Hottentot Indra or
Zeus".

The advantages of our hypothesis (if its legitimacy be admitted) are
obvious. In the first place, we have to deal with an actual demonstrable
condition of the human intellect. The existence of the savage state
in all its various degrees, and of the common intellectual habits and
conditions which are shared by the backward peoples, and again the
survival of many of these in civilisation, are indubitable facts. We are
not obliged to fall back upon some fanciful and unsupported theory of
what "primitive man" did, and said, and thought. Nay, more; we escape
all the fallacies connected with the terms "primitive man". We are not
compelled (as will be shown later)(1) to prove that the first men of all
were like modern savages, nor that savages represent primitive man.
It may be that the lowest extant savages are the nearest of existing
peoples to the type of the first human beings. But on this point it is
unnecessary for us to dogmatise. If we can show that, whether men began
their career as savages or not, they have at least passed through the
savage status or have borrowed the ideas of races in the savage
status, that is all we need. We escape from all the snares of theories
(incapable of historical proof) about the really primeval and original
condition of the human family.

(1) Appendix B.

Once more, our theory naturally attaches itself to the general system
of Evolution. We are enabled to examine mythology as a thing of gradual
development and of slow and manifold modifications, corresponding in
some degree to the various changes in the general progress of society.
Thus we shall watch the barbaric conditions of thought which produce
barbaric myths, while these in their turn are retained, or perhaps
purified, or perhaps explained away, by more advanced civilisations.
Further, we shall be able to detect the survival of the savage ideas
with least modification, and the persistence of the savage myths with
least change, among the classes of a civilised population which have
shared least in the general advance. These classes are, first, the
rustic peoples, dwelling far from cities and schools, on heaths or by
the sea; second, the conservative local priesthoods, who retain the more
crude and ancient myths of the local gods and heroes after these
have been modified or rejected by the purer sense of philosophers and
national poets. Thus much of ancient myth is a woven warp and woof of
three