THE PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 
21 
to the niegalithic remains in Cornwall has been well-nigh given 
up ; and yet there are many who are averse to the modem matter 
of fact explanation which Fergusson, for instance, in his " Rude 
Stone Monuments," offers us to account for the remains in question. 
There is a saying of Malebranche, quoted by Sir W. Hamilton in 
his " Metaphysics," vol. i. p. 13, to the effect that "if I held 
Truth captive in my hand, I would open my hand in order once 
more to peruse the Truth and so it is with many others, and 
especially arch seolo gists. There is a venerable obscurity and misti- 
ness connected with such studies that refuses to give place to the 
sunlight ; if for a moment the clouds rend, and the mists rise, and 
the fogs lift ; yet it is but for a moment, and back we go into the 
mystery and gloom of the half -solved questions which delighted 
the past age, and racked the ingenuity of archaeologists now gone 
to realms of less obscurity, and free from enigmas. Undoubtedly 
there was a charm in the Druidical theory which converted our 
lithic circles into choirs or churches, and our cromlechs into altars, 
on which had bled the human victims consecrated to Moloch, or 
some other time-honoured yet blood-thirsty idol-god. Eut alas 
for the fickleness of all such self- evolved theories ! Our familiarity 
with sacrifice made us suppose this to be the constant adjunct of 
all religious or superstitious worship ; and as the idea of worship 
without an altar was inadmissible, according to the received tradi- 
tional teaching of our time, therefore there must be altars, which 
were perhaps but the moss-covered memorial of some long for- 
gotten chieftain, who in early days ruled over the territory which 
was enclosed by the horizon, as by a circle of fancied rocks, 
an idea derived probably from the cloud-gathered attendants of the 
morning or evening twilight, which thus became the analogues of 
the stones that were erected around the central spot of his sepul- 
ture. In order to place this theory in an intelligible light, I must 
refer to some of the oldest traditions of the human race, as they 
come down to us from remote antiquity ; and fortunately I am able 
to do so with some degree of certainty, as I do not depend on mere 
fanciful derivations, but on the evidence of the oldest symbolical 
language in the world. I mean the Chinese. And I may say, before 
going further, that these same symbols are found here and there 
scattered through the world, proving that they were at first uni- 
versally understood, just as it is now asserted by one of our best 
sinologists (Dr. Edkins), that the phonetic roots of the Chinese 
