Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/256

218 And some years ago I endeavoured to show that these latest ethnographical facts only verified those oldest kinship traditions of which Genesis presents us with Semitic variants.

Here I cannot even indicate all the historical and ethnological proofs of this Conflict of Higher and Lower Races. Time forbids. But so important does it appear to me to be with reference to the Origins of Mythology, that I trust I may be permitted to pause on it for just a couple of minutes, while I point out one or two of the unsolved problems of the history of Civilisation of which this Conflict appears likely to give a solution.

Sir Henry Maine, in his epoch-making book on Ancient Law, drew attention to the exceptional character, in Human Societies, of the phenomena we call progress. Innumerable Human Societies exist, and have always existed, which are no more distinguished by progress than are Animal Societies. Why? The answer I would suggest is, that these Human Societies are no more distinguished than are Animal Societies by that Conflict of Higher and Lower Races, which, through the subjection of the Lower Races, gives the Higher Races wealth, and hence leisure and opportunity for the development of those higher intellectual capacities which would otherwise lie dormant—gives leisure and opportunity, in a word, for that development of Thought which is the core and cause of progressive history.

There is another problem, the problem of Matriarchy, on which I venture to think that this Conflict of Races may throw light. But I have elsewhere lately set forth my hypothesis on this subject at some length. And here I shall only say that I trust that those who may think my suggestion as to Matriarchy somewhat hazardous will not allow themselves, on that account, to be diverted from an impartial consideration of the other bearings of that Conflict of Higher and Lower Races which alone I would, as yet, put forward as a verifiable fact.

And on a third problem I venture to think that a due consideration of the natural consequences of this Conflict of Higher and Lower Races will throw light—the problem of the suddenness more particularly of Egyptian Origins. But as my attention has