SCORPION

That a whole nation should have a special dress, special
tools and weapons, special laws of marriage and property,
special moral and religious doctrines, is a remarkable fact,
which we notice so little because we have lived all our lives
in the midst of it. It is with such general qualities of
organized bodies of men that ethnography has especially to
deal. Yet, while generalizing on the culture of a tribe or
nation, and setting aside the peculiarities of the individuals
composing it as unimportant to the main result, we must
be careful not to forget what makes up this main result.
There are people so intent on the separate life of indi-
viduals that they cannot grasp a notion of the action of a
community as a whole such an observer, incapable of a
wide view of society, is aptly described in the saying that
he ' cannot see the forest for the trees.' But, on the other
hand, the philosopher may be so intent upon his general
laws of society as to neglect the individual actors of whom
that society is made up, and of him it may be said that
he cannot see the trees for the forest. We know how arts,
customs, and ideas are shaped among ourselves by the com-
bined actions of many individuals, of which actions both
motive and effect often come quite distinctly within our
view. The history of an invention, an opinion, a ceremony,
is a history of suggestion and modification, encouragement
and opposition, personalgain and party prejudice, and the in-
dividuals concerned act each according to his own motives,
as determined by his character and circumstances. Thus



DISTRIBUTION AND DIFFUSION. 13

sometimes we watch individuals acting for their own ends
with little thought of their effect on society at large, and
sometimes we have to study movements of national life
as a whole, where the individuals co-operating in them are
utterly beyond our observation. But seeing that collective
social action is the mere resultant of many individual
actions, it is clear that these two methods of enquiry, if
rightly followed, must be absolutely consistent.

In studying both the recurrence of special habits or ideas
in several districts, and their prevalence within each district,
there come before us ever-reiterated proofs of regular causa-
tion producing the phenomena of human life, and of laws
of maintenance and diffusion according to which these phe-
nomena settle into permanent standard conditions of society,
at definite stages of culture. But, while giving full import-
ance to the evidence bearing on these standard conditions
of society, let us be careful to avoid a pitfall which may
entrap the unwary student. Of course the opinions and
habits belonging in common to masses of mankind are to
a great extent the results of sound judgment and practical
wisdom. But to a great extent it is not so. That many
numerous societies of men should have believed in the
influence of the evil eye and the existence of a firmament,
should have sacrificed slaves and goods to the ghosts of the
departed, should have handed down traditions of giants
slaying monsters and men turning into beasts all this is
ground for holding that such ideas were indeed produced in
men's minds by efficient causes, but it is not ground for
holding that the rites in question are profitable, the beliefs
sound, and the history authentic. This may seem at the
first glance a truism, but, in fact, it is the denial of a fallacy
which deeply affects the minds of all but a small critical
minority of mankind. Popularly, what everybody says
must be true, what everybody does must be right ' Quod
ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est, hoc
est vere proprieque Catholicum ' and so forth. There are
various topics, especially in history, law, philosophy, and



!4 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

theology, where even the educated people we live among
^ can hardly be brought to see that the cause why men do
hold an opinion, or practise a custom, is by no means
necessarily a reason why they ought to do so. Now collec-
tions of ethnographic evidence bringing so prominently into
view the agreement of immense multitudes of men as to
certain traditions, beliefs, and usages, are peculiarly liable
to be thus improperly used in direct defence of these insti-
tutions themselves, even old barbaric nations being polled
to maintain their opinions against what are called modern
ideas. As it has more than once happened to myself to
find my collections of traditions and beliefs thus set up to
prove their own objective truth, without proper examination
of the grounds on which they were actually received, I take
this occasion of remarking that the same line of argument
will serve equally well to demonstrate, by the strong and
wide consent of nations, that the earth is flat, and night-
mare the visit of a demon.

It being shown that the details of Culture are capable of
being classified in a great number of ethnographic groups of
arts, beliefs, customs, and the rest, the consideration comes
next how far the facts arranged in these groups are produced
by evolution from one another. It need hardly be pointed
out that the groups in question, though held together each
by a common character, are by no means accurately defined.
To take up again the natural history illustration, it may be
said that they are species which tend to run widely into
varieties. And when it comes to the question what relations
some of these groups bear to others, it is plain that the
student of the habits of mankind has a great advantage over
the student of the species of plants and animals. Among
naturalists it is an open question whether a theory of
development from species to species is a record of transi-
tions which actually took place, or a mere ideal scheme
serviceable in the classification of species whose origin was
really independent. But among ethnographers there is no
such question as to the possibility of species of implements



