August 30, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



247 



would claim that, because the rather com- 

 plex social system of the Iroquois had a 

 close parallel among the Munda tribes of 

 the Punjab, therefore the ancestors of each 

 must have come from a common culture 

 center; or, who, like an eminent living Eng- 

 lish ethnologist, sees a proof of Asiatic re- 

 lations in American culture because the Az- 

 tec game of patolli is like the East Indian 

 game of pareliesi — such an ethnologist, I say, 

 may have contributed ably to his science in 

 the past, but he does not know where it 

 stands to-day. Its true position on this 

 crucial question is thus tersely and admira- 

 bly stated by Dr. Steinmetz: " The various 

 customs, institutions, thoughts, etc., of dif- 

 ferent peoples are to be regarded either as 

 the expressions of the diiferent stadia of 

 culture of our common humanity; or, as 

 different reactions of that common human- 

 ity under varying conditions and circum- 

 stances. The one does not exclude the 

 other. Therefore the concordance of two peo- 

 ples in a custom, etc., should be explained 

 by borrowing or by derivation from a com- 

 mon source only when there are special, 

 known and controlling reasons indicating 

 this ; and when these are absent, the explan- 

 ation should be either because the two peo- 

 ples are on the same plane of culture, or 

 because their surroundings are similar."* 



This is true not only of the articles in- 

 tended for use, to siipply the necessities of 

 existence, as weapons and huts and boats 

 — ^we might anticipate that they would be 

 something similar, otherwise they would 

 not serve the purpose everywhere in view ; 

 but the analogies are, if anything, still 

 more close and striking when we come to 

 compare pure products of the fancy, crea- 

 tions of the imagination or the emotions, 

 such as stories, myths and motives of dec- 

 orative art. 



It has proved very difiicult for the com- 

 parative mj'thologist or the folk-lorist of 



* Dr. S. E. Steinmetz, ubi supra, Einleitung. 



the old school to leai-n that the same stories, 

 for instance, of the four rivers of Paradise, 

 the flood, the ark and the patriarch who is 

 saved in it, arose independently in western 

 Asia, in Mexico and in South America, as 

 well as in manj' intervening places, alike 

 even in details, and yet neither borrowed 

 one from the other, nor yet drawn from a 

 common source. But until he understands 

 this, he has not caught up with the progress 

 of ethnologic science. 



So it is also with the motives of primitive 

 art, be they symbolic or merely decorative. 

 How many volumes have been written tra- 

 cing the migrations and connections of na- 

 tions by the distribution of some art mo- 

 tive, say the svastika, the meander or the 

 cross ! And how little of value is left in 

 all such speculations by the rigid analysis 

 of primitive arts that we see in such works 

 as Dr. Grrosse's Anfdnge der Kund, or Dr. 

 Haddon's attractive monograph on the 

 ' Decorative Art of British N'ew Guinea,' 

 published last year ! The latter sums up 

 in these few and decisive words the result 

 of such researches pursued on strictly in- 

 ductive lines — " The same processes operate 

 on the art of decoration whatever the sub- 

 ject, wherever the country, whenever the 

 age." This is equally true of the myth and 

 the folk-tale, of the symbol and the legend, 

 of the religious ritual and the musical scale. 



I have even attempted, I hope not rashly, 

 to show that there are quite a number of 

 important words in languages nowise re- 

 lated by origin or contact, which are pho- 

 netically the same or similar, not of the 

 mimetic class, but arising from certain com- 

 mon relations of the physiological function 

 of language ; and I have urged that words of 

 this class should not be accounted of value 

 in studying the afl&liations of language.* 



* ' On the Physiological Correlation of certain Lin- 

 guistic Eadicals.' By D. G. Brinton. In the Pro- 

 ceedings of the American Oriental Society, March, 

 1894. 



