I will end this chapter as I began it, in the defence of the Theban thieves. In a place where every yard of ground contains antiquities, and where those antiquities may be so readily converted into golden guineas, can one wonder that every man, woman, and child makes use of his opportunities in this respect to better his fortune? The peasant does not take any interest in the history of mankind, and he cannot be expected to know that in digging out a grave and scattering its contents, through the agency of dealers, over the face of the globe, he loses for ever the facts which the archæologist is striving so hard to obtain. The scientific excavator does not think the antiquities themselves so valuable as the record of the exact arrangement in which they were found. From such data alone can he obtain his knowledge of the manners and customs of this wonderful people. When two objects are found together, the date of one being known and that of the other unknown, the archæological value of the find lies in the fact that the former will place the latter in its correct chronological position. But if these two objects are sold separately, the find may perhaps lose its entire significance. The trained archæologist records every atom of information with which he meets; the native records nothing. And hence, if there is any value at all in the study of the history of mankind, illegal excavation must be stopped. CHAPTER XVIII THE ERROR OF POMPOUS HISTORY “Reason will tell you,” wrote George Hakewill in 1627, “that old age or antiquity is to be accounted by the farther distance from the beginning and the nearer approach to the end, the times wherein we now live being in propriety of speech the most ancient since the world’s creation.” The same thought was expressed by Giordano Bruno in 1564, and by Pascal in his _Treatise on Vacuum_. “For as old age,” the latter writes, “is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it?” “These present times,” says Bacon, “are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient, _ordine_ retrogrado by a computation backward from ourselves.”