444 The Doctrine of Evolution. 



history in common, while at the same time they present 

 such differences in detail as to suggest that some have ad- 

 vanced 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 development is pre- 

 sented 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 Komance languages which we know to have been 

 developed out of 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 retained with little modification, in another 

 it is completely blurred, as the Latin metipsissimus becomes 

 medesimo in Italian, but mismo in Spanish, while in modern 

 French there is nothing left of it but meme. So in Sanskrit 

 and in Lithuanian we find a most ingenious and elaborate sys- 

 tem of conjugation and declension, which in such languages 

 as Greek and Latin is more or less curtailed and alteflsd, and 

 which in English is almost completely lost. Yet in Old 

 English there are quite enough vestiges of the system to en- 

 able 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 find- 

 ing 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 unmis- 

 takable traces of their former existence. In Australasia we 

 find types of savagery ignorant of the bow and arrow ; in 

 aboriginal North America, a type of barbarism familiar 

 with the art of pottery, but ignorant of domestic ani- 

 mals 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 material culture we find associated 

 gradations in ideas, in social structure, and in deep-seated 

 customs. Thus, some kind of fetichism is apt to prevail in 

 the lower stages of barbarism, and some form of polytheism 

 in the higher stages. The units of composition in savage 

 and barbarous societies are always the clan, the phratry, and 

 the tribe. In the lower stages of barbarism we see such 



