the vowel U, and the nasal 
 M, are also interchangeable in a certain order in all lan- 
 guages and dialects yet studied. Do you not call Maria and 
 Mary, Molly and Polly? Do you not call Martha, Matty and 
 Patty ? Margaret becomes Maggy and Peggy, &c. Keep- 
 ing this law in mind you will see how the English word 
 ARM corresponds with the word ALP a mountain, pre- 
 cisely as the Hebrew dor an arm, corresponded to the 
 Phoenician tor and the Arabic tel a mountain. You can. 
 also see why the Mont Blanc of Greece was called OL^fMpos; 
 and why the mountain beast of Asia with the houdaJi on 
 
 * »->T the arm, the shoulder of an animal, foroi-, strength, &c. ■'^3 be- 
 longs to a different set of ideas, regarding the arm as a weapon, or a too/. 
 
IX.] THE ALPHABET. 231 
 
 his back was called an "ELiTJiant ; and why the bull with 
 the crescent horns received the Syriac name of ALF. The 
 mountain was not named from the arm, the arm was 
 named from the mountain, and then only when held up in 
 adoration, with some votive offering in its hollow palm. 
 The mountain, the alp, was the beginning of all things in 
 sacred history. Hence all ancient things were named after 
 it. Olympus was the Ararat of Europe and curiously 
 enough replaces Ararat on the coat of arms of the Duke de 
 
 Fig. 6. Doric column ; Caph ; n'ham ; tarn ; escutcheon of Nevers ; Crown of 
 
 the Pharaohs. 
 
 Nevers among the beautiful sculptures in front of the old 
 chateau in the middle of that little quaint city (Fig. 6). The 
 most ancient and venerable river in Greece was named 
 ALFaro.s. The aborigines of Europe were called ELVes. The 
 Latin word for formerly or in ancient twips was OLiM. The 
 Heljrew word for eternity, or unknown infinite beginning, 
 wa< OLM. Heii^e the first letter of the alphabet had to be 
 ALFrt, or as the Shemites called it, ALF. And its shape also 
 had to be Alpine, like its name. The letter A is simply a 
 pyramid or mountain with a line drawn across it. In the 
 ancient bardic books of Ireland, that seat of the learning 
 of old times in the Druidic west, whenever the word moun- 
 tain occurred it was not written out in full, but in its place 
 they merely wrote a letter A; that was sufficient. 
 
 The science of philology as it now stands is largely made 
 up of the results of the investigations of learned men into 
 such subjects as these : — ^Vhat is the whole number of 
 distinct sounds which can be uttered by the human organs 
 of speech ? What special number of these sounds have 
 been selected out of the whole number for use by different 
 races and tribes of men in different countries ? What dis- 
 tinction of these sounds can we make into vowels, semi- 
 vowels and consonants ; and of the consonants into sonants 
 and snrds, aspirates and sibilants, labials, dentals, linguals, 
 guttui'als and nasals ? What relation do some of these 
 
232 THE GROWTH OF [lECT. 
 
 sounds as spoken in one language bear to others of them 
 as spoken in another language; in other words^ what 
 is the real nature of those processes of transmutation, 
 permutation^ inversion, and reduplication of sounds which 
 are all the time going on from generation to generation, 
 as the tribes of men meet and influence each other^s speech ? 
 How can we understand the formation of dialects ? Wliafc 
 are the true derivations of words ? and what is the range 
 of those modifications which time keeps making in the 
 meanings of single words ? An immense range of inve>ti- 
 gation into which I could not pretend to enter. 
 
 I have been keeping exclusively in view one special 
 inquiry : what was the origin of the alphabet ? Why 
 were certain figures cut upon the surface of stone walls to 
 represent certain sounds which issued from the human 
 mouth ? On what principle was this done ? Why, for in- 
 stance, and taking the first letter as it comes, and in its 
 archaic Greek or Doric form, why was the vowel sound A 
 painted to the eye by two strokes like legs and a third 
 stroke across them ? What is there in the sound A to 
 suggest such a shape ? Is there any natural connection 
 between the two things ? If not, then is there any arti- 
 ficial connection between them ; a,nj fanciful connection? 
 If so, what governed the fancy of the man who invented the 
 letter A, to cause him to establish such a connection ? 
 Could it have been by any possibility an accident ? 
 
 This question, which goes down to the very roots of the 
 science, has kept many brains busily thinking in all ages ; 
 for the pure and direct tradition of how it was done has 
 been lost this long time, and it must be rediscovered in 
 very roundabout ways. Nature loves to hide the begin- 
 nings of things, and seems to kill off her early creations 
 merely for the sake of giving palgeontologists a chance to 
 develop their own intellects by the study of the fossils. 
 It was a great question in the first centuries of the Chris- 
 tian era when the Talmuds were written, and the Indian 
 Puranas, as this pretty Oriental story may show you : — 
 
 When Jesus was a little boy, his mother Mary took him 
 by the hand and seated him at the feet of the village school 
 master among the other children of Nazareth. When his 
 master looked upon him he loved him and stroked his 
 curly hair and called him a good boy, and he should learn 
 
IX.] THK ALPHABET. 233 
 
 his a-b-c's. So lie began to show him aleph, the first letter 
 of the alphabet. ' But why is it called aleph ? ' said the 
 boy. ' Ask not vain questions/ replied his master kindly 
 'but proceed with the next letter heth.' 'Not so/ said 
 Jesus ; ' I must comprehend the first ; for God maketh 
 nothing in vain.' Then, taking all the letters in order, he 
 expounded unto his master the significations of all their 
 forms.* 
 
 The legend does not inform us what this divine commu- 
 nication amounted to. But there is an Armenian version 
 of it which gives us some idea of what it was. ' Behold/ 
 said Jesus, ' how this letter A is made : the three upright 
 strokes signify the three persons of the Trinity ; and the 
 stroke which underlies them signifies that these same three 
 are one.' To comprehend this part of the legend, how- 
 ever, we must notice the shape of the letter in Armenian 
 (Fig. 13, p. 24'J). We must remember then that this legend 
 dates not merely from Christian days, but from a time sub- 
 sequent to the Athanasian and Arian controversy. It was 
 an Athanasian accommodation of the old Arkite trinity to 
 the new controversies of the 4th century of the Christian 
 era. But it was no mere monkish or scholastic whim. 
 It had the essence of the old truth in it. Different as it 
 looks, this strange-looking Armenian A has a form which, 
 when critically studied, is essentially identical with the 
 Cadmean A, the posture of the form only being varied, as 
 I shall show directly. 
 
 I must here say, that one of the most remarkable cir- 
 cumstances connected with the tradition of the alphaliet 
 is the apparent indifference which the sculptors and scribes 
 who invented the lettei's exhibited as to whether a letter 
 stood upright, or leaned to the right or to the left, or lay 
 upon its side, or was turned topsy-turvy so as to stand 
 upon its head. We are not to suppose any greater nicety 
 in writing nor any greater difficulty in reading what was 
 written five thousand years ago than now. No doubt 
 many an ancient scribe learned to write as badly as Rufus 
 Choate ; or as that superintendant of the Michigan Central 
 Railroad whose angry letter of remonstrance and warning 
 about keeping his cows off" the track wjis used by the 
 
 * Norton, Vol. iii. d. 270. Discussion of tlic Marcosian sect of 
 Gno&lics (W. 54, 2). 
 
204 THE GROWTH OF [lECT. 
 
 farmer to whom it was addressed as a free-ticket on the 
 line for a year. 
 
 But there was a far better reason for this indifference 
 than carelessness, or that familiarity which breeds con- 
 tempt. If the earliest letters were pictorial symbols it 
 did not much matter how they stood, provided the form 
 which conveyed the idea was kept clearly before the eye. 
 If any one out of several possible postures became a 
 specialized and permanent variation, it was because that 
 posture of the form could be also inade as symbolical as 
 the form itself. Such was the case of the arm . It was only 
 when the arms were stretched upwards with the palms 
 open, that they could typify adoration, praise, admiration, 
 holy rejoicing and the like. You see it thus expressed in 
 the93rdideograph of Bunsen*slist(Fig. 7,p.235). Its sound 
 was haa ; its meaning 'to rejoice;^ and also the number 
 100,000,000. It was used like the Chinese exclamation of 
 astonishment Hai-ah /* To apply this symbol of venera- 
 tion or astonishment to a special subject such as time, some 
 addition had to be made to the symbol. A feather (which 
 meant histo y and truth and antiquity) was placed upright 
 upon the centre of its head, and then the symbol meant 
 one hundred million years, or in other words an astonish- 
 ing length of time. 
 
 But when the arm was not used to express this a! of 
 astonishment or veneration , but merely the sound a as it 
 issues in a simple and unimportant manner from the mouth, 
 or as pronounced at the end of words and through the 
 nose like the ov and m final of the French, or like the nasal 
 and final double ^aa of the Hebrew — then the arm was en- 
 graved in a horizontal positiou at the bottom of the word. 
 We see it, for instance, thus in that bilingual inscription of 
 * the great Emperor Xerxes,' upon an alabaster vase in 
 the cabinet of antiquities in the Royal Library at Paris 
 (Fig. 8) which has played as important a part in the 
 discovery of the lost key to the ancient Assyrian or Cunei- 
 
 * The 94th, 95th, and 96th ideographs are variations. The arms and 
 neck alone, when used with the eagle (a) as a complement (Fig. 7), sig- 
 nifies the letter k, or sound KA, as in kam, black ; skai, to plough ; kaut, 
 to huild ; K(i, a bull, goat, to receive : nifka, copper ; ticn, a snark, &c. 
 I/umb thinks that it is the Hebiew n turned upside down, oee Hunsen's 
 Phonetics, p. 562, vol. i. , -Egypt. 
 
 I 
 
n.] 
 
 THE ALPHABET. 
 
 235 
 
 Figure 8. 
 
 Bilingual luscriptiou of Xerxes, on an Alabaster Vase, 
 
 in the Royal Library at Paris. 
 
 K SK, H 
 
 ■R SK ^ 
 
 
 Ne H 
 
 Wu 
 
 Note. — Hon /it nd was Paucnier s reading, ic is now read Jr'er aa ve aaa. 
 House great the greatest; i.e., the most Sublime Porte. 
 
236 THE GROWTH OP [lECT. 
 
 form writing as the more celebrated trilingual inscription 
 commonly known as the Rosetta stone had previously 
 played in Egyptology.* In the upper horizontal range of 
 characters, the two letters A and the two letters S wero 
 at once seen to correspond to the two letters A and the 
 two letters Sh, in the hieroglyphic group in the cartouche 
 below. In the art of reading a correspondence written in 
 cypher, c'est le premier jjdg qui coute, a right beginning is 
 all you want. Get one or two letters of the alphabet and 
 the rest follow as obediently as a skein of thread when you 
 have found the right end. But the hieroglyphic A here is 
 represented by an eagle. The Egyptians had, in fact, 
 three hieroglyphics to express this sound — the single 
 feather, the arm, and the eagle. The feather, as I have 
 said, standing for the initial long AA of astonishment ; the 
 arm standing for the final nasal °aa ; and the cngle stand- 
 ing for a sort of gently aspirated ^a, which there is no need 
 to allude to farther. 
 
 Now what I wish to fix your attention upon is the shape 
 of the Cuneiform or Assyrian letter A in this inscription. 
 Remember what I have been saying about the apparent 
 indifference of the ancient scribes to the position of the 
 letters, provided the form was what they wished it to be. 
 I do not here allude to the position of the letters in respect 
 to one another in the word; although that too is a very 
 important point to which not half enough attention has 
 been given in the science of language. For words were 
 written indifferently backwards and forwards ; the old 
 Greek inscriptions are written alternately backwards and 
 forwards, from line to line, as a field is ploughed by 
 farmers; and they actually called that mode of writing 
 ' boustrophedon/ that is ' oxen turned.-' And you see that 
 in this cartouche the Egyptian scribe has done the same 
 thing. The fact is, if carving the letters preceded the 
 writing of them with a fen, as it probably did, the necessity 
 for using a pushing or striking force coming from the right 
 hand is apparent. Nothing can be more awkward than 
 
 * See the account of its discovery by St Martin, and its complete dis- 
 cussion, in G. Pauthicr's ' Essai sur rorii/inc ri la- forniatioii si/nilnire drs 
 ecriiuresjif/uratiocs chimue el Er/j/pfii'iis.'' Paris, 1842. Part 1. |i. l^t, 
 et seq. ' Kshliarsha Nch Wuzurk--Kshairsha Hon Pe Na=Xerxes the 
 Great.' — bee note uu page 2.jj. 
 
IX.] THE ALPHABET. 237 
 
 writing the Hebrew or Arabic letters ; but nothing is easier 
 or more convenient than engraving them, commencing each 
 letter from the bottom right-hand corner. The Chinese 
 write from the top of the line downwards. On the con- 
 trary, the county land-surveyor now-a-days writes his field- 
 notes upwards, from the bottom of the page to the top. 
 All this has caused many dialectic variations in the woi'ds 
 of cognate languages which have greatly puzzled philolo- 
 gists ; e.g. the Hebrew kol a voice, is in Greek logos ; the 
 (ireek gala milk, is in Latin lac ; and if I had time to go 
 through the whole alphabet with you I would have to use 
 this law of inversion to explain many things ; as e. g. how 
 the Theb, or ark of Noah, came to be pronounced Beth, 
 the second letter of the Shemitic alphabet, and Bath , 
 meaning both a house or temple -and a daughter, or the 
 virgin goddess of the temple. 
 
 But my object in this course of lectures has been rather 
 to state principles, to describe methods of thought, than to 
 cram the imagination with detailed facts and subordinate 
 results ; and I keep to the discussion of the letter A, not 
 for the sake of any special pre-eminence that it may have, 
 but as affording a good example of the method which 
 governed the alphabet-making mind of antiquity. 
 
 You see, then, that the position of the form of the letter 
 itself, that is, its j^osture, was so variable that it could be 
 laid upon its side, and turned over upon its head, ap- 
 parently without inconvenience. Mark me, I say apparently, 
 not really. Those old wise men knew what they were 
 about. Their fancy was as dogmatic as our logic, and loved 
 etiquette and punctilio as well as our natural science does. 
 If the old Assyrian scribes wrote the letter A thus fTl with 
 three upright strokes and a fourth stroke laid across on top; 
 aud the Armenian scribes, many centuries afterwards, saw 
 tit to reverse their letter A thus I I I . that is, three upright 
 strokes and a fourth laid underneath — they certainly had 
 some dogmatic reason for doing so. And the Marcosian 
 legend of the little Jesus tells us what that was; 'to 
 teach us,' said the little master, ' that the beginnings of all 
 things is one essence in thi'ee persons.^ But why would not 
 the stroke, when drawn ahoce do as well as when drawn he- 
 low? The Egyptians expressed the emanations from the 
 sun, unnlii/hf, by three waved lines descending from a circle 
 
238 THE GROWTH OP [lECT. 
 
 surrounding a dot; and the ancient Chinese expressed 
 spiritual emanations, spirit, genius, genii, by three strokes 
 beneath a fourth horizontal stroke. And although thi-< 
 figure received another small horizontal stroke subsequent- 
 ly, its meaning remained the same, and has been considered 
 so important that it forms the key to an entire class of 
 Chinese words, viz. all those which relate to the spiritual 
 intelligence of mankind, the power of expressing thoughts 
 in words, the power of giving names to things. Its 
 ancient and its modern form are both given in Fig. 9. 
 p. 245. It is called chi, and means monere, significare, prce- 
 cipere, ostendere, resjdcere, docere, per scripturam signiji- 
 care* 
 
 But the Athanasian theology was not so easily satisfied ; 
 it had a certain technical expression to employ, viz. ' the 
 hypostdtical relation of three persons in one God.' If you 
 look in Greek dictionaries for the word hypostdsis, you will 
 be rather astonished to see no theological allusion whatever 
 in its meaning ; for it stood to the Greek farmer for no- 
 thing but loine lees. It meant simply what our chemists 
 would call a precipitate. But it was made up of two words, 
 — hupo under, and histemi to stand; and its orig-inal 
 meaning must have been something fundaracntal or at tlu 
 hoitorn. Angry theologians got to hurling this word at 
 each other's heads with this older meaning which perhaps 
 it still retained in the learned world. The hypostatical 
 union of the three Divine persons meant their fundamental 
 union, their personalities rooted in a common undei-lying 
 substance or substratum. The Scribes could do no less 
 than the Pharisees. The letter which had come down to 
 them from Assyrian days, bearing its Arkite significatiuu 
 of eternity and divinity, the beginnings of things and the 
 stuft'of the world's phenomena, suited their purpose exactly, 
 provided they took the fourth stroke which joined the 
 tops of the other three, and put it below, making it hypo- 
 statical or fundaynentnl. 
 
 Going back now to the Cadmean or Alpine form of the 
 letter A, will you demand that I bring it into similar re- 
 lationship with the Armenian and Assyrian forms ? The 
 demand would be just if 1 asserted that the Cadmean idea 
 
 * French Dictionary, p. 489. Also see the 113th Key, Kij. 
 
IX.J THE ALPHABET. 239 
 
 of the letter was precisely the same as the Assyrian or 
 Armenian idea of it. But all alphabets were not made in 
 the same age, nor by the same people, nor under the same 
 set of influences. All 1 wish to hint this evening is, that, 
 taken as a whole, and in the earlier ages of literature, a 
 general Arkite mythology governed the fancy of men and 
 therefore shaped all their attempts at expressing their re- 
 ligious and historical ideas both in architecture and in 
 writing ; and that the traces of this mythology exist under 
 all modifications of the forms of letters in all alphabets 
 even to the present time. 
 
 The origin of the curious iv edge form of the Assyrian let- 
 ters has not been explained. The scribes who wrote the 
 archives of Xineveh and Babylon upon clay cylinders could 
 have made their lines or strokes as straight and smooth as 
 the Romans who wrote on wax made theirs. Letters 
 made with such skill and care that they cannot be read 
 sometimes without the help of a magnifying lens (a proof, 
 by the way, that the lens was two or three thousand years 
 older than the time of Galileo) show that the writers 
 could do anything in the way of neat writing, and 
 that they must have been inspired with some special re- 
 verence for letters made with strokes in the shape of a 
 wedge, or rather arrowhead. Now Layard has figured 
 among other things found in Assyria an altar on which 
 reposes a gigantic arrowhead, half as large as the altar 
 itself — as large in proportion in fact as a sheep or a calf 
 would be if laid upon the altar. Lying thus upon the 
 altar it must be considered as a sacred object offered to 
 some God. Or, if the altar be merely a pedestal, then the 
 arrowhead must be regarded as a divinity. But the arrow- 
 head is just the shape of the Cadmean letter A ; is Alpine 
 in the Arkite sense ; was used in divination ; carried the 
 ureat hyperborean Druid Abaris in Greek fable on its 
 back to Delphi; and was as appropriate an offering as the 
 fir-cone, or as the little pyramid held in the open palm of 
 the Egyptian priest. What connection may hereafter be 
 traced between this worship of the arrowhead in Mesopo- 
 tamia and the use of flint weapons by the people of Central 
 Asia in the Stone age I will not venture to conjecture. 
 It is enough for my present purpose that the construction 
 of the Assyrian letters out of arrowhead-shaped strokes 
 
240 THE GROWTH OF [lECT. 
 
 gave them a peculiar sanctity or significance in an Arkite 
 sense, and converted them all into Alpine hieroglyphics. 
 
 Confining ourselves therefore still to this Alpine or 
 pyramid symbol, let me ask you how an ancient scribe 
 would be likely to make a letter out of it. Would it not 
 be in one of these four ways ? If he worked in a 
 
 Chinese spirit, scorning perspective, he would use four 
 diverging strokes to express its four sloping angles. If 
 he were a true artist he would use three diverging strokes, 
 the middle one perhaps a little on one side for the sake 
 of perspective. If he were a literal fellow he would use 
 two strokes and be satisfied with that. But if he were a 
 transcendentalist he would use but one vertical stroke to 
 represent the essential idea of isolated height. 
 
 Neglect the first form as too absurd for any body but a 
 Chinaman, and the last also as too transcendental to have 
 come into vogue until the refinements of later ages pro- 
 duced the obelisk out of the pyramid and the obeliskal let- 
 ters out of the pyramidal, it remained for the common 
 Alpine letter to be made of either two or three strokes, 
 joined of course at the top. Look now at this series of 
 ancient Cadmean letters, of which No. 1 is from a Greek 
 boustrephedon inscription, the fourth is Phoenician, and 
 the rest are antique (4reok. 
 
 AAAMflAAxlK 
 
 1234 56 78 9 10 
 
 You will perceive how the original form came to vary so 
 much that there is in some cases now scarcely a recog- 
 nizable trace of its original intention. Look again at the 
 initial Sanscrit A, No. 11 of the following forms; and 
 
 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 
 
 when you remember that all Sanscrit letters are hung 
 upon a sort of clothes-line and boxed up by vertical 
 strokes, you can see how the essential three divergent 
 
IX.] THE ALPHABET. 241 
 
 liness of the pyramid may come to form the cuneiform 
 letter. No 12 ; and, finally, the Armenian letter, No. 17. 
 
 But there are still simpler pyramidal forms for the 
 letter. The Runic A has only two strokes, No. 14; and so 
 had some of the Roman forms of the time of the Christian 
 era, Nos. 15, 16, as well as the Moeso-Gothic, No. 18. 
 
 But there is an Irish form of great antiquity, used ex- 
 tensively in Europe, which has a peculiar significance, 
 No. 18, formed of an horizontal stroke across the summit 
 of two others. By reference to this upper stroke I think 
 we reach a complete understanding of the Arkite ideas of 
 the early alphabet-makers. But to make this clear I must 
 speak of another element of alphabetic writing, the water- 
 symbol. 
 
 
 :^OiiSMN 
 
 19 20 21 22 23 24 
 
 The Egyptian hieroglyph for water was three horizontal 
 waved lines, often reduced to one. In process of time 
 this became merely a straight horizontal line. Out of this 
 Egyptian hieroglyph the Greeks made their sharp hissing 
 X (H, f), and the Assyrians their cuneiform S, No. 21. 
 The early Greeks made these lines waving like the Egyp- 
 tian, but the classic Greek alphabet converted the waved 
 into straight lines. The Greeks and Romans used the 
 same Egyptian water-symbol for the simple sibilant s; 
 but they stood it up straight. No. 22 ; because water 
 never hisses except when it rises in a jet or falls in a 
 cataract. When they desired an alphabetic letter to ex- 
 press the rmirmuring sound of water as upon the sea shore 
 they preserved the original horizontal posture of the sym- 
 bol ; and hence our MMs and NNs. The most ancient 
 Egyptians did not recognize in their alphabet the hissing 
 sound of water : it would be difficult to say why, unless it 
 might have arisen from the scarcity of rain and mountain- 
 torrents, cascades and jets in the valley of the Nile. It 
 is a curious fact also that they employed their water-symbol 
 for their letter N ; whereas for M they chose the figure of 
 an owl. 
 
 These two sounds of water are recognized more or less 
 
 ifi 
 
242 THE GROWTH OP [lECT. 
 
 distinctly in all human languages. For instance, in our owe 
 English we have two names for the great and little waters 
 of the earth : the former we call the Main, as the Hebrews 
 called it Mtm The latter we call Seas. In eastern myth- 
 ology the name of the hundred-headed sea-serj)ent on 
 which Vishnu sits is in Sanscrit Shi-shl. The name of the 
 Syrian Noah was Xisuthrus. 
 
 The soft hissing sound of Z in Italy had the same water 
 form. The dental sibilant of the Greeks, 0, was originally 
 represented by the Egyptian zig-zag waterline surrounded 
 by a circle. It was reduced afterwards to a line, and 
 finally to a point or dot. In Arkite symbolism this letter 
 had a special function in signifying things surrounded by 
 water. Thus holy Mount Athos received its name, A0, 
 because the A represented a mountain, and signified 
 that it was surrounded by the sea. 
 
 Let us return once more carrying with us now this water- 
 symbol to the discussion of the letters that were founded 
 on the mountain idea. The diluvial mountain could be re- 
 presented in three ways: either in the air, or partially sub- 
 merged, or wholly submerged ; in other words, the water- 
 symbol line could be drawn across it at the bottom, in the 
 middle, or at the top. The first would make the Greek 
 letter delta, A, the simple mountain tol or tor — our letter 
 D. The second made the Greek letter alpha, A. The 
 third gives us the Irish and Gothic letter a, No. 18 above. 
 The Runic alphabet of northern Europe adds additional 
 confirmation to these facts, by giving a pyramidal form 
 to its letter t, the equivalent of the Greek d, and by calling 
 it by the same name Tyr. 
 
 Finally, to show the connection of the pyramid and 
 obelisk in alphabetic forms, as in architecture, it is only 
 needful to contrast the A and T (or D) in respect of this 
 horizontal waterline, with all the other letters. These are 
 
 the only two letters, carrying the waterline, in the old 
 cuneiform alphabet ; just ns they stand apart from all the 
 others in the Cadmeau alplmbets of the west in carrying 
 
 i 
 
IX.l THE ALPHABET. 243 
 
 it ; as may be seen in the following .series. Tht dj, No. 27, 
 and sh, 28, are no exceptions, for they are evidently 
 subsequent modifications of the older simple d, No. 26. 
 Nor is it less a significant fact that the only other letter 
 besides a, made with three vertical strokes, is the letter th, 
 No. 31. 
 
 i could adduce still a number of other instances of the 
 essential similarity between these two letters. But I have 
 already far transgressed the extent to which I had intended 
 to carry the illustration of the subject. As I said at the 
 outset, it is impossible to do more than to give you some 
 idea of its richness; and to suggest a method of inves- 
 tigation which will be likely to yield the best results. 
 
 Each letter of the alphabet might be taken up in its 
 turn and its original mythological significance developed 
 by comparison with other letters in the same alphabet and 
 other forms in other alphabets. For instance, the liquids 
 L and B, were used to represent the flowing of water, 
 sliding and slipping actions, continuance, and all that class 
 of ideas. Mythological explanations come in everywhere. 
 Rhea the goddess of the flood, from petv to flow, and 
 geographical names like Rhine and Rhone are good illus- 
 trations. Invention, design, the regulated fancy of a learned 
 caste appear at every step. The natures of the letter- 
 sounds were critically studied and ingeniously applied, as 
 in the Greek word aet, (always) constructed out of vowels 
 in a definite order so as to express continued existence. 
 
 In a word, words were designedly built up by the old 
 scribes, by placing the letter-symbols in all sorts of well- 
 devised positions and relations to each other, until the 
 Arkite fancy was exhausted and satiated with its work 
 or play ; and then fresh crops of Arkisms took root in 
 these strange compositions, and new series of fables sprang 
 from them again to delight the taste and feed the venerat- 
 ing instinct of other generations. 
 
 But before bidding adieu to this whole subject to pass to 
 quite a diff"erent one in the next lecture I must say a word 
 respecting the history of the growth of the more ancient 
 alphabets. 
 
 The history which Chinese scholars give of the 
 growth of their own language is precise and authentic, 
 
244 THE GROWTH OF [lECT. 
 
 although their literature will not compare for antiquity 
 with that of Egypt. The most ancient book they have, is 
 supposed to have been written somewhat more than 1000 
 years before Christ, that is, before the time of King David. 
 It is called Y-King or the hook of transformation-^. In a 
 supplement to it called Hi-thseu, edited by two learned 
 Chinese of the 11th century before the Christian era,* we 
 find this account of the orig^in of Chinese writin»" : 'In old 
 times Paoi or Fou-hi governed the world ; and lifting up his 
 eyes, saw figures in the sky ; and casting down his eyes, 
 saw models of them on the earth, in the forms of birds and 
 beasts, and in the proportions of the earth. From these 
 near and distant objects he began to trace out the eight 
 symbols (koua), to penetrate the meaning of the divine 
 intelligence, and to classify therein the properties of things 
 by genera.' 
 
 An ancient commentator upon this book explains that 
 the fundamental distinctions involved in this classification 
 were those of the fixed and the mobile, the resisfing and the 
 yielding; which correspond very well to the western 
 mountain and ivater symbols. He adds that the geneinc 
 figures were those of lakes and mountains, wind, thunder, 
 &c. He then goes on farther to explain that Fo formed 
 his letters by six rules. By the 1st he imitated the objects 
 themselves ; by the 2nd he combined these imitations into 
 groups ; by the 3rd he inverted their meanings ; by the 
 4th he invented determinative marks to express accidents, 
 * high and low ' for instance ; by the 5th he gave his letters 
 metaphorical meanings ; by the 6th he showed by letters 
 the sounds of things. Pauthier names these six classes of 
 letters: 1. The Figurative; 2. The Qualitative; 3. The 
 Composite; 4. The Polar or Antithetic; 5. The very 
 numerous class in which an image of the object is given 
 and with it another character to express the sound of its 
 name; 6. The Abstract or Figurative. He gives five or 
 six characters as examples of each class, from which I 
 select but one to show the plan upon which it was con- 
 structed and the change its shape has undergone in course 
 of time. 
 
 * Wen-wang and Tclieou-Koung; see Pauthier's Essay, page 3, et 
 seq. The commentator takes occasion to remark that before Fo's time 
 men employed knotted cords in tlie administration of affairs. 
 
 II 
 
rx.| 
 
 THE ALPHABET. 
 
 245 
 
 For example: — Fig. 9. 
 
 1st Class, 
 Imitative. 
 
 2iid Class, 
 Qualitative. 
 
 3rd Class, 1 
 Composite, j 
 
 4tli Class, 
 
 Polar or 
 
 Antithetic. 
 
 5tli Class, 
 
 very numerous, 
 
 Image and 
 
 Sound 
 combined. 
 
 6th Class, "j 
 
 Abstract, or !■ 
 
 Figurative. J 
 
 Qj the sun : now written Hj 
 y morning: „ „ J^ 
 
 ■i4 
 
 (^ jVj (sun and moon) 
 
 Jy light : now written 
 
 n^ left 
 
 -^\ right 
 
 \\\ spirit, genius 
 
 chi 
 
 i> 
 
 from on high 
 
 heart, 
 i.e. soul 
 
 In Fig. 9 above. No. 1 is the Sun, represented as on the 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics, by a disc with a dot in it; 2. 
 Morning, by a solar disc above a horizon line; 3. Light, 
 by the two figures of the sun and moon combined : 4. 
 Left and right, by skeleton human figures, without legs, bow- 
 ing different ways; 5. Spirit, or genius sent from above, by 
 three slightly waved lines depending from a horizontal line, 
 meaning the sky ; 6. Soul or affection, by a heart. Many 
 other and finer examples might with a little care be 
 selected. The best description 1 have seen of the figurative 
 cunning of the inventors of the ancient Chinese characters 
 is in H. Noel Humphreys^ History of Writing. Take^ for 
 instance, the three signs following : — 
 
 f\ 
 
 folding doors; 
 
 ^^^1— g. f^ 
 
 asking a 
 question. 
 
 ear. 
 
 mouth. 
 
246 THE GROWTH OP [lECT- 
 
 Or these : 
 
 Jr^ singing bird j H' sansiiino, >^\. obscuntj. 
 
 bird. tree. 
 
 The passage of the figurative into the phonetic is accom- 
 plished under class Y. by a union of the two; thus, a 
 duck is not only drawn, Fig 10, but has a character added 
 to express the sound of its name ki. A willow is repre- 
 sented by a tree and the phonetic ki. A root is repre- 
 sented by a tree, and a phonetic ken. &c. 
 
 Fig. 10. 
 
 1^ rK^ It 
 
 Ki Ki Ken 
 
 Rude as this method is, it was the one adopted also by 
 the inventors of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. In fact, these 
 phonetic adjuncts are little else than the mafres lectionis of 
 the Hebrew, in the essential genius of their purpose. 
 
 There are some remarkable fables relating to this inven- 
 tion of the great Cadmus of the East, which throw a new 
 light upon its nature. In one passage it is said that Fo 
 got the external ^orms of things from the heavens, but his 
 letter -figures he saw ' upon the -picture luhich issued before him 
 from the ivafers.' And this mystic Arkite description of the 
 nature of the origin of letters does not by any means stand 
 alone. It is repeated by other writers, and in other forms, 
 and has no doubt some deep significance. Men whose 
 books are filled with practical wisdom, humour and wit, 
 shrewd sarca.sm and a refined fancy do not utter what 
 seems the sheerest nonsense, the folly of babes, without a 
 cause. 
 
 ]jopi, the author of the ancient 'book of itineraries,' 
 writes, that Fohi called his new invention Dragon-writing, 
 because he found it in marks upon the back of a Dragon- 
 horse ivhieh rose out of the waves. For the same reason all 
 the great mandarins or scribes in early days were denomin- 
 ated dragons. It will occur to you at once that Cadmus, 
 whom the Greeks considered the inventor of the alphabet, 
 
 i 
 
IX.] THE ALPHABET. 247 
 
 obtained his colonists by sowing tlie teeth of a dragon. 
 The hydra, the many-headed dragon of Greek fable, as its 
 name shows represented the raging waves of the sea. The 
 Chinese word Shaii, a mountain, is expressed by a charac- 
 ter which shows three teeth. The centaurs of Greece — 
 half maa, half horse — were the learned men of that heroic 
 age, ' the priests of the mountain,^ "Tlij |,'-r")3 ; and their 
 chief initiated Hercules and Achilles into all the mysteries 
 of learning which then wei'o. 
 
 Whatever maybe the date assigned to the origin of the 
 alphabet, or what the country, the fable still wears this 
 peculiar mountain-water or Arkite garb. One Chinese 
 authority, Hoai-nan-tseii (189 B.C.) asserts that Thsan-hie, 
 crown lawyer to the Emperor Hoang-ti in 2698 B.C. was the 
 inventor. Another fixes on a somewhat lower date, 2357 B.C. 
 But here again the fable shows itself in a still more perfect 
 form ; for the tortoise has always been the living and walk- 
 ing symbol of the Tor, the Druid under his tumulus ; and 
 therefore the Indian mythology piles the earth upon the 
 elephant and the elephant upon the tortoise. The great 
 sea-tortoise especially, seen with his back above the waves, 
 struck the ancient Arkite imagination with transcendant 
 admiration. So the story goes that the Emperor Yao in the 
 year 2357 b.c began to trace letters in imitation of the cha- 
 racters which he noticed on the back of the divine tortoise 
 which was brought to him by a barbarian family from the 
 far south. This tortoise was three feet wide and a thousand 
 years old ; and on its back was written in Kho-teau cha- 
 racters tlie ivhole liistory of the world from its heg inning. 
 The land of the south may have been India, or Mesopo- 
 tamia, or Egypt, for all that we know to the conti'ary. A 
 similar, but long subsequent, arrival of learned strangers 
 about 1110 b. c. (a date not very far from that of Solomon's 
 commerce with Ophir, by the way ) is mentioned in the 
 Li-tai-ki-sse.* 
 
 After describing the dragon-scrip of the most ancient 
 times, and the tortoise-shell alphabet of the 24th century 
 before Christ, the Chinese historians go on to tell us that 
 during the Han dynasty, i. e. from 2205 down to 1766 B.C., 
 the people got used to writing a third but also extremely 
 
 * Pauthier, p. 10. 
 
248 THE GROWTH OF [lECT. 
 
 ancient kind of characters, such as are seen on bells, vases 
 and tripods preserved in the present museums and palaces 
 of the celestial kingdom. 
 
 When the Tcheoii dynasty came in, before the time of 
 Solomon, 113t B.C., its founder introduced a new modifi- 
 cation of the alphabet, called the bird tracks, Niao. Soon 
 afterwards, that is, under the Wen-Wang dynasty, 1110 
 B.C., the fish-gamhol characters, Nu, came into vogue, and 
 every kind of polite learning got systematized. It was at 
 this time that the sage Pao-chi invented the five rules 
 of politeness, the six kinds of music, the five methods of 
 archery and the five styles of horsemanship ; and fixed for 
 all succeeding times the six styles of writing as now re- 
 cognized by all Chinese scholars. 
 
 In 221 B.C. Li-sse, at the emperor's command, invented 
 the small tcliovan writing ; but it was rejected except for the 
 royal signets ; and then he invented the ta or great tcheuen 
 writing, a most artificial and fantastical form of character 
 wholly different from those that had been in use, viz. under 
 the Tchooii dynasty, 880 B.C., which scarcely differed from 
 the Kou-wen or ancient figurative forms in which the six 
 Kings, &c. of Khoung-tseu and the great Commentary of 
 Tso-kieov-meng were all written. 
 
 Then came the dissolution of the Emjoire and the rise 
 of the great heptarchy of independent provinces which 
 caused local modifications of the characters chiefly due to 
 differences in artistic taste. One of these provinces, the 
 easternmost, ruled over by a dynasty called Han, had 
 wisdom enough to throw overboard the whole literature of 
 the past and attempt to open for the national mind a new 
 career. 
 
 Once, only this once, in the history of this strange na- 
 tion there seemed a chance of the establishment of that 
 tremendous power in letters which changed the face of the 
 intellectual world in the far west ; I mean a pure phonetic 
 alphabet such as gave Greece its empire over thought 
 and Rome its empire over society and Palestine its throne 
 of grace and worship over Christendom. Even Egypt knew 
 enough to adopt a demotic or current hand. The number 
 of Chinese charactci's amounts to 80,000. The whole num- 
 ber of Eg3^ptian characters in Champollion's Dictionary is 
 but 749. Those which modern science is content to use. 
 
IX.] 
 
 THE ALPHA BKT. 
 
 149 
 
 even including all the mathematical^ chemical and othc 
 signs, woiald not amount to many more than a hundj-ed. 
 Wliat China would be now, had the invention of the bold and 
 easy cursive hand-writing been adopted by the Han dynasty 
 in A.D. 76 to 88 no one may say. But the purely phonetic 
 'bureau hand/ t'sao as it was called, would probably have 
 set the soul of China free from the incubus of its strange, 
 fossilized, monosyllabic, uncompromising characters, which 
 weiofhs the future down for ever under the load of all the 
 past. But the experiment did not succeed. The emperor, 
 Hiao-ho-ti, in A.D. 89 while John was writing his great 
 Gospel, annulled the new invention on the ground that it 
 disturbed the public education, and ordered a return to 
 'the culture of the ancient hand ; on which his head gram- 
 marian, Hiu-chin, immediately composed a treatise in 40 
 books, which sealed the fate of China to the end of time. 
 The Chinese characters now in use have certainly not 
 varied in shape since the year 618 of the Christian era.* 
 
 But to show how they have varied since the invention 
 of letters by Fohi, I take from Pauthier the following 
 
 
 specimens of the three ancient styles, called : 1. the 
 Kouwen, of the highest antiquity; 2. the Td-chouen, of 
 mean antiquity ; 3. the Siao-clioven, of low antiquitA- ; 
 followed by, 4. the Li-chou, or bureau character; 5. the 
 Hinci-chou, common or current hand ; 6. the Thsao-chou, 
 cursive hand ; 7. the Kiai-choii, square .^eal character ; 
 and, 8. the Kini-hing-rlon or current hand, all of more 
 modern age. Fig. 12 gives the original So'areu characters 
 
 * Pauthier, p. 21. 
 
250 THE GROWTH OF [lect. 
 
 for ^heaven/ '^man/ and the 'savage beast sse/ followed 
 by the modifications of form to which they were subjected, 
 corresponding to the other seven styles of writing suc- 
 cessively coming into vogue during the four thousand 
 years which have elapsed since the reputed age of Fo. 
 
 It is only by tracing the forms of the Chinese radicals 
 back through their various transformations to their original 
 that any comparison with the Egyptian hieroglyphs can 
 be made ; but when this is carefully done important analo- 
 gies are discoverable. The classification of ideas common 
 to both eras has been made upon a common principle, 
 which was in fact to be expected from the very constitu- 
 tion of the human mind. But in some instances form^ 
 are also common to the two systems, establishing some 
 actual historical connection between the two such as is 
 hinted at by the legends cited above. 
 
 mkk\^twMmff 
 
 AA/V\ 
 
 12 13 14 15 10 17 18 19 20 21 22 
 
 Figure 13 gives the twenty- two* characters which the 
 priests of Egypt invented for determining the class to 
 which any particular hieroglyphic belonged, when its pro- 
 nounced or written name would not of itself show. The 
 modern alphabetic writing has done away with the neces- 
 sity for such a rude device, but originally some such 
 
 * Pauthier's Essai, p. 103. Uhleiiiann gives thirteen, on the authority 
 of Ideler, based on Champollion. Bunsen's list is more extensive. 
 
IN.] THE ALPHABKT. 251 
 
 Tuethod was indispensable. For instance, the difference 
 between sheep and shij? in English is made in writing by 
 using in one case two vowels e, and in the other one vowel 
 i. But in the absence of vowels it would be necessary to 
 add to the word shp some sign, in the one case a rude 
 picture of a boat, and in the other case a rude sketch of au 
 auimal. This is precisely the mode in which the Egyptians 
 used the following determinative signs, standing for — 1. all 
 names of gods; 2. of goddesses; 3. of men; 4. women; 5. 
 members of the body ; 6. quadrupeds ; 7. birds ; 8. rep- 
 tiles ; 9. fish; 10. trees; 11. plants; 12. metals; lo. 
 stones; 14. edifices or habitations; 15. places; 16. stars; 
 17. divisions of time; 18. fire; 19. fluids; 20. things noxious 
 or ecclesiastically impure or unclean, represented by a spar- 
 r<>w; 21. scripture; and 22. actions. 
 
 Under these I have arranged a selection from the whole 
 list of over 200 Chinese radicals, such as represent the same 
 ideas, bv equivalent denominative signs. These are named 
 in Chinese: 1. Ky (Radicals, 113, 119, p. 489 of the Great 
 French DictionarV) ; 2. Mv, p. 534; 3. Jin, 9, p. 8; 4. 
 Nuu, 38, p. 138; '5. Jo, 130, p. 587 ; 0. Nieou, 93, p. 398 
 7. mho, 196, p. 899; 8. Tchong, 142, p. 655; 9. Yft, 195 
 p. 891; 10. Mo, 75, p. 288; 11. Tsao, 140, p. 615; 12 
 Peh, 154, p. 724; 13. Chy, 112, p. 478; 14. Mien, 40, p 
 145, and Yen. 53, p. 177; 15. Kin, 167, p. 793, Y, 163, p 
 779, and Febu, 170, p. 818; 10. Chin, 161, p. 765; 17 
 Jv, 72, p. 274; 18. Ho, 80, p. 3t0; 19. Chouy, 85, p. 343 
 20, 21. Yu, 129, p. 586; 22. King, 144, p. 672. 
 
 The principal alphabets to be studied are the Punic 
 the still but partially understood Italic or Etruscan group 
 the Phoenician, Samaritan, Hirayaritic, iVrabic, Hebrew, 
 Coptic and Amharic; the Armenian; the three ex- 
 tremely ancient cuneiform alphabets ; the Davanagari and 
 other alphabets in India; the Thibetan; the Burmese, 
 Siamese and Singalese of farther India; the Japanese 
 and the Corean. They are all different at first sight from 
 one another, and some are comparatively modern. But 
 when critically studied they are all found to be allied more 
 or less distantly. Of all these the Corean is the most per- 
 fectly regular. 
 
 Our own alphabet, derived from the ancient Cadmean, 
 
262 THE GROWTH OP THE ALPHABET. 
 
 is theoretically reducible to four or five letters, represent- 
 ing that many classes of sounds : 
 
 Vowels 
 
 Labials. 
 
 Gutturals. 
 
 Dentals, &c. 
 
 A 
 
 B 
 
 C 
 
 
 D 
 
 E 
 
 F 
 
 G 
 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 
 M 
 
 K 
 
 
 L 
 
 N 
 
 
 
 P 
 
 Q 
 
 
 EST 
 
 u 
 
 YW 
 
 
 X 
 
 
 Y 
 
 
 
 
 Z 
 
 A mere glance at this scheme will show that the lettei-a 
 of the alphabet were not placed fortuitously in their posi- 
 tion ; that the vowels came in the order of their vocal de- 
 velopment ; in a word, that the entire alphabet is a fivefold 
 orderly repetition of the first four letters, ABCD which in 
 themselves sum up the entire range of sounds, and make 
 the key notes to all the dialectic transmutations of lettei-s 
 to which I have already drawn attention more than once 
 before. These transmutations occur regularly only within 
 the respective columns of this scheme. For instance, B is 
 exchanged for F, M, P, or V, but never for C, G, K, Q, or 
 X ; nor for D, H, N, R, S, T, or Z. In cases where a let- 
 ter of one column seems to be transmuted into a letter of 
 another column, as in the often-quoted instances of William 
 for Gulielmus, — German welch for old English quilk, — 
 French garenne for Eugli.sh warren, &c.,a loss of some letter 
 must always be supposed, or the substitution of one of the 
 vowels for one of the letters. In the three instances just 
 quoted the initial g is lost : — thus g-william for g-uHelm, 
 q- welch for q-uilk, g- warren for g-(b)arenne. 
 
 It is true that in the fourth column are collected dentals, 
 Unguals, sibilants, a nasal and an aspirate, but all these 
 are proved to be transmutable by the simple method of 
 comparing a dozen or two of allied dialects. D and T ai-e 
 in fact the same letter; L and H are universally inter- 
 changeable ; S and Z are identical ; N is the nasal of D, as 
 M is of B ; and H is in fact a sibilant in its simplest form, 
 as such words as aks and sel show. 
 
 Here I must leave this fascinating subject, hardly having 
 taken the first step across its threshold, but only thrown 
 open the door to exhibit the immensity and magnificence 
 of its interior. 
 
LECTURE X. 
 
 THE FOUR TYPES OF RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 
 
 If the views be correct which I have very imperfectly 
 expressed in the previous lectures of this course, we are 
 now prepared to enter upon the last and most important 
 and most interesting subject connected with the early 
 history of man — the origin of its mythologies. 
 
 It will be necessary to keep always in view the funda- 
 mental distinction between religion and worship. Religion 
 is the soul of worship. Worship is the body, the phe- 
 nomenal form of religion. The religious life of man con- 
 sists of a combination of three of his elemental forces, — 
 Admiration, Love, and Fear — having for their object of 
 activity the invisible or superhuman world. 
 
 As there are four great types of organic animal life, 
 represented by the Articulate, Radiate, Mollusc, and Ver- 
 tebrate kingdoms, — so there are four great types of this 
 religious life, embodied in the Worship of the dead, the 
 Worship of the powers of nature, the Worship of God in 
 heaven, arid the Worship of the universe. 
 
 Under these four heads all human conceptions of the 
 divine as worshipful can be collected. In one sense they 
 are four successive stages in the order of the development 
 of the human intelligence governing the exercise of the 
 instinct of worship. They are not only philosophically 
 consecutive in the order of nature, but to a certain extent 
 also historically consecutive in the order of time. They 
 have co-existed in some ages, and been combined and in- 
 termixed in some countries, just as in the case of the four 
 types of animal hfe. But they have virtually followed 
 each other in ruHng the world, just as in the succession 
 
254 THE FOUR TYPES OF [lECT. 
 
 of geological ages Radiates had their maximum develop- 
 ment first, Molluscs next, and Vertebrates last of all. 
 
 For it will not do to affirm — drawing sharp lines of 
 distinction — that in the ages of maD''s first appearance 
 on the planet there was no other worship than that of 
 their dead parents, or of the manes of their heroes ; that 
 everywhere there followed Fetichism or the worship of 
 the powers of nature ; that then in later times all nations 
 attained to the higher worship of some Fate, or Jove, or 
 God of Heaven ; and that finally, in these last times, a 
 genuine Pantheism has grown universal. Far from it. 
 Complex enough have been the '^.ombinations of religious 
 ideas as far back in history as we can see. Varieties of 
 the individual, co-working with varieties of race and with 
 the various stages and kinds of civilization, have kept not 
 only alive but in full vigour the worships of the past side 
 by side with one another, and with the higher worships of 
 the present day, developing in fact their four great types 
 in four parallel lines , just as in the growth of the whole 
 animal kingdom we notice that Radiates and Articulates 
 lived together in the oldest sedimentary rocks, and are 
 represented still in the multiform fauna of to-day ; while 
 Molluscs and Vertebrates, from the time when these ap- 
 peared, have been mixed in with them through all the 
 higher and later sediments. 
 
 All that we can affirm therefore is this ; — that the 
 earliest times of mankind seemed to be stamped with the 
 forms of ancestral worship chiefly, some of which have 
 lasted to the present moment; — fetichism of all kinds — 
 stone worships, mountain worships, water worships, firt, 
 air and sky worships, Sab^ism, Mithraism, Indraism 
 and the astrological systems of the ancients flourished 
 chiefly in a second age, but have also lasted to our day ; 
 — then the cultivation of the T((ste by idolatry and of the 
 Sentiments by mysticism produced at the beginnings of 
 historic times grand, dominating, ceremonial worships of 
 a god supreme, Jove and Jehovahism, culminating in 
 Christianity ; and that, finally, the culture of the Intellect 
 has developed Pantheism. 
 
 When circumstances favour their growth all these types 
 are developed in a single nation, in a single individual; 
 but they come to consciousness in this one order only. 
 
X.] EBLiaiOUS WORSHIP. 255 
 
 Their consecutive development has been realized in all 
 the cultivated portions of the great historic section of the 
 race. Pantheism has expressed itself in the Hindu Vedas 
 and in the Christian writings ; by Plotinus the Pagan and 
 by Spinoza the Christian ; by Swedenborg in one charac- 
 teristic form and by Hegel in another. On the one hand, 
 children and savages cannot be Pantheists. On the other 
 hand, philosophers like Ralph Waldo Emerson_and Blanco 
 White, historians like Buckle, naturalists like Von Baer 
 were equally impossible in the Stone period. There is a 
 time for everything iinder the sun. Ages may overlap. 
 One nation may outstrip another in its religious develop- 
 ment. One race may hurry forward from Fetichism to 
 Pantheism with greater intellectual vivacity than another ; 
 but he who aspires to be the historian of mythologies must 
 learn to recogrnize or have the crenius to construct out of 
 the apparent confusion which has thence ensued some 
 wide, consistent, ever- working law of growth, some com- 
 prehensive system of religious development residing in the 
 very nature of the common mind of man. 
 
 If now there be four types of religion, there are also but 
 four modes of worship. I use the word here in a more 
 precise and restricted sense. The religious sentiments of 
 man, intelligently directing themselves towards any one of 
 the four great objects of adoration, embody themselves in 
 four forms of worship. In other words, all the religions of 
 the ages have become incarnate with four members : 
 Prayer, Praise, Offering, and Sacrifice. They correspond to 
 the instincts of religious Fear, religious Love, religious 
 Policy, and religious Conscience or the sense of justice. 
 And they have filled the world for ages upon ages with 
 cries, and songs, and gifts, and altar-smoke. 
 
 As worship is a body for the spirit of religion, so cere- 
 monial is the dress which these four kinds of worship 
 wear. Ceremonials are merely special shapes and combin- 
 ations of prayer, praise, offering, and sacrifice, devised by 
 the clerical imagination, localized by circumstances, and 
 sanctified by long tradition. 
 
 In common parlance we speak of ceremonials as religions ; 
 and we class men rudely by them. There could not be a 
 more unphilosophical mistake. An ethnologist might as 
 well attempt to classify the races of mankind by the 
 
256 THE POUR TYPES OP [lECT. 
 
 fashions of their clothes. No two kinds of ceremonial, for 
 example, could be more unlike than that of the Romish 
 Church on the one side, and that of the Quakers, Puritans, 
 Methodists, or Moravians on the other. And yet if we ana- 
 lyze the Papist and the Protestant with equal scrupulosity 
 and skill, we shall obtain what chemists call ' allotropic 
 elements ' in both. What is Protestantism but melted 
 sulphur dropped into cold water ? or, if the amour jpwjpre 
 of my audience demand another simile, red phosphorus, 
 innoxious to the manufacturers ? In the Romish commu- 
 nion you have Calvinist and Arminian, Jansenist and 
 Jesuit, Rationalist and Mystic, just the same and just as 
 eager as in the Protestant communions. There is not a 
 spiritual distinction with which intercourse and literature 
 have made us familiar that we cannot discover (of course, 
 Avith intellectual modifications of expression, due to various 
 culture ) in all the religions of the modern world. 
 
 Nor is the rule confined to them. The same is true of 
 the ancient mythologies. Under a ceremonial Joseph's 
 coat of many colours they present a grand simplicity 
 of essential symbolism. But the fourfold distinction of 
 religious type remains ; and combinations of the four modes 
 of worship in each type are there. The mythologist must 
 not allow himself to be cheated by the variety of cere- 
 monial details. The confusion of priesthoods, and mysteries, 
 and creeds, and fables, is only in appearance and in words, 
 not in reality — only in the visible organizations and local 
 establishments of the worshippers, not at all in the funda- 
 mental ideas that inspired and regulated their worships. 
 Let us look at these — 
 
 I. The worship of the dead. 
 
 I have said so much on this subject in previous lectures, 
 that nothing remains but to place it in its true relationship 
 of precedency to the other forms of religious thought and 
 conduct. 
 
 If it were necessary to add anything to the testimony 
 which the Egyptian tombs of the first six dynasties afford 
 to the extreme antiquity of ancestral worship among the 
 more civilized nations at the dawn of history, we would 
 find such additions in the mention of it in the hymns of 
 the Rig Veda, the oldest literature of southern Asia. The 
 laws of Menu speak of it as the most ancient religion of 
 
 I 
 
X.] RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 257 
 
 mankind. Long after Brahmanisiii had substituted for tlie 
 idea of immortality the doctrine of jMetempsychosis^ the 
 custom of the sraddha or funereal repast continued to 
 be kept ; rice, milk, roots, fruit, were furnished regularly 
 to the departed soul. The Greeks and Romans, and in 
 fact all branches of the Aryan race, sacrificed periodically 
 at the tomb. 
 
 So universal were these rites that De Coulanges thinks 
 himself justified in basing upon them his theory of the 
 Family Law of the ancients. The stranger was excluded. 
 The dead accepted service and homage only from his chil- 
 dren and descendants in direct succession. ' The dead,* 
 says Lucian, ' who has left no son receives no ofierings, 
 and is exposed to a perpetual famine.' So long as the 
 family supplied their head with what he needed in the 
 other world, so long he was its god and benefactor. The 
 living needed the dead, the dead the li\ang, equally. This 
 mutual tie produced the solidarity of the family, the clan, 
 the tribe. 
 
 But from this service women were excluded. The 
 hearth became an altar; the son became a priest. The 
 daughter was always a sarvant — first to her father, then to 
 her brother, then to her husband ; once married, she 
 passed into another family ; marriage was a second birth — 
 the wife was the daughter of her husband. If the dead 
 had only daughters he lost his immortality, became a 
 larva, or returned to earth in another body to obtain 
 another family. ' The extinction of a family says the 
 Baghavatgita ' causes the ruin of the religion of that 
 family.' ' No man ' says a Greek writer ^ knowing that he 
 must die can care so little for himself as to be willing to 
 leave his family without descendants, for then no one can 
 worship him.' ' If a man die without sons ' says the 
 Mosaic law ' let his brother marry his widow and procure 
 him children.' ' By children ' says the law of Menu ' a 
 man acquits his debt towards his ancestors and secures his 
 own immortality.' The Hindu who had no son married 
 ofi'his daughter on the condition, that her first son should 
 be considered as his own. 
 
 This was the origin of the custom of adoption at a later 
 period. The hereditary rights of property were first estab- 
 lished entirely in the interest of this overwhelming re- 
 
258 THE FOUR TYPES OF [lECT, 
 
 ligious consideration ; property could proteci the hearth, 
 the tomb, the fuiiei'al rites, the immortalitv. ' TJolioion 
 prescribes ' says Cicero ' that the possessions and the 
 worship of each family should be inseparable, and that the 
 care of the sacrifices should always devolve upon him to 
 whom the inheritance belongs/ The right of primogeni- 
 ture in England is maintained by precisely analogous con- 
 siderations. The Eonian daughter could inherit nothing 
 from her father. The Greek laws forbade the daughter to 
 inherit anything. The common law derived from Rome 
 considers the daughter always as a minor. 
 
 The adoption of a son, also, by another man than his 
 father removed him entirely from his own family and 
 passed him irrecoverably over to another, as in the case of a 
 raan'ied daughter. When the demagogue Claudius curried 
 favour with the populace by causing himself to be adopted 
 by a plebeian Cicero thundered at him the tremendous 
 rebuke ' Why dost thou expose, by thine own fault, the 
 religion of the Claudian clan (gens) to become extinct !' 
 Athens was but a confederation of families ; a number of 
 families formed a (pparpLa, a number of phratrise a tribe, and 
 the tribes combined composed the city. The religion 
 of the family retained its integrity long afte;r the religion 
 of the city was formulated in a more splendid shape. The 
 fathers of the families became the dii Gentiles ; the city had 
 its eponym deities. 
 
 So much for the classic literature of the subject. Let us 
 turn back now to far more ancient days, beyond the dawn 
 of written histoiy. Let us study ancestor worship in its 
 first beginnings, preceding all those notions of religious 
 sentiment and worship with which the monuments of the 
 great past have made us so familiar. 
 
