Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/116

108 (as far as we know) developed a cultivated society at all. Mr. Müller himself would probably admit as much in the case of institutions that are not religious. He would admit that fibres beaten into consistency are earlier than woven cloth. He might even admit that races which have to carry "the seed of fire" about with them are nearer the beginning of culture than races which can light fire by the fire-drill, or by flint and steel. He will probably not deny that races which make no pottery are nearer what man must have been when he first came on the earth than races which make pottery by hand; while it is almost incredible that races which make pottery by hand should not be "nearer the beginning" than races which have invented or adopted the use of the potter's wheel. Again, a race which has domesticated animals, acquired the art of metallurgy, settled down to agriculture, and collected itself into walled cities, has surely much more experience of the world in its past than the races which have not, and show no sign of ever having had, a knowledge of those arts and institutions. The anthropologist is inclined to infer that the religious ideas of peoples which are comparatively "near the beginning " of the arts of life must be earlier than the religious ideas of peoples which have long acquired all the arts of life. Mr. Max Müller, on the other hand, remarks, "I simply say that in the Veda we have a nearer approach to a beginning, and an intelligible beginning, than in the wild invocations of Hottentots or Bushmen." Would Mr. Müller add, "I simply say that in the arts and political society of the Vedic age we have a nearer approach to a beginning than in the arts and society of Hottentots and Bushmen?" Is the use of chariots, horses, ships: are kings, walled cities, agriculture, the art of weaving, and so forth, nearer the beginning of man's civilisation than the life of the naked or skin-clad hunter who has not yet learned to work the metals, who acknowledges no king, and has no certain abiding place? If not, why is the religion of the civilised man nearer the beginning than that of the man who is not civilised? Perhaps we are to believe that the Aryans were sent ready civilised into a ready-made set of appliances, while other races have had to work their way up by slow degrees into culture. But this view will scarcely be maintained.

Whatever Mr. Müller may think on this point, we only know that he thinks the religion of an ancient civilisation is nearer the beginning than the religion of races who have scarcely any civilisation at all. As to those races and their ideas, he says that "The materials on which