H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 143 



To take another instance of the hasty reasoning which credits ancient 

 man with anticipatory conceptions that in ourselves are due to knowledge, 

 it is sometimes suggested that there is no improbability in the idea of the 

 multiple origin of the pyramid, since the observation that piles of loose 

 materials readily assumed a conical form must have been frequently made. 

 To this it may be answered that pyramids are not small, are not made of 

 .loose materials, and are not conical in form, but this is only a small part 

 of the relevant reply. The affiliation is indeed inconceivable, since the 

 evolution of a pyramid depended not only upon many material factors, 

 but also upon a number of social and religious sequences. Pyramids 

 were not preconceived as being more pleasing to the gods, and more 

 elevating to the human soul, than any other geometrical monstrosity ; 

 nor were they built out of mere Euclidean bravado. For such structures, 

 even in their various modifications of material, form, and function, to 

 appear independently in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Cambodia, Java, and 

 America, would have called for parallel networks of coincidences rather 

 than for parallel chains. In any case we may disregard the pile of sand as 

 a likely foundation for such structures, though it may be that we must put 

 a mountain in its place. 



A third example is that of the practice of mummification, and, as in the 

 case of the last, it is one which has been dealt with faithfully by Prof. 

 Elliot Smith. The assumption is often made that mummification 

 originated in more than one part of the world, as a result of the observation 

 that under conditions of aridity the bodies of the dead suffered desiccation 

 instead of decay ; and that this observation readily led to the evolution of 

 processes of preservation by artificial means. That this is merely an 

 assumption is obvious. Whatever may have been the course of events 

 that led man to a belief in a future life, and however widely spread the 

 notion of the attachment of the spirit, for a longer or a shorter period, to 

 the corpse, it cannot be argued that a belief in the resurrection of the 

 physical body formed part of the original structure of the immaterial 

 artefact we call theology. However great the affection of the living for 

 their dead, in one way or another the body had to be disposed of. An 

 easily-discovered and very early method was that of putting it out of 

 sight by covering it up, eventually by burying it, and this was perhaps 

 the first definite funeral custom to be established. Instinct might have 

 taken man as far as this. That under certain conditions the body, buried 

 or unburied, did not entirely lose its human semblance, was in itself no 

 inducement to the consfervation of the dried remains. A shrunken body 

 was of no more value than a skeleton, and new views of man's place in 

 nature, and in supernature, had to be evolved before the preservation of 

 the body became a means to an end. Whatever may have been the 

 conditions imder which this end or aim appeared, the main determining 

 causes were not those of the natural environment — though this was no 

 doubt an essential factor — ^but of the artificial, and they did not arise out 

 of the ' psychic unity ' of man. For the idea to originate in two or more 

 regions independently, there must have been coincidences in social and 

 religious sequences, as well as in the natural environment. For the 

 independent evolution of artificial preservation out of natural desiccation, 

 there would be needed further coincidences in the growth of the idea of 



