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{212} Section V. The Etruscan Language. Professor
Calori showed scant sympathy with the Turanian or Mongolian theory, which has
been patronised by Pruner Bey and G. Lagneau, and which was not wholly rejected
by the learned Nicolucci. In England the Altaic, or ‑‑ as the
author calls it, Ugric ‑‑ tribe of Turanian has lately been
advocated, [Jeff
Hill's footnote: In
England the Altaic, or ‑‑ as the author calls it, Ugric ‑‑
tribe of Turanian has lately been advocated in England PRO In England the Altaic, or ‑‑ as
the author calls it, Ugric ‑‑ tribe of Turanian has lately been
advocated] on linguistic and
mythological grounds, by one of those marvellous popular scientific books, like
The One Primaeval
Language, and India In Greece, by which the abuse of private judgment, and, perhaps, a compound ignorance of the subject, periodically
causes the reading world of Europe to laugh, and the British Orientalist to
blush. Etruscan Researches, by the Reverend Isaac
Taylor (London, Macmillan And Company, 1874), sets out with a thoroughly
erroneous and obsolete assertion which succeeds in vitiating almost every
research. {213} We are told at the first opportunity (page
2) that the
ultimate and surest test of race is language. As the multitude of general readers
still allows itself to be misled upon this point, whose proper determination is
essential to all correct anthropology, I will consider it in a few words. Long
ago my friend Professor Carl Vogt asserted and proved that un peuple peut toujours avoir
adopté une langue qui n' était pas la sienne. We have familiar instances of the
Longobardi in Italy, the Franks in France, and the Visigoths in Spain, changing
their own tongues for various forms of neo Latin. The Aryan speaking Baloch
merge their rugged variant of Persian into the Arabic of Maskat, and into the
African Kisawahili or lingua‑franca of Zanzibar. Well worth repeating are the words of Prince Louis
Lucien Bonaparte (Anthrop.
Inst., February
9, 1875): It is a
bold theory to advance that language is a test of race, and a no less bold
opinion that language should be rejected as an evidence in the question. Finally (page 356), we have
the obsolete Grimm's
Law about the drei Kennzeichen der
Urverwandtschaft;
the three signs of primordial affinity of languages, being the numerals, the
personal pronouns, and certain forms {214} of the substantive verb. The importance
of numerals is especially laid down (page 158), when all know that they are
exceedingly liable to phonetic decay, especially those most used; for instance,
eka (Sanskrit), ΕΙΣ, VNVS, and jedian (Slovene). Mr. Robert Ellis has fallen
into the same trap when advocating primaeval unity. Bearing
in mind Prince Bonaparte's sensible limitation, we proceed to the process by
which the Etruscan Researcher, who speaks (page 182) of the discovery of Sanskrit, has invented for the
Etruscans a dialect of his own. Before him others have adopted the facile plan
of compulsing a host of dictionaries, vocabularies, and strings of words,
Hebrew, Chaldaic, Arabic, and Syriac, Himyaritic, Ethiopic, and Coptic, and of
compelling one of them to afford the explanation required. This is a process
which, by the by, I am sorry, in the interests of glottology, to see spreading: without exact
historic knowledge and extensive linguistic practice it can only do harm.
Similarly our author, by turning over the eleven volumes of Nordische Reisen and the rest, and Alexander
Castrén (Finn,
Myth, and the
rest), and by borrowing from the dialects of some 48 detached Turanian tribes,
ranging between the {215} Ainos and the Magyars, the Finns and the
Seljuks (Osmanlis), has created a conglomerate never yet spoken, nor ever
possible to be spoken, by mortal man. He rarely attempts an explanation of the
phonetic laws which govern his cognate languages; he relies, not upon grammar
and formative system, but on detached words; and he treats the digraphic and
other inscriptions, not as a decipherer or an archaeologist, but as a comparative philologist. And ‑‑ will it
be believed? ‑‑ this pseudospeech is made, with dogmatic self
confidence, to explain the origin of, not only Lycians, Carians and Phyrygians,
Cilicians and Pisidians, Ligures and Leleges, but of the debated Euskaric and
even the ancient Egyptian (Coptic, page 39), whilst on page 68 we are told that
Egypt is a Semitic region; and, finally, the mysterious Albanian is simply the
vulgar Finnic ‑‑ Tosk
being converted, not honestly, into Toscans (page 20). Another
unsupported and erroneous assertion is, that mythology, like language, is an absolutely conclusive test of (racial) affinity (page 85). It often
represents certain phases of social development through which all civilised
peoples have passed, {216} and the same basis of religion ‑‑
which we may, in the absence of a better word, call Fetishism ‑‑ has served for the Aryan
and the Semite as well as for the Turanian. The
worship of the dead is held by some reviewers to be the strongest argument of
Turanian affinities. They will find it throughout half civilized Africa:
Dahome, for instance. The Ugric practice of sorcery (page 14) is simply universal; every reader of Blackland
travels is familiar with that stage of society; and magic need not be derived from Magi (page 79) when we have the Persian
equivalent mugh () a MAGVS. Animism is represented to be the peculiar creed of the
Turanians (page 35), when it is the dawn of faith, the belief in things unseen;
therefore it was universal, and it lingers in the most advanced creeds ‑‑
for instance, in Christianity, to whose spirit the material ghost is opposed.
