Savages? What Savage Race can we point to which, considering the facts I have indicated of Migrations, etc., may not possibly, and even probably have, in some indirect and distorted way, derived its Mythology from the great centres of Civilisation? Stanley's Dwarfs in Central Africa? Well, I will admit that they do not seem to have been thus influenced—but then, neither do they seem to have any Mythology, or any Religion. Then, again, as to Mr. Spencer's and Dr. Tylor's elaborate theory of Savage Philosophers not only observing Shadows and recalling Dreams, etc., but working out from these facts a reasoned system of Philosophy — nor that only, but—unlike Philosophers of a higher degree — coming all of them to identical conclusions, all over the world. This is a subject for a long paper rather than for a mere incidental allusion, and I regret, therefore, that time will not permit to say more here than this—Whatever truth there may be in this theory of Mr. Spencer's and Dr. Tylor's, it appears to me to be but a very partial truth, and that in nothing, perhaps, do the moral and intellectual differences of Races more clearly show themselves than in their conceptions of Nature; and I would ask you to judge of this conclusion by comparing, for instance, the Folk-conceptions of the Greeks, as revealed in their Folk-poesy, and the Folk-conceptions of the Chinese. The Origins of Notions of Spirits, that is a fundamental question for a really thorough treatment of the Origins of Mythology. But I can here only suggest the problem as one of which the solution given by the thinkers I have named seems to be far too simple for the facts.
Secondly, if all the Civilisations of which we have any knowledge originated in the very complex conditions of a Conflict of Higher and Lower Races, then we must, I think, very seriously question the current assumption that different peoples necessarily pass through similar "stages". Animal Organisms assume new forms, or enter into new "stages", not because of any inward necessity, but because of special outward conditions of Conflict; and there is no proof whatever that it is not so also with Social Organisms. We have no proof whatever that any Savage People has passed independently into new "stages", and developed its Mythology in accordance therewith. And I submit that without the fundamental condition of a Conflict of Higher and Lower
