288 Mr Beke on the Classification qf Languages, 



we only admit the fact of the occurrence of such an event, we 

 can at once understand how the condition of the first ancestors 

 of the present race of mankind was not a natural but an artificial 

 one, derived from the previous social state of the antediluvian 

 world. Hence we can have no difficulty in conceiving how the 

 social condition of man may have fallen from the culture of that 

 artificial primitive state to the condition of the uncultivated sa- 

 vat^e, through all those intermediate stages of civilization which, 

 according to the contrary hypothesis, have been regarded as the 

 steps by which man has progressed upwards. 



The process of this declension in civihzation may be thus 

 briefly stated. When mankind first began to separate, and to 

 be " scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth," it is mani- 

 fest that the amount of knowledge in every department of pursuit 

 must have diminished at every step that was taken from the 

 centre, unless each tribe could have ensured to itself (which 

 would have scarcely been possible) the possession of individuals 

 imbued with the aggregate of the acquirements of the parent 

 society. Knowledge can in no case remain perfectly stationary : 

 it must either advance or recede : and the latter must universal- 

 ly have been the case in the first instance, and must have con- 

 tinued to be so, until the numbers of mankind had sufl[]ciently 

 increased to allow them again to begin to accumulate — each na- 

 tion in its own particular sphere of acquirements — the know- 

 ledge which had been retained by direct transmission from the 

 common centre, or which had subsequently been derived from 

 the circumstances in which they had respectively been placed. 



Subsequently to the dispersion of mankind from Shinar, the 

 pressure of population would doubtless have been the primary 

 cause of the general distribution of the human race over the 

 earth, and of their consequent descent in the scale cf civiliza- 

 tion. To this, however, are to be added disputes among neigh- 

 bouring people, too often ending in warfare ; the dislike of some 

 races to the countries in which they had voluntarily settled, or 

 into which they had been compelled to migrate ; and the desire, 

 or probably the necessity, of obtaining possessions more suited 

 to their inclinations or their requirements. As the social tie 

 gradually became weaker, the growth of erratic habits, and the 

 consequent rapid declension in civilization which universally at- 

 tends the settling of new lands, would operate ; leading at 



