hanging. Proofs of the old civilizations and
the archaic wisdom are accumulating. Though soldier-bigots and priestly
schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses;
though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious
records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made
bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if
spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; though Omar lit the
fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of
the Serapeum; though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and
Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian invaders of Ceylon
"heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees" the ollas
of the Buddhists, and set them ablaze to light their victory--thus
obliterating from the world's knowledge early Buddhist annals and
treatises of great importance: though this hateful and senseless
Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations--still,
despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of
mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what
science has often called "most curious coincidences." Europe has no
very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her
successive races and their doings. What with their savage wars, the
barbaric habits of the historic Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior
nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests
who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an
antiquity could not exist for Europe. And, having no Past to record
themselves, the European critics, historians and archeologists have not
scrupled to deny one to others--whenever the concession excited a
sacrifice of biblical prestige.

No "traces of old civilizations" we are told! And what about the
Pelasgi--the direct forefathers of the Hellenes, according to Herodotus?
What about the Etruscans--the race mysterious and wonderful, if any, for
the historian, and whose origin is the most insoluble of problems? That
which is known of them only shows that could something more be known, a
whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered. A people
described as are the Pelasgi--a highly intellectual, receptive, active
people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary,
though preferring peace; a people who built canals as no one else,