It is much too readily assumed that traditions must be worthless where no records are kept. Gibbon,[92] I think, was the first who took this position. To this I reply, that although records are valuable for the attestation, they are not guarantees for the fidelity of tradition.[93] I do not assert that the tradition is more trustworthy than the record; but that, when mankind trust mainly to tradition, the faculties by which it is sustained will be more strongly developed, and the adaptation of society for its transmission more exactly conformed. In other words, tradition in ancient times seemed to flow as from a fountain-head, and the world was everywhere grooved for its reception. We may take in evidence the strange resemblances in mythological tradition in various parts of the world on the one hand, and on the other the oral tradition of the Homeric verses; the frequent concourse of citizens, and at recurring festivals of the surrounding populations, to listen to their recital. And not only was there oral tradition in verse, but all public events were recorded in the attestations of the market-place. When a treaty was ratified it was commonly before some temple, or in some place of public resort, and its terms were committed to memory by some hundred witnesses; and in like manner was the recollection of other public events and memorable facts preserved.[94] (_Vide_ Pastoret's "Hist. de la Législation," i. 71; also, account of "Annales Maximi" in Dyer's "Rome," xvii.) [92] Gibbon ("Decline and Fall," i. 353) says, "But all this well-laboured system of German antiquities is annihilated by a single fact, too well attested to admit of any doubt, and of too decisive a nature to leave room for any reply. The Germans, in the days of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters, and the use of letters is the principal circumstance which distinguishes a civilised people from a herd of savages, incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory ever dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge." Compare with Coleridge, _infra_, p. 122; Ozanam, _infra_, ch. xiii. [93] Eusebius ("Ecclesiastical Hist.," ch. xxxvi.) says, speaking of St Ignatius--"He exhorted them to adhere firmly to the tradition of the apostles; which, for the sake of greater security, he deemed it necessary to attest by committing it to writing." I do not remember to have seen this quoted in testimony and proof of ecclesiastical tradition.