of the development of man, as already observed in the introduction to this work. The genius of primeval Asia comes before us in the early history of Egypt, both as regards language and mythology, in the form of a chrysalis, within which, however, a new life is already in operation. This life is conscious spirit-the spirit of organically creative personality, stamping on the fluctuating phenomena, which flow on in one eternal stream, the impress of the divine thought of universal history.

By virtue of this impress an organic formation is produced, which preserves and carries on the old element, and raises the development of the tribe or people into a part of the historic whole. Of this creative working of the mind, thus awakened into complete consciousness, we find the oldest records in the linguistic formations of Egypt, by which the most serious lacuna in history is filled up.

The ultimate object, then, of the present Book is to represent this development as actual and historical.

The question as to the place of Egypt in historical chronology is thus at once changed to that of its place in the whole development of man. We pass out of the domain of chronology and history into that of pure philosophy. The questions we must attempt to answer are these: What does this position in the development of the human mind imply? What is the place of the language of Egypt, what that of its mythology, in this pantheon of humanity? In what relation does it stand to the ultimate questions about history and philosophy?

It is obvious that a first attempt to give a general representation of the course of history according to these views, and upon that to sketch out the general laws of the development of mankind in its main epochs, must be very incomplete. In the present work, that sketch must be limited to the merest outlines. All that the author can hope for is, that the truths it con

tains will not be misapprehended owing to the shortcomings with which they are coupled, but that they may gradually pave the way to a more correct estimate of the development and destiny of our race, as well as facilitate the understanding of general history as the Kosmos of Mind.

The present work, so far from throwing a veil over obscure points and lacunæ, will direct attention to several which have been hitherto unnoticed. I am persuaded, however, that these obscurities and lacunæ will offer no impediment to our arriving at a correct view of the whole, nor prevent us from recognising the continuity in the divine development of man. However

much additional information as to details future discoveries may supply, the facts now before us appear to justify us in sketching the outlines of this historical development with a cautious, but at the same time. with a steady, hand.

These remarks, which will be worked out still further in the following discussions, are sufficient to substantiate and elucidate the philological as well as philosophical or speculative basis of the historical illustration here attempted.

This investigation is divided, first of all, into two principal parts, indicated by the title of this Book: the examination of the Origines, and the establishment and approximate calculation of the Ages of the World. The primeval time includes two vast formations, which constitute an indivisible whole, that of language and that of mythology.

The first four Sections of the present work treat of the Origines; the fifth of the Ages of the World; the sixth, with which the whole concludes, is an attempt to fit the picture of Egypt into this historical frame.

Social life, in the primitive times, grew out of the union of families into a confederation of tribes. In that stage, therefore, the germs of the body politic already

existed; but the independent shape and development of these beginnings, which grew out of the vast primeval formations, belongs to the latter half of general history.

The nations of the old world, at their first appearance on the stage of history, were possessed of language, probably of the rudiments of writing and of mythology. According to an organic law which is obviously innate in man, people-history advances by races. Philology has discovered the existence of two vast branches of cognate organic languages, the Semitic and Iranian. The stage anterior to Semism is Khamism, the one contemporary with Iranism is Turanism. This antecedent stage is antediluvian. Peoplehistory is postdiluvian. We find in it, thousands of years before Menes, first of all a world-empire, the realm of Nimrod the Kushite, or rather the Kossman, which probably embraced Egypt as well as Western Asia, the district of the Euphrates and Tigris.

The Semitic branch, in its Khamitic type, extended through Menes as far as the Mediterranean, and attained to positive rank in the world. The Egyptian form of Khamism struggled on in antagonism to the kingdoms of the historical Semites. They both fell under the Arians, who from thenceforth obtained the supremacy of the world, and have retained it to the present day.

Egypt became subject, first of all, to the Iranian tribe of the Arians; shortly after, Cyrus the Persian subjugated the older Iranians (the Medes and Bactrians), and by the conquest of Babylon made himself the heir of the Semitic empires. But it was Alexander, the great European-Asiatic, who severed for ever the thread of Egyptian life, and planted the Hellenic banner of Alexandria upon the tomb of the Pharaohs.

If we connect these views with the historical development before us, we shall find in the first place ancient history divided into antediluvian and postdiluvian. For

the former we. require 10,000 years, which we can prove approximately to be the extent of the latter period before Christ.

Modern history, or the age of historical personalities, commences with Abraham and his race: the most modern with Christ and the formation of Christian communities.

The details of the subdivisions of the Ages of the world will be given in the fifth part.

II.

PRELIMINARY DEFINITION OF THE

CONNEXION BETWEEN EGYPTIAN

LANGUAGE AND MYTHOLOGY, AND THE CORRESPONDING SYSTEMS IN ASIA AND EUROPE: WITH EIGHT THESES.

Ir rarely happens that the beginnings of ancient peoples offer to the student of history any traces of a foreign origin, or even any direct affinity with the corresponding institutions of other peoples or tribes. The fact of merely isolated or general features in these beginnings having come down to us, which have been rescued from the forgetfulness of posterity and the destruction of subsequent ages, is not the only way of explaining it. There is probably a stronger reason in the fact that the earliest political institutions are apt to give a partial prominence to the special peculiarities of the people in question, in those obscure times when they lived in families and tribes, and the general historical consciousness was thrown into the background.

The case is very different with the beginnings of language and mythology. These traditions are handed down from the house to the tribe, and from the tribe to the people.

This is especially so in regard to Egypt. Here two

questions meet us at the outset which require to be answered. The first is, Whether any affinity exists between the language and mythology of Egypt and those of Asia? The second, Where are we to look for the starting-point, in Egypt or in primeval Asia? This latter question, as a general one, is usually answered in favour of Asia. But the former has, since the discovery of the hieroglyphic system, hitherto only been argued, as to mythology, by myself; as to language, it has been answered affirmatively by me, negatively by M. Renan. This acute and learned reasoner, however, seems to me to admit the fact by admitting the identity of the Coptic and Semitic pronouns; he might have added, the identity of roots. Either all the axioms and results which have thus far been verified by philology are false, or the Egyptian language has an original affinity with the Asiatic languages, and especially with the Semitic. The Bible, rightly understood, is in accordance with this view. Kham is called the father of Kanaan, and the Kanaanites spoke Semitic; Abraham's adopted language is called Kanaanitic. The Kanaanites were Semitic races, driven back out of conquered Egypt. Kham himself came from the original country of the Semites, from Chaldea, before their language had grown into historical Khamism. If we prove this fact of the original affinity, we have obtained a fixed point for the chronology of the formation of language in primitive Asia both backwards and forwards, and we have, for the first time, explained a Biblical statement about the primeval world.

But I will state at once, in the most unqualified terms, that it is impossible to question the assumption of there being a similar historical connexion with the old world as regards mythology, when we dispassionately consider the facts before us, without being doggedly wedded to prejudices which have lost all foundation, and can only be retained through stolid ignorance.