206 MR STARK ON THE SUPPOSED PROGRESS OF HUMAN SOCIETY 



accounted for how the race should have declined to barbarism and savage life. 

 Between the period of the Creation and the Deluge, no facts are recorded concern- 

 ing individual portions of the race, with the exception of one family. Beyond 

 that family " all flesh had corrupted their ways." Whether a physical degrada- 

 tion accompanied this moral declension, is not apparent ; but as far as regards 

 the civilization of the race, and the knowledge of the arts previously practised, 

 the survivors of the Deluge were the depositaries and the examples to their future 

 descendants. That their situation was not one of savage barbarity, nor of feed- 

 ing upon acorns, or hunting wild animals, is evident from the Sacred Record. 

 And it is fairly presumable, that all the arts and sciences of the antediluvians 

 their knowledge of the true God and his worship, were the property of the se- 

 cond progenitors of the human race, and communicated to their descendants. 



What the state of the human race was at this time, is apparent from the 

 Sacred Record. Agriculture, horticulture the vine and the olive flocks and herds, 

 were the known resources of the children of Noah ; and however from soil, cli- 

 mate, or relative situation, it became necessary for particular families, his descen- 

 dants, to choose the pastoral or agricultural life as their chief employment or 

 means of support, yet the adoption of the one did not necessarily exclude the 

 knowledge or practice of the other. No one, from finding a country more fit 

 for pasturage than tillage, necessarily excludes from his mind or practice, the 

 arts by which grains are raised and food provided ; on the contrary it is pre- 

 sumable, and indeed certain, that even the pastoral tribes raised a certain 

 quantity of corn for the supply of their families and flocks.* Besides, there are 

 large portions of the globe unfitted for the operations of agriculture. The Penin- 

 sula of Arabia, abounding in vast sandy deserts, is almost wholly occupied by no- 

 made races ; and Central Asia, for the most part a bare table land, without fo- 

 rests, has been inhabited by wandering tribes of pastoral people from the com- 

 mencement of history. The nature of the country fixes the wandering and pas- 

 toral mode of life upon the races inhabiting such districts ; and when the want of 

 irrigation and other causes renders the raising of crops to any extent impossible, 

 pasturage over immense districts is the necessary and chief occupation of the in- 

 habitants. 



The Book of Job, written, it is conjectured, centuries before the time of Moses, 

 and at least a thousand years before the poems of Homer and Hesiod, may be re- 

 ferred to as evidence of the state of civilization and knowledge at that early period 

 of the history of Man. The vine and the olive were cultivated (xv. 33.) ; the 

 ground ploughed for the growth of corn (i. 14.) ; metals used for domestic purposes 

 (xxxvii. 18.) ; the horse trained for war ; musical instruments were in use ; writ- 

 ten characters employed (xix. 23, 24.), and astronomy studied. The evidences of 

 a highly civilized society are prominent in all the details of this vivid picture of 

 ancient manners ; and as to its own composition, according to Dr MASON GOOD, 



* Genesis, xxiv. 32. 



