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tion of sneezing, for not one of ns, for instance, believes anything of the kind ; 
and indeed most of us rather enjoy a good sneeze very heartily. But the 
reason why Sir J. Lubbock has joined issue on the point whether the custom 
is an arbitrary one or not is because a community of arbitrary customs is 
the best proof of a common origin or unity ; and he goes on to say that the 
deduction that two and two make four, or that twelve months make a year, 
which we arrive at naturally, is no proof of a common origin. But, in 
making that remark, the learned baronet has fallen into a strange mistake. 
Most certainly such a division of the year into twelve months is purely 
arbitrary, for naturally the division would be into thirteen months, from the 
thirteen moons that occur in the year. There are several other arbitrary 
customs mentioned in the paper of Sir J. Lubbock to which I have alluded, 
but which I do not think by any means so exhaustive as the one we have 
just had the pleasure of listening to. The most important of all these arbi- 
trary customs is one which has only been slightly glanced at by Mr. Titcomb, 
but still sufficiently to show that he has not overlooked the point, and that 
is the division of the sky into “ constellations ” of stars. I hope one day that 
we shall have some able author to take up that subject, so as to show a com- 
munity of thought and object in dividing the starry sky into those very 
arbitrary signs designated by arbitrary figures and animals of various kinds, 
which seems to me to be a thing which could never have occurred independently 
to different peoples. It is a fact that the tendency of the present day has been 
to try to reverse that custom, though it is found that throughout the whole 
world, wherever there is the least knowledge of astronomy retained, you have 
the signs of the zodiac pretty nearly as we have them on the celestial globe. 
But the original divisions seem to have faded most completely and exten- 
sively in America, although, as has been mentioned by Mr. Titcomb, even 
there they have been retained in some few instances. Before I sit down, 
and with reference to the remark made regarding the mode of interpreting 
the Scriptures, I am going to take the liberty of criticising the paper on one 
point, and one only. There is no doubt whatever that what has been 
supposed to be the teaching of the Scriptures has much more frequently 
been the teaching merely of the belief of the people into whose hands the 
Scriptures have fallen, and who have' been the generally accepted teachers of 
the day, and of course at certain different stages in the history of Christen- 
dom. Substantially, no doubt, Professor Macdonald is quite right in saying 
that the clergy were once the sole interpreters of the Scriptures. But it is 
unnecessary to tell him that then the clergy were the only “ clerks ” or 
learned people, and that they alone taught science and everything else. They 
naturally had their science drawn from such sources as they could get, but 
when they had once got a notion which they thought to be science they very 
often found it in the Scriptures also, just as Professor Macdonald has found 
the theory of the pre- Adamite men there ! The only two or three words of 
the paper to which I am going to take a slight exception — and I am sure 
Mr. Titcomb will excuse me, and will agree with me when I have explained 
what I mean — are those which referred to the belief respecting the shape of 
