"Nor," says Sir J. Lubbock (p. 335), "will tradition supply the place of history. At best it is untrustworthy and shortlived. Thus in 1770 the New Zealanders had no recollection of Tasman's visit. Yet this took place in 1643, less than one hundred and thirty years before, and must have been to them an event of the greatest possible importance and interest.... I do not mean to say that tradition would never preserve for a long period the memory of any remarkable event. The above-mentioned facts (De Soto's expedition is also referred to) prove only that it will not always do so; but it is unnecessary for us to discuss this question, as there is in Europe no tradition of the Stone Age, and when arrow-heads are found the ignorant peasantry refer them to the elves or fairies; stone axes are regarded as thunderbolts, and are used not only in Europe but also in various other parts of the world for magical purposes" (p. 336). _"Relieved" then_ "from _the embarrassing interference of tradition_, the archæologist can only follow the methods which have been so successfully pursued in geology" (p. 336).[246] This is partly a limitation of the question to oral tradition, and partly an anticipated denial of what I shall now venture to assert, namely, that we can only look for the savages' traditions of things known to them before they were savages, religious impressions which have not been effaced from their minds, legends connected with their race, facts which have determined their destiny. The very characteristic of the savage is that he lives only for the present; that he has little memory for the past, and no forecast for the future; that his mind is stricken with a hopeless sterility and fixedness, so that he only seems to remember things that are bred in the bone, and the tradition of which he cannot divest himself.[247] [246] "It must not be forgot to the honour of the Babylonians that they are acknowledged, by all antiquity, to have been the first who made use of writing in their public and judicial acts, but at what period it is not known."--Goguet, "Origin of Laws," i. 45. Diodorus, however, says of the Egyptians (_vide_ p. 48), "_Menes_ without doubt has been esteemed the first legislator of Egypt, _because_ he was the first who put his _laws in writing_. For before him Vulcan, Helius, and Osiris (_vide ante_, p. 189) had given laws to Egypt."--Diod. l. 1, 17-18. But also it must be recollected that the copper mines of Egypt were worked from the earliest period. [247] But there are savages and savages; or rather there are savages who are strictly such, and savages who have still the germ of life and who are more properly distinguished as barbarians. _Vide ante_, p. 285, De Maistre's definition of the barbarian.