630 REPORT—1896, 
organism, not to be tampered with except for the purpose of scientific 
analysis, and then after that purpose has been effected all the parts must 
be put together again, and the original organism restored to its form. 
The handling of each custom or belief and of its separate parts in this 
way enables us, in the first place, to disentangle it from the particular 
personal or social stratum in which it happens to have been preserved, 
and, secondly, to prepare it for the place to which it may ultimately be 
found to belong. The first step in this preparation is to get together all the 
examples which have been preserved, and to compare these examples with 
each other, first as to common features of likeness, secondly as to features 
of unlikeness. By this process we are able to restore whatever may be 
really deficient from insufficiency of any particular record—and such a 
restoration is above all things essential—and to present for examination 
not an isolated specimen but a series of specimens, each of which helps to 
bring back to observation some portion of the original. 
The first important characteristic which distinguishes a custom or 
belief in survival from a custom or belief belonging to an established 
system is that not only do different examples present points of common 
likeness, but also points of unlikeness. The points of likeness are used 
to determine and classify all the examples of one custom or belief, the 
points of unlikeness to trace out the line of decay inherent in survivals. 
This partial equation and partial divergence between different examples 
of the same custom or belief allows a very important point to be made in 
the study of survivals. We can estimate the value of the elements which 
equate in any number of examples, and the value of the elements which 
diverge ; and by noting how these values differ in the various examples 
we may discover an overlapping of example with example which is of the 
utmost importance. A certain custom consists, say, of six elements, a, 6, 
c, d,e, f. Another example of the same custom has four of these elements, 
a, b, c, d, and two divergences, g, h. A third example has elements 
a, 6, and divergences g, h, 7, k. A further example has none of the 
radical elements, but only divergences g, h, i, 7, m. Then the statement 
of the case is reduced to the following :— 
l=a, 8, ¢, d, ¢, J. 
pe a, b,c, d+g, h. 
= a, b+q, h, i, k. 
4= +g, h, i, l,m. 
The conclusions to be drawn from this are, first, that the overlapping of 
the several examples (No. 1 overlapping No. 2 at a, b, c, d, No. 2 over- 
lapping No. 3 at a,b, g,h, No. 3 overlapping No. 4 at g,h, 72) is the 
essential factor in the comparison. Secondly, that example No. 4, though 
possessing none of the elements of example No. 1, is the same custom as 
example No. 1. Thirdly, that the divergences g to m mark the line of 
decay which this particular custom has undergone since it ceased to belong 
to the dominant culture of the people, and dropped back into the position 
of a eee from a former culture preserved only by a fragment of the 
people. 
The first two of these conclusions are not affected by the order in 
which the examples are arranged ; whether we begin with No. 4 or with 
No. 1, the relationship of each example to the others, thus proved to be 
in intimate association, is the same. The third conclusion is necessarily 
dependent upon what we take to be ‘radical elements’ and ‘divergent 
