Tradition : Principally with Reference to Mythology and the

332 NOAH AND THE GOLDEN AGE.
subordination to a patriarchal chief; and. along with
reminiscence of a time of peaceful prosperity at the com
mencement of things, the tradition of the primitive a
as one of great barbarism and privation, man living on
acorns, &c.
That these testimonies of tradition are incongruous
and confused, I am bound to admit; but then, looked a
from the point of view of tradition, they seem to me t
have their explanation. If this happens to be deemed
somewhat fanciful, I contend that the test in all thesi
cases must be-(1.) Does the key fit the lock? (2.) I
there any other key producible?12 I venture, then,
t (p. 211) that the notion of the primitive equality
may be traced through the Bacchanalian traditions ; and
the tradition of a primitive age of great privation I believe
to be the recollection of that brief but probably
period of suffering during which mankind clung to the
mountains in distrust of the Divine injunction and
promise, until brought into the plains by Noah.13 ( Vide
p. 137.)
12 « rji^ evidence, therefore, of the meaning of this part of the Homeric
system is like that which is obtained, when, upon applying a new key to
some lock that we have been unable to open, we find it fits the wards and
puts back the bolt," - Gladstone, " Homer and the Homeric Age/' ii. 30.
13 Plato's testimony to this tradition is remarkable (Plato de Legibus,
lib. L) Boulanger extracts the passage with reference to the golden age
(iii. 296). (Vide also Grote's Plato, iii. 337.) Plato says- " That it is a
tradition that there was formerly a great destruction of mankind caused
by inundations and other general calamities [are not these calamities those
to which Horace alludes, I. Ode iii.,
"Semotique prius tarda necessitas
Lethi corripuit gradum,"
from which only a few escaped ?] those who were spared led a pastoral
life on the mountains. We may suppose," he adds, " that these men
possessed the knowledge of some useful arts, of some usages to which
they had previously conformed/' Plato indeed goes on to tell how this
knowledge must have been lost, and one reason he gives is, "mankind
remained many centuries on the summits of the highest mountains - fear