STAGES OF CULTURE. 15

or habits or beliefs being developed one out of another, for
development in Culture is recognized by our most familiar
knowledge. Mechanical invention supplies apt examples of
the kind of development which affects civilization at large.
In the history of fire-arms, the clumsy wheel-lock, in which
a notched steel wheel revolved by means of a spring against
a piece of pyrites till a spark caught the priming, led to the
invention of the more serviceable flint-lock, of which a few
still hang in the kitchens of our farm-houses for the boys
to shoot small birds with at Christmas ; the flint-lock in
time passed by modification into the percussion-lock, which
is just now changing its old-fashioned arrangement to be
adapted from muzzle-loading to breech-loading. The
mediaeval astrolabe passed into the quadrant, now discarded
in its turn by the seaman, who uses the more delicate
sextant, and so it is through the history of one art and
instrument after another. Such examples of progression
are known to us as direct history, but so thoroughly is this
notion of development at home in our minds, that by means
of it we reconstruct lost history without scruple, trusting to
general knowledge of the principles of human thought and
action as a guide in putting the facts in their proper order.
Whether chronicle speaks or is silent on the point, no one
comparing a long-bow and a cross-bow would doubt that
the cross-bow was a development arising from the simpler
instrument. So among the fire-drills for igniting by
friction, it seems clear on the face of the matter that the
drill worked by a cord or bow is a later improvement on the
clumsier primitive instrument twirled between the hands.
That instructive class of specimens which antiquaries
sometimes discover, bronze celts modelled on the heavy
type of the stone hatchet, are scarcely explicable except as
first steps in the transition from the Stone Age to the
Bronze Age, to be followed soon by the next stage of
progress, in which it is discovered that the new material is
suited to a handier and less wasteful pattern. And thus,
in the other branches of our history, there will come again



!6 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

and again into view series of facts which may be consis-
tently arranged as having followed one another in a
particular order of development, but which will hardly bear
being turned round and made to follow in reversed order.
Such for instance are the facts I have here brought forward
in a chapter on the Art of Counting, which tend to prove
that as to this point of culture at least, savage tribes
reached their position by learning and not by unlearning,
by elevation from a lower rather than by degradation from
a higher state.

Among evidence aiding us to trace the course which the
civilization of the world has actually followed, is that great
class of facts to denote which I have found it convenient
to introduce the term ' survivals.' These are processes,
customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on
by force of habit into a new state of society different from
that in which they had their original home, and they thus
remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of cul-
ture out of which a newer has been evolved. Thus, I know
an old Somersetshire woman whose hand-loom dates from
the time before the introduction of the ' flying shuttle/
which new-fangled appliance she has never even learnt to
use, and I have seen her throw her shuttle from hand to
hand in true classic fashion ; this old woman is not a
century behind her times, but she is a case of survival.
Such examples often lead us back to the habits of hundreds
and even thousands of years ago. The ordeal of the Key
and Bible, still in use, is a survival ; the Midsummer bonfire
is a survival ; the Breton peasants' All Souls' supper for
the spirits of the dead is a survival. The simple keeping
up of ancient habits is only one part of the transition
from old into new and changing times. The serious
business of ancient society may be seen to sink into the
sport of later generations, and its serious belief to linger
on in nursery folk-lore, while superseded habits of old- world
life may be modified into new-world forms still powerful for
good and evil. Sometimes old thoughts and practices will



STAGES OF CULTURE. 17

burst out afresh, to the amazement of a world that thought
them long since dead or dying ; here survival passes into
revival, as has lately happened in so remarkable a way in
the history of modern spiritualism, a subject full of in-
struction from the ethnographer's point of view. The study
of the principles of survival has, indeed, no small practical
importance, for most of what we call superstition is in-
cluded within survival, and in this way lies open to the attack
of its deadliest enemy, a reasonable explanation. Insigni-
ficant, moreover, as multitudes of the facts of survival are
in themselves, their study is so effective for tracing the
course of the historical development through which alone it
is possible to understand their meaning, that it becomes
a vital point of ethnographic research to gain the clearest
possible insight into their nature. This importance must
justify the detail here devoted to an examination of survival,
on the evidence of such games, popular sayings, customs,
superstitions, and the like, as may serve well to bring into
view the manner of its operation.

