30 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 
their customs are often unpleasant; and so they have 
been unduly despised. Fortunately travellers have 
given copious descriptions of savage and barbarous 
tribes, but they have been lazily accepted as freaks 
or oddities, and it is only lately that they have been 
subjected to serious study, comparison, and analysis. 
It is not too much to say that this has wrought a 
greater change in our conception of human history 
than all other causes put together. For it has formed 
the occasion for a vast extension of the comparative 
method. Early in the present century something like 
a new Renaissance was begun when Englishmen in 
India began to study Sanskrit, and were struck with 
its resemblance to the languages of Europe. The 
first result of such studies was the beginning of 
comparative philology in the establishment of the 
Aryan family of languages; pretty soon there fol- 
lowed the comparative study of myths and folk-tales ; 
and then came comparative jurisprudence, which, for 
the world of English readers, is chiefly associated 
with the beautiful writings of Sir Henry Maine. 
Next it began to appear that many problems which 
remain insoluble so long as we confine our attention 
to the Aryan world soon yield up their secret if we 
extend our comparison so as to include the speech, 
the beliefs, and the customs of savages. In taking 
this great step the name of an American investigator, 
the late Lewis Morgan, with his profound classifica- 
tion of stages of human culture, stands foremost; and 
the work of our Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, 
under the masterly direction of Major Powell, is 
doing more toward a correct interpretation of the 
beginnings of human society than was ever done 
