sive kind may be of value in the hands of a great master; but
it is often not only valueless but mischievous in the hands of less
experienced writers, who think that comparison is justified wherever
similarity is discovered.

Similarity in form, however, does not necessarily mean similarity in
origin. It does not mean similarity in motive. Customs and rites which
are alike in practice can be shown to have originated from quite
different causes, to express quite different motifs, and cannot
therefore be held to belong to a common class, the elements of which
are comparable. Thus to take a very considerable custom, to be found
both in folk-tales and in usage, the succession of the youngest son,
it is pretty clear that among European peoples it originated in the
tribal practice of the elder sons going out of the tribal household to
found tribal households of their own, thus leaving the youngest to
inherit the original homestead. But among savage peoples where the
youngest son inherits the homestead, he does not do so because of a
tribal custom such as that to be found in the European evidence. It is
because of the conditions of the marriage rites. Thus among the Kafir
peoples of South Africa

"the young man of the commonality, who being a young
man has had but little or no means of displaying his
sagacity--a quality with them most frequently
synonymous with cunning--commences for himself in a
small way. Hence, too, being polygamous, and his wives
being bought with cattle, his first wife is taken from
a position accordant with that of a young, untried,
and poor or comparatively poor man. Hence also it
happens that his wives increase in number, and in--so
to speak--position, in accordance with his wealth, and
with his reputation for wisdom and sagacity, which may
have raised him to the rank of headman of a district,
and one of the Chief's counsellors. It is, therefore,
only when old in years that he takes to himself his
'great wife,' one of greater social and racial
position than were his previous wives, and her son,
that is, her eldest son, who is consequently the
father's youngest or nearly his youngest, becomes his
'great son,' and par excellence the heir. If the
father be a Chief, this son becomes the Chief at his
father's death.

"As, however, subordinate heirs, the father after some