 That it did actually precede all other kinds of religion 
 seems indubitably settled by the arcligeological discoveries 
 of the last few years. If the picture of the head of an 
 elephant slightly engraved upon a blade of ivory, broken 
 into five pieces, discovered by Dr Falconer in company 
 with MM. Lartet and de Verneuil when they visited 
 together the excavations making at the station of La 
 Madeleine, Commune of Turzac, in the valley of the Yezere 
 at the foot of the chalk cliffs of Perigord in 1864 proves 
 that the aborigines of that part of France were acquainted 
 
X.] RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 259 
 
 with the animal in its living state, although no elephants 
 now live in Europe ; — if the bunch of lines descending 
 beneath the throat be suflScient evidence that this elephant 
 which lived among them was no other than the long- 
 haired Mammoth, now entirely extinct, the carcases of 
 which however are still preserved in the eternal ice banks 
 of the Siberian coast enveloped in the shaggy mantles 
 characteristic of the species ; * — if another engraving of 
 the head of a true elephant (that is, with almost vertical cra- 
 nium) done upon a fragment of reindeer bone, found by M. 
 de Vibraye at Laugerie-Basse, a station lower down the 
 valley, proves in like manner that the elephant as well as 
 the Mammoth lived in France at that remote epoch, spe- 
 cifically diflPering by its narrow oblong ears set forward 
 close to the eyef from both the elephant of Africa and the 
 elephant of Asia as we know them now ; — if the picture of 
 a combat of reindeers (in which the attitude of the con- 
 queror is described as of surprising truth) upon a plate of 
 shist, with representations of a stag and doe, a horse, an 
 ox, an otter, and a beaver, upon other materials, all found 
 together by M. de Vibraye in the diggings at Dordogne 
 and Charente,J give us all the proof we should require 
 
 • This peculiarity was verified by Mr Adams, in 1799, at the mouth of 
 the River Lina. Troyon, p. 74. Comptes rendus de I'Academie des 
 Sciences, Ixi. p. 311. 
 
 f Comptes rendus I'Acad. des Sciences, Ixi , 21 Aoiit, 1865. The eye 
 itself is represented closed by a finely-cut oblique line in its normal po- 
 sition. The tusks are represented, and the trunk, rather thin, has a 
 length about one and a half that of the head. Were these figures made 
 under the influence of a traditional knowledge of the existence of the 
 animals in a distant part of the world, chimerical characteristics would be 
 apparent, whereas a scrupulous exactness of details has been observed, 
 only to be accounted for on the supposition that the model was before 
 the artist's eyes. And, of course, all doubt is set aside by the fact of the 
 existence of the bones of these animals found iu great numbers. Troyon, 
 p. 75. 
 
 X Mortillet, Materiaux, li^^e Annee, p. 109. Troyon I'homiiie fossile, 
 p. 73. I have myself examined a large number of these relics (iu 
 cast) in the cabinet of my friend Professor Desor, and can vouch for the 
 sober truthfulness of the followhig description of them by Dr Broca; — 
 'One can hardly conceive of men, deprived of the use of metal, able to 
 fabricate in bone, in ivory, in horn, an infinite variety of tools, extremely 
 delicate ; to chisel them into elegant forms, and represent by designs 
 graven on the handles of their instruments, figures of various animals ; 
 figures which are distinguished by an exactitude and artistic ability truly 
 remarkable. To find, in equal measure, the art sentimenr we must 
 
260 
 
 THE POUR TYPES OF 
 
 [lbct. 
 
 Fig. 14. Handle of a Dagger, made of reindeer horn, and ropruscnting 
 a Falling Deer, found at Langerie Basse, Dordogne, France, 1863. 
 
X.] RKLIGIOUS WORSHIP. 201 
 
 • 
 
 apart from the evidence afforded by the bones of the 
 animals themselves fossilized in the same localities) that 
 they were the contemporaries, the prey, and no doubt' 
 the dread of the men who sketched their forms ; — if, in a 
 word, such relics of rude skill serve well instead of books 
 to inform us under what conditions the early races of man- 
 kind protracted their material existence, why should we 
 not expect to get equally significant hints respecting their 
 intellectual and spiritual state ? 
 
 The question is answered for us by the funerary grotto of 
 Aiirignac in the south of France. 
 
 A workman making a terrace for a vineyard, in 1852, 
 dug into a talus of loose earth piled against the foot of a 
 limestone bluff, and exposed to day a large stone slab set 
 upright against a small arched opening penetrating but a 
 short distance into the rock. Seventeen human skeletons^ 
 some mammalian teeth, and eighteen little discs of sea- 
 shell pierced as if for wearing round the neck, were super- 
 posed upon each other in the little cave. The mayor of 
 the canton was a good Christian but a bad ethnologist ; 
 and so he gave orders to have the skeletons buried de- 
 cently, before any one had a chance to examine them 
 anatomically. Philanthropic, but rather stupid that; con- 
 sidering that these were the immortal relics of the Adams 
 and Eves of Languedoc : and it was a chance, perhaps 
 never to turn up again, for seeing if the story of an Eden 
 could be proved or no. The adventure created no great 
 excitement, and even the new burying-place of these ante- 
 diluvian remains was afterwards forgotten. 
 
 descend innumerable centuries to the best days of Greece. They form a 
 contrast with the gross tracery of Celtic monuments so absolute that, 
 perhaps, — it has been suggested — they have been the handiwork of 
 modern refugees in the caves of the old troglodytes. But who in Europe, 
 since Quaternary times, coidd design on reindeer bone or horn, the figure 
 of an elephant different from all the kinds now living? This interesting 
 race led a peaceable existence. A cranium found in the grotto of Brn- 
 niquel is distinguished by purity of form, softness of contours, slight pro- 
 jection of its apophyses, and shallowness of muscular impressions, — 
 feat ures incompatible with the violent manners of a savage race.' lu order 
 to assure the reader that there can be no exaggeration in the eulogies be- 
 stowed upon these wonderful works of art. 1 have drawn the figure of a 
 fallinu: reindeer, which serves for the handle of a horn dagger, and he may 
 judge lor hinseir of the artistic genius which these inhabitants of Gaul, of 
 the reindeer age, displayed. See fig. 14. 
 
262 THE FOUR TYPES OF [lBCT. 
 
 In 1860 M. Lartet, unable to recover the bodies, com- 
 menced his researches of the cave itself. After the stuff 
 from the cliffs which had concealed the mouth of the 
 cave had been removed, there remained a terrace standintj- 
 about forty feet above the bed of the valley and level with 
 the floor of the grotto. The soil of this terrace and the 
 earthy floor of the grotto formed one continuous deposit, 
 of variable thickness, but everywhere yielding relics of an 
 ancient age, — hearthstones, charred wood and beds of 
 cinders, pottery, flint tools and arrow-heads, and burned 
 and fractured bones of animals. But mark this difference ! 
 All the traces of fire, all the marks of good-table fellow- 
 ship, all the proofs of industry, were outside, not inside 
 the grotto — in the soil of the terrace, not in the floor-earth 
 of the cave. On the other hand, the human skeletons, 
 the disjointed necklaces, were found within the grotto, 
 and nothing of that sort occurred outside of it. 
 
 No stalactites were visible in this cave, nor the usual 
 stalagmite covering to the floor; no traces of the usual 
 bone-mud brought by water and enveloping the remains 
 as in other ossuary caverns. The earthy deposit seemed 
 a bed spread by the hands of man, on which to lay the 
 bodies found upon it. It was, to all intents and purposes, 
 a cave of Machpelah, an aboriginal mausoleum. 
 
 Outside the cave the friends of the departed had held 
 their funereal feasts ; but what were their delicacies ? 
 A-nimals no longer in existence, — the great cave-beai', the 
 mammoth, the rhinoceros, the great horned Irish elk, and 
 the cave-lion, attesting the immense antiquity of the event. 
 The aurochs — now almost extinct — and the reindeer were 
 also there. To these were added entremets of smaller crea- 
 tures which have escaped extinction and continue to haunt 
 our modern woods and fields : the common bear, the 
 badger, polecat, wild-cat, wolf and fox, the horse and ass (?), 
 the wild boar, common stag and roe buck.* All the 
 bones which contained marrow were found broken or split 
 lengthwise with a knife. Hyenas^ bones were also found ; 
 and these foul creatures must have stolen in by night to 
 iTtiaw the relics of the feast, for the transverse marks left 
 b}' their teeth occurred on mau}^ of the surfaces, and their 
 dung was on the spot. 
 
 * One bono of a liare was also t'oiiiid. 
 
l] RELIGIOUS WuRSHiP. 263 
 
 Inside the cave were also found portions of animal 
 skeletons so articulated that it was evident the flesh had 
 been upon them when they were deposited. Outside, the 
 remains of rumiuauts predominated, especially of reindeer 
 and of aurochs. Inside, those of carnivorous beasts pre- 
 dominated, especially the fox. Some species were only 
 represented by their teeth. 
 
 A few more details, and we will be prepared to draw 
 conclusions. 
 
 A hundred lamellae of flint, some flakes or chips of flint, 
 a kind of hammer, and some nuclei or matrix-blocks, gave 
 positive indications that the manufacture of tools and 
 weapons was carried on upon the spot ; and, therefore 
 that the visit of man to the grotto was not a single and 
 incidental event. The bones and horns of the reindeer 
 had been utilized for divers instruments, such as awls or 
 bodkins, plain (unbarbed) arrow-heads, and whetstones in 
 the shape of polished blades. 
 
 The earthy deposit inside the grotto contained with the 
 human skeletons teeth of the cave-lion and wild boar, and 
 bones of the cave-bear, wolf, fox, horse, aurochs, reindeer, 
 and other mammifers, neither broken, gnawed, nor bm-ned. 
 
 The picture of a bird's head was sculptured on the eye- 
 tooth of a bear. A lamella of flint perfectly fresh and 
 unused lay near it. The earth that had been thrown out 
 of the grotto in a heap upon the terrace at the time 
 when the bodies were discovered was carefully searched, 
 and furnished a beautiful specimen of worked reindeer- 
 horn, and about a hundred worked flints; many of them 
 however so exceedingly minute that it seems impossible 
 to imagine them of any practical utility to those who made 
 them and placed them with the dead. These were pro- 
 bably miniature weapons, such as those small bronze 
 swords and spears, an inch or two in length, which are 
 often found in the cinerary urns of the north and south 
 of Europe. 
 
 In the same heap of dirt coming from the grotto 
 were found, naturally enough, other human bones and bones 
 of animals, none of which were either gnawed or broken ; 
 and several fragments of pottery more or less rudely 
 made with the hand ; the only instance on record yet 
 in which this art has shown itself to be of an antiquity 
 
264 THE FOUR TYPES OP [l-ECT. 
 
 commensurate with that of the extinct cave-bear. In all 
 other cases where remains of pottery have been dis- 
 covered, it has been in ossuary cave-deposits of the latest 
 Stone age, i. e. (see page 6G) contemporary with the Bos 
 primigenius (Urus), long after the total extinction of the 
 great cave-bear and large pachyderms, and the retire- 
 ment of the reindeer to the polai" regions. We must 
 keep ill mind however here that these other ossuary 
 deposits were not composed, as in this case, of dry earth 
 shovelled by man's hand ; but muddy loams distributed 
 by water ; and that in such aqueous deposits unburned clay 
 potsherds could have stood but little chance of preserva- 
 tion. 
 
 What now are our conclusions ? We have here before 
 us a terrace and a cave, divided by a door of stone. On 
 the terrace traces of active life, a workshop and a table, 
 so to speak. In the cave no trace of life, dead bodies 
 only, carefully shut in from the assaults of weather and 
 wild beasts. The dead were buried then, not burned. 
 But more, — arms, ornaments, food, vessels, holding per- 
 fumes perhaps or fruits or cakes, were buried then (as in 
 so many parts of the world is still the custom to this day) 
 together with the dead. 
 
 Those savages believed in immortality ! What was th'.' 
 age they lived in ? The most remote of which we have 
 as yet any certain information of the existence of mankind 
 —unless the reported discoveries of human fossils in the 
 tertiary rocks be true — the first of the four established 
 epochs of the great Stone age, the epoch of the cave- 
 bear, the antique elephant and first rhinoceros ; for the 
 bones of this gigantic kind of bear were found not only 
 upon the terrace but inside the cave. 
 
 These funereal fires, these offerings in the tomb, this 
 workshop of the travelling equipages of their dead before 
 its door, are so many speaking traditions of an ancient, a 
 most ancient, a first and altogether aboriginal ivorship of 
 the manes of the dead. 
 
 The strangest part of this strange story is, that when 
 we turn to look at other funerary grottoes, for there are 
 others, caves formed by nature and used foi' tombs by man, 
 we see, first, that they arc of a much later os:e, vz. the 
 fourth epoch of the age of Stone, that characterized by the 
 
\-.] RKLIGIOUS WOKSHIP. 265 
 
 predominance of the urus bones and domesticated animals ; 
 and secondly, we notice in them no traces of funereal 
 repasts ; at least none such have been reported or de- 
 scribed.* 
 
 Was the worship of the dead abandoned, or forgotten, 
 or exchanged for some newer form of religious ceremony 
 during this interval ? That is hardly a possible suppo- 
 sition ; for, as I have shown in previous lectures, Egyptian 
 history opens under the auspices of this religious venera- 
 tion for the dead ; and the Druid dolmens, cromlechs and 
 other structures, now considered as belonging to the lacus- 
 trine or fourth epoch of the age of Stone, are all of them 
 closely related to views and ceremonies which have the 
 same religion for a starting-point. The cave of Auriguao 
 stands as a fact so much alone in our present knowledge 
 of those distant ages that it would be extremely hazard- 
 ous to build any theory upon it involving comparative 
 questions. It is very curious however to observe how 
 the early sculpture also seems to have disappeared ; for on 
 the Druid monuments, and even on the bronze utensils 
 and armour of more civilized times — those of the lacustrine 
 epoch — we find no pictures of animated nature ; only 
 circular and cross-bar patterns of a mathematical character, 
 (>r fanciful arabesque designs. If Troyon be correct in 
 ascribing this remarkable abstention to religious prejudices, 
 such as those which Moses afterwards established among 
 the Jews, and Mahomet among his followers, — then he 
 may be equally correct in assigning to the deluge a date 
 falling between the third and fourth epochs of the age of 
 Stone : that is, following the disappearance of the reindeer 
 and previous to the appearance of the present races of 
 domesticated animals and plants on European soil, — to a 
 deluge which was connected with slow changes of sea- 
 level, and the melting of continental glaciers ; to a deluge 
 which destroyed, not all indeed, but a large part of the 
 previous population, and allowed of a fresh importation 
 from the Orient brinofino- with them an advance in arts 
 and arms, domesticated animals, the serial grains and 
 
 • Since this ^as written. Mr D monthas found a somewhat similar in- 
 staiK^e in Belgium. 
 
266 THK FOUR TYPES OF [lECT. 
 
 orcliard trees ; and together with this new social Hfe, a 
 more complicated set of religious ideas, among which the 
 pure and simple earlier worship of the dead would occupy 
 a subordinate and perhaps an insignificant position. 
 
 But it is in vain for us to attempt in this advanced age 
 either a defence or a precise definition of the extravagant 
 story of the deluge transmitted to us by the Hebrew 
 scriptures. M. Troyon's strong religious convictions 
 have prevented him from saying in so many words 
 that the deluge which he proposes to place between 
 the third and fourth Stone age was an almost insensible 
 variation of the sea-level, due to the retreat of the glacial 
 fields ; but he leaves that inference to be drawn by his 
 readers. Such, however, would be no Noachian deluge. 
 It would be quite another thing to ascribe the introduction 
 of new ideas simply to an amelioration of the post-glacial 
 climates and soils of Europe, permitting an influx of an 
 advancing population among whom the primitive simplicity 
 of ancestral worship had become confused and concealed 
 by all those intellectual speculations and social customs 
 which Professor Fustel de Coulanges, of Strasbourg, has 
 traced backward in the pages of his admirable book, ' La 
 Cite Aiitiqtie.' * 
 
 Whether this new population came from Asia originally 
 as the compai'ative philologists seem to agree in believing, 
 or whether it was only reflected from the coasts of Asia 
 Minor and Syria like a wave originating in the west or 
 south, a view defended by Brugsch in his discussion of 
 the seat of the Tahrau race and others affiliated with it 
 in the times of Ramses II. 1400 B.c.f ; or lastly, whethci- 
 it came direct from the great centre of Berber or Numidiau 
 life, by Malta, Sicily and Spain, as Desor and other ex- 
 plorers of the Dolmen monuments seem inclined to 
 favour, — in any case, such a population, endowed with 
 Philistine (Phoenician or Pelasgic) arts and arms, would 
 feel themselves no more embarrassed by the aborigines 
 whom they found in situ, than the Quakers, Puritans, 
 Cavaliers, and Catholics of the British colonies were by 
 
 •Paris, 1864. Reviewed in the Bih. Univ., Lansanne, xxx. No. 118. 
 t Geographie der Nachbarlander 7Eg}-ptens. 4to. Leipsic, 18.58. 
 
X,] RELTOIOrs WORSHIP. 267 
 
 the red Indians. The one race would disaDpear slowly 
 before the other without a deluge, or he absorbed into it. 
 
 But the subject of the apparent disappearance of these 
 mortuary rites from western Europe becomes more hipflily 
 complicated when we add to it the equally mysterious dis- 
 appearance of all subsequent traoesuf that early art which 
 has so astonished antiquaries recently, by the admirab'e 
 productions which it left entombed m the caves of Peri- 
 gord. ' What ' asks Dr Broca * ' has become of this in- 
 digenous civilization, so original, so different from all we 
 know? Did it disappear by slow modifications ? No; it 
 vanished suddenly, leaving no trace behind, and everything 
 permits us to believe by force. Followingit without transi- 
 tion we can discover nothing but the imprints of a powerful, 
 religious, warlike race equipped with a perfected armour 
 and knowing how to polish silex, but otherwise not dis- 
 posed to industry, and total strangers to all art sentiment. 
 SuflBcient indication of a brutal and conquering invasion ! 
 The cave-dwellers of the age of Stone, who had acquired 
 the mastery of the soil, and had succeeded in extirpating 
 the last of the great mammifers of the Quaternary fauna, 
 did not know enough to defend themselves against the 
 irruption of barbarians ; and so we see a sort o^ pre-lnsforir 
 Middle Ages intervene, succeeding to beautiful days of a 
 more ancient premature civilization, the origin of which is 
 as yet entirely unknown.' But probably these people of 
 the reindeer sculpture, so advanced in some respects, were 
 merely the somewhat softened and polished offspring of 
 the ruder savages of the epoch of the old diluvium. In 
 more than one cavern the lower layers of the soil contain 
 rhinoceros and mammoth, while the upper hold only rein- 
 deer bones. The flints of the second epoch were worked 
 by simple percussion precisely like those of the first epoch, 
 only that the flakes were smaller, and therefore the work 
 finer. No rubbing was employed in either. The knives 
 of both epochs are precisely alike. We may then conclude 
 from the sculptures of the reindeer cave-men of Perigord 
 that the still more ancient cave-hear people of the grotto of 
 Aurignac had begun to make designs. One such, in fact, 
 
 * Address before the Anthropological Society, Hist, des Travaux de 
 1855-6. 
 
268 THE FOCR TYPES OP [lECT. 
 
 has been discovered by M. Garrigou, in another Pyrenean 
 cave — a pebble, on which are cut the outlines of a bear.* 
 
 It woulti seem m fact impossible for a race^ however 
 low m mental capacity, to continue for many generations 
 pecking away at flint nodules to make weapons,, and at 
 marrow-bones to obtain iood, without developing ideas of 
 form and the desire of producing them at will. Just so 
 the ceremonial rites of interment must have grown up 
 slowly from the most imperfect and accidental beginnings; 
 and any ideas of a hereafter must have been educed by 
 chance from the accidents of life, through the religious 
 faculty; just as accidental likenesses in stones and bones, 
 and chance marks which were made on them by human 
 teeth and flint knives, must have pi'ovoked the artistic 
 faculty to rouse itself to attempt aesthetic shapes. 
 
 All this was consistent with the lowest grades of 
 savagery. I have said in a former lecture f that all 
 evidence is against the cannibalism of the Scandinavian 
 aborigines. But in other regions cannibalism may have 
 prevailed. The subject has become lately a favourite and 
 fruitful theme of discussion ; and the evidence against the 
 aborigines is growing formidable. At the recent festival at 
 Salisbury in honour of the opening of the new Museum 
 of archaeological relics Dr Thurnam read a paper on the 
 round-head people of the round barrows (corresponding to 
 the hiigelgraber of Germany), and the long-headed people 
 of the long barrows [reihen grdber) . He asserted the priority 
 of the latter and their evident addiction to human sacri- 
 fices. Mr Stevens stated that the human bones found in 
 the pit-dwellings lately opened at Fullerton were all split 
 and broken like those of the animals with which they were 
 found. In the Belgian caves the same fact has been re- 
 marked. M. Garrigou (and M. Roujou also) has exhibited 
 human bones from the Pyrenean caves on which exist 
 marks of methodical percussion, intended for opening the 
 medullary canal. Dr Clement, of St Aubin in Canton 
 Neuchatel, has found the arm-bone of a boy with numer- 
 ous pointed teeth-marks on its sides and ends. 
 
 War is the normal social state of all savages ; war with 
 
 • ' Wliich by the length of its cervical spiny apophyses resembles more 
 ihe cave-bear than any other known species.' 
 t Pages 130, 131. 
 
X.] RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 269 
 
 the beasts, war with encroaching clans. Their style of 
 war was to be crafty, treacherous, and consequently cruel. 
 The growth of religious ideas once introducing sacrifices, 
 war offers human victims, and hunger baits the temptation 
 sooner or later, which when yielded to, becomes a habit ; 
 and habits are hereditary. The traces of this custom 
 are visible in the most civilized nations of antiquity. 
 In Rome and Greece locks of human hair were laid upon 
 the altar. Human effigies, built up of rushes, were on 
 certain occasions solemnly thrown into the Tiber. Mr 
 Blyth thinks that the same explanation will suit for the 
 red powder which the Hindoos throw about upon each 
 other in their religious festivals. 
 
 But whether fllowers, or food, or incense, or ornaments 
 and arms, or horses and slaves, or hecatombs of captured 
 enemies were offered in the sacrifices of the advancing 
 ages — all these rites, however beautiful some, however 
 horrible others, were but the many-sided aspects of one 
 aboriginal idea, the primitive religion of mankind, the 
 pure and simple worship of the dead. 
 
 I have said the pure and simple worship of the dead. 
 What, then, was the aboriginal savage's idea of immortality ? 
 A life beyond the grave ; no more, no less. How then 
 did it differ from the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman ideas of 
 the state of the departed ; and from that faith which the 
 Christian casts as his anchor into Heaven ? 
 
 All things are valued by relationships. A life this side 
 the grave cannot be the same for any two living beings ; 
 how can the life yon side be other than most manifold ? 
 And its idea, if not mere book-lore, must be likewise mani- 
 fold. The Egyptian's eternal mansion was a combination 
 of Palace hall and Parisian restaurant. The Greek of 
 Homer's day anticipated an Elysium such as Ossian sang. 
 The artists and philosophers of the Empire half believed 
 in a Hades of pensive, ennuied, gentle, garrulous and re- 
 gretful shadows, such as Dante has described, and Bocca- 
 cio's ' Decameron ' embodies in more earthly substantiality. 
 The savage knew nothing of life but its wants and woes, 
 its haggard forests, death chills, demon-like wild beasts, 
 famines, incurable diseases; what could nis faith in im- 
 mortality do for his hooped and sJiackled nature ? His 
 
270 THE FOUR TYPES OP [lECT. 
 
 worship of the dead was but the germ of a reh'gion, a va.ev^ 
 instinct of his animal aflfections — nothing more. 
 
 The heaven of the Christian is a blinding: reflection 
 from the skies of all the beauties and sublimities that th'.' 
 eye of the poet has seen upon the earth ; of all the sweet- 
 ness of this life that the heart of parent and lover has ever 
 tasted; of all those sun-lit regions of science which the 
 latest civilizations have conquered and possessed. The 
 immortality of the ancients was the immortality of the 
 deadj with their faces always turned regretfully towards 
 the life that they had lost, because it was real life ; while 
 their immortality was but an eternal death, without an 
 object and without activity. Jesus came and stood and 
 said, ' God is not the God of the dead, but of the living ; ^ 
 therefore we say of Him that ' He brought a living immor- 
 tality to light.-* 
 
 Yet after all, the Christian religion is but the ancient 
 worship of the dead, sublimated, glorified, intensified, 
 made more concrete in its objects and details, and con- 
 centrated upon one figure around which all its ceremonial 
 is grouped. 
 
 II. The second type of religion is that of the worship ot 
 the powers of nature. Fetichism is its lowest form ; 
 astrology and fire-worship its highest forms ; but in every 
 aspect its essential nature consists in the worship of the 
 material parts of the world, under the false impression 
 that they possess powers which they do not. This ought 
 to be distinctly understood. There is a true and reason- 
 able worship of the powers of nature, which regards theii- 
 just sublimities, loves and respects their concurrent har- 
 monies, burns with a grateful sense of their blessed in- 
 fluences on the life of man, and shudders at the imagination 
 of disasters which the understanding can explain and even 
 sometimes can predict but not prevent, nor even yet per- 
 haps escape from. 
 
 But a Fetich is a natural object superstition sly beloved 
 or feared because supposed to possess unknown, peculiar, 
 or magical powers. A fetich is a thing personified by 
 ignorant people so as to be considered able to act — 1. volun- 
 tarily ; 2. under the influence of a kind or unkind feelinjr 
 towards man ; and 3. witli some other kind of power thnu 
 its nature would suo-ijest. 
 
X.] KELIGIODS WORSHIP, 271 
 
 The earliest Fetiches, no doubt, were stones and sticks. 
 
 A stone, for instance, has the power to lie still where it 
 js put, but not to get up of itself; it can roll down-hill, 
 but not up-hill. Imagine our horror at seeing a rock slowly 
 and deliberately rolling itself to the top of a hill ! or an 
 A ipine aiguille nodding to us and standing again erect ! 
 Yet that is the horror of the fetich. One of the most 
 effective scenes in the spurious continuation of Bunyan's 
 Pilgrim^s Progress is that where the wretched man is 
 hurried off by demons towards the mouth of the pit, while 
 all the trees along the road-side draw back their branches 
 from his despairing grasp except two twigs, which merci- 
 fully advance themselves, and by which he holds on and is 
 saved. Amadis de Gaul and all the romance literature of 
 Tihe days of chivalry abounds in this conception by the 
 imagination of a voluntary, kind or malignant, power, 
 resident in things. It is the characteristic of our dream 
 life ; it makes nightmare nightmare. It characterizes all 
 child life. It makes itself dominant not only over the 
 savage population of the globe, but over the most culti- 
 vated minds at special times, and in respect to special 
 things. I have known a well-balanced mind, set free from 
 all superstitions but one, ascribe a prophetic power of mis- 
 chief to broken glass. I have heard the most enlightened 
 and liberalized people confess to a superstitious faith in 
 those charming fetiches the precious gems; and in- 
 numerable are the beautiful legends on record respecting 
 their magical powers. I have myself worn for four years 
 an amulet which no money would buy ; and since I have 
 worn it my life has been most pi'osperous. I will show it 
 to you — it is the nail on which John Brown hung up his 
 coat and hat all the time he was incarcei'ated in Charles- 
 town jail. A friend of mine, a brigade surgeon in General 
 Patterson^s army, the fii'st man who entered the cell when 
 our troops occupied the place (in 1861), looking round the 
 room saw nothing he could bring away for me but this 
 one nail, which the jailor told him had been thus used, — I 
 hope it is my only fetich. 
 
 What married woman in this audience of Boston lUumi- 
 natae would not feel heart-sick with a nameless premoni- 
 tion of impending evil if her wedding-ring should snap 
 asunder ? That is her fetich. When the sword fell from 
 
272 THE FOUR TYPES OP [lECT, 
 
 the castle- wall, the seneschal never thought of ascribing it 
 to the fatigue of leather , but to a voluntary ability in the 
 sword itself to sound an alarm of danger to the noble 
 house of whose possessions it had been both grantor and. 
 guarantee. 
 
 It is impossible to enumerate the instances of existing 
 fetich worship in the uncultivated world. The worship oi' 
 the horse-shoe is still almost universal ; I may explain its 
 origin hereafter. So is the observance of the divining 
 rod , which has a similar origin. Of ten or twelve thou- 
 sand wells bored during the last eight years in the Venango 
 county oil-region in Pennsylvania a thousand (more or 
 less) were located by diviners with a divining rod; or 
 with a pendulum made of a deerskin bag enclosing a ball 
 of musk ; or by spiritualists falling into trances and exe- 
 cuting spasmodic evolutions when they felt the influence 
 of the spot to be selected. There is a popular lecturer 
 on geology whose wife practises the profession of a 
 spiritual explorer by help of this kind of fetich. The 
 other day she held a piece of antimony ore to her forehead 
 and immediately fell into a rhapsodical description of a 
 charming lake-country, in Canada, through which the 
 vein of that ore runs. I have seen shafts sunk after silver 
 in the glades of Somerset county, Pennsylvania, under the 
 dictation of an old scamp who would lay in his hunting 
 cap a small looking-glass which had cabalistic characters 
 on the back of it and was called an erdspiegel ; and then 
 hiding his own face over it he would describe the depth 
 exactly to an inch of all the minei'al wonders that ho saA\- 
 beneath the surface. So strongly did the imagination of 
 this fetich act upon his workmen, simple old German 
 immigrants from the mother-land of superstition as they 
 were, that they affirmed with all their faith that when at 
 work at the bottom of their shaft they could distinctly hear 
 invisible agents laughing, talking, pounding, picking be- 
 neath their feet, removing the treasure downward out of 
 reach ; for of course they never found it. 
 
 Now if all this and a thousand times more of it be 
 possible in our day, in this fresh land of honest, open work, 
 compelling nature to say all and no more than what she 
 knows — to do all and no more than what she has the 
 power to do ; leaving no hole or corner of the globe an 
 
X.] BELiaiOUS WORSHIP. 273 
 
 unexplored retreat of tlie mysterious ; witli libraries full of 
 demonstrations of the exact ability of every created agency 
 to harm or heal us ; with public schools to save our sons 
 and daughters from the ineradicable first infection of this 
 superstition of the fetich^ how overwhelming a deluge of 
 it must have submerged the early souls of men ; those 
 hapless savages who trembled at every leaf-fall and fled 
 with averted faces from every natural object a little out of 
 the ordinary shape.* What more inevitable than that 
 such shapes as isolated pillars of rock, stones curiously 
 perched on peaks and movable by the hand's touch, and 
 ambrose stones, cheese-rings, boulders in river currents, 
 labyrinthine caves and horrid clefts between high crags, 
 made grandly vocal with the voice of cataracts and with 
 the awful roar of beasts ; what more inevitable than that 
 these objects of nature should come to be feared and 
 worshipped ? f 
 
 This was sure to be the case when they imitated even 
 in the least degree the forms of man or beast. Such a 
 pillar of red saliferous sandstone capped by a fragment of 
 a layer of white limestone as the traveller may see stand- 
 ing half way up the mountain side and overlooking the west 
 shore of the Dead Sea., was sure to have some horrible 
 Lot's-wife legend attached to it. Two months ago as I 
 passed along the southern shore of the Gulf of St Law- 
 rence, rounding the point of Gaspe, I saw a rock called the 
 Old Man, and was told that some few years ago another 
 stood beside it called the Old Woman, but the surf had 
 carried that away. The ocean is a great artificer of such 
 rude effigies, making and breaking them wherever there 
 are suitable rocks on any coast. And the ancient savages 
 were fishermen, and lived upon the coast, and sailed 
 among these cliff's ; and many a father's dead body was 
 found near some remarkable rock, which grew to be the 
 special object of his children's reverence ; and many a 
 legend of dead warriors got mingled up with new-formed 
 
 • See good instances mentioned by Livingstone. 
 
 f See in ' Harper ' of November the account of the Indian worship of 
 Mount Popocatapetl, ' the smoking mountain.' See the picture and 
 description of Mount Barkal, in Upper Egypt, by Lepsius, Reise. See 
 also -the views of the cleft mountain behind Delphi, in Greece, and the 
 cleft rock in front of the temple of Pbilcp. 
 
 18 
 
274 THE FOUR TYPES OF [lECT. 
 
 })rodigie.s of the erosive powers of the sea; transitions 
 from ancestor worship to fetich worship, and mixtures of 
 the two. In this way we can explain the frequency o 
 legends of animated stones, and human beings turned tc 
 stones, and in fact all the phenomena of early idolatry, 
 together with that other class of legends wherein trees are 
 substituted for rocks, maidens changed into laurel and 
 myrtle and cypress, spirits confined in oaks, and the whole 
 range of similar superstitions. But I shall show you 
 hereafter that even for these superstitions there was a solid 
 historical basis, apart from all disposition in the human 
 imagination to personify and deify or diabolize the benefi- 
 cent and noxious qualities of natural things. We must 
 never forget that Druid priests lived under oaks, and their 
 spirits were supposed' to haunt them afterwards. The 
 hunter who fell from the rock was supposed to become 
 identified with the rock. Superstition acts upon material 
 objects to convert them into fetiches just as heat acts upon 
 a bar of iron to make of it a magnet. It was not the height 
 of the rocky summit that evoked the savage^ s devotion, 
 but the remembrance of some salvation there ; it was his 
 Ararat. It was not the tickled fancy which grew reverent 
 before the natural rocking-stone. It was its unaccountable 
 and imposing resemblance to the boat which had been to 
 his race both mother and father in one — obtaining for him 
 food in life, saving him in storms fi-om death, and furnish- 
 ing him with a burial-place — that made him reverent. 
 
 But the intellectual ground of fetich worship is now, and 
 always has been, ignorance of natural history. The fetich 
 is the first physical object which strikes the bewildered eye 
 as wanting its own explanation. In this sense the range 
 of the fetich is immense. It is not confined to sticks and 
 stones. It ascends to the platform of classic art. The 
 Greek priests made their statues live and move and speak 
 and weep, as Romish priests do now. Memnon's statue 
 with its sunrise music was a splendid fetich. 
 
 We can ascend still higher. I have mentioned the ■wor- 
 ship of gems, endowed with superhuman intelligence. 
 But there is a far more refined fetichism than that. The 
 whole system of the Cabala is built upon it. In ancient 
 times extraordinary powers were assigned to words and 
 numbers. They were treated as entities, powerful entities. 
 
X,] EELIQIOUS WORSHIP. 275 
 
 You know how full the stories of the Thousand Nights are 
 of this. The name of Solomon was the most powerful of 
 all fetiches. He who could speak it rightly could bind 
 and loose spirits^ fly like a bird, and in fact command all 
 the powers of nature. The King of the Genii was confined 
 thousands of years in a casket merely because Solomon's 
 seal was upon it. The story has been repeated in many 
 forms. Asmodeus was thus shut up in a modern magi- 
 cian's phial. No satisfactory explanation of this class of 
 superstitions has ever been published, to my knowledge. 
 It must have some basis in real life. Primal error, which 
 is a nothing, cannot bear fruit. The Pythagorean system 
 of Philosophy turned on the magic powers of numbers. 
 There is a great disposition in the human mind to dwell on 
 coincidences. We are fascinated by the magic square, for 
 instance, which adds up the same in all directions. I was 
 once introduced to a learned Rabbinical scholar living in 
 Berlin. His room was so full of tobacco smoke when I 
 entered it that I could hardly discern his form at the far end. 
 But I soon found that his head was so much fuller of tal- 
 mudic and cabaUstic lore that it was impossible to see any 
 truth through that fog. He assured me that there was such 
 power in a name, that the moment of the christening of a 
 child was the most solemn and sublime of all the momenta 
 in his history. For as he was named so he became. The 
 name had the power of destiny, and involved in its own 
 letters all the events of that child's existence. 
 
 Now how could such a curious system of fetichism 
 arise ? I have given you the explanation, in part, in my 
 lecture on the alphabet. The letters of a name are sym- 
 bolic ; their conjunction was cabalistic. But fully to com- 
 prehend the importance of a word to the old nations, one 
 must imagine for himself the rise of the secret priesthoods, 
 the sacred mysteries, the freemasonries with their signs and 
 pass words,* Solomon was the representative Cell Man, 
 or Cabalist, head of all the orders of freemasons clerical 
 and lay, so to speak, that have ever existed.f His name 
 
 * "^ST DaBaR, Hebrew, a word, is the same as lan DeBiR, the taber- 
 nacle of Jehovah, 
 
 t Solomon, SUalmanezer, Carloman, Charlemagne, such names are may- 
 poles upon which have been hung all the garlands of mythology, for the 
 nations to dance around. Solomon calls himself (if he wrote the book) 
 
276 THE FOUR TYPES OF [lECT. 
 
 waSj in fact, the embodied idea of the Mystery ; it stood 
 for the whole body of occult lore. But it therefore stood 
 for the whole political power of the initiated classes. Its 
 use by any man was a guarantee of his good standing in 
 the society, of responsibility as a messenger, of authority 
 as an agent. All the spirits of the throne and the pulpit, 
 the work-bench and the writing-table, were obedient to it. 
 Hence, legends like that of Prospero and Ariel; Faust 
 and Mephistopheles ; Friar Bacon and Father Bungay; 
 legends so devised as to conceal the real spirits, the real 
 magicians, and the real words-of-command ; but legends 
 which, doing this work for their inventors, did also another 
 for themselves, infused into the common people of every 
 race a fresh and more subtle spirit of mystic fetichism, so 
 penetrating and intangible in its character that the wisest, 
 most learned, and most holy men of modern times have 
 not escaped its influence. For, 
 
 One step more, and we reach the highest grade of 
 fetichism , rising insensibly from all before described. 
 What is an orthodox creed, but a mystic word-fetich ? 
 Look at the wafer elevated by the Romish priest in the 
 sacrifice of the mass as a piece of God-man — thousands 
 prosti-ate before it, not daring even to look at it, so awful 
 is their dread of its power to bless them and to curse 
 them, to annihilate them instantly ! Yet that is merely a 
 thing -fetich. Look now at that dogma elevated by the 
 Protestant preacher before the logical understanding of 
 his audience, whose souls lie prostrate in the dust before 
 it, not daring to use their reason on it, or to look it for a 
 moment in the face, believing, as they must that to doubt 
 it is to be damned ! That is a word-fetich. 
 
 What is the school of Gaussen and Hengstenberg 
 among theologians but a sect of Christianity retiring 
 from the noble reverence and practice of the Spirit of 
 Christ and his apostles and from the sublime conceptions 
 of the Hebrew poets and dropping backward and down- 
 ward on to the ground of literal fetichism ; worshipping 
 
 in the beginning of Ecclesiastes, the Cabalist, or quelt (nVp,) which our 
 translators have rendered pirac/in; without knowing that to preach = to 
 bark, i. e. to speak oracuhirly (Arkitely) ; as, to pra^ = to bray ; and as, 
 to gabble, or talk gibberish = to gobble, i. e. to speak cabalistically , or in 
 a manner unintelligible to the uninitiated or common people. 
 
X.] RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 277 
 
 the letter which, Christ says it, must kill ; and converting 
 the literature of all the Hebrew ages from David and Solo- 
 mon to James and John into a gilt-edged quarto bound in 
 calf; putting a more fatal stop to the progress of the Chris- 
 tian Church towards its millennial purity than ever did the 
 golden calf which arrested the progress of Israel into their 
 promised land ! There are multitudes of Christians living 
 now who entertain so strongly the old Jewish reverence 
 for the word Jehovah that they bring themselves to pro- 
 nounce it only with a strenuous effort of the reason and the 
 will combined. It is not simply from reverence for the in- 
 finite God whose special name it is supposed to be — but 
 reverence for the word ; because it was for ages one of the 
 great world-fetiches and called ' the unpronounceable/ 
 Laymen had no right to take it on their lips. It was a 
 privilege of clergy. It was fetich — or tabu — for the out- 
 side masses. W\ij ? Because it lay at the heart of the 
 special religious system of the Hebrews : because it was 
 the supposed formula of Unitarian doctrine as opposed to 
 all idolatry ; because it was translated * the living God ' 
 and itself shared a sort of weird life ; because it was the 
 word-temple in which dwelt the shekinah of all transcend- 
 ental science ; veiled, but ready to break forth in fire and 
 light ; veiled like Isis, but before which the initiated priests 
 might worship trembling and alone. It was, therefore, to 
 the ancient Jew, and still is to the devout but superstitious 
 Christian, an awful silent logos. 
 
 In a still more distant east we have another instance of 
 an unpronounceable word, a fetich formula, the key to the 
 mysteries of another system of religious worship : I refer 
 of course to the sacred syllable ATJM of the Brahmans. It 
 is said to be of no known specific meaning, but to involve 
 in some way the idea of the Trinity. Now we know what 
 the Hindu trinity is : Brahma, Vishnu, Siva ; the maker, 
 preserver, destroyer. But why these three are so related 
 to each other and to human history, or how they can be 
 distinguished by the letters A TJ M (or any other mode of 
 spelling OM), has not been clearly stated; nor can I venture 
 to demand your long attention this evening to what I 
 would consider the true demonstration of the curious 
 problem. I should make it on Arkite grounds; by which 
 I mean that the word itself, as pronov/ncedj has always 
 
278 THE FOUR TYPES OF [lECT, 
 
 been tlie symbol of Arkite mystery, secrecy, and initiation ; 
 being tlie representative of the roar or murmur of tbe 
 great deep. Mim is tlie Hebrew name for tbe waters of 
 the sea.* Amim is the Hebrew name for multitudes of 
 peoples, the roar of which goes up as the voice of many 
 waters. I have shown you that the shape of the letter M 
 was obtained from the water-waved surface of the sea. 
 You are all probably sufficiently acquainted with the 
 pictures of the Hindu pantheon to recognize in Vishnu 
 the Fish- Noah, or god of the waters, sleeping upon a coiled 
 serpent, the symbol of water, and representing the pre- 
 serving genius of the ark. Brahma as the father-creator 
 represents the genius of the mountain. And Siva, the 
 destroyer, his name being identical with the Typhon of 
 the west, represents the devouring deluge. Then, al- 
 though the three letters A TJ M are of western form, and 
 the analogous Sanscrit letters have been so changed as to 
 conceal their old meanings, the identity of the A with Brah- 
 ma, TJ with Vishnu, and M with Siva, follows as a matter 
 of course ; and there is no longer any wonder that this 
 Om is too dreadful a fetich to be pronounced, and too 
 sacred to be taught by any Brahman to a man of any 
 other caste. And yet in spite of the prohibition it has 
 escaped. It leaked out into many languages in the earliest 
 times. It formed part of many of the most sacred western 
 words ; such as. Omphalos, the navel, a name for the 
 Delphic oracle; Triomphe, the cry or watchword of the 
 priests of Bacchus; umber and imher, darkness and storm; 
 amher,'\ the precious electron found floating on the waves. 
 The Irish Druids called by this name, Omh,J the living 
 God, and defined its meaning ' He who is.'' There is very 
 little doubt that it is the Ob or spirit of divination men- 
 tioned in the Hebrew scriptures, and the Obi or necro- 
 mantic power of the blacks of Western Africa. It is not 
 
 * Egyptian ham-ham, to roar (Bunsen, vol. i. p. 462) ; Coptic 
 liem-hem, to roai , hm, to fish, p. 463 ; mhi, to draw water, p. 469 ; mah, 
 water (Bunsen cites Leemans, viii. xiv. xvi. for this, on p. 468). 
 
 f Am, Egyptian, gem or pearl. Bunsen, p. 455 (Coptic ana-met), and 
 anm (p. 456).— 
 
 X CJf. Jmn, Egyptian name of Jupiter, Coptic anicun ; and also the Egyp 
 tian verb, to conceal ; Coptic amoni. Compare with this the Amen of the 
 Hebrew, and the Egyptian ma (Coptic me, met), truth, true. Cf. also 
 amut (Coptic amen-t), Hades ; and am-t (cf. ouom), devourer. 
 
X.] EELIGI0U8 WORSHIP. 279 
 
 impossible that it occurs in sucli modern words as hiimhug; 
 for the second syllable of that word is undoubtedly (like 
 bugger, and bugaboo) the Scythian hog, once meaning 
 god (Bacchus) and now devil. It probably occurs in our 
 word Umpire, or judge in equity, but refers in this case 
 not to the man, but to the bar or court whose laws he 
 but administered. 
 
 The unpronounceable divine name among the Hebrews is 
 perhaps the best introduction we could have to the history 
 of the third type of religious worship which I have now 
 to describe. 
 
 m. The worship of the gods in heaven. 
 
 You may remember that our first type of religion in- 
 volved the worship which the early inhabitants of the 
 earth paid, and many of its present inhabitants still pay to 
 their dead parents and ancestors. The second type of 
 religion, the last described, coeval in its origin and co- 
 extensive in its duration with the first, was fetichism, the 
 worship of the powers of nature as expressed unintel- 
 ligibly or magically in the objects of sense — mountains and 
 seas, rocks and trees, sounds in the air, works of art, and 
 words and creeds constructed by the priests. 
 
 Now the third type of religion is the worship of the 
 invisible God as a creator, preserver, benefactor, and judge. 
 
 It has been the central question of all critical theology 
 how this religious conception was generated in the soul 
 of man. Was it aboriginal ? Or has it been developed 
 gradually by civilization ? Was it revealed at first ? Or did 
 it reside as an innate co-essenfial germ of intelligence in the 
 human intellect as such ? Was it the common property of 
 the earliest people and afterwards lost amid the sins and 
 miseries of migrating races, enslaved races, isolated races, 
 perishing races ? Or was it committed as a sacred and 
 pecuHar privilege to one chosen people for safe keeping 
 until the fulness of times had come and the Son of God 
 was revealed and the new dispensation was inaugurated 
 and the apostles were sent forth to fill the earth with the light 
 and warmth of that ' life eternal, which is the knowledge 
 of the true God, and of Jesus Christ whom he hath sent.* 
 
 Of these theories, the last is held to be the true one by 
 orthodox Christians. But it is opposed in many points to 
 the results of that criticism of the religious history of inan- 
 
280 THE FOUR TYPES OF [LECT. 
 
 kind whicli the modern sciences have forced the honest 
 seekers after truth to undertake. Of course I will not 
 have time this evening to pursue the discussion far. But 
 I must at least point out the place where men of science 
 stand to view the rise of the divine idea in man — that 
 glorious sunrise of the soul — the only sunrise in the 
 history of mankind. 
 
 The idea of an invisible God finds its only analogy in 
 the knowledge which the domestic relations give to chil- 
 dren of their parents. It is reasonable therefore, that it 
 sprang as a natural development out of the worship of 
 dead ancestors. If the idea of God be that of a being 
 invisible, creative, provident, protective and judicial, it 
 differs in no resjpect from a combination of the two ideas 
 of a living father, and a father who has entered his eternal 
 mansion. Do you object, however, that the idea of God is 
 far grander ? I grant it : but that is a matter of degrees. 
 The definition of the young minister which took by storm 
 the sufirages of the Assembly of the Westminster Divines : 
 — ' God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his 
 being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and 
 truth,' was the glorious consummation of all the religious 
 feeling and reasoning of all ages — the flower of human 
 thought, ripened in the choicest soil of the last deposits of 
 the waters of civilization. Wisdom, power, justness, 
 goodness, truth ! What are these but human attributes 
 on which the whole superstructure of ancestor worship 
 has been built? But the three epithets, Infinite, Eternal, 
 and Unchangeable, are transcendental ideas, evolved by 
 science ; abstractions, only possible to well-formed, well- 
 bred brains; enlargements of the savage notion of a 
 father's character by civilized thinkers whose material 
 horizon has been widened by travel ; whose astronomy has 
 changed its starry firmament into realms of interstellar 
 space; whose lives of leisure have allowed free scope for 
 poetry as well as practice ; and made love, not fear, the 
 law of thought. Love is, like heat, the great expander. 
 God is a product of philanthropy.* The shiveringj 
 
 • Benevolence is an unknown instinct in the lower animals until they 
 are domesticated with mankind; for their love of offspring is not only 
 selfish, but provisional, and in all its exhibitions savage and cruel. Bene- 
 volence is foreign also to the animal part of man's economy; the 
 
X.] RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 281 
 
 hungry, timorous savage of tlic earliest days had not 
 enough of love about his house to make a small- sized god 
 of. Infinite ! Eternal ! Unchangeable ! Men could begin 
 to comprehend such epithets — to invent them rudely I 
 should rather say — when they began to build pyramids and 
 ' eternal mansions ' for their departed great : but not 
 before. 
 
 We find, therefore, no trace of our idea of Deity in the 
 earliest history of mankind. The Hebrew writers report 
 indeed such traces ; but their reports are not evidence 
 because not contemporary. They only go to show what 
 was the idea of God among the Jews after the times of 
 David, subsequent to whom all their Scriptures seem to 
 have been written. Or, if the earlier books should be 
 considered as compilations from fragments of an older 
 time — an opinion now placed almost above discussion — 
 such fragments prove, not that our idea of God existed at 
 the beginning of history, but, on the contrary, that it did 
 not so exist. You will find an admirable resum'S of the 
 evidence of the truth of this statement in Chapter V. of a 
 book by William Rathbone Greg, entitled Creed of 
 Christendom. You need, however, merely refresh your 
 biblical memories, and recall a few texts, to see at once 
 that the common notion of a special revelation to the 
 Jews as a peculiar people of the fact of the existence of 
 One God has no foundation whatever. 
 
 Milman and others speak of the pure monotheism of the 
 Jews as a singular phenomenon, confined to the narrow 
 strip of land called Palestine, where ' the worship of one 
 Almighty Creator of the universe subsisted as its only 
 sanctuary, and where, in every stage of society, under the 
 pastoral tent of Abraham, and in the sumptuous temple of 
 Solomon, the same creed maintained its inviolable sim- 
 
 storaach laughs at it ; but the savage is little else than a reasoning 
 stomach ; he immolates his parents, and exposes his children, when they 
 cease to benefit his own life, or gratify his own desires. Benevolence did 
 not enter — could not enter into the early idea of a God. The Hebrew 
 Jehovah is a selfish personage. The Christian God is Love itself. It is 
 not made out whether r/ood is from ffod, or ffod from good ; or whether 
 indeed there is any direct connection between these words. 
 
282 THE FOUR TYPES OP [lECT. 
 
 plicity.''* No ! Their own writings show that they were 
 incessantly and unconquerably idolatrous. No punish- 
 ments could cure them. The High Priest of Jehovah 
 is described as worshipping the Egyptian Apis while 
 Jehovah was thundering his law to this high priest's 
 brother on the top of the mountain before their eyes. 
 And when that law came down in his hands, it contained 
 no notice of the doctrine of an only true God. Its first 
 commandment merely forbade the people to whom it was 
 sent from worshipping any other than their own God. 
 
 The fact is evident,, that Jehovah was the family God of 
 the Abrahfimidse ; and therefore became subsequently the 
 national God of the Hebrews. I do not mean by this, a 
 family god in the sense of the ancestor worship ; but a 
 god considered by the Hebrew progenitors of David and 
 Solomon, whoever they were, as the lar or baL[j.(ov of their 
 house. It looks as if it were an adopted deity, adopted 
 by the Hebrews (if they were Hyksos) from the Egyptian 
 NTJK PU NUK, the ' unknown God,' the male Isis, whose 
 veil could not be raised ; the god who refused to tell his 
 worshippers his name ; a name in fact in process of in- 
 vention. The story reads that this God called Abram out 
 of Ur of the Chaldees ; of course the call came from the 
 God at his own home — in Palestine ; he was a western 
 deity. The story says that Abram's parents worshipped 
 other gods (although in Gen. xxxi. 53, we read, ''the God 
 of Abraham, the God of Nachor, the God of their fathers 
 judge betwixt us' !), and that his children's cousins at the 
 old eastern homestead continued to do so afterwards. The 
 Jehovah was evidently a western deity. His other Hebrew 
 name, Adonai, shows this still more plainly ; for it is the 
 Adonis of the Syrian worship, and was introduced into 
 the pantheon of Egj^t by Amenoph IV. a Pharaoh of the 
 18th dynasty, who took this God's name instead of Am- 
 mon's in his own, calling himself no longer Amen-oph, but 
 Khou-en-Aten, or the splendour of the solar disc. Aten, 
 ' the radiant disc,' was then the Syrian Baal-Adonis, intro- 
 duced into Egypt by the Hyksos of the previous (17th) 
 dynasty, under the name of Sutech. How it happened that 
 a native Pharaoh, a, lineal descendant of Amosis, the ex- 
 
 • Hist. Jews, i. 4. 
 
X,] RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 283 
 
 peller of the Hyksos (through Amenoph I., Thoutmes I. 
 and III., Amenoph II., Thoutmes IV., and Amenoph 
 III.), should forsake Ammon, persecute the old Egyptian 
 ceremonial, and become a fanatical propagandist of a 
 special form of Hyksos- Shemite faith, can only be ex- 
 plained by refet-ence to the fact that his mother was a 
 foreigner. Her pictures at Tel-Amarna have rose-coloured 
 (i. e. northern-coloured) flesh. His own most extraor- 
 dinary profile hints at a strange and tragic family origin; 
 while similarly strauge-faced priests standing around his 
 figure at the altar, on the monuments, intimate that his 
 reign was a temporary revolution in favour of the only 
 half-expelled and half-suppressed Hyksos population of the 
 Delta — a momentary triumph of that worship, every trace of 
 which the next Pharaoh (Horus) did his best to obliterate ; 
 but which still survived in secret under his successor 
 Seti I., the founder of the 19th dynasty, and then 
 was re-established as the worship of Seth by the great 
 Ramses II. and his unfortunate son Menephtha, the so- 
 called Pharaoh of the Exodus. 
 
 Thus a direct connection is established between the 
 Mosaic woi'ship of Jehovah-Adonai, the Hyksos worship 
 of Seth-Aten, and the later Israelitish worship of Baal- 
 Adonis ; and any noble character discoverable in the first 
 must be related to what natural refinements the already 
 long-existing civilizations of those countries had already 
 been enabled to produce. In later times we are express- 
 ly told that the Jews of the twelve tribes worshipped 
 Jehfovah and Baal together. 
 
 But not to hurry on too fast, let us remount from the 
 19th to the 1 2th dynasty, and return from Moses to 
 Abraham; for men's ideas are wonderfully changed in 
 fifteen hundred years, or even in five hundred, to take the 
 Hebrew chronology for our guide. 
 
 The legends of Ab ram's God Jehovah exhibit him to us 
 in the most anthropomorphic garb — the least spiritual and 
 Christian possible. He sits with Abraham at the door of 
 his tent. He eats with him ; getting into an angry alter- 
 cation with Sarah, the patriarch's old wife. He discusses 
 with him the case of Sodom and Gomorrah; informing 
 him that he was on his way thither to see if the reports he 
 had heard of their wickedness were correct. 
 
284 THE POUR TYPES OP [lECT. 
 
 The legends of Isaac and Jacob are equally explicit and 
 compromising to the god they praise. They describe 
 Jacob's family as idolaters, and Jacob himself as only 
 gathering their idols together and hiding them under an 
 oak (Gen. xxxv. 2 — 4) when he approached the domain of 
 his western family deity. They tell a story of the cun- 
 ning fellow regularly bargaining with Jehovah to take 
 him for his God on certain conditions, and promising a 
 tithe of his possessions if Jehovah would fulfil his part of 
 the contract (Gen. xxviii. 20). To whom the tithes were 
 to be paid, or for what end, is not stated; but this mention 
 of an arrangement of tithes betrays the late date of the 
 history in which the story occurs. 
 
 It was not until the Abrahamidse came in contact with the 
 civilization of Egypt that we begin to see any tendency of 
 their Jehovah worship to rise to a higher intellectual level. 
 Moses — a character representing the New Egyptian phase 
 of Hebrew (or Hyksos ?) life — takes one great step in ad- 
 vance of his forerunners. But even Moses makes no claim 
 of sole existence for his nation's deity ; but only insists 
 that he is superior to all other gods ; the Jehovah Elohim, 
 Lord of lords, and God of gods. 
 
 In Exodus XV. 11, he is made to say, ^Who is like thee, 
 O Jehovah, among the gods?' He is always represented 
 as speaking to Pharaoh of Jehovah not as Supreme Ruler 
 of heaven and earth, but as the God of the Hebrews ; and 
 to the Hebrews, ^I am Jehovah thy God, who brought 
 thee out of the house of bondage ; thou shalt have no other 
 gods beside (or before) me.' What is true of the legends 
 of Moses is equally true of those of his successor. In the 
 24th chapter, Joshua is made to urge upon the people 
 fidelity to Jehovah, not at all on the ground of an ex- 
 alted Monotheism, but because it would be the blackest 
 ingratitude in them not to prefer the God who had heaped 
 such favours upon them to all other deities. The sub- 
 sequent records of the nation, as far as they can be con- 
 sidered historical, become a monstrous paradox in psycho- 
 logical research if we suppose that there existed at that 
 time in the Hebrew mind any idea of one true God such as 
 we possess. 
 
