barbarisms, or lower civilisations (as in ancient Mexico), and the
sacerdotage of India, till myth reaches its most human form in
Greece. Yet even in Greek myth the beast is not wholly cast out,
and Hellas by no means "let the ape and tiger die". That Mr. Tylor
does not exclude the Aryan race from his general theory is plain
enough.[3] "What is the Aryan conception of the Thunder-god but a
poetic elaboration of thoughts inherited from the savage stage
through which the primitive Aryans had passed?"[4]


[1] Primitive Culture, 2nd edit., i. p. 283.

[2] Op. cit., p. 275.

[3] Primitive Culture, 2nd edit., ii. 265.

[4] Pretty much the same view seems to be taken by Mr. Max Muller
(Nineteenth Century, January, 1882) when he calls Tsui Goab (whom
the Hottentots believe to be a defunct conjuror) "a Hottentot Indra
or Zeus".


The advantages of our hypothesis (if its legitimacy be admitted)
are obvious. In the first place, we have to deal with an actual
demonstrable condition of the human intellect. The existence of
the savage state in all its various degrees, and of the common
intellectual habits and conditions which are shared by the backward
peoples, and again the survival of many of these in civilisation,
are indubitable facts. We are not obliged to fall back upon some
fanciful and unsupported theory of what "primitive man" did, and