972 . REPORT— 1890. 
and of connection particularly with the Finnie group of languages, as would 
correspond with such a racial intermixture as would seem probably to have been 
effected in this region. 
Fourthly.—Because that interlinking of Aryan languages, which is inex- 
plicable on the hypothesis of successive migrations from Asia, may, on the 
contrary, be at once explained by a common speech in the South Russian area 
indicated, and by differentiations caused by the reaction of the speech of the 
Aryanised non-Aryan tribes encountered in the progress of the Aryans eastwards 
and westwards. 
And Fifthly.—Because westwards, in the country between the Dnieper and 
the Carpathians, and eastwards in the country on the upper waters of the Jaxartes 
and Oxus, there were the conditions of the passage of the Aryans from the 
pastoral into the agricultural stage; and because, in moving southward from 
these regions, they would come into contact with, and have their further develop- 
ment fostered by, more highly civilised peoples. 
Conclusion.—As will be seen from the last reason assigned in favour of 
Southern Russia, the question of the Aryan Cradleland connects itself with all 
these various researches which tend to limit the primitive civilisations to those of 
Egypt and of Chaldea, and to derive from these civilisations, and particularly from 
that of Chaldea, all the later civilisations. 
4. ‘Is there a Break in Mental Evolution ?’' By The Hon, Lady WEtzsy. 
Religion has been defined as ‘consisting wholly and solely in certain acts of 
deference paid by the living to the ghosts of the dead.’ But how does the 
savage come by the idea of ‘ghost’? If evolution consists in a gradually increasing 
range of adaptation to environment, why should the correspondence between 
mental evolution and environment become less complete? The introduction 
of the idea of ‘ ghost ’ marks mental degeneration. 
If intelligence thus ceased to adjust itself to fact, the law of elimination 
should assert itself here as in all other cases. The consequences would react on 
the physical welfare, and the descendants of the superstitious would, on the 
whole, give way before those of the stronger-minded. 
‘ No such aberration of instinct can be traced amongst the animals. We find 
there no suicidal sacrifice of time, labour, or victims. Why should primitive man 
be in this so far below their mental level ? 
It may be urged that the imaginative or figurative power of the savage, 
like that of the child, lacks a corrective which is subsequently supplied. But 
why should this corrective have lapsed at all, since we find it throughout organic 
dévelopment in automatic and increasingly complex form ? 
Where, then, in the developing consciousness does the link with nature fail, 
and the answer to stimulus go astray ? 
And even if the majority of primitive men had failed to carry on the organic 
tradition of adjustment, why was not the tendency preserved amongst a dominant 
minority? If such a dominant minority is to be found in the early priests and 
seers, how comes it that they have not left clearer traces of this really valid 
knowledge? The truest ideas (however simple and even vague) of the elements 
of experience ought to be the most widely transmitted. Why, then, was the 
general tendency towards persistent illusion? The growing ‘ mind’ must have 
lost the primordial ability to penetrate through mask of any kind to reality. 
But to have thus lost touch with nature ought to lead to the non-survival of the 
false thinker. Fatal waste of precious opportunity and energy as well as more 
positive mischief must needs result. 
And, further, the tendency to understand and utilise experience must have 
been universally inherited. Why, then, should it have so generally failed when 
wecome to the imaginative stage ? 
If the idea of* spirit ’ had its origin in primitive man, it would have to undergo 
1 See Journ. Anthrop. Inst. 1891. 
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