The invention of a phonetic alphabet and the use of written records, Mr. Morgan thinks, mark the beginning of civilization. But, as John Fiske points out, it will not do to insist too narrowly upon the phonetic alphabet. Hieroglyphics have perpetuated much historic record in Egypt and China. Although the Mexicans and Central Americans did not smelt iron ore, they yet possessed historic records in their hieroglyphics (hieroglyphics which may still be read). They were then enjoying civilization of an extremely rude type, combined with a marvellously developed barbarism. For though their barbarism was marked by human sacrifices and by cannibalism, yet, according to testimony which Mr. Morgan says may be taken at its face value, these barbarians had pleasure-gardens and fountains, baths, menageries, feather-work that was marvellously beautiful, pottery that showed admirable taste, vessels of gold and silver, and many other accessories of an advanced civilization. Mr. Morgan was adopted into the Seneca tribe of North American Indians, and he was able to study Indian institutions from an inside point of view. Unquestionably he had a more profound knowledge of those institutions than any other scholar of his time. But he went too far when he confined the Aztecs to the narrow limits in development to which the Senecas had attained. Moreover, he does not make due allowance for the changes in development which the more favorable climate of the Mexican table-lands brought about. The “long house” of the Iroquois may have been constructed on the same general plan, but it could hardly have been mistaken for the building in which Montezuma quartered Cortés and his allies. The one meal, freshly cooked and eaten about midday, bore but little resemblance to the banquets in Mexico described with such watery appreciation by the Spanish chroniclers. (Morgan admits that these same chroniclers may be trusted when they write of food and other such palpable matters.) But Mr. Morgan is unquestionably right in saying that Montezuma’s so-called “empire” was really a confederacy of tribes--living in pueblos, governed by a council of chiefs, and levying tribute upon other pueblos. The Aztec confederacy dominated the Mexican land as the Iroquois confederacy dominated the region between the Connecticut and the Mississippi. To assert that otherwise the two nations were alike both in their institutions and in their development is as unwarranted as to say that the governmental institutions and the political development of the United States and Venezuela are identical. How did this confederacy come to be formed?