32 A Century of Science 



skrit and in Lithuanian we find a most ingenious 

 and elaborate system of conjugation and declen- 

 sion, which in such languages as Greek and Latin 

 is more or less curtailed and altered, and which in 

 English is almost completely lost. Yet in Old 

 English there are quite enough vestiges of the sys- 

 tem to enable us to identify it with the Lithua- 

 nian and Sanskrit. 



So the student who applies the comparative 

 method to the study of human customs and insti- 

 tutions is continually finding 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 unmistakable traces of their former existence. 

 In Australasia we find types of savagery ignorant 

 of the bow and arrow ; in aboriginal North Amer- 

 ica, a type of barbarism familiar with the art of 

 pottery, but ignorant of domestic animals or of 

 the use of metals ; among the earliest Komans, a 

 higher type of barbarism, familiar with iron and 

 cattle, but ignorant of the alphabet. Along with 

 such gradations in material culture we find as- 

 sociated gradations in ideas, in social structure, 

 and in deep-seated customs. Thus, some kind of 

 fetishism is apt to prevail in the lower stages of 

 barbarism, and some form of polytheism in the 



