en assiduously collected.

Let us end by showing how this discussion illustrates the method of
Folklore. We have found anomalies among Aryans. We have seen the
_gens_ an odd, decaying institution. We have seen Greek families claim
descent from various animals, said to be Zeus, or another god, in
disguise. We have found them tracing kinship and deriving names from
the mother. We have found stocks with animal and vegetable names. We
have found half-brothers and sisters marrying. We have noted
prohibitions to marry any one of the same family name. All these
institutions are odd, anomalous, decaying things among Aryans, and the
more civilised the Aryans the more they decay. All of them are living,
active things among savages, and, far from being anomalous, are in
precise harmony with savage notions of the world. Surely, then, where
they seem decaying and anomalous, as among Aryans, these customs and
laws are mouldering relics of ideas and practices natural and
inevitable among savages.

FOOTNOTES:

[206] _Early Law and Custom._

[207] _Studies in Ancient History_, p. 127.

[208] _Descent of Man_, ii. 362.

[209] _Early Law and Custom_, p. 210.

[210] Here I would like to point out that Mr. M'Lennan's theory was
not so hard and fast as his manner (that of a very assured believer in
his own ideas) may lead some inquirers to suppose. Sir Henry Maine
writes, that both Mr. Morgan and Mr. M'Lennan 'seem to me to think
that human society went everywhere through the same series of changes,
and Mr. M'Lennan, at any rate, expresses himself as if all those
stages could be clearly discriminated from one another, and the close
of one and the commencement of another announced with the distinctness
of the clock-bell telling the end of the hour.' On the other hand, I
remember Mr. M'Lennan's saying that, in his opinion, 'all manner of
arrangements probably went on simultaneously in different places.' In
_Studies in Ancient History_, p. 127, he expressly guards against the
tendency 'to assume that the progress of the various races of men from
savagery has been a uniform progress: that all the stages which any of
them has gone through have been passed in their order by all.' Still
more to the point is his remark on polyandry among the very early
Greeks and other Aryans; 'it is quite consistent with my view that in
all these quarters (Persia, Sparta, Troy, Lycia, Attica, Crete, etc.)
monandry, and even the _patria potestas_, may have