such a statement, we could have cleared up anything in our position which
might seem to him obscure.

Our system is but one aspect of the theory of evolution, or is but the
application of that theory to the topic of mythology. The archaeologist
studies human life in its material remains; he tracks progress (and
occasional degeneration) from the rudely chipped flints in the ancient
gravel beds, to the polished stone weapon, and thence to the ages of
bronze and iron. He is guided by material 'survivals'--ancient arms,
implements, and ornaments. The student of Institutions has a similar
method. He finds his relics of the uncivilised past in agricultural
usages, in archaic methods of allotment of land, in odd marriage customs,
things rudimentary--fossil relics, as it were, of an early social and
political condition. The archaeologist and the student of Institutions
compare these relics, material or customary, with the weapons, pottery,
implements, or again with the habitual law and usage of existing savage
or barbaric races, and demonstrate that our weapons and tools, and our
laws and manners, have been slowly evolved out of lower conditions, even
out of savage conditions.

The anthropological method in mythology is the same. In civilised
religion and myth we find rudimentary survivals, fossils of rite and
creed, ideas absolutely incongruous with the environing morality,
philosophy, and science of Greece and India. Parallels to these things,
so out of keeping with civilisation, we recognise in the creeds and rites
of the lower races, even of cannibals; but _there_ the creeds and rites
are _not_ incongruous with their environment of knowledge and culture.
There they are as natural and inevitable as the flint-headed spear or
marriage by capture. We argue, therefore, that religions and mythical
faiths and rituals which, among Greeks and Indians, are inexplicably