"PROFESSOR RIDGEWAY AND RACIAL ORIGINS" 141 



identical with the Faith as professed in Arabia, or Persia, or 

 Turkey, There can be no better proof than this of the need 

 for giving Indian Civil servants some training in religion and 

 ethnology before they are permitted to undertake the admin- 

 istration of Indian races. So too the Muhammadanism pro- 

 fessed by Malays and Negroes is but a thin veneer, for ^ each 

 race brings over into Islam almost all its ancient ideas and 

 practices. 



Nor is it otherwise with Buddhism. In that religion the burn- 

 ing of the dead is a great feature. Yet the Burmese Buddhists 

 have always refused to burn their dead, as do also many Tibetan 

 professors of the same religion. Moreover, the best authorities on 

 Lamaism maintain that in the Buddhistic religious dramas we 

 have survivals of pagan dances and ceremonies. Thus once more 

 Mr. Houghton has fallen into the fatal error of his whole 

 school : he takes the shadow for the substance and never 

 realises that a mere term may have many various connota- 

 tions. Nor is he more happy when he points out that the 

 Egyptian changed over completely to Christianity, and with 

 equal readiness to Islam. In the graves of the Coptic Christians 

 we find the same amulets as were buried in the pre-Christian 

 graves. There was a veneer of Christianity, but the practical 

 religion of the people and their real objects of devotion were 

 but little changed. Then came Islam, but the amulets remained 

 as before. The old eye-charms, the cowries and the like, are 

 as much worn in Egypt and are as much believed in to-day as 

 in the time of the Pharaohs. 



Mr. Houghton next asserts : " Nor can polygamy, trial by 

 jury, parliaments or such-like be, on any right conception of 

 the facts, the heritage or result of any climate or locality. 

 There were parliaments in Rome." Once more he is the 

 victim of terms. There was a Senate in Rome and also 

 Centuriate, Curiate, and tribal Assemblies, of which rhetorical 

 and slipshod writers speak sometimes as parliaments. But 

 there was no Parliament in Rome or Greece or Egypt or 

 any other country in the world, ancient or mediaeval, in the 

 sense connoted by the term " British Parliament." By a par- 

 liamentary system we mean a distinctly representative system, 

 a system unknown to any ancient state, a system evolved 

 {pace Mr. Houghton) in England and nowhere else. But 

 once more he gives away his own case by admitting that 



