e a similar
practice is found, and where the practice is no longer irrational and
anomalous, but in harmony with the manners and ideas of the people among
whom it prevails. That Greeks should dance about in their mysteries with
harmless serpents in their hands looks quite unintelligible. When a wild
tribe of Red Indians does the same thing, as a trial of courage, with
real rattlesnakes, we understand the Red Man's motives, and may
conjecture that similar motives once existed among the ancestors of the
Greeks. Our method, then, is to compare the seemingly meaningless
customs or manners of civilised races with the similar customs and
manners which exist among the uncivilised and still retain their meaning.
It is not necessary for comparison of this sort that the uncivilised and
the civilised race should be of the same stock, nor need we prove that
they were ever in contact with each other. Similar conditions of mind
produce similar practices, apart from identity of race, or borrowing of
ideas and manners.

Let us return to the example of the flint arrowheads. Everywhere
neolithic arrow-heads are pretty much alike. The cause of the
resemblance is no more than this, that men, with the same needs, the same
materials, and the same rude instruments, everywhere produced the same
kind of arrow-head. No hypothesis of interchange of ideas nor of
community of race is needed to explain the resemblance of form in the
missiles. Very early pottery in any region is, for the same causes, like
very early pottery in any other region. The same sort of similarity was
explained by the same resemblances in human nature, when we touched on
the identity of magical practices and of superstitious beliefs. This
method is fairly well established and orthodox when we deal with usages
and superstitious beliefs; but may we apply the same method when we deal
with myths?

Here a difficulty occurs. Mythologists, as a rule, are averse to the
method of folklore. They think it scientific to compare only the myths
of races which speak languages of the same family, and of races which
have, in historic times, been actually in proved contact with each other.
Thus, most mythologists hold it correct to compare Greek, Slavonic,
Celtic, and Indian stories, because Greeks, Slavs, Celts, and Hindoos all
speak languages of the same family. Again, they hold it correct to
compare Chaldaean and Greek myths, because the Greeks and the Chaldaeans
were brought