* * * * *

Such an idea as this of first "stopping the rivers" might well have been
conceived independently by different peoples, but surely not by such a
race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos, who must have got the
story from the Japanese, who in their turn probably derived it from some
Indian-Buddhist source--perhaps a version of the Book of Sindibád. Of
course, the several European versions and variants have been copied out
of one book into another, and independent invention is out of the
question.




IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

_Orl._ Whom ambles Time withal?

_Ros._ With a priest that lacks Latin; for he sleeps easily,
because he cannot study, lacking the burden of lean and wasteful
learning.--_As You Like It_.


During the 7th and 8th centuries the state of letters throughout
Christian Europe was so low that very few of the bishops could compose
their own discourses, and some of those Church dignitaries thought it no
shame to publicly acknowledge their inability to write their own names.
Numerous instances occur in the Acts of the Councils of Ephesus and
Chalcedon of an inscription in these words: "I, ----, have subscribed