Tradition : Principally with Reference to Mythology and the

126 THE TRADITION OF THE HUMAN RACE,
and Totemism," sees farther evidence of his theory in
the following traditions from Sanchoniathon :
" Few traditions respecting the primitive condition c
more remarkable, and perhaps none are more ancient, than th<
have been preserved by Sanchoniatho ; or rather, we should s
are to be found in the fragments ascribed to that writer by Ei
They present us with an outline of the earlier stages of hum P
in religious speculation, which is shown by the results of
inquiry to be wonderfully correct. They tell us for instance th
fi men consecrated the plants shooting out of the earth, and
'.em gods, and worshipped them upon whom they themselves
1 all their posterity, and all before them, and to these thev »
made their meat and drink offerings.'26 They further tell us that the
first men believed the heavenly bodies to be animals, only differently
shaped and circumstanced from any on the earth. 'There were
certain animals which had no sense, out of which were begotten in
telligent animals .... and they were formed alike in the shap<
of an egg. Thus shone out Mot [the luminous vault of heaven ?
the sun and the moon, and the less and the greater stars.' Next they
f the successive generations of men that in the
first generation the way was found out of taking food f m
in the second, men, having suffered from droughts, b
the sun-the Lord of heaven; that in the third, Light, Fire, and
Flame [conceived as persons], were begotten; that in the fourth
giants appeared; while in the fifth, ' men were named from their
hers' because of the uncertainty of male parentage, this genera-
being distiniraished also bv the introduction of
.ot till sit the gods appeared 1
in the old mythologies, such as Kronos, Dason, Z
-^^«-
Apollo, and Typhon ; and then the queen of them all was th
headed Astarte. The sum of the statem m
worshipped plants ; next the heavenly bodies, supposed to b
animals; then ' pillars;' and, last of all, the an1
morphic gods. Not the least remarkable statement is, that in
primitive times there was kinship through mothers only, owing to
the uncertainty of fatherhood." 26
[25 A tradition of the constellations, a proof from tradition that they wera
so named in the ante-diluvian period.]
26 Sanchoniatho's "Phoenician History," by the Right Rev. R. Cumberland.
London, 1720, pp. 2, 3, 23, et sc%. Eusebius, Prsepar. Evangel, lib.
i. cap. 10.