202 SIR W. M. RAMSAY^ ON EXPLORATION OF ASIA MINOR^ AS BEARING 



maintain it, and its consequences and the inferences founded on 

 it still survive and are quoted and widely believed. The 

 prejudice had no foundation except in the fact that sucli was 

 the case in mediteval Europe, and it was assumed that what 

 was the case in the Middle Ages must have been still more 

 decidedly the case in ancient times. In other words, this 

 prejudice rests on the preliminary assumption that there has 

 been a continuous development in civilisation and knowledge 

 since ancient times. That, again, is mere prejudice which 

 deceives men by its pseudo-scientific character. We now all 

 are devotees of the theory of development : it has ceased to be 

 a theory and is made the basis and the formative principle in 

 our mind and thoughts. Kightly or wrongly, we must have 

 development everywhere, and in this case it is utterly wrongly, 

 for in religion the human tendency is always towards 

 degeneration, not towards development, and in civilisation 

 there occurred the almost total destruction of the ancient 

 knowledge and the ancient education. 



There was, therefore, no ground for the practically universal 

 assumption that writing was not familiarly used in ancient 

 times for ordinary purposes of life. Yet this assumption was 

 made the basis for arguments in literary history, and in 

 particular for arguments against the early date of many old 

 books, such as the books of Moses and of Homer. The 

 picservation of books from the period to which these com- 

 positions were traditionally assigned was impossible without 

 writing, and writing was either unknown or practised only in a 

 very narrowly limited way at that period. This argument was, I 

 confess, quite convincing to me when I was studying, under 

 Robertson Smith's guidance before the year 1880, the Hebrew 

 history. The reply to this argument equally assumed the false 

 premise about the rarity of writing and merely pleaded that 

 memory unaided by writing was quite fit for the composition 

 and preservation of great literary works. This reply was 

 hopelessly inadequate. There would be no difficulty in com- 

 mitting to memory the Iliad, for example ; personally, I knew 

 that T. could easily do so, if there were anything great to gain 

 tliereby. lUit a vast deal more than mere memory is needed 

 before tlie civilisation is formed in which such a literature can 

 ])e conqiosed and Ijecome a national possession, a power, a 

 ]>ible. I mention this re])ly — tlie only reply then made — 

 mereh' to sliow liow universal in (piite recent times that 

 assumption about the ignoranc(\ or at least extreme rarity, of 

 knowledge of writing was. Homeric and Biblical criticism, 