Progress, degradation, survival, revival, modification, are
all modes of the connexion that binds together the complex
network of civilization. It needs but a glance into the
trivial details of our own daily life to set us thinking how
far we are really its originators, and* how far but the
transmitters and modifiers of the results of long past ages.
Looking round the rooms we live in, we may try here how
far he who only knows his own time can be capable of
rightly comprehending even that. Here is the 'honeysuckle*
of Assyria, there the fleur-de-lis of Anjou, a cornice with a
Greek border runs round the ceiling, the style of Louis XIV,
and its parent the Renaissance share the looking-glass
between them. Transformed, shifted, or mutilated, such
elements of art still carry their history plainly stamped
upon them ; and if the history yet farther behind is less easy
to read, we are not to say that because we cannot clearly
discern it there is therefore no history there. It is thus
even with the fashion of the clothes men wear. The



l8 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

ridiculous little tails of the German postilion's coat show
of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd
rudiments ; but the English clergyman's bands no longer
so convey their history to the eye, and look unaccountable
enough till one has seen the intermediate stages through
which they came down from the more serviceable wide
collars, such as Milton wears in his portrait, and which
gave their name to the ' band-box ' they used to be kept
in. In fact, the books of costume, showing how one
garment grew or shrank by gradual stages and passed into
another, illustrate with much force and clearness the nature
of the change and growth, revival and decay, which go on
from year to year in more important matters of life. In
books, again, we see each writer not for and by himself, but
occupying his proper place in history ; we look through
each philosopher, mathematician, chemist, poet, into the
background of his education, through Leibnitz into Des-
cartes, through Dalton into Priestley, through Milton into
Homer. The study of language has, perhaps, done more
than any other in removing from our view of human thought
and action the ideas of chance and arbitrary invention, and
in substituting for them a theory of development by the
co-operation of individual men, through processes ever
reasonable and intelligible where the facts are fully known.
Rudimentary as the science of culture still is, the symptoms
are becoming very strong that even what seem its most
spontaneous and motiveless phenomena will, nevertheless,
be shown to come within the range of distinct cause and
effect as certainly as the facts of mechanics. What would
be popularly thought more indefinite and uncontrolled than
the products of the imagination in myths and fables ? Yet
any systematic investigation of mythology, on the basis of
a wide collection of evidence, will show plainly enough in
such efforts of fancy at once a development from stage to
stage, and a production of uniformity of result from uni-
formity of cause. Here, as elsewhere, causeless spontaneity
is seen to recede farther and farther into shelter within the



DEVELOPMENT. IQ

dark precincts of ignorance ; like chance, that still holds its
place among the vulgar as a real cause of events otherwise
unaccountable, while to educated men it has long con-
sciously meant nothing but this ignorance itself. It is
only when men fail to see the line of connexion in events,
that they are prone to fall upon the notions of arbitrary
impulses, causeless freaks, chance and nonsense and in-
definite unaccountability. If childish games, purposeless
customs, absurd superstitions, are set down as spontaneous
because no one can say exactly how they came to be, the
assertion may remind us of the like effect that the eccentric
habits of the wild rice-plant had on the philosophy of a
Red Indian tribe, otherwise disposed to see. in the harmony
of nature the effects of one controlling personal will. The
Great Spirit, said these Sioux theologians, made all
things except the wild rice ; but the wild rice came by
chance.

' Man/ said Wilhelm von Humboldt, ' ever connects
on from what lies at hand (der Mensch kniipft immer an
Vorhandenes an).' The notion of the continuity of civili-
zation contained in this maxim is no barren philosophic
principle, but is at once made practical by the consideration
that they who wish to understand their own lives ought to
know the stages through which their opinions and habits
have become what they are. Auguste Comte scarcely over-
stated the necessity of this study of development when he
declared at the beginning of his ' Positive Philosophy* that
' no conception can be understood except through its
history/ and his phrase will bear extension to culture at
large. To expect to look modern life in the face and com-
prehend it by mere inspection, is a philosophy whose weak-
ness can easily be tested. Imagine any one explaining the
trivial saying, ' a little bird told me/ without knowing of
the old belief in the language of birds and beasts, to which
Dr. Dasent, in the introduction to the Norse Tales, so
reasonably traces its origin. Attempts to explain by the
light of reason things which want the light of history to



