ritual acts was fatal to the employment of such opportunities to gain
knowledge. Nor was the attitude of mind of the Egyptians such as to
permit the acquisition of a real appreciation of the structure of the
body.]

[16: See my address, "Primitive Man," _Proc. Brit. Academy_, 1917.]

Beginning of Stone-Working.

During the last few years I have repeatedly had occasion to point out
the fundamental fallacy underlying much of the modern speculation in
ethnology, and I have no intention of repeating these strictures
here.[17] But it is a significant fact that, when one leaves the
writings of professed ethnologists and turns to the histories of their
special subjects written by scholars in kindred fields of investigation,
views such as I have been setting forth will often be found to be
accepted without question or comment as the obvious truth.

There is an excellent little book entitled "Architecture," written by
Professor W. R. Lethaby for the Home University Library, that affords an
admirable illustration of this interesting fact. I refer to this
particular work because it gives lucid expression to some of the ideas
that I wish to submit for consideration. "Two arts have changed the
surface of the world, Agriculture and Architecture" (p. 1). "To a large
degree architecture" [which he defines as "the matrix of civilization"]
"is an Egyptian art" (p. 66): for in Egypt "we shall best find the
origins of architecture as a whole" (p. 21).

Nevertheless Professor Lethaby bows the knee to current tradition when
he makes the wholly unwarranted assumption that Egypt probably learnt
its art from Babylonia. He puts forward this remarkable claim in spite
of his frank confession that "little or nothing is known of a primitive
age in Mesopotamia. At a remote time the art of Babylonia was that of a
civilized people. As has been said, there is a great similarity between
this art and that of dynastic times in Egypt. Yet it appears that Egypt
borrowed of Asia, rather than the reverse." [He gives no reasons for
this opinion, for which there is no evidence, except possibly the
invention of bricks for building.] "If the origins of art in Babylonia
were as fully known as those in Egypt, the story of architecture might
have to begin in Asia instead of Egypt" (p. 67).

But later on he speaks in a more convincing manner of the known facts
when he says (p. 82):--

When Greece entered on her period of high-strung life the time of first
in