6 ELLIOT Smith, Distribution of Mummification. 



been proved by an overwhelming mass of precise and 

 irrefutable data. But this evidence does not stand alone. 

 It is linked with scores of other peculiar customs and 

 beliefs, the testimony of each of which, however imperfect 

 and unconvincing some scholars may consider it indi- 

 vidually, strengthens the whole case by cumulation ; and 

 when due consideration is given to the enormous com- 

 plexity and artificiality of the cultural structure com- 

 pounded of such fantastic elements, these are bound to 

 compel assent to their significance, as soon as the present 

 generation of ethnologists can learn to forget the meaning- 

 less fetish to which at present it bends the knee. 



But suppose, for the sake of argument, we shut our 

 ears to the voice of common sense, and allow ourselves to 

 be hypnotised into the belief that some complex and 

 highly specialised instinct {i.e. precisely the type of in- 

 stinct which real psychologists — not the ethnological 

 variety — deny to mankind) impelled groups of men 

 scattered as far apart as Ireland, India and Peru inde- 

 pendently the one of the other to build mausolea of the 

 same type, to acquire similar beliefs regarding the petri- 

 faction of human beings, and many other extraordinary 

 things connected with such monuments, how is this 

 " psychological explanation " going to help us to explain 

 why the wives of the builders of these monuments, 

 whether in Africa, Asia or America, should have their 

 chins pricked and rubbed with charcoal, or why they 

 should circumcise their boys, or why they should have a 

 tradition of the deluge ? Does any theory of evolution 

 help in explaining these associations ? They are clearly 

 fortuitous associations of customs and beliefs, which have 

 no inherent relationship one to the other. They became 

 connected purely by chance in one definite locality, and 

 the fact that such incongruous customs reappear in asso- 