 Tn fine, these records are full of charges against them of 
 infidelity to Jehovah but do not contain one single charge 
 
X.] RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 285 
 
 against them of Atheism on that account. No wonder ! 
 Do these records ever describe Jehovah in language such 
 as a modern civilized thinker would dare to use ? On the 
 contrary, they tell us that Jehovah said to Moses : Let 
 them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them 
 (Exod. XXV. 8j 21, 22). Put the cover on the ark, and 
 there will I talk to thee. And Jehovah spake with 
 Moses face to face as a man with his friend (Exod. xxxiii. 
 9, 11). And Jehovah said, I will put thee in a cleft of 
 the rock, and will cover thee with my hand, while I pass 
 by, and thou shalt see my back parts (Exod. xxxiii. 21 — 
 24). Moses is described as piquing the amour jprojpre of 
 the Hebrews, by telling them how it was reported among 
 the surrounding nations that Jehovah was their God and 
 was seen by them face to face (Numb. xiv. 14). He is de- 
 scribed as pleading with Jehovah when very angry, and 
 nobly offering himself as a victim to his wrath, and thus 
 gaining a respite and commutation of their punishment ; 
 which, however, involved an entire change of the whole 
 programme of the Exodus, a change of base for their 
 military operations, and the postponement of their invasion 
 of Palestine for the mystic number of 40 years. 
 
 Surely all this is merely a slight modification of those far 
 more ancient and semi- savage ideas of deity which ap- 
 pear in the legends of the creation and of the flood, where 
 Jehovah is said to make woman out of a rib of man; 
 to take Noah and ' shut him into the ark ; ■* ' to smell a 
 sweet savour ' when Noah liberated made his first sacrifice; 
 to invent the rainbow ; and to promise no more ' to curse 
 the ground for man's sake.' 
 
 But time went on. The wars of settlement, the civil 
 feuds of rival judges, came to an end. The poet warrior 
 and the regal philosopher sat in turn upon the throne of 
 Zion. Peace bore its proper fruit ; commerce enlarged the 
 native genius of the Jew. Priesthoods devised grand 
 ceremonials. The discussion of false mysteries sharpened 
 the souFs perception of the true, as alchemy in our day 
 led on to chemistry. Luxury bred vice, and the miseries 
 of despotism generated a reactionary patriotism. The 
 school of the sacrificers found itself confronted by the 
 school of the sacrificed. Prophets arose to denounce 
 the priest, and die for it. But as they died, the heavens 
 
286 THE FOUR TYPES OF [lECT. 
 
 opened, and they caught those visions of the one true 
 God which were to become the hving realities of after 
 ages. Calamities crushed in upon the little remnant of 
 that kingdom which David founded, and Solomon illumin- 
 ated with his taste and wisdom, idolater and sensualist as 
 he was. The poor ' favoured people ' were meal between 
 the millstones of Egypt and Babylon ground to the finest 
 flour. Their anthropomorphic deity vanished like a power- 
 less, mocking spectre before the irresistible wind raised 
 by migrating nations. But in its place arose the sun in a 
 sky which if not clear was hot and bright. The abstract 
 idea of God as a unit, an Infinite one, on whose strong 
 arm Nature the mother and Man her baby child could 
 always lean with confidence and ever-springing hope — of 
 God the sole creator, sole sustainer, sole judge and exe- 
 cutioner of justice — penetrated that broken mass of 
 Hebrew people as the alkaline waters of the drainage of 
 the rain penetrate disturbed and fractured regions of the 
 eartVs crust, permeating the entire substance, metamor- 
 phosing, crystallizing and charging it with veins of the 
 precious metals. 
 
 It is impossible not to see that the God of the priests 
 and the God of the prophets of Israel — and the same is 
 true in our day — were two very different deities ; the 
 embodiment of two very different classes of ideas. ' Let 
 any one, (says Greg) ' compare the partial, unstable, re- 
 vengeful, and deceitful God of Exodus and Numbers with 
 the sublime and unique Deity of Job and the nobler 
 Psalms ; or even the God of Ezekiel and Daniel with the 
 God of Isaiah ; and he can scarcely fail to admit that the 
 conception of the one living and true God was a plant of 
 slow and gradvial growth in the Hebrew mind, and was 
 due — not to Moses, the patriarchs, or the priests, but to 
 the superiority of individual minds at various periods of 
 their history. ■" This plant of Aryan growth was first 
 planted in the mountains of Judea when Solomon, estab- 
 lishing his kingdom ' from the great River Euphrates 
 to the Western Sea,^ brought his people into contact with 
 the pure Zoroastrian monotheism of the Persian plateau ; 
 and it came to flower when several centuries afterwards 
 , the chosen people ' were banished from their native hills 
 to hang their harps upon the willows of Babylon; er 
 
X.] SELiaiOUS WORSHIP. 287 
 
 rather, we may say, were sent to school, tribe after tribe, 
 back to the lands where their original ancestors first drew 
 the breath of life. 
 
 It was Solomon who first learned how to say 'Behold, the 
 heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this 
 house which I have built ? ' * ' The eyes of Jehovah are 
 everywhere, beholding the evil and the good/ f 
 
 It was no priest or Levite of the temple service, but 
 David the young shepherd poet, or more likely yet, some 
 later prophet whose verses equally dear to the hearts of 
 all humanity came to be sung under that all overshadow- 
 ing name, who chanted — 'Whither shall I go from thy 
 spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? ' ' Thou 
 coverest thyself with light as with a garment; thou art 
 clothed with honour and majesty/ 'Jehovah ! who shall 
 abide in thy tent ? who shall dwell on thy sacred tumulus ? 
 He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, 
 and speaketh the truth heartily. For the word of Je- 
 hovah is right, and all his works are done in truth.' 
 * He loveth righteousness and judgment. Lying lips are 
 his abomination. But true dealers are his delight.' ' The 
 counsel of Jehovah standeth for ever.' ' Thou desirest 
 not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delightest not in 
 bui-nt-olFering.' ' The world is mine and the fulness 
 thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, and drink the blood 
 of goats ? If I were hungry would I tell thee ? Ofier unto 
 God thanksgiving.' % 
 
 It was no Hebrew priest or Levite, but some Idumean 
 sheikh of the eastern desert, who lived it would seem from 
 the best philological criticism long after the days of Solo- 
 mon, who said all those fine things in the Book of Job, 
 like ' Lo, he goeth by me, but I perceive him not.' ' How 
 should a man be just with God ? he cannot answer him for 
 one of a thousand. For he is not man, as I am, that we should 
 come together in judgment. Shall a man be more pure 
 than his Maker ? ' || 
 
 The fine words which are put into the mouth of the first 
 
 1 Kings Vlll. Cf. Svvaaai it cru Travroa dicoviiv 'Avspi Ki}Sofikv(fi. Ilisd, 
 
 16. 614. 
 
 t PrOV. XV. Cf. Btoi TO. TTcivTa "laaaiv. Odys. 4. 379. 
 
 X Psalms xxxiii., 1., li., civ., cxxxix. ; Prov. xv. 
 
 II Job ix., xi. 
 
288 THE POUR TYPES OP [lECT. 
 
 of the prophets, the reputed teacher of David ' The 
 strength of Israel will not lie, nor repent, for he is not a 
 man to repent,^ * give us still the narrow idea of a national 
 god, and not of the universal and only God of the later 
 prophets, such as was known to the author of the Book 
 of Ecclesiastes, who threw the same idea into a much 
 larger mould : ' I know that whatsoever God doeth shall 
 be for ever; nothing can be put to it nor nothing taken 
 from it/ t 
 
 It was in the midst of the desolations of Israel by the 
 hordes of Mesopotamia that the greatest of the prophets 
 expressed the Zoroastrian faith iu those sublime words, 
 * To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto 
 me ? saith Jehovah/ J 
 
 And it was in the last convulsions of national extinction 
 that the Prophet Micah proposed and answered the 
 same awful question in the still sublimer words : 
 ' Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself 
 before the Highest God ? With burnt- offerings, calves of 
 a year old ? Will he be pleased with thousands of rams, 
 or ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my firstborn 
 for my transgression ; the fruit of my body for the sin of 
 my soul ? He hath showed thee, man, what is good. 
 And what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, 
 to love mercy, and to walk humbly before thy God ! ' \\ 
 
 Thy God ! The cycle is complete. The God of Abraham 
 had become the God of the ten tribes ; the God of Israel had 
 grown to be the God of all ; and now this God of mankind 
 is about to come incarnate to the individual soul to claim 
 his last and highest throne of all. 
 
 It was the propagation of these splendid conceptions of 
 deity subsequent to the Babylonian captivity, and after 
 they had come under the Zoroastrian influence of Persia, 
 which cured the J ews of infidelity to Jehovah, made them 
 self-sacrificing Unitarians to the end of time, and pre- 
 pared the way for the founding of the Christian Church. 
 And we are probably to explain the rapid spread of Chris- 
 tianity at the outset by the wide diffusion of Jewish ideas 
 previous to the birth of Christ among the sober-minded 
 Gentiles of Western Asia and the Roman empire. But 
 
 * 1 Sam. XV. f Eccl. iii. % Isaiah i. || Micah vi. 
 
r.] EELiaious WORSHIP. 289 
 
 there resulted thence a strange mixture of monotheism 
 with polytheism before the Christian Era, corresponding 
 to the mixture of Christianity with every form of local 
 heathenism which happened afterwards. 
 
 Professor Sophocles has lately published an ancient 
 epitaph, dug up recently by a seeker for treasures of another 
 sort, near the little town of Zerbhokhia in Magnesia. I 
 will give you his translation of it.* 
 
 ' No other corpse, whether of a man or of a woman, is 
 permitted to be deposited in this vault. And if any one 
 shall recklessly dare to open it, he will anger the most 
 great, the King, the Almighty Maker of all things ; and 
 all the gods, and goddesses, and demigods, and the lady 
 queen herself. For the depositing of any other corpse with 
 these is forbidden once for all.' 
 
 We could not have a better description than this 
 epitaph affords us of that mixed or primitive theism which 
 pervades the older Hebrew or Mosaic Scriptures, and 
 which gave place to a gi-ander and purer monotheism 
 among the prophets of a later age. 
 
 The date of the beginning of this change then would be 
 about 1000 years before Christ. We find in the Hindu 
 Scriptures of that date evidences of a similar growth of 
 the religious mind. ' In the oldest portions of the hymns 
 [of the Eig Veda, the most ancient of the Sanscrit books] 
 we discover,' says Mr Muir, the latest and best English 
 writer on this subject, 'few traces of any such abstract 
 conceptions of the Deity. They disclose a much more 
 primitive stage of religious belief. They are the produc- 
 tions of simple men, who, under the influence of the most 
 impressive phenomena of nature, saw everywhere the 
 presence and agency of divine powers, who imagined that 
 each of the great provinces of the universe was directed 
 and animated by its own separate deity, and who had not 
 yet risen to a clear idea of one Supreme Creator and 
 governor of all things.' f 
 
 The hymns of the Rig Veda are hymns to Agni the god 
 of Fire, Surya the god of the Sun, Indra the god of Storms, 
 addressed each under a variety of names, and strangely 
 mixed up together, and sometimes actually identified with 
 
 • Journ. R. Asiat. Soc, New Series, i. 2, p. 339. 
 
 t Proc. Araer. Acad. p. 17, 1864. 
 
 19 
 
290 THE FOUR TYPES OP [lECT. 
 
 one another. But, as Muir and others have shown, there 
 are strains in these ancient hymns which seem to come from 
 some inner sanctuary, revealing a conception of divinity 
 more spiritual and universal than the general tenour of the 
 hymns. The grades of this spiritualism involved in the 
 general materialism of the Vedic hymns are various. The 
 reader can, as it were, watch the expansion of the poetic 
 idea. Varuna is described as dwelling in a palace of a 
 thousand columns, and a thousand doors,* before he is 
 described as dwelling in all woi'lds, as sovereign ruler, 
 possessed of illimitable resources, meting out, creating, 
 and upholding the heavens and the earth.f The different 
 earliest deities had their different admirers and special 
 devotees. Each deity was praised in strains as exalted as 
 the capacity of the worshipper, and as the growth of the 
 religious ideas of his age. Hence, as the notions of space 
 and time became enlarged, and the powers of abstract 
 thought were cultivated, the pantheon swelled to colossal 
 proportions ; and each separate deity belonging to it be- 
 came to his own worshippers the infinite and eternal God 
 of gods ; while yet retaining his own distinctive name and 
 some relics of his original, local, and specific character. 
 
 The resemblance between the poetic imagery of the 
 Hebrew and Hindu Scriptures of that ancient date is 
 strikingly in harmony with the ethnological derivation of 
 the Abrahamidse from the land of Brahma. The Hebrew 
 poet sings : ' The eyes of Jehovah are in every place be- 
 holding the evil and the good.' The Yedic poet sings : 
 ' Varuna, the mighty ruler of the worlds, sees as if close at 
 hand.^ The Hebrew : ' Whither can I flee from thy pre- 
 sance ? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there ! If I 
 make my bed in the grave, thou art there ! If I take the 
 wings of the morning, and fly into the uttermost parts of 
 the sea, even there will thy right hand uphold me/ — is 
 echoed by the Sanscrit : ' The earth belongs to Varuna 
 the King, and the mighty sky whose ends are far away; 
 the seas are his loins, though he lives in the smallest pool ; 
 let one flee beyond the furthest skies, he should not escape 
 Varuna the King, whose messengers descend from heaven 
 
 ♦ Rig Veda, ii. 41. 5 ; v. 62. 6 ; vii. 88. 5. 
 
 t Ibid. iv. 42. 3, 4 ; vi. 70. 1 ; vii. 86. 1 ; 87. 5, 6; viii. 41. 4, 5. 10; 
 48.1. 
 
X.] RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 291 
 
 and thousand-eyed traverse the earth/ There is in the 
 Hebrew poems a sad, sweet, noble simphcity and intense 
 spiritual personality, which is not so perceptible in their 
 Indian contemporaries. There is also in them an absence 
 of gross mistakes and exaggerations which place them 
 on an eminence unapproachable by the admirers of their 
 Sanscrit rivals ; yet the common propriety which both 
 these holy literatures have in all the essential elements of 
 the divine idea is unmistakable. 
 
 This is especially true of the later hymns of the Rig 
 Veda, and of the hymns of the Atharva Veda, supposed to 
 have been not much, if any, less ancient. It is in these 
 that we begin to find those grand titles : Visva Ka man 
 ' the universal architect,' and Prajapati ' lord of crea- 
 tures ; ' but we notice that they are applied stiU to special 
 deities : Indra, Savitr, Rudra, Soma, Vishnu, or Varuna. 
 In the I21st hymn of the Rig Veda, for example, the deity 
 is celebrated (under the name Hiranyagarbha) as 'arisen 
 in the beginning ; only lord of all ; upholder of heavens 
 and earth ; giver of life and breath ; god of all gods, and 
 the animating principle of their existence.* 
 
 I need not follow this subject further. I confess I do 
 not at all agree with the common explanations of the Hindu 
 mythology, as published by Muir, Max Miiller, and other 
 Sanscrit scholars. Their theories seem to me to have no 
 system. I think it is because they have no basis. They 
 have not yet struck the key-note. In this course of lectures 
 I have been gradually preparing your minds for a view of 
 the subject, which I think may explain most of the diffi- 
 culties which Sanscrit mythologists confess that they en- 
 counter. This is my tenth lecture. I have still one more 
 to deliver. I have reserved the theme to which I have 
 given most attention to the last.f I do not wish to scare you 
 with a deluge of unintelligible words. I think I can repay 
 your patience with a solid addition to your knowledge. I 
 think I can show you an order reigning over the apparent 
 chaos of ideas respecting the gods in olden times. I think 
 I can put into your hands the right key to the door — the 
 safe clue for the labjTinth. The ancient poets were not 
 mad-men; the old philosophers were not all fools. They 
 
 • Sanscrit Texts, iv. 13 H. Muir, p. 344!. 
 
 t The lecture on Arkism has been omitted in this edition. 
 
292 THE FOUR TYPES OP [lECT. 
 
 could distinguish sense from nonsense as well as we — 
 thongli not as well as we. Classical scholars have been 
 tormented by the inconsistent and contradictory family- 
 relations of the Greek and Roman gods, father, brother 
 and son being mixed up together. Sanscrit scholars are 
 equally at a loss to comprehend why Bramanas-pati should 
 be called in one hymn of the Rig Veda ' the father of the 
 gods,^ * and in another ' the son of Tvashtr, lord of all.' f 
 Now I think that it is only in the theory of the develop- 
 ment of the later monotheisms and polytheisms out of the 
 older ancestral worships and fetich- worship of primeval 
 times that we can find our explanation of these and similar 
 mj'thological absurdities. To the ancient bard initiated in 
 the Arkite mysteries they were no absurdities. What was 
 fetich to the vulgar crowd outside was Jdstory and poetry to 
 the priest within. And so it may become to us. But we must 
 comprehend the symbols. Of these I will speak at large 
 when next we meet, and you will permit me to devote an 
 entire evening to them ; for they cover the whole ground 
 of human life and interpenetrate every department of na- 
 tural history. 
 
 For this evening I have but one more word to add. I 
 have spoken of three types of religious ideas : 1. Ancestral 
 worship ; 2. Fetich worship ; 3. Polytheism and Mono- 
 theism. 
 
 IV. The highest type of the religious idea is Pantheism. 
 It is the philosophic idea of God. It is the idea which 
 science takes of the divine. Science, you know, is the know- 
 ledge of the logical imderstanding ; not the instinctive 
 siglit of the pure reason — not the deep faith of the loving 
 imagination. Science is essentially irreligious, that is, 
 unworshipping. Science looks down upon things — not up 
 to them. Science analyzes, dissects, discusses all things; 
 God among the rest : or tries to do so ; it is its vocation, 
 its nature, its duty. Do not blame it. Do not feel a 
 horror at it, as the Italians shuddered at good old Vasari, 
 with his medical fez, loose gown, and scalpel. Vasari 
 with his scalpel looked like a vampire hanging over that 
 dead body. But there was no demoniac fury in the old 
 man's eyes ; no — there was a holy zeal burning in them to 
 
 • Muir, p. 344. R. V. ii. 26. 3. t R. V. ii. 23. 17. 
 
X.] RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 293 
 
 discover tte laws of the anatomy of the dead for the good 
 of the Hving. Science is no vampire of the night, flap- 
 ping its wings over our sleeping religion, soothing its 
 slumbers, and sucking its blood. God forbid the thought. 
 Every part of man must do its duty; and science is the 
 work of man^s logical understanding. Now, the investiga- 
 tion of God by man's understanding has always resulted in 
 some theory of Pantheism. 
 
 Whether philosophers took Fetichism as their stand- 
 point, or whether they took Ancestor-worship as their 
 starting-point, they arrived at Pantheism. The worship 
 of the father on earth developes itself into the worship of 
 the father in heaven. Then the attributes of the personal 
 god become generalized, refined, distributed, dissipated, 
 and identified with the universe. When ancient sages 
 came to believe in the absolute goodness, justice, love, and 
 wisdom of deity, or providence, they fell into that peace 
 which needed nothing, feared nothing, and therefore wor- 
 shipped nothing. Nothing to blame, nothing to praise, 
 the perfect whole became one great divinity. It was so in 
 Magadha and Benares ; it is so in Concord and Boston. 
 
 On the other hand, the worship of the fetich developed 
 itself into the elemental worship of the ancients, and into 
 the thunder- and war-providence worship of orthodox 
 Christianity. If the progress of science has explained 
 away the miracles, where is the miracle-maker? Dis- 
 tributed throughout his universe. All nature becomes a 
 miracle. ' In him we live and move and have our being.'' 
 
 But universal Pantheism is impossible. All the common 
 instincts of man oppose his progress in that dii'ection. 
 Man also is a trinity : he is heart, imagination, under- 
 standing, in one. His God must therefore always be per- 
 sonal and anthropomorphic as well as infinite : personal — 
 to be beloved ; anthropomorphic — to be imagined ; and 
 infinite — to be confided in. The Incarnation of Jesus was 
 a reaction of the human heart against the cold spaciousness 
 of Pantheism. The Assumption of Jesus was a reaction of 
 the imagination against the dark vagueness of Pantheism. 
 So long as man feels himself a child he will climb up upon 
 the knees of the Father who is in heaven ; or nestle to the 
 bosom of Abraham. So long as woman feels herself op- 
 pressed and afflicted she will idolize a well-defined divinity. 
 
294 THE FOUR TYPES OP EELIQIOUS WORSHIP. 
 
 Joy and sorrow make common cause against the approach 
 of Pantheism. Youth and women — three quarters of the 
 human race — are idolaters by natural necessity. Let then 
 the progress of science — the deductions of the logical un- 
 derstanding — clear away from men's eyes the errors of the 
 past, and lead them into that liberty of spirit which is due 
 to Christianity, ' the liberty wherewith Christ made his 
 people free/ — ^it will be none the less a fact that 'the things 
 of the Spirit are spiritually discerned.' There are things 
 that science cannot grasp, some things that lie beyond the 
 scope of logic ; and it will be as true in every age as it 
 was when the blessed Master took a little child and set him 
 in the midst of them, that — 'many things are hidden from 
 the wise and prudent which are revealed unto babes. 
 
LECTURE XL 
 
 THE POSSIBLE IN DESTENT. 
 
 Theke are but two great schools of philosophy, the 
 Optimist and the Pessimist. 
 
 The one teaches that the world was made to be a 
 success — a distinguished success. 
 
 The other teaches that the world made itself, and is 
 bound to be a failure — a flagrant and miserable failure. 
 
 Can these schools claim co-ordinate authority? Can 
 such opposite philosophies be avouched of equal value ? 
 Impossible. The senate-chamber and the mad-house, 
 a ball-room and a hospital-ward, could not inspire spec- 
 tators with more contrary sentiments. 
 
 Who are they who compose these schools ? 
 
 Pessimists are made of thinkers who are sick at 
 heart — the discontented, the discouraged, and the dis- 
 consolate ; hopers who have lost hope in losing youth, 
 fortune, ambition, affection, zest in work ; dreamers of 
 the absolute, who are tired of wandering blindly among 
 truths undemonstrable, and vices irremediable ; men 
 who have lost themselves in scenes of misery not to be 
 relieved by charity ; men shipwrecked on a monotonous 
 continent of ignorance, gloomy with fogs impenetrable 
 to the rays of science ; men of exceptional sensibilities ; 
 men of diseased, abnormal tenderness of spirit; men 
 whose eyeballs are avenues for the approach of pain, 
 whose hearts are overswollen with excessive sympa- 
 thies ; men crushed by the load of the sins of an unre- 
 deemed world. 
 
 Can such as these be philosophers, teachers, proph- 
 ets ? These be no prophets. These have never heard 
 the voice of one crying in the wilderness, " Make His 
 paths straight before Him ! " 
 
296 THE POSSIBLE IN DESTINY. [LECT. 
 
 Pessimism is the doctrine of the school of the lost 
 prophets. 
 
 Its image and symbol is that gaunt figure perambu- 
 lating the battlements of the doomed city, crying b}'- 
 day and by night : " Woe ! Woe to Jerusalem ! " and 
 struck dead by the flying stone from the Roman 
 engines, with the cry in his mouth: "Woe! Woe to 
 myself!" 
 
 But the school of the Optimists is in the grove of 
 beauty and in the portico of health; where the sun 
 shines and the birds carol ; whither the sounds of the 
 anvil and the loom penetrate from the city, and the 
 lowing of kine and bleat of flocks from the pasture and 
 ploughed field. 
 
 Optimism weighs the sum of good against the sum of 
 evil and believes in eternal providence ; measures the 
 misery of life and finds it in the proportion of the lees 
 to the wine ; estimates knowledge b}' its commonplace 
 usefulness, and counts the virtues by the number of 
 honest faces in a crowd. 
 
 Optimism is the practical prose side of philosophy, 
 on which is written the legend of patience, contentment, 
 hard work, and holy love for man and beast ; life with 
 many a merry passage for the most unfortunate, and 
 death, the angel, the Christ, releaser of the spirits for 
 a season in prison. 
 
 To both these opposing schools " The World " means 
 man — mankind. The rest of the world is merely the 
 addenda. Respecting man only are they opposed. 
 They agree that the animal, vegetable, mineral, and 
 physical phenomena of the universe are all right. Only 
 man is badly treated, thinks the Pessimist. INIan also 
 its well arranged, thinks the Optimist. The Pessimist 
 is inconsequent, the Optimist is logical. In the school 
 of Pessimism one virtually sits in the seat of the 
 scorner. 
 
 The destiny of all things is to attain the possible : for 
 the world at large, the possible for it ; for mankind, 
 the possible for it ; for man in particular, the possible 
 for him. 
 
 How do we know this ? We do not know it. We 
 
XI.] THE POSSIBLE IN DESTINY. 297 
 
 onij believe it, are sure of it, rely upon it. It is a 
 reasonable conclusion from all we know, and from all 
 we see going on around us. 
 
 Science is the definition of the possible. Science is 
 knowledge of relationships determined by surrounding 
 circumstances ; of the knowledge of exhibitions of 
 forces counteracting and directing each other within a 
 bounded arena overlooked by spectators. Each force 
 has its possibilities of scope, direction and intensity, 
 resulting in established possibilities of form, color, size, 
 quantities and qualities, all and singly predetermined 
 and postdetermined by a common law. 
 
 Life is the struggle from within outward to accom- 
 plish all that is possible by and for the living thing. 
 Destiny is its success. 
 
 Is there a destiny of failure ? Certainly not. Fail- 
 ure is merely failure ; a check from the surrounding 
 success. What one gains another loses ; what one loses 
 another gains. Each attains its own possible, though 
 not another's. There are eddies in all rivers. While 
 the whole succeeds perfectly, parts succeed only par- 
 tially. The current shoots ahead, the eddies lag ; but 
 the whole river reaches the sea, except what rises into 
 the sky. 
 
 What is possible? Theologians say that all things 
 are possible with God ; but it is precisely with God 
 that all is not possible ; for God is the embodiment, the 
 embodier of law; and law is another word for cor- 
 relation and interlimitation. Law is both the assertion 
 and denial of possibilities. 
 
 Two and two cannot make five ; a body cannot be 
 hard and soft, hot and cold, active and passive, acid 
 and alkali at the same moment to its vis-d-vis. One 
 cannot be before another, and yet behind it ; which is 
 only saying over again that order must reign, and 
 eddies be in all rivers bounded by irregular shores. 
 All creatures resemble rivers bounded by irregular 
 shores ; and the possible for them — and theii destiny 
 to accomplish the possible — is made up of the current 
 and the eddies. 
 
 Some of the relationships which limit the possible 
 
298 THE POSSIBLE I^ DESTINY. [LECT. 
 
 and predict destiny seem to be fixed and universal ; 
 while others are evidently slight, fleeting, and momen- 
 tarily influential, or, as we call them, accidental. But 
 it cannot be that even the vastest relationships of the 
 universe are really fixed and universal. They onl}'- 
 seem so to us babes of time and place. Therefore, 
 while the destiny of man seems unchangeably good to 
 the Optimist, and fixedly bad to the Pessimist, it is 
 running a course, describing an orbit, unrolling a life 
 of its own too large and long and too distant (in past 
 and future) from our momentary stand-point of obser- 
 vation to be studied by us according to the ordinary 
 canons of human investigation. 
 
 The destiny of every created thing is necessarily 
 determined for it by the relations which exist between 
 the qualities of its own constitution and the qualities 
 which characterize created things around it. To know 
 its destiny, we must know first what it is, and secondly 
 what they are. 
 
 Take this crystal and drop it into the sea. What 
 becomes of it ? That will depend : 1, upon whether it 
 be a crystal of quartz, or of feldspar, or of calcite, or 
 of common salt ; 2, upon where in the sea you drop it ; 
 on what shore ; swept by what current ; in the tropics 
 or near the pole. In one case, it will resist solution and 
 be covered up where you drop it, or be swept away to 
 be deposited in the distance ; in another case, it will be 
 dissolved and mixed with the tides and circumnavigate 
 the globe ; enter into the tissues of sc^iweeds and corals, 
 or become part of the tests of moUusks or bony fibre of 
 fish. 
 
 A babe is born into the constituent mass of human 
 society. What is to be its destiny? Sa}^ first, what 
 are its inherited qualities of soul and body ; secondly, 
 into what specially constituted zone of social life it is 
 dropped, in what age of peace or war, in what class of 
 luxur}^ or sordid penury, in the city or in the fields, in 
 the forest or in the desert, among the mountains or 
 upon the plain, amid the snows and scanty daylight of 
 the North which imprison men beneath their house- 
 roofs, or where perjjetual warmth and abundant fruit 
 make life in the open air a free festival. 
 
XI.] THE POSSIBLE IN DESTDTST. 299 
 
 The key-note of modern science is given by this A- 
 string of the violin, this dominant of existence : that 
 every created thing, whether belonging to the spiritual 
 or material worlds, is acted upon by and reacts upon its 
 surroundings by virtue of its own nature and theirs. 
 The result is its destiny. There is no escape. There 
 is no intervention. Given the first two terms of the 
 equation, the third follows. 
 
 But the terms are complicated, and the formulse of 
 resolution numerous. Substitution after substitution 
 must be made by the calculator before the value of x 
 appears. He is dealing with such a multitude of fac- 
 tors that his calculus must be both integral and differ- 
 ential. Long//'s multiply on the page. Perhaps the 
 value of X never appears. That is not the fault of 
 nature nor of science, but of the mathematician. A slip 
 spoils his demonstration but has no effect upon the 
 nature of thins^s. Some unrecotjnized element in the 
 problem must be sought for. The reagents react ahvays 
 in the same style, whether in the beaker-glass of Ber- 
 zelius, or in the alembic of Paracelsus, or in the crucible 
 of the old mountebank of Somerset County. Nature is 
 no observer of persons. She cares not who is looking 
 on and does her duty. This is the astonishing specta- 
 cle of destiny. Xature confers no D.D.'s, calls no man 
 sage or saint, is blind to the existence of prophets, deaf 
 to the groans of nations, smiles at the suggestions of 
 her pupils, and froAvns at the absolution of priests. 
 There is no absolution. The universe is all solution and 
 precipitation — re-solution and re-precipitation — with- 
 out haste, without indecision, unerring, absolute, inevi- 
 table, normal, beautiful and divine. 
 
 In this despotism which the nature of things habit- 
 ually, unceasingly, inexorabl3% both benignantly and 
 pitilessly exercises over all created things the Pagan 
 and the Pessimist see fate and the devil ; the Christian 
 and the Optimist see God's powerful mind and benev- 
 olent heart. 
 
 That is the essential difference between the two 
 schools. 
 
 But there are Pessimists concealed in the school of 
 
300 THE rOSSlBLE IN DESTINY. 
 
 Optimism, pretenders, eclectics, wIkj borrow from the 
 text-books of its adversary to warp and debase tlieir 
 own profession. When the sons of God assemble to 
 worship, Satans appear among them, point to the case of 
 Job, and say : All then is not good, and all is not inevi- 
 table. Destiny may be thwarted by its own inventor; 
 natural consequences may be averted by prayer, fasting, 
 and alms ; miracles may be wrought on special occa- 
 sions; demons maybe unchained from the Euphrates, 
 and science may be rendered uncertain by divine or 
 diabolic interposition. 
 
 No Christian can be a true Optimist who subscribes 
 to the popular belief in hell. No Optimist can be a 
 true philosopher who subscribes to the popular belief in 
 miracles and prayer. 
 
 Yet hell is a part of the universe, miracles a part of 
 its phenomena, and prayer the privilege of life. 
 
 These mysteries we must examine. They involve 
 their own explanation in that of the:destiny of mankind. 
 But there is a natural order to every investigation ; and 
 to discover the destiny of man we must begin by distin- 
 guishing the whole from the parts, the individual from 
 the race. We must also distinguish destiny from des- 
 tination. We must learn the future from the past, and 
 the past from the present. And we must bring to bear 
 upon the subject of our research the light of every 
 department of physical and mental science. 
 
 This is our task. It is a hard one. It has strained 
 the intellectual sinews of the greatest thinkers. It has 
 filled the libraries of the world with treatises. How 
 can it be accomplished in a chapter or two ? 
 
LECTURE XII. 
 
 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 
 
 When a great subject presents itself to the mind, it 
 is as when the countless dove-clouds of Egypt take 
 wing above the gunner's head. He knows not how to 
 shoot. 
 
 A traveller's destination is his journey's end. The 
 traveller's destiny comprises all his adventures by the 
 way, and the success or failure of his hopes and wishes 
 for that and every other journey he may ever make. 
 The traveller's destiny rides on horseback outside his 
 carriage door, like a lady's lover or a convict's guard 
 or a general's aide-de-camp. 
 
 The Moirai sit by the housewife's hearth, and rock 
 the baby's cradle. The three weird sisters, Clotho, 
 Lachesis, and Atropos, spin, measure out, and clip at 
 the appointed length the thread of its destined life. 
 Born of the night, they explain not their work ; ser- 
 vants of deity, they listen to no complaints; joint 
 regents of land and sea, there is no escape from their 
 dominion ; the common wives of one husband, Neces- 
 sity, their lips and the baby's lips are alike sealed. 
 
 And thus they sat at the cradle of the world. 
 
 Fate: fatum est, sat sapientibus verhiim, — "the word 
 has gone out, and shall not return. ... So shall my word, 
 going forth from my mouth, return not unto me void, 
 but accomplish what I please, and prosper where I send 
 it." It is decreed. 
 
 From this ^v,"', I say, Greeks made their 6r]ur], a voice 
 from heaven, a prophecy, an oracle; and Latins their 
 fama (fame), and their fatum (fate). For whatever 
 
302 THE DESTINT OF MAX. [LECT. 
 
 happens is first ordered, and then reported. History 
 is but the echo of predestination. And the joys and 
 sorrows of every man are but a drama pkiyed between 
 the author behind the scenes and the audience before 
 the footlights, — an anonymous author, and an audience 
 indistinguishable for its multitudinous variety. 
 
 What then is fame, unless it be referred back to its 
 author ? And what worth hath human history except 
 when recited by a soul inspired with a knowledge of 
 the mind of God? To comprehend the destiny of a 
 man requires a comprehension of his birth and educa- 
 tion, — those hereditary traits which characterized the 
 stock on which he budded, and the divine appointments 
 of soil and climate in which he grew ; the race to which 
 he belonged ; the century in which he lived ; the wealth 
 or poverty which lapped him ; the winds which blew 
 about him ; the food he ate, the games he played, the 
 books he read, the women he loved, the battles, great or 
 small, with himself and with the world outside, which 
 he fought, and how in each and all of them the victory 
 perched. For out of all these destinies his destiny is 
 compounded. 
 
 It is a mere trick of the irrational fancy to argue that 
 a man's death is his destiny because when he dies he 
 vanishes suddenly from view. Yes : from our view. 
 But how is that event more significant of destiny than 
 was his sudden appearance on the scene to our view ? 
 The sentiment which palpitates through society at the 
 death of a man has as little share in the " Word of the 
 Lord " as the applause or the hisses under cover of 
 which an actor quits the stage. It is but one of his 
 many adventures, — a part of his continuous destiny; 
 and commonly as slight an index of his native charac- 
 ter as it is an unimportant episode of his biography. 
 The majority of human beings, like guests from a 
 crowded ball-room, slip away unperceived. 
 
 Destiny for the individual is made up of unnoticed 
 and unnoticeable articles. It streams through one's 
 days and nights as diseased or healthy blood-globules 
 succeed each other through one's veins. It tempers a 
 man's palate, and nerves his arms. It looks out at him 
 
XII.] THE DESTI^'Y OF MAN. 303 
 
 from the e3'es of his wife, and is reflected upon him iu 
 the behavior of his children. It furnishes or unfur- 
 nishes his homestead. It sows and reaps his fields. It 
 sharpens or blunts the tools of his handicraft. It per- 
 vades his heart with passions, and his brain with ideas. 
 It is the orbit in which he moves toward or from the 
 central sun of his existence, drawing him inward to the 
 warmer and more brilliant regions of the universe, or 
 driving him forth into the outer darkness and cold of 
 solitary spaces. 
 
 But the main point is, How does the man himself 
 regard his own fate ? 
 
 This also is part of his fate, and may be almost called 
 the self-determining will of his fate. For, if he make 
 himself his fate's friend, all will go well with it and him. 
 But, if he conceives an aversion for it, if it disgusts 
 him, enrages him, torments him ; if he be afraid of it, as 
 a burglar breaking into his chamber, or as a jailer feed- 
 ing him on bread and water who may forget or with- 
 hold and leave him to starve, or as a tyrant whose nod 
 can at any moment order him to execution, or as a 
 treacherous guide who will probably lead him to self- 
 destruction, or as a master who only wants him for a 
 tool or a plaj'thing or raw stuff to make something else 
 out of — then he and it are lost together. 
 
 INIen lump all fatalists and condemn them in a mass. 
 But no difference can be more fundamental, more egre- 
 gious, more operative, than the difference between fatal- 
 isms and — fatalisms. Buddhistic fatalism is grandiose, 
 if absurd. Mohammedan fatalism is as commonplace 
 as it is enervating. Christian fatalism is inspiring, 
 stimulating, strengthening, and affectionate. Scientific 
 fatalism is the soul of curiosit}', the basis of reason, a 
 whip to investigation, a sword to superstition ; robs 
 religion of its terrors, and prepares the whole apparatus 
 of the future for man's salvation. 
 
 Kismet, murmurs the Turk, on the approach of the 
 cholera or plague, and sits down to smoke his pipe. 
 Deo volente, whispers the Christian, as he hurries to the 
 hospital to save whom he can. And there he finds 
 already in advance of him the man of science calmly 
 
804 THE DESTINY OF MAN. [LECT. 
 
 studying tlie unalterable law of disease, and the trained 
 nurse instructed in a routine as intelligent and regular 
 as that of the solar system, representing in her sacred 
 person the mind, the heart, and the hand of God — 
 all three in one — and she also a fatalist, knowing how 
 to say of any patient : saved ! or, doomed ! but never 
 damned ! 
 
 The future destiny of mankind is for all to become 
 fatalists in the Christian sense ; to say, " If thou wilt 
 not what I will, then, O Lord, I will what thou willst; 
 and so we shall still be agreed." As the order of the 
 world becomes universally known it will become uni- 
 versally both acquiesced in and enjoyed, both obeyed 
 and commanded. Learn to obey and thou shalt 
 become ruler, says the Fate in Nature to the Fate in 
 Man. Love me and I will serve thee, says this queen- 
 lover to her lackey. Lift my veil reverently and take 
 a thousand kisses, says this Isis to the priest. Fear 
 the Lord and depart from evil, so shall thy days be 
 long and prosperous on earth, rings through the air of 
 all lands, and will so ring for a thousand years, until all 
 shall know the Lord from the greatest even unto the 
 least of the sons and daughters of Adam. 
 
 Nature then is fate, and natural religion is the des- 
 tined religion of the future. Man's salvation is the 
 product of obedience to the Col-Jehovah ; this " voice 
 which maketh the hinds to calve, and breaketh the 
 cedars of Lebanon" ; and the salvation of the race is to 
 be an outcome of universal education in true science, 
 where all shall know the Lord, and hearken diligently 
 to his voice, — of a universal training of the brain, the 
 affections, and the will of men of all races in all lands. 
 
 How is this to come about ? Education, by the mul- 
 tiplication of teachers ; sanctification, by the multipli- 
 cation of saints ; activity, by the multiplication of 
 heroes. But teachers, saints, and heroes are them- 
 selves men and women. 
 
 Therefore, the prime and central fate of mankind is 
 man himself. This is that God manifest in flesh. This 
 is that Holy Ghost. This is the Jesus who is to be 
 with people — his people, and all mankind are his 
 
Xri.] THE DESTINY OF MAN. 305 
 
 people — to the end of time ; and, as he walks, his 
 special followers walk behind him as students follow a 
 demonstrator through the clinic ; and the following 
 grows as the ages elapse ; and finally the whole mixed 
 multitudes of the earth will be but one vast flock, led 
 by the great, good Shepherd. 
 
 Meanwhile, every good soul is a Jesus redivivus, and 
 has his or her own desert and Galilee, Tabor and Geth- 
 semane. As he was a fate to millions, each of them 
 becomes a fate to many. Science blunders if she limits 
 her definition of fate as habitat by excluding man. The 
 prime factor in the habitat of the bird is the abundance 
 or scarcity of seed ; of the fish, the temperature of the 
 sea ; of the buffalo and the horse, the luxuriance or 
 drought of the prairie grass; but of man, the virtue or 
 vice of surrounding people. 
 
 Every human being is therefore a main part of the 
 fate of his or her fellow-creatures; and the destiny of a 
 generation or of a race is determined by a plebiscite 
 vote, just as is the result of an election held on demo- 
 cratic principles. The majority carries the day and 
 holds the reins of government. But an aristocratic 
 minority also exercises power, and more power in pro- 
 portion to its size than the democratic majority. The 
 proof of resident deity is, that, in the long run, the 
 minority of goodness outweighs the majority of bad- 
 ness, so that" the whole tendency of history is toward 
 goodness. For, one man or woman, if wise and good, 
 can affect the fate of societ}^ more than a score of men 
 and women who are foolish and ill-behaved. Because 
 nature — that is, fate — justifies the words and conduct 
 of the wise openh' in the sight of all, and as openly 
 condemns folly by punishing it. 
 
 The destiny of mankind then, after all said, hangs 
 and turns on the hinges of individual human conduct; 
 on personal goodness, and the normal increase of the 
 number of individuals who are personally good. Fa- 
 natics sigh for some impossible liighcr exhibition of indi- 
 vidual goodness, some abiKjrmal display of superhuman 
 qualifications for a normal terrene life. The wise anti- 
 cipate only an increase of human goodness in the gross ; 
 
806 THE DESTINY OF MAN. [LECT. 
 
 a perfect sum total of earthly goodness ; when none 
 shall be better than the best who have already lived, 
 but when all shall be good, and thus consent and con- 
 cur to keep all good. Let the wise and good breed 
 many children in their own likeness, and let the seed of 
 the ungodl}^ perish. So, and so only, shall the earth be 
 filled with the glory of the Lord, as the waters fill the 
 sea. 
 
 But what is goodness ? 
 
 Anon ! Anon ! That requires illustrations, and we 
 must pursue our train of thought a little further. 
 
 There is a distinction to be drawn between the phys- 
 ical and spiritual destinies of mankind, although they 
 are so intimately interwoven that they must be real- 
 ized together. For Manicheism is absurd, and the last 
 traces of Asceticism are disappearing from the morning 
 sky. We are followers of St. Paul, not of St. Anthony. 
 The time comes when all fakirs and dervishes will be 
 committed to houses of correction, with Italian organ- 
 grinders and book-agents. The flesh is as good as it 
 is beautiful, as good and as beautiful as the mind and 
 soul, and much more easily saved. But the flesh exists 
 only for the life that is in it, and beauty should be only 
 the garb of goodness. 
 
 The physical destiny of each individual man, then, is 
 to eat and live, to propagate children and die. 
 
 The physical destiny of mankind as a whole, may be 
 stated in the same terms. It is at least true that the 
 physical sciences predict with absolute confidence the 
 coming of a time, however remote from the present age, 
 when the sun will cease to shine, water to flow, grass to 
 grow, and man to exist as a terrestrial animal; in which 
 most remote and undatable catastrophe, however, his- 
 torical and philanthropic philosophers can hardly be 
 expected to interest themselves. 
 
 Nearer and dearer topics of meditation absorb us : — 
 the growth of virtue in man and woman, the welfare of 
 separate communities, the good ordering of local gov- 
 ernments, the preservation or premature decay and pos- 
 sible extinction of races in detail, and the spring and 
 spread of benignant influences, ameliorating the cares 
 
XU.] THE DESTINY OF MAN. 307 
 
 and sorrows of men of every race, in every quarter of 
 the globe. 
 
 It is, in fact, the possible enhancement of human 
 virtue and human happiness which instigates the good 
 to action, generates a true public spirit, makes reform- 
 ers, martyrs, and philosophers merry, and indicates tlu' 
 character of that millennial age, the very name of 
 which is to most minds the equivalent of human 
 destiny. 
 
 But, in this sense, the destiny of a man and the des- 
 tiny of mankind are terms which at first sight bear 
 different and opposite meanings ; although on further 
 observation these meanings will be seen to resolve 
 themselves into one and the same, — in materials, proc- 
 ess of manufacture, and final use. 
 
 What, asks the Westminster Catechism, is the chief 
 end of man? 
 
 Answer : The chief end of man is to glorify God and 
 enjoy him forever. 
 
 In no case is this chief end of a man's existence on 
 earth likely to be wholl}^ and perfectly fulfilled; for 
 individual perfection is hindered at the commencement 
 of life by inherited defects of both material and con- 
 struction ; and throughout the whole course of life by 
 defects of education and untoward circumstances. 
 
 The theological doctrine of original sin is plainly a 
 fanciful portraiture of the hereditary disabilities under 
 which each human being is ushered upon the stage of 
 life — disabilities which are undeniable facts, and uni- 
 versally felt to be so. 
 
 The Oriental saying quoted by Jesus in his conver- 
 sation with the young man of the Gospels : ^ Why call- 
 est thou me good ? There is none good save God," is 
 merely an exaggeration or forensic generalization of 
 those imperfections, so numerous and so disabling, 
 which every human being has been compelled to recog- 
 nize in his own behavior, in childhood, in middle life, 
 and in old age alike. 
 
 Yet "be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is per- 
 fc'-t " must be a command based upon some sound and 
 general condition of things in this world, and is in fact 
 
308 THE DESTINY OF MAN. [LECT. 
 
 fully justified by the near approach to perfect manhood, 
 or likeness to the highest ideal of mankind, actually 
 made by multitudes of men and women in every gen- 
 eration. 
 
 It is evidently as possible for a man or a woman to 
 be perfectly good, as it is possible for a cow, under the 
 most favorable circumstances, to fulfil all her righteous- 
 ness, or for an exceptionally fine horse to run the 
 mortal career of an absolutely typical or model horse, 
 or for a monkej'' to be as complete and perfect a mon- 
 key as could be got up by any creator on the basis of 
 such and such generic and specific characters. 
 
 But it is equally evident that the very perfection of 
 a cow lies in her laziness, without which she would be 
 lean and tough and milkless ; that the perfection of a 
 horse culminates in his stupidity, without which man 
 would find it impossible to manage his fiery strength. 
 The perfection of a monkey is its sinfulness, its insane 
 passion for mischief, an abandon of curiosity tormenting 
 to the surrounding animal world. That of the tiger is his 
 cruelty and craft and treachery and deceit. That of a 
 snake is its venom and ability to fascinate and swallow 
 pitilessly birds and small quadrupeds; that of a fish, 
 to gluttonize on shoals of its own offspring ; that of the 
 eagle, to rob ewes of their lambs and pick out their eyes. 
 These abilities and habitudes are the forms which 
 divine perfection puts on in such creatures and also in 
 man, so long as man remains a citizen of the animal 
 commonwealth, and also afterward; but less and less 
 as he migrates toward and finally settles in the new 
 world of super-animal civility. And at last the substi- 
 tution of another set of qualities changes the exhibi- 
 tion of God in flesh to a more glorious fashion. 
 
 " Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect," 
 is then a phrase carrying two very different meanings, 
 corresponding to the two kinds of human goodness — 
 the goodness of man as a spirited animal and the good- 
 ness of man as an embodied spirit. The first kind of 
 goodness being very general in the world, and the last 
 kind of goodness being in Jesus' day very rare — and 
 still rare enough for dogmatic purposes in our own 
 
Xn.] THE DESTINY OF MAN. 309 
 
 times — Jesus cominauded and prophesied it, not the 
 other kind. 
 
 The philosopher of the nineteenth century expects a 
 millennium illustrated by both kinds of human perfec- 
 tion ; not in rare cases and classes, and favored individ- 
 uals and sects, but universally. All men and women 
 shall in course of ages become as good, as perfect as 
 horses, cows, monkeys, tigers and snakes are, and also 
 as good, as perfect as Jesus was, and also as good, as 
 perfect, in their kind, as God the Father is in his infi- 
 nite, comprehensible, and unmistakable way. 
 
 In other words, the lower and the higher natures of 
 all mankind — physique and intellect, passions: and 
 aspirations — shall both of them be cultivated to per- 
 fection, universally, under every possible variety of cir- 
 cumstance, stirpal and personal, tribal, national, com- 
 munal, and familiar. The breeding of man will become 
 as high an art as the breeding of plants or cattle. 
 And this art must apply itself with the same conscien- 
 tious closeness to the various utilities of man-kind as to 
 the various utilities of cattle-kind and plant-kind. Beg- 
 garly science that, to make all men alike and all 
 women alike, in making them perfect as God is perfect ! 
 The stars must differ still in glory after the differ- 
 ent species of glow-worms have become stars. The 
 glory of each will be, that it will shine its own kind of 
 light. Creeds cannot manage this sort of thing. No 
 technical doctrine of goodness and badness can cast so 
 much as a rushlight along so vast a vista as that of the 
 future — mankind perfectly arranged according to all 
 the human qualities and all their uses ; each quality 
 being good for its appropriate uses, and each use being 
 good in its appropriate circumstances, and bad only 
 when out of time and tune in the orchestra. Some 
 men are born fifes and D flutes, and others are born 
 diapason pipes and ophicleides, and others clanging 
 cymbals or kettle-drums, and some delicate violins or 
 superb 'cellos, or martial bugles and cornets, or soul- 
 ravishing French horns ; and some are the voices of 
 angels who have come unperceived to listen to the con- 
 cert, and stayed to partake in it. 
 
310 THE DESTINY OF MAN. [LECT. 
 
 By all these are the Composer's thoughts turned into 
 music. But in each reside possibilities of harmony and 
 discord ; and these possibilities realize themselves in 
 what we call human goodness and human badness. If 
 the music call for harmony, then discord is bad. But 
 if the music call for discord, then harmon}^ becomes 
 bad. Good and evil change places. And this is tlie 
 key to the right interpretation of human history. And 
 this is also the test of reason in any system of ethics ; 
 of divinity in any religious creed. It certainly domi- 
 nates the true logic of human depravity ; for the ques- 
 tion is not, Are all men sinners ? but, Is all sin sin ? 
 
 To discuss sin, one must begin with original sin. All 
 sin is in fact original, just as all virtue is original, since 
 both issue like wind from the pipes of the organ, man ; 
 for the wind has no music when it is blown into the 
 pipes, but the reed in the pipe originates the music. 
 Each of its own kind, true or false, good or bad, accord- 
 ing as it is made and tuned, and not otherwise. 
 
 The doctrine of orisfinal sin might be aro^ued for from 
 small to large, from the defects in every baby born 
 to the brutality of savage populations and the prevalent 
 vices of cities. But it is demonstrated by those results 
 of archaeological research which have been described 
 in Lecture VI. on the early Social Life of Man : — 
 no age of gold, no Adaraic Eden ; cave-dwellers of the 
 Stone ages, oscillating to and fro in front of the polar 
 ice; invaded, driven back, extinguished or absorbed by 
 succeeding races of equally barbarous metal-workers 
 of the bronze and iron ages ; followed by civilizations 
 abortive, cultivating superstitions hideous ; from all 
 which arose, in the last times, true learning and genuine 
 humanity. 
 
 No man has been good, no race has not deserved the 
 name of bad. Yet God was at first and afterward and 
 all the time good, and his nature sweet and true. For 
 man, all God's plans and performances were only tenta- 
 tive and preparatory, but how prophetic ! 
 
 Good! There we have a Joseph's coat of many 
 colors. 
 
 Groodf All things have been always good and right. 
 
Xn.] THE DESTINY OF MAN. 311 
 
 For mankind is a thing. And every man is a thing. 
 
 What, then, must we mean by good? 
 
 In the eye of science, philosophy and Optimism, the 
 arranged is good, the disarranged is bad. Filth is mat- 
 ter out of place. Sin is intemperance, disobedience, 
 irrationality, inconsistency, imperfection, incomplete- 
 ness. 
 
 Nothing can be teleologically good until it is finished. 
 Nothing can be scientifically bad, if it be going on unto 
 completion. To move is to live ; and life has the seed 
 of the perfect in it, although it doth not yet appear 
 "what it shall be. 
 
 In the last analysis, the had turns out to be the 
 inconvenient. But it is quite convenient to itself and 
 to its generating element. For all else, it is inconven- 
 ient, and therefore bad. The young wolf is good to the 
 old wolf, but bad to the ewe and its lamb. Weeds are 
 beneficent to the waste land, to the rivers that drain 
 their reservoir of rain-water, to the soil they protect 
 from erosion, to the birds they feed with seeds, whose 
 nests they supply with timber, to the botanist whose 
 heart they rejoice ; but the farmer sees in them a curse 
 for Adam's sin. " Thorns and briars shall it produce, 
 and in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread" he 
 murmurs, as he pulls them up and crushes them under 
 stones, as evil and only evil, and that continually. 
 
 Can we say less of the Bedouin, "that wicked 
 race " of Egyptian literature, the Kurd, the Miaotze, or 
 the red Indian? Have not barbarians been thorns in 
 the side of every local ci^^lization■? Yet hold not all 
 barbarous tribes from Nature a freehold right to habi- 
 tation, and Nature's passport of citizenship? Is not 
 Nature's aegis of protection thrown over them as effec- 
 tively as over classic Greece and Rome? Where are 
 Babylon and Memphis now ? Were they good because 
 they were seats of learning and centres of art ? Where 
 now is that Jerusalem, tlie Holy City, the delight of 
 the whole earth? 
 
 If, then. Nature lovingly protects the bad, God must 
 love the bad; or — man is mistaken as to what is bad. 
 
 Both are true. God loves and cherishes as good 
 
312 THE DESTINY OF MAN. [LECT. 
 
 much that man designates and denominates the bad. 
 Jesus taught this in parables, and science exphiins his 
 parabk'S. 
 
 When Jesus turned to the woman and said unto her, 
 " Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee : sin no more" 
 lie expressed the central truth of human wisdom — that 
 the good is the convenient, and the bad the inconven- 
 ient. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of 
 good and evil grow side by side. In the vernacular, the 
 good is proper and the evil 'improp>er. Proper to what? 
 Proper to its own time and circumstances ; that is, con- 
 venient. To kill a tiger is heroic, to kill a monkey is 
 shameful, to kill a slave detestable. No words can 
 express our horror of the thumbscrew and faggot ; but 
 we have only terms of admiration for the dentist's tools 
 and the moxa. And yet good men have been inquisi- 
 tors, sportsmen, members of Vigilance Committees. 
 The question is, Did they know what they were doing? 
 The last words of Jesus were, " Father, forgive them, 
 for they know not what they do." Who ? Even they 
 who howled, " Awa}^ with this fellow from the earth." 
 Was it because he was so supremely good ? No : it was 
 because he could not look upon them as so very bad. 
 They were, in fact, men who loved their wives, their 
 children and their countr}^ — good citizens, as the times 
 went, but semi-civilized. They had not yet attained. 
 Their character was inchoate, fcetal ; in a stage of the 
 process of formation at which they were but half-made 
 men. Their destiny was in mid-career. 
 
 What is true then of animals in natural history, 
 and of savages and criminals in human history, must 
 i)e true also of the evil-minded and evil-doers with 
 whom we live. They are not bad in the eyes of God 
 ;ind of Nature in the same sense in which they seem so 
 bad to us. We are easily deceived b}- our natural love 
 of what is to us convenient. The shingle-stealer has 
 certainly more right to the timber of the forest than we 
 liave ; for he works it for the convenience of society, 
 and does no harm to any one. Yet we brand him as a 
 thief, and shut him up from the light of the sun like a 
 wild beast, precisely as if he had starved his family. 
 
XII.] THE DESTINY OF MAN. 313 
 
 Whatever traverses our personal convenience, that is 
 bad. This is the shibboleth. 
 
 Let us take another view. Let us suppose that the 
 State owned the forest, and that the shingle-cutter were 
 a citizen. Is he changed? Is his conduct altered? 
 Does he support his family otherwise than as before ? 
 Is he less or more diligent, enduring, self-sacrificing, 
 honest to the store-keeper, attentive to sick neighbors ? 
 Is he less or more passionate, sober, envious, truthful, 
 chaste, or profane ? The situation is unchanged. The 
 man is unchanged. His deeds are the same : his 
 thoughts, his words, his behavior, are just what they 
 were before. Yet, strange to say, he is now no longer 
 a thief, but an honest fellow and good citizen. 
 
 What, then, has wrought this result ? Something that 
 has happened hundreds of miles away, at Harrisburg, 
 or in Philadelphia. An idea has slipped from men's 
 minds and been replaced by another idea. 
 
 Another case : A poor man in a city steals a loaf of 
 bread, because he has had no work and his children are 
 crying for something to eat. He is a thief, a beggar, a 
 miscreant. He is arrested, tried, convicted, and sent 
 to jail.* 
 
 But suppose a change of ideas in the minds of the 
 people of that city to take place. Instead of the idea 
 that the thief is a public enemy, suppose the idea that he 
 is the public's ward. Instead of the idea that the con- 
 
 * Tuesday, Feb. 22, 1881, the coroner was informed of a dead 
 body in a house near Milwaukee in Wisconsin. He found a mother 
 ill on the ninth day after her confinement. The child had been 
 dead two days. Four children under ten years of age, with herself, 
 had had no food for forty-eight hours, except scrapings from an old 
 swill-barrel, which had formerly been used in carrying slops from a 
 distillery. Ernst Lutz, the father, was in jail, awaiting trial for 
 stealing an old harness. On the previous day, he had finished a 
 term of sixty days, at the house of correction for a i^etty offence, 
 and was arrested again as he left the jail. 
 
 The blind philanthropy of modern ideas refused to whip for the 
 "petty offence," and death and starvation was its reward. Thrust 
 the inconvenient by all means out of sight for sixty days, and again 
 for sixty days. But the baby will die, and the mother and chil- 
 dren starve. Xo matter. Thrv.st the inconvenient out of sight, — • 
 it is intolerable, it is bad. Bury it alive as much as possible ! 
 
