66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



doubt that the psychical faculties of the individual as soon as 

 they reach outward expression fall under the control of natural 

 laws as fixed as those of inorganic nature." 



As the endless variety of arts and events in the culture history 

 of different tribes in different places, or of the same tribe at different 

 epochs, illustrates the variables in anthropologic science, so these 

 independent parallelisms prove beyond cavil the ever-present con- 

 stant in the problem to wit, the one and unvarying psychical 

 nature of man, guided by the same reason, swept by the same 

 storms of passion and emotion, directed by the same will toward 

 the same goals, availing itself of the same means when they are 

 within reach, finding its pleasure in the same actions, lulling its 

 fears with the same sedatives. 



The anthropologist of to-day who, like a late distinguished 

 scholar among ourselves, would claim that because the rather 

 complex social system of the Iroquois had a close parallel among 

 the Munda tribes of the Punjab, therefore the ancestors of each 

 must have come from a common culture center ; or who, like an 

 eminent living English ethnologist, sees a proof of Asiatic rela- 

 tions in American culture because the Aztec game of patolli is like 

 the East Indian game of parchesi such an ethnologist, I say, 

 may have contributed ably to his science in the past, but he does 

 not know where it stands to-day. Its true position on this crucial 

 question is thus tersely and admirably stated by Dr. Steinmetz : 

 "The various customs, institutions, thoughts, etc., of different 

 peoples are to be regarded either as the expressions of the differ- 

 ent stadia of culture of our common humanity or as different 

 reactions of that common humanity under varying conditions and 

 circumstances. The one does not exclude the other. Therefore 

 the concordance of two peoples in a custom, etc., should be ex- 

 plained by borrowing or by derivation from a common source 

 only when there are special known and controlling reasons indi- 

 cating this ; and when these are absent, the explanation should be 

 either because the two peoples are on the same plane of culture or 

 because their surroundings are similar." 



This is true not only of the articles intended for use, to supply 

 the necessities of existence, as weapons and huts and boats we 

 might anticipate that they would be something similar, otherwise 

 they would not serve the purpose everywhere in view ; but the 

 analogies are, if anything, still more close and striking when we 

 come to compare pure products of the fancy, creations of the 

 imagination or the emotions, such as stories, myths, and motives 

 of decorative art. 



It has proved very difficult for the comparative mythologist 

 or the folklorist of the old school to learn that the same stories 

 for instance, of the four rivers of Paradise, the flood, the ark, and 



