RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 167 



from the same source. Not seeing any other explanation, he suggests 

 that they may have beow given by direct revelation from Grod. This 

 hypothesis is reverent, but the very interesting fact to which he calls 

 attention caa be explained without resort to miracle. The original 

 instructor in these arts was the ancient Cushite civilization, which 

 went into Africa from the east and the north, and was felt for a very 

 long period of time in all its central countries.'"^-'. The merest tyro in 

 archasology would find little diffiiculty in filling an entire number of 

 the Journal with extracts illustrative of this third class of facts. 



Another class of facts may be called ethological, I do not use thia 

 word in the same sense as Sir William Hamilton or Mr. Mill, nor is it 

 indeed the same word which they employ ; since "E0OI, rite, custom, 

 and not their 'HdOI, disposition, character, is the root. Ethology 

 would thus be the doctrine of customs or rites. Among the most 

 notable rites practised in different parts of the world are those con- 

 nected with burial, and which the name of Charon, the ferryman of 

 the Styx, at once suggests. Diodorus Siculus brings these rites from 

 Egypt, with many other ceremonies f** and even the Muscovites, it 

 appears, received the knowledge of them.^^ Pluto and the parapher- 

 nalia of Hades wandered westward from the Stygian fount in Idumea, 

 through Greece, Sicily and Gallia Narbonensis, to Spain.*^** The branch 

 of gold, gathered from a tree in the wood of Hecate, is plainly the 

 mistletoe of the Druids 3**^* the Gallic forest-worship is the grove- 

 worship of Palestine f'' the Druidical cauldron is that of Dodona j^** 

 and Taliessin's Metempsychosis claims kindred with that of the Hin- 

 doos." The rites of Ceres, or the Eleusinian mysteries, may be traced 

 in Egypt, India and Britain as distinctly as in Greece." The extent 

 to which circumcision is found to have been practised has led many to 

 deny the fact of its being a purely Abrahamic institution." Phallus- 

 worship, often wrongly connected with this rite, is found to have been 

 still more widely diffused.'^* Festivals of lamps and Bale-(Baal)fire3 



66 Baldwin, Prehistoric Nations, 327. 



«« Diod. Sic. i., Sec. ii., 34, 36. 



«' Banier, ii., 436. 



«8 Id. ii., 449. 68* Virgilii .^Eneis, vi., 201. 



»9 Id. ii., 624. 



'0 Davies, British Dmids, 217. 



" Id., 573. 



'2 Herodot., ii., 171. Asiatic Researche.?, v., 297. Strabo, iv., 4 6. 



?3 Kenrick, Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, i., 376. 



7* Maurice, Indian Antiquities, Vol. i., Pt. i., p. 264. 



