elatives of the phases of experience
through which man passed in his emergence into civilised life. To
demonstrate and to illustrate these relations will be the aim of the
following chapters.

CHAPTER II--THE CHIEF PHASES OF CELTIC CIVILISATION

In the chief countries of Celtic civilisation, Gaul, Cisalpine and
Transalpine, Britain and Ireland, abundant materials have been found for
elucidating the stages of culture through which man passed in prehistoric
times. In Britain, for example, palaeolithic man has left numerous
specimens of his implements, but the forms even of these rude implements
suggest that they, too, have been evolved from still more primitive
types. Some antiquarians have thought to detect such earlier types in
the stones that have been named 'eoliths' found in Kent, but, though
these 'eoliths' may possibly show human use, the question of their
history is far from being settled. It is certain, however, that man
succeeded in maintaining himself for ages in the company of the mammoth,
the cave-bear, and other animals now extinct. Whether palaeolithic man
survived the Ice Age in Britain has not so far been satisfactorily
decided. In Gaul, however, there is fair evidence of continuity between
the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods, and this continuity must
obviously have existed somewhere. Still in spite of the indications of
continuity, the civilisation of primitive man in Gaul presents one aspect
that is without any analogues in the life of the palaeolithic men of the
River Drift period, or in that of man of the New Stone Age. The feature
in question is the remarkable artistic skill shown by the cave men of the
Dordogne district. Some of the drawings and carvings of these men reveal
a sense of form which would have done credit to men of a far later age. A
feature such as this, whatever may have been its object, whether it arose
from an effort by means of 'sympathetic magic' to catch animals, as M.
Salomon Reinach suggests, or to the mere artistic impulse, is a standing
reminder to us of the scantiness of our data for estimating the lines of
man's religious and other development in the vast epochs of prehistoric
time.

We know that from the life of hunting man passed into the pastoral stage,
having learned to tame animals. How he came to do so, and by what
motives he was actuated, is still a mystery. It may be, as M. Salomon
Reinach has also suggested, that it was some curious and ind