314 THE DESTINY OF MAN. [LECT. 
 
 venience of society means that of the shrewd, active, 
 and well-to-do political, mercantile, and artisan classes, 
 suppose the idea to become prevalent that the con- 
 venience of society means the regulated welfare of old 
 and young, rich and poor, sick and well, shrewd and 
 simple, ill and well born, ill and well educated, each 
 and all alike. Suppose that out of this idea some ad- 
 mirable municipal organization of property and labor 
 should be made to include some cunning organization 
 of the feebler and more vicious classes of society for 
 streugtliening and bettering them. Suppose that the 
 same philanthropy should be applied to vice and want 
 that is, in some good degree, already applied to disease 
 and insanity. In a word, and for the sake of specimen, 
 suppose that there were a municipal store-house to 
 which the man who stole that loaf might betake him- 
 self, — go and take his loaf of bread, not from the pri- 
 vate baker but from the public bakery, and pay for it 
 by presenting a due-bill ticket redeemable by one or 
 more hours of labor for the public convenience ; by 
 sweeping the streets, carting refuse, cleaning sewers, 
 building levees and wharves, dredging channels, car- 
 rying bricks for public buildings, keeping parks in 
 order, serving as supernumerary messenger, police, 
 hospital servant, etc. until he could earn his bread in 
 his usual, regular and private way. Would he then 
 be a thi'f? Yet the act of carrying off the bread 
 would be the same, and the use of it would be the 
 same. The man would be unchanged, and his rela- 
 tions to society would be unchanged. 
 
 The change would be in our ideas of the moral qual- 
 ity of one of his million acts. He was a bad man 
 because he committed a bad act. The act is no longer 
 bad, therefore the man is no longer a bad man. Soci- 
 ety retaining its first idea was inconvenienced, and 
 clapped him in jail. Society having got another idea 
 is not inconvenienced, and calls him a good and useful 
 citizen. 
 
 Let us look at all this a little closer, for it lies at the 
 bottom of all discussions upon the Destiny of Man. 
 
 To return to the shingle-cutter. Does he believe that 
 
XII.] THE DESTINY OF MAN. 315 
 
 he is a thief? By no means. He breathes the air and 
 commits no theft, for God gives the atmosphere to all. 
 He drinks the water and commits no theft, for God 
 distils rain from the sea for the life of all. He cuts the 
 forest and thinks that he commits no theft, for he sees 
 that God has spread it out over the earth; and why not 
 for the good of all ? The tree he cuts would otherwise 
 rot and fall and disappear, and be of use to none. He 
 utilizes it for some farmer's roof in the low country. Is 
 it any one man's special property? Whose? Who 
 made it? Has any one planted or watered it? No one 
 but God. Then God alone owns it, and all that God 
 owns he gives to mankind, — to the man who will make 
 good use of it. It is his by first right. The air to him 
 who breathes it, the water to him who drinks it, the 
 tree to him who cuts it, the soil to him who farms it. 
 
 In all past ages these common possessions of the race 
 have been claimed in specialty by the rapacious, the 
 powerful, and the cunning ; seized upon by force of 
 arms, and held by acts of legislation. But legislation 
 based on barbarous or semi-civilized ideas can neither 
 certify truths nor qualify rights. And the shingle-cut- 
 ter feels this in his heart of hearts, and acts accord- 
 ingly. The same inward inspiration has made the slave 
 a thief in every age and clime. 
 
 Does the shingle-cutter appropriate a tree upon his 
 neighbor's farm ? He would scorn the act. Why ? 
 Because he feels that every tree on a farm belongs actu- 
 ally, truly and of right reason, to the farmer who works 
 that farm ; to touch it would be theft, and he is no 
 thief. If he felt that the claim of ownership of a tree 
 in the unbroken forest by a man in Philadelphia who 
 had never set his foot upon it or lifted his finger to use 
 it, was a genuine, just and reasonable claim, he would 
 respect it also. He cannot enforce his denial of the 
 justness of the claim in the face of law courts and 
 prisons, backed by the armed force of the State, wielded 
 by the man in Philadelphia; but, den3'ing it all the 
 same, he evades it all the same, and repudiates the 
 charge of theft agahist himself. 
 
 There are two kinds of theft then : theft which the 
 
316 THE DESTINY OF MAN, [LECT. 
 
 mind and heart of every man recognizes to be theft: — 
 the robbery or spoliation by one man of that which 
 another really and truly owns, according to the laws of 
 God and nature; — and theft constructive: the appro- 
 priation by one man of what he rightly or wrongly be- 
 lieves not truly owned by others, although claimed by 
 one or more. 
 
 Against the first kind of theft the thunders of Sinai 
 rolled, and all society wars; it is the destiny of man 
 to abolish it. 
 
 Against the second kind of theft the statute-books of 
 Christendom are written, and the overwhelming forces 
 of the organized communities of the nineteenth century 
 wage cruel and protracted warfare. It is the destiny of 
 man to abolish this kind of theft also, but not in conse- 
 quence of that warfare ; still less by the petty successes 
 gained in that campaign. 
 
 All crime is theft. All the crimes and vices of man- 
 kind resolve themselves into theft. The whole moral 
 law was uttered against one sin, theft. God recognizes 
 but one class of criminals among his creatures, — the 
 robber. 
 
 The enemy of God and nature is that thing, that 
 creature, that man who disturbs good order by living 
 not of his own and in his own, but in and of and 
 from and by another's. To give is the privilege ; to 
 steal is the crime. 
 
 Murder is the theft of another's life ; and the worst 
 of thefts, because repentance is vain and restitution 
 impossible. 
 
 Adultery is the theft of another's wife ; and the next 
 worst of crimes, because it robs the heart and invades 
 and destroj^s the very nucleus of civilization, the 
 family. 
 
 Fornication is theft ; for it robs the woman of her 
 honor, and her relatives of a part of their standing in 
 society. 
 
 Slander and false-witnessing are accursed, because 
 they are raids upon society ; burglary and petty larceny 
 in the street and in the home; filching and stealing 
 the most personal of all property, a man's good charac- 
 
XII.] THE DESTINY OF MAN. 317 
 
 ter and standing before the community ; on the loss of 
 which he had better die, than live compassionated by 
 his friends, mistrusted by his companions, feared b}^ 
 the feeble and despised by the strong. 
 
 Lying is theft. It robs men of what they have a 
 right to know. It forces upon their acceptance false 
 coin with which to carry on the business of life, causing 
 them to fail of the success to which they are entitled. 
 
 Blasphemy and obscenity are theft. They rob men 
 of the pure air which they have a right to breathe, and 
 of the honest thoughts which they have a right to 
 enjoy. 
 
 Envy and covetousness are theft essential ; theft pure 
 and simple ; theft in the seed and in the bud ; the very 
 soul and force of all the outward forms of rapine and 
 murder which the laws of human society are invented 
 and enforced to suppress. 
 
 But observe — and observe it well, for this is the 
 kernel in the nut — murder is not theft, if the murdered 
 man forfeits his right to live ; nor adultery, if the hus- 
 band's right of ownership be bad ; nor fornication, if 
 the man and woman wholly own themselves, as on a 
 desert island ; nor slander and false-witness, if the libel 
 be a truth ; nor lying, if the listener have no right to 
 know; nor blasphemy and obscenity, if they be so only 
 according to the superstition and impure interpretation 
 of the judges ; nor envy and covetousness, if they be 
 directed to what is common property, with enough for 
 all and plenty to spare. 
 
 In other words, these terrible names for real crimes 
 are not to be applied by mistake, by popular clamor, by 
 superstition, by fear, favor and unrighteous legislation, 
 by selfish interest, by illogical inference and narrow 
 prejudice. Alas, the crimes are real and too prevalent. 
 The names are justly bestowed — but not always. How 
 we can guard the virtues from having forced upon 
 them this nomenclature of the vices is the question of 
 the future. And how we can spread the knowledge of 
 the true order of things is the true destiny of man. 
 
 The bigot calls the pure and holy testimony of the 
 Quaker and the INforavian blasphemy. For, says he, it 
 
318 THE DESTINY OF MAN. [LECT, 
 
 robs God of his glory, the Church of her hxmbs, and the 
 priesthood of its power to loose and bind. 
 
 The Mormon, or the Turk, denounces the wife (one of 
 many) who leaves his hareem and marries another man, 
 as an adulteress, and shoots or stabs her new husband 
 as a seducer. 
 
 Society brands as a harlot the innocent and guileless 
 girl who yields to a false promise of marriage ; hunts 
 her to distraction and death, and rewards her betrayer 
 with the presidency of a railroad or insurance company, 
 or sends him to Congress to make laws for the good of 
 the land and the hastening of the Millennium. 
 
 Society would utter a cry of horror, and punish if it 
 dared with confiscation and imprisonment the author of 
 a book unveiling the debaucheries of good society ; 
 while it proffers all the resources of the press and of 
 the post to the publication and transportation of the 
 vilest writings of Paul de Kock or Balzac, while it per- 
 secutes in a hundred ways Anthony Comstock, the only 
 man in the largest city of the Union who devotes his 
 life to the suppression of obscenity. 
 
 And what else can we make out of that legal rule, 
 " The greater the truth the greater the libel," but a 
 government device to protect fraud and vice by giving 
 the vice-name of slander to the virtue of uttering whole- 
 some truth for the purpose of guarding honest people 
 against rogues ? To rob a rogue of his character is no 
 robbery ; it is unmasking the wolf in the sheep-fold. 
 
 While all crimes are merely species of one genus, — 
 theft — theft is only theft against a just ownership. 
 The acknowledged ownerships of savage society are 
 mostly genuine ; the legislative ownerships of civilized 
 communities are many of them equally genuine and 
 allowed by all ; bui many of them are fictitious, en- 
 acted by the privileged for special classes, and are 
 secretly disowned and rebelled against by the multitude. 
 
 Hence the majority of committed crimes. 
 
 Hence the periodical rebellions and insurrections of 
 the many against the few. 
 
 Hence elaborate codes of arbitrary laws, the educa- 
 tion of professional lawyers, the enrolment of standing 
 
XII,] THE DESTINY OF MAN. 319 
 
 armies, the elevation of gibbets and multiplication of 
 prisons, the precipitate of a pariah class, the wander- 
 '*}igs of a host of tramps, infinite land litigation, the 
 ruin of families on the foreclosure of mortgages, the 
 ever-increasing population of alms-houses, the organiza- 
 tion of labor against capital, and the spread of social- 
 istic doctrines all based on one idea — La propriete, 
 ccst le vol. 
 
 Has it then come to this ? Is the destinj^ of man to 
 be a bouleversement of the divine law of property, on 
 which all true civilization has been, is now, and must 
 forever continue to be based? 
 
 Property theft ! Nay, the theft of property is theft. 
 And, if mankind have any one definite destiny it must 
 be to demonstrate this in theorj", and to organize in all 
 parts of the habitable world the right applications of 
 this theory to the practices of life. 
 
 What men own and what they do not and cannot 
 own ; what women own and do not own ; what children 
 own and how far their rights of property are merged 
 in or limited by the property of their parents; what 
 society owns, to the extinction of individual rights, and 
 what it only claims to own, without any right but that 
 of might; what are the periods, qualities, quantities 
 and guarantees of all these species of propriety; and 
 what are the methods by which their public statement 
 and record, and their private and popular recognition 
 can be formulated, so that misunderstanding and strife 
 may cease — these are the highest themes of the philos- 
 ophy of the future. 
 
 These have always been and are now the main topics 
 of human conversation. 
 
 But desultory conversation, the gossip of neighbors, 
 the objurgation of litigants, the scandalous cross-exam- 
 inations of witnesses, special pleadings at the bar, and 
 literal precedents of the bench, newspaper editorials, 
 partisan political pamphlets, discussions at board meet- 
 ings, riotous speeches at the polls, fourth of July ora- 
 tions, inaugural gubernatorial and presidential ad- 
 dresses, legislative debates, and sectarian sermons — all 
 these ordinary and universally abundant means for ven- 
 
320 THE DESTINY OF MAN. 
 
 tilating the thoughts and feelings of the human race 
 have failed hitherto, and fail habitually to settle the 
 rights of human property. 
 
 Because the foundation itself must be deep and per- 
 manent on which a stable edifice is to be erected ; and 
 no such sound and natural theory of human rights has 
 been agreed upon as will safely bear the vast and com- 
 posite edifice in which the laws of practical right and 
 wrong are hereafter to be administered. 
 
 Church and State, monarchies and republics, alike, 
 continue to take for granted the revelations and inspira- 
 tions of the past. God owns absolutely everything and 
 man nothing. The man everything and the wife and 
 child nothing — but of his free gift. The State has em- 
 inent domain, and every individual must buy of the 
 State. The Church has a monopoly of truth, and the 
 individual is a beggar at the church-door. The right to 
 amass wealth is unlimited, and the inept in body, mind 
 or heart is a tolerated or beneficed client — nothing 
 more. 
 
 How, upon these cyclopean foundation walls, laid in 
 the centuries gone by, can the New Jerusalem be built 
 and all the sons and daughters of God be gathered 
 into it? 
 
 New foundations can Science only lay: — science, 
 that revelation of God in nature to and for the 
 whole human race, and not to any individual human 
 being. Social order will be a gradual experimental, 
 analytical and synthetic discovery, like astronomical 
 order, or geological order, or any other generalization 
 of phj^sical phenomena. It will not be invented, but 
 fouiid out. It will grow slowly, secretly and openly, 
 and spread this way and that. By degrees rights and 
 wrongs will reveal themselves. By degrees men will 
 know what they own and what they do not. Then 
 there will be justice, and peace on earth and good-will 
 among men. 
 
 J 
 
LECTURE XIII. 
 
 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE KACE. 
 
 The destiny of maiikiud depends in a physical sense 
 on the permanence of its liabitation ; upon the continu- 
 ance of favoiable circumstances in air, land and water ; 
 upon the maintenance of a proper temperature ; upon 
 geological changes which may happen to alter the sea- 
 level and multiply or diminish the number and size of 
 lakes ; upon the copiousness of harvests in fertile parts, 
 the possible reclamation of deserts, the preservation of 
 forests, the colonization of plants and animals and the 
 culture of useful fish ; upon the inexhaustibility of 
 mineral deposits ; upon the practice of medicine and 
 the knowledge of hygiene ; upon the adjustment of 
 property and the use of accumulated wealth; upon the 
 equal distribution of handicrafts, the applications of 
 machinery, the multiplication of the lines of commerce, 
 and the prevalence of national friendship ; upon the 
 simplification of language, the extension of primary 
 education, the elevation of the intellect of the whole 
 race, the number of men of genius, and the adoption 
 of pure religion. 
 
 The Astronomical future of our globe will depend 
 upon the results of actions taking place in the Sun. 
 The earth will hardly be affected by the planets much 
 more than it is now. We know of no causes likely to 
 alter their masses or orbits. Their distances from us 
 will remain constant, and their heat, light and attrac- 
 tion be alike unimportant. But indirectly they will 
 continue to influence the earth by their effects upon 
 the Sun. 
 
322 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [lECT. 
 
 It is now understood that when the larger planets 
 collect upon one side of the Sun they produce a marked 
 change in the number and size of its spots, although 
 the precise nature or mode of operation eludes inquiry. 
 It has also become an accepted fact that the maxima 
 and minima of sun-spot area agree with the maxima and 
 minima of magnetic force upon the earth, of auroral 
 displays, of mean temperature, of rainfall; probably of 
 plenty and famine ; and possibly of epidemic disease.* 
 
 A connection between the sun-spot cycle of eleven 
 years and the cyclones of the Indian Ocean has been 
 attempted by Mr. Meldrum of the Mauritius Observa- 
 tory, while the Indian meteorologists Archibald, Blan- 
 ford, Broun, the two Chambers, Eliot and Hill have 
 sought in the sun-spot period some explanation for the 
 droughts and famines of that densely populated penin- 
 sula. Frederick Chambers attributed the high barome- 
 ter and deficient rainfall of 1877 to less sun-radiation' 
 not piling the atmosphere at the equator. Dr. Hunter 
 connected the sun-spots with the famines through the 
 barometer, thus: — 
 
 1. Variations of the solar-spotted area are succeeded 
 months afterwards by corresponding abnormal baro- 
 metric variations, a high barometer corresponding to a 
 minimum of sun spots. 
 
 2. Famines follow in the wake of curves of high 
 barometric pressure. 
 
 The approach of famines may probably be foreseen by 
 the immediate publication of continuous observations 
 of the state of the sun's face, and by immediate publi- 
 cation of barometric observations in high and low lati- 
 tudes. This great work is already becoming not only 
 national, but international, and must needs become a 
 complete and perfect system all over the globe. f 
 
 * See Baxendell's researches in 1878-9, Manchester. 
 
 t Meldrum's observations sliow by observations at thirty-seven 
 stations in his district tliat the rainfall is greater about times of 
 maximum sun-spot frequency. Meldrum's and Poey's observations 
 seem to show the same of cyclonic storms both in the Indian Ocean 
 and Carribean Sea. Balfour Stewart has recently seen reason 
 to believe that sun-spot inequalities of short duration are fol- 
 
Xin.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE EACE. 323 
 
 The Meteorological future of our globe could be safely 
 predicted were its past records at our command in any- 
 thing like a complete and intelligible shape. But these 
 records are, on the contrary, signally deficient and sin- 
 gularly obscure. 
 
 We have but two criteria to judge of the climate of 
 prehistoric ages: 1. the former extent of ice- and snow- 
 fields ; and 2. the former healthy existence of animals 
 and plants in regions which they no longer inhabit. 
 
 When Scandinavia was buried under a solid and con- 
 tinuous sheet of ice as Greenland is for the most part 
 now, and icebergs drifted over an arctic sea outspread 
 upon the plain of Northern and Eastern German}^ and 
 dropped their blocks of granite as far south as Leipzig 
 in Saxony * ; when all Canada was similarly covered, 
 and all New England, with ice so thick that its sloping 
 surface stood above the highlands of southern New 
 York and north-western Pennsylvania, twenty-five hun- 
 dred feet above the sea, filling the great basin in which 
 lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron now lie, and projecting 
 glaciers through low places in Ohio and Indiana as far 
 southward as the Ohio river, and in one place (in west- 
 ern Kentucky) even beyond that river; leaving on its 
 retreat a whole zone of the continent covered with frag- 
 ments, sand, and mud ; reconstructing the surface to- 
 pography ; and dotting our maps with innumerable 
 small lakes and ponds, caught in these Northern Drift 
 
 lowed by corresponding inequalities in the diurnal temperature 
 range of Toronto iu Canada, in such a way that a large amount of 
 sun-spots slightly precedes a large temperature range. Sabine long 
 ago showed that the diurnal oscillations of the magnetic needle are 
 greatest about times of maximum sun-spots, lagging behind them, 
 so that " magnetic weather " also travels from west to east. AVith 
 all this agree tlie spectroscopic observations of Lockyer and others 
 and the actinometric results of J. II. Hennessey in India. The 
 question (raised by Professor Stokes), if a greater amount of solar 
 spots denotes a greater solar activity, seems iu a fair way of l)eing 
 answered affirmatively. But the question of true periodicity is not 
 well answered yet ; there may be variability with true periodicity. 
 (See B. Stewart in Nature, p. 237, 1881.) 
 
 *The most recent memoir on th« subject however extends the 
 ice sheet itself as far south as Leipsig. 
 
324 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OP THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 deposits — the climate of the globe must certainly have 
 been of a very different temper from that of our day. 
 
 If the Scandinavian ice-age were different from the 
 Canadian ice-age in point of time, we might ascribe its 
 phenomena to largely acting local causes, not affecting 
 the globe as a whole. But it is difficult to find marks 
 of such a distinction. Most geologists believe that 
 Canada and Scandinavia, Scotland and the north of 
 England and Wales, lay buried at one time beneath a 
 sheet of moving ice. Siberia shows no distinct traces 
 of this ice, and was probably left bare. But the Ural 
 chain was covered ; and modern glaciers in the Altai 
 range present themselves as remnants of a similar ice- 
 sheet covering Mongolia and western China. The 
 Tien-shan, the Pamian plateau, and the northern Hima- 
 layas probably escaped for want of moisture, as they do 
 now, in spite of their great elevation. But the Alps 
 and the Pyrenees had their covering of ice, the north- 
 ern edge of which flowed down over Switzerland, and 
 banked itself against the Jura Mountains ; while its 
 southern edge invaded Piedmont and Lombardy nearly 
 to Turin and Milan, and beyond Verona. Probably all 
 Languedoc and Provence were covered for the short 
 time during which the outspread was at its maximum ; 
 for Desor has recently discovered moraines just back of 
 Nice ; and reindeer, polar bears, gluttons, and hairy 
 mammoths prowled and browsed in southern France. 
 
 The recent survey of British Columbia has shown a 
 similar ice-spread over the two mountain ranges and 
 intermediate valley-land of the Pacific coast and Vancou- 
 ver's Island ; but Prof. Whitney's last report on Cali- 
 fornia shows the glaciers of the Sierra Nevada as always 
 local and unconnected. 
 
 The cause of this prevalence of ice at one time in 
 the northern hemisphere is still disputed. Glacial ice 
 is made out of snow. Snow falls only along the paths 
 taken by winds saturated with moisture evaporated 
 from the sea surface. In the bitterly cold winter 
 climate of Minnesota and British Columbia, swept by 
 dry air, the snow-fall is so light that the Canada Pacific 
 railway will be easily worked. To get into the heavy 
 
Xirr.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 325 
 
 snow belt we must go south toward Colorado and New 
 Mexico. The balance between evaporation and frost in 
 the Glacial Age must have turned in favor of the for- 
 mer, whether the real mean temperature of the globe 
 was higher or lower then than now. There must have 
 been extra evaporation, a more constantly saturated 
 atmosphere, whether the lower strata of the air were 
 extra cold or not. 
 
 Did this excess of evaporation come from a larger 
 sea-surface ? Certainly not in the case of Europe ; nor 
 in the case of British Columbia ; nor have we any cer- 
 tain evidence of the submergence of the Mississippi 
 basin at that time. 
 
 Was the excess of evaporation caused by a temporary 
 access of solar energy ; operating upon the oceanic 
 areas as we know them, in the southern and equatorial 
 regions, and saturating the northern frigid zone ? 
 
 The sentiment of geologists, physicists, and palae- 
 ontologists, in favor of an extra cold mean climate of 
 the northern hemisphere in the ice-age is pronounced. 
 But there is danger of reasoning in a circle. The re- 
 mains of the reindeer in southern France, of the walrus 
 in South Carolina, are good evidence of an arctic cli- 
 mate at the edges of the ice-covered areas, but not of 
 a general low mean temperature of the arctic zone as 
 a whole. 
 
 If the Glacial Age, however, was really one of uni- 
 versal arctic cold, it may have been also one of uni- 
 versal antarctic heat. When Canada was buried under 
 ice, the now concealed antarctic continent may have 
 been a land of the fig and the grape, crowded with 
 animal life. 
 
 This is the picture drawn by Mr. Croll, the inventor 
 of an astronomical cause for the phenomenon under 
 review. The ellipticity of the earth's orbit not being 
 constant, there recur periodic times when the earth 
 approaches to within eighty millions of miles, and re- 
 cedes to one hundred and ten millions of miles from the 
 sun. When at such a time of maximum orbital elonga- 
 tion, the nutation of the earth's axis turns the north 
 pole away from the sun at the apogee, many extra cold 
 
326 THE THYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 winters and extra hot summers must follow each other 
 in succession. Those who support Mr. Croll's hypoth- 
 esis calculate on an accumulation then of the annual 
 winter's cold in excess of the accumulation of annual 
 summer's heat, for covering the north slowly with ice. 
 
 Mr. Alfred llussel Wallace in his " Island Life " 
 adopts this view in a modified form, but lays more 
 stress upon concurrent changes of land- and sea-areas. 
 Others see greater difficulties in the way of accepting 
 it arising from a fact which presses most upon the 
 attention of geologists : viz. the absence of geological 
 evidence of recurring glacial ages. Recently indeed 
 pre-Cambrian glaciation has been noticed in Scotland ; 
 and there are marks of glaciation of a Permian age. 
 But other recurrences have not been noticed ; whereas 
 at every 21,000 years of the history of the globe the 
 phenomenon should have left its traces. 
 
 Whatever may have been the cause of this state of 
 things in the last ice age several thousand years have 
 passed (some would have it 10,000, others 200,000) 
 without the repetition of any such flagrant departure 
 from the order of sunlight and solar heat which Earth 
 enjoys ; and many thousand more will probably roll by 
 without disturbance to the human race from this capital 
 but obscurely comprehended cause. Whatever destiny 
 the race is to have will be accomplished in full before 
 the improved spectroscopes and thermopiles of the 
 future shall have detected, much less measured, a sec- 
 ular diminution of favor in that royal countenance by 
 the grace of which all earthly animated things continue 
 to live and move and have their beginning. 
 
 The meteorological future of man's dwelling-place 
 wears no sinister aspect when regarded from the stand- 
 point of those who ascribe the glacial age to alterations 
 in the proportion or relative positions of the areas of 
 land and sea. These areas have remained practically 
 unchanged since long before the dawn of monumental 
 human history ; and that means at least ten thousand 
 years. Therefore, for ten thousand years to come the 
 mountains, plains, great rivers, and lines of sea-coast in 
 all countries, and the shoals and islands of the sea, will 
 
Xrn.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 32T 
 
 probably continue to be represented in the charts of the 
 distant future as they are on our best maps now ; and 
 mankind will continue to work out the problem of its 
 destiny on virtually the same slate which is already so 
 covered with demonstrations of the past. 
 
 Considering then the sun as fixed in its resolution to 
 shine and warm, the present continents as fixed in their 
 places, forms, and altitudes, and the water-basins of the 
 globe as changeless and inexhaustible resources for the 
 ever shifting and sliding, ascending and descending at- 
 mosphere, there is no fear that the early or the later rains 
 shall fail for the husbandman, that the great trades 
 shall cease to blow for the sailor, or that the sunrise 
 and sunset shall ever be less inspiring to the lover of 
 the beautiful. Deserts will remain desert, and fertile 
 regions continue to be populated ; mountains will 
 always bear forests, and great cities continue to be 
 built along the sea. 
 
 But storms will also always be in order, and local 
 hurricanes and extraordinary waterfalls from the sky 
 and uncommon wide-spread frosts or heats, causing 
 bodily distress and loss of wealth to individuals, or to 
 whole communities ; inundations and avalanches in 
 moantain valleys, a,long great rivers, and upon the sea- 
 coast ; tidal waves generated by earthquakes ; all dan- 
 gerous to the life and happiness of man. 
 
 But as man has been a helpless prey to these calami- 
 tous gesticulations of his mother earth in past times 
 because ignorant of their cause and meaning, of the 
 times to expect and the safeguards to oppose to them, 
 in future he will learn the premonitions of their ap- 
 proach, and fearlessly provide for his own safety. This 
 is the promise of the new science of Meteorology. 
 
 Since William Blasius, after a study of the West 
 Cami)ridge tornado in 1849,' proposed to Joseph Henry 
 in 1851 the plan of a meteorological Signal Service sys- 
 tem, and Lorin Blodget made the first trial of one by 
 telegraph for two mouths in 1852,* and the Smithsonian 
 Institution actually accomplished it by distributing 
 
 * Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 1876, p. 205. 
 
328 TriK PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 thermometers, barometers, anemometers and rain-gauges 
 to volunteer observers at various points between the 
 Mississip[)i and the seaboard, first France, then England, 
 then the United States have established, government 
 Bureaus of Meteorology. Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, 
 Germany, Austria and Russia have imitated their exam- 
 ple ; and now Sweden is preparing to extend the area 
 of observation by erecting one observatory at the head 
 of the Gulf of Bothnia, and another in a deserted ref- 
 uge on Spitzbergen. Three times a day the weather of 
 all Europe and North America is telegraphed to cen- 
 tral observatories and the data charted and redistrib- 
 uted by mail. Storm signals are raised at all points of 
 coming danger to shipping ; news of any sudden rise 
 in rivers is telegraphed to points below, in advance of 
 the descending freshet. Every cold wave that crosses 
 the Rocky Mountains is heralded before it can reach 
 Chicago and St. Louis, and its course considered and 
 reported, so that the people of Canada and the Eastern 
 States may be prepared ; or if it be moving southward, 
 the planters of the south may protect their crops. 
 When the tremendous meteor has left our coast, its 
 time of probable arrival in Great Britain is telegraphed 
 to Liverpool, to warn all colliers and fishing boats of its 
 coming; and every step of its subsequent career is 
 noted and recorded until lost sight of beyond the 
 Euxine on its way to the highlands of Persia. 
 
 From Jamaica to Ottawa, from San Francisco to 
 Sydney, from Lisbon and Algiers to within 208 of the 
 north pole, and to the Indian Ocean, a thousand trained 
 observers report three times a day how the winds are 
 blowing and whether the sun shines, the rain falls or 
 the snow drifts ; the height of the air above them, and 
 the heat of the air around them. 
 
 A century hence — the United States territory sus- 
 taining a population of 200,000,000 souls, — Mexico 
 having received an overflow of 50,000,000 English- 
 speaking whites, — the Soutii American savannahs illus- 
 trated by half a dozen commonwealths as large and as 
 civilized as any of our Northern States, — Cape colonists 
 occupying southern Africa northward to the Zambezi, 
 
XIII.] THE PHVSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 329 
 
 — Egypt and Mesopotamia regenerated and refurnished 
 by the energy of Franks with wealthy cities connected 
 by railways with all the world, — the Ottoman empire 
 under Greek and Austrian rule, — the Russian steppes 
 illuminated by the sciences and enriched by the arts, — 
 India irrigated and China reformed, — a century hence, 
 the thousand trained observers of atmospheric physics 
 will have become a hundred thousand, and from innu- 
 merable localities, equally distributed over land and 
 sea, hourly bulletins will be concentrated, to be reflected 
 through the universal press upon the whole human 
 race; — bulletins not merely of the movements of the 
 surface air, but of the upper currents of the atmosphere ; 
 for every favorable Alpine summit will be crowned 
 with an observatory, and trial balloons will be regularly 
 set adrift from the plains. 
 
 Then too will be detected and charted those invisible 
 streams of fertility by which the greater part of the ani- 
 mal and vegetable worlds are generated and regener- 
 ated ; of disease by which human populations are deci- 
 mated ; of the smokes and dusts which compose a 
 notable portion of the sediment in lake and ocean beds, 
 and so much of the natural manure of forest and prairie. 
 Mankind will be instructed how to engross their hab- 
 itations on wholesome places, and how to purify the 
 atmosphere of cities from noxious vapors.* 
 
 But the largest future profit to accrue to the race from 
 a universal and perpetual study of the air may be best 
 summed up in the phrase ''a true theory of storms for 
 the use of sailors," the rudiments of which we already 
 unmistakably possess ; but which when well perfected 
 for all sea-surfaces and sea-coasts will benefit in many 
 ways the ever-enlarging fleets of ships and steamers, and 
 their future thousand-fold expanded living freight, f 
 
 In Physics what wonderful discoveries have rewarded 
 experimenters since the first application of the galvanic 
 current to the production of mechanical movements by 
 
 * See Blasitis on the Connection of Meteorology with Health in 
 Proceedings Amer. Philos. Soc. 1875, p. 667. 
 
 tSee Blasius "On Storms," 187 5. — Proc. Am. P. S. 1876, p. 198. 
 
330 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 Joseph Heiiiy at Princeton in 1840 ! The telegraph 
 system of Morse, followed by the writing telegraph of 
 House, followed in its turn by methods of relaj' and 
 duplication, and still later by the marvellous invention 
 of the phonograph and now of the still more curious and 
 promising phototelephone, will certainly be extended 
 into all parts of that habitable world which it already 
 encircles with its aerial, subterranean and submarine 
 wires. The most distant centres of business are already 
 brought within a few hours' reach of each other ; the 
 prices of money, bonds, commodities of all kinds, are 
 regulated by instantaneous conversation in all the lan- 
 guages in Christendom : travellers find themselves as 
 well supported and insured against disaster thousands 
 of miles from home as in their own offices ; the term 
 foreigner will lose its prime significance ; unwarrant- 
 able or capricious insurrections become impossible ; 
 criminals can no longer feel impunity from arrest 
 whichever way they fly; the lost can be found, the 
 truant reclaimed, the impostor gazetted in advance; 
 and every new experiment at association with political, 
 social or religious ends in view must become more easy 
 and complete. The dismembered widely scattered 
 body of Osiris has been gathered together by this Isis 
 of physical science, and now first truly begins to live 
 a divine life. Christendom is unified ; and its senti- 
 ments, its plans, its energies so concentrated by tele- 
 graphic intercommunication, that nothing on a grand 
 scale will be attempted hereafter except under the 
 guidance of such a discussion by all governments, by all 
 the moneyed syndicates, by all classes of men of science 
 and of business, as must surely result in the best choice 
 of methods and means, at the least possible outlay of 
 the capitalized wealth of the world.* 
 
 * The three telephone companies of Paris have just been consoli- 
 dated into one, and place given in the sewers for wires enough to 
 serve fifteen thousand subscribers, through tea connected central 
 offices, girls b^ day and boys by night shifting the connections so as 
 to answer the subscribers' calls to be placed in communication with 
 each other. Branch companies and similar systems at Marseilles, 
 Lyons, and Bordeaux are already in working order. The navy has 
 portable wires for practice and tlie array will be handled by wire. 
 
Xni.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 331 
 
 Geographical maps are intended either to inform or 
 misinform society. When they lie, they lie with the 
 extraordinary force of all dramatic action as compared 
 with verbal statement. 
 
 The nine-foot map of the Atlantic and Pacific Ship 
 Canal Company, for instance, published in 1850, ex- 
 hibited one of the most impracticable of canal-routes as 
 so clear of obstacles, that the world has wondered why 
 the work was not commenced; a level river valley; a 
 large lake ; six locks up and six locks down, — the Pa- 
 cific is reached. But in fact Lake Nicaragua lies one hun- 
 dred and twenty-eight feet above the Pacific ocean and is 
 separated from it by a range of active volcanoes. Berg- 
 haus' great atlas shows twenty-eight on a line three hun- 
 dred miles long ; with eleven more extinct ; that is, one 
 volcano for every twenty-one miles ; and one of the num- 
 ber, five thousand high, seated in the centre of the 
 lake. In 1709, 1809, and 1835 the Cosaguina shook 
 the whole Isthmus, on which it deposited a layer of 
 ashes three and one-half feet deep. The French Gov 
 ernment survey map of 1858 represents the proposed 
 canal with its locks built into the side of an active 
 volcano with a double crater ten thousand feet high ! 
 
 Topography has improved its methods of representa- 
 tion in modern days ; not as pictures pleasing to the 
 eye and stimulating to the imagination (for no such 
 beautiful maps are now executed as those of Italian 
 geographers published two centuries ago) but as accu- 
 rate delineations of real objects on the earth's surface in 
 their true proportions of size and relative positions to 
 each other and to the sea-level. The addition of con- 
 tour-curves (showing equal heights above tide) to the 
 more recent maps has been of immense value to several 
 branches of science, especially to civil engineering and 
 geology. The latest mapping method substitutes these 
 for the old hachures for marking slope, and obtains all 
 the relief which the eye demands by reinforcing them 
 on the shady side. 
 
 The invention of underground contour-ciiTves twenty 
 years ago is now coming into use for mining engineer- 
 ing purposes, and opens a future prospect to the geol- 
 
332 THE PHYSICAL DESTIISTY OF THE RACE [LECT. 
 
 ogist of boundless extent and rich promise. The time 
 must come when every mineral bed and vein, every up- 
 throw and down-throw, anticlinal and synclinal, will be 
 thus represented pari passu with mining operations; 
 and civil engineers will follow the example of their 
 brethren of the other caste in constructing underground 
 contour maps of the rock-bedding in such tunnels as 
 that which penetrates the Mt. Cenis, to show its folded 
 structure, — that of the Innspruck and Botzen line, to 
 show its core of dolomite, — and that beneath the Eng- 
 lish Channel to show its fault. 
 
 Geodesy is the application of mathematics and geome- 
 try to the actual measurement of the earth ; — first, for 
 the determination of its true figure, which is not per- 
 fectly globular, nor regularly oblate, but slightly bat- 
 tered like an old billiard-ball, or an apple in the first 
 stages of decay ; — secondly, for the determination of the 
 exact edges of the dry land, and the exact place of every 
 watercourse ; — and thirdly, for the exact height above 
 sea-level of every object attracting man's attention or 
 affecting his interests — hill-tops and valley-beds, steep 
 cliffs and sloping plains, houses and other monuments of 
 history. 
 
 The ordnance maps of Great Britain are on the scale 
 of an inch to the mile, and of six inches to the mile, 
 so that every man's house, barn and stable in the king- 
 dom can be referred to on the paper. The Belgian map 
 is equally precise. The Swiss map shows every foot- 
 path in the Alps; and guides are unnecessary, if the 
 traveller be hardy, fearless and judicious. The coast of 
 the United States is nearly all mapped in the most 
 minute manner; and the chain of the great lakes; and 
 belts of inland triangulation are being carried from east 
 to west across the continent. Arcs of great circles have 
 been measured in South America and across Europe on 
 the meridian of Paris, and through Russia. Germany 
 and Austria are extending the area of this kind of 
 work; Spain has lately been connected with Algeria, 
 so that future surveys in Africa will have a base in 
 common with the European measurements. The tri- 
 angulation of India has been going on for years. 
 
Xlir.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 333 
 
 To all this must be added the Admiralty charts of the 
 sea bottom on all coasts which the ships of Christendom 
 approach ; and a beginning has been made for a general 
 measurement of the ocean depths, and a complete map 
 of the ocean bottom in both hemispheres. Mr. Patter- 
 son has just published a map and a model of the curi- 
 ous basin of the Gulf of Mexico. How it would 
 rejoice the heart of the geographer to get a glimpse of 
 the maps to be published in the year 1981 ! How 
 many questions wait for their solution until those maps 
 be constructed ! Yet geodesy will be as little ex- 
 hausted then as now, and the maps of A.D. 2081 and 
 A.D. 2181 will differ from each other in nothing but 
 completeness. 
 
 It is not however merely the completeness of our 
 knowledge of what is now that these centuries of 
 geodetic work will effect. The repetitions which will 
 be needful — made needful by the growth of instruments 
 in precision, and by the extension and use of telegraph 
 lines for time observation — will subserve quite a differ- 
 ent purpose. Changes in river courses and coast lines 
 have already been observed ; two or three centuries 
 of comparative maps can alone show the law and 
 rate of these changes.* While successive land maps 
 will determine the term of England's coal trade, suc- 
 cessive coast maps will exhibit the rate of the destruc- 
 tion of the island by the waves in some places, and the 
 growth of deltas, swamps and shoals in others. The 
 height of no one alpine summit is as yet told with abso- 
 lute truth ; but by repeated surveys not only a close 
 approximation to absolute truth will be reached for the 
 top of Mt. Blanc, Monte Rosa, the Jungfrau, the Wet- 
 terhorn, and hundreds of other summits, but a compari- 
 son of heights so obtained in one century with heights 
 obtained by remeasurements in the next century and in 
 the next, will show which are the rising and which the 
 settling portions of the Alps; and how and at what 
 rate the warping movements range, which produce such 
 
 * See the map of MarseiUes in the tune of the Romans and now 
 (Bull. Soc. de Geog. Paris, 1874) showing how the Mediterranean 
 has worn away the cliffs. 
 
334 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 earthquakes as those of Agram in 1880. And when 
 this knowledge is far enough advanced in all the prin- 
 cipal alpine districts of the earth, a comparison of data so 
 obtained will teach much respecting the larger changes 
 which the form of the globe is always and everywhere 
 undergoing. 
 
 In the course of many centuries men will come to 
 know whether the oceans make great oscillations from 
 the south pole to the north and back again ; and 
 whether archipelagos be emerging from the Pacific and 
 Indian seas, forerunners of wide continents, now under 
 water ; or, whether they be the disappearing remnants 
 of ancient continents once inhabited by aboriginal men. 
 
 Chemistry and Mineralogy have peculiar blessings in 
 store for the human race. 
 
 Previous to the discovery of oxygen by Priestley 
 Alcliemy was the rudest cookery of the inorganic con- 
 stituents of the ground. Now it is one of the fine 
 arts. In future it will furnish the mathematics of 
 Metaphysics. 
 
 No other science has so uplifted the right reason 
 of man. No other science has been equally successful 
 in teaching men to think. No other science deals so 
 entirely with the Invisible, underlying and informing 
 the visible creation. No other science so habitually 
 feels by calculation and thinks with the imagination. 
 
 As out of Alchemy sprang the noblest poetic fancy 
 and the purest moral sentiment of the middle ages, so 
 out of Chemistry has been born all that is honest, con- 
 scientious, patient and prudent in the physical sci- 
 ences of our own day. There is no such check to the 
 vague imaginings and reckless generalizations of na- 
 tural philosophers, of all kinds, as that to which they 
 have been, are and more and more shall be subjected by 
 the ever-enlarging scope and deep-reaching interpreta- 
 tion of the intimate nature of things of this purest and 
 sternest of all the spirits that represent the wisdom of 
 God in nature. 
 
 Are there any limits to human knowledge ? Is there 
 any limit to the world's mysteries ? What kind of a 
 being will the chemist of a thousand years hence be ? 
 
XriT.] THE PHYSICAL DESTIXY OF THE RACE. 335 
 
 But the answer to these questions is of interest only 
 to the individual man. The interest which the mill- 
 ions sliall take in the chemistry of the future relates 
 to the quantity and variety of the accumulating appli- 
 cations of chemistry to the comfort and convenience 
 of life. These cast their shadows before. Their kind 
 and scope at least can be predicted. 
 
 By chemistry mankind is destined to discover and 
 put to use a great number of economic processes which 
 will first cheapen and then make abundant the raw 
 materials of the arts. 
 
 Hitherto all that men have manufactured they have 
 manufactured by tedious, laborious, painful, wasteful, 
 and consequently costly methods. Waste — infinite, 
 irrecoverable waste has characterized all crafts. Mate- 
 rial was plenty, because tools were bad, and the rich 
 alone could be supplied. When tools improved and 
 goods became abundant and cheap, the crowd de- 
 manded, and the raw material grew scarce. The prob- 
 lem of the future is to wrest from nature enough stuff 
 to manufacture for all. The solution of the problem is 
 to be sought for in a reduction of waste to its possible 
 minimum. In this search, as in all other intellectual 
 paths, chemistry takes the lead. 
 
 The chemist's whole education consists in detecting 
 residua ; recovering what has tried to elude observation 
 and escape ; committing every element under bail to 
 keep the peace and behave itself. Chemists are the 
 gendarmerie of the manufacturing world. To them has 
 been consigned the task of deciphering all the adulter- 
 ations of nature and art ; the qualities of the raw ore, 
 and of the metal when brought to nature ; of the soil 
 and the manures it needs; of salts and infusions, and 
 the drugs made from them ; of oils, and their soaps and 
 acids ; of medicinal plants and their principles ; of 
 paints and bleaching powders ; yeast and the bread it 
 raises ; in a word every article of food which man 
 grows, every fibre out of which man's clothing is woven, 
 every stone man builds with, every fuel he burns, the 
 clay of his potteries, the sand and alkalies which he 
 turns into glass, the slag which flows from the furnace 
 
836 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 or flies from the anvil, and the iron which is rolled into 
 rails. Every dnig-shop has a chemical laboratory be- 
 hind it. Every iron furnace keeps a chemist in employ- 
 ment. Chemical experts swarm in the great mineral 
 districts. Even justice acquits or condemns the mur- 
 derer according to chemical analysis. The assayer 
 accompanies the explorer into unknown regions ; and 
 great movements of population will be governed in 
 the future, as they have been in the past, by miueral- 
 ogical observation confirmed by a verdict from the 
 laboratory. 
 
 But all this is nothing to the effect of chemistry on 
 the future world by reason of its inventive faculty. 
 While the resident chemist guides the miner and guards 
 the furnace-man in the hourly progress of their ordi- 
 nary work, he is devising modifications of the process of 
 production, and inventing transformations of useless 
 refuse into useful materials for other industries, the 
 sale of which may diminish the cost of work, and insti- 
 tute some new and flourishing production. As the years 
 and centuries roll on, the waste of raw material will be 
 eliminated from human industry, and the cost of every 
 manufactured article will be reduced for the benefit of 
 every class of consumers ; the percentage of return for 
 labor will be increased ; time will be saved ; and savage 
 metliods will be replaced by scientific methods all over 
 the earth. 
 
 In Mineralogy — the transcendental aspect of which 
 is of no interest to us here except for its bearing upon 
 the growth of the human mind — and especially in 
 Metallurgy (which is Mineralogy practised under the 
 instruction of chemistry) what has just been said finds 
 its illustration. 
 
 With an unfailing abundance of two minerals, the 
 destiny of man is made safe. With a hollow coal fire 
 and an iron bar a man can arm himself against all ene- 
 mies and equip himself for every kind of useful work: 
 — with an axe to hew the forest, a chisel to cut through 
 the rock, a shovel to level the road, a ploughshare to till 
 the soil, nails to build his house, axle and springs to 
 facilitate the transport of his goods. 
 
XIII.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 337 
 
 The uprising of the old forest from its sleep of ages 
 underground, glorified into bituminous and anthracite 
 coal, was like the reappearance of the sun in a new- 
 morning of human history, calling an awakened world 
 to fresh existence and universal activity. The use of 
 coal was confined at first to the immediate vicinity of 
 the outcrop of the bed. In course of time small quan- 
 tities began to be carried on mules and in canoes to 
 smithies at some distance. When the canal-lock was 
 invented at Viterbo in 1481, and the French canals of 
 Briare (1G05-1642), Orleans (1675), Languedoc (1667- 
 1681) and others on the Continent had led the wav for 
 the Duke of Bridgewater's first English canal (1758) 
 and the English canal-mania, which lasted forty years, 
 the foundation was laid for enormous colliery opera- 
 tions and a general use of the mineral fuel. The rail- 
 way-mania of the present century was a repetition of 
 the canal-mania in a more intense form ; and its effect 
 upon the annual production of coal has been to carry 
 it up from ten million tons (in 1800) to one hundred 
 and thirty-six million in 1877. Nine-tenths of this is 
 consumed in Great Britain ; the remaining tenth is sent 
 in ballast to all parts of the world. 
 
 The present annual production and use of hard and 
 soft mineral coal in the United States is supposed to be 
 between sixty and seventy millions of tons, shared be- 
 tween blast-furnaces and rolling-mills, railway locomo- 
 tives, steamboats, steam-mills, gas-works, and city stoves 
 and grates. 
 
 The production of anthracite was 350 tons in 1820 ; 
 850,000 in 1810 ; 8,500,000 in 1860 ; and about 25,000,- 
 000 in 1880. In spite of the enormous waste in mining 
 and screening anthracite (a waste of at least 60 per 
 cent, at present) there is enough in the ground to 
 furnish fifty millions of tons per annum for use for 250 
 years.* But the deposits of semi-bituminous and bitu- 
 minous coal in the United States are of such extent, so 
 undisturbed and so near the surface, that an annual 
 
 *P. W. Sheafer, Proc. Am. Asso. F.A.S., Saratoga, 1879. 
 
338 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 consumption of 200,000,000 tons is possiblt- for 10,000 
 years.* 
 
 It is supposed that the total consumption of mineral 
 coal will in the present year exceed 300,000,000 tons ; 
 and that the extension of the railway system, the expan- 
 sion of steamship commerce, and the planting of steam 
 manufactures in India and China, will enlarge this con- 
 sumption to a thousand million tons in less than half a 
 century. 
 
 The mechanical power of one pound of good coal 
 equals that expended in one day of human hand-work. 
 Most of the coal raised from under ground is burned 
 for warming mankind, cooking food and making iron. 
 But if only one ton of coal in every ten be consumed 
 for steam machinery, Great Britain is at present using a 
 machinery power equal to one year of labor performed 
 by 100,000,000 men ; and the Uuited States is using a 
 machinery power of 40,000,000 men. Since the male 
 adult population of the United States is about 10,000,000, 
 coal adds the labor of four machine men to that of every 
 living man in the Republic ; and as England has a male 
 adult population of about 5,000,000, her coal places 
 beside each living man a machine of twenty-man power. 
 
 These machine-men indeed have to be built and 
 nursed and served ; they eat and drink voraciously, re- 
 quire sleep, and are improved by education (or inven- 
 tion); must be well housed and carefully and expensively 
 dressed ; demand the services of menials and a police ; 
 even produce offspring. But these are in mature 
 power from the moment of their birth ; and the larger 
 and mightier the machine the less service in proportion 
 it requires. It indulges in no expensive amusements, 
 never strikes for higher wages, has no blue Mondays, 
 is always at its post, and always obedient to the touch 
 of the commanding hand — a conscientious, punctilious, 
 loving slave, like Ariel waiting on Prospero. 
 
 The population of the world may therefore be said to 
 be changing. A new race of anthropoid machines has 
 
 * See general estimate in Geol. Penn., 1858, p. 1017. 
 
 1 
 
XIII.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 339 
 
 come into existence ; and its rate of increase is so rapid, 
 and so little subservient to any known Malthnsian law, 
 that a propliecy may be ventured : viz., that in one or 
 two centuries from this, while the human race will 
 remain substantially and as a whole about as numer- 
 ous as it is now, the man-power (steam-enofine) popula- 
 tion of the world will exceed it ten to one. And per- 
 haps the greatest of all the problems of the future is : 
 who will own control of this man-power? how will its 
 distribution be effected? how far will it supplant rather 
 than supplement the work of living men? and, above 
 all, what will be the consequent increase of human idle- 
 ness on the one hand and of human luxury on the 
 other? For it is evident, that, could coal-power be 
 equally distributed to all homes, a man's necessary day 
 labor could easily be reduced from ten hours to one. 
 But it is equally evident that steam manufacture will 
 always concentrate itself on spots of the earth's surface, 
 leaving a large majority of the human race indifferent 
 spectators of its effects. 
 
 Another important feature of the case must be re- 
 garded. Apart from the first and current expenses of 
 mining and machinery, the theoretical power in coal is 
 never obtained ; not one tenth of it ; the rest is wasted 
 in transmission, through boiler plate and boiling water, 
 crank, cog and strap. Part of the future of civilization 
 is to be determined by the gradual elevation of the per- 
 centage of power left available. 
 
 But even with the small available percentage of coal- 
 power remaining unchanged, the rapidly increasing 
 annual production of coal mines, and the steadily 
 rising rate of increment, the accumulation of work-power 
 at the disposal of working man towers before the philo- 
 sophic imagination like mountain masses before the eye 
 of a traveller from the plains. 
 
 No possible discoveries of new motive powers can 
 prevent the perpetual use of coal, any more than the 
 discovery of steam power has caused the use of the 
 horse to be forgotten. "Wood will always be burnt; 
 coal will always feed steam-engines and gas-holders, 
 whether electric motors and galvanic lights be success- 
 
340 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 ful iuventions or not ; and the same a thousand years 
 hence as now. 
 
 Iron too can never be deposed from its royal throne 
 among the metals. Nothing can replace it. Its produc- 
 tior^ will always be on the increase. Its applications 
 will be ever and ever more numerous, various and apt. 
 To the lake-dwellers of Switzerland it was more pre- 
 cious than gold or bronze, for fine threads of it are in- 
 laid as ornamentation on sword handles preserved in 
 the museum at Berne. The Roman soldiers conquered 
 Gaul merely because their sword-blades being of iron 
 would not bend; they killed their opponents while 
 these were stopping in the thick of the fight to re- 
 straighten their bronze swords across their knees. The 
 followers of Odin settled Europe and enslaved the 
 stone-age populations by virtue of the iron they brought 
 with them from the land of the Chalibes. Iron made 
 the conquests and colonies of Spain and Holland, 
 France and England possible in both hemispheres. 
 Iron alone makes universal international communica- 
 tion possible. Whether it require two centuries or ten, 
 the globe is forging for itself as complete a shirt of 
 chain mail to cover itself from head to foot withal as 
 ever Knight Templar wore. The meshes become ever 
 finer and closer. The tissue spreads further and fur- 
 ther, from district to district, from province to province, 
 from empire to empire. No desert will remain exempt 
 from the iron network. Each mountain vale will re- 
 ceive in time its proper branch-line. Every mountain 
 spur that hinders travel will be pierced. The bridge 
 has become iron ; the station-house iron ; the tele- 
 graph post will be iron ; the locomotive is iron ; the 
 freight car is of iron in whole or in part; the ship 
 becomes iron and Elisha's axe-head floats. 
 
 In prehistoric days iron was more costly than gold, 
 because made by hand in a hole in the ground. It is so 
 made by African savages and Hindu blacksmiths yet. 
 In Roman days, the forge was planted at the head of a 
 ravine and the blast was made by the wind hurtling up 
 the gorge. In the middle ages the mountain stream 
 was diverted so as to fall through a vertical wooden 
 
XIII.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 341 
 
 pipe, and with the moist air thus driven downwartl and 
 led off sidewise the Catalan forge was blown. Then 
 the German high oven was invented, and cast iron was 
 bestowed as a divine boon to the race, inaugurating the 
 real age of iron. Higher and higher rose the furnace 
 stack until it towered 120 feet into the air, with coked 
 coal for its fuel, Scottish blackband and Yorkshire iron 
 stone for its burden, and air heated to 1000° Fahrenheit 
 forced into the tiojcre holes under a pressure of 16 lbs. 
 to the incli from twin blowing engines costing $100,000 
 to construct. 
 
 The production of cast iron in the United States in 
 1880 reached 4,295,41-4 net tons, (40 per cent, more than 
 in 1879, the year of largest production) made by 446 
 furnaces in blast out of 701 in existence. 
 
 In 1830, the first casting of anthracite pig iron was 
 made, and in 1881 its amount reached 1,807,651 tons; 
 1,950,205 tons were smelted with bituminous coal and 
 coke; and 537,558 tons with charcoal. Of spiegeleisen 
 20,000 tons were made for the Bessemer works. 
 
 The mere surplus exports of iron and steel from the 
 British works amounted in 1879 to 2,610,000, and in 
 1880 to 3,560,000 tons. 
 
 Bessemer iron was first successfully and regularly 
 made, in 1861, by Mr. Brown at St. Seurin, a few 
 leagues north of Bordeaux. In 1863 the new process 
 was established in Sweden, while the great inventor 
 was still struggling to perfect it at Sheffield, and it had 
 been tried and abandoned at Liege, at Creuzot, along 
 the Rive de Gier and at Allier. In 1863 Peter Turner 
 made his first blast at Leoben. In 1872, 120,000 tons 
 of Bessemer iron were made in the United States, and 
 1,20:1173 in 1880. In 1872, 94,070 tons of steel rails 
 were rolled in the Bessemer works of the United 
 States ; in 1880, 917,592 tons. (See page 354.) 
 
 In twenty years, all the main railway lines of Amer- 
 ica have been relaid with Bessemer low steel rails made 
 at Troy, at Bethlehem, Harrisburg, Johnstown, Pitts- 
 burg, Cleveland, Chicago and St. Louis; and in Europe 
 mammoth cannon and the plates of iron clads, the axles 
 and tires of railway rolling stock, and a thousand other 
 
342 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 shapes are produced of this new form of iron, the cost 
 of which at first was $160 a ton and is now $40. 
 
 This wonderful revolution in the manufacture of 
 malleable iron for cast iron has not however set aside 
 the puddling and boiling furnaces ; strange to say, it 
 has not destroyed the charcoal high stack furnace. 
 But it pours an incalculably larger flood of ingot iron 
 upon the markets of the world, and has multiplied and 
 enlarged the rolling-mills, while stimulating the devel- 
 opment of iron mines, and spurring the exploitation of 
 coal to its upmost speed. 
 
 Considering now that iron ore is the most plentiful 
 of all minerals except coal, and absolutely ubiquitous 
 in the earth's crust, what prospects stretch before us in 
 the future whichever way we look ! On iron all true 
 civilization depends for its material power of work; 
 and henceforth iron can be produced without stint or 
 limit in all lands, by all nations. Surely the greatest 
 chapter of Man's Destiny as a worker has been opened 
 for our reading. 
 
 With Bessemer iron all the rivers of earth will be 
 spanned ; all public edifices will be made fireproof with 
 iron beams and concrete floors; archives will be safe; 
 museums and libraries, hospitals and asylums, ware- 
 houses and their wharves will become permanent; 
 cities will be supplied with water, gas and condensed 
 air for motive service ; and telegraph and telephone 
 wires will be protected in iron pipes and culverts. 
 Already the oil fields of Penns3dvania are netted with 
 thousands of miles of iron tubing for the transporta- 
 tion of petroleum, and pipe lines traverse hill and val- 
 ley to bring the precious fluid to the cities on the sea- 
 shore. What more iron is to do for man who can pre- 
 dict? But this is certain, that the modern methods of 
 producing this metal at a low cost and in infinite 
 abundance will expand the capacities of all the arts 
 and extend the tools and symbols of civilization to the 
 remotest provinces of the world. 
 
