DISCOVKRY 



247 



he lived. But it has been too little noted that, before 

 the Proclamation of Emancipation became not only 

 practicable but necessary, he had used every effort to 

 initiate a policy of gradual and compensated emancipa- 

 tion coupled with education in the Border States, which 

 was likely to have been spontaneously followed by each 

 seceding State as it returned to the Union, and to have 

 placed the negro in a better position than he occupies 

 to-day. He failed because in his day he stood almost 

 alone in what all would now recognise as a true view 

 of the relation between the races. It was a kindlier, 

 not a colder, view than that of any mere wholesale 

 philanthropist. Few things are more moving in his 

 Life than the notices preserved of his actual intercourse 

 with negroes. It must suffice as an illustration that a 

 great negro preacher who came to him, at his earnest 

 desire, to confer with him on some acute point of differ- 

 ence, came away exclaiming in astonishment, " He 

 treated me as a man ! He did not let me feel for a 

 moment that there was any difference in the colour of 

 our skins ! " How many of us ever produce that effect 

 on a man of swarthier colour ? 



Thus the full comprehension, which was not at first 

 fKJSsible, of Lincoln's main actions and motives produces 

 an effect of intellectual and moral grandeur which his 

 abundant minor faiUngs only endear. If, further, we 

 considered now the quality of his oratory, we should 

 find it to lie, above all, in the sincerity of a man who 

 would not " deceive the people even by a single adjec- 

 tive." His robust devotion to government by the 

 popular vote was rooted in an intense but quite clear- 

 sighted, patient, and disillusioned behef in the good 

 that lies in ordinary people. Lastlj', though the once 

 hotly contested subject of his religion lies a little beyond 

 the scope of this article, the truth, as it now stands out, 

 lends a peculiar interest to the deepest of his wholly 

 unorthodox and unconventional thoughts ; and we 

 may close our survey of his great work by recalling the 

 wordswhichhe spoke, in a rare outburst of confideHce, to 

 a friend while his election to the Presidency was pro- 

 ceeding : "If He has a place and work for me, and I 

 think He has, I believe I am ready." 



The Discoveries in Crete 



By George Glasgow, B.A. 



(Continued from June No., p. 178) 

 III 

 If the nine Minoan periods into which Sir Arthur 

 Evans has divided the Bronze Age in Crete are primarily 

 a fanciful play upon the " nine seasons " of King 



Minos's reign in Knossos, the system of dating itself 

 is by no means fanciful. It rests on a solid basis. It 

 has been made possible mainly by the fact that the 

 ancient Cretans were seafarers. Cretan products were 

 exported to Egypt, and have been found there along- 

 side Egyptian deposits of more or less known date. 

 Hence a system of sequence-dating can be estabhshed. 

 It is obvious that a Cretan vase found side by side with 

 an Egyptian vase of 2500 B.C. belongs to an earlier 

 period than one found with deposits of 1500 B.C. This 

 fixing of landmarks is the first step. The second is to 

 assign to them absolute dates in the terms of our own 

 chronology. Owing to the fact that Egyptian dates 

 (within at least certain limits) are known in terms of 

 our own, and that Egyptian ware has been found in 

 Crete as well as Cretan in Egypt, equation is possible. 

 The chief difficulty is that Egyptian chronology is 

 itself variously interpreted, and one particular version 

 has had to be fixed on for comparison. Three con- 

 venient and easily-remembered landmarks have been 

 established ; 



[a) Early Minoan II corresponds to Dynasty VI in 

 the early Dynastic Period of Egypt, circa 2500 B.C. ' 



[h) Middle Minoan II corresponds to Dynasty XII 

 in the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, circa 2000 B.C. 



(c) Late Minoan II corresponds to Dynasty XVIII in 

 the New Empire of Egypt, circa 1500 B.C. 



Traces of commercial intercourse overseas can be 

 found as far back as the Neolithic Age. Among the 

 deposits of stone implements in Crete are great quan- 

 tities of obsidian knives, and the only source of obsidian 

 in the .■Egean was the island of Melos. Obsidian is a 

 kind of volcanic glass which flakes off into layers, 

 giving a natural edge. Excavators, who are as childish 

 as most people, have shaved with obsidian knives. It 

 is said that the result has sometimes been a near 

 shave. 



It is probable that the Minoan Empire had a navy as 

 well as a merchant marine. Minos was commonly 

 represented as " Ruler of the Waves," and the Greek 

 historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, refer to him 

 as a mythical character celebrated as the first possessor 

 of a fleet. The extent of the Minoan Empire can be 

 gauged by the survival of many trading stations and 

 naval outposts on all the shores of the ^gean, from 

 Sicily in the East to Gaza in the West, which bore the 

 name " Minoa. " There was a discreditable chapter, 

 so tradition relates, in the Empire's history. When 

 the King's son Androgeos went to Athens to compete 

 in the games, he carried all before him, and was slain 

 in jealousy ; whereupon the all-powerful Minos decreed 

 that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens should 



' As the evidence for this equation is slight compared with 

 that for the other two, it must be accepted with reserve at 

 present as a good working hypothesis. 



