.i)HOOD H: fc W R Li) IVP.F.R.A.S. J TliB CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD; % Sxmpk %ctoxxni -OF- MAN IN EARLY TIMES. -BY- EDWARD CLODD, F.R.A.S: " As a child that cries. But, crying^ knows his father near.'' IN MEMORIAM. Second ^MERicAN Edition. ASA K, BUTTS & CO., 36 DEY STREET. 1873. NEW YORK : Mcbmnc, Makbat A Cn., Printiri, 16 Di'k Str«kt. "■■ ■ t- r 3 PREFACE. For the information of parents and others into whose hands this book may fall, it may be stated that it is an at- tempt, in the absence of any kindred elementary work, to narrate, in as simple language as the subject will permit, the story of man's progress from the unknown time of his early appearance upon the earth, to the period from which writers of history ordinarily begin. That an acquaintance with the primitive condition of man should precede the study of any single department of his later history is obvious, but it must be remembered that such knowledge has become attainable only within the last few years, and at present enters but little, if at all, into the course of study at schools. Thanks to the patient and careful researches of men of science, the way is rapidly becoming clearer for tracing the steps by which, at ever-varying rates of progress, dif- ferent races have advanced from savagery to civilization, and for thus giving a completeness to the history of man- kind which the assumptione of an arbitrary chronology would render impossible. As the Table of Contents indicates, the First Part of this book describes the progress of man in material things, while the Second Part seeks to explain his mode of ad- vance from lower to higher stages of religious belief. Although this work is written for the young, I venture to hope that it will afford to older persons who will accept the simplicity of its style, interesting information concern- ing primitive man. In thinking it undesirable to encumber the pages of a work of this class with foot-notes and references, I have been at some pains to verify the statements made, the larger body of which may be found in the works of Tylor, Lubbock, Nilsson, ^Yaitz, and other ethnologists, to whom my obligaiions are cordially expressed. I am lully conscious how slenderly each department of human progress has been dealt with in this work, but in seeking to compass a great subject within a small space, it has been my anxiety to break the continuity of the story as little as possible. E. C. 133 BRErKNOCK Road, London, iMciviber, 1872. CONTENTS. PART 1. SECT. PAGE. I. Introductory 7 II. Man's First Wants 13 III. Man's First Tools 15 ly. Fire 19 V. Cooking and Pottery 20 YL Dwellings 21 VII. Use of Metals 23 VIII. Man's Great Age on the Earth ... 26 IX. Mankind as Shepherds, Farmers, and Traders 29 X. Language 33 XI. Writing 37 XII. Counting 38 XIII. Man's Wanderings from his first Home . 40 XIV. Man's Progress in all Things .... 42 XV. Decay of Peoples 43 VI PART II. XVI. Introductoky 46 XVII. Man's First Questions . 48 XVIII. Myths .50 XIX. Myths about Sun and M(k»n 51 XX. Myths about Eclipsk^ 52 XXI. Myths about Stars .53 XXII. Myths about the Earth and Man . 56 XXIII. Man's Ideas about the Soul .... 57 XXIV. Belief in Magic and WrrcHCRAPr . . 60 XXV. Man's Awe of thk Unknown . . ^1 XXVI. Fetish- Worship 68 XXVII. IlXJLATRY 64 XXVIII. Nature-Woushu 65 1. Water- Worship 66 2. Trei>Worshii' 67 3. Animal- Worshu' t)7 XXIX. Polytheism, or Belief in Many God8 . 68 XXX. Dualism, or Belief in Two Gods . . 72 XXXI. Prayer 74 XXXII. Sacrifk i 75 XXXIII. MoNOTHLiSM, OR BeLIEF IN OnE GoI> 76 XXXIV. Three Six^RiKs ABoiTT Abraham M XXXV. Man's Belief in a Future Life >4 XXXVI. Sacred BooK^ . S6 XXXVII. Conclusion ^^ THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. PART I. I. INTRODUCTORY. Everything in this wide world has a history ; that is, it has something to tell or something to be found out about what it was, aiid how it has come to be what it is. Even of the small stones lying in the roadway, or about the garden, clever men have, after a great deal of pains- taking, found out a history more wonderful than all the fairy stories you have been told ; and if this be true, as true it is, of dead stones and manv other thin<>:s which cannot speak, you may believe that a history stranger still can be written about some living things. And it is the history of the most wonderful living thing that this world has ever seen that I want to tell you. You will perhaps think that I am about to describe to you some curly -haired, big-tusked, fierce-looking mon- 8 THE CHILDHOOD OF THF WORLD. Bter that lived on the earth thou^nndb ot vcarB ngo, for children (and some grown-up people too) are apt to think that things are wonderful only wlien they are big, which is not true. To show you what I mean : the beautiful eix-sided wax cells which the bee makes are more corions than the rougli lint wliicli the chimpanzee — an African monkey — piles together ; and the tiny ants that keep plant-lice and milk them just as we keep cows to give us milk, and that catch the young of other ants to make slaves of them, are more wonderful than the huge and dull rhinoceros. Well, it is about yourself that I am going to talk, for I want you to learn, as far as we are able to lind out, how it is that you are what you are, and where you are. Re- member, I do not say how your are, or why you are, for God alone knows that, and He has told the secret to no one here, although, maybe, He will tell it us one day elsewhere. Perhaj^s you have thiMight tjiat there is nothing very wonderful in being where you are, or in possessing the good things wliich you enjoy ; that people have always had them, or if not, that they had (Hily to buy them at the shops; and that from the iirst day man lived on the earth he could cook his food, and have ices and dessert after it ; could dress himself well, write a good hand, live in a fine house, and build sj)lendid churclM'> u ith stained glass windows, just au he does uow-a-day.- It you have thought so, you are wTong, and I wish to THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WOKLD. 9 set you right, and show yon that man was onc^e wild and rough and savage, frightened at his own shadow, and still more frightened at the roar of thunder and- the quiver of lightning, which he thought were the clapping of the wings and the flashing of the eyes of the angry Spirit, as he came flying from the sun ; and that it has taken many thousands of years for man to become as wise and skillful as we now see him to be. For just as you had to learn your A, B, C to enable you to read at all, and just as you are learning things day by day which will help you to be useful when you grow up and are called upon to do your share of work in this world, where all idleness is sin, so man had to begin learning, and to get at facts step by step along a toil- some road. And instead of being told, as we are told, why a cer- tain thing is done, and which is the best way to do it, he had to find out these things for himself by making use of the brains God had given him, and had often to do the same thing over and over again, as you have sometimes with a hard spelling lesson, before he was able to do it well. Now there are several reasons for the belief that man was once wild and naked, and that only by slow degrees did he become clothed and civilized. For instance, there have been found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, but especially in Europe, thousands of tools and weapons which were shaped and used by men ages 10 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. Upon ages ago, and which arr Just like the tools and weai)on8 need by 8Hvage8 living now-H-days in variouK parte of the earth, and among whom no traces of a civil- ized past can he found. Far across the wind-tossed t>eas, far away in such places as Australia, Borneo, and Ceylon, islands which you must learn to find out on a map of the world, or on a globe, there live at this day creatures so wild that if you saw them you would scarcely believe that they were hu- man behigs and not wild animals in the shape of men, covering themselves with nmd, feeding on roots, and living in wretched huts or in woods imder the shelter of trees. The word "savage" means one rcho lives in the woods. In telling yuu huw the earliest men lived I shall want you to go back with me a great many years, even before the histories of different countries begin. For men had to learn a great deal before they were clever enough to write histories of themselves and live together as we Eng- lish people do, making a natioii; many, many centuries — and a century is a hundi-ed years — passed away before they left any trace behind to tell us that they lived, otlier than tlie tools 1 am about to describe, or broken pottery and s(;ratchings on bones. Yes, I shall take you i)ast not only the Conquest, but past the day when in this England — then eddied Britain — the wild jieople dwelt in mud hut«, lived on fruits and tin tiesh of wild animals, stained their bodies with the blue THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 11 juice of the woad-plant, and worshiped trees and the sun and moon, even to the day when no sea flowed be- tween England and France, when tliere was no German Ocean and no EngHsh Channel ! For you nmst take now on trust what by and by you will be able to prove tlie truth of for yourself, when you learn lessons from the rocks and hills themselves, instead of from books about them, that this world is, like the other worlds floating wdth it in the great star-tilled spaces, very, very old and ever-changing, — so old that men make all sorts of guesses about its birthday; and that, unlike us who become widnkled and gray, this dear old world keeps ever fresh and ever beautiful, brightened by the smiling sunlight of God playing over its face. Now, it would be making another guess — and, as we shall never know whether we have guessed right, what is the use of guessing ? — to say how many yearsi^ man has lived here. It is enough for us to know^ — and this is no guess — that the good Being wlio made the world put man on it at tlie best and tittest time, and that He makes uothing in vain, whether it be rock, tree, flower, flsh, bird, beast, or man. But althoiigli God left man to find out very much for himself, He gave him the tools wherewith to work. Eyes wherewith to see, ears where\vith to hear, feet wherewith to walk, hands wheremth to handle, — these were given for the use of the man himself, by which I mean the mind, soul, or spirit, w^hich is man. Perhaps 12 THE CHTLPHOOn OF TFTF WORIJ). WO TTiftv best call it the tliinkin^^ part, booauBO the word ** man'' comos from a very old word which means to thxnk\ therefore a man is one who thinks. When names were given to things, some word was fixed upon which best de- scribed the thing. " Brute" comes from a word meaning raw or roughs and so man is distinguished from the brutes which are in some things like him, and from the plants and trees, which are like him in that they breathe, by being knowTi as the thinking ])eing. If I sometimes break off my story to explain the meaning of certain words, you will one day learn to tliank me for it, because, as you liave already seen, there is a reason, and sometimes a very beautiful reason, for the names which things bear; and it is not less strange than true, that words often tell us more of the manners and doings of people who, silent now, used to speak them, than we c*i find out from tlie remains they liave left be- hind them. In one case, the words they used to speak are the only clue we have to the fact that a people who were our fore- fathers once lived in Asia. They have left no traces (so far as we can find out) of tlie tools which they used, of the houses they lived in, or of writings on rocks or bricks, and yet we know that they must have been, because the words they si>okc have come down to us, and are really used by us in dilfcreut lorms and with different meanings, of which I will give'you a proof. You know tliat the girls in a family are called the THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 13 ^^ daughters." That word comes frora a word very much hke it, bv which these people of old, — the Aryans, as we have named them — called their girls, and which means a milking-viaid. Now, we know by this that they had got beyond the savage state, and that they must have kept goats and cows for the milk which they gave. Thus much a simple word tells us. In the same way, if the English people had died off the face of the earth, and left no records behind them other than remains of the words they uttered, we should know that English girls had learned to sj)i7i^ because in course of time un- married women were called spinsters. I have now to tell you that the first men were placed here wild and naked, knowing nothing of the great riches stored up in the earth beneath them, and only after a long time making it yellow with the waving corn, and digging out of it the iron and other metals so useful to mankind. The first thought of man was about the wants of his body ; his first desire was to get food to eat, fire for warmth, and some place for shelter when night came on, and wild beasts howled and roared around him. See how, in tho first step he had to take, man is imhke the brutes. Wherever God has placed the brute. He has given it the covering best fitted for the place in which it lives. 