C H AFTER XXI 



THE DECLINE OF MEN AND RACES 



ALL history bears out the contention of a 

 primitive purity of religion, that was 

 gradually lost in proportion as men pro- 

 ceeded farther from the fountain source of the 

 first Divine Revelation. "Thus Diodorus Siculus," 

 writes Father Robert Kane, "says that the old 

 Chaldeans held a religion of pure tradition, and 

 did not, like the Greeks, seek to discover some- 

 thing novel by the exercise of their own ingenuity. 

 Plato tells of a reproach addressed by the Egyp- 

 tian Sages to the Greeks. The Sages held that 

 the true religion was the one handed down from 

 generation to generation, and they blamed the 

 Greeks for ignoring this. It is a rule of Aris- 

 totle, often also insisted upon by Plato, that to 

 discover the truth we must find out what was said 

 of old, what was the primitive doctrine, for this 

 was the teaching of God. It was the opinion of 

 Socrates that our early progenitors have trans- 

 mitted to us sublime lessons taught originally from 

 on high. There are many similar assertions to 

 be met with in Cicero who constantly declares an- 

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