Chapter XIII · NOAH AND THE GOLDEN AGE.

Taking as the basis of this theory that the law of nations forms part of a tradition, that the stream of this tradition has never ceased to flow, and that the diffusion of its waters has ever been the source and condition of fecundity; and further, that this tradition in its main current has run in the channels which Dr Newman (infra, p. 338) has indicated—for although there are other reservoirs, they have become stagnant, and exist like the fresh-water lake, the Bahr-i-Nedjig (vide Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” i. 18), whose waters are “fresh and sweet” so long as they communicate with the Euphrates, but when they are cut off become “unpalatable,” so that those “who dwell in the vicinity are no longer able to drink of it”—taking these various facts as the basis, we come inevitably to the question—Whence this tradition arose, and upon what authority and sanction it rests?

In answer to this I do not hesitate to affirm that presumptively it goes back to the commencement of human history, and more demonstrably to that commencement—which for historical and practical purposes is sufficient—the era of Noah.

I propose now to inquire how near this theory can be brought to the facts.

A fairer opportunity could hardly have been afforded for ascertaining the force and fulness of primitive tradition than the discovery of the American continent; yet this opportunity was totally disregarded by the Spanish conquerors,[266]—rough men, and for the most part the offscourings of Spain,—and its evidences were but sparsely and negligently collected by the explorers of a different character who followed at a later date.

Something, however, of primitive tradition has been thus preserved (vide Help’s “Spanish Conquest of America,” i. 278, 286, 290; Prescott, “Mexico,” i. 54). Indeed, the approximation to the biblical narrative is so close that the suspicion would be quite reasonable that missionaries of whom we have no record had found their way to these people before the continent became known to us; or that the people themselves were of Jewish descent; or that they had left the Asiatic mainland subsequently to the preaching of St Thomas the apostle. Manco Capac (vide infra), according to this conjecture, may have been one of these missionaries; or it may even be that in the venerable image which the description calls up we see in vision the apostle himself.

When, however, the description is compared with the traditions I have collated of a patriarchal character—still more remote and venerable, “Him of mazy counsel—Saturn” (Hesiod), I shall ask the reader to decide whether the more improbable conjecture, measured according to time and distance, has not the greater weight of evidence.

I proceed to place in juxtaposition a recapitulation of the classical and oriental traditions, and the quotations from Helps above referred to.

“One peculiar circumstance, as Humboldt remarks, is very much to be noted in the ancient records and traditions of the Indian nations. In no less than three remarkable instances has superior civilisation been attributed to the sudden presence amongst them of persons differing from themselves in appearance and descent.”

[As to the argument to be derived from colour and appearance, vide supra, p. 79.]

“Bochica, a white man with a beard, appeared to the Mozca Indians in the plains of Bogota, taught them how to build and to sow, formed them into communities, gave an outlet to the waters of the great lake [compare supra, p. 70, Chronology], and having settled the government, civil and ecclesiastical, retired into a monastic state of penitence for two thousand years.[267]

“In like manner Manco Capac, accompanied by his sister Mama Ocllo, descended amongst the Peruvians, gave them a code of admirable laws, reduced them into communities, and then ascended to his father the Sun.”[268] (A confusion with the tradition of Enoch, parallel to the like confusion in the person of Xisuthrus,[269] unmistakably identified with Noah in the Babylonian tradition.)

“Amongst the Mexicans there suddenly appeared Quetzalcohuatl, the green-feathered (i.e. elegant) snake” (compare with Chaldæan fish-god, p. 199), “a white and bearded man of broad brow, dressed in strange dress, a legislator who recommended severe penances, lacerating his own body with the prickles of the agave and the thorns of the cactus, but who dissuaded his followers from human sacrifices. While he remained in Anahuana it was a Saturnian reign; but this great legislator, after moving on to the plains of Cholulas, and governing the Cholulans with wisdom, passed away to a distant country” [if this looks more like the movement among them of some apostolic missionary, it is also in keeping with the journey of Bacchus, “travelling through all nations,” &c.], “and was never heard of more.” It is said briefly of him, that “he ordained sacrifices of flowers and fruit, and stopped his ears, when he was spoken to of war.”[270] Such a saint is needed in all times, even in the present advanced state of civilisation in the old world.”[271]—Help’s “Spanish Conquest of America,” i. 286.

I have shown (p. 211) that Calmet (and other authorities of the same date might be adduced) identifies Saturn with Noah. Among other proofs he points to the tradition of Saturn devouring his children (with the exception of three), as a distorted tradition of the destruction of mankind according to the prediction of Noah, upon the canon of interpretation, “that men are said often to do what they do not prevent, or even what they predict.” I have also shown that this conjecture receives attestation from a fragment of Sanchoniathon’s (Phœnician),important whether regarded as a more ancient parallel tradition, or as the same tradition nearer the fountain-head.

Without recapitulating the other points of resemblance (vide ch. x.), let us compare what is said of Saturn with what is said of Bochica, Manco Capac, &c.

