(the system here advocated) "and that of comparative philology, it
is the former that I would adopt without the slightest hesitation.
This method alone enables us to explain the fact, which has so
often provoked amazement, that people so refined as the Greeks, . . .
or so rude, but morally pure, as the Germans, . . . managed to
attribute to their gods all manner of cowardly, cruel and
disorderly conduct. This method alone explains the why and
wherefore of all those strange metamorphoses of gods into beasts
and plants, and even stones, which scandalised philosophers, and
which the witty Ovid played on for the diversion of his
contemporaries. In short, this method teaches us to recognise in
all those strange stories the survivals of a barbaric age, long
passed away, but enduring to later times in the form of religious
traditions, of all traditions the most persistent. . . . Finally,
this method alone enables us to explain the origin of myths,
because it endeavours to study them in their rudest and most
primitive shape, thus allowing their true significance to be much
more clearly apparent than it can be in the myths (so often
touched, retouched, augmented and humanised) which are current
among races arrived at a certain degree of culture."

The method is to this extent applauded by a most competent
authority, and it has been warmly accepted by a distinguished
French school of students, represented by M. Gaidoz. But it is
obvious that the method rests on a double hypothesis: first, that
satisfactory evidence as to the mental conditions of the lower and
backward races is obtainable; second, that the civilised races
(however they began) either passed through the savage state of
thought and practice, or borrowed very freely from people in that
condition. These hypotheses have been attacked by opponents; the