134 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the simpler products from which they have been derived. Already 

 an instance has been furnished by the interpretations of primitive 

 religions given by the reigning school of mythologists. Possessed 

 by the ideas which civilization has evolved, and looking back on the 

 ideas which prevailed among the progenitors of the civilized i-aces, 

 they have used the more complex to interpret the less complex ; and 

 when forced to recognize the entire unlikeness between the iuferrcd 

 early religious ideas and the religious ideas found among the imcivil- 

 ized who now exist, have assumed a fundamental difference in mode 

 of action between the minds of the superior races and the minds of 

 tlie inferior races : classing with the inferior, in pursuance of this 

 assumption, certain ancient races to which the modern world is 

 indebted for its present advance. Though to the teachings of so- 

 called Turanians the Aryans and Semites owe their civilizations; 

 though the Accadians had great cities, settled laws, advanced indus- 

 tries, arts in which four metals were utilized, and writing that had 

 already reached the phonetic stage, while the Semites were still 

 nomadic hordes ; though the Egyptians had for mme thousands of 

 years lived as an elaborately-organized nation, approaching in many 

 of its appliances to modern nations, and producing monuments that 

 remain a wonder to mankind, while the Aryans were wandering with 

 their herds in scattered groups about the Hindoo Koosh yet these 

 peoples are, in company with the lowest barbarians, cavalierly grouped 

 as having radically inferior intelligences, because they sliow in an 

 unmistakable way the genesis of religious ideas irreconcilable with 

 that genesis which mythologists are led by their method to ascribe 

 to the superior races. 



All who accept the conclusions set forth in the first part of this 

 work, will see in this instance the misinterpretation caused by 

 analysis of the phenomena from above downward, instead of syn- 

 thesis of them from below upward. They will see that in search of 

 explanations we must go below the stage at which men had learned 

 to domesticate cattle and till the ground. 



O' 



I make these remarks by way of introduction to a criticism on the 

 doctrines of Sir Henry Maine. While valuing his works, and accept- 

 ing as true within limits the views he sets forth respecting the family 

 under its developed form, and respecting the part played by it in the 

 evolution of Em-opean nations, it is possible to dissent from his as- 

 sumptions concerning the earliest social states, and from the derived 

 conceptions. 



As leading to error, Sir Henry Maine censures "the lofty contempt 

 which a civilized people entertains for barbarous neighbois," which, 

 he says, " has caused a remarkable negligence in observing them." 

 But he has not himself wholly escaped from the effects of this senti- 

 ment. While valuing the evidence furnished by barbarous peoples 



