brought into play, by which means a path was _melted_ through the rocks. A tradition, by the by, which, while confirming the remark that the invention of metallurgy belongs originally to the Yellow Race in its earliest stages of development, is strangely in accordance with the name of the Biblical Tubalcain, "the forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron." That the Accads were possessed of this distinctive accomplishment of their race is moreover made very probable by the various articles and ornaments in gold, brass and iron which are continually found in the very oldest tombs. 4. But infinitely the most precious acquisition secured to us by the unexpected revelation of this stage of remotest antiquity is a wonderfully extensive collection of prayers, invocations and other sacred texts, from which we can reconstruct, with much probability, the most primitive religion in the world--for such undoubtedly was that of the Accads. As a clear and authentic insight into the first manifestation of the religious instinct in man was just what was wanting until now, in order to enable us to follow its development from the first, crudest attempts at expression to the highest aspirations and noblest forms of worship, the value of this discovery can never be overrated. It introduces us moreover into so strange and fantastical a world as not the most imaginative of fictions can surpass. 5. The instinct of religion--"religiosity," as it has been called--is inborn to man; like the faculty of speech, it belongs to man, and to man only, of all living beings. So much so, that modern science is coming to acknowledge these two faculties as _the_ distinctive characteristics which mark man as a being apart from and above the rest of creation. Whereas the division of all that exists upon the earth has of old been into three great classes or realms--the "mineral realm," the "vegetable realm" and the "animal realm," in which latter man was included--it is now proposed to erect the human race with all its varieties into a separate "realm," for this very reason: that man has all that animals have, and two things more which they have not--speech and religiosity, which assume a faculty of abstract thinking, observing and drawing general conclusions, solely and distinctively human. Now the very first observations of man in the most primitive stage of his existence must necessarily have awakened in him a twofold consciousness--that of power and that of helplessness. He could do many things. Small in size, weak in strength, destitute of natural clothing and weapons, acutely sensitive to pain and atmospheric changes as all higher natures are, he could kill and tame the huge and powerful animals which had the advantage of him in all these things, whose numbers and fierceness threatened him at every turn with destruction, from which his only escape would seem to have been constant cowering and hiding. He could