 But, although Coal and Iron are the Alpha and 
 Omega of all the future, the rest of the mineral alpha- 
 bet, the metals and bases and salts, will play their parts 
 
Xni.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE KACE. 343 
 
 aud share in the eiilargeiuent of liuman activity. For 
 every ore chemistry is providing better processes of 
 treatment, cheapening cost and enhancing quantity ; 
 diminishing waste and suggesting new uses. Many 
 another Stassfurt will be discovered; and when Green- 
 land has ceased to furnish its criolyte, the alkalis will 
 be obtained in still greater quantities from other earths 
 in many lands. 
 
 It is said that the total value of finger rings worn by 
 the people of the United States amounts to $50,000,000. 
 Luxury and pleasure must increase with every other 
 quality of civilized life. Jewels will be sought for, 
 even when banks and saving institutions have set aside 
 their chief use — that of an easy and safe investment in 
 times of bad government and in places of personal 
 danger. Nothing that man has once esteemed will 
 man ever abandon ; and the destiny of the human 
 race as a whole is what only the destiny of a few has 
 in past times bee-n : for every human being to make 
 himself pleasing in his own sight. 
 
 The Geological future of man's destiny is not confined 
 to what the races will suffer or enjoy by geological 
 changes in the face of the earth ; but will chiefly con- 
 sist of man's discoveries in the underground and the 
 uses thereof. 
 
 Upon the great blank canvas of profound ignorance 
 lasting thousands of years, the few first bold strokes of 
 the coming picture arrest the eye and excite the liveli- 
 est admiration. 
 
 Toward the close of the last century, a few thinkers 
 began to see that the globe was an organic being and 
 had grown. In the early part of the present century, 
 an examination of its skin was timidly attempted here 
 and there. Less than fifty years ago, the States of 
 Europe and many of the United States of America 
 commenced extensive geological surveys, based upon 
 geodetic meridian line- and coast-surveys; directly in 
 the interest of land ownership and commerce, but in- 
 directly stimulating to all departments of physical 
 science. 
 
344 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 Once embarked on this voyage of discovery, there 
 was no return to port. Once establislied, this cam- 
 paign against the closed fortresses of Nature, a large 
 corps must be well armed, provisioned and transported. 
 Hence the erection of one observatory after anotlier, 
 one laboratory after another, one museum after another, 
 each equipped with more and more powerful and accu- 
 rate apparatus. Apparatus reacted on observers, and 
 observers on apparatus, constantly improving and mul- 
 tiplying each other. Every day now beholds the inven- 
 tion of some finer method or piece of machinery, like 
 Langley's photometric balance by which, at last, the 
 radiant heat of the moon is really proved and really 
 measured.* 
 
 The early work of the British, French, Swiss, Belgian, 
 German, Russian and American surveys was of the 
 nature of a systematic reconnoissance. In the course of 
 the next twenty years enough became known to allow 
 of the subdivision of continental areas into provinces 
 and districts. Renewals and reorganizations of surveys 
 which had been stopped took place. Schools of mines 
 became numerous, and geology with its adjunct sciences 
 educated for its work a multitude of young and fresh 
 minds. The mere publication of work done became 
 a world of literature in itself. Improvements in litho- 
 graphy and photography multiplied maps, sections, and 
 j)lates of fossil forms indefinitely. The new science of 
 microscopic rock-analysis was added to geological chem- 
 istry, and the employment of chemists in the labora- 
 tories of Bessemer iron-works doubled the number of 
 iavestigators and quadrupled the amount of geologi- 
 cal survey work. 
 
 Meanwhile the new applications of steam to industry 
 and commerce made vast demands on geology, first for 
 coal and then for iron ; and government surveys became 
 insignificant in comparison with the restless and ubiqui- 
 tous activity of an army of experts employed by incorpo- 
 rated companies of private individuals. The knowledge 
 
 * First announcement of this substitute for Melloni's pile, Am. 
 Jour. S. & A., March, 1881. 
 
XUI.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 345 
 
 thus obtained did not at first become the property of 
 the world ; only its fruits showed. But knowers were 
 multiplied and drilled ; and these, naturally desirous of 
 public credit for the work they did, began to publish 
 first their crude and afterwards their maturer memoirs 
 under the auspices of a multitude of new lyceums, so- 
 cieties and associations which they had combined to 
 organize, being themselves excluded from the venerable 
 societies of science because as yet unknown. From 
 these now well-known new geologists, mineralogists, 
 metallurgists, chemists, physicists, botanists and zoolo- 
 gists, the old societies have been recruiting their ranks, 
 thinned by death, and infusing thus into their old veins 
 new blood. 
 
 The accidental discovery of great reservoirs of petro- 
 leum, the accidental discovery of vast quantities of gold 
 in the California gravels, the accidental discovery of a 
 multitude of rich silver veins in Colorado — three dis- 
 coveries following each other at short intervals of time 
 — while they introduced the greatest possible changes 
 in the movements of emigrant mankind, and caused 
 the founding of new States, the building of great 
 cities, the conversion of Australasia into an English- 
 speaking Christendom, the settlement of South Africa, 
 the readjustment of the values of all articles of trade, 
 food included, and a new renaissance of fine art — ex- 
 erted another and more lasting influence upon science 
 in converting whole populations of handworkers into 
 wide-awake observers, investigators, scholars and teach- 
 ers of each other, collectors of all that is curious, and 
 energetic explorers of every omitted, overlooked acces- 
 sible or inaccessible nook and cranny of the surface of 
 the -earth. 
 
 Out of this new class of mankind, numbered already 
 by the hundred thousand, come inventors without end ; 
 and among all their inventions the Diamond Drill is for 
 geology the most important ; and is certainly destined 
 to inaugurate the future study of the as yet untouched 
 profounder depths of the underworld; to limit for us 
 the real areas of the coal measures; to discover beneath 
 destitute regions an underground plenty of iron ; to 
 
346 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [lECT. 
 
 settle for us the problem of internal heat ; and per- 
 haps to detect for us the cause while measuring the 
 direction, the amount and the rate of crust move- 
 ments. 
 
 To imagine what the geological destiny of man is 
 sure to be a century hence, it is only necessary to com- 
 pare the mining industries of the Roman world with 
 ours. 
 
 What was the stowing of a dozen tons of the pre- 
 cious metals on a trireme at Cadiz for a month's hard 
 sailing and rowing to Ostium, compared to the lading 
 of a million tons of anthracite on Reading railway 
 steam barges at the Richmond yard in Philadelphia, 
 for a two or three days' run to New York, Boston or 
 Norfolk? What was the packing of amber, bronze 
 swords, gold torques, amulets, gems and a few small 
 iron-blooms along the Appian and Flaminian Ways, 
 compared to the roar of two hundred freight trains 
 per day, carrying 100,000 tons of ores and coals, iron 
 tools, furniture, dry goods, grain, cattle, groceries, fruit, 
 books and newspapers, in two weeks across the Amer- 
 ican continent. 
 
 Or, take the rate of increase of our length of rail- 
 way lines, of the number of mines of all kinds, and of 
 the expansion of smelting works and finishing mills 
 and factories for the last 20 years, and project that 
 rate forward for a single century ; then, calculate the 
 amount of exploration and exploitation to which all 
 that must give rise — the geographical, topographical 
 and geological surveying, ever on the increase ; the 
 penetration of vast stagnant populations by these irre- 
 sistible impulses to knowledge and industry ; and the 
 merging of such populations in wide-awake, laborious, 
 curious, inventive, efficient, affluent Christendom, broad- 
 ening the arena, multiplying the games and enhancing 
 the prizes ; — what a world it will be ! 
 
 Then will the Diamond Drills revel in the deep. 
 Governments will pay the price for profound research. 
 Instead of single holes, pairs will go down, by which 
 the structural sections can be made. Rows of bore- 
 holes will be drilled across an entire kingdom. Not 
 
XIII.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 347 
 
 a stratum will be missed. Usually shallow, they will 
 at iutervals be sunk to great depths, to test underly- 
 ing old topographical surfaces. Here and there a 
 single one will be put down 2,000 or 8,000 metres, 
 even if it cost a fortune and the work should last 
 for many years. 
 
 Such will be the geological spirit of the coming age. 
 
 A recent book, entitled " The Ground of the City of 
 Berlin," by Herr Lossen, published at the cost of the 
 municipality, gives, as the result of 316 borings in and 
 around the city, the most precise description yet at- 
 tempted of the nature, order and extent of the vari- 
 ous strata composing the Diluvium of North Germany; 
 and the depths and values of the various water-bearing 
 planes to which wells must be sunk, or holes bored, for 
 public or private use.* 
 
 Every city of the future will execute such a work for 
 itself; and not for itself alone, but for an entire province. 
 
 The future career of Natural History^ and the influ- 
 ence of its two branch-sciences Botany and Zoology — 
 recent and fossil botany — recent and fossil zoology — 
 upon the future welfare of the human race, can be 
 easily signalized. 
 
 The task before these sciences in the future is two- 
 fold:— 
 
 1. To continue and complete the catalogue of living 
 species, — to obtain a perfect knowledge of the habits 
 and habitats of each, — to compare them in various 
 regions, — to make out their migrations, — to estimate 
 the value of physical influences tending to change 
 their forms, or modify their organs, — and to discover 
 such passages from one variety, species or genus over 
 into another: — 
 
 2. To continue and complete (if it be not possible ever 
 to exhaust) the catalogue of fossil forms, — to obtain 
 the whole range of mere varieties in each species, — to 
 eliminate from each genus all species which by passing 
 
 * See Schriften Phys. (Econ. Gess., Konigsburg, 1879, Sitzung, 
 p. 46. 
 
348 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LEOT. 
 
 insensibly into other closely allied species cease to be 
 distinctive species, — to fill up the gaps between genera, 
 — to multiply indefinitely the number of synthetic 
 types, — to correlate and weave in together extinct and 
 recent faunas and floras, by which lacunse in the one 
 set are supplied from the other, — to establish the true 
 order of probable evolutions of types and their eleva- 
 tions and degradations, — to search for fossil representa- 
 tions or indications of tlie structure of organs, and to 
 connect these plausibly or by necessary logical infer- 
 ence with their several circumstances of climate, food 
 and warfare. 
 
 The machinery for this study can hardly be very dif- 
 ferent from that in use, since the microscope has been 
 brought to its present perfection and deep sea dredg- 
 ing and trawling has become a familiar art. Again, 
 the question of the past and present has been one of 
 quality ; that of the future will be one of quantity. 
 The reconnoissance has been made ; the detailed survey 
 will go on for a thousand years. 
 
 But the practical side of Natural History presents 
 itself with a grand aspect. 
 
 Formerly man dwelt in the forest, and among the 
 beasts, as a hostile intruder, or as a barely tolerated 
 guest. 
 
 In course of ages man formed alliances with some of 
 the animals and some of the plants, and grew powerful 
 enough to wage successful warfare against the forest 
 and its denizens. 
 
 In modern days, man has established his government 
 over all living things ; replants the forest which he has 
 cut down ; cultivates poisonous herbs for medicine or 
 pleasure ; preserves wild beasts for the exercise and dis- 
 cipline of his own mental and corporeal faculties ; and 
 feeds the most useless, noxious and savage creatures, 
 merely to sate a vulgar curiosity, or to advance the 
 refinement of science. 
 
 In future ages, the animal and vegetable worlds will 
 pay him back a rich reward for Avhat he now does heed- 
 lessly, wantonly, or scientifically alike. From the cost 
 of human life in experimental cooking, in the hunt of 
 
XIII.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 349 
 
 lions and bears on land and of whales and sharks 
 at sea, in the exploration of arctic snows and tropical 
 deserts to fill the museums of Christendom — from the 
 outlay in Botanical and Zoological Gardens, experi- 
 mental farms and parks of acclimation, government 
 seed distributions and fish commissions — the first divi- 
 dend of a mighty income has already been received. 
 No investment the human race ever made will satisfy it 
 better in a business point of view. 
 
 Hitherto the spontaneous exercise of the creative en- 
 ergy inherent in the planet sufficed to distribute and 
 arrange its animate inhabitants, man included. The 
 destiny of man is that of the heir to an aged monarch 
 who gladly abdicates the throne. Mankind will rear- 
 range its own residence first, and then regulate the sub- 
 ordinate place and mode of life for every tree that 
 waves, every seed that falls, every beast of the field and 
 fowl of the air, and even for those lawless vagrants of 
 the pathless sea on whom nature seems to have be- 
 stowed a charter of absolute independence. 
 
 The effects of man's improved civilization upon the 
 cereals and tubers must always be limited by the num- 
 ber of arable acres circumscribed by mountain-ranges 
 and the sea-coasts, over which human wit and will 
 have no control. But within these limits chemical 
 geology will assign the proper planting for the proper 
 soil ; and scientific agriculture will assign the minimum 
 of right enrichment of the soil for producing the maxi- 
 mum of food for men and cattle. 
 
 Scientific arboriculture will not only weed out the 
 useless woods and multiply the useful ; replace the 
 waste of present forests, and repress wanton destruc- 
 tion; but will protect exposed hill-sides from undue 
 erosion, and the inhabitants of valleys from ruinous 
 debacles ; while it will provide desert belts of country 
 with rain evaporated from stored-up snow and artificial 
 lakes. The irrigation of the globe will employ all the 
 resources of engineering science, when these shall have 
 been once set free from the miscalled industries of war; 
 and food will pay for grooving, when all the natural 
 avenues of water transportation have been rectified, 
 
350 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 and rendered at all seasons both copious and safe, by 
 retaining reservoirs in the forest, and by jetties and 
 dredged channel ways along their open courses through 
 the plains. 
 
 The breeding of cattle for labor and for food, the 
 selection of poultry, the use of counter parasites for 
 parasitic pests, the acclimation of varieties from other 
 climes, but above all the government of fish-breeding, 
 on the grandest scale, for inland lakes, for rivers and 
 for soundings on the coasts — all these operations, 
 already successfully begun, will become the work of 
 the whole world, and increase the supply of food, and 
 the wholesome occupation of the millions, beyond our 
 present powers of computation. 
 
 If any one supposes that a thousand years will be 
 enough to finish all this, he has only to regard a globe 
 and note these facts: — 1. That human population is 
 concentrated on a few limited areas ; — 2. That the 
 communications between food and hunger have not 
 yet been completed; — 3. That the entire continent of 
 South America is still virtually uninhabited by man, 
 and that great regions of North America are also to be 
 occupied; — and 4. That the work of mutual destruc- 
 tion has not yet ceased over the whole continent of 
 Africa and a large part of Asia. For the first thou- 
 sand years, civilization will be occupied in securing 
 itself on one-half the land, and preparing its ways and 
 means by water for afterwards repressing the disorder 
 of the other half, preparatory to its reorganization on 
 the basis of a beneficent commerce and a permanent 
 peace. 
 
 The discovery of the potato, of tobacco and of caout- 
 chouc are the most notable in modern times bearing 
 upon the conditions of life. The commerce in Ameri- 
 can grain and cattle and of preserved vegetables bids 
 fair to dispel future famines. But the transport of 
 grain has always been a marked feature of civilization. 
 The difference now is that man no longer migrates 
 towards food — food comes to him from afar. This 
 will do much for rendering populations stable. 
 
 The destruction of the American forests in certain 
 
Xlir.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 851 
 
 districts is something enormous. For example: the 
 president of the Chicago Lumber Exchange reported 
 March 7, 1881, that the receipts of lumber at Chicago 
 during 1880 amounted to 1,564,000,000 feet, and pre- 
 dicted the final exhaustion of the pine forests of the 
 country in twenty j^ears. White pine will then become 
 extinct. The waste of pine wood in Pennsylvania has 
 been scandalous. The best trees only were taken to 
 market, and it is reckoned that not more than one-tenth 
 of the actually standing pine forest was utilized ; the 
 rest being lost for the use of man. Had the Common- 
 wealth watched over this precious treasure committed 
 to its care, not only might much of this reckless 
 destruction have been avoided, but if a .law had been 
 enforced to the effect that for every pine tree felled two 
 young trees should be planted, future generations 
 would enjoy a natural right of which this generation 
 has deprived them. 
 
 The forestry regulations of the Old World must in 
 course of time come into vogue in the New, and indi- 
 viduals must be taught obedience to the rules of public 
 interest, and compelled to recognize not only the rights 
 of existing societ}'-, but the welfare of future generations. 
 
 The United States laws of 1873-74, giving 160 acres 
 of government land free to persons pledging themselves 
 to plant trees, failed in operation owing to the imprac- 
 ticable conditions imposed upon the planter. Public 
 sentiment secured their general evasion. Railway com- 
 panies have begun to plant trees along their lines, and 
 farmers of the West, pressed by private necessity and 
 far from coal, are planting largely. In Wales, whole 
 mountain-sides have been made nurseries of the Norway 
 larch. There are now Schools of Forestry established 
 in France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Switzer- 
 land, Italy and Portugal, in which arboriculture is 
 made a science, as well as an art, and governments 
 offer large inducements to the people to plant waste 
 lands. The German Government not only plants all 
 roads, but buys up all private lands unfit for agricult- 
 ure or pasturage to establish forests on them. 
 
 The people of the United States will in time learn 
 
352 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 the lesson of their old charcoal iron-smelters, that it 
 only requires 20 years to rear trees fit to cut; that a 
 careful trimming and regular succession of cutting 
 grounds will secure even from an ordinary farm suffi- 
 cient fencing and building stuff, and fuel, from genera- 
 tion to generation ; and that species may be brought 
 from other places which will flourish better, grow faster 
 and meet the local necessities more exactly than the 
 growth which stands before them. 
 
 The destiny of the forest is to disappear before the 
 axe of the pioneer settlers of all the wild regions of the 
 earth. The destiny of the prairie, the pampa, the 
 steppe and the savanna is to receive a cunningly se- 
 lected forest from the hand of man. This process of 
 equalization in field and forest will imitate the proc- 
 esses of Nature, by which the mountains are being 
 lowered, and the lowlands raised, all over the world, 
 through the agency of countless myriads of rivulets. 
 In the end, the whole earth must resemble a fair garden, 
 and a fertile farm ; the very desert, condemned geologi- 
 cally to eternal sterility, being destined to its own 
 special kind and degree of amelioration. 
 
 Physiology^ Anatomy and Medicine as sciences, pure 
 or applied, regard man as one of the animal races; 
 but it has already appeared that their final conclusions 
 cannot be reached by confining their researches to the 
 human frame. The health or sickness of man is now 
 studied in close connection with that of other creatures; 
 and this comparison will be an endless occupation of 
 the human intellect until comparative zoology itself 
 becomes exhausted. In this field also experimentation 
 and observation supplement, stimulate and check each 
 other. The age of empiricism has not closed; nor 
 should it close until every possible trial on man's con- 
 stitution of every vegetable and mineral reagent shall 
 have been thoroughly made and intelligently recorded 
 and compared. 
 
 But medicine is fast resolving itself into hygiene ; 
 and the destiny of man is to free itself as completely 
 from medical as from all other kinds of superstition. 
 
Xni.] THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 353 
 
 Air, water, food, sleep, work, pleasure and cleanliness 
 are destined to resume the pharmacopoeia of the future. 
 
 In this the gain will be again one of quantity, not 
 quality. No man of future ages will grow taller or 
 stronger, or have a sounder brain or liver, than thou- 
 sands in every generation have already had, The con- 
 stant weight of the earth on which man lives determines, 
 once and for all, the me^^n weight of male men at 150 
 lbs. and the mean weight of females at 120. There is 
 no changing that, whether there be a millennium in 
 view or not. And within the scope of just so much 
 condensed hydrocarbon-compounds, and no more, must 
 be located all the bodily organs, none of which can be 
 spared, nor their number, quality nor functions increased 
 or improved. Man as 7nan, is already and always has 
 been an absolutely perfect creature. His destiny is to 
 continue to be the same perfect creature as he always 
 has been. 
 
 But 7nan the individual, and woman the individual, 
 realize the perfection of their design only when their 
 individual lots are cast in pleasant places and under 
 circumstances favorable for enjojdng their goodly heri- 
 tage. What we are to expect from the physical sci- 
 ences is to instruct ever-increasing numbers of human 
 beings in hygiene : — how to marry suitabl}'" ; how to 
 breed safely ; how to eradicate hereditary taints of 
 blood from their offspring in infancy ; how to give their 
 organization free play to perfect itself; how to guard 
 their adolescence from depravity ; how to feed and 
 clothe themselves in all stages of their mortal career ; 
 how to reform the maimed and restore the debili- 
 tated; how to regulate work and recreate vigor by 
 sleep and amusement; how to drain and ventilate 
 the dwelling-place, and how to provide comforts for 
 old age. 
 
 In a word the Destiny of Mankind is to realize by 
 the thousand and by the million, more and more as 
 time rolls on, an actual approximation to the perfect 
 standard of healthy activity exhibited hitherto by sin- 
 gle individuals, isolated communities or favored classes. 
 
354 THE PHYSICAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 
 
 Note to page 341. The statistics of the English iron trade are 
 like the hands upon a clock to the thoughtful student of human 
 economics. 
 
 The latest stroke of the bell rings out thus, from the annual 
 report of the British Iron Trade Association. The following 
 table shows the distribution of the pig-iron production of the Uni- 
 ted Kingdom in 1871, and that in 1880. That which will arrest 
 the reader's eye, will be the enormous increase of pig-metal con- 
 sumed now in making Bessemer and Siemens xteel : — 
 
 In 1871. In 1880. 
 
 Piq-iron, total made, 5,067,179(0/18. 7,741 ,(XK) (ojw. 
 
 Converted into wrought iron 2,480,000 " 1,950,000 
 
 " " Bessemer steel 220,000 " 1,220,000 
 
 " " Siemens steel, 35,000 " 295,000 
 
 " " tin-plate iron, 120,000 " 265,000 
 
 Applied to foundry purposes, etc., . . . 1,748,721 " 2,379,371 
 
 Surplus, exported, 1,057,458 " 1,631,629 
 
 Total, 11,334,358 " 15,482,000 
 
LECTURE XIV. 
 
 THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE KACE. 
 
 History is the poor, imperfect, distorted, mistaken 
 record of mau's past destiny. 
 
 The science of History is a partially successful res- 
 toration of the old portrait of the human race, with 
 new paints, under consultation with its best friends. 
 
 Can any task be more hopeless? Oh, it is not at all 
 hopeless. What are the monuments of antiquity but 
 faded photographs? What are buried statues and 
 steles, buried urns, arms and tools, but family records? 
 What are dead languages but fossiliferous strata in 
 which lie safely preserved for our examination millions 
 of words and grammatical inflections each of which re- 
 stores to us some mental conception of our ancestors ? 
 
 The analogy of the present will explain the past. 
 The papyrus of Turin is in a much more sadly dam- 
 aged condition than is the book of human history. 
 
 To collect all the mutilated leaves of this book and 
 to decipher all the lines of writing on them — this is 
 part of the future destiny of man. 
 
 The revival of enthusiasm for the study of Antiquity 
 and its antiquities in the midst of a most practical and 
 prosy business world, and in the face of a whirlwind of 
 physical science, is an amazing phenomenon. Never 
 did human beings seem more wholly engrossed in the 
 present ; yet never were there so many nor such zeal- 
 ous antiquarians. The rush forward is unprecedented, 
 universal, irresistible ; yet some thousands of thinkers 
 stand with their backs to the future and their faces to 
 the past, letting the crowd sweep past them. The out- 
 
356 THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 put of coal and iron is parodied by the output of arrow- 
 heads, coins, papyri, torsos and skeletons. Troys upon 
 Troys are stoped at the archseological mine of Hissar- 
 lik. Mj'^cense is searched for the armor of Agamemnon. 
 The excavations at Olympia are feeding the Museum at 
 Berlin. Apollo's shrine is found spanning a chasm on 
 the peak of Delos. 
 
 Men are now living who have witnessed not only 
 the institution of free government, the invention of 
 steam, and the spread of the telegraph, but the re- 
 covery of the lost languages of Egypt and Assyria, the 
 uncovering of Nineveh and Zoan, the publication of 
 the ancient inscriptions of India, the translation of the 
 Veds, the collation of the folks-lore of a multitude of 
 nationalities, and the establishment of the Philosophy 
 of History on a permanent critical and scientific basis. 
 Every university has its chairs of ancient learning from 
 which the copious restorations of past human life are 
 explained to eager students preparing themselves for 
 fresh expeditions and explorations at the very scenes 
 of old events. Historical, Antiquarian, Numismatic, 
 Archseological, Anthropological, Oriental societies are 
 springing into active life, not only in the national capi- 
 tals, but in the smaller cities and towns of all coun- 
 tries. Peripatetic congresses of antiquarians assemble 
 at some different centre of observation each successive 
 year, and aj)point committees to investigate the most 
 promising localities of the neighborhood. The Roman 
 army-itineraries are studied for the purpose of recover- 
 ing prsetorian stations, which may be searched for tes- 
 serae, carrying trade-marks, to elucidate ancient manu- 
 factures and lines of commerce, or consular names and 
 dates to rectify chronology. 
 
 A topographical survey of Palestine is accomplished 
 by the English Church in obedience to the new scien- 
 tific sentiment of its Deans and Bishops. The Sheriff 
 of Islam grants a hateef to the agents of the British 
 Museum to violate the graveyards of Kuyunyik for the 
 purpose of discovering in the palace-library of Assur- 
 banipal the Babylonian original of the Hebrew story of 
 the flood. 
 
XIV,] THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 357 
 
 And where and when will all this end? Is there a 
 natural term to the awakened curiosity of man regard- 
 ing his origin, his career and his destiny? Can any 
 limit be set to the wealth of monumental lore concealed 
 beneath the soil of plains which have been cultivated 
 for three thousand years since money was first coined 
 and buried on the approach of the invader, whose 
 departure left a track of smoking ruins behind him, or 
 at the commencement of a commercial journey from 
 which the merchant never returned ? 
 
 Rome has been burnt to the ground seventeen times. 
 Every time its houses fell they made a layer of tools 
 and furniture, armory and statuary, amphorae and 
 lamps, jewels, coins and tablets, to be rediscovered by 
 modern builders of high houses with deep founda- 
 tions, by street contractors driving new culverts, and 
 by the Accademia dei Lincei with its sharp eyes and 
 pricked-up ears. Every now and then a subterranean 
 church of St. Clemens, or a Marmoriura, is revealed; 
 and all the world takes railroad or steamboat to see and 
 admire it. Sometimes even in London and Paris a 
 temple to Jupiter or a bath-house of Julian is dis- 
 covered.* 
 
 Surely as the number of antiquarians increases and a 
 Chinese sentiment of ancestral veneration pervades the 
 west, the rage of discovery will only burn the fiercer, 
 and the right knowledge of the past history of man- 
 kind will frame itself the faster. Upon the past as a 
 high place of vision the prophet of the future sets his 
 chair and writes his oracles. 
 
 This antiquarian lore is looked upon of course by the 
 uninitiated as a child's play, or a fool's errand. But 
 in the laboratory of human thought it is proving itself 
 to be the aqua regia of reason, the universal solvent of 
 popular delusions, by which the education of nations 
 will be purified and fixed. Criticism needs precedent 
 facts. Without these, criticism is the mere caprice of 
 fancy or the prejudice of ignorance. Informed by a 
 sufficiency of proven data, criticism is the right govern- 
 
 * The table plate of Valens has been lately found on the field of 
 Hermann's victory. 
 
858 THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE KACE. [LECT. 
 
 ment of reason dealing with what most nearly concerns 
 humanity in all ages past, present and to come. Por- 
 phyry set himself with the seriousness of Kant and the 
 youthful zeal of Paul to investigate the popular relig- 
 ion of his day, and wrote his great work " On the Phil- 
 osophy to be drawn from Oracles " which Eusebius 
 quotes so largely. But his undertaking was a failure, 
 both for himself and for his fellow-men, as he himself 
 sadly confesses; because it was impossible, he says, to 
 verify the facts which he had set himself to criticise. 
 Until arohceological science had done the work it has 
 done, serious men of modern times were in Porphyry's 
 case. Now, enough is already known to make most of 
 the popular beliefs suspected ; and the skilled criticism 
 of past facts, conducted by men bred to thinking 
 according to the rules of modern science, has already 
 greatly modified those conceptions of God, the world, 
 and human duty which are habitually entertained and 
 acted on by modern society. 
 
 This readjustment of the ideas of mankind must 
 become more and more wide-spread and operative ; 
 affecting profoundly the status of every community 
 of human beings; and introducing a state of things 
 throughout the whole world, a thousand or several 
 thousand years hence, impossible to describe by antici- 
 pation. 
 
 One thing alone is plainly visible beforehand : the 
 Mythology and Ethnology of the past will both of 
 them pass out of the general human belief and mem- 
 ory, and be replaced both by Christian views of the 
 government of the world, and by an international 
 friendship, in the mild flame of which all antipathies 
 of race must be slowly cousumed. 
 
 The modern science of IMj^thology deals onl}- with 
 historical facts, it is true ; and is itself unimpassioned ; 
 believes nothing of itself; merely collects, collates, 
 classifies and accounts for the faiths which have in all 
 past ages prevailed, and which still survive as prevalent 
 motives of conduct with millions of men and women. 
 But in doing this it has collected and will continue to 
 collect and arrange data for an exalted, far-seeing, 
 
XIV.] THE SOCIAL DESTIKZ OF THE RACE. 359 
 
 fearless, theological criticism, the slayer of supersti- 
 tions, and the herald of true religion. 
 
 The science of Ethnology is making the same kind of 
 passionless, unprejudiced, critical study of the past con- 
 duct of the race, in its restless migrations backwards 
 and forwards, by sea and land ; the early settlements 
 and centres of dispersions ; its lines of march ; its inva- 
 sions, extirpations, overlappings and commixtures ; its 
 refuges and establishments; its ]nore stable subdivi- 
 sions, and their present arrangement ; its modifica- 
 tions of individual or collective forms, features, colors, 
 tongues, occupations and ideas ; — in a word, a thorough 
 study of the old and the new meanings of two terms : 
 race and nation. 
 
 What is as yet the outgo from all this studious learn- 
 ing — no longer merely gathered from books, or by 
 hearsay of uninstructed travellers, but from personal 
 investigation by trained men of science, sent into every 
 region for no other purpose, furnished with all possible 
 facilities for a successful examination and discussion of 
 facts, and subjected to the closest cross-examination at 
 the scats of universal knowledge on their return? 
 
 It is, in the main, this: — the essential unity of the 
 human race, and tlie striking similarit}^ of its principles 
 and methods of earthly existence. 
 
 When it is observed that the daily press, driven and 
 distributed by steam, lets nothing escape publication, 
 but compels the uninvestigating multitude to hear the 
 report of all investigation, even on subjects in which it 
 feels but little interest, — when one notices the rapidly 
 spreading popular taste for descriptions and pictures of 
 whatever is foreign, strange or curious, — when a cal- 
 culation is made of the probable increase of such litera- 
 ture and of the number of its readers, — the inference 
 is inevitable that a sentiment of brotherhood must be 
 generated on the largest scale, and must become a 
 vital source of sympathy and justice between nation 
 and nation and race and race as time rolls on. 
 
 It is needless to quote the signs of this fresh and 
 most luxuriant growth of geniality and cordiality ob- 
 servable in the newspaper literature of Europe and 
 
860 THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 America; in the new codes of law; in recent diplo- 
 matic intercourse; and even in the conduct of war. 
 It is a great reality ; it will become a still greater 
 reality. It already hinders mutual wrong and destruc- 
 tion. It must in time bring in an age of at least com- 
 parative peace and beneficence. As it sinks deeper and 
 deeper into the minds of men and spreads from province 
 to province and from nation to nation it will surely 
 quench the quarrelsome instinct of humanity and realize 
 the teachings of Jesus. Whatever be the fate of creeds 
 determined by other causes, no creed can live in the 
 future unless it drink of this water of life. However 
 stubborn the barriers of language, they must all sooner 
 or later open their gates to admit one element of lan- 
 guage common to all: terms of universal fellowship 
 and good-will, of common interest and mutual sympa- 
 thy. As Comparative Mythology is destined to re- 
 adjust the theology of the world, so Comparative 
 Ethnology is destined to re-adjust the international 
 morality of the world, on a basis of its stirpal com- 
 munity of blood, and by virtue of a virtual identity 
 of manners and rights, amply illustrated, and every- 
 where proclaimed and understood. 
 
 The past history of the race however will be potent 
 for the production of future events; and the present 
 geographical distribution of races and languages and 
 religions and governments must largely determine the 
 succession of changes which future historians will have 
 to record. 
 
 The first great event of the future will be the taking 
 of Constantinople. Twice already it has shown itself 
 to be the lock on the door of history. Twice the key 
 has turned and fate passed through. When Constan- 
 tine transferred to it the imperial throne, the Western 
 world died under the blows of the northern barbarians. 
 Taken by the Turks in 1453, it sent back life to the 
 Western world; but the Eastern world sank to its pres- 
 ent condition of extreme senility, poverty and wretch- 
 edness. Taken by Austria or Greece in the next cen- 
 tury, as it is sure to be, when the present strain of 
 European diplomacy snaps at the touch of the next 
 
XrV.] THE SOCIAL DESTIXY OF THE RACE. 361 
 
 general revolution, the East will renew its youth like 
 the eagle, and a new-world era will begin. Europe is 
 like an angry boil on the earth's skin ; it must soon 
 burst ; and then it can heal ; and the fever of the sur- 
 rounding world will abate, and health bo established. 
 As long as the mutual jealousy of European nations 
 burns, the Turk and the Arab can prevent the advance 
 of civilization. 
 
 When one contemplates the site of Byzantium, one 
 comprehends the jealousy of London. Here the East- 
 ern and Western worlds meet. Towards this centre of 
 three continental areas of infinite fertility flow the 
 Rhone, the Nile, the Danube, the Dnieper and the 
 Don. A wise government established here must 
 absorb Austria and Greece, European Russia, Asia 
 Minor, Syria, Arabia and Northern Africa, and hold in 
 check Italy, France and Spain. But the wise govern- 
 ment of the future will be just and benevolent. The 
 absorption will be confederative ; the centralization 
 representative ; the process peaceful and peace-assur- 
 ing; the consequences — a revival of agriculture, the 
 restitution of woodlands, the amelioration of desert cli- 
 mates, security for trade, the expansion df commerce, 
 the reformation of nationalities, and the restoration of 
 the glorious Eastern World. A hundred years may 
 bring, a thousand years will not be too long to wait 
 for, the consummation of such events. 
 
 Sociology is the science of Human Society, as based 
 on property, its manufacture, and its transfer from 
 hand to hand. 
 
 This science wears two faces, the one historical, the 
 other theoretical. 
 
 Historical Sociology ranges with Ethnology, Mythol- 
 ogy and Philology, as a critical statement of the basis, 
 form and fruits of human association, in the family, in 
 the clan, in the tribe, and in the nation. It states the 
 facts as far as they can be learned; investigates the 
 causes of these facts ; and compares, contrasts, classi- 
 fies and infers from them what is probable and possible. 
 ' Theoretical Sociology on the contrary ignores in 
 
362 THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 great measure the past procedure of the race and 
 endeavors to devise the best methods for constructing 
 human society out of present materials, in present cir- 
 cumstances, leaving future generations to care for their 
 own associations. In this aspect only does Sociology 
 expose itself to the oft-repeated and damaging charge 
 of not being a science, but only a trade. 
 
 Nothing is recognized as science which excludes 
 experiment; nor can any science produce generaliza- 
 tions acceptable as laws of nature if it take not cogniz- 
 ance of the whole range of recorded experimentation. 
 Sociologists degenerate into fanatics unless they make 
 their science comparative ; studying the whole past in 
 close connection with the whole present social life of 
 the race. Society has been an experimental kind of 
 existence from the beginning, and is- so still: — experi- 
 ments in manufacture, experiments in commerce and 
 finance, experiments in law and government, and ex- 
 periments in war. And these experiments have been 
 tried so repeatedly, under such various circumstances, 
 and with such long trains of serious consequences, that 
 it is idle for any theorist to think himself a statesman 
 unless he be well versed in the social history of ages 
 gone by. For the ages gone by have begotten the age 
 we live in, and the essential qualities of mankind do 
 not change with the changes of surrounding things. 
 New powers are offered to man for his service ; but 
 man will always take advantage of enlarged facilities 
 for accomplishing his same old favorite purposes. 
 Through all time his main occupation will be hand- 
 work ; his chief aim, accumulation ; his most valued 
 pastime, government ; and his fiercest passion, war. 
 
 But handAVork, with or without machinery, has for 
 its main object the production, employment and accu- 
 mulation of property ; government is chiefly concerned, 
 when once life and limb are made secure, with the 
 regulation of the ownership and transfer of property ; 
 and war would lose all zest were there no property to 
 be seized or destroyed. 
 
 On Property therefore Human Society has always 
 been erected and maintained. As the question: Whdt 
 
 ^ 
 
XIV.] THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 363 
 
 is Property? governs the current of events, so the ques- 
 tion : What will be considered Property ivhcn all the 
 zoorld is civilized by education? must receive some defi- 
 nite answer before a prophecy of Human Destiny can 
 be imac^ined. 
 
 The first postulate in the theological story of the 
 universe is the eternal reality and value of property. 
 The first assertion is that God owns the world which 
 He made, and therefore can do what he likes with it. 
 
 This theological maxim has been encased in the 
 corner-stone of the foundation of every edifice of 
 humane society. 
 
 Savages and civilized agree that to create is to 
 possess; whether it be a tool or a weapon, clothing 
 or ornament, hut or canoe. In early times, a wife was 
 captured property, a child personal propert}', sacred 
 from all other claimants. The only limitation to this 
 law of personal property sprang from an indispensable 
 community of action. What could be made or got by 
 the man alone was his own. What could be made 
 or got only by the family as a whole, was owned in 
 common by the family ; but by no other family. What 
 was only attainable l3y the joint efforts of a tribe was 
 the property of the entire tribe. Polyandry obscured 
 and extinguished the individual ownership of the child ; 
 and then the eldest brother, as head of the house, 
 became the master of the lives and fortunes of all the 
 children, whether begotten by himself or by his 
 brothers. The fruit of the chase, in which all shared, 
 was partaken by all ; and the fruit of the soil, which 
 all tilled. Hence savage tribes still hold land in 
 commonalty ; and the worst feature of this mode of 
 tenure, the encouragement it gives to laziness, is the 
 strongest popular argument with civilized nations in 
 favor of ownership in severalty. 
 
 But this ver}'^ argument for the several ownership of 
 the land which can be divided, and of the fountains, 
 running streams and coast lines which can be defined 
 for fishing and milling purposes, is of no logical value 
 except so long as it stands upon the original ground 
 of Use. 
 
364 THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 To the savage tribe it is all-importaiit to define and 
 defend boundaries; because expatriation on the one 
 hand and invasion on the other, means for them either 
 annihilation or enslavement. 
 
 For the civilized farmer, the landmark has the same 
 value ; it protects work and the fruit of work ; that is, 
 life and happiness. But this its main function is of 
 course limited to the homestead and its vicinage ; and 
 cannot be justified at a distance. To remove the land- 
 marks was a crime rightly cursed by Jewish legislation. 
 But the wealth and enterprise of modern days has 
 caused a far removal; in important respects indeed a 
 necessary one ; but in other respects most unjust and 
 injurious. 
 
 Absenteeism, a social disease of the new order of 
 things, demands a wise and skilful diagnosis, a careful 
 and benevolent treatment. Surely it must some day 
 obtain both. But the day seems far removed; for, 
 what with changes of government; the general increase 
 of population ; the expansion of trade ; the multiplica- 
 tion of industries ; new inventions in the mechanic arts 
 fostering the growth of cities and the immigration of 
 provincials into these ; the location of continental rail- 
 ways branching in all directions; the development of 
 innumerable gold, silver, copper, iron, coal and oil 
 regions and the transference to them of homeless multi- 
 tudes ; the flow of emigration into newly discovered 
 areas of the earth's surface ; and the general intermixt- 
 ure of families, tribes, nations, and races, still clinging 
 to their only half-abandoned claims to old possessions 
 while inaugurating claims to new — Absenteeism has 
 seen its opportunity and seized it with a vigorous grasp. 
 It has changed its form, and with that its name. It is 
 now Monopoly. 
 
 Yet Monopoly is not an evil ; only subject, like other 
 things, to the risk of becoming evil. In this it differs 
 from Absenteeism, which is almost wholly evil. Mo- 
 nopoly is the return of civilization to take up the sav- 
 age code of ownership in commonalty, without purging 
 that code of what is unsuitable to civilized ownership in 
 severalty. Instead of, as formerly, the tribe at war 
 
XIV.] THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 365 
 
 with every neighboring tribe, we have now the com- 
 pany in competition with every other company. In- 
 stead of a contest with bows and arrows, clubs and 
 spears, ambuscades and hand-to-hand battles, we have 
 log-rolling in the legislature, intrigues in the directors' 
 room, sharp practice at the bar, and the bulling and 
 bearing of stocks on change. 
 
 The popular cry against Monopolies is a mistake; 
 for, as the drainage of a continent requires great rivers, 
 and the rains collect into lakes and seas, fi'om the evap- 
 oration of which the continents are again blessed with 
 fertilizing showers, so, private wealths combine to form 
 accumulated capital, by the which entire nations of 
 working-men are provided with various work. And 
 capital must be administered. And administration 
 requires service. And service to be efficient must be 
 made responsible. And the most stringent sense of 
 responsibility is that of a man to his own interest. 
 Power when distributed among many loses force by 
 losing directness ; when placed in the hands of one or 
 a few it becomes quick, straightforward and efficient. 
 
 The monopolies of the Middle Ages, and of the Ori- 
 ent of the present da}', were and still are iniquitous 
 compacts between tyrants and their tools, for fleecing 
 the people. Farming out the taxes has reduced en- 
 slaved nations to wretchedness and kept them wretched. 
 The salt and grain-grinding monopolies, once in vogue, 
 deserved all the execrations they received. But a gov- 
 ernment monopoly of the sale of tobacco is a blessed 
 mitigation of despotism. 
 
 There remains under modern constitutional govern- 
 ments only one monopoly which perpetuates the system 
 of bad government now so fast passing away — the mo- 
 nopoly of land by hereditary descent. 
 
 France relieved itself of this load by the great rev- 
 olution of 1789. Switzerland threw off the same load 
 gradually, in her long struggles with Austria and Bur- 
 gundy; but is not even yet entirely disencumbered. 
 All th" other countries of Europe groan still beneath 
 its weight. 
 
 In America alone, the land, like aii' and water, is as 
 
366 THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 yet too pleDtiful to be appreciably monopolized either 
 by government, by privileged classes, or by individuals. 
 But the spirit of land-monopoly works even in the 
 United States, and produces evils here and there, petty 
 in view of the woes of other times and lands, but 
 prophetic of future danger. Bred of the old delusion 
 that he who does not create can nevertheless rightfully 
 own, it exerts its subtile influence upon all the legisla- 
 tion of all the united states ; and nothing but the fresh 
 energy of new ideas, nothing but the counteraction of a 
 wise and good public sentiment, will avail to save us 
 as a nation from a future destiny which shall repeat 
 the horrors of the past. 
 
 The popular sentiment in America, however, is sound 
 at the core. It affirms silently, if not openl}', that 
 Absenteeism is not monopoly in the modern sense, but 
 monopoly in the sense of the dark ages. Americans 
 permit it to live and work, but watch and lifnit its 
 activity ; tax it heavily ; and hamstring it effectively by 
 forbidding its entail. The woes of Ireland issue from 
 the womb of an entailed absenteeism. The prosperity 
 of France is wholl}^ due to the various effects produced 
 upon the character and habits of the people by the en- 
 forced equal devisement of land to all and each of the 
 surviving children. Despotism is impossible without 
 an aristocracy based upon an hereditary close entail of 
 land, — cither an aristocracy of title, or an aristocracy 
 of money, or both. The iron despotism of England — 
 the least free of all civilized countries for the multi- 
 tude — is upheld by the power of this prerogative of the 
 peer, reinforced by the same power and prerogative 
 vested in the capitalist. The Irish landlord lives in 
 London; his banker in London pays the troops which 
 guard his land in Ireland. The Common Law of Eng- 
 land (called "common" in a sarcastic sense) declares 
 that he owns that land in Ireland. The Irish tenants 
 rebel — not against government, but against this idea. 
 The whole human race — except the privileged owners 
 of "real estate" and th(! lawjers, politicians, and sol- 
 diers, their retainers — the whole human race enter- 
 tains the profound conviction, implanted by Nature 
 
XIV.] THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 367 
 
 and cultivated by the experience of life, that ownership 
 is based ou creation, and confirmed by use, alone. 
 
 The destiny of man is to prove this conviction to be 
 true, and to illustrate the truth of it in the future. 
 
 Will it be accounted illogical, if I say that the so- 
 called Monopolies of our day, at which self-styled dem- 
 ocrats and socialists bay, like dogs at the moon, are 
 among the first of these illustrations ? 
 
 Let us see. 
 
 The genius of our age is the spirit of mutual asso- 
 ciation for the promotion of a common interest. It 
 organizes society in a thousand ways so as to combine 
 its particular individual forces for greater efficiency, 
 interweaving a thousand twisted threads of wisdom 
 and energy into one fabric. 
 
 Relieved of autocracy, that vain substitution of a 
 local god- and father-despot whose sceptre and sword 
 should answer all demands of law, justice and benevo- 
 lence, — relieved of oligarchy, that equally unsuccessful 
 makeshift for a nation's self-keep and self-culture, — 
 human society is now free to assume the reins of its 
 own government, to provide for its own wants, to regu- 
 late its own conduct, to cure its own harms, to select 
 its own paths to prosperity, and to forecast its own 
 destiny. 
 
 The first stage of the new adventure is that of Conr 
 sultation. Knowledge of the situation — the whole sit- 
 uation, within and without, — must be gained first. 
 
 And the first business to be attended to is the 
 taking an account of stock ; estimating the resources at 
 human command for accomplishing needful human 
 work; debating and distinguishing between the need- 
 ful and the less needful, the useful and the agreeable, 
 the desirable and the attainable ; stating the amount 
 and quality of raw material ; the efficiency of the 
 machinery by which it can be converted to use; the 
 means of transportation; and methods of distribution, 
 where the supply is demanded. And this as regards 
 not only the feeding, clothing, housing, and warming of 
 the body, but the enlightenment of the intellect, the 
 rectification of the will, and the ennoblement of the 
 heart — for each and all — also. 
 
368 THE SOCL\.L DESTINY OF THE RACE. [LECT. 
 
 The second business to be attended to, is the adjust- 
 ment of property. Modern society is essentially dem- 
 ocratic. The Divine Right has descended to all. The 
 old idea of the clan, or tribe, or gens, has been expanded 
 to fit the entire nation. There must be a distribution of 
 work, and a distribution of the proceeds of work, to all., 
 He that works much must get much ; he that works ill 
 earn little. But the wages must be proportioned to 
 the work. "Whether the work be invisible or visible, 
 skilled or merely manual, for the craving necessities or 
 for the no less craving imaginations of men — the work 
 in any case must be justly estimated at its true value to 
 society, and be rewarded with a just amount of owner- 
 ship in real estate^ — not necessarily in land., but in 
 iohatever is real in the estate of the owner, whoever he 
 may be, working under the divine inspiration of a 
 desire and a hope to own. And the same legal safe- 
 guards should be thrown around " personal property " 
 so called, that are so sedulously drawn around what 
 improperly arrogates to itself the exclusive title of 
 " real estate." 
 
 Consultation upon these two subjects of universal 
 interest was not feasible until the commencement of 
 the present century. Kings could consult upon their 
 OAvn affairs, but not the people. Even merchants and 
 bankers found it difficult to consult. Armies were lost 
 for want of means of verbal communication. 
 
 The discovery of the power of steam, and the discov 
 ery of the galvanic current, — the inventions of the 
 steamboat, the railroad, the newspaper and the tele- 
 graph — were trumpet notes of invitation to man- 
 kind to meet in convention to revise the Constitu- 
 tion of the Commonwealth. Slowly but surely all 
 classes of men in Christendom have answered the call. 
 They are now in session. The convention has a 
 quorum of millions.. There is a committee on every 
 subject of necessity or interest to any class of society, 
 however small. They sit en permanence. They report 
 at pleasure. They elect to fill their own vacancies. 
 They appoint their own chairmen, secretaries, and 
 treasurers ; frame their own parliamentary rules ; meet 
 
XIV.] THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 369 
 
 and adjourn in independence of each other ; have their 
 several committee rooms ; keep their own private and 
 publish tlieir public records. Nothing private is long 
 concealed. The committees know each other's debates 
 and pass judgment on each other's resolutions; debate 
 again and again and resolve acjcordingly. 
 
 These committees of the general convention of civ- 
 ilized communities are all well known to you, Ity name, 
 and character. They are the Trades unions, the 
 Boards of brokers, the Institutes of Mining, Civil and 
 Mechanical engineers; Astronomical, Meteorological, 
 Physical, Chemical, Mineralogical, Geological, Palseon- 
 tological. Botanical, Zoological, Historical, ArchiEologi- 
 cal, Philological, Statistical and Geographical socie- 
 ties; the Cobden club, the Iron and Steel association, 
 the Free-trade league, the Land league ; Boards of 
 trade and Merchants' associations; the Society of the 
 Cincinnati ; Army clubs, Literary clubs, Political clubs 
 of all kinds ; Scientific congresses, associations and 
 unions in ever}^ land ; Health conventions, Prison dis- 
 cipline conventions, Political caucuses and conventions 
 of every size and shade of opinion; Freemasonries 
 of a dozen names ; Religious conventions bj^ bishops, 
 by presbyters, by laity of every order and doctrine ; 
 Railway, Canal and Mining companies, and Bureaus of 
 government, with statistical, agricultural portfolios no 
 longer held by the lords but by the servants of the 
 people; no longer busy with plans for destroying the 
 peace of the many for the sake of the ease of the few, 
 but collecting and distributing the knowledge of what 
 is good to all, that all may obtain some fair and reason- 
 able share of it. 
 
 This new organization of civilized society resembles 
 the old organization of semi-civilized society as a man 
 awakened to the exercise of brain and nerves and mus- 
 cles resembles a man with the powers of thought and 
 motion still locked fast in slumber. The organic 
 nature of mankind has always manifested its ability 
 for performing the functions of amity and comity on a 
 small scale, in the sphere of the family and the clan, 
 where intercommunication and mutual intelligence are 
 
370 THE SOCIAL DESTINY OF THE EACE. 
 
 comparatively easy and simple, and. within narrow geo- 
 graphical limits defined by the physics of human exist- 
 ence. Now, that physical disabilities are so abated 
 or removed, intercommunication of neighborhoods and 
 provinces with one another and of whole nations with 
 one another has become gwift and facile. The old bar- 
 riers are thrown down ; the seas are bridged, the Alps 
 are tunnelled ; lightning and news are synonymous 
 terms; language alone remains forbidding; and even 
 this last barrier is being removed by the resolutions 
 of the World Committee on Education. International 
 conventions are the order of the day. International 
 expositions of the industries of all nations explain to 
 the eyes and minds of all peoples their common inter- 
 ests. Thousands of millions of letters and postal cards 
 fly and fall like snow upon the globe, covering, warm- 
 ing and moistening the soil of the coming springtime 
 of history; the seed in which is Christianity ; and the 
 harvest must needs be Peace and Plenty. 
 
 The Isis of man's destiny has dropped her veil. Lo ! 
 we suspected the worn face and streaming eyes of the 
 Mater Dolorosa. We behold instead the radiant coun- 
 tenance, full of wisdom, energy and benevolence, of 
 the Dresden Madonna ; and in her arms sits the regal 
 boy, the thoughtful, planful, powerful Horus-Christ; 
 just Avaked from the dreamful slumbers of a millennial 
 night, to enjoy a millennial day ; the observant specta- 
 tor of his Father's work. 
 
 I 
 
LECTURE XV. 
 
 TBTE PUTUBE ECONOMIES OP MATTKCNT). 
 
 I HAVE said that the common social life of the world 
 is represented in four ways: — 1. by Manufacture, 2. 
 by Trade and Commerce, 3. by Warfare, and 4. by 
 Legislation. 
 
 How will the future declare itself in respect to these 
 normal lines of conduct pursued by the human race, as 
 it becomes more and more a unit ? Let us take them 
 up in order; and with the premise that they call for 
 discussions on the nature of property, on the value of 
 money, and on the art of finance far too fundamental 
 and extensive to be more than suggested in this lecture. 
 
 In Manufactures the skill of man has exhausted 
 itself. Evidently there are few materials left to dis- 
 cover which can be so important for the arts as the 
 india-rubber gum, quinine, the black diamond, the 
 Stassfurt salts, cryolite, and anthracite. 
 
 The modern house typifies the future, as plainly as 
 the wigwam and mud hovel signifies the past. 
 
 Within the domain of luxury the manufacturing 
 genius shall find its chief employment in coming ages. 
 Universal comfort will be the watchword; for, com- 
 fort, once the expensive monopoly of a few, is to be 
 the cheap abundance of the many. 
 
 Machinery is both the cause and the effect of comfort. 
 What few demand, a few supply; and the supply is 
 occasional, sparing, difficult and costly. What all 
 demand is sure to be created abundantly, quickly, 
 easily and at a low price ; transported in quantities to 
 
372 THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF JMANKIND. [LECT. 
 
 great distances ; and stored in piles for general eon- 
 sumption. 
 
 No more exquisite gold work, silver work or glass 
 worlv can ever be made than is exhumed from ancient 
 tombs. But 850,000,000 worth of finger-rings are now 
 worn by the people of the United States. The grand 
 duchess Margaret of Burgundy slept in a small stone 
 room, with one low window, in the chateau of Dijon ; 
 sat upon a wooden stool ; and dressed by a hand glass 
 no larger than a window-pane. A cell in the Eastern 
 Penitentiary is a fine place in comparison. The audi- 
 ence chamber of Queen Elizabeth of England was car- 
 peted with rushes, not free from vermin ; and the 
 house of any mechanic in Philadelphia compared with 
 her palace is a heaven of curious luxury. 
 
 Modern machinery is fast obliterating the distinctions 
 of caste and class. When Steinway's, Chickering's and 
 Broadwood's grand-action pianos are heard in secluded 
 farm-houses, the old days of chivalry, with spinnet and 
 cither, have closed up their accounts with civilization ; 
 assigning their best possessions and long jealously 
 guarded rights to the canaille. No chariot of Pharaoh 
 or Emperor could compete for curious elegance or util- 
 ity with either the English bicycle or the American 
 buggy; no coliseum with a modern opera house. 
 
 What Avere the glories of Cleopatra's barge, or of the 
 Bucentaur, in comparison with the splendid convenience 
 of a Fall River steamboat, daily fitted out for the pleas- 
 ure of any two thousand citizens who please to occupy 
 it? The elaborately aristocratic post-chaise system of 
 only seventy years ago seems rude and awkward now, 
 in view of the democratic refinements of daily trains 
 of palace, sleeping, smoking, dining, express and mail 
 cars following each other in rapid fiight and ceaseless 
 succession across the American continent. 
 
 The application of steam to machinery, and of sci- 
 ence to invention, has accomplished this ; and there- 
 fore, since the power of steam is infinitely applicable, 
 and since the multitude of inventors is always on the 
 increase, the universal distribution of comiiunal lux- 
 uries to mankind would seem to be merely a question 
 of time. 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. 373 
 
 It must also be cousidered, that in past ages war 
 was habitual, cruel, and reckless of cousequencos. 
 Every conflict was succeeded bv the sack of cities, and 
 cities were the only centres of manufacture. With the 
 city, its artisans also were destroyed ; and their ma- 
 chinery, poor as it was, perished in the same ruin. 
 
 Now, on the contrary, wars come rarely, rage fiercely 
 but locally, destro}^ little, spare carefully, and, so far 
 from belittling, actually enlarge and invigorate the 
 sphere of the arts ; and modern manufacturing estab- 
 lishments, placed rather in the open country than in 
 cities, escape instead of inviting destruction. 
 
 The Finance of the future — what will it be ? 
 
 That must depend upon the future reconstructions of 
 social ideas of property. 
 
 In past times, the task of collection and expenditure 
 was simple, if not easy: collection by force, and expen- 
 diture at will. Absolute power, based on the right of 
 the strongest and on the loose aggregation of the mill- 
 ions, took what it pleased, or could get, and spent 
 upon itself and its favorites. The lord owned every- 
 thing and was accountable to no one. The tax-gatherer 
 compounded with the monarch for half the imposts, 
 and often lost his half, now to the unscrupulous despot 
 and now to the enraged and despairing mob. 
 
 At length the necessities of the throne established 
 the right of the commons to initiate appropriations 
 for its maintenance. 
 
 Finally, democratic revolutions formulated the pre- 
 scription "No taxation without representation" — so 
 far as freeholders of the male sex were concerned. 
 
 Republican government has resulted in the popular 
 criticism of all aj)propriation bills not onl}^ after but 
 previous to their passage ; and all such bills are re- 
 ferred, not to the Executive, but to a standing Com- 
 mittee on finance. 
 
 It seems likely then that in the future every separate 
 interest of societv wdl have its weight in determining 
 legislative financial enactments; and that a just balance 
 of all interests will be rejiresented by a frequently mod. 
 
374 THF FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. [LECT. 
 
 fied but generally consistent system of internal taxes 
 and foreign imposts, lightening the burden of expense 
 for each by equally distributing it over all. 
 
 But a struggle will always be maintained between 
 the direct and indirect methods. 
 
