efinable
sense of kinship with them that led him to do so, or more probably, as
the present writer thinks, some sense of a need of the alliance of
animals against hostile spirits. In all probability it was no motive
which we can now fathom. The mind of early man was like the unfathomable
mind of a boy. From the pastoral life again man passed after long ages
into the life of agriculture, and the remains of neolithic man in Gaul
and in Britain give us glimpses of his life as a farmer. The ox, the
sheep, the pig, the goat, and the dog were his domestic animals; he could
grow wheat and flax, and could supplement the produce of his farm by
means of hunting and fishing. Neolithic man could spin and weave; he
could obtain the necessary flint for his implements, which he made by
chipping and polishing, and he could also make pottery of a rude variety.
In its essentials we have here the beginnings of the agricultural
civilisation of man all the world over. In life, neolithic man dwelt
sometimes in pit-dwellings and sometimes in hut-circles, covered with a
roof of branches supported by a central pole. In death, he was buried
with his kin in long mounds of earth called barrows, in chambered cairns
and cromlechs or dolmens. The latter usually consist of three standing
stones covered by a cap-stone; forming the stony skeleton of a grave that
has been exposed to view after the mound of earth that covered it has
been washed away. In their graves the dead were buried in a crouching
attitude, and fresh burials were made as occasion required. Sometimes
the cromlech is double, and occasionally there is a hole in one of the
stones, the significance of which is unknown, unless it may have been for
the ingress and egress of souls. Graves of the dolmen or cromlech type
are found in all the countries of Western Europe, North Africa, and
elsewhere, wherever stone suitable for the purpose abounds, and in this
we have a striking illustration of the way in which lines of development
in man's material civilisation are sooner or later correlated to his
geographical, geological, and other surroundings. The religious ideas of
man in neolithic times also came into correlation with the conditions of
his development, and the uninterpreted stone circles and pillars of the
world are a standing witness to the religious zeal of a mind that was
haunted by stone. Before proceeding to exemplify this thesis the
subsequent trend of Celtic civilisation