Note RETURN — FOOTNOTES.

Of the very earliest state of human society, as we have already said, history teaches nothing; but, as man is a progressive animal, and the plan of Providence with regard to him seems plain to let him shift for itself and learn to do right by blundering, as children learn to walk by tumbling, we may safely say that the easier, more obvious, and more rude forms of living together must have preceded the more difficult, the more complex, and the more polished. And in perfect consistency with this presumption, we find three social platforms rising one above the other in human value, duly accredited either by monuments, by popular tradition, or by the evidence of comparative philology. These three are—(1) The prehistoric or stone period, from which such a rich store of monuments has been set up in the Copenhagen Museum, and the existence of which is indicated in Gen. iv. 22 as antecedent to Tubal Cain, the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. (2) The shepherd or pastoral stage, represented by Abel (Gen. iv. 2), in which men subsisted from the easy dominance which they asserted over wild animals, and from fruits of the earth requiring no culture. (3) The agricultural stage, when cereal crops were systematically and scientifically cultivated, which, of course, implied the limitation of particular districts of ground to particular proprietors, and those agrarian laws which caused the Greek Demeter to be honoured with the title of θεσμοφόρος, or lawgiver—a step of marked and decided advance, insomuch that we may justly attribute to it the redemption of society from the vagus concubitus of the earliest times, and the firm establishment of the family, with all its sanctities and all its binding power, as the prime social monad. To the priestess of this goddess accordingly, amongst the Greeks, was assigned the function of ushering in the newly-married pair to the peculiar duties of their new social relation.1