14 THE OHILDHCX)!) oK THK WORLD. and has Bupplicnl its proper focnl cloHe at hand. But God ha*> placed man lien* naked, and left him to seek for himself the food and ( lothing best suited to that jmrt of the world in which he lives. If God had given man thick, hair-covered skin he could not have moved from phice to phute with comfort, and so man is made naked, but given the power of reasoning about things, and act- ing by reason. The lirute remains tlie brute he always was, whih' man never sto[)s, ])ut improNo u[)(>n what those wlio lived before liim have done. Man has not the piercing eye of the eagle, but he has the power of making instruments wliicli not only bring into view stars whose light has taken a thousand years to reach the earth, but which also tell us what metals are in the sun and other stars ; nuin has not the swiftness of the deer, but he has the power of making steam-en- gines to carry him sixty miles in an liour; man has not the strength of the horse, but he lias put machines to- gether which can do the work of a Imndred Ikm-scs. Whatever power man has, whether of body or of mind, improves by use. The savage, who has to make con- stant use of his bodily powers to secure food, is by prac- tice, fleeter of foot and quicker of sight than civilized man who, using the power of his mind, excels the savage in getting knowledge and making good and also bad use of it. 1 have said that the first things man wanted were food, warmth, and shelter. THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 16 Ages before he lived here, the streams of fresh water had run down tlie nionntain sides and tlu'ough the val- leys they had lieiped to make, and they were nmning still, never resting, so that man had little trouble in quench- ing his thirst, and would of course keep near the sti-eam. But the food he needed was not to be had so easily. The first things he fed on would be wild fruits and berries, and the first place he lived in would be under some tree « or over-hanging rock or in some cave. He might wish to eat of the fish that glided past him in the river, and of the reindeer that bounded past him into the depths of the forest ; but these were not to be had without weap- ons to slay them. There are few things which the wonderfully made hand of man cannot do, but it must have tools to work with. A man cannot cut wood or meat without a knife, he cannot write without a pen, or drive in nails without a hammer. III. MAJSr's FIRST TOOLS. One of the first things which man needed was there- fore some sharp-edged tool, which must of course be harder than the thing he wanted to cut. He knew nothing of the metals, although some of them, not the hardest, lay near the surface, and he therefore made use of the stones lying about. Men of science (that is, men toho k7ww^ because " science " comes from a word mean- ing to know) have given the name " Age of Stone " to 16 THE CHILDHOOD OF THI WORLD. that far-off time when stone and such things as bone, wood, and horn, were mnde into various kinds of tools. Flints were very imicli used, because, by a hard blow, flakes like the blade of a knife could be broken off them. Other flints were shaped to a point, or into rough sorts of hammers, by cliii)j)ing with a rounded pebble, or other stone. Many of them are in form like an almond, hav- ing a cutting edge all round. Their sizes differ, some being six inches long ;ind three inches wide, while others are rather larger. These oldest stone weapons, unsharpened by grinding and unpolished, have l^een cliiefly found in places known as the " drift ;" that is, buried underneath the gravel, and clay, and stones which have been drifted or carried down by the rivers in their ceaseless flow. In these early days of man's history liuge wild animals shared Europe with liim. There were mammoths, or woolly-haired elephants, rhinoceroses, liippopotamuses; there were cave-lions, cave-bears, cave-hyaenas, and other beasts of a much hirger size than are foimd in the world at this day. That they lived at the same time that man did is cer- tain, because under layers of earth their bones have been found side by side with his, and with the weapons which lie made. Year after year man learnt to shape his tools and weapons better, until really well-formed spear-heads, daggers, hatchets, hammers, and other implements were THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 17 made, and at a far later date he had learnt the art of polishing them. Remember that first in what is called the " old Stone Age " men learnt to chip stones, and afterwards, in what is called the " New^er Stone Age," to grind and polish them. The better-shaped tools and weapons' have been chiefly found in caves, which, as books about the earth will tell you, were hollowed out by water ages before any living thing dw^elt liere. These caves were used by men not only to live in, but also to bury their dead in ; and from the dififerent remains found in and near them, it is thought that feasts were held when the burials took place, and that food and weapons w^ere put with the dead because their friends thought that such things were needed by them as they traveled the long journey to another world. I should tell you that but very few bones of primitive man have been found, and this is not to be wondered at when we remember how much more lasting is the work of man than are his remains, and also that from an early period the burning of dead bodies was common. The great help to man of the weapons I have described to you against the attacks of the wild animals is easily understood, for with them he was able not only to de- fend himself and his family, but to kill the huge creat- ures, and thus get food for the mouths that were always increasing hi number. That he did kill and eat them, ^ 18 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. and clothe hiniBelf in their 8kin8 and make their jaw- bones into strong weapons, is certain. It is surprising to think liow many tilings the first men had to do with the stones they roughly shaped. They cut down trees, and perhaps by the aid of tire scooped them out to make canoes, for it was j)lain to them that wood floated Oh tlie water ; they killed their food, cut it up, broke the bones to suck out the marrow ; cracked sea- shells to get out the fish inside thcni, besides doing many other things witli wliat would sccni to us blunt and clumsy tools. While we are talking about this Stone Age I should tell you that there are found in different parts of the world stone ruins of very great age and various sizes, some built of stone pillars covered with a flat stone for roof, others built to a point like the great pyramids of Egypt. These, like the caves, were used to l>urv the dead in. Vjut sometimes were Iniilt to mark the place where some great deed was don«, or where something very wonder- ful liad happened. The piling together of stones was an easy and lasting way of keeping such things fresh in meirs minds, just as we erect statues in honor of our great men, or build something in nunnory of their acts of bravery, nobleness, or love. When built as tombs for t lie dead, their wizc depended upon the rank of the person to be laid within them. The circles of standing Btones — like that at Stonehenge — are thought to have been built for worship of some kind. THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 19 You have learnt, then, that during the time when weapons and tools of stone were made men lived a wild, roaming life, eating roots, berries, and fruits, and, in a raw state, the flesh of such animals as they killed, and, sad to say, some of them eating the flesh of their fellow- man ; clothing themselves, little or much as they needed, in the skins of animals, which they sewed together with bone needles, using the sinews for thread ; and now we have to speak about the first mode of getting a fire. IV. FLBE. There are a great many curious stories which profess to give an account of the way in which fire was first ob- tained, but they are a part of that g-uess-work about things which is ever going on, and which brings us no nearer the truth. Men have ever been quick to make use of what we call their " wits " (w^hich word comes from an old word used by our forefathers, meaning understanding) or their common sense, and common sense taught them that fire was to be had by rubbing two pieces of wood together. In making their flint weapons sparks would fly, but they saw that the flints themselves could not be set on fire. AVhen they felt cold they rubbed their hands together and warmth came to them. They tried what could be done by nmning a blunt pointed stick along a groove of its own making in another piece of wood, and they found 80 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. first that each got heated, then that eparke flew, then that flame burst out. Travelers tell us tliat savages can produce fire in a few seconds in this way, and that in the northern seas of Europe the islanders find a bird so fat and greasy that all they have to do is to draw a wick through its body, and on lighting it the bird burns away as a candle doe8. And fire was as useful in the days I am writing about as travelers find it now in giving protection from the wild beasts at night, so that man liad many reasons for keeping his fire always burning by heaping on it the wood which was ready to his hand in such abimdance. V. COOKING AND POTTERY. At first men ate flesh raw, as some northern tribes do now, but afterwards they would learn to cook it, and this they did by simply putting the meat direct to the fire. Af- terwards they would dig a hole and line it with the hard hide of the slain animal, fill it with water, put the meat in, and then make stones red-hot, dropping them in until the water was hot enough and the meat cooked. Then a still better way would be found out of boiling the food in vessels set over the fire, which were daubed out- side with clay to prevent their being burnt. Thus men learnt — seeing how hard fire made the clay — to use it by itself and to shape it into rough pots, which were dried THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 21 either in the sun or before the fire, and hence arose the beautiful art of making earthenware. VI. DWELLINGS. Besides living in caves, holes were dug in the ground, a wall being made of the earth which was thrown out, and a covering of tree-boughs put over it. Sometimes where blocks of stone were found lying loosely, they were placed together, and a rude, strong kind of hut made in this way. There have been found in lakes, especially in Swiss lakes, remains of houses which were built upon piles driven into the bed of the lake. The shape of many of these piles shows that they were cut with stone hatchets. and this proves that people lived in this curious fashion in very early times. It is thought that they did so to be freer from the attacks of their enemies and of wild beasts. These lake dwellers, as they are called (and they not only lived thus in the Stone Age and later ages, but there are people living in the same manner in the East Indies and other places at this day), made good use of their stone hatchets, for they not only cut down trees, but killed such animals — and very fierce they were — as the bear, wolf and wild boar. They had learned to fish with nets made of flax, which they floated with buoys of bark, and sank with stone weights. Besides what we know about the dwellings of men in ^rly times, there have been found on the shores of Den- 2*2 THK OfflLOffOOD OF THK WottLD. iiiiirk, Scotljind and rlst^wiicrr, i-m>rmou8 heapft of what are <'alled '' kitclien-middens." These were really the feeding-places of the people who lived on or about those coasts, and are made up of piles of shells, largely those of the oyster, mussel, periwinkle, &c., on which they fed. With these there have also been found the bones of stags and other animals, and also of birds, as well as flint knives and other things. I said at starting that the three things which man would first need were food, fire and slielter, and, having told you how these were procured by him, you are per- haps wondering how those people of the Stone Age spoke to each other and wliat words they used. This we shall never know, but we may ])e sure that tliev lunl some way of making their thoughts known one to an- other, and that they learned to speak and write and count little l)y little, just as they learned everything else. They had some idea of drawing, for bones and pieces of slate have been found with rough sketches of the mam- motli, l)nll, and other bet^sts scratched on them. These old-world pictures witness to tlie truth, that man is greater than brutes in tliis as in otlii^ things, since no brute has yet been known to di'aw a picture, write an alphabet, or learn how to make a fire. But I shall have something to say about speaking and writing bv ;ith1 l)y. tHE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 23 VII. USE OF METALS. In (course of time, some man, wiser than his fellows, made use of his quicker eye and more active brain to discover the metals which the earth contained ; and this marks a great gain, for which we cannot be too thankful. When we think about the thousand different uses to whicli metals are put — ^how without them no ship big enough and strong enough to cross the ocean could have been built, or steam-engine to speed us along constructed — we learn how enormous is their value to us. It is cer- tain that if man had never discovered them he would have remained in a savage, or, at least, a barbarous state. Through all the story of his progress we see that he never went to the storehouse of the earth in vain. There- in were treasured up for him the metals which he needed when stone was found to be too blunt and soft for the work he wished to do ; therein the vast coal-beds which were laid open to supply the cosy fires when wood grew scarce. Gold, which means the yellow^ bright metal (from gul7\ yellow), was most likely the first metal used by man. Its glitter would attract his eye, while, unlike some other met- als, it is found in rivers, and on various rocks on the surface of the earth. It has to be mixed with another metal to be hard enough for general use ; and in its na- tive state would be therefore easily shaped into orna- ments. Savage and polished people are alike in this love of ornament. Necklaces of shells and amber made in •24 THE CHILDHOOD OF THK WORLD. the Stone Age have been found; and to this day gavages think of decoration before dress. One very common way of making themselves smart, as they think, is by marking tlieir face, body, and limbs with curved lines, made with a pointed instrument, tilling in the marks with col- or. This is called tattooing. If this shows that people have in all places and times loved to look tine, altliough they have gone throug pain and discomfort as the price, it also shows that the love of what is beautiful, or of what is thought to be l)eautiful, is theirs, and that is another thing which the brute has not. No herds of cows ever leave oti* feeding to admire a sunset ; and you never saw a horse or a monkey witli Wire lit u]) with de- light at the sight of a rainbow. Copper is a metal wliich came into early use, as, like gold, it is often found unmixed with anything else, and its softness enables it to be worked into various shapes. Where it was scarce, and tin could be had, tire was made use of to melt and mix the two togetlier, forming the pretty, hard, and useful metal called bronze. By pour- ing the molten mass into a mould of stone or sand, weap- ons of the sluipe wanted would be made. The aire when tlie metals I have named were used is called the "Age of Bronze." A very long time pass- ed before iron was smelted, that is, melted and got away from the ore (or vein running through the rock) with which it is found, because this is very hard w(.rk, and needs more skill than men had then; but when they suo- THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 25 ceeded in smelting and monlding it, it took the place of bronze for making spear-heads, swords, hatchets, &c., bronze beino- used for the handles and for ornaments, many of which — such as earrings, bracelets, and hair-pins — have been fomid among the ruins in the Swiss lakes. Silver and lead were used later still. You have thus far learnt that by finding river-beds, caverns, and elsewhere, various tools, weapons, ornaments, and other remains, some of them at great depth, and all mthout doubt made by man, it is known that he must have lived many thousands of years before we have any records of him in histories written on papyrus (which was the reed from which the ancients made their paper — hence the name " paper"), or painted on the walls of tombs. By the way of marking the steps in man's progress his early history is divided into three periods, named after the things used in them, as thus : — 1. The Age of Stone, which, as stated at page 17, is also divided into the Old Stone Age and the Newer Stone Age. 2. The Age of Bronze. 