they all agree in character, though the Greek tales are full of grace,
while those of the Australians or Brazilians are rude enough, we may
plausibly account for the similarity of myths, as we accounted for the
similarity of flint arrow-heads. The myths, like the arrow-heads,
resemble each other because they were originally framed to meet the same
needs out of the same material. In the case of the arrow-heads, the need
was for something hard, heavy, and sharp--the material was flint. In the
case of the myths, the need was to explain certain phenomena--the
material (so to speak) was an early state of the human mind, to which all
objects seemed equally endowed with human personality, and to which no
metamorphosis appeared impossible.

In the following essays, then, the myths and customs of various peoples
will be compared, even when these peoples talk languages of alien
families, and have never (as far as history shows us) been in actual
contact. Our method throughout will be to place the usage, or myth,
which is unintelligible when found among a civilised race, beside the
similar myth which is intelligible enough when it is found among savages.
A mean term will be found in the folklore preserved by the
non-progressive classes in a progressive people. This folklore
represents, in the midst of a civilised race, the savage ideas out of
which civilisation has been evolved. The conclusion will usually be that
the fact which puzzles us by its presence in civilisation is a relic
surviving from the time when the ancestors of a civilised race were in
the state of savagery. By this method it is not necessary that 'some
sort of genealogy should be established' between the Australian and the
Greek narrators of a similar myth, nor between the Greek and Australian
possessors of a similar usage. The hypothesis will be that the myth, or
usage, is common to both races, not because of original community of
stock, not because of contact and borrowing, but because the ancestors of