Atlantis: The Antedeluvian WorldDonnelly, Ignatius
History
Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Deluge; Ethnology
Civilization is not communicable to all; many savage tribes are
incapable of it. There are two great divisions of mankind, the civilized
and the savage; and, as we shall show, every civilized race in the world
has had something of civilization from the earliest ages; and as "all
roads lead to Rome," so all the converging lines of civilization lead to
Atlantis. The abyss between the civilized man and the savage is simply
incalculable; it represents not alone a difference in arts and methods
of life, but in the mental constitution, the instincts, and the
predispositions of the soul. The child of the civilized races in his
sports manufactures water-wheels, wagons, and houses of cobs; the savage
boy amuses himself with bows and arrows: the one belongs to a building
and creating race; the other to a wild, hunting stock. This abyss
between savagery and civilization has never been passed by any nation
through its own original force, and without external influences, during
the Historic Period; those who were savages at the dawn of history are
savages still; barbarian slaves may have been taught something of the
arts of their masters, and conquered races have shared some of the
advantages possessed by their conquerors; but we will seek in vain for
any example of a savage people developing civilization of and among
themselves. I may be reminded of the Gauls, Goths, and Britons; but
these were not savages, they possessed written languages, poetry,
oratory, and history; they were controlled by religious ideas; they
believed in God and the immortality of the soul, and in a state of
rewards and punishments after death. Wherever the Romans came in contact
with Gauls, or Britons, or German tribes, they found them armed with
weapons of iron. The Scots, according to Tacitus, used chariots and iron
swords in the battle of the Grampians--"enormes gladii sine mucrone."
The Celts of Gaul are stated by Diodorus Siculus to have used
iron-headed spears and coats-of-mail, and the Gauls who encountered the
Roman arms in B.C. 222 were armed with soft iron swords, as well as at
the time when Cæsar conquered their country. Among the Gauls men would
lend money to be repaid in the next world, and, we need not add, that no
Christian people has yet reached that sublime height of faith; they
cultivated the ground, built houses and walled towns, wove cloth, and
employed wheeled vehicles; they possessed nearly all the cereals and
domestic animals we have, and they wrought in iron, bronze, and steel.
The Gauls had even invented a machine on wheels to cut their grain, thus
anticipating our reapers and mowers by two thousand years. The
difference between the civilization of the Romans under Julius Cæsar
and the Gauls under Vercingetorix was a difference in degree and not in
kind. The Roman civilization was simply a development and perfection of
the civilization possessed by all the European populations; it was drawn
from the common fountain of Atlantis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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