“Under Saturn,” says Plutarch, “was the golden age.” “Saturn is represented with a scythe, as the inventor of agriculture.” Virgil (Æn. viii. 315) describes Saturn as bringing the dispersed people from the mountains and giving them laws. I have also drawn attention to the Saturnalia as connecting Bacchus with Saturn. Now Cicero tells us that one Bacchus was king of Asia, and author of laws called Subazian; and Bacchus is also said to have travelled through all nations doing good, in all places, and teaching many things profitable to the life of man.

Noah has also been identified with Janus, and under Janus as under Saturn was the golden age; and it is, moreover, said (vide p. 218), “that in the time of Janus all families were full of religion and holiness.” He is said to have been the first that built temples and instituted sacred rites, and was therefore always mentioned at the beginning of sacrifices. [This, in common with what is said of Quetzalcohuatl is again possibly a combined tradition of Enoch and Noah.]

Let both these traditions be compared with Berosus’ account of Hoa, or the fish-god (vide Rawlinson, “Anct. Mon.” i. p. 155, and supra, p. 238).

“He is said to have transmitted to mankind the knowledge of grammar and mathematics, and of all arts (or of any kind of art), and of the polity of cities, the construction and dedication of temples, the introduction of laws, to have taught them geometry, and to have shown them by example, the mode of sowing the seed and gathering the fruits of the earth; and along with them to have tradated all the secrets which tend to harmonise life. And no one else in that time was found so experienced as he.”[272]

In the traditions, however, which connect Noah with the Saturnian reign,[273] it appears to me that threefold confusion has to be disentangled.

I. There is a tradition of a golden and of a silver age frequently transfused.

II. When thus transfused there is often along with the tradition of a golden or silver age trace of a subordinate and incongruous tradition of a state of nature as a state of barbarism—both at the early commencement of things.

III. There is a double tradition of the succession of ages, the one ante-, the other post-diluvian.

I. The tradition of the golden age is primarily the tradition of Paradise, to which succeeded in gradation of degeneracy a silver, brass, and iron age. Of this line of tradition we have seen distinct trace in Sanchoniathon (supra, p. 127).

But there is also, as we have just seen, a tradition of another golden age connected with Saturn, Janus, &c., and of this perhaps we have the most direct testimony in the Chinese tradition.

“The Chinese traditions,” says Professor Rawlinson (Bampton Lectures, ii., quoting “Horæ Mos.” iv. 147) “are said to be less clear and decisive (than the Babylonian). They speak of a ‘first heaven’ and age of innocence when ‘the whole creation enjoyed a state of happiness; when everything was beautiful, everything was good; all things were perfect in their kind. Whereunto succeeded a second heaven, introduced by a great convulsion, in which the pillars of heaven were broken, the earth shook to its foundations, the heavens sank lower towards the north, the sun, moon, and stars changed their motions, the earth fell to pieces, and the waters enclosed within its bosom burst forth with violence and overflowed,’” &c.

Here, then, is a tradition of a second heaven, or a Saturnian reign, following a convulsion which will perhaps be conceded to be a tradition of the universal Deluge (vide p. 223), and which links the tradition of the Saturnian reign with the patriarch Noah?[274]

I ask now to be allowed to look at the same tradition from a different point of view.

I have elsewhere shown (p. 27) that according to the operation of natural causes everything in the primitive ages would have led to dispersion, but however probable or even certain these conjectures may be, we know as a fact that they did not operate (Gen. xi. 1, 3, 8) for some three hundred years or more, probably until after the death of Noah. Does not this look as if mankind were kept together for a period, in order that they might become settled in their ideas and confirmed in their maxims, under the influence and direction of the second father of mankind, whose direct communications with the Most High had been manifest, and whose authority necessarily commanded universal respect—“Him of mazy counsel, Saturn?” (Hesiod, “Theog.”)[275]

If this theory appears far-fetched and fanciful, let it be recollected, on the other hand, that there has long subsisted a tradition among mankind of a code of nature as connected with a state of nature, which has to be accounted for (vide chap. ii.)

And when we consider how the impulsion which a nation receives at the commencement of its history continues—how much, for instance, at the distance of a thousand years we resemble our Saxon ancestors of the eighth century, and even our ancestors of the German forest in identity of character, sentiment, and institution—we must not make the lapse of centuries an impassable barrier to a belief in the traditions of mankind in the early periods of history.

Let us also, in regarding the golden or silver age, glance beyond it to that iron age which ultimately followed it, in which the world, becoming crowded and also corrupted, many families and tribes collected together for warfare, and in which one nation swallowed another until all came to be absorbed, at least on the Asiatic continent, into one or two great empires, which again contended for supreme dominion. An age of universal war, of many sorrows, of great perturbations, but one in which the process of dispersion was stayed, and mankind settled down within certain definite lines of demarcation, which in great part have continued to this day.

