Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese Vol II. - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/222

 sary (as in the case of tigers and sheep for instance) these are of different sizes and colours.



From examples such as that of these tiger-games which have long since acquired a genuine popularity far out among the islands of the Indian Archipelago in spite of their foreign origin, we may see how wide is the spread of such pastimes throughout the world even where civilization is still most primitive and the means of communion and intercourse with other nations few and far between.

In like manner we find the Dutch word knikker (marble) widely diffused in the interior of Java miles beyond any place where European children have ever played.

What is true of childrens' games is without doubt still more applicable to human institutions. This is a fact that should impress on the science of ethnography the necessity for caution in drawing conclusions.

Undoubtedly the ethnography of later times has at its disposal innumerable data which point to the most remarkable results scarcely conceivable in former times, arising from the uniformity of the human organism—results which appear even in the details of man's mental life.

Manners and customs which the superficial enquirer might classify among the most peculiar characteristics of individual races, appear on closer observation to be in reality characteristics of a definite stage of