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CHAPTEE VII. 



GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CULTURE. 



Direct record is the mainstay of History^ and where this fails 

 us in remote places and times, it becomes much more difficult 

 to make out where civilization has gone forward, and where it 

 has fallen back. As to progress in the first place ; when any 

 important movement has been made in modern times, there 

 have usually been well-informed contemporary writers, only 

 too glad to come before the public with something to say that 

 the world cared to hear. But in going down to the lower 

 levels of traditional history, this state of things changes. It 

 is not only that real information becomes more and more 

 scarce, but that the same curiosity that we feel about the origin 

 and growth of civilization, unfortunately combined with a dis- 

 position to take any semblance of an answer rather than live 

 in face of mere blank conscious ignorance, has favoured the 

 growth of the crowd of mythic inventors and civilizers, who 

 have their place in the legends of so many distant ages and 

 countries. Their stories often give us names, dates, and places, 

 even the causes which led to change, — just the information 

 wanted, if only it were true. And, indeed, recollections of 

 real men and their inventions may sometimes have come to be 

 included among the tales of these gods, heroes, and sages ; 

 and sometimes a mythic garb may clothe real history, as when 

 Cadmus, Dip, " The East," brings the Phoenician letters to 

 Greece. But, as a rule, not history, but mythology fallen cold 



