s, Platonists, and
heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on
those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses. And, as among the
few that escaped the dire fate not all by any means were trustworthy--
hence, perhaps, the secret of their preservation--Western scholars got
early into the habit of rejecting all heathen testimony, whenever truth
clashed with the dicta of their churches. Then, again, the modern
Archeologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans; and they
are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise. However it may be,
most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate
the supposed antiquity of the Jewish records. This is a ditch into
which most have slipped.

The traces of ancient civilizations exist, and they are many. Yet, it is
humbly suggested, that so long as there are reverend gentlemen mixed up
unchecked in archaeological and Asiatic societies; and Christian
bishops to write the supposed histories and religions of non-Christian
nations, and to preside over the meetings of Orientalists--so long will
Archaism and its remains be made subservient in every branch to ancient
Judaism and modern Christianity.

So far, archeology knows nothing of the sites of other and far older
civilizations, except the few it has stumbled upon, and to which it has
assigned their respective ages, mostly under the guidance of biblical
chronology. Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal
History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe
and reject, at the same time, every datum as every other tradition
furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian
nations, is questionable. At any rate, had it accepted as willingly data
coming from other sources, it might have assured itself by this time,
that not only in Italy and other parts of Europe, but even on sites not
very far from those it is accustomed to regard as the hotbed of ancient
relics--Babylonia and Assyria--there are other sites where it could
profitably excavate. The immense "Salt Valley" of Dasht-Beyad by
Khorasson covers the most ancient civilizations of the world; while the
Shamo desert has had time to change from sea to land, and from fertile
land to a dead desert, since the day when the first civilization of the
Fifth Race left its now invisible, and perhaps for ever hidden, "traces"
under its beds of sand.

Times have changed, are c