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Page:Colson - The Week (1926, IA weekessayonorigi0000fhco).djvu/127

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the hope that those who are specialists in Celtic or Teutonic mythology and antiquities may give it a consideration which I do not think it has yet received.

I have been obliged to end, as I began, on a note of uncertainty, and it may also be said that much of the intermediate part, particularly as to the relation between the Christian Church and the planetary week, is somewhat conjectural. But there is a great difference between the two forms of uncertainty. In the one—that which besets the question of the existence of the prehistoric week and the meaning of the Teutonic week—we suffer from a paucity of facts. In the case of the other we have abundance of facts, though the inferences to be drawn from them may be doubtful. But, apart from these two conjectural elements, there is much which is certainly historical. That our week rests upon a combination of the Jewish and the planetary week, that the latter obtained a remarkable currency during the first two centuries A.D., and that it is in origin an hour rather than a day system, are truths to my mind established beyond question. If this little treatise falls into the hands of what are called 'general readers,' experience tells me that to the great majority the matter will be new, and if they fail to find it interesting, I shall conclude that it is my method of presenting the subject, rather than the subject itself, which is at fault.