70 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



which has passed long ago are preserved in the soil of China; in this 

 great empire, there are provinces where not so long ago axes and cut- 

 ting instruments were made of hard stone," etc. 



Giglioli (/. c), as shown by the very title of his article, and C. 

 Puini 1 have taken the same stand. 



Prof. Hirth has adopted a special platform (The Ancient History 

 of China, p. 236), and his argument deserves a hearing, as it is based 

 on a discourse of the philosopher Kuan-tse. Hirth believes that 

 "this philosopher was fully conscious of the extent and sequence of 

 cultural periods in high antiquity, knowledge of which, as the result 

 of scientific reasoning, is a comparatively recent acquisition with west- 

 erners." The words of the philosopher are then construed to mean 

 that the time of the primeval emperors (about b. c. 3000) was a stone 

 age in which weapons were made of stone and were used for splitting 

 wooden blocks for the construction of dwellings, and that this first 

 period is followed by a second age extending from about b. c. 2700- 

 2000 in which jade was used for similar purposes. "This may be 

 compared," adds Hirth, "to our neolithic period, when hatchets and 

 arrow-heads were made of polished stone, either jade or flint." All 

 Chinese philosophers evince a great predilection for evolutionary 

 theorizing which appears as the mere outcome of subjective speculation 

 and cannot stand comparison with the methods and results of our 

 inductive science; deduction there, and induction on this side, make 

 all the difference. It is impossible to assume that the Chinese specula- 

 tors of later days should have preserved the memory of cultural events 

 and developments which must lie back, not centuries, but millenniums 

 before their time. Just the intentional interpretation of an evolution 

 read into the past which looks so pleasant on the surface is the strongest 

 evidence for the fact that this is a purely personal and arbitrary con- 

 struction or invention, not better than the legend of the golden, silver 

 and iron ages. Thus, I cannot agree either with Hirth (/. c, pp. 13, 

 14) in regarding the traditions clustering around the ancient emperors 

 as symbolizing "the principal phases of Chinese civilization" or their 

 names as "representatives of the preparatory periods of culture." 

 They are, in my opinion, culture-heroes (Heilbringer) of the same type 

 as found among a large number of primitive peoples, downright mythical 

 creations which have no relation whatever to the objective facts of 

 cultural development. Reality and tradition are two different things, 

 and the thread connecting reality with tradition is usually very slender. 

 Nowhere has the history of reality been so evolved as traditional or 



1 Le origini della civilta secondo la tradizione e la storia nell' Estremo Oriente, 

 p. 163 (Pubblicazioni del R. Istituto di Studi Superiori, Firenze, 1891). 



