But civilisation must have begun somewhen, somewhere, with some person,
or some family, or some nation; and how did it begin?

I have said already that I do not know. But I have had my dream--like
the philosopher--and as I have not been ashamed to tell it elsewhere, I
shall not be ashamed to tell it here. And it is this:

What if the beginnings of true civilisation in this unique, abnormal,
diseased, unsatisfied, incomprehensible, and truly miraculous and
supernatural race we call man, had been literally, and in actual fact,
miraculous and supernatural likewise? What if that be the true key to
the mystery of humanity and its origin? What if the few first chapters
of the most ancient and most sacred book should point, under whatever
symbols, to the actual and the only possible origin of civilisation, the
education of a man, or a family by beings of some higher race than man?
What if the old Puritan doctrine of Election should be even of a deeper
and wider application than divines have been wont to think? What if
individuals, if peoples, have been chosen out from time to time for a
special illumination, that they might be the lights of the earth, and the
salt of the world? What if they have, each in their turn, abused that
divine teaching to make themselves the tyrants, instead of the ministers,
of the less enlightened? To increase the inequalities of nature by their
own selfishness, instead of decreasing them, into the equality of grace,
by their own self-sacrifice? What if the Bible after all was right, and
even more right than we were taught to think?

So runs my dream. If, after I have confessed to it, you think me still
worth listening to, in this enlightened nineteenth century, I will go on.

At all events, what we see at the beginning of all known and half-known