Lecture I. Introduction. 19
of those essentials of human life and progress of which no savage
community has hitherto been found to be destitute. He would
have known nothing of the art of producing fire, nothing of
language, without which human society would be impossible.
On the other hand, if the civilised races of mankind possessed
from the outset the germs of culture and the power to develop it,
they can in no way be compared with the savages of the modern
world, who have lived, generation after generation, stationary [018]
and unprogressive, like the beasts that perish, even though at
times they may have been in contact with a higher civilisation.
To explain the religious beliefs and usages of the Greeks and
Romans from the religious ideas and customs of Australians or
Hottentots, is in most cases but labour in vain, and to seek the
origin of Semitic religion in the habits and superstitions of low-
caste Bedâwin, is like looking to the gipsies for an explanation
of European Christianity. Such a procedure is the abuse, not
the use, of the anthropological method. Folk-lore gives us a
key to the mind of the child, and of the childlike portion of
society; it sheds no light on the beginnings either of religion or of
civilisation, and to make it do so is to mistake a will-o'-the-wisp
for a beacon-light. It is once more to find“survivals”where they
exist only in the mind of the inquirer. So long as civilised society
has lasted, it has contained the ignorant as well as the learned,
the fool as well as the wise man, and we are no more justified
in arguing from the ignorance of the past than we should be in
arguing from the ignorance of the present. So far as folk-tales
genuinely reflect the mind of the unlearned and childlike only,
they are of little help to the student of the religions of the ancient
civilised world.
We must, then, beware of discovering allegory and symbol
where they do not exist; we must equally beware of overlooking
them where they are actually to be found. And we must
remember that, although the metaphors and symbolism of the
earlier civilisations are not likely to be those which seem natural