We have (page 84) the vague assertion that Semitic races tend to a theocracy, while
the tendency of the Aryans is to a democratic government: this view is formed by
reading only Jewish, Greek, and Roman history; but the Bedawin, the type of the
so called Semitic race, have never shown a symptom of theocracy, and, indeed,
may be said to be of no {217} religion at all. The Turanian tombs are family tombs (page 36); but what are the
so called Tombs of
the Kings and of the Prophets near Jerusalem? What are
those of Dahome, Ashanti, and Benin? ‑‑ perhaps these also are
Turanian! Of the contradiction about the temple and the tomb (pages 41 and 49) I
have already spoken. Even Stonehenge (page 43) is a primaeval sepulchre of the
Turanian type, when Mr. James Fergusson has proved it to be comparatively
modern. I presume that Pococke's two black demons who dwell
in the sepulchre with the (Moslem) dead
(page 117, from Dennis
I, 310) are our old friends the Angels Munkir and Nakir, known to Lord Byron;
they simply visit the corpse for the purpose of questioning it. And most people
know that the Arab Jinn was a human shape made of
fire, not an
unsubstantial body of the nature of smoke (page 127). The
geographer and anthropologist stand aghast before the seven Ethnographic Notes which contain such
assertions as these. This is an absolute note: No Aryan or Semitic people is found
separated by any great interval from other nations of a kindred race (page 69). Some have traced
the Aryan tongue to South America, and what
are the {218} Gipsies scattered about the Old and New
Worlds? Are the Jews Semites or Turanians? And the Arab, who, in prehistoric
times, spread northeast to Samarkand, southeast to Malabar, southwest to
Zanzibar and Kafirland, and west to Morocco and to Spain? Is this an unbroken continuous block
without detached outliers? How can it be said that the conquests of the Goths, Vandals, and other
Teutonic (add,
Scandinavian), and
Slavonic (Slav) [footnote 1: I am sorry to see Mr.
