picturesque accounts given by Herodotus of the customs of savage
tribes. To take one instance, which bears a good deal on modern
questions, we find in the works of this great traveller the gradual
and progressive steps in the development of the family life clearly
manifested in the mere gregarious herding together of the
Agathyrsi, their primitive kinsmanship through women in common, and
the rise of a feeling of paternity from a state of polyandry. This
tribe stood at that time on that borderland between umbilical
relationship and the family which has been such a difficult point
for modern anthropologists to find.

The ancient authors, however, are unanimous in insisting that the
family is the ultimate unit of society, though, as I have said, an
inductive study of primitive races, or even the accounts given of
them by Herodotus, would have shown them that the [Greek text which
cannot be reproduced] of a personal household, to use Plato's
expression, is really a most complex notion appearing always in a
late stage of civilisation, along with recognition of private
property and the rights of individualism.

Philology also, which in the hands of modern investigators has
proved such a splendid instrument of research, was in ancient days
studied on principles too unscientific to be of much use.
Herodotus points out that the word ERIDANOS is essentially Greek in
character, that consequently the river supposed to run round the
world is probably a mere Greek invention. His remarks, however, on
language generally, as in the case of PIROMIS and the ending of the
Persian names, show on what unsound basis his knowledge of language
rested.