A Lecture on the Origin and Development of the First Constituents of Civilisation (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

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Excerpt from A Lecture on the Origin and Development of the First Constituents of Civilisation

The origin of important and extensive institutions, arts or contrivances, which present themselves to the inquirer, distinctly defined and in a certain state of completeness, has been generally ascribed to acts similarly distinct and definite - to conscious invention, deliberate agreement, united wisdom, sudden discovery or direct inspiration. So widely has this error prevailed at almost all former periods, that it is now but slowly yielding to the more substantial knowledge of calmer, more comprehensive and resolute inquiry.

The Greeks, in common with all early nations, referred the origin of agriculture to a deity. Either they raised, by magnifying tradition, the individual, who brought to them the art of agriculture in a state of considerable perfection, from more advanced nations of the East, into a deity; or, when first they contemplated the many successive processes which constitute agriculture and its extensively beneficial influence, they clearly perceived, that it could not be the result of invention, even of the highest human intellect. They saw, perhaps, too, that the supposition of an invention of this sort, involves a contradiction.

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