 Before social interests became so involved with one 
 another as they are now, and when individuals and 
 guilds and single communities maintained a strict and 
 jealous individuality, having little intercourse witli one 
 another, each standing squarely face to face with the 
 ruling power, the personal property tax was the sim- 
 plest, quickest and most forcible method of taxation. 
 So, the purist still admires the income tax for its 
 directness and simplicity. But business men univer- 
 sally prefer an impost on the ' fruits of industry ; 
 because that method of taxation raises no embarrass- 
 ing personal questions. Moreover, losses which are 
 not noticed are not grieved over; and poor people, 
 receiving no tax-bills, suppose that capitalists and land- 
 lords alone support the government, and are seldom 
 roused to inquiry except at crises when house ex- 
 penses exceed wages. Even then, far from compre- 
 hending that both prices and wages are regulated 
 partly by taxation and partly by the balance of 
 supply and demand — they lay the blame vaguely 
 upon capital in the abstract, and not upon an}^ pre- 
 cise misappropriation of capital for unnecessary or 
 wasteful objects. 
 
 Even should a universal better education of the mul- 
 titude hereafter avail to clear men's vision for a real 
 understanding of the complicated finances of human 
 life — which is very doubtful — the hope of the future 
 must rest upon a breed of honest experts, Avhom the 
 people can trust, and to whom they can delegate the 
 power to tax. The education of such a class of experts 
 may perhaps be hoped for ; but it will manifest two 
 opposite tendencies. 
 
 There must always continue to be two schools of 
 linauciers — one more theoretical ; the other more prac- 
 tical; both relying on masses of statistics; both argu- 
 ing fiom different stand-points. The more theoretical 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. 375 
 
 will strive to realize transcendental ideas ; the more 
 practical will strive to arrange interests as exhibited 
 about them. 
 
 This native divergence is the first distinction be- 
 tween free-traders and protectionists. The former start- 
 ing from the universal idea of human brotherhood, and 
 the latter starting with the necessities of their own 
 home and country. The former pursue the argument 
 with a conviction that what is good in the long run for 
 the whole must be good for each part ; the latter con- 
 fessing ignorance of what should be good for the whole, 
 confine their intellectual activity within the scope of 
 actual knowledge of what is beneficial to a part. 
 
 Other elements of strife intrude. The commercial 
 class (technically so called, as opposed to the class of 
 traders) resist by instinct all imposts upon foreign 
 goods, and desire to throw the burden of an excise tax 
 upon home productions. Especially is this true of the 
 very large class of really or virtually foreign merchants 
 doing business at American ports. Their interests cen- 
 tre in foreign lands, and they naturally wish well to 
 foreign manufactures. Their wealth is great, and 
 their efforts to influence home legislation are skilfully 
 directed. Aliens at heart, citizens only in name, and 
 by accidental or temporary residence, their financial 
 philosophy leans as much to one side away from the 
 truth, as do to the other side the financial propositions 
 of those who would gladly support the government (if 
 that were possible) by the exclusive taxation of for- 
 eigners to the complete relief of its own citizens. 
 
 Between these two extremes ranges the line of theory 
 and practice called " Protectionist " ; seeking to impose 
 only such a tariff upon foreign goods as shall result in 
 founding and making safe and permanent all kinds ol 
 human work on its own soil ; so that competition shall 
 take place only between the equally liable subjects of 
 the home government, and not between tax-payers rep- 
 resented at Washington (for instance), and foreigners 
 whose conduct cannot be checked in London, Paris, or 
 Berlin. A high tariff, at its first send-off, certainly 
 enhances the price of manuiactured articles at home. 
 
376 THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. [LECT. 
 
 But experience shows this to be a temporary incon- 
 venience ; for, as soon as any inanufactiire is fairly in- 
 troduced and extended, competition with itself brings 
 down the price nearly to a par with the foreign article. 
 And if a difference still remain, that difference really 
 represents a higher rate of wages at home, and a better 
 ])rofit on the raw material produced at home. 
 
 But, apart from the question of price. Protection to 
 home manufactures meets a capital demand of nature : 
 that every nationality shall take proper stops for equip- 
 ping itself with all the powers, and furnishing itself 
 completely with the whole apparatus of civilization. 
 Evidently, this cannot be effected so long as foreign 
 nations are permitted to feed or clothe or build or 
 make for it anything that it really wants and can ac- 
 complish for itself. 
 
 Any advancement of the human race in wisdom and 
 goodness must result in the general spread of the virt- 
 ues of temperance, diligence, honest}^ and thrift. Any 
 accumulation of the popular wealth in the hands of all, 
 must render working men more independent of their 
 employers and tend to co-operative industry. This in 
 its turn will settle wages accoixling to the law of supply 
 and demand; and, finally, the right adjustment of both 
 wages and profit in associated trades will arrange 
 prices. There is a real price and there is a fictitious 
 ])rice for everything. Its real price is the average 
 money which would be offered for it, say by a hundred 
 thousand ordinarily intelligent people. Its fictitious 
 jirice is what it might occasionally command as bric-a- 
 l)rac, or as a souvenir, or from a capricious, eccentric, 
 or extraordinarily wealthy person. 
 
 The natural price of a manufactured article is deter- 
 mined by an estimate of the expense of its manufac- 
 ture : 1. So many minutes, hours, days, or years of the 
 maker's life -)- the cost of the raw material and tools 
 -|- the expense of exposing it in its proper market -j- 
 an average percentage of unemployed time between 
 the finishing of it and the undertaking of another job 
 -f- a percentage of the hours of enforced idleness in 
 old age, during which the workman must be supported 
 from the profits of his life -\- a percentage. 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OP MANKIND. 377 
 
 His education as a child and for the workshop is not 
 counted as a separate item, for that comes into his 
 father's account, and reguLates the prices of the hist gen- 
 eration. But the education of his own chiklren and all 
 other home expenses taken together determine the value 
 of the first element of the calculation. If it cost a 
 workman $1,000 a year to live, as husband, father, citi- 
 zen and christian ; and if he can accomplish 6 good 
 hours of work in each of 300 days in tlie 3'ear, for 40 
 years, in a life of 70; then from 40x300x6=72,000 
 hours of work he must get $40,000 worth of prices 
 over and above all expense of material, tools, shop 
 and transportation ; making each theoretical work- 
 hour worth to him at least $0 55. Commencing at 20 
 years of age and working until he is 60, he must pro- 
 vide $10,000 more for the remaining 10 years of his 
 life, if his home expenses continue to be the same to 
 its close. This will make his work-hour worth at least 
 $0.79. This supposes him to have no interruption in 
 business for forty years. Supposing interruptions to 
 the extent of 20 per cent., — the worth of an hour then 
 rises to $1.00. 
 
 If by the abundance and low price of food, clothing 
 and materials he can support his family on $500 a year, 
 the natural first price of his manufactured article will 
 fall to $0.50 or to $0.40 per hour required for its manu- 
 facture. But every indidgence he allows to himself, to 
 his wife or to his children, will enhance the price he 
 must ask for his hour's work. Every delay in his ar- 
 rangements, every detention by a customer, every piece 
 of spoiled work, every loss by accident, every play of 
 his invention, every change of model compelling new 
 calculations or new tools, increases the natural price of 
 his Avorking hours by diminishing their number. 
 
 This is the explanation of the supposed stupidity of 
 mechanics who obstinately refuse to depart from their 
 rules of thumb to gratify the caprice or the intelligence 
 of their employers. 
 
 The estimate given above is based on the American 
 idea that the man supports the woman by his labor, 
 and that the woman earns nothing by her own labor, 
 
378 THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. [LECT. 
 
 being Avholly and ahva^'s occupied in household cares. 
 On the basis of French ideas — a basis far sounder and 
 more stable in the nature of things, to which all nations 
 have been brought down, and on which the American 
 nation also in the course of time will be forced to 
 arrange its affairs — the woman, sharing the work life 
 of the man, shares in the profit and loss account of its 
 finance. The wife works with the husband in the field 
 and vineyard, in the workshop and office. Thus the 
 family time and strength is doubled, and the woman 
 who cannot earn as much as the man does more to save 
 earnings than the man. On this basis, with this thrifti- 
 ness, the cost of living is reduced to one-half, and the 
 cost of all manufactures falls" to one-half; because raw 
 material is itself a manufacture in the first stage, and 
 its cost is reduced first. If the American married 
 man's hour be worth -$1.00, the French married man's 
 hour is worth only 50c. But on this half-pay he and 
 his live wiser, better and happier than the American 
 family lives on double wages. 
 
 I have no opportunity here to discuss the complicated 
 mass of consequences deducible from this principle. 
 But it is easy to see that however machinery may 
 cheapen comfort for future generations, hand-made' or 
 brain-made luxuries must in all future ages continue to 
 be the private enjoyment of a favored few, or else be 
 owned in common and arranged in public places. Pri- 
 vate cabinets must give way to public museums. Li- 
 braries of rare and costly books must be thrown open to 
 all. The gardens of the rich must be combined to 
 make public parks. Luxurious symposiums must be 
 replaced by municipal festivals. Railroad shares must 
 be held in small blocks. 
 
 This change however has already made its mark upon 
 the century in which we live. The tendency to a more 
 complete realization of it, in the shape of comfort at 
 home and luxury in public, is a strongly pronounced 
 feature of human destiny while yet that destiny is 
 merely a child of the future. 
 
 The item of Intcreat was not included in the list of 
 price-data given aijove. Tliere is a destiny for this 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OP MANKIND. 379 
 
 fiction of Interest, also; and its destiny is to vanish 
 away out of the calculations and the life of men. It is 
 no arrangement of Nature that a baby should be born 
 heir to an accumulation of the ownership of the saved 
 products of a million days' works of other men through 
 the cunning procedure of his father (who in his life- 
 time did no more labor himself than any other man), 
 and be thereby invested by legal enactments or 
 societ)' regulations with the right of living on the 
 " Interest " of that accumulated " Capital " his whole 
 life tlirough, and that without doing any work at all 
 himself. 
 
 " Interest " reveals its true character when it throws 
 off the mask of moderation, and appears then with its 
 natural face as " Usury." The reason why all enact- 
 ments against usury have been acknowledged failures 
 is the ground fact that there is no natural distinction 
 between usury and interest. Man was born to work, 
 and to save from the proceeds of his work a ^lenny for 
 a rainy da}'. Most human beings find no loophole of 
 escape from this divine ordinance. Some however do 
 escape ; and the efforts of others to escape makeup the 
 history of rapine and fraud. Historians know that the 
 greater part of the past legislation of mankind has 
 really been for the application of ph3'sical force to the 
 legalization of rapine and fraud. The effort of the 
 present generation is to rectify legislation in the inter- 
 est of honest labor, to protect it from the prescriptive 
 claims of rapine and fraud, formulated in the statute- 
 books of bygone generations. 
 
 The worst feature of the system of Interest is not its 
 theoretical unnaturalness, and the opportunity it affords 
 for hereditary idleness and uselessness, but its practical 
 side-effects in establishing a broad foundation for non- 
 hereditary idleness and uselessness combined with 
 noxious profligacy and wasteful private luxury. The 
 imitation of the habits of those born rich and of those 
 living on incomes incommensurate with the amount of 
 work which they have accomplished, by a large class of 
 youthful human beings, whose only wish and endeavor 
 is to repudiate their indebtedness to those who work 
 
3S0 THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. [LECT. 
 
 for lliein, leads to tins consequt'iicc : tluit the prices of 
 all articles of consumption are enhanced to the honest 
 on the business principle that " bad debts " on the 
 ledger of the manufacturer must be balanced by in- 
 creased profits. Every idle man must be supported by 
 the workers of the world. Every non-producing fam- 
 ily adds to the expenses of producing families. Every 
 unpaid debt increases the price of food, clothing, house- 
 rent, and furniture to the whole community. The 
 habit of drawing interest on money lent is the first 
 cause and continual opportunity of the production of 
 drones in the human hive; and its abolition will be one 
 of the most necessary and one of the most difficult of 
 all tlu; tasks of the future. 
 
 The abolition of Interest will probably be hastened 
 by the change going on in men's regard for women. 
 Hitherto they have been men's property, carefully 
 guarded, and forbidden to work at any trade but that 
 of serving and pleasing men. This made one sex — 
 one half of every privileged class — one half of every 
 highly civilized community — drones. So long as men 
 worked only for a shelter from the cold and for suffi- 
 cient food, women's house-work equalled and balanced 
 man's shop-work; the shop wa^ the house, and the 
 woman and the man being constant companions fell 
 naturally enough to share each other's employments. 
 In planting and reaping and tending cattle, they 
 worked in common. And this is the case still with 
 the most of human beings. But as certain individuals 
 and classes became distinguished from the multitude 
 by luxury and superior retinement of manners, certain 
 women ceased to work at useful tasks and betook 
 themselves to embroidery and such like fanciful and 
 useless occupations. As "Civilization" spread, and 
 men's wealth increased, the female sex acquired senti- 
 ments and habits of absolute dependence and physical 
 inefficiency. Their maintenance devolved wholly on 
 working men. In our day find country, now that men 
 consider women their equals in all the rights of life 
 except the right of a separate and independent selec- 
 tion of work for themselves, and a separate and inde- 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECON(,)MIES OF MANKIND. 381 
 
 pendent ownership of its proceeds, the extra comfort 
 and luxury in which men love to see their women live, 
 doubles or quadruples the severity of male labor, and 
 the cost of family maintenance. Hence the growing 
 number of unmarried men. Hence the multiplica- 
 tion of abandoned women. Hence the increasing diffi- 
 culty with which lone women sustain life. Hence the 
 revival of woman's desire to share in man's labors. 
 Every male trade is besieged with female applicants. 
 In course of time, some readjustment and return to 
 first principles must be inevitable. Useless work will 
 be eliminated from the business of the human race, 
 and men and women, together or separately, must 
 occupy their minds and hands only with what is 
 useful. The proportion of drones — now nearly fifty 
 per cent, of the whole population — wili fall to 30, 20, 
 10, 5 per cent. Production will rise as idleness de- 
 clines; and the cost of living will be abated for each 
 male and female worker, first b}^ the surplus of work 
 done, and secondly by the lessening of the number of 
 drones to be worked for. 
 
 But, by this general distribution of moderate means 
 to all, the accumulation of an undue amount of the 
 symbol of work (money) in the hands of the few will 
 become more and more difficult and exceptional ; while 
 a universal and traditional industry will gradually 
 metamorphose the fiction of Interest into the fact of 
 Dividend. 
 
 Interest and Dividend are contrary terms. For, 
 whereas Interest represents an artificial system of 
 usury, Dividend represents a natural system for distrib- 
 uting the proceeds of labor. It is needless to illustrate 
 this further ; it is the key to the future Social Science. 
 Its present symbol is the Mutual Savings bank, even 
 complicated as that still is with the fictions of Interest 
 on money lent; but the symbol in this form of it 
 will be exchanged for the better forms of the Building- 
 association and the Co-operative store, in the just oper- 
 ation of which Money makes its nearest approach to 
 an identity with Work. 
 
 Money. — This mystic word is destined to a fair illu- 
 mination. 
 
382 THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND^ [LECT. 
 
 Aclergymaii of Philadelphia is said to have collected 
 16,000 books on the one doctrine of infant baptism. 
 When Stephen Colwell died, he left to the University 
 of Pennsylvania 9,000 separately bound treatises on 
 Money. 
 
 Why so many words to explain what everybody com- 
 prehends? It costs the farmer a day's work to get 
 a bushel of corn out the soil; and it costs a basket- 
 weaver one day's work to make a bushel basket to put 
 it in. Barter means that the farmer shall exchange 
 his bushel of wheat for the basket; and now the 
 farmer owns a basket for which he has wrought, and 
 the basket-maker has enough food for his household 
 until he can make and sell another basket. 
 
 But Bartering is impeded by a thousand incon- 
 veniences. A pledge from the farmer to deliver the 
 wheat when the basket-maker wants it will save both 
 of them from inconvenience. A piece of gold or silver 
 stamped with a mark which all farmers and basket- 
 makers have agreed to mean "one day's work" and 
 which is known by the name of "Dollar," will enable 
 the transfer of wheat and basket to be made at any 
 future more convenient season. A piece of leather, or 
 paper so marked and so recognized will do this as well. 
 But in the case of gold and silver the money (of such 
 and such a weight and size) represents also itself a 
 day's work, and its circulation is therefore of the nature 
 of barter; but in the use of a leather coin or a paper 
 dollar, thousands of which can be made and stamped in 
 a day, the barter is confined to the goods, and the 
 money is a mere promise to pay. In the case of gold 
 and silver coin, the buyer and seller both know that 
 the whole human race will recognize, comprehend and 
 help to realize the contract. In the case of paper 
 money, the buyer and seller have no guarantee beyojid 
 the genuineness and local reputation for honesty of the 
 name upon the note. Facilities for forgery and breach 
 of trust are infinitely greater in the one case, therefore, 
 than in the other. If, however, these facilities can be 
 taken away, — so that the barter can be made as safely 
 and surely with the paper dollar as with the gold 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. 383 
 
 dollar, — then the nature and value of the one is pre- 
 cisely the nature and value of the other. 
 
 To do this is precisely the object of every national 
 bank system. Banks are but larger individuals, and 
 when they deceive, multitudes are wronged. The gov- 
 ernment steps in to guarantee the multitudes against 
 deceit. If now the government itself becomes fraudu- 
 lent, the whole nation must suifer, and without redress. 
 
 Irresponsible governments have done this a thousand 
 times. The overthrow of many a government is attrib- 
 utable to no other cause. When the late Pope debased 
 the Roman franc ten per cent.. Napoleon's policy 
 being then to protect the Pope, the bank of France 
 accepted the circulating coins at their face value ; 
 but when Napoleon's policy changed and the French 
 brokers would receive the debased coin at only its real 
 value, the French peasantry, then discovering and 
 fully appreciating their loss of two sous on every 
 franc they hoarded, attacked the priests, and yielded 
 themselves to a mad delusion that the Pope had 
 moved the Vatican to Germany and instigated the 
 invasion of France. From the moment of that fatal dis- 
 covery the prestige of the Catholic religion was broken 
 down throughout the kingdom ; and the present repub- 
 lican and anti-clerical majorities in the Corps legisla- 
 tive are a logical consequence. 
 
 Every — the slightest — shade of dishonesty cast on 
 the monetary transactions of a government darkens the 
 moral and social atmosphere of the nation, even when 
 the government is unconstitutional. Much more disas- 
 trous are the consequences of fraudulent dealing openly 
 enacted by a representative government, for all the 
 acts of which the whole population of the republic 
 must needs feel itself responsible. The debased coin 
 of the United States is nothing else than the ugly 
 reflection which the debauched business conscience of 
 the nation sees of its own face in the looking-glass of 
 its National Congress of law-makers. Still worse is the 
 issue of legal-tender notes which violate the funda- 
 mental principle of money by carrying no guarantee. 
 
 Geology has no prediction to make respecting the 
 future exhaustion of the precious metals. Even if this 
 
384 THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND, [lECT. 
 
 be enj^rossed in the schedule of events its date cannot 
 be calculated; because, the innumerable gold-washing 
 places of both liemispheres indicate an infinite number 
 of as yet unworked auriferous quartz veins; and, ne\y 
 argentiferous regions of extraordinary value are among 
 the most recent discoveries. Refinements in metal- 
 lurgy will come to the relief of deep mining; and, bet- 
 ter chemical processes will diminish the waste of gold 
 and silver in the arts. 
 
 To all this must be added the probability of a more 
 general prevalence of peace ; the easy multiplication 
 and preservation of gold and silver work in private and 
 public edifices ; and that cessation of the ancient and 
 universal practice of hoarding, by burying C(.'iiis in the 
 earth, which, first in one country and then in another, 
 will be the natural result of the introduction of a 
 system of paper currency, under the guardian care of 
 stable and enlightened republican governments estab- 
 lished throughout the world. 
 
 There seems no reason to doubt that the supply of 
 the precious metals will always be sufficient for the- 
 trade and commerce of men ; and all the more because 
 due bills, bank bills, and bills of credit will be more 
 and more in demand, relieving coin of risk of transpor- 
 tation, and in fact of every function except that of 
 petty exchange; while the perfection of telephonic and 
 telegraphic communication will make the transmission 
 of paper money itself to some extent unnecessary. 
 
 The future Commerce of the world is a theme too 
 vast for even a fancy sketch. Carriers of goods on 
 foot, on horses, asses, camels, oxen; in bark or hide- 
 canoes, which men could lift out of one river and carry 
 over to launch in another ; in coasting-boats, hugging 
 the shore from headland to headland ; or in vessels with 
 sails, piloted by the stars — merchants of the desert, of 
 the mountains, of the islands of the sea — appear at the 
 earliest dawn of history. In all subsequent ages 
 some kind of commerce flourished wherever there were 
 human beings. Amber, nephrite, the turquoise and 
 the pearl, gold torques, bronze swords and chunks of 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. 385 
 
 iron established its early routes. Rock salt and textile 
 fabrics have been its principal burden. The discovery 
 of any unknown land was always followed by the build- 
 ing of new marts upon its coast, the spread of manufact- 
 ures and the building of fleets. The central sea of the 
 world became a theatre of commercial competition, war, 
 and piracy. The products of Europe, Asia and Africa 
 were brought by caravans to its shores. India and 
 China traded with the eastern archipelago. Even the 
 mound-builders of America had their general trade 
 in Lake Superior copper and North Carolina mica, 
 which wove the interests of their tribes together, and 
 produced a feeble civilization, destined in the end to be 
 extinguished by the power of the red Indian, as the 
 civilization of southern Europe and northern Africa 
 and western Asia had been by Skythic, Teutonic and 
 Sara'cenic invasions. 
 
 Trade is the local exchange on equal terms of one 
 man's works for another's. 
 
 Commerce is the transportation of cheap goods from 
 where they are superfluously abundant to distant places 
 where they are scarce and rare and highly valued. 
 
 Trade involves no profit except such as represents 
 the deficiencies of a man's livelihood. The parties in 
 trade have an equally good knowledge of the worth 
 of the things bartered, and in the end come out square 
 with each other. 
 
 The parties in commerce were never (until lately) 
 on equal terms, except in one respect: to wit, there 
 was no true knowledge of the worth of the goods 
 on either side ; the whole transaction was done in the 
 dark. The buyer could know neither the price of 
 the goods at the place they were made, nor the cost 
 of their reaching him. The seller knew their prices 
 where he got them, but could neither calculate his own 
 expenses in transporting them to the place of sale, 
 nor what the buyer there would imagine them to be 
 worth. Hence all commerce was a pure adventure, 
 and had the charm of a gambling risk ; ,ind all com- 
 mercial negotiation was a slow and cunning haggling 
 over prices between the merchant and the citizen. 
 
386 THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. [LECT. 
 
 Ill Oriental countries, this essential character of Com- 
 merce has bred its like in trade, and not an article is 
 bought or sold, even between two people in the same 
 village, without the formality of a negotiation respect- 
 ing a pennyworth, worthy of some transaction of the 
 Rothschilds, or the cession of Epirus by the Turkish 
 government to Greece. Even in France and Germany, 
 travellers are astonished by the universal fact that a 
 price for every article on sale is at first demanded higher 
 than the seller will be willing to take in the end. 
 Here, it is a mere traditional custom. But in the Ori- 
 ent it is the consequence of actual ignorance of the real 
 price of the article in trade, both on the part of the 
 seller and on the part of tlie buyer ; and as there are 
 no fixed values for goods, it takes time for the buyer to 
 get the seller's lowest price, and for the seHer to find 
 out the buyer's highest. 
 
 This ignorance, due to defective general intercom- 
 munication, and the total absence of a general advertis- 
 ing medium, like the press, converts Trade into Com- 
 merce. On the other hand, in the great cities of the 
 West, and among the more wide-awake populations of 
 northern Germany, Belgium, England, and the United 
 States, a perfected system of mutual information has 
 converted Commerce into Trade ; and it is surely writ- 
 ten in the destiny of the human race that, as time rolls 
 on, and the local exchange, the newspaper and the tele- 
 graph station get planted in every nook and corner of 
 the earth, the home price of every article of human 
 manufacture will be accurately fixed and universally 
 published, and the sole business of Commerce will be to 
 dechire the additional cost of transportation, and then 
 lapse back into Trade. 
 
 There are four principal methods of transporting 
 goods : by wagon, by canal-boat, by rail-car and by 
 steam or sailing ships. Trade by canal, and commerce 
 on tlie sea, are exceptional. Trade on common roads, 
 and commerce on iron tracks, take and must always 
 take the precedency. There are very few parts of the 
 earth's surface proper for engineering a canal; and a 
 canal, when made, must be of great width and depth, 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. 387 
 
 like the Erie canal between the Hudson river and Lake 
 Erie, to play any important role in the commerce of the 
 world. Even then, 10,000 boats will only carry 1,500,- 
 000 tons of freight at the rate of 2 miles per hour, the 
 trip requiring about two weeks ; * whereas, the New 
 York Central railroad, which runs beside it, could 
 carry the same amount in the same time, delivering 
 it at the rate of 100,000 tons per day, but after a 
 run of only one day. The cost of freight on the 
 canal, however, is less than 3 mills per ton per mile, as 
 against a cost of 7 mills by rail. The canal is therefore 
 used for slow freight, grain, etc. and the rail for express 
 freight and live stock. Railways, moreover, can be 
 constructed anywhere, and the Pennsylvania Railroad 
 Company alone now operates 7,000 miles of line. The 
 whole mileage of railway in the United States is 40,000 
 miles, increasing every year. Along all these lines are 
 innumerable stations, whence freight is distributed by 
 horse and wagon to every hamlet and farm-house in the 
 land ; and the number of horses thus employed may 
 be estimated from the fact that among the various crops 
 of the United States the hay crop has the highest value. 
 The tonnage of England's commercial navy amounted 
 in 1880 to 10,000,000; that of all other countries to 
 11,000,000. At the commencement of 1880 a tonnage of 
 430,000 was under construction ; at the commencement 
 of 1881 a tonnage of 095,000 ; indicating not only 
 the future expansion of ocean commerce in the world, 
 but the continued supremacy of the British Empire as 
 a commercial carrier for the world. This cannot last 
 forever ; but it may last a long time. In course of time, 
 the vast future population of the United States will 
 requh'e a commensurate lleet to export its products of 
 
 * The Erie Canal is 350 miles long, 70 feet wide and 7 feet deep, 
 and can float boats of 240 tons freight. It reduced the theoretical 
 time of freight from Albany to Buffalo from 20 to 10 days, and the 
 cost from §100 to ^10 per ton, at once, delivering it at the rate of 
 100,000 tons a day. 
 
 The actual use of the canal falls far short of this, for the tol al 
 of all freight passed both ways on all the canals of Canada in 1860 
 was only 4,270,820 tons. In Great Britain, 4,700 miles of canal 
 exist. 
 
388 THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. [LECT. 
 
 the sijil. But the rapid growth of manufactures in 
 America will more and more confine the consumption 
 of meat and grain within its borders. Tlie wealth which 
 England seeks abroad America will find at home. In- 
 ternal trade will be a substitute for foreign commerce ; 
 as it is in China. Meanwhile the opening of the mouth 
 of the Mississippi river is making of New Orleans a 
 future rival for New York, and of St. Louis a future 
 rival for Chicago. 
 
 Will War ever cease upon the Earth ? is a question 
 often asked and never answered. The prophecy of the 
 second Isaiah, the glorious Unknown, was a sigh and a 
 cry for peace for the Holy Land. But so long as chil- 
 dren of Cain and children of Abel are born upon the 
 same or neighboring soils, — these with the hereditary 
 virtues of a love of peaceful labor and temperate thrift, 
 those with a hereditary taint of laziness and greed — 
 Fraud and Theft will cultivate the arts of Attack and 
 Defence into the science of War. 
 
 As the classic government of force, Tyranny, has 
 always l)een the eminent realization of organized and 
 concentrated Theft, it can never exist but as both 
 product and producer of War ; and as both proof and 
 example of the prevalence of the Cain element over 
 the Abel element in any age and country. 
 
 Tyranny evinces also the insufficient education of the 
 masses; for, as ignorance distinguishes the isolated 
 and therefore unjirotected individual from the educated 
 and therefore united and powerful, the only protection 
 for all is in the education and consequent close inter- 
 communication and mutual acquaintanceshij) of all. 
 
 The spread of democratic ideas and the nuiltiplication 
 of republics result directly from the increase of popular 
 intelligence, by which the real strength of the robber 
 class gets measured, and the easy ability of the honest 
 multitude to check and suppress schemes of spoliation 
 ap])eals to the common sense of the nation. 
 
 Theft is essentially a vice of the night and of loneli- 
 ness. In the light of day and in the midst of an active 
 society, all crimes, but especially Ihe world's habitual 
 
XV.] THE FUTUEE EC0N0:MIES OF MANKEvD. 389 
 
 crime, Theft, becomes too difficult. Popular education 
 need not be teclmically moral to ensure a diminution of 
 the rapine of kings and nobles, the spoliation of life and 
 property by the cunning and reckless. When a people 
 become well informed of all kinds of affairs they get 
 into a condition to organize intercourse on a reasonable 
 basis ; to adjust the various claims of men on men ; to 
 tune and temper the great piano-forte of Human So- 
 ciety ; to balance rights, and compress wrongs Avithin 
 the narrowest limits. Small communities, in which all 
 know all, are necessarily better governed, or govern 
 themselves better, than large ones. Religion has noth- 
 ing to do with it. Morality is not in any sense the 
 cause, but is the effect of it. And after Good Order 
 follows naturally Peace. 
 
 Foreign interi^erence is thereafter the only danger to 
 be dreaded. Every ill educated, badly governed coun- 
 try is a standing menace to its better educated and self- 
 governed neighbors. The great historical mission of the 
 Republic of the United States is to illustrate these 
 truths on a grade scale, and with exceptional advantages 
 of time and situation. But Switzerland, Belgium, and 
 now France, have also afforded fair and fine examples. 
 Other nationalities are already inchoate republics, and 
 will each in its turn realize the principle of general 
 knowledge, a better order, and greater safety. 
 
 When a war is over, each soldier, after parading about 
 awhile, making and listening to patriotic speeches, and 
 getting back into the old routine of daily business, hangs 
 up liis rifle on its hooks, where it has leave to rust as a 
 harmless memento of the past. So, nations will, in time 
 and turn, put away their standing armies, when there 
 are no more kings and nobles, but only artisans and 
 tradesmen, scholars and physicians and artists left in the 
 land ; with here and there a thief, a sot or an imbecile, 
 who will be cared for, each in a proper way. 
 
 When this process has been fully realized in all coun- 
 tries — those now savage requiring of course the longest 
 time for it — it seems unreasonable to fancy the con- 
 tinual existence of War. 
 
 But meanwhile? 
 
390 THE rUTUKE ECONOMIES OP MANKIND. [LECT. 
 
 Ah ! meanwliilc, wars nlust needs recur ; and every 
 nation, not cut off from the rest by the ocean, must sub- 
 mit to military drill, and stand ready to repulse invasion. 
 But is more than that needful ? Probably the growing 
 intelligence of Christendom will say No. 
 
 The experience of the Great Republic in the greatest 
 of all wars has proved two things : 1. that all parts of a 
 nation must be equally well educated if civil wars are 
 to be avoided ; and 2. that standing armies are not ab- 
 solutely necessary either for attack or for defence. 
 
 The latter truth is enforced upon the consideration of 
 the world by the powerlessness of the standing army of 
 France in its last war. It was precisely the supposed 
 existence of an efficient French army that occasioned 
 that war ; although its true causes were dated back in 
 the times of Louis XIV, times of rapine and fraud par 
 excellence. 
 
 A standing army represents enthroned rapine and 
 fraud, whether on the steppes of Russia, on the plain of 
 the Ganges, or in the bogs of Ireland. An army of vol- 
 unteers is, on the contrary, the people; confederated 
 under oath to remain a people, or to die rather than be 
 enslaved. But such an army to be successful must be 
 honest in its aims and claims, and educated by all kinds 
 of work for all kinds of action. Given this, it scorns 
 delays, disasters, sufferings and defeats ; it knows itself 
 invincible at last. Men who build locomotives, and 
 tunnel mountains, and invent the electric light, and 
 pipe petroleum a hundred miles, and hang steel bridges 
 across Niagara, and transact their business by wire, and 
 change their government with the regularity of clock- 
 work every four years without disturbance, can on an 
 emergency overwhelm their enemies with destruction, 
 sink hostile ironclads with torpedoes, and improvise 
 army for army as fast as their invaders approach. 
 
 If it be the destiny of the human race for all nations 
 to become educated, enlightened, equipped with the 
 apparatus of civilization, and exercised in self-govern- 
 ment, then, it seems to be the destiny of manldnd to 
 attain to universal order and to universal peace. 
 
 But there resides in the very body of war the subtle 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. 391 
 
 seeds of its own dissolution. For it is evident tliat the 
 perfection of defence must in the end balance the per- 
 fection of attack, in military operations on a large scale. 
 The improvement of arms of j^recision has already 
 greatly widened the interval between forces in the act 
 of conflict. This changes the sentiment of soldiers; 
 which used to be a personal hatred, generated and in- 
 tensified by frequent bayonet charges and musketr}^ at 
 close quarters. The brutality of cavalry movements is 
 also lessened by the rapidity of breech-loading artillery- 
 practice keeping off the approach of mounted squadrons; 
 which are now detailed for other service. Sieges are 
 no longer scenes of long protracted devil-revelry, per- 
 manently demoralizing whole regions. Vast fortresses 
 require vast armies of besiegers ; and when one or two 
 capitulate, the war is over. It only remains to substi- 
 tute nitro-glycerine for gunpowder to make destruction 
 too terrible to be practised by reasonable beings. 
 
 Will the Legislation of the future be simpler or more 
 complex — less or more vague — more or less opera- 
 tive; — more or less satisfactory to all — than it is at 
 present ? 
 
 To speak of the formal legislation of past ages is to 
 talk of the imperious edicts of some conqueror, the arbi- 
 trary enactments of some oligarchy, or some rare and 
 fugitive code of a casual tribal law-giver. But in fact 
 mankind has always spent life under a double regime^ 
 the permanent and greater part of which has formulated 
 itseli" in what is called sometimes Custom, and sometimes 
 the unwritten Common Law. 
 
 Legal science recognizes this as the fundamental basis 
 of all current legislation. Its principles are those of 
 property in life, libert}' to work, ownership of the jiro- 
 ceeds of Avork by the worker, family duty and good 
 neighborship. jModern legislation occupies itself mainly 
 in the writing out of this unwritten common law; codi- 
 fyuig and commenting on it ; simplifying and ajjplying 
 it to occasions as they arise; and providing it with 
 executive sanctions. 
 
 The study of it enlarges legal science ; and the prac- 
 
392 THE FCTTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. [LECT. 
 
 tice of it supports the legal profession — a class of ex- 
 perts, who naturally gravitate, as lawyers to the courts 
 of justice, and as law-makers to the halls of legislation. 
 These experts in law are the arguers and deciders of all 
 questions in controversy between man and man in re- 
 spect of honesty and fraud; and between society and its 
 members in regard to every act of crime. They repre- 
 sent the common law of all ages as interpreted into the 
 thinking and feeling of the day and place. They arc 
 the voice of every class of mankind complaining of in- 
 conveniences or pleading excuses. They are the framers 
 of all contracts and the detectives of all disorder ; but 
 not as inspired from without society, or from a higher 
 source of wisdom and justice, but as society itself would 
 do this, of itself and for itself, if it were not too busy. 
 
 Therefore, although Law and Justice are terms stand- 
 ing in the history of jjhilosophy for the absolutely good 
 in regard to the ordering of society, they are also and 
 universally, in the actual life of the world, merely terms 
 standing in the minds of men for the best social ar- 
 rangements which they have become acquainted with 
 up to date. Beyond this their meaning cannot reach. 
 Beyond tliis lawyers cannot go. Yet, beyond this a 
 certain jiercentage of law-makers are constantly striv- 
 ing to press forward — off from the ground of present 
 usage, on to some surer ground of a more perfect jus- 
 tice and morality. These advanced men however can 
 only proceed at such a rate as will permit the crowd to 
 see and follow them ; and the lost prophets of legislation 
 have been leaders whose rapid pace m advance of their 
 times carried them out of sight. 
 
 Our word 7norals is the Latin wos, custom, mores, 
 manners. It comes from the Coptic and old Egyptian 
 Mes, a child, to be born, to imagine (conceive?) Max^ to 
 introduce, ilier, to rule over, superintend, bind.* That 
 is to say, family order preceded the regulations of society 
 at large, and consisted of 1. the autliority of the })arent 
 over the child, and 2. the riglits and duties of children 
 in the family. When the family was enlarged to a 
 nation, Morality became Common Law. 
 
 * Ma and Mat, truth ; ^falc, to think, consider, and regulate. 
 
XV.] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. 393 
 
 If, as it seems, the life of the whole race is destined to 
 parallel the life of an individual man, then, the morality 
 of its past childhood (the common law of its present 
 adolescence) is destined to grow into the mature and 
 more transcendental legislation of its future manhood, 
 powerful, energetic, wise and good. 
 
 Law and Legislation are allied terms ; but the distinc- 
 tion between them is notable. They are related as 
 cause and effect, principle and practice. Legislation is 
 the enactment of laws. 
 
 As Laiv is represented, on the one side, by Usage^ 
 which is common law based on equity, — and on the other 
 side, by Legal enactments, which are special permissions, 
 prohibitions, limitations and sanctions in the shape of 
 punishment (never in the shape of reward) — so Legis- 
 lation consists of both Constitutional ijrovisos, and Par- 
 liamentary practice. 
 
 The equation, — Common law : Legal enactments : : 
 Constitutional provision : Parliamentary practice, is, 
 however, analogical, not homological. For, enactments 
 are attempts to specify and enforce customary justice ; 
 whereas the provisions of a constitutional convention 
 are attempts to redress the licentious liberty of the legis- 
 lature, by defining its functions, limiting its powers, and 
 regulating its practice.* 
 
 Under Absolute monarchy, all the rights of legisla- 
 tion centre in the king. The parliament or legislature, 
 if there be one, is merely his cabinet council. 
 
 Under Constitutional monarchy all the rights of leg- 
 islation centre in some voting class, whose elected dele- 
 gates control the king. 
 
 Under a Re[)nblic, based on universal suffrage, the 
 whole nation (theoretically) convenes by delegates to ar- 
 range both the constitutional scope, and the legislative 
 practice of human rights. 
 
 Delegation hy election is therefore the radical principle 
 of mcidern legislation. 
 
 Hoiv to ferfect the modus operandi of popular elections^ 
 
 * " Parliamentary practice " technically so called is merely a vol- 
 untary and convenient self-assumption of supplementary rules by 
 the Legislature. 
 
394 THE FUTURE econo:mies op mankind, [lect. 
 
 for selecting and empowering certain individuals, to legal- 
 ize property and conduct, for multitudes, is the question 
 of the future. 
 
 To suppose that this question in any country belongs 
 to the past, is to ignore the progress of mankind in 
 equity. 
 
 When kings have been obliged to grant the suffrage, 
 they have racked their wits to make it as innocuous as 
 possible to their prerogative. 
 
 In like manner, with every change of class or party 
 domination, the suffrage shifts its garb. At the present 
 moment Scrutin de liste and Scrutin d'arrondissement 
 are watchwords of civil war in France. Much of the 
 time of American politicians is spent in devising schemes 
 for apportioning the suffrage to population (or popula- 
 tion to suffrage) in view of coming elections. District- 
 ing a State, or " Gerrymandering" a district, has become 
 a vile fine art in America. Human cupidity distorts the 
 straight lines of Legislation, by first notching the edge 
 of the ruler — Suffrage. 
 
 One fundamental maxim must come to be acknowl- 
 edged: No man has a right to express an opinion who 
 does not knoiv the subject. And when the subject is 
 the fitness of a candidate to act as legislator, expression 
 of opinion means — a vote. 
 
 Consequently, no man has a right to vote for a repre- 
 sentative of whose fitness for office he is ignorant. 
 
 But thousands vote for statesmen of whom they can 
 know absolutely nothing. Millions vote, every four 
 years, for the most powerful monarch on earth, the 
 President of the United States, in complete ignorance 
 of his character and abilities. 
 
 The radical cure for so radical an evil is to be found 
 not in the suppression of popular suffrage; but in its 
 localization ivithin the limits of personal acquaintance. 
 
 This amounts to saying that the natural form of gov- 
 ernment is Hierarchy. 
 
 A republican hierarchy will perhaps be the govern- 
 ment of the future. The old English system of " Hun- 
 dreds " will be its basis. The elect of the Hundreds 
 will be electors for Ward or Township officials ; these in 
 
XV,] THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OF MANKIND. 395 
 
 turn will elect County officers; these, in their turn, 
 State officers; these, Congress; and Congress the Execu- 
 tive of the nation. Personal acquaintance and personal 
 responsibility will then react upon each other. Con- 
 ventions on occasion will regulate and supplement the 
 system. 
 
 It is not to be. expected that people will yield readily 
 or soon to such an innovation. It will be called reaction- 
 ary, retrogressive. The Church of Rome and the So- 
 ciety of Jesus will be cited as warnings. But Nature 
 cares nothing for warnings; neither does the true 
 patriot, the true philosopher, nor a fully enlightened 
 people. Fate is the embodiment of Patience. The 
 Great Republic has only lived one century. Its con- 
 stitution was constructed for five or six millions of 
 people. In thirty years from now a hundred millions 
 will find themselves irked by it. Children are already 
 born- who mil not die before subscribing themselves 
 citizens of a nation of two hundred millions of souls. 
 By that time forty millions of male votes and forty 
 millions of female votes will he cast together. The 
 world has not yet imagined such a contingency; but 
 the powers of destiny are preparing for it; and the 
 American people are drilling at Organization^ without 
 knowing that when marcliing-orders arrive the field of 
 action must be Suffrage. 
 
 The common man values more liighly his worthless 
 vote for Governor or President than his priceless vote 
 for School Commissioner, Constable, or Butter inspec- 
 tor. When the woman comes to the poll, she will 
 arrest this far-off gaze of the man, and turn it upon the 
 really important interests surrounding the home, and the 
 work-shop. Then, the hierarchical principle, which now 
 works concealed in party politics to the mischief of 
 society, will sit with dignity, and act beneficently, on 
 the throne of constitutional prerogative. 
 
 The disturbing element of national politics is city life. 
 
 The time will come when the difference between city 
 and country will be estimated and defined and taken 
 into account in all legislation, both political aiid volun- 
 
396 THE FUTURE ECONOMIES OP MANKIND. 
 
 tary. Legislating experts will then be divided into two 
 classes, differing from each other as completely as 
 mechanical experts differ from chemical experts. No 
 city lawyers will be permitted to have a voice in legislat- 
 ing for the country ; no country lawyers for the city. 
 
 When each ward in a city shall be made so small that 
 its affairs can be regulated by persons personally well 
 known to and elected by all the residents in such ward ; 
 — ^when each small ward shall have its central edifice 
 arranged conveniently and spaciously for all the public 
 uses or common purposes of a ward — with an exchange 
 room for public conference and discussion — with a com- 
 plete library free to all — with legislative rooms for 
 committees of all kind — with judicial rooms for arbi- 
 tration — with a hall arranged solely and specially for 
 public festivals and music — with a theatre room for 
 school exhibitions, concerts and dramas — with a ward 
 museum of ' science, and an art gallery of statues and 
 paintings — then, competition of a noble kind shall pre- 
 vail between these ward edifices and the wards which 
 own and use them; and the same social spiritual force 
 which now sustains our imperfect church and sunday- 
 school system, shall transfer its activity to, and find a 
 more fruitful exercise for, its functions in this practical 
 sphere of watcliing over and edifying, in all senses, 
 every individual inhabitant of the ward, old and young, 
 rich and poor, strong and feeble alike. 
 
 This is what the Future Destiny of Man in city life 
 holds up to view. Something like this will be the ulti- 
 mate outward shape taken by the genius of modern 
 Socialism and Communism, flourishing on its only native 
 soil — the city pavement. 
 
 In this regenerated body the vices of the old spirit 
 will be ameliorated to genuine virtues. 
 
 Aristocrac}'' will also more mightily prevail; inas- 
 much as, by restricting the locus and limit of the suf- 
 frage, the wisest, strongest and most useful people in 
 each precinct will be known and recognized as the best 
 class, and be honored and vested with power. This 
 honor will be accepted as a sufficient reward, and the 
 old vice of Aristocracy, the over-appropriation of special 
 and personal privileges to itself, will be suppressed. 
 
LECTURE XVI. 
 
 THE INTELLECTUAI. AND MORAL DESTINY OF THE RACE. 
 
 Language is the real cement of a nation; and the 
 chief barrier between nations. In the seclusion to 
 which a nation is confined by a language peculiar to 
 itself, its morality and religion, its tendencies in science 
 and its criticism of art, become fixed national manner- 
 isms; distinguishing its character — we may say, its 
 personality — from that of every other nation speaking 
 a different vernacular and publishing a different litera- 
 ture. 
 
 This happens not so much through the habitual use 
 of a different vocabulary. It is rather in some peculiar- 
 ity of verbal construction and of grammatical inflections ; 
 in the employment of favorite particles and untrans- 
 latable interjections; in a certain style of statement, 
 direct or inverted, by short, sharp sentences or by sen- 
 tences protracted, parenthetic, involved and introverted, 
 that we must look for the influence of language upon 
 national character. The rugged strength of the Roman 
 as contrasted with the elegant Greek, — the brusque and 
 honest directness of the Englishman as contrasted with 
 the Parisian, is more than typified — is partly brought 
 about — by the absence of the article, or the absence of 
 case endings, from the vulgar tongue. The obscure 
 prosiness of German literature, secured by the one rule 
 of projecting the prepositional prefix of verbs to the end 
 of the sentence, has had its effect upon the thinking of 
 the whole nation. The parenthesis, enforced in the ex- 
 pression, has reacted on the logic of ideas. Opportuni- 
 ties for mystifying the reader, being multiplied by the 
 
398 THE INTELLECTUAL AXD MORAL [LECT. 
 
 indefinitely extensible cliain-work of a sentence, have 
 ended by rendering the writer insensible to the risks of 
 self-mystifi cation. 
 
 The peculiarity of German metaphysics may be laid 
 at the door of what is wrongly enough called the rich- 
 ness and flexibility of the German language ; just as 
 Locke's and Hume's severe thinking is greatly due to 
 what is with equal injustice called the baldness and 
 rigidity of English speech. When an unlimited liberty 
 to compound long words is granted, the language of 
 tliinkers gets beyond the easy criticism of their readers ; 
 and so, unquestioned mental dictation becomes first 
 irresponsible, then arrogant, and finally absurd. But 
 when logical terms, postulates, and conclusions are com- 
 pelled by the genius of a national language like the 
 English to present themselves in single file, they are 
 easily reviewed, and must keep their regimental uniform 
 and equipments clean and efficient. 
 
 The effect upon the literature of the nation is cumu- 
 lative. And the effect of its literature on the character 
 of a nation is cumulative. In the lajDse of ages, whole 
 peoples become thus capable of constantly and on all the 
 lines of life, misunderstanding each other. Granted the 
 stirpal distinctiveness of Celt and Teuton, there is more 
 in the guttural sound of the Swabiaii ch or the Prussian 
 k to make them aliens in Paris than in all the history of 
 the past ; for it affects ever}^ individual Frenchman at 
 every moment of intercourse. The one word guess, al- 
 though brought from England to America in the " May- 
 flower," is a redder rag to inflame the national animosity 
 of John Bull against the Yankee matadore, than the 
 tariff act of 1844; because the one may become a for- 
 g;)tten wrong; the other continues to be an ever-fresh 
 disgust. 
 
 Enough for illustration. Ancient history is full of 
 such. The modern world is kept in chronic warfare by 
 them. The spread of one language, then, at the ex- 
 pense of the rest, must tend to the future mutual good- 
 understanding of mankind. If that language be a ner- 
 vous, accurate, and copions method of expressing botli 
 facts and ideas, embodied in a literature of absolutely 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE RACE, 399 
 
 all that is known, tliouo^ht, conjectured and proposed, 
 produced with lightning-like speed, in infinite abundance, 
 — if, in a word, the English language and literature be 
 evidently taking possession of the world, and will in 
 another hundi-ed years be spoken or understood by a 
 fourth part of mankind, — then, the destiny of man for 
 a more peaceful, useful, and noble existence obtains one 
 more guarantee. 
 
 Inside of the regional limits of each language spoken 
 on earth exist many provincial dialects of it, respect- 
 ing which the considerations just stated hold good Avith 
 moderated force. Consequently the spread of a lan- 
 guage over the earth's surface does not involve the 
 destruction of patois, or dialects of sjjeech^ but their mul- 
 tiplication. But the spread of one literature must extir- 
 pate other literatures, or dialects of ideas. Provincial 
 expressions, like individual tones of voice, will continue 
 to make the intercourse of mankind variously pictur- 
 esque; and the birthplace of people will be recogniza- 
 ble b}' subtile indications. But a genuine community 
 of ideas, and an honest co-operation for realizing them, 
 will as plainly stamp future ages of man's history as 
 the superstitious hatred of each other's languages has 
 stamped the past history of nations. 
 
 In the beginnings of history Speech was recognized 
 as the expression of character; and the most recent 
 thinkers can advance not one step beyond this idea. 
 The inner life of every animal makes itself outward 
 (utters itself) by some appropriate vocal organ. By 
 the sounds of their voices we know them, and by the 
 words of their mouth the primal language-makers named 
 them ; as our children spontaneously do now. To hear 
 the Vox humana stop play always excites the peculiar 
 pleasure of astonishment, because it is known to belong 
 elsewhere, and is a delightful intruder. We expect 
 hoarse and coarse language from the carnivora, and from 
 savages; fine modulated tones and various discourses 
 from cultivated creatures. The mocking bird's reper- 
 toire depends upon the populousness of its native woods 
 and fields. The parrot's tones may be organically 
 croaking and screeching, but its high-pitched intellect 
 
400 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MOKAL [LECT. 
 
 allows it to master many phrases if surrounded by nu- 
 merous talkers. 
 
 Listen to the monotonous, invariable, space-penetrat- 
 ing bleat of sheep and low of kine, the horse's neigh, the 
 crow's caw, the chirp of the katydid, the street cry of 
 the milkman in the morning. Why so monotonous, so 
 invariable, so far-reaching? Becav.se it expresses only 
 some one idea, under pressure of instant and pressing 
 necessity. Because it expresses some one intellectual 
 phenomenon, and leaves all the rest of the universe of 
 thought to be elsewhere and otherwise expressed. Be- 
 cause the soul of the sheep, the horse, the crow, is an 
 embryo soul, enclosed in a body perfect in babyhood, 
 and never to advance beyond the narrowest limits dur- 
 ing the few months of its earthly existence. What it 
 is and what it wants it utters in its cry, — nothing more, 
 — one cry suffices to express it all. 
 
 The monotonous wailing, and cooing of the human 
 baby tells the same story of a limited but precise knowl- 
 edge of vital necessities; a loud, insistent petition 
 for help, food, comfort, love, from the Creator in sur- 
 rounding Nature. When the child, after j^assing 
 through years of experience, becomes a man, invested 
 with dominion over Nature, and inspired with creative 
 faculties of his own, his infantile monotones become 
 modulated without limits, as the plaintive schlag of the 
 nightingale passes into its brilliant and exhaustless 
 carol. 
 
 The noisy monotonous chatter of vulgar or mal-edu- 
 cated people of both sexes is simply an imitation of the 
 monotonous, uninflected, barren gabble of the lower 
 creatures; while it is as perfect an expression of the 
 inner life, as needful and satisfying an exercise of the 
 half-developed brain, and as completel}'' successful a 
 process for establishing community of sentiment and 
 action, on the wlnjle, as if it were the table talk of Soc- 
 rates and his disciples. 
 
 Educate these chatterers — discipline them by sorrow 
 and by labor — cultivate tliem by study and by travel — 
 fill their souls ^vith holy emotions and their minds with 
 varied knowledge — teach their hands the arts of life 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE RACE. 401 
 
 and their taste the beauties of nature — and, gradually, 
 fhc chatter dies aAvay and language comes to take its 
 place. 
 
 We predict then for mankind in the future, — when 
 a more general and generous distribution of wealth and 
 leisure shall produce its natural consequence, a greater 
 variety of occupations, more movement among men and 
 women, — that Human Language will become more copi- 
 ous and fluent accordingly. 
 
 The distinction between spoken language and litera- 
 ture must, however, be taken into strict account in all 
 speculations about the future. This is taught by the 
 well known history of the Latin language, which be- 
 came the veliicle of communication between the many 
 ill-coupled provinces of the Roman Empire, and after- 
 wards between all the countries of Cliristendom, among 
 a vast population speaking wholly different languages. 
 It was the Latin literature that accomplished this re- 
 sult. The clergy translated their latin ideas into every 
 vernacular, and in the end latinized the speech of the 
 people. English words are thus becoming domiciled 
 in all kinds of languages and will gradually expel their 
 synonymes, and introduce grammatical forms adapted 
 to themselves. The Mandarin literature, with its own 
 l)roper dialect, is now — at the end of several centuries 
 — comprehended and employed in all the provinces of 
 the Chinese Empire, although each province speaks a 
 language incomiDrehensible to the people of other prov- 
 inces. 
 
 The more literature is multiplied the speedier comes 
 the day when men will use a common speech. But the 
 increase of French and German literature, by the side 
 of English, will retard the adoption of English as a com- 
 mon human speech. What gives English the chances 
 of the field is, 1. the English love of colonization as op- 
 posed to the French and Italian passion for home ; and 
 2. the perfect willingness which the Germans and the 
 Irish show to settle in English colonies and adopt the 
 English language as their own. 
 
 The literature of Christendom has suffered two im- 
 
402 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 portant physical changes: 1. the pamphlet of the politi- 
 cian has been absorbed into the newspaper ; and 2. the 
 folios of the learned have been replaced by octavos. 
 
 Belles-lettres uses now the monthly magazine as its 
 chief vehicle, as the nobleman has learned to ride in 
 the railway wagon and the fine lady in the street car 
 alongside of common people. The sciences adopt a 
 similar vehicle of publication, while learned societies 
 are* casting their memoirs more and more in the new 
 mould of "Journals," or "Proceedings," so as to hasten 
 and extend their issue, compelling their authors to 
 adopt a more condensed mode of statement and a more 
 matter-of-fact style. A species of newspaper for science 
 has come into existence — like the London Nature — 
 to announce at once whatever seems of interest or 
 promises to be important. 
 
 Meantime, books never fail ; books large and small ; 
 books that have cost a lifetime of hard work ; books 
 that are the ephemeral brood of empty brains ; books 
 on every conceivable and inconceivable subject of 
 human meditation ; books by the million for the mill- 
 ion, and books never read but by recluses; books at 
 once consigned to oblivion, still-born abortions of un- 
 happy love ; and books heralded by the renown of the 
 author's genius, long waited for, at once enthroned 
 among the glories of the age, and destined to en- 
 lighten, charm or sanctify successive generations. 
 Judged by the test of these, the world is growing 
 younger as it grows older, and like an incipient vol- 
 cano, the internal heat of God's intelligence glows more 
 and more toward its surface. 
 
 That some grand law of constant force operates in 
 the production of literature, as in the harvests of the 
 soil, in the balance of the animal creation, and even, as 
 statistics prove, in the annual percentages and propor- 
 tions of accidents, idiocy, insanity and crime, any 
 modern list of books will show. One such has just 
 been published by Heiurich, of Leipzig, in the Zeit- 
 schrift of the German Geological Society, No. 90, Vol. XV. 
 
XVI.] DESTDfY OF THE RACE. 403 
 
 The bibliography of Germany for the years 1879 and 
 1880 is summed up thus: — 
 
 1879 1880 
 German books of all kinds * 14,179 14,941 
 
 School books and others for the young, .... 2,175 2.446 
 
 Law, politics, statistics, conveyancing, .... 1,683 1,557 
 
 Theologv 1,304 1,390 
 
 Belles-lettres 1,170 1,209 
 
 Medicine, 732 790 
 
 Natural history, chemistry, pharmacy, .... 841 787 
 
 Historical works 680 752 
 
 Popular works, almanacs, 642 657 
 
 Fine arts, stenography, archseoloG^, mythology, . 481 533 
 
 Modem languages, old German literature, . . . 485 506 
 
 Agriculture, 421 433 
 
 Miscellaneous \Tritings, 378 423 
 
 Ai'chitecture, railways, engineering, mines, navi- 
 gation 384 403 
 
 Bibliography, encyclopaedias, 278 377 
 
 Geography, travels, 306 356 
 
 War, ." 337 353 
 
 [Maps, 300 301 
 
 JIathematics, astronomy, 158 201 
 
 Philosophy, 139 125 
 
 Forests and game, 103 112 
 
 Freemasonry, 21 20 
 
 And such must be the supply of intellectual food 
 furnished to every future generation, impro"vdng in qual- 
 ity as the world grows wiser and better, and in quantity 
 with the demand for it. 
 
 But it is asked: Will not the practical supplant the 
 imaginative? Shall not speculation cease with the 
 perfection of science? and poetry with the dissipation of 
 error and superstition? and the drama be degraded to 
 the level of the text-book? and all fiction become the 
 mere story-telling of traveller's adventures, or a realistic 
 portraiture of society? Shall the world ever know 
 another Homer, Milton, Shakespeare, Kant, or Thomas 
 a Kempis? — As well ask if the genius of creation is 
 exhausted. As well ask if the heart of the world is des- 
 tined to chronic ossification, or fatty degeneration. As 
 
 * The author is not responsible for this total. The table is given 
 as a quotation. 
 
