ABSTRACT
The sense of the past, which is a composite of memories, is not evenly continuous. Thinking back, there is a break where first-hand knowledge pieces onto the secondary stuff of hearsay, and at a third remove belief is spun from written record. The latter falls into two main divisions, concerned severally with people much like ourselves; and with people who might almost be of another species, their motives having become either undecipherable or incomprehensible. Of these alien folk, certain nations from widely separated ages and places appear to be of one type; the stiff hieratic figures of the Egyptians, of the Byzantine period, and of the Incas, bear a resemblance. The Dark Ages are puzzling, not in being obscure, since immense tracts of human history have receded from view, but because they occur between lighted intervals, as if they had passed while we were asleep. These gulfs of time cannot be measured by the square of the distance. They lie between two antithetic concepts of humanity, of the relation of the individual to the group, two methods of association. The distinction was drawn clearly by Sir Henry Maine, with the designation of the Society of Contract and the Society of Status.
