The principal facts on which the author rests his system, and the mode of argumentation, are foreshadowed in the following extracts :·

"Philosophy has discovered the existence of two vast branches of cognate organic languages, the Semitic and Iranian. The stage anterior to Semism is Khamism. This antecedent stage is antediluvian. People history is postdiluvian. We find in it, thousands of years before Menes, first of all a world-wide empire — the realm of Nimrod, the Kushite, . . . which probably embraced Egypt as well as Western Asia, the district of the Euphrates and Tigris.

"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 ten thousand years, which we can prove proximately to be the extent of the latter period before Christ." (Vol. iv. p. 24.)

"The legends of the classics about colonies from Egypt, in so far as they have any historical foundation, are explainable, just as are the expressions in the Bible that Kanaan, who was driven back out of Lower Egypt, was the son of Kham.” * p. 30.)

(Vol. iv.

"I must, on the other hand, repudiate all historical connection between the Helleno-Italic mythology and the Indians, or even their patriarchs, the Iranians and Bactrians." (Vol. iv. p. 31.)

"We start, therefore, with this premise, that in the Egyptian we have obtained a fixed chronological point, and, in fact, the highest in general history. In it we find a perfectly formed language which we can prove to have been in existence about the middle of the fourth millennium B. C. We have, moreover, the means of determining approximately the epoch of the beginnings of regal government immediately before Menes. We therefore

* A reference to the expulsion of the Shepherds from Egypt.

arrive at the very threshold of the foundation of language." (Vol. iv. p. 45.)

With regard to "the premise" here named, with which the author starts, we simply remark here, that we do not admit it. Nor do we admit the existence of the "perfectly formed language” which he says he "can prove to have existed in the middle of the fourth millennium B. C." See remarks on this point below.

"The result of criticism goes to prove, however, that we can not compute, by the ordinarily received chronology, the interval between the above starting-point of the present life of man and the oldest conquests in Asia, — those of Nimrod,

or the interval between them both and Abraham, the first historical personage in the Semitic reminiscences.

"On the other hand, the period of twenty-one thousand years, which has been adopted by all the great astronomers of the day, for the deviation of the earth's axis, brings us to two restingplaces. The consequence of the deviation is a change of the proportion of the cold and heat at the poles, the greatest of which gives eight days more cold or heat.

“At the present time, in the northern temperate zone, spring and summer are seven days longer than autumn and winter; in the southern hemisphere, consequently, the proportion is reversed.

"In the year 1248 this favorable change in our hemisphere had reached its maximum, namely, eight days more warmth, and therefore the same number of days less cold. Consequently, after a gradual decrease during five thousand two hundred and fifty years, in the year 6498, the two seasons will be in equilibrio, but in the year 11,748 (five thousand two hundred and fifty years more) the hot period will have reached its lowest point.

"Now, if we calculate backward five thousand two hundred and fifty years from 1248, we shall find that in the year 4002

B. C. the two seasons must have been in equilibrio in our hemisphere. In the year 9252 B. C. the cold season had attained its maximum. The opposite or most favorable division of heat and cold took place, therefore, in the year 19,752 B. C.

"This epoch explains very simply the reason why the north pole is surrounded with perpetual ice only from about the seventieth degree, when at the south pole it is found at the sixty-fifth. In other words, the history of progressive human civilization, with which we are acquainted, is comprised within one hemisphere, and under climacteric accidents the most favorable to advancement.

"Now, as we must suppose that the date of the commencement of our race was the most favorable both for its origin and continuance, and as, on the other hand, the catastrophe which we call the flood would have arrived at the next unfavorable period for our hemisphere, that epoch, the central point of which is the year 9250 B. C., would seem the most probable one for the change in climatic relations. This assumption is confirmed by the most ancient monuments and traditions.* The chronology of Egypt shows still more clearly than traditions preserved in the Rabbinical Book of the Origines, that the flood of Noah could not have taken place later than about 10,000 B. C., and could not have taken place much earlier.

"The only question, therefore, is, whether the history of the human race, and consequently the origines of the primitive world, date from the above-mentioned favorable epoch, about 20,000 B. C., or whether we are justified in going back to the last epoch but one, or about 40,000 B. C." (Vol. iv. 52-54.)

The following extracts show an important part of the argument adopted to maintain these assumptions:

* What monuments and traditions? As far as we know, even our author has failed to specify them; unless such a specification is intended by his brief allusions to the mythological periods of some of the ancient nations.

“The formative words in the Egyptian mark the transition from Sinism to Khamism - from the particle language to the language of parts of speech. The earliest Turanism to the east of Khamism marks the first stage of organic language, i. e., of language with the parts of speech. The second is Khamism, i. e., the stage of language we meet with in Egypt." (Vol.. iv. p. 558.)

"The shortest line from inorganic language to organic is that of Sinism through primitive Turanism to primitive Semism, the deposit of which in the valley of the Nile we have in Egyptian. The last emigration was probably that of the Aryans to the country of the five rivers. The oldest hymns in the country of the Punjaub go back to 3000 B. C. This community of language must then, at all events, be supposed to have existed much earlier than 3000 B. C. They had, consequently, at that time long got over the stage of underived Iranism and Semism. Between 10,000 and 4000 B. C., the vast step in Asiatic advancement from Khamism to Semism, and from Semism to Iranism, was made. If the step from Latin to Italian be taken as a unit, this previous step must be reckoned at least at ten or at twenty." (Vol. iv. p. 562.)

"From all this it appears that the period of one great revolution of the earth's axis (twenty-one thousand years) is a very probable time for the development of human language in the shortest line; and that the double of this, which we should be obliged to suppose, would be a highly improbable one." (Vol. iv. p. 563.)

"It has been shown at the commencement of this volume, that we may hope by a combination of researches and observations to establish that mankind has only terminated one astronomical period, and commenced the second in the year. 1240 of our era; and there are reasons for placing the intermediate catastrophe in the most unfavorable part of that period, or about 10,000 B. C. As to subdivisions, if too large a space has been assumed in this one, there is room enough for it in the other. We see no reason

for going back to a preceding epoch of twenty-one thousand years; but less than one period is impossible, were it only because of the stubborn fact of the strata of languages. To what point, then, is Egypt brought back by this calculation? To the middle, at least, or the ninth millennium of man, as the period of the immigration of the western branch of our race into the valley of the Nile. But this is the very close of the primitive world in the strict sense, that is to say, of the history of our race before the great convulsion of that part of Central Asia to which we turn as the cradle of mankind. This convulsion, which we know as the flood of Noah, in all probability coincides with that epoch of the northern hemisphere when the temperature was lowest, or from 9000 to 10,000 B. C., just as the origin of our race coincides with that period of it when the temperature was highest, which was ten thousand five hundred years earlier.

"If this principle be correct, the Egyptians can have known nothing of the flood, allusions to which we find everywhere among the Iranians and Semites; and in truth no such tradition is current among them, any more than it was among the old Turanians and Chinese." (Vol. iv. p. 564.)

In regard to the above hypothesis of the great antiquity of man on the earth, and the arguments in support of it, we think little needs to be said by way of confutation. We must, however, briefly state the reasons why we do not receive the hypothesis, and think the arguments inconclusive. We might use the words "absurd,” “irrational," and other stronger disparaging epithets, in relation to the author's reasoning, and think ourselves justified in their use. But the use of such terms generally weakens an argument. For what one calls absurd, another regards merely as inconclusive, a third, fair reasoning, and a fourth, sound argument. We, therefore, will endeavor to