404 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 well ask if in future ages babes are to issue from 
 their mothers' wombs monsters of maturity or senility. 
 For so long as infancy shall crow on every mother's lap, 
 and marriage follow true love of boys and girls, so long 
 will rhymes be sung and music lead the dance ; so long 
 will the theatre and opera house be crowded, and new 
 Mozarts and Shakespeares will supj)ly what shall make 
 the bosom of tlie world heave with passion and its eyes 
 stream with tears. And so long as the mist of parting 
 spirits shall rise as a thick and constant cloud from the 
 planet smoking with the incessant life of death, shall 
 holier men fill all lands with tender words of comfort 
 for the bereaved, and Imitations of Christ be repeated 
 by writers who live nearer, and ever nearer, my God, 
 to Thee. 
 
 The reputation of every great poet, composer, histo- 
 rian, philosopher and man of science, or religion, has 
 been in part factitious; due partly to his genius, and 
 partly to opportunities of its display. The delight of 
 mankind in the surprising advent of the divine blessing 
 has impressed it more deeply on the world's memory. 
 Great comets have often lit up the sky ; but those which 
 have come in ways and at seasons favorable for human 
 observation have claimed precedency of the rest. Many 
 have been the conjunctions of the planets Jupiter and 
 Saturn ; but only the one that happened to coincide with 
 the birth of Christ was named the Star of Betlilehem, 
 and will live in story. 
 
 Transcendent genius is not a rare production of any 
 age ; but the occasion and the genius must fall properly 
 together to excite the hero-worshipping spirit. The 
 founder of a dynasty is always accounted god-like. The 
 great teacher of a new science is greater than his greater 
 followers. The world is easily blase ; a charge of imita- 
 tion is the death of reputation ; no matter if the imitator 
 be a nonpareil. He who suggests an explanation claims 
 mastership over those who furnish it. Such are the 
 frailties of fame. We need not fear that when great 
 occasions arise souls are not already born for them. 
 Troy is buried and there will be no second Homer. 
 Manners are so changed that were Shakespeare one of 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE EACE. 40-'^ 
 
 US we sbiHiltl not recognize him by the di-amas he would 
 now he writing. Hegel and Schopenhauer have made 
 another Kant impossible and undesu'able. Von Baer 
 has supplanted Oken, and Agassiz, Von Baer. But as 
 these arose at the call of human destiny, a thousand 
 more shall sleep for ages until the trumpet of their gen- 
 eration sounds ; and so the literature of the world Hows 
 on, and must ever flow, like the INIississippi or the Dan- 
 ube, wliile rain falls, and grass grows, and the soul of 
 God finds utterance through the hearts and minds of 
 men. 
 
 And the same question is asked respecting the Fine 
 Arts; and shall be answered in like manner. In 
 waves like the commotions of the atmosphere, the crea- 
 tive faculty in art sweeps across the ages. Reilaissance 
 succeeds renaissance. We live just now under a high 
 barometer of art. The form of Paris, the color of Ant- 
 werp, never was excelled and seldom equalled in the 
 palmiest days of Italy and Greece. The hell scene of 
 Polygnotus at Delphi, unconsciously imitated by the 
 unknown master-painter of Pisa, and again b}'' Buona- 
 rotti in the chapel of the Vatican, is surpassed even as a 
 tour de force, to say nothing of technique, by the great 
 canvases of David and Kaulbach. 
 
 The influence of the physical sciences upon the Fine 
 Arts is most curious and instructive. 
 
 In the earliest historical age, the art of sculpture was 
 perfected by a close observation of objects under the- 
 inspiration of family pride and personal affection. This 
 produced the wonderful statues of the monarchs and 
 officials of the Fourth and Fifth dynasties of Egypt., 
 found in the tombs of Memphis, dating from at least 
 3,000 years before the Christian era. The rude sketches 
 of wild animals made on fragments of tusk and bone by 
 palteolitiiic men were inspired hj personal adventures. 
 
 The most ancient scribes of Egypt improved on these, 
 when they adopted the forms of birds, beasts, fish and 
 human implements as syllables and letters of the alpha- 
 bet. No longer solitary woodsmen, but associated deni- 
 zens of palaces and temples in tlie midst of a crowded 
 and wealthy population, die native spuit of the artists 
 
40G THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 awoke to the delights of praise, and strove for perfection 
 of detail. A pre-Raphaelistic fineness of touch charac- 
 terizes the carvings and the frescoes of the tombs. But 
 a plethora of work induced conventionalism in delinea- 
 tion ; and the imitation of nature fell into disuse for re- 
 cording the exaggerations of a monarch's successes, and 
 for representing the growing absurdities of a compli- 
 cated Pantheon. Still further degraded by the hideous 
 chimera worsliip of Phoenician commerce, fused with the 
 symbolism of INIesopotamia and Tlu'ace, the art of 
 sculpture sank to its lowest degradation. In India and 
 China the same effects produced like causes without a 
 revival. But Greece, which could evolve the lovely and 
 exalted Pythian Apollo from the hideous Tyrian Mel- 
 carth, and breed a Solon, Lycurgus, Pericles and Alci- 
 biades, an Aspasia and a Sappho, a Socrates and a Plato, 
 a Democritus and an Anaximander, could also create a 
 Phidias, a Praxiteles and a Polygnotus. Once more 
 the imitation of nature became the canon of art; and 
 Nature was so beautiful in Greece that Art could 
 achieve its masterpieces. But to the Greek, Nature 
 meant Man ; and the Florentine boar remains a curious 
 anomaly of Greek artistic caprice. 
 
 Painting therefore in our sense of it could not flourish ; 
 and landscape painting^ to a race of sailors on the most 
 picturesque of seas, and landsmen who sat on the stone 
 benches of a theatre in the open air surrounded by all 
 the glories of land and water to listen to the dramas of 
 ^Eschylus and the comedies of Aristophanes, was a dis- 
 carded superfluity. The garden frescoes of Pompeii 
 2)robably represent all there was of ancient landscape art. 
 
 When classic art perished at the fall of Rome, and the 
 rude Christian symbolism of half-heathen Europe was 
 realized m stone and on plaster by mechanics in the 
 disguise or in the pay of monks, form and color were 
 mere suggestions of spiritual yearnings, and had no 
 value of themselves. When the Moslem came, and 
 then the Turk, and tlie learning that lingered in the 
 East was exiled to Italy, the lo"<'e of the beautiful awoke 
 once more, but still with bat half-dissipated dreams of 
 the night ; and its morning was spent in tlio ondeavor to 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE EACE. 407 
 
 realize in marble the ileeting visions it had got of God 
 and the prophets, of Christ and his apostles, of Marv and 
 the niart^T-ed saints. The doors of the Baptisteries were 
 cast in historic panels of the acts of Jesus ; the walls of 
 churches became a mosaic of Bible history; or were 
 frescoed with the sufferings and triumphs of the Church's 
 witnesses. Nature was still the creation, not of the di- 
 vine father, but of the Demiurge. The invisible alone 
 deserved to be rendered visible. 
 
 But when this sacred task had been well performed 
 the artists were set free, and Leonardo and Raphael and 
 Murillo began to spiritualize the material and teach 
 once more the beautiful in flesh and blood. In the 
 North, shut up in commodious homes, the Dutch 
 painters began to paint flowers and fruits; and their 
 domestic easel pictures reacted on the classic sentiment 
 of the South. And so — and so — and so — we see 
 what we now see. 
 
 But a great revolution has been in progress. . The 
 development of criticism in history has made men im- 
 patient of those legends which constituted the staple of 
 both sculpture and painting. No second Rubens is now 
 possible. Allegory has become contemptible. Protes- 
 tantism protests against all representations of the great 
 Unknown, the mystical and the sentimentally ascetical. 
 But Science makes a still more imperative and coercive 
 protest against all representations of the unnatural and 
 impossible. Never again will be executed a great paint- 
 ing of the Adam and the beasts, the Noah and his del- 
 uge, the Moses descending from Mt. Sinai, Elijah rapt 
 into the sky in a chariot of fire, Jesus walking on the 
 water, or Saint Theresa floating in the air. Science per- 
 mits the beautiful, the grand, even the cataclysmic, in 
 pictorial art ; for these reside and occur in Nature. But 
 the modern world, charged as it is already with the sen- 
 timent of facb^ and the future informed as it will be of 
 every possibility oi fact, will have nothing more to do 
 with winged horses and dragon-slayers, cherubim and 
 seraphim ; nor endure the least departure from just form 
 and color, even for the sake of the holiest sentiment. 
 
 Although the great schools of ]Munich and Diisseldorf 
 
408 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 were never more flourishing, nor so many artists were 
 ever painting in the galleries of Dresden, Berlin, Flor-» 
 ence, Madrid and London, Paris is now the acknowl- 
 edged Ca])ital of Art.* Here an intense realism pre- 
 vails. Paint what you please, but let it be exactly like 
 what it is meant to represent ; whether a peasant girl 
 returning from the sea flats with a basket of shrimps, or 
 LePage's peasant Joan d'Arc, under the apple-tree be- 
 fore her cottage, seeing the King and the Madonna in 
 her half-entrancement ; whether it be a scene in a ball- 
 room or the horrors of a massacre, let every detail of the 
 truth be visible. INIodern science has made the modern 
 Parisian atelier, and explains its dogmas in the lecture- 
 rooms of the Ecole Kationale et Speciale des Beaux 
 Arts of the Rue Bonaparte. But all its explanations 
 sum up in one word. Nature. Its only sentiment is that 
 belief in the essential rightness of things as they are, 
 considered a lyriori., which inspires every branch of 
 modern science, and all the applications of science to all 
 the arts of life, useful and beautiful alike. The ten- 
 dency shown by science to ignore the idea of sin as sin is 
 therefore frightfuU}^ parodied by French art, and a sci- 
 entific fanaticism in behalf of the reality and truth of 
 the accidents betrays and de})lorably degrades the true 
 faith in the reality of lawful phenomena. 
 
 It is this feature of modern art which maj^ — or may 
 not — in its turn disappear. Surely the Destiny of Man- 
 kind shall provide for its disappearance. Surely, as 
 vu'tue increases in the land, pictures of vice will cease 
 to be desired, and so cease to be painted. INIodern Art, 
 <lrunk with youtliful life, is sowing its wild oats. 
 
 The number of pictures is now immense. Six thou- 
 .sand French paintings executed during the preceding 
 twelvemonth were exhibited at the French Salon of 
 1880. To distribute these throughout Europe and 
 America, to adorn the walls of private dwellings, is the 
 work of a few short years. The demand for statuary 
 and painting in the United States increases every j-ear ; 
 
 *The reader will get an excellent idea of the facilities it affords, 
 from Miss Tlioebe Natt's short sketch of them in LlppincotCa Mag- 
 azine for March, 1881. 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE RACE. 409 
 
 and it will not be long before the supply will be afforded 
 by the Art Schools of Philadelphia, New York, Cincin- 
 nati, Chicago, and St. Louis, with little aid from Europe. 
 
 Already landscape pictures by American artists take 
 rank with the best of the age ; and the equestrian stat- 
 ues of Henry K. Brown and the frescoes of William 
 Hunt are worthy of a place in any gallery. 
 
 It would be a mere act of philistinism to multiply the 
 number of works of art annually executed, by the num- 
 ber of years in the coming centuries, to make an esti- 
 mate of the boundless treasures of coming generations. 
 But it gratifies the heart to predict so much pleasure 
 for babes unborn, and to finish our sketch of the phj'si- 
 cal destiny of man by crowning it \vith these garlands 
 of roses. 
 
 But when we reflect that the Fine Arts are no longer 
 the exclusive property of the Church and the Aristoc- 
 vacj, whether of title or of wealth, but have been en- 
 listed into the ordinary occupations of trade and manu- 
 factiu'es ; and are made especially to subserve the pur- 
 poses of Natural History as a branch of Education ; a 
 new career is seen to open before them far more exten- 
 sive and more important than they have run. Exqui- 
 sitely beautiful colored delineations of animals and plants 
 are now published by academies and societies of science. 
 Photographs of mountain scenery illustrate government 
 siuweys and geological reports. Photographs and col- 
 ored plates of discovered objects are considered indis- 
 pensable to good archaeological memoirs. Books of 
 travel are now made salable by means of admirably 
 artistic landscape and genre paintings. Even Encyclo- 
 paedias are now illuminated like old Missals. The influ- 
 ence of the sciences is everywhere apparent in the trans- 
 ference of the work of the artist from the capricious 
 service of the powerful and toealthy few to the constant 
 and reliable service of the millions ; not so much with a 
 view to their amusement, as under stress of educational 
 needs. Primary education bids fair to become in great 
 measure pictorial, and the stimulation of the young 
 mind is intrusted to those who can make the world it 
 enters as picturesque as possible. 
 
410 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MOKAL [LECT. 
 
 The Architecture of the Future will uot be confined 
 to gorgeous edifices, but will more than rival the great- 
 est works of the most practical races of ancient and 
 modern days. Every city will be flooded with water 
 like Imperial Rome ; and every river will be spanned by 
 as many bridges as the Seine in Paris. 
 
 Accumulation is the work, the test, the legacy, the 
 glory of Time. 
 
 Time buries all the labor of man, sings the poet. 
 Nay, — that is not Time's doing. Time is innocent. 
 War, man's true fiend, throws down his edifices and 
 heaps one ruined city on another. So, when wars shall 
 cease, ruins will be replaced by new monuments, more 
 and more substantial and grandiose ; and the spread of 
 the old schools and the rise of new ones, shall prevent 
 the traditionally beautiful from being forgotten ; the 
 lovely shapes of past ages shall be abundantly imitated ; 
 and a thousand new combinati(jns and fresh lines be 
 introduced. As Peace and Plenty have restored all the 
 cathedrals and some of the great castles of France, and 
 protected those of England from decay ; as the Dom at 
 Cologne after waiting for centuries has been just com- 
 pleted out of the contributions of all Germany ; and 
 Sanctus Paulus extra Muros rebuilt with unrivalled 
 splendor by a living Pope ; and St. Patrick's cathedral 
 rises in New York in the very form which it is the fash- 
 ion to consider extinct ; so, as peace and plenty spread 
 to Greece and Syria and Egypt, — to Bagdad and Can- 
 dahar and the sites of ancient Bactrian splendor, — the 
 styles of all ages Avill revive from their graves. Ruined 
 monuments which are now but the study of the anti- 
 quary, will inspire a host of native arcliitects in every 
 land with patriotic zeal. The past will live again in its 
 very dress. The quarries of Syene and Baalbec will be 
 reopened. The obelisques will be replaced, the Col- 
 umns of the Sun re-erected and the tower of Babel re- 
 built. But near them will also rise Oriental railroad 
 stations and houses of parliament, grand opera houses, 
 museums, and Walhallas, of styles produced by the in- 
 termarriage of the genii of the East and West. 
 
 How large a role religion will play in the Architecture 
 
X^^.] DESTINY OF THE RACE. 411 
 
 of the future may be guessed from tlie knowledge we 
 have of the intimacy existing between the sensuous 
 imagination and the sentiment of providence. Every 
 kind of religious worship has cultivated a grandiose 
 architecture of its own. If men must always be relig- 
 ious and affect associated worship, directed by a priestly 
 class, then, the larger the Ecclesia, the larger the House 
 of God ; the more devout the worshippers, the more 
 magnificent the ritual ; the greater the accumulations of 
 wealth, the more lavish the expenditure ; but the style 
 will vary with race and climate as before. 
 
 The possible Education of the whole human race is 
 evidently not a question of kind but of degree. The 
 widening of favorable circumstances ought always to 
 multiply the number of the instructed, whether the 
 greater multitude pursue a higher curriculum or not. 
 It is easy enough to prove that a very small percentage 
 of any nation or race can ever become excei'tionally 
 learned ; and that the millions will in all future ages be 
 too busy and too poor to gain more than a primary edu- 
 cation. If the race of man be left to inhabit the earth 
 tens of thousands of years, as is most likely, a university 
 course must always be a privilege, a prize, a good fort- 
 une, and a special blessing. This will even become 
 more and not less the case through an increase of gen- 
 eral peace, plenty and prosperity ; for with these go 
 hand in hand ease of marriage and a swelling tide of 
 births ; consequently a denser population ; consequently 
 a severer struggle for life, a more imperative confine- 
 ment to place and occupation, lower wages, an increase 
 in the number of hours of work, and the shortening of 
 the term of years of schooling for childi'en. The dense 
 ignorance of the English population has been produced 
 in this way by the exceptional enhancement of employ- 
 ment for men, women and children alike ; while the 
 extraordinary general intelligence of the people of the 
 United States tells the same tale. For, land being un- 
 bounded, and food superfluously abundant, no crowding 
 has yet taken place ; life is easy ; women are left to breed 
 and nurse children ; and children are not called upon to 
 
412 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [lECT. 
 
 help support the family until they have nearly or quite 
 leached their majority. Two hundred years; hence the 
 great multitude of Americans will be no better educated 
 than the multitudes of Germans in Germany are to-day. 
 
 And this must needs happen in spite of the advance 
 of science, in spite of the pulpit and the press, in spite 
 of Educational Bureaus, Boards and Societies, and quite 
 apart from the also inevitable -pro rata increment of 
 private and common schools, normal schools, colleges 
 and universities. 
 
 The signs of the working of Nature's law to this effect 
 are already patent, in a reaction against the forcing proc- 
 ess to which American youth of both sexes are now 
 subjected ; and in the healthier tone of public sentiment 
 respecting the disastrous consequences of over-educating 
 the children of hard-working parents, who must be hard 
 workers themselves, or become burdensome to the Com- 
 monwealth. Already " a higher education " is becom- 
 ing a privilege and prize out of the reach of the majority 
 of honest people. 
 
 Is this pessimist doctrine ? By no means. It simply 
 teaches that the bulk of the human race must work all 
 their lives ; and consequently cannot learn in childhood 
 anything more than to read, write and cipher ; nor in 
 adult life things unconnected with their daily employ- 
 ments. This is the general destiny of mankind where- 
 ever it increases and multiplies on the face of the earth. 
 And when the whole surface of the globe is filled with 
 a laborious, honest, peace-loving, orderly, moral and 
 religious multitude this destiny will find its grandest 
 exhibition. 
 
 In nothing so well as in education does human des- 
 tiny proclaim its mission of sufficient good for all, and 
 no more. In nothing is " the Possible " so evidently 
 limited for each as to quality, and so evidently unlimited 
 for all as to quantity. No human being will ever suc- 
 ceed in becoming more learned or wiser than certain 
 men and women have already been, or than not a few 
 individuals now living arc. And the same is true of 
 goodness ; of genius ; of force of character. The acme 
 of quality was long ago reached in the destiny of iudi- 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE RACE. 413 
 
 viduals, and will be reached in rarmy more in all coming 
 ages. 
 
 But the bright destin}- of the race is this : — the num- 
 ber of the sufficiently good, wise, learned, skilful, ener- 
 getic, honest, thrifty, temperate and chaste will increase 
 — ever increase — perhaps at times more rapidly in- 
 crease, under the influence of proper instruction be- 
 stowed on all at an early age ; until the last traces of 
 the brutish populations which still infest — rather than 
 inhabit — all countries under the sun shall have dis- 
 appeared ; until by successive generations of suffieientli/ 
 taught children a disposition for useful knowledge shall 
 become generally hereditary and unbiassed traditions of 
 the true and beautiful shall direct the conduct of every 
 family and every state. 
 
 The quantity of virtue and the quantity of intelli- 
 gence will then be iniinitely great ; while the quality of 
 neither mercy, justice nor truth, in any individual, will 
 be any more illustrious than it is now. 
 
 To bring this about we recognize three necessities : — 
 1. The compulsory education of all children without ex- 
 ception ; 2. The education of woman on a full equality 
 with man ; and 3. The co-education of the sexes. 
 
 The compulsory education of all children is now so 
 soundly accepted as to be enacted by the most enlight- 
 ened governments. The only objections to it which de- 
 serve a patient hearing are drawn : — 1. From its sup- 
 posed interference with the right of parents to decide 
 the fate of their offspring; 2. From its supposed exas- 
 perating effect upon the lowest classes of society ; and 
 3. From its dreaded invasion of the domain of this or 
 that established church or religious sect. 
 
 The first objection represents a sentiment proper to 
 past ages, when the woman was accounted pniperty, as 
 well as her children, by the husband and father. 
 
 The second objection is urged against compuhion as less 
 effectual ih<m. persuasion^ and bearing sour fruit. But it 
 must be acknowledged by all who study the lower forms 
 of social life, that, as justice nuist be mixed with mercy 
 and sternness with sympathy, so the worst evils can only 
 be rooted out vi et armis, and cliildren who are compelled 
 
414 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 by vicious parents to learn how to ruin thcmseh'es and 
 infect society should be compelled by society to reform 
 themselves and learn wisdom in spite of their dreadful 
 surroundings. Compulsory Education is compulsion, 
 not for the helpless child, but for the criminal parent. 
 Society knows that it can reclaim and save the child by 
 a strong hand and an outstretched arm even when the 
 parent of the child is unreclaimable and destined to 
 destruction. 
 
 The third objection is a despairing cry from Supersti- 
 tion, seeing in the rising sun only a warning to depart 
 back to the hell it came from. 
 
 All living things have been endowed with instincts 
 how to live. 
 
 Human society has a divine inspiration how to live in 
 every age and stage of its existence. The polity of a 
 savage tribe is as perfectly well ordered for its circum- 
 stances as that of the most enlightened civilized govern- 
 ment for its circumstayices. It is idle to object to the 
 compulsory instruction of the children of a compact 
 connnunity in that kind of knowledge which the major- 
 ity of its healthy members feel to be most needful for 
 the common weal. The brain demands food for itself, 
 for the heart, the lungs, the liver, the kidnej's, the 
 spleen, the muscles and the nerves, even where the 
 stomach rebels. Priests who fight against a common 
 school system are precisely the diseased entrails of the 
 body politic. 
 
 The education of the female sex to an equal degree 
 with that of the male sex is distinctly predicted by the 
 current liistory of the United States and England. In 
 other countries woman is still regarded as a breeder, 
 cook and nurse, for man's benefit. The birth of girls is 
 a necessity for securing the continuance of the male 
 population of the world. The education of woman is 
 discouraged in view of her probable interference with 
 the political monopoly enjoyed by man, and of her cer- 
 tain competition M'ith man in the crafts and trades. 
 The more skilful the art, the more jealous the artisan 
 and artist. Physicians abhor female medical students. 
 Painters exclude women from their studios. Preachers 
 
XVI.] DESTHSTY OF THE RACE. 415 
 
 announce the word of the Lord that women must be 
 silent in the churches. Critics scoff at the ability of 
 woman to write an epic or compose an opera. Men of 
 science patronize female observers, but expect from them 
 no discoveries of natural law. Politicians bar against 
 the sex of the house every exit to the street and every 
 entrance to the forum, on the pretence that the street 
 and the forum will convert them into men ; but in real- 
 ity for the purpose of keeping the sex of the street inde- 
 pendent of the only influence which can cleanse the 
 street and ennoble the forum. 
 
 As all laws are made by men alone, without consulta- 
 tion with women ; as all lawmakers are elected b}" men 
 alone, women being excluded from the polls; as all 
 judges, barristers, jurymen, sheriffs, policemen, jailers, 
 all boards of control, all school directors, in a word all 
 parts of the machinery of the government of male and 
 female society are composed of men alone — the female 
 element being wholly and absolutely excluded — liberty, 
 independence, self-government, democracy, civilization, 
 are terms which have only an accidental meaning for one- 
 half the human race, and mark the progress of only that 
 half in the destiny of the race. The Destiny of INIan 
 can fully work itself out only after the abolition of the 
 factitious political distinction which is now everywhere 
 made between the two sexes ; when women shall govern 
 men as thoroughly and regularly as men now govern 
 women; when the male and female mind and con- 
 science combined shall regulate male and female society 
 regarded as a unit. 
 
 This is the newest sentiment of our day, and will 
 become the dominant sentiment of future ages. 
 
 This sentiment is born of the education of woman, 
 and will prevail in proportion as the sex is educated. 
 The intellectual genius of woman, aborted by the skil- 
 ful management of the male sex liitherto, asserts its 
 rights, and recuperates its power, by tearing the mask 
 from the face of injustice, and by disrobing society so as 
 to reveal its hideous sores ; claiming that woman alone 
 can heal these sores; and in order to do this must be 
 granted her just share of public power. 
 
416 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 The battle which women are winning is the first of a 
 fine campaign ; the first, against their fathers, husbands, 
 brothers, and sons; the rest, against adulterers and 
 seducers, dishonest guardians and trustees, pilfering 
 ollice-holders, slanderous newspaper editors and obscene 
 book writers, lazy officials, brutal jailers and madhouse 
 keepers, uneducated luirses, drunken, stujDid school direc- 
 tors, licentious theatres, the gambling hells, and that 
 crowning woe of the city world, innumerable rows of 
 grog-shops, sucking in by day and night the precious 
 heritage of women, spoiling all that would be lovely in 
 life, and breeding all that is deadly for future genera- 
 tions. 
 
 All these evils are represented by the male sex — by 
 individual men, in close consultation among themselves, 
 relieved of the restraints of the presence of good women, 
 unchecked by their remonstrances, unenlightened by 
 their information. The legal concurrence of one well- 
 educated, right-minded woman would in most instances 
 suffice to reorganize on a noble basis the ignoble con- 
 duct of legislature, court, and council chamber. How 
 perfect would be the reform were an equal number of 
 men and women to sit at every public board of manage- 
 ment and control ! 
 
 But the women selected for this task must be well 
 educated; and to educate such individual women, the 
 whole female sex must be well educated. But a good 
 system of female education will inevitably react to 
 improve the education of the male sex. And to perfect 
 the operation the two sexes must be educated together. 
 To do this rightly boards of school directors must be 
 composed of both sexes. Are not mothers as much the 
 owners of children as fathers are? And what do men 
 know of the proper mode, means and degree of the edu- 
 cation of girls ? Yet all school directors are males. 
 
 The induction of women into the rights and powers 
 of school direction is the hinge on which turns the 
 opening door of the coming civilization of the human 
 race. This is all that is needed to secure the selection 
 of fit teachers for children. From these will come the 
 advanced teachers of the future. The general improve- 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE KACE. 417 
 
 ment of primary education will result in an increased 
 number of women capable of higher instruction. Al- 
 read}^ the whole field of human learning is open to culti- 
 vation of woman at Oberlin (women have been admit- 
 ted at Oberlin since its founding in 1835), Ann Arbor, 
 at Cornell, at Swarthmore, at Northampton, at Pough- 
 keepsie. Even the venerable seats of learning at Boston 
 and Philadelphia have been compelled to grant quasi 
 university courses to female students. And Cambridge, 
 old Cambridge in England, grants diplomas on the sly 
 to those of the disfrancliised sex who demand them vig- 
 orously. In time the superb creatures who taught 
 science in the still older universities of Italy will have 
 a host of equal successors lecturing and demonstrating 
 from the professors' chairs of the future. Even now 
 female doctors of medicine, philosophy, chemistr}'', letters 
 and arts are founding schools of their own and lajdng 
 the basis for a general education of their own sex equal 
 in all respects to the general education of the other sex, 
 hitherto its master, henceforth only its rival.* 
 
 Slow and sure is the word of the Lord. Step by step 
 the destiny advances. By insensible gradations the 
 dawn melts into daylight. Line upon line and precept 
 upon precept, here a little and there a little, the race 
 of mankind becomes aware of its fate. One nation 
 after another opens its sleepy eyes and slowly gets upon 
 its feet and goes to work. Minister of Public Instruc- 
 tion, Mr. Ferr}^, has just issued orders to the school-mas- 
 ters of 40,000 parishes in France to meet in their 2,000 
 
 * See six reasons why the English University of Cambridge 
 " should be one of the leading centres of female education," in a 
 paper issued fi'om Cambridge in view of the discussion Feb. 24, 
 1881,^ in Nature of that date, page 394. Oxford, too, is going in 
 the same direction as Cambridge, very fast. The first woman stu- 
 dent has been admitted to the Sorbonne at Paris, and to the Uni- 
 versity of Berlin : and there are a great number of women students 
 at a university in St. Petersburg. The first woman has just been 
 graduated as Dottressa in the Papal College at Rome. In the 
 United States all the new State Universities, founded on the great 
 Government land grant, admit women, I think : and in Wisconsin, 
 iMinnesota, Kansas, Iowa, Indiana. California, etc., are rapidly be- 
 coming great centres of learning. Indeed it would be hardly pos- 
 sible now to establish de novo a great university for the education 
 of men alone. 
 
418 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LEOT. 
 
 district towns and send up delegates to a School Con- 
 vention at Paris. Two thousand select school-masters 
 of the Republic will there discuss the best measures for 
 perfecting the general education of the nation. Switzer- 
 land is converting itself into a Central University for 
 Europe. Germany has carried the primary education of 
 boys and girls to the highest pitch, but still hesitates to 
 permit girls to advance be^'^ond the rudiments. In the 
 course of another century or two the popular learning of 
 the West will invade the Orient ; and the already long 
 since well established school system of China will be 
 applied to the rapid spread of right knowledge tlirough- 
 out the most populous region of the globe. 
 
 As the result is already predetermined and inevitable, 
 there is no need of passion in advocating the means for 
 producing it. Fanaticism is out of place. The women 
 of America are not called upon to abuse the men for 
 doing only half the work. Their own duty lies before 
 them, — to do the other half. 
 
 The Co-education of the sexes is the tliird aspect of 
 the subject. It needs no argument. It is certain to 
 prevail. It has been tried and been successful. The 
 hostility of the male sex to it arises from either an im- 
 pure and an ignoble timidity ; from a superficial knowl- 
 edge of natural laws; from deep-rooted prejudices in- 
 herited from unenlightened ancestors fostered by the 
 half-enlightened conversation of society ; or, from lack of 
 faith in the native worth of woman's practical character; 
 and at the same time from an obscure instinctive pre- 
 monition which inconsistently enough affirms to them 
 that the female sex, superior to the male in everytliing 
 but physical strength and mental energy, is destined to 
 resume its prehistoric r81e of government, and to per- 
 form most of the legislative functions of society, leaving 
 the executive in the stronger hands of men. 
 
 Safely leaving the common-sense of whole populations 
 to take care of popular education on the plain, and turn- 
 ing to contemplate the peaks of human learning climbed 
 by the few, an inspiring spectacle awaits us. Thou- 
 sands and ten thousands of investigators occupy the 
 scene. Although a minute proportion of the myriads 
 
XVI.] DESTLNY OF THE KACE. 419 
 
 that populate the earth, tliis scattered multitude — scat- 
 tered, but in complete communication with each other — 
 fulfil all the laws of discovery and distribute the pre- 
 cious fi:uits of research to feed the hunger of the uni- 
 versal mind. No more pedantry — no more scholasti- 
 cism — no more crude conjectures — no more supersti- 
 tions. All, knowledge ; won by investigation, and tested 
 by experiment. Men of science, the futui-e order of 
 nobility ; teachers of facts and laws and uses and meth- 
 ods, the acknowledged leaders and rulers of society ; 
 incipient intellect, the object of the most sedulous fos- 
 tering care ; charlatans, drowned in the sea of real 
 learning on which they spread their sails ; cant, replaced 
 by simple lucid demonstration ; truths, painted in the 
 perspective of great and small, important and unimpor- 
 tant, each subordinate to the natural hierarchy of phe- 
 nomena, and the good and beautiful made always and 
 in all cases to rank the commonplace ; schools, colleges, 
 universities, purged of all obstructive or repressive rou- 
 tine ; the graduation of capacities, strict yet generous ; 
 the forward advancement of the best endowed, no longer 
 hindered by an inert mass of stupidity favored by fort- 
 une ; endowments, plentiful and adequate and wisely 
 administered, not by the rules of trade, nor for privileged 
 classes, but by men expert in education, and for those 
 whose natural abilities it will pay the world best to 
 favor. 
 
 Dead men's legacies have crushed the Universities. 
 A city should oiun its University, not merely have it ; as 
 a curiosity for visitors to look at ; or a convenient wall to 
 which a private citizen may now and then affix his ceno- 
 taph. The day comes when the city will no more leave 
 the maintenance of its University to private chance or 
 caprice, or to the accidents of trade, than its mayor's 
 office, its council chamber, its court house, its alms- 
 house, its hospital, or its prison. To drain the city of 
 ignorance is as obligatory a duty upon all as to drain it 
 of filth. To furnish the city with an abundance of the 
 best science is as imperative a part of good government 
 as to provide a plenty of pure water, or gas-light. The 
 common and high schools are supported by general tax- 
 
420 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 ation ; the University, the culmination of the educational 
 system is still left to chance. 
 
 In England the perversion of ancient wealth at 
 Oxford and Cambridge to the delectation of aristo- 
 cratic pride and indolence has become a scandal and 
 a nuisance. What those celebrated beds of roses could 
 be made to produce — and will surely soon be made 
 to produce — is thus stated by Max Miiller in his recent 
 address in the University College, London : — 
 
 To compare the work that Oxford or Cambridge could do and 
 ought to do, with that of any other university, whether British or 
 Continental, is simply absurd. Oxford, with its excellent material, 
 the well-fed and well-bred youth of these islands ; Oxford with 
 its many students who have not to work for their bread ; Oxford, 
 with its rich colleges and libraries and fellowships, can do for the 
 advancement of learning fifty times over what (Jiessen or even 
 Leipsic can do. Oxford and Cambridge could beggar the whole 
 world and make the old universities the home of all English genius, 
 all English learning, all English art, all English virtue. 
 
 The plan he proposes is a simple one. Prize fellow- 
 ships are in future to be tenable for five or seven years 
 only. He proposes that, if a Fellow has then developed a 
 taste for scientific work and wishes to continue it, he 
 shall have a second fellowship with duties attached, like 
 those of the Extraordinary Professors in Germany. Let 
 the few who hold out another five years receive a tliird 
 fellowship and become Ordinary Professors for life, with 
 an income from the three fellowships of X 1,000 per 
 annum. 
 
 But if the ancient endowments of the two English 
 universities are to be thus utilized for future work, the 
 same improved public sentiment which works the change 
 in them will gradually effect a more radical enhancement 
 of the University system, in other countries, so soon as a 
 few democratic revolutions shall have overthrown the 
 existent governments fortified by standing armies, and 
 the millions now taxed for war shall be competent to 
 tax themselves for knowledge. The destiny of nations 
 is not merely to beat swords and spears into ploughs 
 and prunihg-hooks, but to eject the soldiery from forts 
 and iill their places with astronomers and meteorolo- 
 
XVI.] DESTDTZ OF THE RACE. 421 
 
 gists; to convert barracks into universities; and to 
 supply men of science with an artiLlery of research as 
 efficient and not half so costly as the equipment lav- 
 ished upon troops. 
 
 The Philanthropy of the future: what ma}^ we expect 
 it to be ? The same in kind, degree and method as it 
 has been in the past? Or, something nobler, greater, 
 wiser? 
 
 Surely the growth of general intelligence must affect 
 philanthropic conduct. The better knowledge of human 
 distress will widen and deepen the sentiment of pity ; 
 and the acuter and more thorough investigation of its 
 causes will modify the practise of its cure. 
 
 The first need of civilized man is a good home. 
 
 Tenement houses for the poor represent the two oppo- 
 site poles — of squalid misery and of cheap comfort. 
 
 Left to the selfishness of impious wealth the arrange- 
 ments of life for the outcast classes are the last desper- 
 ate lairs of wild beasts in districts from which the 
 pressure of surrounding superior species threatens exter- 
 mination. Committed to the wise benevolence of pious 
 wealth the arrangements of life for the classes which are 
 always on the verge of becoming outcast are sweet, 
 wholesome, hopeful and thrift-inspiring. 
 
 Where, as in Philadelphia, a whole population can by 
 a little foresight and self-government easily save and 
 build their own dwellings, at an average cost of from 
 $1,000 to $1,500, over a wide space, all goes well. 
 Where, as in London, millions are cramped and crushed 
 into a sweltering mass, a divine philanthropy is called 
 for, and becomes illustrious thi-ough such success as that 
 which has followed the application of George Peabody's 
 bequest of 82,500,000. In 17 years eleven blocks of 
 houses for the poor have been erected in various quar- 
 ters of the great metropolis, at a cost of $2,750,000; 
 constituting 2,355 separate dwellings, with 5,170 living 
 rooms (besides bath-rooms, laundries and wash-houses 
 free in common), inhabited by 9,899 persons, on an 
 average rent of $1.00 per week per dwelling, and $0.50 
 per week per room, mth a death rate of 19.71 per 1,000 
 
422 THE DTTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 (2.49 less than the death rate of the city as a whole). In 
 1881 other blocks will be built adding to this saved 
 population 3,500 persons more. 
 
 The tendency of a part of mankind to crowd into 
 cities is as natural as the occlusion of hydrogen in the 
 pores of a mass of iron. But it is a mistake to suppose 
 that cities grow by this process ; their growth is organic 
 like that of a peat bog. At first the}'' are planted from 
 without ; but once established, they enlarge themselves 
 from their own seed-vessels. This is proven by the 
 history of a normal city like Philadelpliia, in which ever}'- 
 married couple strives to live in a separate house. By 
 comparing the annual number of native-born j^outh of 
 both sexes Avho come of age, and may be supposed to 
 marry, — and the annual number of houses built, — the 
 two numbers will be seen to agree. It follows, then, 
 that the number of new comers to settle in the city is 
 about balanced by the number of native-born citizens 
 who migrate from it. 
 
 Every great manufacturing city obeys this law of 
 normal organic growth, and may be safely left to its 
 normal arrangements for cleansing itself of its own 
 offal. But great commercial ports like New York, Liv- 
 erpool, London, Marseilles, Alexandria, Calcutta, Can- 
 ton, have a double growth. Besides the native growth, 
 there is an afflux. And besides the immigration, which 
 is mostly not harmful but useful, there is a floating 
 population of sailors and traders and criminals. These 
 have to be regulated specifically. 
 
 Tramps and professional beggars and criminals are the 
 outgrowth of times of special social disturbance, like 
 the American civil war of 1861 or the Bulgarian rev- 
 olution ; or, to cite the most notable of all examples, 
 like the Tai-piug rebellion in the Chinese Empire, 
 wliich lasted 20 years, and in its sixteenth year de- 
 stroyed 10,000,000 lives in one province alone. But 
 they are chronically produced by any standing malad- 
 justment of the apparatus of social life ; such as a long 
 continued disproportion between supply and demand ; 
 or a succession of bad crops ; or the development of 
 gold, diamond and oil regions ; or a permanent occupa- 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE RACE. 423 
 
 tion of an empire by incompetent foreign rulers, like 
 the Turks. 
 
 The hope of the future is, that such disturbances, 
 whether sporadic, or continuous, will become rarer, and 
 tlii'ough the spread of intelligence and the enforcement 
 of just laws by all and for all, cease t(j afflict humanity. 
 When the Turk, the fanatic and the usurer fail, man- 
 kind will find no excuse for rebellion, civil war and 
 theft. But a shrewd and active pliilanthri^py must 
 substitute itself for the mischief-breeding domination of 
 the honest many by the dishonest few. 
 
 Philanthropy should be the science of Hygiene re- 
 specting Roguery in society. Hitherto it has neither 
 been a science, nor has it had roguery in view. On the 
 contrary, it has been a mere sentiment of fanaticism, 
 selfish in its own nature, and wholly unaware of what 
 its own name meant. One of the worst misinterpreta- 
 tions of Christianity has been the popular clerical doc- 
 trine of the virtue of almsgiving i^er se, and of its heav- 
 enly rcAvard as such. Men will learn in couise of time 
 that Benevolence becomes Malevolence through unen- 
 quiring almsgiving ; and if God in assigning his rewards 
 regards the consequences of conduct, the paying teller's 
 desk at which such Benevolence must present its 
 warrants is certainly not in Heaven. 
 
 The cure for beggary is not compulsory labor ; but 
 a humane and sympathetic instruction and assistance ; 
 having for its object, first, a revival of the beggar's self- 
 respect, and secondly, a stimulation of his pride in self- 
 support. The beggar must have a new set of ideas and 
 feelings forced into him ; and then, a chance given him 
 to realize the ideas, and gratify the feelings. Alms- 
 giving is as bad a medicine for unthrift, as is whiskey 
 for low spirits ; and works woe in the same fashion. 
 
 The old time recipe to cure a cat is to make disgust 
 rectify its intellect. So the only eft'ectual cure for 
 sordid unthrift and that jjretended starvation which 
 appeals for eleemosynary relief, is the application of 
 doses of real and actual starvation ; administered not at 
 all as a punishment ; nor, in the spirit of a family physi- 
 cian dealing with a case of gout or gluttony; but, on 
 
424 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 the principle of the Socratic method of reasoning with 
 a sluggish mind or indifferent scholar. When beggars 
 really come to starve, which, unfortunately, so-called 
 Christian Benevolence takes good care to prevent, they 
 not oiLi\j begin to listen to certain questions which 
 Nature has been asking them in vain, but they begin 
 also to feel the force and bearing of said questions ; 
 and then — and not till then — they cast about to find the 
 answers. 
 
 It is the business of Philanthropy to be on hand to 
 help them comprehend the questions and suggest the 
 answers. 
 
 Organized Charity — this is the discovery of our age ; 
 this is the last anal}' sis of the teachings of Jesus ; this is 
 the arena in which future saints and sages may compete 
 together until the saints become sages and the sages 
 saints; this is the apparatus by which alone Human 
 Society can relieve itself of the miseries of poverty. 
 "The poor ye shall always have with you." Certainly. 
 But not necessarily stuj)id poor, lazy poor, sordid poor, 
 dishonest poor, licentious poor, mischievous poor, dis- 
 gusting, degraded, drunken, haggard, howling, evil-eyed 
 and foul-mouthed poor, whining in the streets for a six- 
 pence, exchanging it for a glass of whiskey, and holding 
 out the hand for another " for the love of God." Yet 
 this is precisely the species of poor which the popular 
 doctrine of Christian Charit}^ breeds. 
 
 Jesus fed the inultitude which followed him into the 
 desert; but he gave no sixpences "for the love of God." 
 
 It is reported that once^ to one person, he said, " Sell all 
 that thou hast and give to the poor." But it is not re- 
 ported that he ever gave monej^ to the poor. Only once 
 does he seem to have given bread ; and then the occasion 
 was desperate ; the hungry were in a desert, where they 
 could neither make food nor earn wages. 
 
 Hesjjonsibility is the touchstone of that Penury which 
 it is lawful to relieve. The first duty of every creature 
 is to provide for itself. The creature that responds not 
 to this law of the Creator perishes — sooner or later. 
 To save it for the moment from the effects of its own 
 Irresponsibility is merely to protract its living death. 
 
XVI.] DESTINT OF THE RACE. 425 
 
 Whatever saps the sentiment of its personal Responsi- 
 bility poisons the fountains of its existence; and ''cliris- 
 tian charity " has been practising this poisoning trade 
 for man}' centuries. 
 
 The -wealthy classes, and the clergy holding their 
 purse-strings, try to purchase a fictitious heaven by a 
 fictitious beneficence. The so-called "hard-heartedness 
 of the poor toward each other" has always been the pro- 
 test of himian common-sense against the debasing and 
 destructive use of wealth to relieve poverty by annihilat- 
 ing the sentiment of personal Responsibility. The hon- 
 est poor know the value of the law "• He that will not 
 work, neither shall he eat." 
 
 The rich, who need not work, naturally yield to the 
 temptation to excuse their own eating, by providing 
 food for those who will not work. But the only true 
 function of wealth is to provide for and to oversee work ; 
 the workers then take care of themselves. 
 
 The sense of Responsibility vitalizes the universe. 
 Where it is lacking, society falls into anarchy, families 
 into decay, and individuals into wretchedness; the 
 genius frustrates his own career, the father abuses his 
 powers, the mother neglects her offspring, filial piety 
 and civic fealty vanish away, and vice and poverty be- 
 come the rule instead of the exception. 
 
 The root of all Morality is Respc)nsibility, and its fruit is 
 true Religion. Shall Benevolence then set itself to cut 
 off the root and spoil the fruit? The Charity of the 
 Future will grasp the idea of watering this root of 
 Morality to reap the fruit of Religion. No good is done 
 to the vicious poor until they are set with their faces 
 heavenward; nor to the shiftless poor until they are 
 taught the lessons of a personal independent responsi- 
 bility. To inspire them with the wish, the will and 
 the knowledge to take care of themselves, and their 
 little ones, is the sole business of " christian charity." 
 
 The sentiment of Responsibility will not grow except 
 in good society. That does not mean in fashionable 
 high life (which is always bad society), nor does it 
 mean in intercouise with the rich and notorious, with 
 people of leisure and pleasure, statesmen and soldiers, 
 
42G THE INTELLECTTJAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 popular writers, orators and artists. It meaus that 
 really good society which is everywhere enjoyed among 
 the steady-living and the steady-working masses of man- 
 kind, where every social virtue is conscripted into ser- 
 vice and disciplined by daily toil and family affection. 
 
 The sense of responsibility cannot be dinned or 
 driven into the poor, by preaching and praying, alms- 
 giving and commitments to houses of correction. It 
 must be instilled and inspired by sympathy, counsel, 
 judicious assistance and example. Like love it is not 
 bought nor sold. 
 
 Like affectionateness too it is hereditable and trans- 
 missible from generation to generation. As the spaniel 
 is the type and illustration of the descent of a cultivated 
 attachment, so the watch-dog is the type and illustration 
 of the stirpal growth of responsibility, under the unin- 
 terrupted influence of a habit of superintendence. The 
 "family servant" has disappeared, only because the fam- 
 ily itself has lost its homestead. It was the homestead — 
 not the family — that bred its generations of menial care- 
 takers. 
 
 Circumstances — not dictation; the unvarying call for 
 comprehended assistance from others — not any calcula- 
 tion of profit or pleasure; these create and foster the 
 gi'owth of responsibility — in servants — in masters — in 
 every creature. For it is often strongest and steadiest 
 where unacknowledged and ill paid ; and it reaches its 
 acme of intensity in the heart of the mother of an uncon- 
 scious babe, or imbecile cliild, all hope of reward fore- 
 stalled and barred out forever. 
 
 To rouse the dormant sentiment in the irresponsible 
 poor, and to sow thereby the seed of it in the constitu- 
 tion of their unborn offspring, is the noblest task of be- 
 nevolence and the only hope of the future. The task is 
 set — the task is undertaken — by the new Organization 
 of Charities. 
 
 Organized Charity requires : 1, a perfect census and 
 registry of professional beggary ; 2, the subdivision of 
 the whole field of beggary into small districts ; 3, com- 
 plete intercommunication and mutual intelligence be- 
 tween each district and the rest ; 4, a resident superin- 
 
XVI.] DESTIXY OF THE RACE. 427 
 
 tendent, a local corps of visitors, a district house, which 
 should be a temporary refuge and place of friendl}* de- 
 tention, as well as an office of observation and informa- 
 tion; 5, a close alliance with the municipal police, not 
 for the application of force in behalf of charity, but for 
 the substitution of force by charity ; 6, a close alliance 
 •with the medical profession, especially in their municipal 
 duty; 7, a close alliance with the trades-people, manu- 
 facturers and merchants in each district or neighborhood ; 
 
 8, a close alliance with clergymen, magistrates, trustees 
 of benevolent endowments, hospitals and asylums; and 
 
 9, a perfect understanding with the overseers and jailers 
 of houses of detention and correction, prisons and peni- 
 tentiaries ; so that, when confirmed vagabonds have re- 
 sisted all friendly treatment, and been committed for cor- 
 rection, they should be taught perforce cleanly habits and 
 industr}^ and be kejDt out of the public streets a suffi- 
 cient length of time to make a new trial more hopeful. 
 
 The extension of this system, the success of which 
 has already appeared in more than one city, to all the 
 cities and towns of an empire, is sure to be made ; and 
 finally to the whole world. All the old forms of Phi- 
 lanthropy as a method for gratifjdng the pride of pa- 
 trons, or appeasing the conscience of wrong-doers in 
 anticipation of the Day of Judgment, are destined to a 
 slow but sure decay and final extinction. But in all 
 ages to come true Pliilauthropy must gratify itself by 
 reasonable exercises; and more and more will it take on 
 the aspect of Public Spirit, — that indescribable desire 
 which the wise and just man feels to render back the 
 benefits which he has received, — to bless future genera- 
 tions with the blessing with which past generations 
 have blessed him, — to show his love to the Creator of 
 his own happiness in the small, by enhancing the hnp[)i- 
 ness of his fellow-creatures in the large, — to please his 
 imagination with pictures of good deeds not limited to 
 the short term of his own earthlj^ life, but vicariously 
 immortal, like his own soul. 
 
 Out of the sentiment of Responsibility as felt by men in 
 their capacity of begetters and providers and by women 
 in their capacity of nourishers and nurses, have pro- 
 
428 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 ceeded the sentiments of religious veneration for an 
 ideal Providence, and religious respect for a God of laTv 
 and love. To cultivate religion among the lowest 
 classes of mankind by appealing to an intellect in them 
 destitute of the first principles of order, or to affections 
 in them of which they are both constitutionally and 
 habitually deprived, is a mere fatuous tradition of the 
 trade of Theology. Rouse in them care-taking for them- 
 selves and painstaking for their relatives, and a new light 
 of the knowledge of the great Care-taker of all will 
 dawn upon them. Teach them to hear the call of famil- 
 iar duty and to answer the prayer of husband, wife and 
 child, and they learn fast enough to pray. The Organ- 
 ization of Charity is therefore destined to be the Reor- 
 ganization of Religion. 
 
 As to the Religion of the future I have perhaf)s said 
 in my Tenth Lecture all that it is safe to say. The 
 progress of the physical sciences, of the material organ- 
 ization of society, and of its mental and artistic train- 
 ing, goes on before the eyes of the beholder. But who 
 can see those mysterious undercurrents of sentiment 
 which are depositing the spiritual strata in the ocean of 
 the Time? 
 
 Nothing is so hard to discover as a tendency. It re- 
 quired a thousand experiments and most elaborately 
 curious machinery to get the curve of a cannon ball 
 through the air, and to show that every — the slightest 
 — change of shape in the projectile produced some cor- 
 responding change in the trajectory. No soldier knows 
 how the corps d'armee with which he fights is manceu- 
 vring. If the army be very great, the commanding gen- 
 eral himself is often doubtful to which side the battle 
 sways. How much less efficient must be the means of 
 observation of the philosopher regarding the tendencies 
 of his age in spiritual things? 
 
 It is noteworthy that every religious zealot supposes 
 his own sect to be on the way to pre-eminence. His 
 point of view being necessarily low down, and his hori- 
 zon limited to the region in which his own creed is 
 j)rofessed, he can frame no just comparison between its 
 general acceptability and that of other creeds. Hia 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE RACE. 429 
 
 prophetic hopes are merely ardent ^^'ishes. What his 
 reason accepts as divine he takes for granted must 
 become universal. 
 
 Every priesthood therefore forecasts the Destiny of 
 Man in the shape of a Millennium when the work of 
 propagating its peculiar dogmatic theology and special 
 ritual of worsliip shall have been completely successful 
 in all quarters of the globe. Tliis, however, being 
 equally true of the priesthoods of Buddha, of Mahomet 
 and of Christ, and of all the divergent sects of each, 
 renders the prophecy in each case vain, so far as it 
 stands on its own merits as a prophecy of the Propa- 
 ganda. There may be other reasons for considering the 
 prophecy of success for one religion better than for the 
 rest; but no reliance can be placed on the ardent wishes 
 and earnest faith which inspire the prophecy in any case. 
 
 To learn the tendency of mankind in matters of faith, 
 one must first consider that religious faith is a corn- 
 pound of morality and metaphysics; that is, of all that 
 men suppose respecting God and his creation, Man's 
 nature, and the well-being of Human society. If, then, 
 a tendency towards certain stable views respecting one 
 or other of these elements of religion can be clearly dis- 
 cerned, the whole religious tendency can be at least 
 partially suspected. 
 
 If it be true that humankind is becoming more and 
 more conscientious, just and temperate in common life, 
 there must be a tendency of their religious sentiments 
 towards the worship of a truly worthy God. If men 
 and women in the mass are growing to be more humane 
 and pitiful and mercifully just towards each other, their 
 God is also growing kinder and more loving to them. 
 By combining these two tendencies of human society 
 we get as a resultant a direct gravitation towards the 
 religion of Jesus of Nazareth ; or, what may express it 
 better, to that element which is common to Confutzee- 
 ism, Mahometanism and Christianity, embodied in the 
 XJhinese motto "Thou shalt not do to another what thou 
 shoukVst dislike him to do to thee.'' and in the Chris- 
 tian formula, ''Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
 all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
430 THE intp:llectual and moral [lect. 
 
 On the intellectual or metaphysical side, the tendency 
 of the educated part of the race is directed at present 
 by the physical sciences : and there seems to be no 
 counteracting influence except that of mysticism. But 
 mysticism is the metaphysical philosophy of human 
 affections, protesting against the controlling dictation of 
 the human understanding. Now if mankmd be really 
 educating tlieir understanding to a more vigorous treat- 
 ment of all the facts of the universe, the result seems 
 inevitable, that the affections must be subjugated to 
 calmer and juster contemplation of facts. Only that 
 residuum of mystical pliilosophy will then remain 
 which shall correspond to actual facts — after a thor- 
 ough-going investigation of the universe so far as man's 
 apjiaratus of discovery and criticism can reach it. 
 
 There is but one mystical fact outside the pale of scien- 
 tific research, viz., the fact of intelligent self-existence. 
 This of course can never be investigated by any scien- 
 tific process, because it is itself the investigator. It 
 knows itself to be ; but how it came to be, it cannot 
 know ; nor by what means it knows itself to be. Its at- 
 tributive powers it can study while embodied in those 
 jjowers; but when disembodied — it vanishes instantly 
 from the field of investigation. It can fancy what it 
 pleases about itself, both while embodied and when dis- 
 embodied ; but it can understand nothing. In ages when 
 the understanding had no physical apparatus, no store of 
 already investigated facts to suggest and guide to fresh 
 investigation, the fancy was at its highest and most con- 
 stant and delightful or unhappy exercises ; but in tliis 
 age of complete and satisfactory occupation for the hu- 
 man understanding, with so much found out and so 
 much to find out, man has neither time nor inclination 
 for the amusements of fancy outside of the world of 
 real life. Hunting in the forest has been given up as a 
 regular occupation by those who have fertile farms and 
 comfortable city homes and exacting business. So, in 
 the mental world, men see too much flesh and blood to' 
 care for ghosts; consort delightfully with too many 
 saints and sages in the body, to invent invisible angels ; 
 and ai€ too much and too successfully dealing with act- 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE RACE. 431 
 
 ual hells in a way of benevolence to take spiritual stock 
 in a theological hell which no one ever was certainly 
 known to go to or come from. 
 
 Medicine has dissipated the fancy of diabolic and an 
 gelic [jossession ; botany and mineralogy have brushed 
 the plush and dew of folk-lore off from human history; 
 chemistry has unmasked magic; geology, geogi-aphy 
 and astronomy have invaded and occupied the fairest 
 and wealthiest domains of the mystical imagination ; and 
 physics as the science of the invisible world-force has in- 
 oculated the human fancy itself with ideas of the unity, 
 simplicity and unchangeable regularity of the entire 
 realm of existence. 
 
 The tendency therefore to some sort of unitarianism, 
 — not only antipolytheistic, and antitritheistic, but 
 antitriunitheistic (except in a Sabellian sense) — is 
 unmistakable, wherever popular education prevails ; and 
 when women are educated equally with men, both sexes 
 must share, each according to its several nature, in a de- 
 parture from the mysticism of the old prevailing creeds, 
 and in a common tendency to make all religious feeling 
 and conduct to consist simply in expressions of confi- 
 dence in the providence of one God and of benevolence 
 towards all his creatures. Religion will in fact become 
 simply Morality and Philantlu'opy. 
 
 Two words will disappear — Schism and Apostasy — 
 in their present religious sense. The}' will b*e recog- 
 nized, socially, as effete Schimjyfwdrter^ "Shame words" 
 of two primary human rights — the right of the indi- 
 vidual to freely "obey the witness in liis own soul," and 
 the right of individuals to freely modify all organiza- 
 tions of social intercourse according to the necessities of 
 inward and outward experience. When it comes to be 
 recognized that God is adorable and lovable, but not 
 knijwable, an authoritative Church will not exist, Schism 
 will cease to be Dissent, and Apostasy will be notliing 
 worse than a woman's change of name at marriage. 
 When Theolog}' expurgates the Syllogism from its 
 creeds, the human heart can become theological, and the 
 distracted brain settle down into rational and peaceful 
 mysticism. The ^personal equation in all the physical 
 
432 THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL [LECT. 
 
 sciences being established, the personal equation in relig- 
 ion will be discovered and believed. If there be Seraphs 
 and Cherubs in heaven, there must be both burners and 
 shiners on the earth, and these will constitute the o\\\y 
 two great sects, to one of which women naturally belong 
 and into the other men naturally gather themselves. 
 But the creed of both will be that unwritten Morality 
 Avhich binds the human soul to God, and that unwritten 
 Philanthropy which binds all human souls together. 
 Thus the Religion of the Future will in fact become 
 merely the harmony of Morality and Philanthropy. 
 