3. The Age of Iron. When you can get to the British Museum, go into the room where the " British Antiquities " are kept, and there you will see for yourself the different flint and metal tools and weapons which I have described. How many years passed between the shaping of the 26 THE CHILDHOOD OP THE WOELD. first flint and the moulding of the first bronze weapon is not known. We are sure that men used stone before they used bronze and iron, and that some tribes were in the Stone Age when other tribes had found out the vahie of metals. The three Ages overlap and run into each other '' like the three chief colors of the rainbow." For example, although some of the lake-dwellings, about which I have told you, were built by men in the Stone Age, a very large number belong to the Bronze Age ; and the relics whic^h have been brought to light show how decided was the progress which man had made The lake-dwellers had learned to cultivate wheat, to store up food for winter use, to weave garments of flax, and to tame the most useful animals, such as the horse, the sheep and the goat. Man had long before this foimd out what a valuable creature the dog is, for the lowest tribes who lived on the northern sea-coasts have left proof of this in the bones found among the shell heaps. In what is known as the Age of Iron very rapid pro- gress was made; and while the variety of pottery, the casting of bronze coins, the discovery of glass, and a crowd of other new inventions show what great advance was made in the thinffs man used, they show also how fast man himself was rising from a low state. VIII. man's great age on the earth. At this point of the story you will, perhaps, be asking a question, to which I will givethe best answer that can at present be found. THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. You will ask how it is that we know these remains of early man to be so very, very old. To make my reply as clear as possible, I will describe to you one of the many places in which the old bones :ind weapons have been found. There is a large cavern at Brixham, on the south coast of Devonshire, which was discovered fom^teen years ago through the falling in of a part of the roof. The floor is of stalagmite, or particles of lime, which have been brought down from the roof by the dropping of water, and become hardened into stone again. Sta- lagmite comes from a Greek word which means a droj). In this floor, which is about one foot in thickness, were found bones of the reindeer and cave-bear, wliile below it Avas a red loamy mass, fifteen feet thick in some parts, in which were buried flint flakes, or knives, and bones of the mammoth. Beneath this was a bed of gravel, more than twenty feet thick, in which flint flakes and some small bones were found. Altogether,* more than thirty flints were found in the same cave with the bones of bears and woolly elephants ; and as they are known to have been chipped by the hand of man, it is not hard to prove that he lived in this country when those creatures roamed over it. But what proof have we, you ask, that the bones of these creatui'es are so very old % Apart from the fact that for many centuries no living mammoth has been seen, we hav^. the finding of its bones buried at a goodly 28 THE OHILDHOOD OK THK WORLD. depth ; and as it is certain tliat no one would trouble to dig a grave to put them in, there must be some other cause for the mass of loam under which they are found. There are several ways by wliich the various bones may have got into tlie cave. The creatures to which they belonged may have died on the hillside, and their bones have been washed into tlie cave ; or they may have sought refuge, or, what in the case I am now de- scribing seems most likely, lived therein ; but, be this as it may, we have to accoimt for the thirty-five feet of loam and gravel in which their remains are Inu'ied. The agent that thus covered them from view for long, long yeai-s, is that active tool of nature which, before the day when no living thing was upon the earth, and ever since, has been cutting through rocks, opening the deep valleys, shaping the highest mountains, hollowing out the lowest caverns, and \vhich is carrying the soil from one place to another to form new lands where now the deep sea rolls. It is icater which carried that deposit into Brixham cavern and covered over the bones, and which, since the day that mammoth and bear and reindeer lived in Devonshire, has scooped out the surrounding valleys 100 feet deeper. And although the time wiiich water takes to deepen a channel, or eat out a cavern, depends upon the speed with which it flows, you may judge that the quickest stream works slowly to those who watch it, when I tell you that the river Thames, flowing at its present rate, takes eleven thousand seven hundred THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 29 and forty years to scoop out its valley one foot lower ! Men of science have therefore some reason for believing that the flint weapons were made by men who lived many thousands of years ago. " A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Science, in thus teaching us the great age of the earth, also teaches us the Eternity of the Ageless God; and like- wise those vast distances about which astronomers tell us make the universe seem a fitter temple for Him to dw^ell in than did the old, cramped notions of a flat earth, for whose benefit alone the sun shed his light by day, and the moon and stars their light by night. Science illu- mines with new beauty the grand thoughts of the star- watching poet of old, who sang, " If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there ; if I make my bed in the unseen world, behold. Thou art there." IX. MANKIND AS SHEPHERDS, FARMERS, TRADERS. From being a roving, wild, long-haired savage, gnaw- ing roots, or crouching behind rock or tree to pounce upon his prey, uncertain each morning whether night would not set in before he could get enough to eat, man had become a shepherd or tiller of the soil, not only learning the greatness of the earth in which he had been placed, but also beginning dimly to feel his own greatness above the beast of the field and the fowl of the air. Some part of mankind, finding how useful certain ani- 30 THE CHlLPHOOn OF THE WORLD. malB were for the iiulk and flesh which they gave as food, jind for the skins, especially of their young ones, which conld be made into soft clothing, had learned to tame and gather them into flocks and lierds, moving with them from place to place [wherever the most grass could be li:ilaces like stables and barns in wliich t(» lodge their cattle and store up their (M)rn. All the sunny days woideoi>k' call it, wduld 1k» stirred, which would end in figliting. The Btronger would conquer the weaker, seize upon or lay wubtc their land, and make slaves of such of the prisoners as they thought it worth while to spare. It was an age, like numy ages since, when no tender feelings ruled in the heart of man, hut when the " golden rule " was not, and the harsh, stern law was this : '' That tliey sliall tako who have the ix)wer, And they shall keep who can." But wars do not last for ever, and men would find thatit was, after all, better to hve in friendship and peace. So they would trade together ; the earth would yield the farmer more food than he needed, and he would be glad to barter with it, giving some of it to the herdsman in ex- change for cattle, and to the toobnaker in exchange for tools, each of whom would be very glad to trade with him. Then as bartering grew, it was found very awkward and cumbersome to caiTy things from place to place, es- pecially if they were now and then not very much want- ed, and people would agree to make use of something which was handy to carry, steady in value, and that did not spoil by keeping. So, whenever they could, men fixed upon pieces of metal, first casting bronze into coins, and then using gold and silver, which being scarcer than other metals are worth more. We learn from the paint- ings at Thebes, and from ancient history, that gold and silver were counted as wealth in early times. Abraham THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 33 is said in the Book of Genesis (which you will read when you are older) to have been " very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold." The word ^'pecuniary," which is used in speaking of a man's riches, comes from the Latin word pecus^ which means cattle^ and shows that formerly a man's wealth was sometimes reckoned by the cattle he had. Another proof of the meaning that a word will hold. And this reminds me that I have to tell you a little about speaking, writing, and counting. X. LANGIIAOE. In what way the wonderful gift of language came to man we do not know, and the wise of many ages have tried in vain to find out. The same God who made the beautiful organs in man by which he can utter so many different sounds, gave him the power of creating names for the things which he saw, and words for the thought which dwelt in his mind. There are some words which we can account for, such as those which imitate sounds, as when we say the clock " ticks," or call the " cuckoo " and the " peewit " after the sound they make. But this explains only a portion of the vast number of words which make up a language, and which spring from roots deep do^m, too deep for us to track. Man at first had very few words, and those were short 34 THE OHILPHOOD OF THE WORLD. ones, and in makinp known liit thou^^hts to others, he used signb \ try nmch ; '' gesture language," as it has been called. We do the same now ; for in shaking the head to mean '' no,'' in nodding it to mean " yes," and in shaking hands in proof that we are joined in friendsliip, we speak in gesture-language, and would have to do it a great deal if we were traveling in some country of which we did not know the language. There are very few things that cannot be expressed by signs or gestures, and among the ancients entire plays were performed by persons called pantomimes (which word means ivntators of all things)^ who acted not by speaking, but wholly by mimicry. A story is told of a king who was in Kome when iSero was emperor, and who, having seen the w^onderful mim- icry of a pantomime begged him as a present, so that he might make use of him to have dealings with the nations whose languages he did not know. We have now so many words that we need use signs but very little, if at all. Just as all the races of mankind are thought to have come from one family, so the different languages which they speak arc thought to have flowed from one source. There :.re three leading streams of language, and I shall liJivo'to fnv»t<' m ^'♦•u- ^\•,\v^^ i»:in)r> in trlliiiir von about them. It was thought some \ -o that Hebrew, which is the language in which the sacred books of the Jews THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 35 (known to us as the Old, Testament) are written, was the parent, so to speak, of all other languages, but it has since been found through tracing words to their early forms that 1. Sanskrit, in which the sacred books of the Brah- mans are written, and which was a spoken tongue in the time of Solomon and Alexander the Great, but which has been a "dead " or un- spoken language for more than two thousand years ; Zend, in which the sacred books of the Parsees (or so-called fire-worshipers) are written ; Greek, the language of Greece ; Latin, the language of the ancient Romans; and nearly all the other dialects and languages of India and Europe, are children of the Indo-European, or Aryan family. I told you something about these Aryans at page 13, and will add that through their language we know that they had learned "the arts of plowing and making roads, of sewing and weaving, of building houses, and of counting as far as one hundred." The ties of father, mother, brother, and sister, were hallowed among them, and thev called upon God, who "is Light," by the name still heard in Christian churches and Indian temples. That name is Deity. It comes from a very ancient word by which these people spoke of the sky, and which was afterwards ap- plied to Him who dwells in the sky. For "beyond sun, 36 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. and moon, and stars, and all which changes, and will changes, was the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament c»f heaven/' There man in every age has fixed the dwell- ing-place of God who is Light, and in whom is no dark- ness at all. 2. The 8C(Mmd division of languages includes the Hebrew; the Arabic, in wliich the Koran, the sacred book of the Mohammedans, is wTitten ; and the languages on the very old monimients of Phoenicia, Babylon, Assyria, and Carthage. 3. The third division includes the remaining languages of Asia, witli the exception of the Chinese, which stands by itself as the only relic of the first forms of human speech, l)eing made up of words of one syllable. The ancient language of Britain is now found only in some parts of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, and the foundation of our present language, which now contains above one himdred thousand words, is tlie same as that spoken on the coast of Germany. It was brought over by Angles, Saxons (hence Anglo-Saxons), Jutes and other tribes from the Continent. Anglo-Saxon is the mother- tongue of our present English, to whicli in various forms Latin words have been added, together with a few words from the languages of otlier nations. For teacliing you the different changes in the English language, as well as for an interesting list of words bor- rowed from the Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, &c., the best THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 37 books to help you are Dr. Morris's " Historical Outlines of English Accidence," and Archbishop Trench's " Eng- lish Past and Present." I am afraid I have confused you a little in this talk about language, but you can hear it another time over again when you are older and better able to learn the importance belonging to the study of the wonderful gift by which we are able to talk to people in various lan- guages, and read in ancient books the history of man's gropings after God. I want to lead you on to feel and know that the study of words is a delightful way of spending time, and that the dictionary, wliich is thought by most people to be a dry book, is full of poetry and history locked up in its words, which the key of the wise will open. XI. WRITING. It is much easier to tell you how men learned to write. The use of writing is to put something before the eye in such a way that its meaning may be known at a glance, and the earliest way of doing this was by a pic- ture. Picture-wi'iting was thus used for many ages, and is still found among savage races in all quarters of the globe. On rocks, stone slabs, trees, and tombs, this way was employed to record an event, or tell some message. In the course of time, instead of this tedious mode. 38 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. men learned to write Bigns for certain words or Bounds. Then the next Btep was to separate the word into letters, and to agree upon certain signs to always represent cer- tain letters, and hence arose alphabets. The shape of the letters of the ali)habet is thought by some to bear traces of the early picture-writiufr. To sliow you what is meant, Aleph, the Urst letter of tlie Hebrew alphabet, means an ox^ and tlie sign for that letter was an outline of an 07^ s head, Tlie signs used by astronomers for the sun, moon and planets ; the signs I, II, III, for one, two, and three, are proofs that if jActure-writing is of value to man in a civil- ized state, it must have been of greater value to him, and much more used by him the farther we search back. We still speak of signing our name, although we have ceased to use a sign or mark, as was done when few could write. XIL COUNTING. The art of Counting is slowly learned by savage tribes, and at this day some are found that cannot reckon beyond four, or that, if they can, have no words for higher figures. All over the world the fingers have been and are used as counters, and among many tribes the word for "hand" and " five " is the same. This may be taken as a common mode by wliich the savage reckons : THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 89 One hand 5 Two hands or half a man . . . . 