HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 173 



still continue to do so. Of this we have examples in 

 Europe itself, and among its more civilized peoples 

 which have been transplanted elsewhere ; for while 

 in one direction a capacity for classification leads 

 to a purer monotheistic conception, and even to 

 rational science, the great majority of the common 

 people, and even of those of higher culture, still hold 

 many ideas which are polytheistic and anthropo- 

 morphic, and some which really belong to the de- 

 based stage of fetishism and vulgar superstition. 



Other causes contribute to produce the natural and 

 intrinsic concurrence of the several stages of myth 

 which are found existing together in the life of a 

 people. Such, for example, is the conquest effected 

 by a more civilized nation over another race, inferior 

 by nature or retarded by other circumstances. The 

 mythical ideas of the conquered people remain, and 

 are even diffused through the lower classes of the 

 conquering race ; or they are ingrafted by a synthetic 

 and assimilating process, so as to modify other 

 mythical and religious beliefs. This compound of 

 various stages and various beliefs also occurs through 

 the moral and intellectual diffusion of dogma, without 

 the acquisition of really new matter. Manifest 

 proofs of these various stages of myth, co-existent 

 together, may be traced in the development of the 

 Vedic ideas among the earlier aboriginal nations, and 

 conversely ; as in the case of the Aztecs and Incas 

 in Mexico and Peru, whose earlier beliefs were mixed 



