218 THE STOIQE AGE PAST AND PRESENT. 



purpose j but if tliis were all, it would be far less troublesome 

 to liave a second knife than to use so miserable a substitute ; 

 and the argument does not toucb tbe Egyptian case of the 

 embalm ers. I cannot but tbink tbat most, if not all, of the 

 series are to be explained as being, to use tbe word in no 

 liarsb sense, but according to wliat seems its proper ety- 

 mology, cases of supersiition, of tbe "standing over" of old 

 habits into the midst of a new and changed state of things, of 

 the retention of ancient practices for ceremonial purposes, long 

 after they had been superseded for the commonplace uses of 

 ordinary life. Such a view takes in every instance which has 

 been mentioned, though the reason of iron not being adopted 

 by the modern Jews in one case as well as in another is not 

 clear. As to Pliny^s story of the balm of Gilead, I am told, 

 on competent authority, that the use of stone and such things 

 instead of iron for making incisions in the tree, if ever it 

 really existed, could be nothing but a superstition without any 

 foundation in reason. It may perhaps tell in favour of the story 

 being true, that it is only one of a number of cases mentioned 

 by Pliny, of plants as- to which the similar notion prevailed, 

 that they would be spoiled by being touched with an iron in- 

 strument.^ There seems, on the whole, to be a fair case for be- 

 lieving that among the Israelites, as in Ethiopia and Egypt, a 

 a ceremonial use of stone instruments long sundved the ge- 

 neral adoption of metal, and that such observances are to be 

 interpreted as relics of an earlier Stone Age ; while incidentally 

 the same argument makes it probable that the rite of circum- 

 cision belonged to the Stone Age among the ancient Israelites, 

 as we know it does among the modern Australians. - 



With regard to the foregoing accounts, there is a point which 

 requires further remark. Glass has been mentioned by the 

 side of stone, as a material for making sharp instruments of; 

 and it may seem at first sight an unreasonable thing to make 

 the use of a production which belongs to so advanced a state 

 of civilization as glass, evidence of a Stone Age. But savages 

 have so unanimously settled it, that glass is a kind of stone 



' Plin., xix. 57, xxiii. 81, ssiy. 6, 62. 



^ Gr. F. Aiigas, ' South Australia Illustrated ; ' London, 1847, pi. v. 



