he point about this class of belief is that it has never
been called upon to do duty for social improvement and organisation,
has never been specialised by the Celt or Teuton in Europe, nor by
other branches of the same race. The myth alone of these two groups of
folklore could have had an ethnological influence, and this must have
been very slight. It remained in the mind of Aryan man, but has never
descended to the arena of his practical life. It has influenced his
practical life indirectly of course, but it has never become a brick
in the building up of his practical life. This distinction between
custom and belief which are tribal and custom and belief which are not
tribal, is of vast importance. It has been urged against the
classification of custom, rite, and belief into ethnological groups
that it does not allow for the presence of a great mass of belief,
primitive in character and undoubtedly Aryan, if not in origin at all
events in fact. The objection is not valid. The custom, rite, and
belief which can be classified as distinctively Aryan is that portion
of the whole corpus of primitive custom, rite, and belief, which was
used by the Aryan-speaking folk in the building up of their tribal
organisation. They divorced it by this use from the general primitive
conceptions, and developed it along special lines. It is in its
special characteristics that this belief belongs to the tribal system
of the Aryans, not in its general characteristics. Not every custom,
rite, and belief was so used and developed. The specialisation caused
the deliberate rejection or neglect of much custom, rite, and belief
which was opposed to the new order of things, and did not affect the
practical doings of Aryan life.

There are thus three elements to consider: (1) the custom, rite, and
belief specialised by the Aryan-speaking people in the formation and
development of their tribal system; (2) the custom, rite, and belief
rejected or neglected by the Aryan tribesmen; and (3) the belief which
was not affected by or used for the tribal development, but which, not
being directly antagonistic to it, remained with the primitive Aryan
folk as survivals of their science and philosophy.

For ethnological purposes we have only to do with the first group. It
is definite, and it is capable of definite recognition within the
tribe. When once it was brought into the tribal system it ceased to
exist in the form in which it was known to general savage