FROM SAVAGE TO CIVILIZED LIFE. 207 



" nothing can be purer than its morality, nothing sublimer than its philosophy, 

 nothing simpler than its ritual, nothing more majestic than its creed."* 



The state of society after the Deluge, may thus be considered as one in 

 a comparatively high degree of civilization. Soon after that event, the mul- 

 tiplied descendants of the patriarch combined to erect a city and a tower ; and 

 his great-grandsons, Nimrod and Asshur, are recorded as the founders of large 

 cities,f ^e ruins of which now remain, a testimony of the truth of the Sacred 

 Record. There is here therefore no grounds for the supposition that the race 

 were savage, or had risen from savage progenitors. The arts, the animals, and 

 the grains of former ages, were the property of the descendants of Noah, who 

 dwelt in the plain of Shinar ; and from this starting-place are to be traced, in the 

 traditions, histories, and monuments of the race, the dispersion of the various fa- 

 milies who were to people the most distant quarters of the world.:): 



The mode in which the human race spread over the world after this period 

 the routes pursued by the various families and the foundation of cities and civi- 

 lized governments, it is no part of my intention, v even if I Avere qualified for the 

 task, to enter upon. I confine myself to establishing the propositions, That man 

 was at his creation a civilized being, endowed with all the physical and intellec- 

 tual powers necessary to his state as a moral and responsible agent, and requisite 

 to enable him to acquire a more intimate knowledge of the creation around him : 

 That the domestic animals, created for his iise, were his companions, and obedi- 

 ent to his will, from the beginning : That the cultivation of the Cerealia was the 

 earliest occupation of the human race : That, prior to the Deluge, the human race 

 had planted cities and practised many of the more useful arts : and, That the sur- 

 vivors of the Deluge started with all the knowledge of their predecessors the 

 possession of the domesticated animals, and the grains necessary to their processes 

 of agriculture. These propositions being granted, it belongs to the philosopher or 

 statesman, to trace the causes, physical and moral, which have reduced the de- 

 scendants of a highly civilized people to the degraded state in which many tribes 

 of men are now found. Is there a downward tendency in the constitution of 

 man ? Have nations, like individuals, their beginning, their increase, and their 

 end their rise and fall? Does history and observation demonstrate, that the 



* The Book of Job literally translated, by J. MASON GOOD, F.R. S. Introd. p. i. 



t Genesis, xi. 4. x. 10. 



I " The boundless riches of the Babylonian fields gave birth," says Mr ALISON, " even in the first 

 ages, to those stupendous cities from whence the enterprise of commerce dispersed the human race in 

 every direction through central Asia ; while the uniform pasturage of the Scythian wilds spread before 

 them a vast highway stored with food, by means of which they could penetrate with ease to the remotest 

 extremities of the old world." ALISON on Population, i. 22. 



" Supposing Babel or Babylon to have been the centre of irradiation how easy was the transit for 

 HAM'S descendants into Africa by the Isthmus of Suez; into Europe the path was still more open for 

 those of JAPHET ; and as the stream of population spread to the east, the passage to America was not 

 difficult to those who had arrived at Behring's Straits." KIKBY'S Bridgewater Treatise, i. 76. 



