THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 585 



Maine, Maurer, Mommsen, Freeman, and Tylor. The point of the 

 comparative method, in whatever field it may be applied, is that 

 it brings before us a great number of objects so nearly alike that 

 we are bound to assume for them an origin and general history 

 in common, while at the same time they present such differences 

 in detail as to suggest that some have advanced further than 

 others in the direction in which all are traveling ; some, again, have 

 been abruptly arrested, others perhaps even turned aside from the 

 path. In the attempt to classify such phenomena, whether in the 

 historical or in the physical sciences, the conception of develop- 

 ment is presented to the student with irresistible force. In the 

 case of the Aryan languages no one would think of doubting 

 their descent from a common original; just side by side is the 

 parallel case of one subgroup of the Aryan languages, namely, the 

 seven Romance languages which we know to have been developed 

 out of the Latin since the Christian era. In these cases we can 

 study the process of change resulting in forms that are more or 

 less divergent from their originals. In one quarter a form is re- 

 tained with little modification, in another it is completely blurred, 

 as the Latin metipsissimus becomes medesimo in Italian, but mis- 

 mo in Spanish, while in French there is nothing left of it but 

 meme. So in Sanskrit and in Lithuanian we find a most ingenious 

 and elaborate system of conjugation and declension, which in such 

 languages as Greek and Latin is more or less curtailed and altered, 

 and which in English is almost completely lost. Yet in Old Eng- 

 lish there are quite enough vestiges of the system to enable us to 

 identify it with the Lithuanian and Sanskrit. 



So the student who applies the comparative method to the 

 study of human customs and institutions is continually finding 

 usages, beliefs, or laws existing in one part of the world that have 

 long since ceased to exist in another part ; yet where they have 

 ceased to exist they have often left unmistakable traces of their 

 former existence. In Australasia we find types of savagery igno- 

 rant of the bow and arrow ; in aboriginal North America, a type 

 of barbarism familiar with the art of pottery, but ignorant of 

 domestic animals or of the use of metals ; among the earliest Ro- 

 mans, a higher type of barbarism, familiar with iron and cattle, 

 but ignorant of the alphabet. Along with such gradations in ma- 

 terial culture we find associated gradations in ideas, in social 

 structure, and in deep-seated customs. Thus, some kind of fetich- 

 ism is apt to prevail in the lower stages of barbarism, and some 

 form of polytheism in the higher stages. The units of composi- 

 tion in savage and barbarous societies are always the clan, the 

 phratry, and the tribe. In the lower stages of barbarism we see 

 such confederacies as those of the Iroquois ; in the highest stage, 

 at the dawn of civilization, we begin to find nations imperfectly 



