mysteries, were common to Hellenic religion, and to the religion of
African, Australian, and American tribes.

Now, with regard to all these strange usages, what is the method of
folklore? The method is, when an apparently irrational and anomalous
custom is found in any country, to look for a country where a similar
practice is found, and where the practice is no longer irrational and
anomalous, but in harmony with the manners and ideas of the people among
whom it prevails. That Greeks should dance about in their mysteries with
harmless serpents in their hands looks quite unintelligible. When a wild
tribe of Red Indians does the same thing, as a trial of courage, with
real rattlesnakes, we understand the Red Man's motives, and may
conjecture that similar motives once existed among the ancestors of the
Greeks. Our method, then, is to compare the seemingly meaningless
customs or manners of civilised races with the similar customs and
manners which exist among the uncivilised and still retain their meaning.
It is not necessary for comparison of this sort that the uncivilised and
the civilised race should be of the same stock, nor need we prove that
they were ever in contact with each other. Similar conditions of mind
produce similar practices, apart from identity of race, or borrowing of
ideas and manners.

Let us return to the example of the flint arrowheads. Everywhere
neolithic arrow-heads are pretty much alike. The cause of the
resemblance is no more than this, that men, with the same needs, the same
materials, and the same rude instruments, everywhere produced the same
kind of arrow-head. No hypothesis of interchange of ideas nor of
community of race is needed to explain the resemblance of form in the
missiles. Very early pottery in any region is, for the same causes, like
very early pottery in any other region. The same sort of similarity was