 Morality and Philanthropy? 
 
 For the mystic these are cold words. To the Chris- 
 tian intelligence they are words burning hot with man's 
 gratitude for the past and confidence in the future. 
 Words? No, not words — but names, — names for a new 
 and future zeal for doing good. "Freely ye have 
 received," they say: "Freely give." New names for 
 Vital Godliness. Names for that boundless, absolute, 
 ecstatic, self-sacrificing Love of the Father, which shone 
 on the face of Jesus the Anointed and the Anointer; 
 which has illuminated the faces of thousands of saints 
 and martyrs who died calling on his name, and claiming 
 the performance of liis promise that the Truth should 
 make them Free, with the glorious liberty of the Sons 
 of God. 
 
 The Religion of the future will be Free Religion ; in 
 no antinomian sense; but in the sense assigned to it by 
 the Type man; who went about doing good and preach- 
 ing righteousness; healing the sick and casting out 
 devils; saying that neither at Jerusalem nor on any 
 other templed height God should henceforth be wor- 
 shipped ; but that God was a spirit, and should be wor- 
 shipped in the human spirit, and with simple, fearless, 
 practical, affectionate and independent lionesty, inspired 
 by a love of personal goodness (holiness), and confident 
 of a happy end in the bosom of creative love. All 
 creeds must simplify themselves into this creed of Jesus, 
 and all mysticism become practical after his example. 
 
 The Destiny of Mankind becomes in this view the 
 macrocosm of the destiny of each individual; and as 
 
XVI.] DESTINY OF THE RACE. 433 
 
 all personal religion resolves itself into the comprehen- 
 sion, love and practice of the fundamental principles of 
 Clu-istianity as set forth in the life of Jesus, with infi- 
 nitely varied applications to the circumstances of per- 
 sonal existence, — so the religions of the human race 
 must, in the course of ages, be reduced to the simplicity 
 of the fundamental : Be God's child and Man's brother. 
 No creed can stand the fire of modern and future sci- 
 ence. All ceremonials must become merely symbolic. 
 The relationship of clergy to laity will resolve itself into 
 that of leadership to following, in purity of character 
 and wise beneficence ; and no rewards in heaven or pun- 
 ishments in hell will be either desired or anticipated ; 
 for Christ will have indeed come the second time to rule 
 and bless the world. 
 
IISTDEX. 
 
 A, B, CD, 252 
 
 A In Armenian, 233 
 
 A forms, 240 
 
 A arrowhead, 239 
 
 A, AA, plumes, 228 
 
 AA, of astouislimeut, 236 
 
 Abaris. 239 
 
 Abbeville (Travels, 55 
 
 Abbeville. 188 
 
 Abbot ((Jen.), 142 
 
 Abrabaiiiic migration, 144 
 
 Abiabain, etymology, 170 
 
 Abraham's fo'otnriuls, 18G 
 
 Absenteeism, 3154 
 
 Aby<los.l47 
 
 Aeaii, 101 
 
 Adam, 43 
 
 Adams, 250 
 
 Adam and Kve legend, 117 
 
 Adam's I'eaU, 222 
 
 Adam's liintprints, 180 
 
 Adainic innocence, 133 
 
 Adjustment of property, 
 
 308 
 Admiral y charts. 333 
 Adonai. Adonis, 282 
 Adoption of children, 257 
 Adnltery. 310 
 Advertising mediums, 386 
 jliueas, 10 
 
 ./Erolite worshipped, 27 
 ^sop, 00 
 Agamemnon, 356 
 Agas.siz,2, 11,40, 132,199 
 Agassiz's views. 76 
 Agassiz's fish, 86 
 Age of the earth. 46 
 Agglutination, 179 
 Agni hvnms, 289 
 Agriculture, 349 
 Aladdin's jialace, 47 
 Alchemy, 334 
 Alt = bull. 231 
 Alfa. A, 231 
 Alphaios, 231 
 AUred(KiugM51 
 Alp = arm, 230 
 Alphabet, 214 
 Alphabets named, 251 
 Altar = mountain, 226 
 Altar Tvith wedge, 239 
 Alternate generation, 111 
 Am, gem. 278 
 Amadis do (ianl, 271 
 Amber collection, 85 
 Amber in trade. 278 
 Amenaman, 149 
 Amenophis, 154 
 Amiens gravel, 58 
 Amn, .love, 278 
 Amosis, 154 
 Amten's tomb. 196 
 Amulet weapons, 263 
 Analysis, 82 
 Anatomy, 352 
 Anastasi papyrus, 149 
 Ancestor worship, 101, 
 
 255 
 
 Anderson (Capt.), 3 
 
 Animals with lake dwell- 
 ers. 129 
 
 Animals of the pyramid 
 age. 155 
 
 Animals in and out of 
 grottos, 262 
 
 Animal si)eech.400 
 
 Ann Arbor, 417 
 
 Antelope in caves, 53 
 
 Anthracite, 337 
 
 Anthro|iouinr)ihism, 283 
 
 Antlochia, 144 
 
 Antiquity of man, 43 
 
 Anlitiuity of Egyptian art, 
 105 
 
 Antiquarianism as a study , 
 355 
 
 Antiquit^s celtiques, 57 
 
 Antiquaries, 355 
 
 Antiquarianism, 357 
 
 Anubis, 129, 156, 194, 196 
 
 Apamea, Ararat, 222 
 
 Ap.appus, 154 
 
 Ape.sMud men, 119 
 
 Apollo, 400 
 
 Apostasy, 431 
 
 Apportioning districts, 394 
 
 Apurn, 140 
 
 Arab eheik, 35, 36 
 
 Arboriculture, 349 
 
 Ararat, picture, 217, 221 
 
 Archeology, 356 
 
 Archibald, "322 
 
 Architect, jioet, 215 
 
 Architecture, 183 
 
 Architecture, modern, 189 
 
 Architcctuic. ancient. 100 
 
 Architecture. the building 
 of arks, 218 
 
 Architecture of the fut- 
 ure, 410 
 
 Architrave, 211 
 
 Archives, in ark, 229 
 
 Arctinus, first poet, 215 
 
 Argos, 217 
 
 Arimaspians, 10 
 
 Arithmetic, 23 
 
 Arithmetic with savages, 
 34,35 
 
 Aristocr.acy, 396 
 
 Aristotle, 9 
 
 Ark of Gen. x.. 10, 144 
 
 Ark of the covenant, 226 
 
 Arkite poetry, 215 
 
 Aries. 218 
 
 Arm, mountain, 230, 234 
 
 Armenian A. explained by 
 Jesus, 233, 237 
 
 Armenian language, 150 
 
 Am, ark, 226 
 
 Arretiuo, 34 
 
 Arrowliead, 239 
 
 Arthur (Kingj, 151 
 
 Arve, 6 
 
 Ar.Y, citadel, 229 
 
 Artist and lion, 68 
 
 Artistic genius, 184 
 
 Assyrian letters, 238 
 Assyrian, style, = Ionic, 
 
 Astronomy in the future, 
 
 321 
 Astrology, 30 
 Athos, island mountain, 
 
 242 
 Atropos, 301 
 Aum, 277 
 
 Anrignac grotto, 261 
 Aurochs in caves, 63, 129 
 Avaris, 148 
 
 Bival-Adonis worship, 283 
 
 Baalbec, 410 
 
 Biibel, 10, 164, 410 
 
 liache, 6, 39 
 
 liaihman. 107 
 
 ISack writing, 237 
 
 r,ac(.n,22 
 
 liadues«,311 
 
 Bai;e, 63 
 
 Balfour, 143 
 
 Bancrott, 208 
 
 Bara, to create, 215 
 
 Barbar, pyramid. 224 
 
 Bard, hs, Kgyp., 215 
 
 Bardic element in lan- 
 guage, 174 
 
 Baring, 174 
 
 Barkal mountain, 273 
 
 Barr, 39 
 
 Barter. 382 
 
 Basalt theory of architect- 
 ure, 210 
 
 Basques, Esquimaux, 113 
 175 
 
 Bear picture on pebble, 
 263 
 
 Beauty, 201 
 
 Beech and o.ak ages, 131 
 
 Beggars, 422 
 
 Belgrade forest, 143 
 
 Belle-air skull type, 118 
 
 Belles-lettres, 402 
 
 Belzoni, 218 
 
 Benev(dence, 423 
 
 Belli Hassan, 143 
 
 Berber race. 114, 206 
 
 Berenice, l.''>0 
 
 Berkeley, 72 
 
 Berlin survey. 347 
 
 Berserkers, 133 
 
 Berzelius, 11, 209 
 
 Berzil, iron, 171 
 
 Bessemer iron, 341 
 
 Bibaii el Molouk, 194 
 
 Biers tadt, 208 
 
 Bilingual inscriptions, 235 
 
 Bimanum, 88 
 
 Biography, 13 
 
 Bird's head picture, 26? 
 
 Bird-track scrip, 248 
 
 Bizo caves, 53 
 
 Blacks cheated, 123 
 
 Black .Tews, 104, 107 
 
 Black race, 95 
 
436 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 lilackRiniths, 340 
 IJlackstimo, 11 
 Blake, 134 
 Blanford. 322 
 Blazius, 327 
 IJIaspliemy, 317 
 lUast furnaces, 337 
 Blodi,'et, 327 
 lUuineubach's blmanum, 
 
 88 
 r. laz, 225 
 Hog, devil, 279 
 l?i)g» of Denmark, 131 
 liogrelirs. 128 
 Houe caves, 53 
 JSonheur. 2 
 Jtoiiivrfril. 152 
 Books. 402 
 liopp, 10!) 
 JSordeii. 39 
 ISoswell, 13 
 Botany in future, 347 
 Botanir.al gardens, 349 
 Bothnia. G4 
 Boucher tie Perthes, 57, 
 
 185 
 Boulaq museum, 196 
 Boiiriieois. 01. 13G 
 Bourges pyramid, 38 
 Bou.^^treplir.don. 236 
 Bow-wow theory, 169 
 Bozzel, 215 
 BrachycLphs, 2C8 
 ISrahma, 278 
 Brain of man, 91 
 Brixham cave, .'iS, 58 
 Broca's bones. 90 
 Broca's measurements, 
 
 103 
 Broca on cave-men. 2G7 
 Bronze age language, 175 
 Broun, 3"J2 
 Brown race. 114 
 Brown (John). ^71 
 Brown of ,vt. .Seurin. 341 
 Brown (H K.), 400 
 Bruce. 213 
 Brugsrh. 143. 2GG 
 Bucklanil. 52, 58 
 Buckle. 255 
 Build, make. 215 
 Buiniet 188 
 Buuseu's Egypt, 34 
 Buuseii's piio etics, 234 
 J>uoiiarot;i. 405 
 Burial f'>r safety, 199 
 Burke (E), 175 
 Burne's I ravels, 222 
 Burton. 30 
 Busk. 107. 132 
 Buteaux. GO 
 Byron's couplet. 152 
 IJyzautium, bOl 
 
 Cabala, 274 
 Oabiri, 188 
 Cadmus, 10, 152, 246 
 (.Jadmuan letters, 238 
 Caen cathedral, 220 
 Cain legend, 117 
 Oalfrcs. 142 
 Calatnites, 51 
 Oallirrhoe, 144 
 Cambridge, 417 
 Cambyses, 101 
 Camel unknown to the 
 
 l)yramids. 155 
 Campbell (,r. J>".), G4 
 Campbell's ledge, 207 
 Camper. 107 
 Canal mania, 337 
 Canals, 387 
 Canne, 169 
 
 Canoes In bogs. 130 
 Cannibalism. 130, 268 
 Caoutcliouc, 350 
 Caph, the h:ind, 229 
 Capital = <aj)itol. 221, 229 
 ('apital and luterost, 379 
 Cardium cilule, 132 
 C.irlomaii. 275 
 Carlyle. 175 
 Caruak, 100 
 Cartouche, ark, 220 
 Caspar ilauscr. 00 
 Case (Chief .Justice). 288 
 (.'ases in Egyptian, 180 
 Cat absent" from pilotis, 
 
 129 
 Cat unknown in Egypt, 155 
 CatacUsms, 137 
 Catechism. 307 
 Cathedral, 203 
 Cattle-breeding, 350 
 Cave bear, 204. 207 
 Cave relics, 52 
 Cave sculptures. 185 
 Cave theory in architect- 
 ure. 209 
 Caves in Brazil, G5 
 Cella of temple, 209 
 Cells, 114 
 Celsius, 04 
 Centaurs, 247 
 Cephiilization. 90 
 C Tberus, 194 
 Ceremonial. 255 
 Chambers. 7G, 322 
 ChampoUiou. 155, 248 
 Chandra. 144 
 Cliaos. 10 
 
 Character of savages, 201 
 Charcoal burning, 352 
 Charity. 424 
 Chase (,!'. E.). 35 
 Chateau de Gallion, 47 
 Chav.innes piloti, 128 
 Cluini:-al geology. 5 
 Cbi-mistry of the future, 
 
 Cheops. 154 
 
 Chihf adoption. 257 
 
 Cbillon. 152 
 
 Chimpanzi^e. 119 
 
 Chinese language, 179. 243 
 
 Chinese not originally 
 monosyllabic. 181 
 
 Chinese radiirals. 251 
 
 Chinese scrip, 237, 240 
 
 C'liuese temple, 210 
 
 Choate's writing, 233 
 
 Chokier c.ive, 64 
 
 Christ of D uniccker. 93 
 
 Christian cliaritv-. 424 
 
 Christol. :ri. d. ch., 53 
 
 Christ V, 53 
 
 Christianity, 19 
 
 Christianity ancestor wor- 
 ship. 270 
 
 Chronolo,'y of E'rvpt, 36 
 
 Chureli,2.20.S,41i 
 
 Cieero. 258 
 
 Circle of stones, 215 
 
 Villi aiitiqae. 200 
 
 City versus country. 390 
 
 Civilisation. 122.201 
 
 Civilization and iron, 342 
 
 Clan life, 253 
 
 Cyclic poets. 215 
 
 Cvclopi'an remains, 218 
 
 Classitication of sciences. 7 
 
 Classilicalionof languages, 
 100 
 
 Classification of nature by 
 Chinese, 244 
 
 Cleft rocks, 273 
 
 Clem,!nt{Dr.). 2C3 
 
 Cleopatra's barge, 372 
 
 Climate of the future, 323 
 
 Clotbo. 301 
 
 Clubs. 309 
 
 Coal, glacial. 51 
 
 Coal and iron. 330 
 
 Cochonn; jn'ramid, 154 
 
 Coeducation of sexes, 413 
 
 Coinage debased, 383 
 
 Columbaria, 197 
 
 Column-mountain. 227 
 
 Columns in pairs, 225 
 
 Comets (lrea<lful, 33 
 
 Comfort in life. 372 
 
 Commerce iu the future, 
 384 
 
 Commercial navy of Eng- 
 land, 387 
 
 Committees. 3G9 
 
 Common Law, 301 
 
 Comparative Philology, 
 159 
 
 Complex relationships .204 
 
 Compound words iu Chi- 
 nese, 181 
 
 Compulsory ed ucation,413 
 
 Conrte, 72, 105 
 
 Cone of the Tiniere, 64 
 
 Congresses, 300 
 
 Conjecture versus knowl- 
 edge. 22 
 
 Conjunction of planets, 36 
 
 Conscience of beasts, 92 
 
 Constantinople, 300 
 
 Coii«titutioual provisos, 
 303 
 
 Construction, 20G 
 
 Consultation, 307 
 
 Contour curves, 331 
 
 Contractor's pole, 123 
 
 Convenience, 313 
 
 Conversation, 70 
 
 Coop, cup. cap, 229 
 
 Coptos. 150 
 
 Coral reef man, 65 
 
 Cornell. 417 
 
 Cosaguina. 331 
 
 Cost of manual labor, 377 
 
 Cottage theory of archi- 
 tecture, 211 
 
 Cow's rock, 187 
 
 Crassus, 144 
 
 Cratvlus, 100 
 
 Crawford, 131, 155 
 
 Cretaceous age, 49 
 
 Creuzot, 341 
 
 Crinoids. 85 
 
 Criticism. 357 
 
 CroU's theorv. 37, 325 
 
 Cromlechs. 100 
 
 Crosse's experiments, 101 
 
 Crystal in sea. 203 
 
 Cuneiform. 2;;o. 242 
 
 Cupola, ark, 226 
 
 Ciivier. 53 
 
 Cvclopeau, 190.215 
 
 Cypress forest. 04 
 
 Cyrena fluniiualis, 59 
 
 Cyrus, 14, 152 
 
 D. tor. mountain, 242 
 
 D'Archiac, 00 
 
 Dal'.ail. DeBiR (Hebrew), 
 
 Dagger handle, 260 
 Damascus. 142 
 Dana, 0. OO 
 Dannceker, 93 
 Daniels, 218 
 Darwin. 0. 76 
 Date of letters, 247 
 David the poet, 287 
 
INDEX. 
 
 437 
 
 David (L.). 405 
 
 Davis. lO'J 
 
 Day = H)00 years. 60 
 
 Duad laumiancs. 17G 
 
 DoaiMinr.i. 1.S7 
 
 Dca li..s4.:;0-.' 
 
 Itobas.-dcuiiiafr'". 3S3 
 
 Di Heaiiin iiit.4l.58 
 
 l)e Coiila:,ges. i; J7, aG6 
 
 Deep-river tish. 51 
 
 I>eer-falliii^'. 'JGO 
 
 Deism. i;7!) 
 
 De (iohiueall. 115. 184 
 
 Dele>;atiou by election, 
 
 303 
 Delphian olinsm. 273 
 Delt>s.L' 18. ooG 
 Deltas. 140 
 Delta, letter. 242 
 D-lii!;e impossible, 137, 
 
 26tj 
 Demavend, 222 
 De Merc y. (iO 
 OenuuiKe. 24. 50 
 DeniDcritus. 4ii(j 
 Driiiise lav I ni lu, Gl 
 Denudation. 48 
 Descartes, 11 
 Desert belt. 142 
 DesortK K 2. 04, 114 
 Desor palafi.tes. 12t> 
 Desor on the l!eri>i;rs, 206 
 De Soto's horse, 70 
 Destiny. 295 
 Destination. 300 
 Deuraliiiii. In 
 Devflopinr: t, 73 
 De Wrueiiil. 258 
 D -voiiian ma, 43 
 Dliorhainides, 186 
 Dialects. 232 
 Di.ilfCts ot ideas, 399 
 Diain )iid diili. 345 
 Diaua. 217 
 Dick.-ns. 15 
 Dignity ot man, 08 
 Dii Ktikiles, 258 
 Dijon. 37:i 
 Diinvium, 57 
 Diluvial man. 55 
 Di^hi'l bo^,]28 
 I):^.^."ntis^t•Uil. 118 
 I i!.iaeu<l and interest, 381 
 1> 's; of earlv man. 129 
 Dolii-hocepiis. 2G8 
 Dollars worth, 382 
 D limens. 53 
 Dolmens of the Sahara, 
 
 218 
 Dome, nioniitain. 226 
 Dor. arm, 130 
 Dordogne caves. 185 
 Doric stvle, 227 
 Dorus, 10 
 
 Dovetailed door, 127 
 Dowler. 05 
 Dragon scrip. 24G 
 Dritt. 57,323 
 Druidmounds,53,174, 274 
 Drvads, 274 
 Duality, 220, 222 
 Dubois. 00 
 Dumas, 11 
 Duplication, 224 
 Dupont. 121, 205 
 Dynasties, Kgypt, 146 
 
 Early social life. 122 
 Earthquake tides, 
 Eclipse of Thales, 37 
 Economics, 371 
 Edenmvth. 133 
 Education, 304, 411 
 
 Egyptian relit s. GO 
 Egyjitiaii chronology, 154 
 Ekvptiau language, 158, 
 
 177 
 Egvptian propylon. 219 
 Kk'vptian letter .S. 241 
 Egyptian symbols. 250 
 Egyptian tombs, 256 
 Elections. 393 
 Elephant. 231. 155 
 Elephant head on bone, 
 
 258 
 Elevation of lands,. 51 
 Elevation of .'•t a level 51 
 Elevation of >'■ rway, G4 
 Eleven-vear cvclo, 32 
 Elijah. 407 
 Elisha's axe, 340 
 Eliot, 322 
 Elves.:i3l 
 Elysmin, 2G9 
 Eiiianations. 237 
 Emerson. 208, 255 
 Enchanted Kronnd. 45 
 Endowments. 420 
 Engihonl cave. 54 
 Engis scull. 54, 121 
 English language, 401 
 Entail, 3G«i 
 Entef, 154 
 Enthusiasm. 2 
 Entomhmi'ut, 199 
 Environment, l'J8 
 Envy. 317 
 Ei>hesiis. 27 
 Kjdiesiaii silversmiths, 
 
 224 
 Ejiic cycle. 216 
 Er(linan:i, 7 
 Ereck(ark). 144 
 Erie canal. 387 
 Erosion, 48 
 Erosion since the bone 
 
 beds. 50 
 Erosion at Marseilles, 333 
 Esquimaux. 135 
 Esquimaux in I'rance, 113 
 Espy, 2 
 
 Eternal mansion, 269 
 Ethnology. 359 
 Euclid, 19.41). G9 
 Etisebius, 358 
 Evans (J), GO. 109 
 Evaporation, 325 
 Excavations. 356 
 Existence. 430 
 E.xperiment. 22 
 Expression, 399 
 
 Facer e. 215 
 Fact, fiction. 407 
 Failure, 297 
 Falconer, 53. 59, 258 
 Fame. 302, 404 
 Family. 04 
 
 Family life in tombs, 193 
 Fancy"in science. 22 
 Fancy of t he ancients, 228 
 Faradav, 3 
 Fatalism, 303 
 Fate, 301 
 
 Fauna successive, 49 
 Faust. 27G 
 Feasts funereal. 2G2 
 Feather, plume, 234 
 P'erry (M.j, 417 
 Fetichism. 270 
 Figurative writing, 245 
 Fine arts, 405 
 p'inger-rlngs. 372 
 Finance, 373 
 
 Fire In many languages, 
 182 
 
 Fish-garabol scrip, 248 
 Flint hatchets. 53 
 Flint forgeries. GO 
 Flood revolutions, 140 
 Flora successive. 49 
 Florida blacks. 123 
 Flower. On 
 
 Flutes in columns, 227 
 Fohi-cadraus. 240 
 Font of baptism. 227 
 Food of lake dwolli.rs. 127 
 Food of Jialtic men. 130 
 Footprints, 180 
 Forbis. 14 
 Forces delineil. S 
 Forged Hints. (!0 
 Forniafi'ins, 47 
 Form-for<'e. 9. 102 
 Forest t li '■ ry 01 a. chitect- 
 
 ure, 213 
 Forests saved. 350 
 Forests H.:d riin. 142 
 Forstcr'sbook. 151 
 Fossil strata. 02 
 F.issil forms.. •;47 
 Four types. 77 
 Free ma-ionry, 309 
 Free religiiii", 432 
 French map of pop., 112 
 French dialects. 100 
 Friar J! u-.on. 270 
 Funerary grot, 261 
 
 Galitzin.lOO 
 Gainie.s V.iliey. 04 
 (larrigoii's pebble, 263 
 Garrison. 12 
 Gaudani 1. ISO 
 Gaudry, GO 
 Gaussen. 276 
 Geikie, 14 
 
 Gem superstition, 271 
 Genesis. 43 
 Genius, 105. 404 
 Geodesv, 332 
 Geography, 38. 331 
 Geology, 4. 343 
 Geological series, 40 
 Geometry. 23 
 Gerryniandi'ring, 394 
 Gibberish. 270 
 Gibbon, 10 
 Gibraltar relics, 60 
 Giraffe. l."po 
 Giralda. 152 
 Girar.l. 11 
 Glacial age. 37. 64 
 Glacial coal. 51 
 Glacial seratches. 208 
 Glacier of the Aar, 2 
 Glaciers, olrl. 323 
 Glacies. l'< rinian, 323 
 Glass uar. 51 
 Glass Rupeistition. 271 
 Glidden, 31 
 
 Gnosticism. 21. 27. 233 
 Goat in caves. 53 
 Goethe. 15 
 Gobble. 270 
 God defined 2.S0 
 Godliness. 432 
 Godwin (.\usten), 53 
 Goffontai le. 54 
 Gold. 345. 3.-<4 
 Goorlness. 300 
 (riirilla's thumb. 89 
 (Jothic .style, 203 
 Graeclli. 151 
 Grandison. 178 
 (irahanKC). 142 
 Giant. 11.39 
 Gratio'.tt. 91. 107 
 Gravel bids, 97 
 
438 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Gr«-en8and age, 48 
 GreK'8 Creed of C, 281 
 Grev (Asa). 7<! 
 Griinin's l:iw, 171, 178, 230 
 Grotto. AurigiiMC, 2G1 
 Growth t'or<'e, 8 
 Gulf of Bothnia, G4 
 G-william. 252 
 
 Haa = 100 000,000. 23i 
 
 Habitat, ,Si 
 
 IIal)itat produces variety, 
 122 
 
 Hadei, 200 
 
 Hadrian's tomb, I'.i] 
 
 Haidingcr. 2S 
 
 Haldf^man, 109 
 
 Halicavnassus. 190 
 
 Hall (.Tas.), 208 
 
 Hanianiat, 149 
 
 Hani-liHin. 273 
 
 Hirailton, 105 
 
 Han dynasty, 247 
 
 Hand.eai). cup. 229 
 
 Hand-print, 187 
 
 Hand-i)rint in many lan- 
 guages, 1S2 
 
 Hare (R.). !19 
 
 Hare not in pilotis, 129 
 
 Harmony. 201 
 
 Hasslor. 39 
 
 Hatasu.15-1: 
 
 Haujit, 20S 
 
 Hauran, 142 
 
 Hayden, 35 
 
 Hazel-nms, 128 
 
 Head in many languages, 
 182 
 
 Heaven, 270 
 
 Hubert, GO 
 
 Hebrew patriarchs. 144 
 
 Hebrew lan.truafie. 158 
 
 Hebrew etymologies, 170 
 
 Hebrew letters, 237 
 
 Hel>ron,148 
 
 Heer(0.),51.G4 
 
 Hegel, 72, 255 
 
 Helen. 9 
 
 Hell. 300, 322 
 
 Hendctrson, G5 
 
 Hengstenbertf, 276 
 
 Hennessey, 323 
 
 Henry, 32'7, 330 
 
 Herculaneuni, 87 
 
 Heredity, 42G 
 
 Herfidotus. 9 
 
 Hieranliv. votinsr. 394 
 
 lli.-n«lviiliics. 1^45 
 
 Hil<lrflJi,2liS, '.iSS 
 
 Hindu paKoda. 219 
 
 Hinckley (T.i.li 
 
 History, 355 
 
 Historical travellers, 14 
 
 Hissarlik, 35G 
 
 Hitchcock. 187 
 
 Hi-thseu, 244 
 
 Hoai-nan-tseu, 247 
 
 lloang-ti, 247 
 
 Hoan;; ho, 130 
 
 Hohljerf? skull, 118 
 
 Holiness. 4H2 
 
 Hooi;iioai, 170 
 
 Horoscope wanted, 29 
 
 Horse unknown, 155 
 
 Horseshoe fetich. 272 
 
 Horse picture, 259 
 
 Host, wafer. 27G 
 
 Hottentot's bones, 90 
 
 Hottentots, 142 
 
 Hiigel-Kraber, 2G8 
 
 Hugo (V.J, 15 
 
 Hui, 149 
 
 Human bones stratified. 53 
 Human lKin<l. 187 
 Humboldt (W.I. 1G5 
 IlunibMlilt.Klacier. 135 
 Huniplivcvs I Gen.), 142 
 Hunt I W.I. 409 
 Hunter. o.S. :!'_'2 
 Hunmian roeks, 48 
 Husehke. 107 
 Huxlev. 70, 89 
 Hydra, 247 
 Hyena, cave, 53 
 Hyksos.31.14G. 155, 283 
 Hygiene, 352 
 Hyiiostasis, 238 
 
 Icswaca, 144, 217 
 Idealism in arch., 222 
 Idioms. 397 
 Udefonso, G5 
 Imaijes of the dead, 199 
 Imitation words, 1G5 
 Immnrtalitv. 198, 204, 2G9 
 Imiiosts, ;;74 
 Incredibility. 153 
 Indian langiiages, 17G 
 Indolence of despair, 123 
 Indraism. 254 
 Indra hymns, 289 
 Intinite, numlier, 234 
 Infinite. :i mn(hn-n idea, 281 
 Inflected languages, 179 
 Inscription. Lycopolis. 152 
 Inscriptnjn at Zerbhokhia, 
 
 289 
 Interjection words, 1G5 
 Inteliei-iiial dc-stiny, 397 
 Interest and principal,378 
 Interest and dividend, 381 
 Interments. 208 
 Inundations, 138 
 Inverted words, 1G6 
 Inventetl by priests, 174 
 Ionic = Assyrian, 212 
 Irish A. 241 
 Irish writing. 184 
 Irish of Meath, 104 
 Irish Cranncpgs, 128 
 Iron prodvietion, 337 
 Irresponsibility, 424 
 Irrigation, 349 
 Isaac, etym., 170 
 Isaac and Ksaii myth, 144 
 Isaac and .Jacob myth, 284 
 Ishmael's footprints, 180 
 
 Jachin, 228 
 Jacob myth, 284 
 Jain temples. 209 
 Jamblicus. 13 
 Jaw of man and ape, 89 
 Jehovah. 151.277. 282 
 Jesus, on A. 15. 232 
 Jesus teaehing. 270 
 Jesus redivivus. 305 
 Jesus' lienevolence, 424 
 Jewels, 343 
 Jewish theology, 45 
 Jewish race, 145 
 .lewish )>rogrpss, 285 
 Joan d'Arc, 408 
 Job. 287 
 Josephus. 151 
 Joshua, 284 
 Judah, 144 
 Judge, Sim, 215 
 Jukes, 83 
 Jumieges. 47. 220 
 Jupiter .Serapis, G3 
 Justice, 392 
 
 ,lustinoiiolis, 144 
 
 Kaab;ih.229 
 Kahluren. ic.) 
 Kalahari 1 IJ 
 Kane. 131. 13.-.. 130 
 Kant. 105 
 Katena. 149 
 Kaulba< h. 405 
 Kauitzir. 149 
 Keniaman. 149 
 Kent's hole. 53. 58 
 Kepler. 30 
 Kho-teau script. 347 
 Khun-.aten. 154,282 
 Ki-willow. 240 
 Kibotos. Ararat. 222 
 Kingsborough, 218 
 Kingston plain, 207 
 Kirk. 143" 
 Kirkir. 215 
 Kismet. 3i>3 
 Kitchen trash. 132 
 Knox's views. 100 
 Kol, logos, 237 
 Kooner mountain, 222 
 Kou-wen ideographs, 248 
 Kraitsir's system, 162, 
 
 107. 173 
 Kuyun\ik. 356 
 
 Lac, gala, 237 
 Lachesis, 3ul 
 Lady queen. 289 
 Lake dwellings, 125 
 Lamarck, 76 
 Lamb on alphabet, 234 
 Laniellre Hint. 203 
 Landlordism 3GG 
 Landscapes, 200. 400 
 Langley's balance. 344 
 Language. 158. 397 
 Language constitutional, 
 
 1C5 
 Language no test of race, 
 
 177 
 Language of priests, 174, 
 
 178 
 Language of beasts, 92 
 Lapitha;', 47 
 Laplace, 37 
 Laplanders, 129 
 Lartet, GO, GO, 258 
 Lartet, researches, 262 
 Larch-planting, 351 
 Lassen, 218 
 Latin and Greek, 399 
 Laurentian age, 48 
 Lausamie, 66 
 Lavajman of Denise, 61 
 Lavoisier, 58 
 Law and legisl.ation, 391 
 Lawgivers, 391 
 Layard's sheik, 35. 218 
 Lavard's altar and wedge, 
 
 239 
 Legacies to colleges, 419 
 Legal tender, 383 
 Legends of the Jews, 48 
 Legislation, 391 
 Leibnitz 11 
 Lempriere. 215 
 Le Page, 408 
 Le Huv man, 87 
 LIpsius' Denk., 193 
 Letters uiisich; down, 237 
 Letters arose from the 
 
 sea, 246 
 Letters in China, 249 
 Lcverrier, 132 
 Lleblg, 3 
 
INDEX. 
 
 439 
 
 Li^ce caves. 54 
 Life of J.SHS. 15 
 Life in oUi Eey|>t. 156 
 Life i'l a wnrfl, "J 7 7 
 Lily-?Tk, 220 
 Liilroln. 16 
 LlriBuistlcs. 175 
 Linnaeus, 58, 88 
 Ltnneaii Soc. Lane, 187 
 Linant P.ev. Co 
 Liiith (K. von d.\ 114 
 Listen, 2-15 
 Lit.-mture. 176 
 Livingstone. 39, 143 
 Looke, 165 
 Lockver. 323 
 LouaniW. E.). 203 
 Longfellow. 208 
 Lonr-head rare. 260 
 Lopi's book of Itiu., 246 
 Lossen. 347 
 Lotophatri. 10 
 Lot's wife. 10. 273 
 Louisville. 85 
 Love and knowledge. 2 
 Love. God of love. 2S0 
 Lubl>o<-k. 132, 134, 155 
 Luose. 107 
 LiiL-iitn. 257 
 Lumber trade, 351 
 Luxury, interest. 370 
 Lycapolis inscrip , 152 
 Lvcnrgus, 14 
 Lrell. 4, 4ii. 52, 56, 208 
 Lvell. list of strata, 62 
 Lying. 317 
 Lyon's cabinet. 85 
 
 51 forms. 241 
 Ma. truth. 228. 278 
 Macanlay. 14 
 Machine power. 333 
 Machinery. 371 
 Ma'lelt-ine r*-mains, 258 
 ilasoicothic A. 241 
 ■*' lin. Mini, 242 
 M line's An. Law, 97 
 Magdesprung. 186 
 M tgical powers, 270 
 Magic square, 275 
 Magnetic needle, 40 
 Mokolo do not bury, 192 
 Makrobioi. 10 
 Malta story. 206 
 Mammoth. 53. 259 
 5ran. migratory. 86 
 Man the worker, 122 
 Man-breeding. 350 
 Man in the future. 352 
 Manes worship. 264 
 Manetho's list, 146 
 Mann, 39 
 
 Manufactures. 371 
 Maps. 38, 332 
 Maps of China. 40 
 Maps of France. 112 
 Maps of the future, 331 
 Marcosians. 2S3 
 Mariette, 31. 192,130, 145 
 Markham. 136 
 Margaret. 372 
 Marmorium. 357 
 Marriage. 380 
 Marseilles map, 333 
 Marshall, 11 
 Martins. 114 
 Mas. Massu. 150 
 Mas. child. 170 
 Masius mount, 222 
 Mass, Romish. 276 
 Massagetes, 10 
 Massiuissa. 191 
 
 Mason and Dixon. 39 
 
 Mat<>r (1 ilorosa, 37i> 
 
 Mathem.itic'S. 23 
 
 Matros lectionis. 246 
 
 Matter and spirit 24 
 
 Mauritius. 322 
 
 Mausolea. 190 
 
 Max Miiller. 420 
 
 Maz:il police. 150 
 
 M.Cullorh, 20S 
 
 McEnery.SS-.^S 
 
 Mechanics. 377 
 
 Medicine. 352 
 
 Meigs. 107 
 
 Melaulan race, 115 
 
 Melearth,406 
 
 Meldrura. 322 
 
 Meninon. 216, 274 
 
 Memphis, 40. 192 
 
 Menrhe court. 56 
 
 Menes. 154. 155 
 
 Meneph'ha. 150 
 
 Mentuliotep, 154 
 
 Menu. 2.j6 
 
 Mern. 222 
 
 Metallurgy, 336 
 
 Metaphvsics, 8 
 
 Meteor."ilogy.4l, 323 
 
 Metempsvchosis. 257 
 
 Mexican Gulf. 333 
 
 Michael Angelo, 34. 188 
 
 Micah's words. 288 
 
 Mi'Miel.'t. 14 
 
 Microscope, ancient. 239 
 
 Migrations. 41. 139, 143 
 
 Mill. 165 
 
 Miller's view.s 80 
 
 Millenium. 309 
 
 3Ii!man. 281 
 
 Mim, Amira, 278 
 
 Mineralogv. 334 
 
 Ming dynastv, 191 
 
 Miracles, 300 
 
 Mithraism. 254 
 
 Mixture of vaL-es, 93 
 
 Moirai. 301 
 
 Mokattt-b. 151 
 
 MoUy, Polly, 230 
 
 Monawhy, 393 
 
 Monboddo, 76 
 
 Mongol faces. 97 
 
 Monopoly. 364 
 
 Monosyllabic. 179 
 
 Monotheism, 284 
 
 Money. 331 
 
 Moon worship. 31 
 
 Moosseedorf. 12? 
 
 Morals. 302. 397 
 
 Morality, 425 
 
 Morier, 221 
 
 Morlot, 132 
 
 Mortillet, 259 
 
 Morton, 92 
 
 Mosaic cosmogonv, 45, 50 
 
 Moses, 150, 407 
 
 Moses and the monu- 
 ments, 148 
 
 Mosque of Omar, 218 
 
 MouUn Quignon, 60 
 
 Mountains rising, 333 
 
 Muir, 289 
 
 Mulattoes. 112 
 
 Miiller. 110. 165, 169, 171, 
 •291. 420 
 
 Multitude. 83 
 
 Murchison. 4, 142 
 
 Murder. 316 
 
 Murgab desert, 152 
 
 MuTillo, 407 
 
 Musquitoes, 85 
 
 Mvcenre, 350 
 
 Mythology, 358 
 
 Name fetich, 275 
 Names, savage, precise, 69 
 Napoli^on. 11 
 Narr.nv science, 71 
 Natchez pelvis, 61 
 Nature. 403 
 Nature in fate. 304 
 Natural, supernatural, 8 
 Natur.il historv. 347 
 Nave. navi«. 220 
 Neanderthal skull, 00.118, 
 
 1-20 
 Nebular h vpothesis , 25 , 73 
 Negroes. 107 
 Neolithic. 67 
 Neptune. 21* 
 Neville pilotis. 128 
 New reel age. 43 
 New Orlrans. 65 
 New Zealand trlaclers, 64 
 Newspapers. 359 
 Newton. 11 
 N'ham, to save, 230 
 Nicaragua. 331 
 Niebuhr. 14 
 Nillson. 132 
 Nimrod. 10 
 Niobe. 10. 216 
 Nismes. 53 
 Nitocris, 154 
 Nevera. 231 
 Noah myth 217, 285 
 Noah fish god, 278 
 Nobility of ancestors, 191 
 Nofre liotep, 154 
 Noorgill mtn.. 222 
 Northampton, 417 
 Norton. 233 
 
 Norwegian churches, 219 
 Notre Dame de Paris, 220 
 Nott and Gliddon, 65 
 Nuclei flints, 263 
 Nuk-pu-nuk. 282 
 Numerals, Egypt, 35 
 
 Oak age, 131 
 Obelisk, techen, 225 
 Oberli'! Colle^re, 417 
 Obi fetich, 278 
 Obscuritv. 246 
 Observation, 70 
 OCallighan. 128 
 Offerings to manes, 257 
 Ogham script, 184 
 Oil wells, 272 
 Old man rock, 273 
 Ole Bull. 109 
 Olim, formerly, 231 
 Olm, eternitv, 231 
 Olvmpia, 356 
 Olvmpos, 230 
 Orn.277 
 Omphalos. 278 
 Onomatopoeia. 166 
 Optimism. 295 
 Oratory, fine art, 2 
 Organization, 369 
 Organization of charity, 
 
 424 
 Oriental trade. 336 
 Origin of language, 163 
 Origin of arcliitecture. 183 
 Origin of the alphabet, 
 
 214 
 Origin of Chinese, 243 
 Original sin. 310 
 Osb >rne. 135 
 Osiris. 194. 196 
 Osi>rtasen. 154 
 Otter picture. 259 
 Ottoman sultans, 31 
 Owen, 11. OO 
 
440 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ownership, 363 
 Oxford. 417. 420 
 Ox |)inture. 259 
 Oyster, 132 
 
 Poestum, 212 
 Pagodas, 218 
 Pal 1 1 rill!,' 40C 
 Pal:<-i)litlne. 07.2C6 
 Pal;i'i>iiti>liigy, 4 
 Pala^izoic age. 48 
 Palaliiti'S. 12.5 
 Palcstini- survey, 356 
 Paley. \r.r, 
 I'anllicisin, 292 
 Paoj. 244 
 
 Papal cuinaKe, 383 
 Papyri. 140 
 Parai-elsus, 209 
 Parliainentarv. 393 
 Par'iithesis, 308 
 Patois, 397 
 
 Patrlarclin' tombs. 192 
 Patriarcli;il liistory, 144 
 Patterson. 333 
 PaulatMalt!i.2nG 
 PautliiiM-. 23(i. 244. 250 
 Peal)ody (deo.). 421 
 Pebble cut f >r a bear, 2G8 
 Pediment. 212, 226 
 Pei-ho, 139 
 Pelrce, 11 
 Pekin, 139 
 Pelasgus, 10 
 Pelops, 210 
 Peloponnesus, 217 
 Pennsy'.-'ania, 99, 109 
 Penoospoi knob, 206 
 Perfection, 307 
 Permian asje. 49 
 Personal equation, 432 
 Pessimi.am, 205 
 Pestilence. 143 
 Petroleum. 345 
 Phallus, 188 
 Pharaohtists, 146 
 Phidias. 202, 40G 
 Philadelpliia. 98 
 
 Philte cleft rock. 273 
 Philanthropy, 421, 424 
 
 Phillips, 208 
 
 PhiIolof>:y. 159 
 
 Phonetics, 248 
 
 Photography, 409 
 
 Phratria, 258 
 
 Physics, 8, 330 
 
 Physical sciences, 20. 21 
 
 Physical geofrraphy, 38 
 
 Physical destiny of man, 
 306. 321 
 
 Physiolocrv, 332 
 
 Pictet. i;;- 
 
 Pii'turcs iu tombs. 193 
 
 I'icturc.s innumerable, 40S 
 
 I'icturcs on rocks, 187 
 
 Pictures on schist, 259 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress, 44, 271 
 
 Pilots villages, 125 
 
 Pi)ie age, 3.")1 
 
 Pinebsa. 140 
 
 Plan of creation, 72 
 
 Plant beds, 51 
 
 I'lanting in India. 143 
 
 Planet worship, 32 
 
 Vlath,181 
 
 Pbito, 9, 11 
 
 Plotiniis. 255 
 
 Plumes of Ma, 228 
 
 Plutarch. 13 
 
 Pococke. 169 
 
 Poet, architect, 215 
 
 Poey,322 
 
 Poitiers, 186 
 J'oitou caves, 130, 178 
 Politeness, rite.^, 248 
 I'olvandry, 303 
 Polygnotiis. 405 
 Pompeii, 87 
 Pondres cave. 53 
 Pontifex. 215 
 I'oohpooh theory. 169 
 Popocatiipetl. 273 
 Population of I'a., 99, 109 
 Population of France, 
 
 map, 112 
 Porches of churches, 210 
 Porphyry. 358 
 Porter (t.). 187 
 Porticos, 210 
 Possible. 205 
 Posture in letters, 237 
 Post-tertiary man, 01 
 Post-pleiocene age, 49 
 Potsdam sandstone, 78 
 Potato, 350 
 Pott, 169. 172 
 Poiichet (G.). 00 
 Poughkeepsie. 417 
 Poultry unknown, 155 
 Pourt;ilis. 05 
 Power in corI. 338 
 Praxiteles, 202, 400 
 Prav, bray, etc., 276 
 Prayer, 300 
 Precious metals, 384 
 Pre-Raphaelism, 200 
 Prescott, 14 
 Prestwich. 53, 50. 59 
 Prices, real and false, 376 
 Prices unsettled. 386 
 Priest language, 178 
 Priestley, 334 
 Primates, 88 
 
 Printing keeps words, 176 
 Pritchard. 104 
 ProcUis. 210 
 Professors. 420 
 Property, 310, 362 
 Property rights, 368 
 Proportion. 201 
 Propriety, 312 
 Propylori, 210 
 Prospero. 270 
 Protection, tariff, 375 
 Protestantism. 250 
 ProtoDoric. 210, 212, 227 
 Providence, 428 
 Pruner bey, 108. 118 
 Ptolemy's inap. 38 
 Public spirit. 427 
 Pmnpelly. 1.34. 140 
 Pulpit, aik. 227 
 Pygmies. 10 
 Pyramid age. 155 
 Pyramid of (iizeh, Cheops, 
 
 39.218 
 Pyramid, construction, 
 
 idea. 100. 240 
 Pyramid, barbar, 224 
 Pyrenees forest, 142 
 Pvrrha, 10 
 Pytlia,-oras.ll,13 
 Pythagoras, numbers, 275 
 
 Quadrumana. 83 
 Quaine-clubbo, 04 
 Quatrefages. 00, 106 
 Question, 245 
 
 Rabbi in Berlin, 275 
 Race, 94 
 
 Race not tested by lan- 
 guage, 178 
 Radicals, Chinese, 251 
 
 Railroads, 340. 387 
 
 Rain, 143 
 
 Ramsav. CO 
 
 Ramses. 149. 1.50 
 
 Rasselas. 03 
 
 Rawlinson. 34 
 
 Reado, 15 
 
 Reading Railroad, 346 
 
 Realism. 407 
 
 R6clus, 107 
 
 Redclavs.59 
 
 Redcliire. 143 
 
 Reiheiigriibcr. 208 
 
 Reindeer. 53. 130 259 
 
 Reindeer cave, 207, 325 
 
 Reiset, 107 
 
 Relationship. 204 
 
 Religions, 253 
 
 Religions of the future, 
 
 428 
 Remusat. 181 
 Renan, 130, 147, 109, 193, 
 
 107 
 Renevier. 06 
 Republics. 393 
 Resiioiisibility. 424 
 Revolutions, 140 
 Rhine, 243 
 Rhinoceros. 53 
 Rigollet. 58 
 Rig Veda. 41. 289 
 Rock temples, 209, 211 
 Rocking stones, 273 
 Rogers. 00. 208 
 Roguery. 423 
 R6hrig."lG9 
 RollistO!i,01 
 Roman bridge, 63 
 Rome's relics, 357 
 Romulus, 152 
 Roots of words, 162 
 Roots in bogs, 185 
 Rosetta stone, 236 
 Rosiere. 00 
 Ross. 135 
 
 RossiiEt. ^Eg.,225 
 Rouen gravels, 60 
 Roujou, 208 
 Roxbury gravel, 97 
 Rubens, 407 
 Runic, (A. T.), 241, 242 
 Ruskin, 
 Rutuneyer, 128 
 
 S, initial, 228 
 S forms, 241 
 Sabreism, 254 
 Sabine, 0, 323 
 Sahara. 04 
 Sainte Chapelle, 197 
 Salisbury, 208 
 Salvatioii, 230 
 San. 148 
 
 Sandification, 304 
 Sanscrit forgery, 137 
 Sanscrit language, 158 
 Sanscrit A, 240 
 Sanscrit mythology, 291 
 Sarah laughing, 283 
 Sarandib, 222 
 Sarcopliagus, 192. 198 
 Sarcophagus ark, 226 
 Savages of stone age, 130 
 Savages versus civilized, 
 
 201 
 Savages have no art, 208 
 Savagery, 263 
 Savings banks. 381 
 Scale of years. 63, 65 
 Scandinavian Ice, 324 
 Scarabsei, 49 
 Scherzer, 107 
 
INDEX. 
 
 441 
 
 Scbtsm, 431 
 Schlagintweit, 39 
 Schlesel, 1(J5 
 Schmerling, 52, 54 
 Schools of finance, 375 
 School convention, 417 
 Schott, 169 
 Schroder, 119 
 SchAvarz, 107 
 Sciences c ibrdinate, 3 
 Science falsely so culled, 
 
 21 
 Scoop, soap, 229 
 Scott, 15 
 
 Scratched bones, 184 
 Scribe, statue, 200 
 Scriptures, 18 
 Scrutin de liste, 394 
 Sculpture, 265 
 Sea, sbi-shi, 242 
 Sect, teeling, 429 
 Sedgewick, 46 
 Segregation of types, 48 
 Sepulchral mound, 190 
 Sesostris, 14, 152 
 Seth-Aten, 283 
 Setl 1, 283 
 
 Shadows of tiles, 212 
 Shalmauezar, 275 
 Shan, mount, 247 
 Shanghu's daughter, 136 
 Shape of letters, 232 
 Sheep, pyramids, 156 
 Sheep, ship, 251 
 ShemitfS, 115 
 Sheshonk, 151 
 Shingle-stealer, 313 
 Ship, cap, 229 
 Shophetim, 215 
 Shorthand, 268 
 Sicily caves, 59 
 Signal service. 327 
 SiUiriaii age, 48 
 Silver, 345, 384 
 Silver mine, Somerset, 272 
 Simoda earthquake, 6 
 Sin, 310 
 Sinbad, 45 
 Singing bird, 246 
 Sipylus, 216 
 Sion, skuU type, 118 
 Sirius worship, 37 
 Skar, to cut, 215 
 Skulls, 96, 
 
 Skulls, Swiss types, US 
 Skulls of man, 102 
 Slander. 316 
 Smith (P.), 39; (R.), 1 
 Social destiny, 355 
 Societies, 369 
 Sociology, 122, 361 
 Solomon, 153 
 Solumnn seal, 275 
 Soma. 144 » 
 
 Souime gravels, 57 
 Sophia. 17, 24 
 Sophocles, 289 
 Soul, 245 
 Species. 76. 94 
 Speech, 399 
 Speke, 39 
 
 Spencer, 73, 82, 165 
 Sphinx temple, 210 
 Spinoza. 255 
 Spirit, 238, 245 
 Spirit-well boring. 272 
 Spontaneous generation, 
 
 102 
 Sraddha. 257 
 St. Acheul gravels, 60 
 St. Aubiu pilutis, 268 
 
 St. Clemens Chiuch. 367 
 
 St. George's. 218 
 
 St. Martm, 236 
 
 St. Paul's gnosis, 23 
 
 St. Radlgonde, 186 
 
 St. Seurin, 341 
 
 Stag in caves. 53 
 
 Stag and doe. picture, 259 
 
 Standards of Kome, 187 
 
 Standing army, 390 
 
 Stars, star, 30.34 
 
 Starvation. 423 
 
 Statutes, Boulag, 100 
 
 Statutes, fourth dynasty, 
 
 405 
 Statuettes. 199 
 Steam engine, 338 
 Steam machinery, 372 
 Steenstrup, 132 
 Steles, 196 
 Stephens, 218 
 Stephenson, 11 
 Sterility of Syria, 143 
 Stewart (B.), 323 
 Stilobate, 227 
 Stm, judge, 215 
 Stokes, 323 
 
 Stone, in languages, 182 
 Stone age art, 185 
 Stonehenge, 190 
 Stone circles, 215 
 Storm theory, 329 
 Strabo, 9 
 Stratification, 47 
 Strata in order, 62 
 Structural geology, 4 
 Style in architec^ture, 218 
 Style, column. 227 
 Style, pencil, 228 
 Styles in China, 249 
 Submergence, 64 
 Succession of forms, 49 
 Suffrage, 393, 395 
 Sufites, 114 
 Sufued Koh, 222 
 Sumner, 208 
 Sunderbunds, 41 
 Sun-worshippers, 31 
 Sunlight, 238 
 iSnnshiue, 246 
 Sun spots, 322 
 Supernatural, 8 
 Superstitions, 17. 18 
 Superstitions existent. 2!t 
 Superstitions personal,27 1 
 Surveying, 40 
 Surveying, geological, 343 
 Surveying Palestine, 356 
 Surya hvmns, 289 
 Susim, l48 
 Susquehanna, 187 
 Sutech-Baal, 150, 282 
 Swathmore, 417 
 Swedenborg, 255 
 Swiss palafittes. 125 
 Swiss tlints. 188 
 Swords of bronze, 340 
 Syene, 410 
 Syllogism, 431 
 Symmetry. 201 
 Synthesis, 82 
 
 Tahmu race, 266 
 Tanis. 148 
 Tantalus. 216 
 Tariff, 375 
 Tartarus, 217 
 Taste. 165, 201 
 Taurus. 217 
 Taxation, 374 
 Tchouan script, 248 
 
 Techen, obelisk, 22.^ 
 Tel, taurus, 217 
 Tel Amarna, 283 
 Telegon, 216 
 Telegraphs, 342 
 Telephones. 330 
 Temple at Baia3,63 
 Temple tombs, 209 
 Temple to the Sphinx. 2 10 
 Tendencies, 428 
 Tenement houses, 421 
 Tennyson, 16 
 Tertiary man. 61 
 Thackeray, 15 
 Theb. 217,237 
 Thibetan temple, 219 
 The possible, 295 
 Theft, 316, 388 
 Thompson, 132 
 Thumb of man, 89 
 Thurman, 268 
 Thsau-hie, 247 
 Ti tomb, 196 
 Tien shan, 324 
 Time immeasurable, 50 
 Time, clock, 65 
 Tini^re cone, 64 
 Tobacco, 350 
 Tombs first built, 190 
 Tomb of Sethos, 194 
 Tomb temples, 209 
 Tool, 229 
 Tor-ites, 227 
 Torquay, 53 
 Torques, 188 
 Tortoise, 247 
 Totmes, 154 
 Toulouse, 212 
 Tournal, 52 
 Towanda, 126 
 Trades unions, 369 
 Trade aiiu commerce. :iS5 
 Tramps, 422 
 Transportation, 386 
 Transposed letters, 2;17 
 Traut^vine, 208 
 Treadwell, 11 
 Triangulation, 332 
 Triglyph, 212 
 Triniurt), 277 
 Triumiihe, 278 
 Troglodytes, 10 
 Trondjim, 64 
 Trov, 217,355 
 TroVon, 61, 66, 127, 259 
 Truth in art, 2 
 Truth, Ma, 228 
 Tunner, 341 
 Turanian. 41, 115 
 Turks, 107, 361 
 Tui-ner, 39 
 Turzac relics, 258 
 Tutmosis, 31 
 Tvashtr, 292 
 Types of man, 65 
 Types of Cuvier. 77 
 Types of religions, 253 
 Types of life; 253 
 Tyranny. 388 
 
 Uhlmann, 225 
 Ulysses, 210 
 Umber, 278 
 Umpire, 279 
 
 Underground curves. 331 
 Undertakers, 190 
 Unity, 77, 94 
 Unitarianism. 279, 431 
 Uniungulus, 70 
 Universities, 419 
 Dp, 173, 177 
 
442 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Urn, ark, 226 
 Use, ownership, 363 
 Usury, 378 
 Utznach, 64 
 
 Valley of the Gard. 58 
 
 Vander Kolk, 110 
 
 Variety, 70 
 
 Varuua, 290 
 
 Vase, 235 
 
 Vedas, 356 
 
 Vesuvius, 87 
 
 Victoria falls, 143 
 
 Village sheik. 200 
 
 Vion.GO 
 
 Virohow, 107 
 
 Vitruvius, 219 
 
 Vost, 101. 110. 118, 120 
 
 Vok-anoes. 331 
 
 Volga, 142 
 
 Von Baer, 107, 255 
 
 Von Biich, 4 
 
 Von Struve, 6 
 
 Voskoboiiiikof . 222 
 
 Voting, suffrage, 394 
 
 Vrolick, 119 
 
 Vyse, 39 
 
 Wages, 377 
 Wagner's skulls, 103 
 
 Wallace. 326 
 Walrus in S. C, 325 
 Wangen pilotis, 129 
 War, 388 
 Waste, 335 
 W:iter symbol, 241 
 Wave line, 242 
 Weapons, 263 
 Weather charts, 328 
 Weaving, 127 
 Webster. 96 
 Weil's legends. 186 
 Wedding ring, 271 
 Wek-ker, 107 
 Welsh language. 159 
 Wedge letters, 239 
 Wedge on altar, 239 
 Westminster, 220, 307 
 Whewell, 7 
 White (B.), 255 
 White Mountains. 222 
 White pine, 351 
 White race. 115 
 Whitney (W.), 169, 175 
 Whitney (J. D.), 324 
 Wilkesbarre, 207 
 William, Etv., 252 
 Wilson, 14, 132 
 Wind, in language, 182 
 Women, excluded, 257 
 
 Women educated. 414 
 Women lawyers, 415 
 Woods, organic, 161 
 Word feti.h. 275 
 Word painting, 2 
 Word roots, 102 
 Work the basis. 123 
 Worsac. ]:',2 
 
 Worsliip of dead. 19S. 256 
 Worship Ivpes. 253 
 Wren. 220" 
 Writing, old, 155 
 Wyoming valley, 206 
 
 Xerxes, 235 
 
 Tadu, 144 
 
 Yao, 247 
 Yellow iron, 1.39 
 Yellow race. 116 
 Y-King. 244 
 
 Z. th, S. 242 
 Zerbhokhia. 289 
 Zoan. 148. 356 
 Zodiac. 36 
 Zoblogv. 347 
 Zoo. Gardens, 449 
 Zoroaster, 14, 286 
 
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