The Egyptian priests, perhaps as late as the great Nineteenth Dynasty, before the days of Moses, threw into definite shape the vague traditions of immemorial antiquity, when men had lived devouring one another, ignorant how to till the ground. Osiris (p. 119) taught the art of tillage, the use of the plough and hoe, how to grow wheat and barley, and the culture of the vine; and Isis added the domestic arts of making bread and weaving linen. Osiris, moreover, appointed the offerings to the gods, regulated the ceremonies, composed the texts and melodies of the hymns. And among his successors was Thoth of Hermopolis (p. 8), who introduced astronomy and divination, medicine, arithmetic, and geometry, and whose "books," embracing a kind of religious encyclopædia, were known to the Christian teacher, Clement of Alexandria, in the second century of our era. {173} So Zeus gave laws to Minos in Crete, and Apollo revealed the Spartan constitution to Lycurgus; Numa, the traditional founder of the Roman ceremonial law, received instruction from the nymph Egeria. The shepherd slave, Zaleucus (whom Eusebius placed about 660 B.C.), taught the Locrians what Athena had first taught him, and prefaced his laws by enjoining them to revere the gods as the real causes of all things fair and good in life, and keep their hearts pure from all evil, inasmuch as the gods do not take pleasure in the sacrifices of the wicked, but in the righteous and fair conduct of the good. From the New World come a series of similar figures. Mr. Curtin claims to show that the vast area of the American continent is pervaded by one system of thought incalculably old. In the central group of the most sacred personages is the Earth with Sky and Sun conceived sometimes as identical sometimes as distinct. The Earth-maiden on whom the Sun has gazed, becomes a mother, and gives birth to a great hero. He bestows on men all gifts that support existence, and it is through him that the race lives and prospers. To the Algonkins he was Michabo or Manibozho, the "Great Light," who imparted vision, author of wisdom, arts, and institutions. Among the Toltecs at Tulla he was Quetzalcoatl, virgin-born, founder of civilisation, who organised worship without human or animal sacrifices, and endured no {174} war. The Miztecs called him Votan, prince and legislator of his people, representative of a higher wisdom, so that he rose to be the mediator between earth and heaven. In the plains of Begota the white-bearded Bohica appeared to the Mozca Indians, taught them how to sow and build, formed them into communities, contrived an outlet for the waters of their great lake, and, having settled the government and the ritual, retired into ascetic penance for two thousand years. Out of the depths of Lake Titicaca in Peru there rose one day the son and daughter of the sun and moon, Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo, sent by their father in compassion for men's wretched plight.