345 
of progression, taken in its unqualified form, seems to me un- 
tenable also It is quite possible, and, I believe, 
highly probable, that retrogression has been as frequent as pro- 
gression*”* 
The tendency of man to adore, worship, or reverence, with 
varying degrees of intensity, numerous real or imaginary per- 
sonages and a great variety of things, has been assumed to have 
been an original tendency ; which is to assert that a trait in the 
character of the man must have appeared in that of the child ; 
whereas the child, the youth, may have been temperate, the 
man of mature years may be a hopeless drunkard. In such a 
case, the youth had not the vice in question, but merely its not- 
vet or possibility ; and so, in the abstract, it may have been with 
primitive man. But there is a natural principle which may 
assist us in accounting or partially accounting for his polytheistic 
reveries, and this is the Law of Reduplication. Primitive man 
observed a constant repetition and reduplication in nature ; 
dawn followed dawn, sun succeeded sun, day after day ; he 
looked upon his fellow-man, and saw himself again, and learnt 
that two was one repeated. He would further notice that this 
repetition was exact or differentiated, e.g., new but similar com- 
binations of clouds; or, again, woman, i.e., mother-man. And 
all reduplication was connected with intensity of continuance, 
of being, of wish, of effort. Thus it took the form of ; — 
1. t/jKpaaig, i.e., something appearing in or on a body which 
was not previously there, an indirect species of reduplication, 
e.g., a became a. And this principle is thus in constant antago- 
nism with the Law of Least Effort, so closely connected with 
Phonetic Decay. 
2. Direct phonetic ancl linguistic repetition. E.g., the Malay 
raja-raja , “princess,” and orang-orang , “people”; the Akka- 
dian khar-khar, “ hollows,” gat-gal, “ very great” (i.e., great 
-f great) ; the Dayak kakd-kakd, “to go on laughing loud”; 
the Tamil muru-muru , “ to mur-mur.” j- The Akkadian, both 
in sound and in pictorial delineation, supplies numerous 
instances of this principle. J 
3. Pictorial Reduplication. The A ssyrio - Akkadian ideo- 
* Sociology, 106. It is to he observed also that very many modern 
examinations of the belief, etc., of savages, are palpably superficial, incom- 
plete, or contradictory. 
t Apud Prof. Sayce, Principles of Comparative Philology, 277. Mr. Sayce 
gives various examples of the principle, e.g., “ the reduplicated Aryan 
perfect,” the formation of the plural in the language of the Bushmen, etc. 
I E.g. talta.l (the god Hea), mukmuh-nabi (altar of incense, i.e. building, 
muh, + building, intensive for the special building), mermer (the air-god 
Rimmon). 