Freeman using the debased form Slave] races were the conquests of armies rather than the
migrations of nations (page 81)? It sounds passing strange to an Englishman in
Istria, surrounded by vestiges of Kelts and Romans, and preserved by a Scythian
population. We read, again, (page 81) the Turks have developed a remarkable genius
for the government and organisation of subject races, when the experience of the eastern man
is embodied in the proverb that where the Osmanli plants his foot the grass will not grow. Nor did the Turks instinctively take to the sea (page 81); they engaged
Greek, Dalmatian, and other Aryans to man their ships. How are the Nairs of the
Malabar coast hill
tribes (page
57)? are they confounded with the Todas of the Nilgiri? We {219} are told (page 66) that geographically, ancient Etruria
is modern Tuscany,
without the qualification that there were two other sets of DVODECIM POPVLI ‑‑ one to the
south, the other to the northeast, [footnote 1: Doctor Paul Broca (Ethogénie Italienne: Les Ombres et les Etrusques, pages 289‑297, volume
III, Revue d'
Anthropologie), remarks
that Etruria Media is a purely geographical
term, which, anthropologically speaking, should be Antiqua, opposed to Nova (CIRCVMPADANA), and to NOVISSIMA or Opicia: the latter is disconnected by Latium,
which was never occupied by the Etruscans] so as to embrace nearly the whole
peninsula; and in 1874 the author had apparently no knowledge of the immense
finds which since 1856 have enriched Bologna. Converging doorjambs (page 353)
are, doubtless, Egyptian and Etruscan, but also they belong to all primitive
architecture, the object being simply to facilitate the construction of the
lintel; we find them in Palmyra, and we find them in the far west of America. I
read (page 66) that ceramic art is the one permanent legacy which the Etruscans
have bequeathed to the world, when all their highest works were either
imitations of the Greeks or were imported from Greece; nor have we a word about
the merchant prince Demaratus of Corinth, who is said to have brought the
alphabet to Etruria (Tacitus, ANN.,
XI, 14, and others) with the FICTORES
Eucheir and Eugrammos (titles, not names). The passion for vivid and harmonious {220} colour is not only Turanian (page 65); even we
English have received it in Fair Isle from Spain, which received it from
Morocco. Tracing
descent by the mother's side (page 14) is common to an immense number of barbarous races;
the Congoese Africans, for instance, can hardly be Turanian, and even the old
Icelanders, who have nothing in common with the Skrćlingjar, under certain circumstances took the
surer matronymic. [Footnote
1: The case stands thus: The Lycians (Herodotos, I, 173) always traced their
descent, unlike the Greeks and Romans, through the maternal line, and this has
been verified by Fellows (Lycia,
276). The Etruscans (Dennis, I, 133) being less purely oriental, made
use of both methods.
But this careful author is hardly justified in deriving the custom from the east:
it would arise naturally from the high position of women in a people of
diviners, augurs, and, perhaps, of mesmerists; but we cannot say that such
dignity is an Asiatic custom.] Exogamy, again (page 58), belongs to a certain stage of society
where all the members of the tribe are held to be of one blood, and where
marriage would be within the prohibited degree. We find it amongst the East
African Somal, who will be Turanians only when the Copts are. It
would be fastidious work again to slay the slain after the critique upon the
vocabulary of Etruscan
Researches,
printed in the Athenaeum of March 28th [Jeff Hill's footnote: May 28th PRO March 28th], 1874, by Mr. William Wright. But {221} the absolute ignorance of all eastern
languages, and the unscrupulous ingenuity with which names of persons and
places are distorted, require some notice. The authority of Mr. Lenormant, Mr. Sayce,
Mr. Edkins, and Sir Henry Rawlinson is invoked (Athenaeum, May 2nd, 1874) to defend as
Turanian or Turkish such familiar Arabic words
as Nasl, Jinn, and Ghoul; but what of li‑umm (LEMVRES!) meaning simply in Arabic to the mother? The learned interpreter of
Cuneiform must be charmed with the role here assigned to him. The name of Attila, we are told, is of an Etruscan type, and can be
explained from Etruscan sources (page 75), when we find it even in the Scandinavoaryan Atli. The name of the Budii, a Median tribe, is seen in the town name of Buda
in Hungary (page
78); the latter (buta), signifying literally a boy, was the proper name of Atil or
Attila's brother, put to death by him. The disputed word Ogre is derived from the Tartar word ugry, a thief (page 376), which also named
the Ugrian, I should rather find its
equivalent in the Hindú aghor,
as aghorpanthi, the religious mendicant,
part of whose Dharma (duty) was cannibalism. The very name of Darius, the Mede, can be {222} explained from Finnic sources, which seem able, like a
certain statesman, to explain away everything (page 79); but we trace its
cognate in the modern Persian Dárá.
Tarquin (ΤΑΡΧΙ) is Tark‑Khan, the prudent prince (page 79); LVCVMO (page 322) means great Khan, from lu
and kan (for khan); and here we may note that the great Cham of Tartary, which the unlettered
Englishman is tempted to pronounce as in chamber, came to us through the Italians.
Perfunctory enough are the connection (pages 266‑228) of the praenomen VELE (an axe handle, or ful in Yeniseian) with CAIVS (a cudgel, Latin, CAIA), which was GAIVS; and such resemblances as Soracte with Ser‑ak‑Tagh, snow‑white mountain (page 346) ‑‑
worse than Nibly's Pelasgic ΣΩΡΟΣ‑ΑΚΤΗ ‑‑ as ASCANIVS with Szön Khan, and as IVLVS with Eszen Ili (page 374), ancestors of the Turkomans.
