Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/57

 of natural phenomena, through the systems of the higher  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. "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?"

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. Wie are not obliged to fall back upon some fanciful and unsupported theory of what "primitive man" did, and said, and thought. Nay, more; we escape all the fallacies connected with the terms "primitive man." We are not compelled (as will be shown later) to prove that the first men of all were like modern savages, nor that savages represent primitive man.