Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/261

 Races, we have no reason whatever to believe that Human Societies would not be as unprogressive as are those Animal Societies in which there is no such Conflict.

Thirdly, consider such a Conflict of Races as certainly was a condition of the Origins of the Egyptian and Chaldean Civilisations, and will it not follow that the Egyptian and Chaldean Mythologies had at least three Origins? The latest researches on Egyptian and Chaldean Astronomy have resulted in deepening our respect for, and indeed wonder at, the immense advances made even so early as 6000 B.C. Is it credible that the Cosmogonic Myths of such observers and thinkers as their Astronomy proves them to have been, were in substance what they appear in form — mere childish fables—and this especially as we know that it was, as, indeed, it still is in the East, the custom, and perhaps the very wise custom, of thinkers purposely to express themselves in language which would have one meaning for the initiated, and quite a different meaning for the vulgar, but a meaning suited to their passionate ignorance, and their craving emotions? And wc seem thus led to believe that the Egyptian and Chaldean Cosmogonic Myths—from which indeed all our Cosmogonies are derived—had probably, at their core, both facts and conceptions not far removed, in general character, from those of Modern Science; and that only in their mythical form were they puerile, but necessarily puerile, considering the undeveloped character as yet, not only of language, but of writing, and considering also the ignorance of all but the small class of Priests and Magi, and hence the manifest expediency of an exoteric doctrine very different from the esoteric.

But these Priests and Magi, proved as they are by their Astronomy, by their Arts of Government, and by their feats of Engineering, to have been incomparably higher intellectually than the Savage Philosophers of Mr. Spencer and Dr. Tylor—is it credible that such men did not record their Traditions, as well as their Cosmogonic Theories, in mythical forms? Dr. Tylor and Dr. Brinton dismiss the Culture-hero Myths, as mere Sun- and Moon-myths, and consider it absurd to regard them as containing any core of historical tradition. But is it so? If the founders of