Father TIBER (page 330) hails from Teppeh‑ur (peh Teppeh, hill, Persian ur, water,
Turanian?); but what of Varro's THEBRIS or DEHEBRIS, and of THEPRI, THEPHRI, the forms given by Dennis
(II, 481)? Who has attributed the invention of dice to the Etruscans (page 332)? The derivation
of Kiemzathrm (page 188), explained, as 2
+ 1 + 4 + 10 + 1, to mean twice forty or eighty, from the Yeniseio‑Ariner
kina‑man‑tschau‑thjung, {223} is a masterly waste of time to the
reader as well as to the writer. If IVNO (page 133) come from Jomu, God, we will take the liberty of
associating with her our old friend Mumbojumbo, not worshipped in the Mountains
of the Moon. On
page 315 the Etruscan ANTAI, the winds, are identified with VENTVS, ΑΝΕΜΟΣ, and the Teuton wind, when the Sanskrit váta shows the nasal not to be radical. Why
go to the Ugric ker, or aker in Lapp, for AGER, when even in Scandinavian we have Akkr (page 333). As Doctor Birch remarks (Athenaeum, June 20, 1874), Mr. Taylor
has made a PETITIO PRINCIPII in assuming that ThAPIRNAL = NIGER; KAHATIAL = VIOLENS, KIARThALISA = FVSCVS, and VANIAL = SCAE CALIS, whatever that may mean. It by no means appears that
the Roman words in the bilingual epitaphs were translations of the Etruscan; they
might have been aliases. In fact, KAHATIAL is translated in the bilingual
inscriptions CAFATIA NATVS and VARNALISA
by VARIA
NATVS, not RVFVS, which, added afterwards, was something besides which he
was called, as an agnomen in Latin, but not Etruscan. On page 319 we are informed that there
is no tenable Aryan etymology for PŌPVLVS, the poplar tree, whence PŌPVLONIA. Colonel Yule {224} (Some Unscientific Notes On The History Of
Plants, page 49,
Geog. Mag., February, 1875) has shown
the contrary to be the case; like bhurja, the birch,
the word accompanied the earliest emigration from the east. POPVLVS, pioppo (fioppa, in Bolognese), peuplier, and poplar are the Sanskrit pippala, the modern Hindú pipal (FICVS RELIGIOSA), whose superficial likeness causes the
French to name the Indian fig peuplier d' Inde and the Palermo gardener to baptise it pioppo delle Indie. Major Madden also found the POPVLVS CILIATA of Kumaon called by the
people Gar‑pípal. Lord Crawford explains the
Etruscan Bacchus by this process: Pampin = FΑΜΠΕΛ
= Phuphl
+ ans,
uns,
or ana
= PhUPhLUNS, PUPLIANA, that is, God of the Vine. The existence of the Huns in
Etruscan days is proved (pages 76 and 367) by the word HUINS (mirror engraved by Gerhard, Tafel CCXXXV), the terminal
sibilant being probably
the Etruscan definite article. I suggested (Athenaeum, May 28, 1874 [Jeff Hill's footnote: March 28, 1874 PRO May 28, 1874]) that the word might also be read HLINS, (Hellenes?) part of an inscription
over what has generally been supposed to be the Trojan Horse. Doctor Birch,
however, says (Athenaeum, June 20, 1874) that it may, with equal, if not greater,
probability {225} be referred to the capture of Pegasus (PECSE) by Vulcan (SEThLANS), and to the Fountain Hippokrene, or FONS
CABALLINVS, in
Etruscan HUINS, analogous to the Latin FONS. He suggests ETULE PECSE SEThLANS, as equivalent to the Greek Edoulene Pegason Hephaistos; but under any circumstances the Huns
take to flight.