20 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

show their meaning, may be instanced from Blackstone's
Commentaries. To Blackstone's mind, the very right of the
commoner to turn his beast out to graze on the common,
finds its origin and explanation in the feudal system. ' For,
when lords of manors granted out parcels of land to tenants,
for services either done or to be done, these tenants could
not plough or manure the land without beasts ; these beasts
could not be sustained without pasture ; and pasture could
not be had but in the lord's wastes, and on the uninclosed
fallow grounds of themselves and the other tenants. The
law therefore annexed this right of common, as inseparably
incident, to the grant of the lands ; and this was the original
of common appendant,' &C. 1 Now though there is nothing
irrational in this explanation, it does not agree at all with
the Teutonic land-law which prevailed in England long
before the Norman Conquest, and of which the remains have
never wholly disappeared. In the old village-community
even the arable land, lying in the great common fields
which may still be traced in our country, had not yet passed
into separate property, while the pasturage in the fallows
and stubbles and on the waste belonged to the householders
in common. Since those days, the change from communal
to individual ownership has mostly transformed this old-
world system, but the right which the peasant enjoys of
pasturing his cattle on the common still remains, not as
a concession to feudal tenants, but as possessed by the
commoners before the lord ever claimed the ownership of
the waste. It is always unsafe to detach a custom from its
hold on past events, treating it as an isolated fact to be
simply disposed of by some plausible explanation.

In carrying on the great task of rational ethnography,
the investigation of the causes which have produced the

1 Blackstone, ' Commentaries on the Laws of England,' bk. II., ch. 3.
The above example replaces that given in former editions. Another
example may be found in his explanation of the origin of deodand, bk. I.,
ch. 8, as designed, in the blind days of popery, as an expiation for the
souls of such as were snatched away by sudden death : see below, p. 287.
[Note to 3rd ed.]



DEVELOPMENT. 21

phenomena of culture, and of the laws to \vhich they are
subordinate, it is desirable to work out as systematically
as possible a scheme of evolution of this culture along its
many lines. In the following chapter, on the Development
of Culture, an attempt is made to sketch a theoretical
course of civilization among mankind, such as appears on
the whole most accordant with the evidence. By com-
paring the various stages of civilization among races known
to history, with the aid of archaeological inference from the
remains of prehistoric tribes, it seems possible to judge in
a rough way of an early general condition of man, which
from our point of view is to be regarded as a primitive con-
dition, Whatever yet earlier state may in reality have lain
behind it. This hypothetical primitive condition corre-
sponds in a considerable degree to that of modern savage
tribes, who, in spite of their difference and distance, have
in common certain elements of civilization, which seem
remains of an early state of the human race at large. If
this hypothesis be true, then, notwithstanding the con-
tinual interference of degeneration, the main tendency of
culture from primaeval up to modern times has been from
savagery towards civilization. On the problem of this rela-
tion of savage to civilized life, almost every one of the
thousands of facts discussed in the succeeding chapters has
its direct bearing. Survival in Culture, placing all along"
the course of advancing civilization way-marks full of mean-
ing to those who can decipher their signs, even now sets up
in our midst primaeval monuments of barbaric thought and
life. Its investigation tells strongly in favour of the view
that the European may find among the Greenlanders or
Maoris many a trait for reconstructing the picture of his
own primitive ancestors. Next comes the problem of the
Origin of Language. Obscure as many parts of this
problem still remain, its clearer positions lie open to the
investigation whether speech took its origin among man-
kind in the savage state, and the result of the enquiry is
that consistently with all known evidence, this may have



22 ' THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

been the case. From the examination of the Art of Count-
ing a far more definite consequence is shown. It may be
confidently asserted, that not only is this important art
found in a rudimentary state among savage tribes, but that
satisfactory evidence proves numeration to have been de-
veloped by rational invention from this low stage up to that
in which we ourselves possess it. The examination of
Mythology contained in the first volume, is for the most
part made from a special point of view, on evidence col-
lected for a special purpose, that of tracing the relation
between the myths of savage tribes and their analogues
among more civilized nations. The issue of such enquiry
goes far to prove that the earliest myth-maker arose and
flourished among savage hordes, setting on foot an art
which his more cultured successors would carry on, till its
results came to be fossilized in superstition, mistaken for
history, shaped and draped in poetry, or cast aside as lying
folly.

