d profoundly than any other
man, that he was apt to forget that there could be any other kind. He
overlooked his own distinction between the lower and middle periods of
barbarism in his attempt to ignore or minimize the points of difference
between Aztecs and Iroquois.[144] In this way he did injustice to his
own brilliant and useful classification of stages of culture, and in
particular to the middle period of barbarism, the significance of which
he was the first to detect, but failed to realize fully because his
attention had been so intensely concentrated upon the lower period.

[Footnote 143: For an excellent account of ancient Mexican
knives and chisels, see Dr. Valentini's paper on "Semi-Lunar
and Crescent-Shaped Tools," in _Proceedings of Amer. Antiq.
Soc._, New Series, vol. iii. pp. 449-474. Compare the very
interesting Spanish observations on copper hatchets and flint
chisels in Clavigero, _Historia antigua_, tom. i. p. 242;
Mendieta, _Historia ecclesiastica indiana_, tom. iv. cap. xii.]

[Footnote 144: It often happens that the followers of a great
man are more likely to run to extremes than their master, as,
for example, when we see the queen of pueblos rashly described
as "a collection of mud huts, such as Cortes found and
dignified with the name of a city." _Smithsonian Report_, 1887,
part i. p. 691. This is quite inadmissible.]

[Sidenote: Importance of the middle period of barbarism.]

In truth, the middle period of barbarism was one of the most important
periods in the career of the human race, and full of fascination to the
student, as the unfading interest in ancient Mexico and the huge mass of
literature devoted to it show. It spanned the interval between such
society as that of Hiawatha and such as that of the Odyssey. One more
such interval (and, I suspect, a briefer one, because the use of iron
and the development of inheritable wealth would accelerate progress) led
to the age that could _write_ the Odyssey, one of the most beautiful
productions of the human mind. If Mr. Morgan had always borne in mind
that, on his own classification, Montezuma must have been at least as
near to Agamemnon as to Powhatan, his attitude toward the Spanish
historians would have been less hostile. A Moqui pueblo stands near the
lower end of the middle period of barbarism; ancient Troy stood next the
up