Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/189

Rh civilisation, that the wanderers went from one paradise to another, that is to say, from one locaHty where there were gold and other precious substances to another. But who is going to point out the beginnings of these ideas in America, seeing that the post-Columbian Indians, the remnants of this early civilisation, have lost them to a great extent? The question that we must face is, Whence came the men who made the first civilised settlements, and how did they get their, ideas about the earthly paradise? The hypothesis that they came from the outside is eminently reasonable in view of the fact that, as Mr. Nutt tells us, the leading motive of Columbus was that of finding the earthly paradise. It is thus not wise to dismiss this suggestion with contempt as unscientific, for what is termed as such is often nothing more than an opinion that does not tally with one's own preconceived view. We know that in the early centuries of our era men were actively seeking for the earthly paradise; they were influenced by a tradition handed down for thousands of years that retained enough vitality to incite them to action. How much more powerful must have been this belief in days when men were more prone to believe in marvels. We can be quite certain that the voyage of Christopher Columbus and the others of which we know only constitute a small part of the expeditions that must have set out during long ages. That being so, how can we deny the possibility that one of these expeditions actually reached America from some civilised country and started the civilisation that we know of? I know full well that many objections can be made to the idea, but they seem to me to weigh but little in the balance against the objections to the theory of the indigenous origin of American civilisation. Also many of these objections to the theory of outside influence are founded on an insufficient appreciation of the known facts concerning culture movements in other parts of the earth.

There are many features of the topic of the earthly