Again, it is evident that the inscription NUSThIEEI or NUSThIEH (pages 112‑113) should
be read the other way, HEIThZUN, or, probably, HEIASUN ‑‑ IASON or Jason, according to Doctor Birch. The
difficulty is that the E faces from left to right and
the S from right to left. The French Maréchal, a groom or farrier (page 267), is not fairly
explained. Our popular derivation is from the Scandinavian mara, a mare -- hence nott‑mara, a nightmare ‑‑ and skjald, a servant. The latter has passed through sundry
vicissitudes before he became a mar‑shal. I would, however, observe that the
Illyrian and other Slavs have mara
or marra, meaning a witch. It is
unpardonable to make (page 113) historic ezhdiha Turkish; everyone knows the origin of
this Persian word, the old Bactrian and intensely Aryan az‑i‑daháka, the biting snake; the ahi, the midgardsom, zohak of Firdausi ‑‑ slain, according to Zendavestan {226} tradition, by Thraetavna (India).
Curiously enough, the Illyrian Slavs still retain adaja (pronounced azhdaya) for a dragon. The CAMEL, [footnote 1: I regret that no one has
answered my questions in the Athenaeum (March, 1874) concerning the
Etruscan camel, whether it be the northern (two humped) or the southern. And it
is even more to be regretted that in the Lost Tombs Of Tarquinii (Dennis, I, 348) no notice was taken
of the elephant being African or Asiatic] with capitals (page 151), as if
alluding to Henri Heine's Great Camel Question, is, we are assured, Turanian; when the Semitic jamal ‑‑ pronounced, probably, by the Jews and
Phoenicians, and certainly by the modern Bedawin, gamal ‑‑ became the kamel‑os of the Greeks. It may
explain CAMILLVS, but if so, the word is,
like CADMVS, Semitic. Of the four
testwords, on which
the whole case as to the Ugric affinities of Etruscan might safely be rested (pages 93‑113) ‑‑
KULMU (which Corssen reads CULSU, page 380), VANTh, HINThIAL, and NAHUM ‑‑ the second and third are
interpreted by the wildest processes. VANTh (thanatos?) relies solely upon the Turkish fáni (page 102) and vani, ready to perish (page 103); the former being pure
Arabic, and the latter a corruption of the active form fáni. HINThIAL loses half its superficial resemblance to the Finnic haltin (or haldia, page 107), which is, letter for letter, the same {227} as the Etruscan word, when we compare its other
form PhINThIAL; nor can we identify it (page 109), with the Turkish ghyulghe (gyulgeh),
a shadow, or break it into HIN‑ThI‑AL, the image of the child of the Grave (page 111). Manitou (page 136) is certainly not the North American Heaven God: it is simply the haltia of the Finns; the phantasm which
resides in every material object. To such information (page 102), as the suffix d or t (!) in Turkish commonly denotes abstract nouns we can only reply Pro‑di‑gious! The four Arabic words melekyut (malakiyyat, from malik), munidat (corrupted), nejdet, and nedámet, quoted in support of this doctrine,
end with what grammarians call the Há el‑masdar (h of
abstraction). A man must be Turan‑smitten, must have caught a Tartar, to
find (page 124) that the title of the Russian Emperor, the Tzar, is doubtless of
Tartaric origin;
and perhaps he would say the same of Caesar and Kaiser. But, seriously, is all
history thus to be thrown overboard? And why, in the name of common sense,
should we compare the Indian Menu with MANTUS, Minos, and MANES? (page 122). Why, again, should not KhARUN be Charon, instead of Kara (black), and UN, an abraded form of AINA, a spirit, or of jum,
God? {228} (page 118). The derivation (page 160) of
the Etruscan MACh (one), [footnote 1: curious to say, the only
dialect in which MACh means one, is the Sim of the Gipsies (see ANTHROPOLOGIA, page 498, volume 1),
probably derived from the Greek ΜΙΑ, whilst Machun
is two. Judged by its numerals, and
by Professor von W. Corssen's undoubted failure, Etruscan has no affinity with
any known tongue, and though Mr. Ellis suspected a double system, this has not
yet been proved]
though safe ground
to tread on (page
174), is another marvel. It proceeds from the Turkic bar‑mach, a finger (read parmak or pármak), and the Turkish (!) mikh lab, the clawed foot of a bird or animal, that is, the noun of
instrument in Arabic from the triliteral root khalaba, he rent. So in our vernacular the fish‑fin perhaps comes from fin‑ger. And yet this conglomerate of
errors is made to take a crucial part in the Turanian scheme; it is the basis
of interpreting the invaluable (Campanari) dice of
Toscanella, now in the Cabinet des Médailles, Paris, where words, taking the
place of pips, form, according to some scholars, an adjuration or prayer, to
others a name and a gift. Lord Crawford explains this (bogus) Rosetta Stone of Mr. Taylor by an
adjuration which also contains an echo of the current names of numerals in
Japhetan, if not Teutonic, speech. {229}
And
the Sprachforscher, Professor Corssen proposes
(pages 28, 806): --
Mr.
