61
February 1925
TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
will come when we will he able to do nothing well. “Take for instance, steel. We claim to make good steel, yet the blades the Saracens tu rned out hundreds of years
the A ustralian negroes and th e F ire Islanders is very great, but these barbarian races, representing hundreds of th o u sands of hum an creatures, millions of them , are a proof of terrib le decay. W ithout Christianity, no race has ever been observed to rise from savage to culture. Savages do not always progress tow ard civilization. There are savages in th e world today; as far backward as history gives us a view of the m a tte r th ere have been savages. Some of these in contact w ith civilized Christian people have progressed toward civilization. On the other hand, some, the descendants of the mo'st civilized, have retro gressed toward the savage state. • Instances of th is have occurred even among our own American people; th e less energetic and less “ prosperous” out of some of our best families, d rifting into mountains and other less populated and less fertile sections, have left descendants approxim at ing savages. So far as history and archeology can tell we know absolutely nothing of the first savages. Canon Raw- linson says in “The Origin of Nations” (pages 4 and 5 ): “H erodotus (IV. 108) tells us of the Geloni, a Greek peo ple, who, having been expelled from th e cities on th e no rth ern coast of th e Euxine, had retired into the interior, and th ere lived in wooden huts, and spoke a language ‘half Greek, half Scythian.’ By th e tim e of Mela th is people had become completely barbarous, and used' th e skins of those slain by them in battle as coverings for themselves and th eir horses. A gradual degradation of the Greco-Bactrian people is apparen t in the series of th e ir coins, which is extant.” The modern Copts are very degraded descendants of the ancient Egyptians, and the Romans of W allachia have fallen away very considerably from the level of the Dacian colon ists, of T rajan . Civilization, as is evident from these and various other instances, is liable to decay, to wane, to deteriorate, to proceed from bad to worse, and in course of time to sink to so low a level th a t the question occurs, “ Is it civilization any longer?” Where we find a real history of a people---and such his tories we have of civilized peoples— we find clear indica tions of a Golden Age. I t is Eden as told in Genesis. A sim ilar history comes to us from the early tim e of the P er sian race, as told in th e Vendidad. Hesiod sang the story (Continued on page 8 0 )...
ago would cut one of our own blades in two like bu tter. . “Take ink. Our modern ink fades in five or ten years to ru st color, yet the ink of mediaeval m anuscripts is as black and b righ t to day as it was seven hundred years ago, “Take dyes. The beautiful blues and reds and greens of a n t i q u e oriental rugs have all been lost, while in Egyp tian tombs we find fabrics dyed th o u sands of years ago th a t rem ain today b righ ter and purer in hue th an any of our modern fabrics. “Take my spec
ialty, buildings. We can’t build as the ancients did. The secret of th e ir mor ta r and cement is lost to us. Their m o rtar and cement were actually harder and more durable th an th e stones they hound together, whereas ours— h o rro rs!” Turning to America we find th a t Dr. H iram Bingham, assistan t professor of L atin American histo ry in Yale Uni versity, who in 1912 visited P eru, declares th a t the oldest remains of P eruv ian ciyilization are th e most perfect. He w rites: “The pre-Inca remains are much more interesting G O N E D O W N O R G O IN G U P ? E v o lu tio n s a y s t h a t a ll h u m a n b e in g s w e re o n c è in a s a v a g e s ta t e lik e th is A fric a n w a r r io r . A s tu d y o f h is to ry , h o w e v e r, p ro v e s t h a t th e s a v a g e s a r e h u m a n ity in a s ta t e o f d e c a y . L o o k in g a t th e p ic tu r e w e m u s t s a y : “M an h a s c o m e d o w n to t h is ” r a th e r th a n : “F r o m th is w e h a v e e v o lv e d .”
and denote .a higher condition of .civilization than th e Inca relics. No marble could be more, exquisitely cut. We learned th a t the workmanship of these pre-Inca peoples,, pre ceding those whom P izarro conquered, .ex ceeded in beauty th e work of the Incas of P izarro’s tim e.” So wherever we tu rn in the world’s history we find, not progress from savage beginnings, but degeneration from an earlier perfection. No one should be misled by the common talk about the stone, bronze, and iron ages as if th e history of m ankind could he a r ranged in such an ascending order. We have all these “ ages” in existence somewhere in the world, today. Strangely enough, the explorers of Asia Minor found th a t th e bronze age was before th e stone age. And America had th e stone age when Europe had the metal age. As to the savage races, these are th e very opposite of evolution. They are races in ruins. The degeneration of the Akkas of Guinea, of the Bushmen of South Africa, of
S U R G IC A L IN S T R U M E N T S U S E D B Y R OM A N P H Y S IC IA N S TW O T H O U S A N D Y E A R S AGO
T h e s e I n s tr u m e n ts , e x h ib ite d in th e F ie ld M u se u m , C h ic a g o , a r e a s p e r fe c t a s a n y o f th e s a m e ty p e in u s e to d a y a n d p o in t to a h ig h d e v e lo p m e n t o f s u r g ic a l s c ie n c e in th e d a y s o f th e R o m a n E m p ire . (C u t u s e d b y p e rm is s io n o f F ie ld M u se u m .)
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