have in common with Australians and Bushmen, and Andaman Islanders. It is the function of the people to retain in folklore these elements of religion, which it is the high duty of the sage and the poet to purify away in the fire of refining thought. It is for this very reason that _ritual_ has (though Mr. Max Müller curiously says that it seems not to possess) an immense scientific interest. Ritual holds on, with the tenacity of superstition, to all that has ever been practised. Yet, when Mr. Müller wants to know about _origins_, about actual ancient _practice_, he deliberately turns to that 'great collection of ancient poetry' (the Rig Veda) 'which has no special reference to sacrificial acts,' not to the Brahmanas which are full of ritual. To sum up briefly:--(1) Mr. Müller's arguments against the evidence for, and the primitiveness of, fetichism seem to demonstrate the opposite of that which he intends them to prove. (2) His own evidence for _primitive_ practice is chosen from the documents of a _cultivated_ society. (3) His theory deprives that society of the very influences which have elsewhere helped the Tribe, the Family, Rank, and Priesthoods to grow up, and to form the backbone of social existence. FOOTNOTES: [197] _Lectures on Language._ Second Series, p. 41. [198] A defence of the evidence for our knowledge of savage faiths, practices, and ideas will be found in _Primitive Culture_, i. 9-11. [199] A third reference to Pausanias I have been unable to verify. There are several references to Greek fetich-stones in Theophrastus' account of the Superstitious Man. A number of Greek sacred stones named by Pausanias may be worth noticing. In Bœotia (ix. 16), the people believed that Alcmene, mother of Heracles, was changed into a stone. The Thespians worshipped, under the name of Eros, an unwrought stone, ἄγαλμα παλαιότατον, 'their most ancient sacred object' (ix. 27). The people of Orchomenos 'paid extreme regard to certain stones,' said to have fallen from heaven, 'or to certain figures made of stone that descended from the sky' (ix. 38). Near Chæronea Rhea was said to have deceived Cronus, by offering him, in place of Zeus, a stone wrapped in swaddling bands. This stone, which Cronus vomited forth after having swallowed it, was seen by Pausanias at Delphi (ix. 41). By the roadside, near the city of the Panopeans, lay the stones out of which Prometheus made men (x. 4). The stone swallowed in place of Zeus by his father lay at the exit from the Delphian temple and was anointed (compare the action of Jacob, Gen. xxviii. 18) with oil every day. The Phocians worshipped thirty squared stones, each named after a god (vii. xxii.). '_Among all the Greeks rude stones were worshipped before the images of the gods._' Among the Trœzenians a sacred stone lay in front of the temple, whereon the Trœzenian elders sat, and purified Orestes from the murder of his mother. In Attica there was a conical stone worshipped as Apollo (i. xliv.).