10 Two hands, and one foot . . . . 15 Hands and feet, or one man - . . 20 We do the same, as shown in the word digit^ which is the name for any of the figm^es from one to nine, and comes from the Latin digitus^ which means 2^ finger; while counting by fives and tens enters into all our deal- ings. One early way of counting was by pebbles, the Latin for which is calculi^ and we preserve this fact in our use of the word calculate ; just as, when we tie a knot in our handkerchief to remind us of something we fear to forget, we are copying the ancient plan of count- ing with knotted cords. This story of the World's Childhood has been chiefly learned by studying the lessons taught by those traces of man which are found in the north-western part of Europe, but it is believed that he first lived elsewhere, and afterwards traveled here. For in thejdays known as the Ancient Stone Age, when Britain and L-eland were joined to the main land, and great rivers fiowed through the valleys which are now [covered by the Ger- man Ocean [and English Channel, and [when woolly- haired elephants and rhinoceroses roamed about in the pine forests of what is now England and France, Europe was very much colder than it is now, and it is thought that man did not live there before these huge creatures. You will one day learn from the beautiful story which 40 THB CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. roclcR and rivers are ever telliner, what vast changes have happened over all the earth, in proof of whicli you may think about what I liave already said, to which may be added, tliat the sea once swept over the place where you live, and ages hence may flow over it again. XIII. man's wanderings from his first home. It is believed tliiit man lived at first somewhere near the middle of Asia, and from thence those who came after hun spread on all sides, some settling in the rich plains watered by tlie river Nile, to become the forefathers of Egyptian kings, others wandering to the bleak shores of Northern Europe to bectome the forefatliers of the Sea- kings. As the climate in which people live affects the color of their skins, so the progress of any race, as well as the kind of life which they live, depend very much on the land they dwell in, and this will explain why some races have progressed so much more than others, and even be- come their rulers. Wliere there were rich, grassy j)lain8, the people gatliered flocks and lierds, wandered from place to place in search of good pasture, and made scarce- ly any advance. Wliere a fruitful soil and balmy air were to ])e liad, there people would settle as farmers and workers in wood and metals, gathering both knowledge and wealth, while those wlio lived on islands and by the sea-coasts became adventurous and bold. THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 41 It is not the object of this narrative to take you be- yond the .time when histories usually begin, and what you have learned does not therefore relate to any single tribe or nation, but to the growth of mankind as a whole. I will, however, sketch in a few lines the course which the leading races of mankind took after they left their sup- posed common home. The tribes who wandered into the northern parts of Europe lived for ages a wild roving life ; and when they had so far advanced as to find out, or, what is more like- ly, learn from other races, the use of metals, and then to apply their powers in building ships stout and strong enough to brave the open sea, they became the terror of quiet people, and you vdll learn from old English history how they pounced one after another upon this island, plundering wherever and w^hatever they could. Other tribes settled down in Persia ; on the sea-board of Palestine ; in Egypt ; and w^ere the roots from which grew those mighty nations whose kings had reigned for many years before the birth of Abraham. Other tribes leapt across the narrow straits between Asia and America, and wandered over that vast New World, those who traveled southwards becoming builders of cities whose ruins tell of their past importance. Long before the great empires of Greece and Rome, there arose a people known to us as the Jews, whose his- tory fills so many books of the Bible, and who were de- scended from a chieftain named Abraham. I shall have 42 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. some interesting stories to tell yon further on concerning this good and noble man. Abraham left his native land and moved with his slaves and cattle to Palestine. His descendants after- wards settled in Egypt, which was then a great corn- }delding country, where they grew to large numbers, and were treated kindly dui-ing the lifetime of Joseph, whose touching story is told in the Book of Genesis. After his death they were, however, made slaves and used very harshly. A good, learned, and heroic man named Moses? who, although he had been brought up by the king's daughter as her son, burned with righteous anger for the wrongs of his oppressed countrymen, rose at the head of them and delivered them. How they journeyed to Pal- estine, li^dng under chiefs or judges ; killing, in the cruel manner of that age, men, women, and children ; how they grew and prospered, but, falling into ^dce, became weak and enslaved : then rose again for a time, until when Jesus Christ lived they were subject to the Roman Em- pire, you will learn by and by from Scripture histories. XIV. man's progress in all things. The early history of man shows us how wonderful his progress has been when we compare the Age of Stone with our present happy lot. Not only in house-building, cooking, pottery, clothing, various uses of metals, have rude ways been improved upon, but also m his knowl- edge of the earth beneath and the stars around has THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 43 the progress of man been vast. The lightning and the wind, the rushing stream, daily work for him, and their force is chained to do his bidding. He has already seen a good depth, and may see farther yet, into the mystery of the stars, and every day he is spelling out some sen- tence here and there in the great book of Nature. One would like to know and thank those men of the past who laid the foundation of all that has since been done. For he who first chipped a flint was the father of all sculptors ; he who first scratched a picture of man or mammoth was the father of all painters ; he who first piled stones together was the father of all builders of ab- beys and cathedrals "; he who first bored a hole in a rein- deer's bone to make a whistle, or twanged a stretched sinew, was the father of all musicians ; he who first rhymed his simple thoughts was the father of all poets ; he who first strove to learn the secret of sun and star was the father of all astronomers. XV. DECAY OF PEOPLES. I have called this "simple account of man in early times" by the title of the " Childhood of the World," because the progress of the world from its past to its present state is like the growth of each of us from child- hood to manhood or womanhood. Although the story has, on the whole, flowed smoothly along, we must not leave out of sight the terrible facts which have sometimes checked the current. History, in 44 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. books and in ruins, teaches that there have been tribes and nations (some of the nations so great and splendid that it seemed impossible for them ever to fall) which have reached a certain point, they decayed and died. And since man has lived so many thousands of years on the earth, there must have risen and fallen races and tribes of which no trace will ever be found. The cause of the shameful sin and crime of which every place in this world has been more or less the scene, has sometimes been man's ignorance of what is due to his God and his fellow-man, but more often his willful use of power to do evil, forgetting, in his folly and wrong-doing, that the laws of God change not, that Sin is a fair-dealing master and pays his servants the wages of death. They have disobeyed the law of love, and hence have arisen cruel wars and shocking butcheries ; captures of free people and the crushing of their brave spirits in slavery. They have disobeyed the laws of health, and the plague or "black death" has killed tens of thousands, or gluttony and drunkenness have destroy- ed them. They have loved money and selfish ease (for- getting the eternal fact that not one of us can live by bread alone, but that we live our lowest if that be the end and aim of our life), and their souls, lean and hungry, have perished. But although the hand on the clock-face of progress has seemed now and then to stand still, or even to go back, it is a great truth for our comfort and trust that THE CHILDHOOI) OF THE WORLD. 45 the world gets better and not worse. There are some people who are always sighing for what is not or cannot be ; who look back to the days of their childhood and wish them here again ; who are ever talking of the " good old days " when laughter rang with richest mirth, when work was plentiful and beggars scarce, and life so free from care that wrinkles never marked the happy face. Do not listen to these people ; they have either misread the past or not read it at all. Like some other things, it is well-looking at a distance, but ill-looking near. We have not to go far back to the "good old times," to learn that kings and queens were worse lodg- ed and fed and taught than a servant is nowadays. It is very foolish and wrong to either wish the past back again, or to speak slightingly of it. It J&Ued its place ; it did its appointed work. Even out of terrible wars blessings have sometimes come, and that which men have looked upon as evil has been fruitful in good. We cannot see the end as well as the beginning : God alone can do that. The true wisdom is to see in all the steps of this earth's progress the guiding hand of God, and to believe that He will not leave to itself the world which for His own pleasure he has created. For ''nothing walks with aimless feet." To you and to every one of us, God gives work to do ; and if He takes it away, it is that others may do it bet- ter, and so the well-being of all be secured. Let us strive to do thoroughly the work which we find 46 THE CHILDHOOD Oli' THE WORLD. nearest to our hand ; though we may think it small and trifling, it is not so in the sight of Him who made the dew-drop as well as the sun, and who looks not so much upon the thing we have to do, as upon the way and the spirit in which we do it. PART II. XYI. INTRODUCTORY. In seeking to show you by what slow steps man came to believe in one all-wise and all-good God, I wish to fix one great truth upon your young heart about Him ; for the nobler your view of Him is, the nobler is your life likely to be. Now you would think your father very hard and cruel if he loaded you with all the good things he had, and sent your brothers and sisters, each of them yearning for his love and kisses, to some homeless spot to live uncared for and unloved, and to die unwept. And yet this is exactly what some people have said that God does. They have spoken of Him, who has given life to every man, woman, and child, without power on their part to take or refuse what is thus given, as being near only a few of His creatures, and leaving THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 47 the rest, feeling a soul-hunger after Him, to care for themselves and to never find Him. Believe that He who is called our Father is better, more just, more loving, than the best fathers can be, and that He " is not far from any one of us." In those dim ages through which I have led you, God, whose breath made and ever makes each of us " a living- soul," was as near the people who lived then as He is near us, leading them, although they, like ourselves, often knew it not. The rudest, and to us in some things most shocking, forms of religion, were not invented by any devil, permitted by God to delude men to destruction, but were, as we learn from savage races now, the early struggles of man from darkness to twilight — for no man really loves the darkness — and from twilight to full day. Around him was the beauty and motion of life ; before him very often the mystery of death, for there were weep- ing fathers and mothers in those old times over dead little children, and friends stood silent and tearful beside their dead friends in those days as they do in these ; and do you think that man would sit himself down to frame a willful^ cunning lie about the things which awed him ? Although the ideas which these early men had about what they saw and felt were wrong, they were right to them^ and it was only after a long time when some shrewd man, making bad use of his shrewdness, pretended to know more than God will ever permit man to know here, that lies and juggling with the truth of things began. 