FIRE AND THE SUN

defunct during his life was flung upon the funeral pile; even his animals were sacrificed, and until quite recently his slaves
and the dependants he had loved were burnt with him. The facts we have been noticing prove that early man cherished hopes
of immortality. All was not ended for him with death; a new life commences beyond the tomb, marked for his ideas could go
no farther by joys similar to those he had known on earth, and events such as had occurred during his life. What else could
be the meaning of the weapons, the tools of his craft, the vases filled with food placed near the defunct, the omaments and
colors intended for his adornment, the wives, slaves, and horses flung into the same tomb or consumed upon the same pile it
is pleasing to find this supreme hope among our remote ancestors; and clumsily as it was expressed, it implies a belief in a
being superior to man, a protecting divinity according to some, but according to some few others a malignant and tyrannical
spirit. The proofs so far to hand are not enough to justify us in seriously asserting that ancestors were worshipped by
prehistoric man. But the subject is too important for us to refrain from putting before the reader such indications of this
worship as have been collected, and which are necessarily connected with the moral and material condition of our remote
ancestors. The radius of a mammoth was discovered at chaleux, occupying a place of honor on a large sandstone slab near the
hearth. The chaleux cave dates from the reindeer period; at which time the mammoth had long since been extinct in belgium,
so that there can be no doubt that the cave man had taken this bone from the alluvial deposits of the preceding epoch, and
this huge relic of an unknown creature had been the object of his veneration, a lar or protective divinity of his home. A
somewhat similar fact· was discovered at laugerie basse and, by a strange coincidence, certain tribes of north america of the
present clay preserve the bone of a mastodon or of a cetacean in their buts as a protection to their homes. From paleolithic
times men were in the habit of cutting celts or hatchets in chalk, bitumen, and other fragile substances, which were certainly
of no practical use. Thousands of similar objects in harder rock, but showing no sign of wear or tear, have also been found,
and there is little doubt that they all alike served as amulets. This superstitious respect for certain objects lasted for many
centuries, and was handed down from one generation to another. The tombs of the bronze and iron ages are often found to
contain flint hatchets, some of them broken intentionally, a proof, as i have already said, that they were connected with
funeral rites of the nature of which we are ignorant. We also find votive hatchets beneath dolmens. By the side of some
skeletons at cissbury lay flint celts. A hatchet one and a quarter feet long was found in a lake station of switzerland. It was
of such friable rock that it can have been of no use but as a symbol; perhaps, indeed, it may have been a badge of office.
Lastly, merovingian tombs contain hundreds of small flint celts, the last pious offerings to the departed. We find hatchets
engraved on the megalithic monuments of brittany, on the walls of the caves of marne, and we meet with them again on the
other side of the atlantic, evidently bearing the same signification, implying respect for them as. Means of protection.
Longperier has published a description of a chaldean cylinder, on which was represented a priest presenting his offering to a
hatchet lying on a throne, and a ring was picked up at mykenae, on the stone of which was engraved a double bladed celt.
We find the same idea in many different mythologies. The word nouter god is translated in egyptian hieroglyphics by a sign
resembling a celt, and the hatchet of odin is engraved on the rocks of kivrik. On a number of gallo roman cippi, we find a
hatchet beneath which we read the words, dis manibus, and lower down the dedication, sub ascia dedicavit. At all times and
everywhere the hatchet appears as the emblem of force, and is the object of the respect of the people. The tradition of its
value and importance is handed down from ancestors to descendants throughout many generations. The nine members of the
supreme court are all old men. Four of them were born before eight of them were born before one of them was born since that
is, james mcreynolds, who was bom in there is not a single member of the supreme court bench born since the civil war. The
oldest man on the bench is justice holmes, seventy seven; the youngest man on the bench is justice mcreynolds, fifty seven; the
average age of the justices of the supreme court is sixty six years. These men all began practising law while we were children,
or before we were born. Three of them began the practice of law before six of them began to practice law before nine of them
before the last member of the supreme bench to be admitted to the practice of law, justice mcreynolds, was admitted in the
supreme court justices were educated in the generation preceding the modern epoch of financial imperialism. They' were
mature when the industrial order as we know it today, was established. They. are the men whose word is the word of final
authority in all the affairs concerning the government of the united states. The supreme court, not because the constitution
grants it the power, but because successive decisions of the court have established that precedent, has the right to veto any
piece of legislation passed by congress and signed by the president. The supreme court is the voice of final authority in the
affairs of the government of the united states. After it has spoken, there is no further authority under the machinery of this

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