No wonder, then, that men turned to each other in these dark days, and talked with regret of the simple agricultural and pastoral age which had passed, and which came variously to be called, in their recollection, the second heaven, the Arcadian era, the Saturnia regna,[276] the golden age. Neither is it surprising that the idea of a state of nature misconceived as to the facts, and of a law of nature dimly remembered and distorted by human perversity, has so often obtained among mankind in modern times and also in antiquity. This is a point which I shall discuss with reference to the historical evidence in another chapter.

II. The conception of the state of nature (chap. ii.) as a basis of theory and belief arose in the main out of the speculations of lawyers and philosophers; yet it is curious that we frequently come upon a concurrent yet always subordinate tradition of equality associated with the tradition of a golden age which, if the age of Noah, we know aliunde to have been a state of hierarchical subordination to a patriarchal chief; and, along with a reminiscence of a time of peaceful prosperity at the commencement of things, the tradition of the primitive age as one of great barbarism and privation, man living on acorns, &c.

That these testimonies of tradition are incongruous and confused, I am bound to admit; but then, looked at from the point of view of tradition, they seem to me to have their explanation. If this happens to be deemed somewhat fanciful, I contend that the test in all these cases must be—(1.) Does the key fit the lock? (2.) Is there any other key producible?[277] I venture, then, to suggest (p. 211) that the notion of the primitive equality may be traced through the Bacchanalian traditions; and the tradition of a primitive age of great privation I believe to be the recollection of that brief but probably sharp period of suffering during which mankind clung to the mountains in distrust of the Divine injunction and promise, until brought into the plains by Noah.[278] (Vide p. 137.)

Moreover, the characteristics of this subsequent period, when mankind were living together in groups of families under the mild sway of the patriarch, when “all families were good” (p. 218), and when

was just that semi-state of nature which it only required the Bacchanalian tradition on the one side to transform into the fiction of the state of savage and absolute equality, or the touch of poetry to convert into the golden reminiscence on the other.

In this way, in the person of the patriarch Noah, the fiction of a state of nature was brought into contact with the tradition of a law of nature and a law of nations, regarded as the law of mankind “when men were nearest the gods.”

III. I have already noticed (p. 127) the double tradition of the succession of ages, the tradition from the fragment of Sanchoniathon, upon which Mr M’Lennan relies, being ante-, that of Hesiod partly ante- and partly post-diluvian. The following lines of Hesiod, for instance, bearing allusion to the confusion of tongues and the shortening of life, being plainly post-diluvian:—

And again, of the iron race which followed them, he says—

I must here, too, point out how curiously the testimonies of tradition and science coincide.[280] Both are agreed as to the transition from a brass (bronze) to an iron age; but in one it is referred to as evidence of degeneracy—in the other, the transition is adduced in proof of progress. But the fact is established by the evidence of tradition, as certainly as by the conclusions of science, and is referred to accordingly by Sir John Lubbock (“Pre-historic Times,” p. 6).

The lines of Lucretius are certainly remarkable—

But here I cannot help thinking the tradition has reference rather to the use than to the knowledge of metals. We have seen, for instance, that the cultivation of the ground commenced with Noah—the fact being attested both by Scripture and tradition. Now, in the above passage, although the primitive weapons are referred to, as of stones, yet it is said “æreque solum terræ tractabunt,” an averment which no doubt has reference to the brazen age; yet nothing forbids the construction, which on other grounds seems the more natural that the land was from the first so cultivated,[281] and that in strictness the commencement of the brazen age was identical with the commencement of cultivation, although in the mind of the poet it had reference to the introduction of bronze weapons and implements of war. Moreover, the sylvarum fragmina rami may point to the period immediately preceding cultivation, when the human race clung to the mountains. The testimony of Scripture to the point seems plain. Not only does the construction of the ark appear to imply the use of metals, but the reference to Tubalcain, “who was a hammerer and artificer in every work of brass and iron” (Gen. iv. 22), seems to put the antediluvian knowledge of metals beyond question.

In the first commencement after the Deluge, unless miraculously supplied, there would have been no grain or bread food until time had been allowed for its production. During this interval acorns, &c., may have been the only food. Perhaps it was so ordained to incite to the new permission to eat flesh meat. On the other hand, I ask, in those ages when men were supposed to live exclusively on acorns, was not flesh meat eaten,—were there no hunters? Had man no control over the domestic animals?

That in a peaceful period, and the intercommunication of families previous to the dispersion implies a state of peace (ch. xiii.), in a period in which, if we follow the other traditions, “all families were good,” and were under the rule of an old man, “who held his hands to his ears when they spoke to him of war,” it is not surprising to learn either that they had no weapons, or that they were of the simplest description. It is characteristic of an age which piques itself upon the perfection of its artillery, and whose greatest triumphs and inventions have been in the science of destruction, to look back upon a totally different age which happened only to have stone weapons, as necessarily an age of barbarism. But from our point of view it must be regarded not as an age of barbarism, but of prosperity,—not as a state of equality, but of the subordination of the members of the family to each chief, and of families relatively to each other; an age of much mental vigour and spiritual intuition, and, so far from being a period of misery, it left reminiscences of happiness such as lingered long in the memory of mankind.