4:8 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. I tell you this because I want you to feel a trust in God that nothing can take away ; and how much you will need this trust, when your heart comes to feel the sin and sorrow of this world, the years that are before you will reveal. XYIL man's first questions. It was not long after man had risen from his first low state, and the chief wants of his body were supplied, that he would begin to act the man still more by thinking (see page 12), and then would hear some voice within, telling him that eating and drinking were not the chief ends for which life had been given him. He saw around him the world with its great silent hills and green valleys; its rugged ridges of purple-tinted mountains, and miles of barren flat ; its trees and fra- grant flowers ; the graceful forms of man, the soaring bird, the swift deer and kingly lion ; the big, ungainly- shaped mammoth, long since died out ; the wide scene, beaming with the colors which came forth at the bid- ding touch of the sunlight, or bathed in the shadows cast by passing clouds ; he saw the sun rise and travel to the west, carrying the light away ; the moon at regular times growing from sickle-shape to full round orb ; * then each night the stars, few or many, bursting out like sparks struck off" the wheels of the Sun-Grod's chariot, or * Moon means the measurer^ h^nce our word months *' for time was meas- ured by nights and moons long before it was reckoned by days and suns and years," THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 49 like the glittering sprays of water cast by a ship as she plows the sea. His ears hstened to the different sounds of Nature ; the music of the flowing river ; the roar of the never-si- lent sea ; the rustle of the leaves as they were swept by the unseen fingers of the breeze ; the patter of the rain as it dropped from the great black clouds ; the rumble of the thunder as it followed the spear-like flashes of light sent from the rolling clouds : these and a hundred other sounds, now harsh, now sweet, made him ask — What does it all mean ? Where and what am I ? Whence came I ; whence came all that I see and hear and touch ? Man's first feeling was one of simple wonder ; his sec- ond feeling the wish to find out the cause of things, what it was that made them as they were. All around him was Nature (by which is meant that which brings forth)^ great, mighty, beautiful; was it not all alive, for did it not all move ? In thinking how man would seek to get at the cause of what he saw, we must not suppose that he could rea- son as we do. But although he could not shape his thoughts into polished speech, common sense stood by to help him. He knew that he himself moved or stood still as he chose, that his choice was ruled by certain reasons, and that only when he willed to do anything was it done. Something within governed all that he did. Natui-e 50 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. was not still ; the river flowed, the clouds drifted, the leaves trembled, the earth shook; sun, moon, and stars stayed not : these then must be moved by something within them. Thus began a belief in spirits dwelling in everything — ^in sun, tree, waterfall, flame, beast, bird, and serpent. XVIII. MYTHS. In seeking to account for the kind of life which seem- ed to be (and really was, although not as he thought of it) in all things around, man shaped the most curious no- tions into the form of myths^ by which is meant a fanci- ful story founded on something real. If to us a boat or a ship becomes a sort of personal thing, especially when named after anyone ; if " Jack Frost," and '* Old Father Christmas," which are but names, seem also persons to the mind of a little child, we may readily see how natural it is for savages to think that the flame licking up the wood is a living thing whose head could be cut off; to believe that the gnawing feeling of hunger is caused by a lizard or a bird in the stomach ; to imagine that the echoes which the hills threw back came from the dwarfs who dwelt among them, and that the thunder was the rumbling of the Heaven-God's chariot wheels. Myths have changed their form in difierent ages, but they remain among us even now, and live in many a word still used, the flrst meaning of which has died out. To show you what is meant : we often speak of a cross THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 51 or sullen person being in a bad humor ^ which word rests on a very old and false notion that there were four moist- m-es or humors in the body, on the proper mixing of which the good or bad temper of a person depended. In telling you a little about myths I cannot attempt to show you where the simple early myths become later on stiffened into the legends of heroes, with loves and fears and hates and mighty deeds, such as make up so much of the early history of Greece and Rome, for that you will learn from other and larger books than this. XIX. MYTHS ABOUT SUN AND MOON". Among many savage tribes, the sun and moon are thought to be man and wife, or brother and sister. One of the most cm^ious myths of this kind comes from the Esquimaux, the dwellers in the far North. It relates that when a girl was at a party, some one told his love for her by shaking her shoulders after the manner of the country. She could not see who it was in the dark hut so she smeared her hands with soot, and when he came back she blackened his cheek with her hand. When a light was brought she saw that it was her brother, and fled. He ran after her and followed her as she came to the end of the earth and sprang out into the sky. There she became the sun and he the moon, and this is why the moon is always chasing the sun through the heavens, and why the moon is sometimes dark as he turns his blacken- ed cheek towards the earth. 52 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. In all the languages known as Teutonic the moon was of the male gender and the sun of the female gender. Among other people, and in later times, the sun is spoken of as the lover of the dawn, who went before him, killing her with his bright spear-like rays, while night was a living thing which swallowed up the day. If the sun is a face streaming with locks of light, the moon is a silver boat, or a mermaid living half her time under the water. When the sun shone with a pleasant warmth he was called the friend of man ; when his heat scorched the earth he was said to be slaying his childi^en. You have perhaps heard that the dark patches on the moon's face, which look so very much like a nose and two eyes, gave rise to the notion of a '^ man in the moon," who was said to be set up there for picking sticks on a Sunday. XX. MYTHS ABOUT ECLIPSES. There is something so weird and gloomy in eclipses of the sun and moon, that we can readily understand how through all the world they have been looked upon as the direct work of some dreadful power. The Chinese imagine them to be caused by great dra- gons trying to devour the sun and moon, and beat drums and brass kettles to make the monsters give up their prey. Some of the tribes of American Indians speak of the moon as hmited by huge dogs, catching and tearing her till her soft light is reddened and put out by the blood flowing from her wounds. To this day in India the na- THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 53 tive beats his going as the moon passes across the sun's face, and it is not so very long ago that in Europe both eclipses and rushing comets were thought to show that troubles were near. Fear is the daughter of Ignorance, and departs when knowledge enlightens us as to the cause of things. We know that an eclipse (which comes from Greek words meaning to leave out oy forsake) is caused either by the moon passing in such a line between the earth and the sun as to cause his light to be in part or alto- gether hidden, left out for a short time, or by the earth so passing between the sun and moon as to throw its shadow upon the moon and partly or wholly hide her light. Our fear would arise if eclipses did not happen at the very moment when astronomers have calculated them to occur. XXI. MYTHS ABOUT STARS. There is a curious Asian myth about the stars which tells that the sun and moon are both women. The stars are the moon's children, and the sun once had as many. Fearing that mankind could not bear so much light, each agreed to eat up her children. The moon hid hers away, but the sun kept her word, which no sooner had she done than the moon brought her childi^en from their hiding-place. When the sun saw them she was filled with rage, and chased the moon to kill her, and the chase has lasted ever since. Sometimes the sun comes 54 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. near enough to bite the moon, and that is an eclipse. The sun, as men may still see, devours her stars at dawn, but the moon hides hers all day while the sun is near, and brings them out at night only, when the sun is far away. The names still in use for certain clusters of stars and single stars, were given long ago when the stars were thought to be living creatures. They were said to be men who had once lived here, or to be mighty hunters or groups of young men and maidens dancing. Many of the names given show that the stars were watched with anxiety by the farmer and sailor, who thought they ruled the weather. The group of stars known to us as the Plei- ades were so called from the word ^Z<2m, which means to sail^ because the old Greek sailors watched for their rising before they ventm'ed on the ocean. The same stars are called the digging stars by the Zulus, who live in South Africa, because when they appear the people begin to dig. A very good illustration of the change which a myth takes is afibrded by these same stars, which are spoken of in Greek mythology as the seven daughters of Atlas (who was said to bear the world on his shoulders), six of whom were wedded to the Gods, but the seventh to a king, for which reason Merope, as she is named, shines the faintest of them all. The stars were formerly believed to govern the fate of a person in life. The temper was said to be good or bad, the nature grave or gay, according to the planet which THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 55 was in the ascendant, as it was called, at birth. Several words in our language witness to this old belief. We speak of a " disaster," which means the stroke or blast of an unlucky star ; aster being a Greek word for star. We call a person " ill-starred" or '^ born under a lucky star." Grave and gloomy people are called " saturnine," because those born under the planet Saturn are said to be so dis- posed. Merry and happy-natured people are called " jovial," as born under the planet Jupiter, or Jove. Ac- tive and sprightly people are called '' mercurial," as born under the planet Mercury. Mad people are called " lunatics." Luna is the Latin word for moon, and the more sane movements of the insane were believed to de- pend upon her phases or appearances of change in form. Sun, moon, and stars were all thought to be fixed to the great heavens (which means heaved or lifted up, and comes from an Anglo-Saxon word, hefan^ to lift), be- cause it seemed like a solid arch over the flat earth. To many a mind it was the place of bliss, where care and want and age could never enter. The path to it was said to be along that bright-looking band across the sky known to us as the " Milky Way," the sight of which has given birth to several beautiful myths. I should like to stay and tell you some of them, but we must not let the myths keep us too long from the realities. 56 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. XXII. MYTHS ABOUT THE EARTH AND MAN. The waterspout was thought to be a giant or sea-ser- pent reaching from sea to sky ; the rainbow (which books about light will tell you is a circle, half only of which we can see) was said to be a living demon coming down to drink when the rain fell, or, prettier myth, the heaven- ladder or bridge along which the souls of the blest are led by angels to Paradise, or the bow of God set in the clouds, as Indian, Jew, and Fin have called it; the clouds were cows di'iven by the children of the morning to their pasture in the blue fields of heaven ; the tides were the beating of the ocean's heart ; the earthquake was caused by the Earth-Tortoise moving underneath ; the lightning was the forked tongue of the storm-demon, the thunder was his roar ; volcanoes were the dwelling- places of angry demons who threw up red-hot stones from them. Man's sense of the wonderful is so strong that a belief in giants and pigmies and fairies was as easy to him as it has been hard to remove. The bones of huge beasts now extinct were said to have belonged to giants, whose footprints were left in those hollows in stones which we know to be water-worn." The big loose stones were said to have been torn from the rocks by the giants and hurlet I at their foes in battle. The stories of the very small p eople who once lived in this part of Europe, and «vhose descendants now live in Lapland, gave rise THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 57 a belief in dwarfs. The flint arrow-heads of the Stone Age were said to be elf-darts used by the little spirits dwelling in woods and wild places, while the polished stone axes were thunderbolts. How all kinds of other myths, such as those accounting for the bear's stumpy tail, the robin's red breast, the crossbill's twisted bill, the aspen's quivering leaf, arose, I cannot now stay to tell you, nor how out of myths there grew the nm^sery stories and fairy tales which chil- dren never tire of hearing ; for we must now be starting on our voyage from the wonderful realm of fancy to the not less wonderful land of fact, whither science is ever bear- ing us. Nay, not less wonderful but more wonderful, since the fancies come from the facts, not the facts from the fancies. We have learnt that because man saw all natm*e to be in motion, he believed that life dwelt in all, that a spirit moved leaf, and cloud, and beast. Words now come in to tell us what in the course of time was man's notion about a spirit. The difference between a living and a dead man is this : the living man breathes and moves ; the dead man has ceased to breathe and is still. Now the word spirit means breath, and in the leading languages of the world the word used for soul or spirit is that which signifies breath or vjind. Frequently the soul of man is thought to be a sort of steam or vapor, or a 58 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. man's shadow, which becoming unsettled causes him to be ill. The savage thinks that the spirit can leave the body during sleep, and so whatever happens to him in his dreams seems as real and true as if it had taken place while he was awake. If he sees some dead friend in his sleep, he believes either that the dead have come to him or that his spirit has been on a visit to his friend, and he is very careful not to wake anyone sleeping lest the soul should happen to be away from the body. Be- lieving that a man's soul could thus go in and out of his body, it was also thought that demons could be drawn in with the breath, and that yawning and sneezing were proofs of their nearness. So what is called an invocation was spoken to ward them oif, of which we have a trace in the custom of saying " God bless you " when anyone sneezes. According to an old Jewish legend, " The custom of saying ' God bless you ' when a person sneezes dates from Jacob. The Rabbis say that before the time that Jacob lived, men sneezed once and that was the end of them — the shock slew them. This law was set aside at the prayer of Jacob on condition that in all nations a sneeze should be hallowed by the words ' God bless you.' " Diseases were said to be caused, among other things, by the soul staying away too long from the body, and the bringing of it back is a part of the priest's or wizard's work. THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 59 All these ideas, crude as they are, have lived on among people long after they have risen from savagery, and in fact remain among us, although their first mean- ing is hidden, in such sayings as a man being "out of his mind," or "beside himself," or " come to himself." If the body has suffered any loss in limb' or otherwise, the soul is thought to be maimed too. And the belief that it will need, after it leaves the body, all the things which it has had here will explain the custom of killing wives and slaves to follow the deceased, and as among very low races lifeless things are said to have souls, of placing clothes, weapons, and ornaments in the grave for the dead person's use in another world. It is within a very few years that in Europe the soldier's horse that follows his dead master in the funeral procession was shot and buried with him. Man regarding himself as surrounded by spirits, dwelling in everything and all-powerful to do him good or harm, shaped his notions about them as they seemed to smile or frown upon him. Not only did he look upon sickness as often the work of demon-spirits, but in his fear he filled the darkness with ghosts of the dead rising from their graves, shriek- ing at his door, sitting in his house, tapping him on the shoulder, and breaking the silence with their whisthng tones. 