POWELL. ] LANGUAGE. 81 
of arts by various processes of acculturation; and of admixture and re- 
ciprocal diffusion of customs, institutions, and traditions. Arts, cus- 
toms, institutions, and traditions extend beyond the boundaries of lan- 
guages and serve to obscure them, and the admixture of strains of blood 
has obscured primitive ethnic divisions, if such existed. 
If the physical classification fails, the most fundamental grouping left 
is that based on language; but for the reasons already mentioned and 
others of like character, the classification of languages is not, to the full 
extent, a classification of peoples. 
It may be that the unity of the human race is a fact so profound that 
all attempts at a fundamental classification to be used in all the depart- 
ments of anthropology will fail, and that there will remain multifarious 
groupings for the multifarious purposes of the science; or, otherwise 
expressed, that languages, arts, customs, institutions, and traditions 
may be classified, and that the human family will be considered as one 
race. 
MYTHOLOGY. 
Here again America presents a rich field for the scientific explorer. 
It is now known that each linguistic stock has a distinct mythology, and 
as in some of these stocks there are many languages differing to a greater 
or less extent, so there are many like differing mythologies. 
As in language, so in mythology, investigation has proceeded from 
the known to the unknown—from the higher to the lower mythologies. 
In each step of the progress of opinion on this subject a particular 
phenomenon may be observed. As each lower status of mythology is 
discovered it is assumed to be the first in origin, the primordial mythol- 
ogy, and all lower but imperfectly understood mythologies are inter- 
preted as degradations, from this assumed original belief; thus polythe- 
ism was interpreted as a degeneracy from monotheism; nature worship, 
from psychotheism; zodlotry, from ancestor worship; and, in order, 
monotheism has been held to be the original mythology, then polytheism, 
then physitheism or nature worship, then ancestor worship. 
With a large body of mythologists nature worship is now accepted as 
the primitive religion; and with another body, equally as respectable, 
ancestor worship is primordial. But nature worship and ancestor wor- 
ship are concomitant parts of the same religion, and belong to a status 
of culture highly advanced and characterized by the invention of con- 
ventional pictographs. In North America we have scores or even hun- 
dreds of systems of mythology, all belonging to a lower state of culture. 
Let us hope that American students will not fall into this line of error 
by assuming that zodtheism is the lowest stage, because this is the status 
of mythology most widely spread on the continent. 
Mythology is primitive philosophy. A mythology—that is, the body 
6 AE 
