Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/267

 On his own part, Mr. Lang demands a definition of Civilisation. He (Mr. Stuart-Glennie) thought he could furnish it with less hesitation than he could a definition of Myth. Civilisation he would define as Social Organisation with Written Records, and hence development of Thought and Social Progress. These are the three characteristics of all those Societies which are not only properly, but ordinarily, termed Civilisations. With reference to his theory of the Origin of Civilisation from a Conflict of Higher and Lower Races, Mr. Lang has asked: "Surely, the Higher Race must have been already possessed of Civilisation?" Why? The Higher Race was simply higher in intellectual capacities; and the subjection and exploitation of the Lower Races gave these Higher Races the wealth and leisure which were the necessary means for the development of these capacities. In a word, he (Mr. Stuart-Glennie) would solve the problem of the Origins of Civilisation, first, as an ethnological, and, secondly, as an economic problem.

Finally, as to Mr. Nutt's denunciation of his (Mr. Stuart-Glennie's) suggestion with reference to Priesthoods as "a most reactionary doctrine", he would simply ask Mr. Nutt whether it is not the fact that very large numbers of the Christian Priesthood do at this moment hold the exoteric doctrines of Christianity in an entirely esoteric sense? As to ancient Priesthoods, Professor Sayce and others have pointed out that one of the great difficulties in interpreting ancient sacerdotal writings arises from the effort of the writers to conceal rather than expound their ideas. And it was hardly necessary to add that one of the most characteristic features of Oriental literature to this day is the twofold meaning of many of its works— an exoteric and an esoteric meaning; a meaning for the vulgar, and a meaning for the initiated.

[Though I did not venture, as above, to reply off-hand to the question of Prof Sayce as to the definition of Myths, I may perhaps now, in passing these pages for press, be allowed to make the following suggestion:—Myths are expressions either of the Relations of Facts to each other, or merely—and more commonly—of the Impressions made, or desired to be made, by Facts, or the Records of Facts, and always in forms determined by the earlier more concrete conceptions of Nature, and hence, more concrete symbols of Language.]