mbrace all the phenomena.
Obviously any satisfactory solution of the problem must be preceded by a
thorough examination of all particular myths, all social
characteristics, and all geographical and migratory relations affecting
the early communities; and on these points there is yet much to learn.

+824+. It is well known that customs and beliefs have sometimes passed
from one tribe or nation to another, when there has been close social
intercourse between the two. It is known also that early men were
capable of long journeys by land and by water: the migration legends of
various peoples are full of the details of such movements; in
comparatively recent times there have been great migrations of large
bodies of people, as, for example, from the Arabian desert to the north
and northwest, and from the central Asiatic steppes westward and
eastward; and the tribes of the Pacific Ocean appear to have traversed
long distances in their canoes. And when we consider the great lapse of
time, many thousands of years, that preceded the formation of the human
society with which we are acquainted, it appears to be impossible to
assign any limit to the possibility of tribal movements on the face of
the earth. On the other hand, we do not know whether, or how far, such
migrations issued in social fusion; and all the well-attested cases of
borrowing of customs and ideas have sprung from long-continued social
union.

+825+. Further, a distinction must be made between general resemblances
and minute agreement or complete identity; there may be a similarity so
great as to force on us the hypothesis of imitation, and there may be
general similarities that may be ascribed to ordinary human thought
working in different places under similar conditions. In fact, the
conditions of existence have not varied very greatly over the globe.
There are differences of climate and soil and surface-configuration, but
everywhere there have been the sky with the heavenly bodies, the
sequence of day and night, sunshine and rain, hunting and fishing,
trees, rivers, beasts and birds, and the cultivable soil; and as man's
problem was everywhere the same--namely, how to put himself into good
relation with his surroundings--and as his intellectual equipment was
everywhere substantially the same, it would not be surprising if he
should fall on similar methods of thought and procedure independently in
various parts of the world. It was natural to early man to think