INTRODUCTION. 3 



morals, religion, law, and many otliers. The matters dis- 

 cussed have been chosen, not so much for their absolute im- 

 portance, as because, while they are among the easiest and 

 most inviting parts of the subject, it is possible so to work 

 them as to bring into view certain general lines of argument, 

 which apply not only to them, but also to the more complex 

 and difficult problems involved in a complete treatise on the 

 History of Civilization. These lines of argument, and their re- 

 lation to the different essays, may be briefly stated at the outset. 



In the first place, when a general law can be inferred from 

 a group of facts, the use of detailed history is very much super- 

 seded. When we see a magnet attract a piece of iron, having 

 come by experience to the general law that magnets attract 

 iron, we do not take the trouble to go into the history of the 

 particular magnet in question. To some extent this direct 

 reference to general laws may be made in the study of Civili- 

 zation. The four next chapters of the present book treat of the 

 various ways in which man utters his thoughts, in Gestures, 

 Words, Pictures, and Writing. Here, though Speech and 

 Writing must be investigated historically, depending' as they 

 do in so great measure on the words and characters which were 

 current in the world thousands of years ago, on the other hand 

 the Gesture-Language and PicturorWriting may be mostly ex- 

 plained without the aid of history, as direct products of the 

 human mind. In the following chapter on "Images and 

 Names," an attempt is made to refer a great part of the beliefs 

 and practices included under the general name of magic, to one 

 very simple mental law, as resulting from a condition of mind 

 which we of the more advanced races have almost outgrown, 

 and in doing so have undergone one of the most notable 

 changes which we can trace as having happened to mankind. 

 And lastly, a particular habit of mind accounts for a class of 

 stories which are here grouped together as " Myths of Obser- 

 vation," as distinguished from the tales which make up the 

 great bulk of the folk-lore of the world, and which latter are 

 now being shown by the new school of Comparative Mytho- 

 logists in Germany and England to have come into existence 

 also by virtue of a general law, but a very difierent one. 



b2 