Nowhere, perhaps, are broad views of historical develop-
ment more needed than in the study of religion. Notwith-
standing all that has been written to make the world
acquainted with the lower theologies, the popular ideas of
their place in history and their relation to the faiths of
higher nations are still of the mediaeval type. It is wonder-
ful to contrast some missionary journals with Max Miiller's
Essays, and to set the unappreciating hatred and ridicule
that is lavished by narrow hostile zeal on Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Zoroastrism, besides the catholic sympathy with
which deep and wide knowledge can survey those ancient
and noble phases of man's religious consciousness; nor,
because the religions of savage tribes may be rude and
primitive compared with the great Asiatic systems, do they
lie too low for interest and even for respect. The question
really lies between understanding and misunderstanding
them. Few who will give their minds to master the
general principles of savage religion will ever again think
it ridiculous, or the knowledge of it superfluous to the rest



DEVELOPMENT. 23

of mankind. Far from its beliefs and practices being a
rubbish-heap of miscellaneous folly, they are consistent
and logical in so high a degree as to begin, as soon as even
roughly classified, to display the principles of their forma*
tion and development ; and these principles prove to be
essentially rational, though working in a mental condition
of intense and inveterate ignorance. It is with a sense of
attempting an investigation which bears very closely on the
current theology of our own day, that I have set myself to
examine systematically, among the lower races, the deve-
lopment of Animism ; that is to say, the doctrine of souls
and other spiritual beings in general. More than half of
the present work is occupied with a mass of evidence from
all regions of the world, displaying the nature and meaning
of this great element of the Philosophy of Religion, and
tracing its transmission, expansion, restriction, modifica-
tion, along the course of history into the midst of our own
modern thought. Nor are the questions of small practical
moment which have to be raised in a similar attempt to
trace the development of certain prominent Rites and Cere-
monies customs so full of instruction as to the inmost
powers of religion, whose outward expression and practical
result they are.

In these investigations, however, made rather from an
ethnographic than a theological point of view, there has
seemed little need of entering into direct controversial
argument, which indeed I have taken pains to avoid as far
as possible. The connexion which runs through religion,
from its rudest forms up to the status of an enlightened
Christianity, may be conveniently treated of with little
recourse to dogmatic theology. The rites of sacrifice and
purification may be studied in their stages of development
without entering into questions of their authority and value,
nor does an examination of the successive phases of the
world's belief in a future life demand a discussion of the
arguments adduced for or against the doctrine itself. The
ethnographic results may then be left as materials for



24 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

professed theologians, and it will not perhaps be long before
evidence so fraught with meaning shall take its legitimate
place. To fall back once again on the analogy of natural
history, the time may soon come when it will be thought as
unreasonable for a scientific student of theology not to have
a competent acquaintance with the principles of the reli-
gions of the lower races, as for a physiologist to look with
the contempt of past centuries on evidence derived from
the lower forms of life, deeming the structure of mere
invertebrate creatures matter unworthy of his philosophic
study.

Not merely as a matter of curious research, but as an im-
portant practical guide to the understanding of the present
and the shaping of the future, the investigation into the
origin and early development of civilization must be pushed
on zealously. Every possible avenue of knowledge must be
explored, every door tried to see if it is open. No kind of
evidence need be left untouched on the score of remoteness
or complexity, of minuteness or triviality. The tendency
of modern enquiry is more and more towards the conclusion
that if law is anywhere, it is everywhere. To despair of
what a conscientious collection and study of facts may lead
to, and to declare any problem insoluble because difficult
and far off, is distinctly to be on the wrong side in science ;
and he who will choose a hopeless task may set himself to
discover the limits of discovery. One remembers Comte
starting in his account of astronomy with a remark on the
necessary limitation of our knowledge of the stars : we con-
ceive, he tells us, the possibility of determining their form,
distance, size, and movement, whilst we should never by
any method be able to study their chemical composition, i
their mineralogical structure, &c. Had the philosopher !
lived to see the application of spectrum analysis to this I
very problem, his proclamation of the dispiriting doctrine of j
necessary ignorance would perhaps have been recanted in
favour of a more hopeful view. And it seems to be with I
the philosophy of remote human life somewhat as with the



PHILOSOPHY OF PRIMAEVAL HISTORY. 25

study of the nature of the celestial bodies. The processes
be made out in the early stages of our mental evolution
distant from us in time as the stars lie distant from us
in space, but the laws of the universe are not limited with
the direct observation of our senses. There is vast material
to be used in our enquiry ; many workers are now busied
in bringing this material into shape, though little may
have yet been done in proportion to what remains to do ;
and already it seems not too much to say that the vague
outlines of a philosophy of primaeval history are beginning
to come within our view.