THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 163 



here." And this, not perhaps distinctly formulated, but everywhere 

 implied, is the belief in which nearly all men are brought up. Let us 

 glance at the genesis of it. 



Round their camp-fire assembled savages tell the events of the 

 day's chase ; and he among them who has done some feat of skill or 

 agility is duly lauded. On a return from the war-path, the sagacity 

 of the chief, and the strength or courage of this or that warrior, are the 

 all-absorbing themes. When the day, or the immediate past, affords 

 no remarkable deed, the topic is the achievement of some noted leader 

 lately dead, or some traditional founder of the tribe : accompanied, it 

 may be, with a dance dramatically representing those victories which 

 the chant recites. Such narratives, concerning as they do the prosper- 

 ity and indeed the very existence of the tribe, are of the intensest in- 

 terest ; and in them we have the common root of music, of the drama, 

 of poetry, of biography, of history, and of literature in general. Sav- 

 age life furnishes little else worthy of note ; and the chronicles of 

 tribes contain scarcely any thing more to be remembered. Early his- 

 toric races show us the same thing. The Egyptian frescoes and the 

 wall-sculptures of the Assyrians represent the deeds of their chief 

 men ; and inscriptions such as that on the Moabite stone tell of noth- 

 ing more than royal achievements: only by implication do these 

 records, pictorial, hieroglyphic, or written, convey any thing else. 

 And similarly from the Greek epic : though we gather incidentally 

 that there were towns, and war-vessels, and war-chariots, and sailors, 

 and soldiers to be led and slain, yet the direct intention is to set forth 

 the triumphs of Achilles, the prowess of Ajax, the wisdom of Ulysses, 

 and the like. The lessons given to every civilized child tacitly imply, 

 like the traditions of the uncivilized and semi-civilized, that through- 

 out the past of the human race the doings of the leading persons have 

 been the only things worthy to be chronicled. How Abraham girded 

 up his loins and gat him to this place or that ; how Samuel conveyed 

 divine injunctions which Saul disobeyed; how David recounted his 

 adventures as a shepherd, and was reproached for his misdeeds as a 

 king these, and personalities akin to these, are the facts about which 

 the juvenile reader of the Bible is interested and respecting which he 

 is catechised : such indications of Jewish institutions as have unavoid- 

 ably got into the narrative being regarded neither by him nor by his 

 teacher as of moment. So too, when, with hands behind him, he stands 

 to say his lesson out of " Pinnock," we see that the things set down 

 for him to learn are when and by whom England was invaded ; what 

 rulers opposed the invasions and how they were killed ; what Alfred 

 did and what Canute said ; who fought at Agincourt and who con- 

 quered at Flodden ; which king abdicated and which usurped, etc. ; 

 and if by some chance it comes out that there were serfs in those days, 

 that barons were local rulers, some vassals of others, that subordina- 

 tion of them to a central rule took place gradually, these are facts 