Ellis (Numerals As
Signs Of Primaeval Unity, and PERVVIA SCYTHICA, page 158) makes MAKH (1), ThU (2, DVO?),
ZAL (3), HUTh (4), KI (5), and SA (6); Mr. Taylor, inverting the sequence, MACh (1), KI (2), ZAL (3), SA (4), ThU (5), and HUTh (6). The relics were found in 1848, and probably Mr. Taylor
is not answerable for the dodge
which, in announcing his book, omitted the date and left the public to believe
that, when the find was described in 1848 by Doctor Emilio Braun (page 60, Bull. Archaeol. Inst. Of Rome), and afterwards of Orioli,
Steub, Lorenz, Morenz, Bunsen, Pott, and others, a new key to Etruscan had lately been discovered. But he is
answerable for the tone of his reply (Athenaeum, May 2, 1874) to the Gentle Lindsay (Athenaeum, April 11, 1874) ‑‑
a painful contrast with the courtesy of the earl's blood. {230} Such
are the process of exhaustion or elimination; the far fetched affinities; the broadest conclusions on
the narrowest of bases; the curious,
or rather, supposed, coincidences, the guesswork of an unwary philologer; the plausible agnation;
the perverted ingenuity ‑‑ such as holding ancient numerals to be
fragments of ancient words denoting members of the body ‑‑ and
explaining the stone circles around tumuli as the survivals of tent weights,
which affiliate Etruscan with Altaic. These picklocks or skeleton keys do not open the lock of the
dark chamber, and the secret is locked with more than adamantine power. The whole volume is a
simple confusion of all scientific etymology, and its abrasion doctrine might be applied as profitably to
deriving roast beef from plum pudding. The cumulative arguments which make the RASENNA Ugrians are mere SORITES of errors called analogies, and exactly
the same defects have been noted in the author's Words And Places. Professor Corssen, perhaps the
profoundest Etruscologue of his age, even asserted that of twenty two numerals
which Mr. Taylor has claimed as proofs of the connection between Etruscan and
the Altaic branch of the Turanian family of tongues, as many as eighteen are
not {231} even Etruscan, and, of the four
remaining, three are pronouns, and one is a proper name. [Footnote 1: Professor
Corssen's numerals are Italian: ‑‑ UNI (1), TEIS (2), TRINAChE (3), ChVARThU (4), CUINTE (5), SESThS (6), SETUME (7), UNTAVE (8), NUNAS (9), TESNE (10), TESNE EKA (11),
and TISNTEIS (20). Perhaps these may be the Italiot, used synchronously
with the Lydoetruscan numbers.] Finally,
in his preface (page VII), the Livingstone of linguists, as a certain reviewer entitles him, was conscious of the shortcomings of his book; in the Reviews
he fought his free
fight more
obstinately for its errors, its hallucinations, and its ignorance than most men
have fought for their truths. I was not a little amused after noticing his
contradictions about the existence of Etruscan temples to read the diatribe (Athenaeum, June 6, 1874) about my utter recklessness in making
groundless accusations. Let me ask, with the distinguished Arabist Professor Wright, QVID
PLVRA? [Jeff Hill's footnote: What is the need for more words?] The
Family Pen has never been employed worse than in writing Etruscan Researches. Yet by substituting a
scatter of colonists from Asia Minor, either Lydian or Lydophoenician, for the
pure Turanian, we may find in Mr. Taylor a useful picture of Etruscan life. The
conclusions which we draw from our actual {232} state of knowledge concerning the
Etruscan tongue are ‑‑ 1.
That it may possibly be proved Italiot;
2. That its origin and its
affiliation are at present mysterious as the Basque; 3. That, whereas almost all previous authorities had
advocated some form of the great Indoeuropean speech, Mr. Taylor has made
himself a remarkable Turanian
exception; and 4. That certain Finnish affinities deserve scientific
investigation. |
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Etruscan Bologna, A Study Part I. The Works Of Man.
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