Mafichester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 127 



treating the nations of America as having reached their 

 level of culture under Asiatic influence." 



One might have imagined that such an instance, 

 especially when backed with the authority 18 of our greatest 

 anthropologist, who certainly has no bias in favour of the 

 views I am promulgating, would have carried conviction 

 to the mind of anyone willing to be convinced by precise 

 evidence. But not to Mr. Keane ! In endeavouring to 

 whittle down the significance of this crucial case, he inci- 

 dentally illustrates the lengths of unreason to which this 

 school of ethnologists will push their argument, when 

 driven to formulate a redactio ad ' absurdum without realiz- 

 ing the magnitude of the absurdity their blind devotion to 

 a catch-word impels them to perpetrate. 



In Keane's " Ethnology " (41, pp. 217-219) the follow- 

 ing passages are found : — 



" It is further to be noticed that religious ideas, like 

 social usages, are easily transmitted from tribe to tribe, 

 from race to race. [Most of my critics base their opposi- 

 tion on a denial of these very assumptions ! ] Hence 

 resemblances in this order, where they arise, must rank 

 very low as ethnical tests. I f not the product of a common 

 cerebral structure, they can prove little beyond social 

 contact in remote or later times. A case in point is 

 [Tylor's statement, which I have just quoted]. 



"The parallelism is complete; but the range of 

 thought is extremely limited — nothing but mountains and 

 knives, beside the river of death common to Egyptians, 

 Greeks, and all peoples endowed with a little imagination." 

 " Hence Prof. E. B. Tylor, who calls attention to the 

 [joints of resemblance, builds far too much on them when 

 he adduces them as convincing evidence of pre-Columbian 

 culture in America taking shape under Asiatic influences. 



1 s For the whole driving force of the so-called " psychological " ethno- 

 logists is really a reverence for authority and a meaningless creed. 