60 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. XXIV. BELIEF IN MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT. In the desire to ward off these unwelcome guests, man has made use of charms and magic arts and tricks of dif- ferent sorts. And there have always been those who, shrewder than the rest, have traded on the fears of the weak and timid, and professed to have power over the spirits or such influence with them as to di'ive them away by certain words or things. Medicine-men, rain-makers, wizards, conjurers, and sorcerers, these have abounded everywhere ; and even among us now there are found, under other names, people who think they have power with the unseen and know more about the unknown than has ever been or will be given to man to find out in this life. This belief in magical arts, which is so firmly rooted among the lowest tribes of mankind, has only within the last two hundred years died out among civilized people, and even lingers still in out-of-the-way places among the foolish and ignorant, who are always ready to see a miracle in every thing that they cannot understand. Out of it grew the horrid belief in witchcraft, through which it is reckoned nine millions of people have been burned ? Witchcraft spread with a belief in the devil, who, being looked upon as the enemy of God and man, was regarded as the cause of all the evil in the world, which he worked either by himself or by the aid of agents. It was held that p3r30o.s had sold than^^al^as to him^ ha in ratarii THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 61 promising that they should lack nothing and should have power to torment man and woman and child and beast. If anyone, therefore, felt strange pains — if any sad loss came — it was the unholy work of witches. It was they who caused the withering storm ; the ruin to the crops ; the sudden death of the cattle; and when any- one pined away in sickness, it was because some old witch had cast her evil eye upon him, or made a waxen image of him and set it before the fire, that the sick man may waste away as it melted. The poor creatures who were charged with thus being in league with the devil were sought for among helpless old women. To have a wrinkled face, a hairy lip, a squint eye, a hobbling gait, a squeaking voice, a scolding tongue ; to live alone : these were thought proofs enough, and to such miserable victims torture was applied so cruelly that death was a welcome release. XXV. man's awe of the unknown. Since all that puzzles the savage puzzles us, we can feel with him, when he speaks of the soul as breath, of dreams as real, and, in hushed voice, of good and bad spirits around. To this day we have not, nor does it seem likely we ever can have, any clear idea about the soul. We have a vague notion that at death it leaves the body as a sort of filmy thing or shadow or vapor. English, Chinese, and Indians alike will keep some door or window open 62 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. through which the departing soul may leave, and it is a German saying that a door should not be slammed lest a soul be pinched in it ! And our di'cams, wliich so many believe in as bringing faithful messages of joy and sorrow, seem to us so real and " true while they last." Even in the most foolish and baseless stories which are told about bells rung in haunted houses, and ghosts with sheeted arms in church- yards, there is, remember^, a witness to the awe in which man, both civilized and' savage, in every age and place, holds the unseen. For all that science tells us^bout the creatures that teem in a drop of water and in the little bodies that course with our blood, brings us no nearer the great mys- tery of life. The more powerful the microscopes we use, the more wonders — as we might rightly expect — do we see : but lij-e itself no glass will ever show us, and the soul of man no finger will ever touch. God has given to man a mind, that is, power to think and reason and remember, and with it time, place, and wish to use the gift. He, in \h% words of a great poet, ^' wraps man in darkness and makes him ever long for light." As that which costs little is valued little, man would not have cared, had much knowledge been granted him at first, to strive after more; but be- cause he knows little, yet feels that he has the power to learn much, he uses the power in gaining increase of wisdom and knowledge, till he feels the truth of those THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 63 very old words which say of wisdom, " She is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her." XXVI. FETISH-W^ORSHIP. So far then w^e have seen how man seeks to explain what he sees around him, and the next thing we have to find out is, what is his first feeling towards it all ? It is to bow before it and worship the powers which seem stronger than himself. The very lowest form of worship is that paid to life- less things in which some virtue or charm is thought to dwell, and is called " fetish" worsliip, from a word mean- ing a charm. It does not matter what the object is ; it may be a stone of curious shape, the stump of a tree with the roots turned up, even an old hat or a red rag, so long as some good is supposed to be had, or some einl to be thwarted, through it. The worship of stones, about w^hich we may read in the Bible, prevails to this day among rude tribes, who have the j^trangest notions about them as being sometimes husbands and wives, sometimes \h^ dwelling-place of spirits. The confused ideas which cause the savage to look upon dreams as real cause him to confound the lifeless with the living, and to carefully destroy the parings off" his nails and cuttmgs of his hair, lest ' evil should be worked through them. The New Zealander would thrust pebbles do\\m the throat of a male child to make its heart hard. The Zulu chews wood 64 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. that the heart of his foe or of the woman whom he loves may soften towards him even as the wood is being bruised. The dreadful practice of men eating human flesh is sup- posed to have arisen from the idea that if the flesh of some strong, brave man be eaten, it makes the eater strong and brave also. The natives of Borneo will not eat deer lest they should thereby become faint-hearted, and the Malays will give much for the flesh of the tiger to make them brave. If a Tartar doctor has not the medicine which he wants he will write its name on a scrap of paper and make a pill of it for the patient to take. A story is told of a man in Africa who was thought very holy, and who earned his living by writing prayers on a board, washing them off and selling the water. We may laugh at this, but whenever we say a verse out of the Bible, or gabble over the beautiful Lord's Prayer, because we think that in some mysterious way we get good by so doing, we are fetish-worshipers, and far below the poor savages I am telling you about, for we know that unless om^ hearts speak, no muttering of words can help us. XXVII. IDOLATRY. The customs of worshiping a fetish and of setting up an idol, although they may appear the same, are really very different, because when an idol is made it does not always follow that it is worshiped. The word " idol " THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 65 comes from a Greek word meaning an image or form^ and sometimes the idol is treated as only an image of the god or gods believed in, and is not mistaken for the god itself. Unhappily it has more frequently been regarded as a god, and believed to hear prayer, to accept gifts, and have power to bless or curse. The materials out of which different races shape their gods show us what their ideas are. These may be mere bundles of grass or rudely daubed stones, or carved with the care and beauty dis- played in the household idols of the East. If the god is believed in as all-powerful, a huge image will be built, to which will be given a score of arms and legs, the head of a lion, the feet of a stag, and the wings of a bird. But it would fill a much larger book than this were I to tell you how in every age different nations have made and worshiped idols and what they have been like. Very many years will yet pass away before even in civil- ized countries people will learn that the great God has neither shape nor parts, and can never be looked upon, "seeing," as the good apostle Paul told the Greeks, "that He is Lord of heaven and earth, and dwelleth not in temples made with hands," and therefore is not "Hke unto gold or silver or stone graven by art and man's device." XXVIII. NATURE-WORSHIP. We have now" to lea^e tlie lifeless things in which poor 66 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. savage man has found a god to hang round his neck or set up in his hut and learn a little about some of the living and moving things which are worshiped. Some learned men think that the worship of serpents and trees was the earliest faith of mankind. Others have thought that the sun, moon, stars, and fire were first worshiped. But it seems more likely that in differ- ent parts of the world men had different gods, and would at first worship the things nearest to them till they knew enough about them to lessen fear, and would then bow before those greater powers whose mysteries are hidden still. 1. Water- Worship. The worship of water is very wide-spread and easy to account for — ^for what seemed so full of life, and therefore, according to early man's reason, so full of spirits, as rivers, brooks, and water- falls ? To him it was the water-demon that made the river flow so fast as to be dangerous in crossing, and that curled the dreaded whirlpool in which life was sucked. When one river-god came to be afterwards believed in, as controlling every stream, making it to flow lazily along or to rush at torrent-speed, it was believed to be wrong to save any drowning person lest the river-god should be cheated of his prey. Sacred springs, holy wells, abound everywhere to show how deep and lasting was water- worship. You have heard of sacred rivers, such as the Ganges, of which THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 67 some beautiful stories are given in the sacred books of India, telling how it flows from the heavenly places to bless the earth and wash away all sin. 2. Tree- Worship. The worship of trees is also very common. The Ufe that, locked up within them during the long winter, burst out in leaf and flower and fruit, and seemed to moan or whisper as the breezes shook branch and leaf, was that not also the sign of an indwell- ing spirit ? So, far later in time than the early nature-worship- ers, the old Greeks thought when they peopled sea and stream, tree and hill, with beings whom they called nymphs, telling of the goddesses who dwelt in the water to bless the drinkers, and of those who were born and who died with the trees in which they lived. And you have perhaps heard that the priests of the ancient relig- ion of tliis island held the oak-tree sacred and lived among its groves, as their name Druid, which comes from the Welsh word devw or the Greek drus^ both meaning an oak^ shows. 3. Animal- Worship. Besides the worship of trees and rivers and other like things seen to have life or motion, the worship of animals arose in A^ery early times. The life in them was seen to be very different from that of the tree or river. The water swirled and foamed, the tree shook, the volcano hissed, but no eyes glistened from them, no huge claws sprang forth to tear. And the brute seemed so like to man in many things, 68 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. and withal was so much stronger, that it must ha.ve a soul greater than the soul of man. As mastery over the brute was gained, the fear and worship of it died out here and there, but sacred animals play a great part in many religions. The kind of brute worshiped depended very much on the country in which man lived. In the far North he worshiped the bear and wolf, further South the lion and tiger and crocodile, and in very many parts of the world the serpent. So cun- ning and subtle seemed that long, writhing, brilliant- colored thing, so deadly was its poison-fang, so fascina- ting the glitter of the eye that looked out from its hateful face, that for long centuries it was feared and became linked in the minds of men as the soul of that Evil which early worked sorrow and shame among them. On this I cannot now dwell, but must go on to tell you that man's next step, rising from the worship of stones and brutes, was to believe in a class of great gods each ruling some separate part of nature or of the life of men. Thus instead of thinking only of a separate spirit as dwelling in every streamlet, he conceived of one river-god or water-god ruling all streams, or of one sea-god ruling every sea. I hope you are taking notice of the lesson this history has so far taught, that the more man began to think and to know, the more did he lessen the number THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 69 of his gods. Thus arose belief in one god ruling the thunder, another tlie rain, another the wind, another the sun, and so on. As the best way of making quite clear to you the growth of belief in these great controlling beings, I will try and explain to you how the worship of the sun and moon began. There is nothing that would excite man's wonder at first so much as the fact that daylight was not always with him, that for a time he could see things around him, and then that the darkness crept over them and caused him to grope along his path or lie down to rest. Each morning, before the sun was seen, rays of light shot upward as if to herald his coming, and then he arrived to flood fiie earth with more light, growing brighter and brighter till the eye could scarce look upon him, so dazzling was the glory. Then as slowly he sank again, the light-rays lingering as they came until they passed away altogether. About all the other gifts which the sun is made to shed upon this and other worlds you m^j read in books on astronomy (such as Mr. Lockyer's Lessons in that science), and from those you may learn true wonder-tales describing how we are all what the Incas of South America were called, " children of the sun ;" here I am dealing with the sun as an object of worship only. Welcome as was the liglit given by moon and far-off stars, it was less sure than the sun's, and, although it re- 70 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. lieved the gloom and darkness, could not chase night away. Therefore the natm^al feeling of man was to bow before this Lord of Light, and, in the earliest knov/n form of adoration, kiss his hand to it, paying it the offer- ing of sacrifice. There is an old story from some Jewish writings known as the Talmud, which describes very powerfully man's feeling concerning the darkness and the light. It relates that when Adam and Eye were driven out of the garden of Eden, they wandered over the face