Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 125 



Bancroft's excellent summary (3), which also supplies a 

 wonderfully rich storehouse of facts and traditions wholly 

 corroborative of the conclusions at which I have arrived 

 in the present memoir. 



I find it difficult to conceive how there could ever 

 have been any doubt about the matter on the part of 

 anyone who knows his " Bancroft." 



It will naturally be asked, if the case in proof of the 

 actual diffusion of culture from Asia to America is so 

 overwhelmingly convincing, on what grounds is assent 

 refused ? One school (of which the most characteristic 

 utterance that I know of is Fewkes' presidential address, 

 18) refuses to discuss the evidence : with pontifical solem- 

 nity it lays down the dogma of independent evolution 

 as an infallible principle which it is almost sacrilege to 

 question. I can best illustrate the methods of the other 

 school of reactionaries by a sample of its dialectic. 



No single incident in the discussion of the origin of 

 American civilization has given rise to greater consterna- 

 tion in the ranks of the " orthodox " ethnologists than 

 Tylor's statement (102) : — 



"The conception of weighing in a spiritual balance in 

 the judgment of the dead, which makes its earliest appear- 

 ance in the Egyptian religion, was traced thence into a 

 series of variants, serving to draw lines of intercourse 

 through the Vedic and Zoroastrian religions, extending 

 from Eastern Buddhism to Western Christendom. The 

 associated doctrine of the Bridge of the Dead, which 

 separates the good, who pass over, from the wicked, who 

 fall into the abyss, appears first in ancient Persian religion, 

 reaching in like manner to the extremities of .Asia and 

 Europe. By these mythical beliefs historical tics are 

 practically constituted, connecting the great religions of 

 the world, and serving as lines along which their inter- 



