Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/264

 226 That is not what we start from, but what we arrive at. For it is only Science, with the realisation it gives of the Relative and Finite, that leads us to the realisation of the Infinite and Eternal — that present Infinite and present Eternal which, to those who think and feel, alone makes endurable the Temporary and the Finite.

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The said he had been extremely glad to hear this exposition of Mr. Stuart-GIennie's views on the matter. So far as he understood the present position of the anthropological school, which the lecturer attacked, it was something to this effect, that, for the purposes of anthropology, it was both possible and desirable to eliminate the consideration of hereditary varieties of the race of man, and to treat mankind as homogeneous in nature. He had touched on that this morning, but he was not quite sure whether the anthropological school was determined to keep to this position. It might have been a matter of method to have ignored races in the beginning, and he doubted whether they could have done as much work as they had done, if they had from the first trammelled themselves with the question of races, which no doubt introduced a great complication. But whether Mr. Glennie's views would eventually beat the others out of the field or not, the attack contained in them might not be without its results in any case.

Professor regretted that there was not time to touch on the various points suggested by the paper, and he would therefore confine himself to one point. The general impression left upon him by the whole paper was that we required a definition, to be accepted by everyone, of the terms Mythology and Myth. If myth, as distinct from folk-tale, was a product of civilised society, it was important to determine when, where, and how civilised society had sprung into existence. For some years he had devoted himself to a considerable extent to the study of the archæologic origins of the population of the old world. Starting from his first belief in the unitarian doctrine of the progress of humanity from Barbarism to Civilisation and Culture, he had been slowly compelled to adopt the opposite view. In the first place, one could not find the beginning of Civilisation; and in the second place, he was obliged to regard it as having originated in one particular part of the world only. He was thinking of Egypt, south of Cairo, where they ought to be able to study the progress of Civilisation and Culture better than anywhere else. From the evidence there, and also from that offered by Babylon—although the