of the earth. And^ the sun began to set, and they looked with fear at the lessening of the light, and felt a horror like death steal over their hearts. And the light of heaven grew paler and the wretched ones clasped one another in an agony of despair. Then all grew dark. And the luckless ones fell on the earth, silent, and thought that God had withdrawn from them the light for ever ; and they spent the night in tears. But a beam of light began to rise over the eastern hills, after many hours of darkness, and the golden sun came back and dried the tears of Adam and Eve, and then they cried out with joy and said, " Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy Cometh in the morning ; this is a law that God hath laid upon nature." The worship of the heavenly bodies is not only very wide-spread but continued to a late age among the great nations of the past, as the names of their gods and the THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 71 remains of their temples prove. In this island pillars were once raised to the sun, and altars to the moon and the earth-goddess, while the story of early belief is pre- served in the names given to some of the days of the week, as Smi-day, Mon- or Moon-day. Days were the most ancient division of time, and as the changes of the moon began to be watched they marked the weeks, four weeks roughly making up the month which was seen to elapse between every new moon. To distinguish one day from another, names were given ; and as it was a belief that each of the seven planets presided over a portion of the day, their names were applied to the seven days of the week. Our forefathers however consecrated the days of the week to their seven chief gods. Sunday and Monday to the sun and moon, as already stated ; Tuesday to Tuisco (which name, strange as it may seem, comes from the same word-root as Deity\ father of gods and men ; Wednesday \.oWoden or Odin^ one-eyed ruler of heaven and god of war ; Thursday to Thor^ the god of thunder ; Friday to Friga^ Woden's wife ; Saturday either to Seater^ a Saxon god, or to Saturn, We use the name for each month of the year which the Romans gave, but the Saxon names were very different, January being called the wolf-monat or wolf-month, March the lenet- Tuonatj because the days were seen to lengthen^ and so on. I should tell you that there [are countries where, be- 72 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. cause the heat of the sun is so fierce as to scorch and wither plant and often cause death to man, he is not worshiped as the giver of the blessed light, but feared as an evil, malicious god. The worship of fire is usually found joined to that of sun, moon and stars. Fire gives light and warmth ; it seems, in its wonderful power to lick up all that is heap- ed upon it, like some hungry, never-satisfied demon, and is nearest of anything on earth to the great fire bodies in the sky. XXX. DUALISM, OR BELIEF IN TWO GODS. Man, as he came to think more and more about things, and not to be simply frightened into an unrea- soning worship of living and dead objects, lessened still further the number of ruling powers, and seemed to see two mighty gods fighting for mastery over himself and the universe. On the one hand was a power that appeared to dwell in the calm, unclouded blue, and with kind and loving heart to scatter welcome gifts upon men; on the other hand was a power that appeared to be harsh and cruel, that lashed the sea into fury, covered earth and sky with blackness, swept man's home and crops away in torrent and in tempest, chilled him with icy hand, and gave his children to the beast of prey. One a god of light, smil- ing in the sunbeam ; the other a god of darkness, scowl- THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WOELD. 73 ing in the thundercloud ; one ruling by good and gen- tle spirits, the other by fierce and evil spirits. This belief in a good god opposed and fought against by a bad god became so deeply rooted that no religion is quite free from it, for it seemed to man the only ex- planation of the hurt and evil whose power he felt. But it is not true that the Almighty God in whom we are taught to believe is checked and hindered by anoth- er power. If He were. He would cease to be all-mighty, and we should have to pray to the evil power and be- seech him not to hurt us. The sin which is in the world, and about which your own heart tells you, has its birth in the will of man, which God in His sovereign wisdom has created free. Instead of making us as mere machines that cannot go wi-ong. He has given us the awful power of doing either good or evil, and thus of showing our love to Him by choosing what He loves and doing the things that are pleasing in His sight. However anxious we may be, as man has so often been, to cast the blame of vsTong-doing on another, the sins which we commit are our own willful work. This we know to be true because it is declared by that Voice vrithin each of us which does not lie, and which is the voice of the holy God. If we have power to break God's commandments, but not power to keep them, or if some imseen force, strong- er than ourselves, is allowed to drive us into evil, we could not have that sense of guilt which ever follows 74: TtlE CHILDHOOD OF THE WOBiLt). sinning, because we should feel that the fault was not all our own, and that we should be wronged in being pun- ished^for what we could not help. Then that saddest of all states — distrust of God, distrust of His voice within — would be ours. But leaving this matter for a while, I have hitherto said little about the way in which man would seek to ex- press his feelings towards the gods in which he believed, be they few or many, good or bad. One way was by jpraying to them, another way by offering sacrifice to them. XXXI. PRAYER. To cry for help when we are in danger is our first act ; to ask for what we want from those who seem able and will- ing to give it is both natural and right. Thus man prayed to his gods, and prays still, for to the end of time the deep long cry of mankind to Heaven will continue. And rude and hideous as may be the idol to which the poor savage tells his story of need or sorrow, we must, remember, stand in awe as we think of the soul within him that hmigers for its food, even as the body hungers, and that yearns after the unseen God whom we call our Father in Heaven. Of course he prays in his ignorance for many weak and foolish things, to grant which would be really hurtful to him. In this he is hke children who ask their parents for something which those parents know is not THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 75 good for them, and who think themselves hadly treated because they are denied it. As man gets more thoughtful and trustful, he prays^for better gifts than the things which perish, and, telling his wants and troubles to thQ All- wise Being, leaves it to Him to send whatever he may choose. *' in His decision rest, Secure whatever He gives, He gives the best." XXXII. SACRIFICE. The reason for offering sacrifices is explained by man's dealings with his fellow-man. When we feel that we have vexed our friends, or that for some cause they are angry with us, our first de- sire is to remove the anger by an offering of some kind ; w^hile towards those whom we love and feel grate- ful for their kindness, we show our love and thanks by gifts. In this way, sacrifices or offerings to idols, and to the seen and unseen powers of good and evil, began, and have continued in different forms among all nations to the present day; one sacrifice being offered from a feel- ing of thanksgiving, another as a bribe to quiet or ap- pease the gods thought to be angry, and who, being look- ed upon very often as big men, were supposed to be hu- mored like cross and sulky people. Of com^se men would offer the best of what they had, and would pick the finest fruits and flowers as gifts to the 76 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. gods, or burn upon a raised pile of stones called an altar the most spotless of their flocks. And because the sur- render of the nearest and dearest was often thought ne- cessary to allay the anger, or secure the help, or ward off the vengeance of the god, the lives of the dear ones were offered, and this is one of the chief causes of the hideous and horrid rites which cui'dle one's blood to think about, and of which every land and every age have been the spectators. The blessed Father of all ^'is not a God of the dead, but of the living," and a Being who therefore loves not the sacrifice of blood and death. The sacrifice which is sweet to Him is that of hearts which, sorrowful for their sins and for grie\dng Him by wandering from His father- ly arms, are willing to give up their wi'ong-doings, and, casting out selfishness, in which so much e^dl lurks, to do His will on earth as it is done in heaven. Men are only, now slowly learning this great truth, although many cen- turies have passed away since it was first taught, because they have found it easier to profess certain beliefs or pay others to perform certain rites for them, than to strive day by day to obey the commandments of God. XXXIII. MONOTHEISM, OR BELIEF IN ONE GOD. Coming much nearer the time when the history of man's rehgious belief grows -clearer, we see that his ideas had become higher and nobler. THB CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 7Y It had at first seemed to him as if in heaven abov© and earth beneath naught but confusion reigned, but as the course of things became more carefully watched, it was seen that order, not disorder ; plan, not blind fate, ruled the universe. The storm which made havoc with the fruit of man's industry swept disease and foul air away; the fire that, uncontrolled, destroyed, was, when controlled, man's useful servant; the night that filled the air with bad spirits, lulled man to welcome rest ; the things which had been looked upon as cm^ses, turned out to be blessings, and much that seemed discord in nature was harmony to him who touched the chords aright. Man had at first worshiped that which was strongest^ and feared that which seemed likeliest to harm him most ; but as he grew in knowledge and wisdom, he came to worship that which was best. This arose from the feeling, which I have just described, that something else than crushing force was over all. We have seen that on man's first entrance into life he found it one con- tinued battle against forces of all kinds, and the only law that ruled was the law of might. He who could get a thing and keep it was entitled to it. Besides ability to defend himself by sheer force or cunning, man possess- ed the power of injuring and of doing wanton cruelty and mischief for its own sake, and of this power all his- tory shows us he made sad use. Lower in this than the beast which slays to satisfy its hunger, man killed bis 78 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. fellow-man to satisfy his lawless ambition, and commit- ted ravages which centuries of labor have been unable to repair. But as the human family increased, it became clear that there would soon be an end to everything, did man continue using to the full this power to hurt, and plunder, and kill. Therefore to enable mankind to live together in peace and to progress, it was needful for them to feel that respect was due to the rights of others, and that it was necessary to do to them as they would wish to be done unto. If a man refused to agree to this, and in malice injured another, he was punished for breaking the rules which must be kept to make what is called society possible. But besides the sense of duty towards others, there was another and a deeper sense by which man felt that it was wrong to injure them. There is something within everyone, when called upon to choose between a better and a worse, which speaks in clear and certain tones. If we are tempted to do wrong, yet know to do right, from whence comes the knowledge ? If after each act of kindness, each duty faithfully done, there follows a blessed peace, from whence does it spring ? Sun and moon cannot be spoken of as knowing right from wrong, or as helping us to discern the difference. The stars of heaven and the stones of earth know nothing about duties, and are moved or kept still by other laws than the law of love. God is its source, and none other but He. THE OHILBHOOD OF THE WORLD. 79 ** His tbat gentle voice we hear, Soft as the breath of even, That checks each fault, that calms each fear, And speaks forgiven." Never, I beseech you, stifle Conscience, for when it speaks you are in the path of danger ; only when you are safe is it silent, yet none the less watchful, unsleep- ing. Never, I beseech you, try to displace that judge who never leaves his seat, but sits moment by moment weighing every thought and act in his balance. For that which we feel and know to be the highest law within us must, we rightly argue, dwell in perfection in Him whose authority thus makes itself heard by us. And since God's laws are the creatures of His love, it follows that to obey them is to dwell in love, and there- fore to dwell in God. So man, footsore and toilworn, came at last to rest in this, and to believe in One God and Father of all, " maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible," and to believe that " to love Him with all the heart is more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices." In some such way as I have tried to show you did man arrive at this sublimest of all beliefs. But only a few out of the large human family are thus blessed ; the greater number still worship gods many, gods good, bad, and indifferent. Even where a belief in one God has been reached, He has at first been shaped in the mind after the fashion 80 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. of a man. To the people dwelling in the cold, bleak North, he was the Thunderer ; to the people dwelling further South on the coast that bordered quiet waters and under sunny skies, he was the Beautiful; to the dweller in the plain, strong in soul and rough in dealing, he was a power walking on the wings of the wind, a being with the feelings and passions of a man. It needed great teachers who walked amidst the groves of beautiful Athens, and a greater still who sat wearied by a well in Samaria, to convey ideas of God which can- not be surpassed. And yet history tells us that in this as in other things nations have fallen back. They have forgotten God as the children of Israel did when, after receiving His com- mandment to worship no graven imagine, they shaped an idol like the sacred bull of the Egypt they had left. Just as there are savage races still in that Stone Age, which, I have shown you, was the beginning of progress, and which Europe has left thousands of years behind, so there are to be found races that have not risen above the lowest ideas about spirits in lifeless things. They show us what we were ; we represent what^ it is hojped^ • they may hecome. In believing this we gain trust that, since God has made nothing in vain, He will give to the poor and wild and ignorant to know in the hereafter, what, through no fault of theirs, has been hidden from them here. THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 81 XXXIV. THREE STORIES ABOUT ABRAHAM. Since the highest belief of any time is the