Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/160



record is the mainstay of History, and where this fails us in remote places and times, it becomes much more difficult to make out where civilization has gone forward, and where it has fallen back. As to progress in the first place; when any important movement has been made in modern times, there have usually been well-informed contemporary writers, only too glad to come before the public with something to say that the world cared to hear. But in going down to the lower levels of traditional history, this state of things changes. It is not only that real in- formation becomes more and more scarce, but that the same curiosity that we feel about the origin and growth of civilization, unfortunately combined with a disposition to take any semblance of an answer rather than live in face of mere blank conscious ignorance, has favoured the growth of the crowd of mythic inventors and civilizers, who have their place in the legends of so many distant ages and countries. Their stories often give us names, dates, and places, even the causes which led to change, just the information wanted, if only it were true. And, indeed, recollections of real men and their inventions may sometimes have come to be included among the tales of these gods, heroes, and sages; and sometimes a mythic garb may clothe real history, as when Cadmus, הדם, "The East," brings the Phœnician letters to Greece. But, as a rule, not history, but mythology fallen cold and dead, or even etymology, allusion, fancy, are their only basis, from Sol the son of Oceanus, who found out how to mine and melt the brilliant sun-like gold, and Pyrodes, the "Fiery," who discovered how to get fire from flint, and the merchants who invented the art of glass-making (known in Egypt in such