rkable that it has given the students of these subjects
'furiously to think' (1)--yet for the most part without great success in
the way of finding a solution. The supposition that (1) the creed, rite
or legend in question has sprung up, so to speak, accidentally, in one
place, and then has travelled (owing to some inherent plausibility) over
the rest of the world, is of course one that commends itself readily at
first; but on closer examination the practical difficulties it presents
are certainly very great. These include the migrations of customs and
myths in quite early ages of the earth across trackless oceans and
continents, and between races and peoples absolutely incapable of
understanding each other. And if to avoid these difficulties it is
assumed that the present human race all proceeds from one original
stock which radiating from one centre--say in South-Eastern Asia
(2)--overspread the world, carrying its rites and customs with it, why,
then we are compelled to face the difficulty of supposing this radiation
to have taken place at an enormous time ago (the continents being then
all more or less conjoined) and at a period when it is doubtful if any
religious rites and customs at all existed; not to mention the further
difficulty of supposing all the four or five hundred languages now
existing to be descended from one common source. The far tradition of
the Island of Atlantis seems to afford a possible explanation of the
community of rites and customs between the Old and New World, and
this without assuming in any way that Atlantis (if it existed) was the
original and SOLE cradle of the human race. (3) Anyhow it is clear that
these origins of human culture must be of extreme antiquity, and that
it would not be wise to be put off the track of the investigation of a
possible common source merely by that fact of antiquity.

(1) See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii.

(2) See Hastings, Encycl. Religion and Ethics, art. "Ethnology."

(3) E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America (vol. i,
p. 93) says: "It is certain that Europe and America once formed a single
continent," but inroads of the sea "left a vast island or peninsula
stretching from Iceland to the Azores--which gradually disappeared."
Also he speaks (i. 93) of the "Miocene Bridge" between Siberia and the
New World.

A second supposition, however, is (2) that the natural psychological
evolution of the human mind has in the vari