belief of its highest minds, it is clear that in every age there have been men more far-seeing and thoughtful than their fel- low-men, who, feeling that this great, solemn life is giv- en for something nobler than eating and money-getting, asked themselves why they were at all ; whither they were going ; and from whence came what they saw around them. Of the holy lives with w^hich such men enriched the earth, and of the wise and beautiful thoughts in which they have recorded their search after truth, which is but another name for search after God, you will learn by and by ; but I want to redeem my promise and tell you a little about one of these men, earliest in his- toric time, who is thought to have laid hold of and given to us through others a belief in the One God. Abraham, for he it is whom I mean, was a native of the country called Chaldea. The clear sky of that East- ern land invited the people dwelling in it to the charm- ful study of the sun, moon, and stars, and they not only worshiped these bodies, but sought to foretell the fate of men from them. An ancient historian tells us that every Chaldean had a signet and staff bearing the sign of the planet or stars that were seen at his birth. Some have said that Ur, the city where Abraham was born, was a chief seat of sun-worship, and that its name means light or fire. We may safely say that Abraham's early years 82 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. were spent among sun- worshipers, and it may interest you to know that his name and memory are held in high honor, not only by the Jews, but also by the Persians and Mohammedans. Among the stories about him which are preserved in certain ancient books are the following. Terah, the father of Abraham, was a maker and deal- er in idols. Being obliged to go from home one day, he left Abraham in charge. An old man came in and ask- ed the price of one of the idols. " Old man," said Abra- ham, ^' how old art thou ?" " Threescore years," answer- ed the old man. " Threescore years !" said Abraham, " and thou wouldst worship a thing that my father's slaves made in a few hours ? Strange that a man of sixty should bow his gray head to a creature such as that." The man, crimsoned with shame, turned away ; and then came a grave-looking woman to bring an offering to the gods. " Give it them thyself," said Abraham ; " thou wilt see how greedily they will eat it." She did so. Abra- ham then took a hammer and broke all the idols except the largest, in whose hands he placed the hammer. When Terah returned, he asked angrily what profane wretch had dared thus to abuse the gods. " Why," said Abraham, " during thine absence a woman brought yon- der food to the gods and the younger ones began to eat. The old god, enraged at their boldness, took the hammer and smashed them." " Dost thou mock thy aged fa- ther?" said Terah; "do I not know that they can neither THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 83 eat nor move ?" " And yet," said Abraham, " thou wor- shipest them, and wouldst have me worship them too." The story adds that Terah, in his rage, sent Abraham to be judged for his crime by the king. Nimrod asked Abraham : You will not adore the idols of your father. Then pray to &e. Abraham : Why may I not pray to water, which will quench fire ? N'imrod : Be it so : pray to water. Abraham : But why not to the clouds which hold the water ? Nimrod: Well, then, pray to the clouds. Abraham, : Why not to the wind, which drives the clouds before it ? Nim^rod : Then pray to the wind. Abraham. : Be not angry, O Eang — I cannot pray to the fire or the water or the clouds or the wind, but to the Creator who made them : Him only will I worship. On another occasion, " Abraham left a cave in wliich he had dwelt and stood on the face of the desert. And when he saw the sun shining in all its glory, he was filled with wonder ; and he thought, ' Surely the sun is God the Creator,' and he knelt down and worshiped the sun. But when evening came, the sun went down in the west, and Abraham said, ^ No, the Author of crea- tion cannot set.' Now the moon arose in the east, and the stars looked out of the sky. Then said Abraham, ' This moon must indeed be God, and all the stars are 84 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. His host.' And kneeling down he adored the moon. But the moon set also, and from the east appeared once more the sun's bright face. Then said Abraham, ^Verily these heavenly bodies are no gods, for they obey law ; I will worship Him whose laws they obey.' " XXXV. man's belief in a future life. The rude beliefs about spirits and dreams and the cus- toms observed at burials show us that, however shape- less man's idea of another life may be, he has from the earl'est times believed that the spirit or breathy the ghost (which comes from the same root as gust)^ departs to dwell elsewhere when the body is cold and still in death. The highest and lowest races of men have tried to form some notion of what that blessed state is like where happiness is given to the good, where friends " loved long since and lost awhile," will, with smiling angel- faces, welcome us ; or what that dark state may be where misery and wanhope (despair) dwell. Man, in wondering what becomes of the spirit, has thought that it haunted the place where it once lived, or that it passed into some other body, perhaps into some animal, and then into higher and higher forms, until it reached the dwelling-place of the gods. He has placed his heaven in some far-off Island of the Blest, or in some sunny land, *' Deep meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawoB, And bowery hollows crowo'd with summer sea/* THE OHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 86 or in the west where the 8iin sets, or in the sun, moon, and stars themselves. The pictm-es of it have been copied from the earth ; and all that he loves here, whether chaste or coarse, he hopes to have in larger measure there, even as he wishes to shut out from thence all that he dreads now. The best and brightest view of heaven is, leaving the rude idea of the savage far behind, to behold in every place on earth a fit spot whereon to kneel, to feel the sacredness of duty, and then we shall believe that all which we here know to be highest and noblest and best shall be ours in heaven, wherever that heaven may be. The thought that God's worlds are thus linked together is very beautifully touched upon in one of the old Per- sian sacred books. The soul of a good man is pictured as being met in the other world by a lovely maiden, "noble, with brilliant face, one of fifteen years, as fair in her growth as the fairest creatures. Then to her speaks the soul of the pure man, asking, ^ What maiden art thou whom I have seen here as the fairest of maidens in body V She answers, ' I am, O youth, thy good thoughts, words, and works, thy good law, the own law of thine own body. Thou hast made the pleasant yet pleasanter to me, the fair yet fairer.' "* And sinca all of us like to read hymns about heaven, * The whole of this beautiful story is given by Mr. Tylor in his " Primi- ttve Calture," vol. ii. p. 90, a work to which I am much indebted, and which should receive careful attention from every thoughtful person. 86 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. here is one which I expect you have never seen before. It was written thousands of years ago by some great- souled Aryan, and is full of music that cannot die away : Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal, imperishable world, place me, O Soma ! Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me immortal ! Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal ! Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me immortal ! Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me immortal I XXXVI. SACRED BOOKS. If this book has taught you nothing else, I hope it has taught you that the different beliefs of mankind about God are worthy of attention. Few of us will live here for more than sixty or seventy years ; and when we take off the time needed for eating and working and sleeping, there is not so very much left wherein to learn a little about the world in which we are sent to dwell. We do wisely to use some spare mo- ments in asking how other eyes have looked upon the beauty and the mystery around, and what it has said to their hearts. It is not so very long ago that good-meaning men looked upon the various religions of the world as almost beneath notice, or if studied at all, studied as proofs THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 87 of man's hatred to the good and the true. But wiser and more thoughtful men felt that we ought to try and under- stand them, and see what kind of answ^^rs others have given to the questions about God, and the wide universe, and life and death, which we all ask. These answers may be feeble and dim, but since they are the best that could be had, they demand our respect. We do not make our own religion more true by calling other relig- ions false, nor do we make it worth less to us by ad- mitting the good that may be in them. And the lesson which even a slight knowledge of the sacred books of other faiths, some older than our own, and still believed in by hundreds of millions of mankind, teaches, is that God has never been without a witness among them. ^These sacred books, which they look upon as His word to them, are as dear to them as our Bible is dear to us. In them are the precepts which they have been taught to obey, the prayers and hymns which have the full rich meaning age alone can give, and which no new words could bring. It is true that these books contain many silly stories, myths, legends, coarse ideas about God ; but from these no ancient book is free, and the errors that they contain do not make less true whatever of truth they hold. A diamond is not less a diamond be- cause we pick it out of a dust heap. Any account which I might give you of the different sacred writings would be chiefly a list of very long names, and it is better that I should prove the truth of 88 THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. what has been said by quoting some hymns and prayers from them. The hymn about heaven comes from the very old sacred book of the Brahmans ; here is part of another hymn from the same : In the beginning there arose the source of golden light. He was the only born Lord of all that is. He stablished the earth and this sky ; who is the God to whom we shall offer onr sacrifice ? He who gives life, He who gives strength ; whose blessing all the bright gods desire ; whose shadow is immortality ; whose shadow is death. Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice ? He who through His power is the only King of the breathing and awak- ening world ; He whose power these snowy mountains and the sea and distant river proclaim. He through whom the heaven was established— nay, the highest heaven; He who measured out the light in the air. This hymn-prayer is from the same book. VarunA, the god addressed, was one of their cliief gods, and means the "Surrounder:" Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay. Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! Through want of strength, have I done wrong; Have mercy, Almighty, have mftrcy ! Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offense before the heavenly host, whenever we break the law through thoughtlessness, have mercy, Almighty, have mercy ! Here are some precepts from one of the sacred books of the Buddhists, which would find a fit place in our own beautiful Book of Proverbs : Conquer anger by mildness, evil by good, falsehood by truth. Be not desirous of discovering the faults of others, but zealously guard against your own. THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 89 Hft is a more noble "warrior 'vrho entducs himself, than be who in battle conquers thousands. (Compare with this ProYerbs xvi. 82.) To the virtuous all is pure. Therefore think not that going unclothed, fasting, or l^ing on the ground, can make the impure pure, for the mind will Btill remaiQ the same. I believe that Jesus Christ would say to every Brah- man and Buddhist who strove to obey these precepts, the words which fell cheer ingly upon the Jewish lawyer's ear, " Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." XXXVn. CONCLUSION. Histories are often so made up of dates, giving the years when kings began to reign, when they died, and when famous battles wei*e fought, that I dare say this early history of man, which has scarcely a date in it, seems a rather vague and confused story. But we have been traveling through ages so vast, that I might have confused you still more if I had spoken of years the number of which none of us can grasp, and put down guess-work figures with long rows of ciphers after them. It is through that twilight time of which I told you in the first pages of this little book that I have sought to take you. I have guessed as little as possible, and brought common sense to interpret the story which bones, fiint knives, metal weapons, picture-writings, words, and other things contain, seeing in it a tale of 90 THE CHILDHOOD Of'tHE WORLD. progress, slow but sure, which began at the beginning of time, and will go on until time shall cease to be. I wish I could have made that story appear as beauti- ful and fascinating to you as it is to myself, but I thought it better told even roughly than not told at all. The facts of science are not, as some think, dry, life- less things. They are li\dng things, filling with sweet- est poetry the ear that hstens to them, and with fadeless harmony of colors the eye that looks upon them. They not only give us these higher pleasures which endure, but they bring daily bread and health and com- fort to thousands, who but for knowledge of them would have lived pitiful lives. I am offering you good counsel in advising you to use a certain portion of your time in studying one branch of science. It matters not which you choose so far as won- der, beauty and truth are concerned, for astronomy, bot- any, chemistry, geology, alike possess these in such abundance that life will be too short to exhaust them. "With the mind thus stored, many an hour, otherwise dull, will be " filled with music ;" many a star-lit night, otherwise unheeded, will shine with familiar lights ; many a landscape, bald and ugly to the unseeing eye, marked with lines of beauty traced by its Maker's hand. And if God, as I think this story shows, has chosen that man's progress shall largely depend upon himself, how careful should we be to do nothing that will be a hindrance. Our knowledge is no blessing to us, unless THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WORLD. 91 we have learned to use it well and wiselj^, and learned too that with it only, life is not complete. If, dealing with the " things we see," it walk hand in hand with faith in the unseen, these two shall make life beautiful and blessed. God gives thee youth but once. Keep thou The childlike heart that will His Kingdom be ; The soul pure-eyed that, wisdom-led, e'en now His blessed face shall see. THE end. Select List of Books published and for sale by Asa K. Butts & Ca HALF HOUR Becreations in Popular Science 25 cents per Part; $2.50 for twelve consecutive Parts. No. 1. Strange Discoveries respecting the Aurora