Now, when any given technological or decorative element crosses the frontier between one culture and another, in the course of borrowing, it is likely to happen that it will come into the new culture stripped of most or all of its anthropomorphic or spiritual virtues and limitations, more particularly, of course, if the cultural frontier in question is at the same time a linguistic frontier; since the borrowing is likely to be made from motives of workmanlike expediency, and the putative spiritual attributes of the facts involved are not obvious to men who have not been trained to impute them. The chief exception to such a rule would be any borrowing that takes effect on religious grounds, in which case, of course, the magical or symbolic efficacy of the borrowed elements are the substance that is sought in the borrowing. Herein, presumably, lies much of the distinctive character of the north-European prehistoric culture, which was in an eminent degree built up out of borrowed elements, so far as concerns both its technology and its art. And to this free and voluminous borrowing may likewise be due the apparent poverty of this early culture in religious or magical elements. A further effect follows. The borrowing being (relatively) unencumbered with ritual restrictions and magical exactions attached to their employment, they would fall into the scheme of things as mere matter-of-fact, to be handled with the same freedom and unhindered sagacity with which a workman makes use of his own hands, and could, without reservation, be turned to any use for which they were mechanically suited. Something of symbolism and superstition might, of course, be carried over in the borrowing, and something more would unavoidably be bred into the borrowed elements in the course of their use; but the free start would always count for something in the outcome, both as regards the rate of progress made in the exploitation of the expedients acquired by borrowing and in the character of the technological system at large into which they had been introduced. Both the relative freedom from magical restraint and the growth of home-made anthropomorphic imputations may easily be detected in the course of this northern culture and in its outcome in modern times. Cattle, for instance, are a borrowed technological fact in the Baltic and North-Sea region, but superstitious practices seem never to have attached to cattle-breeding in that region in such volume and rigorous exaction as may be found nearer the original home of the domesticated species; and yet the volume of folk-lore, mostly of a genial and relatively unobstructive character, that has in later times grown up about the care of cattle in the Scandinavian countries is by no means inconsiderable. CHAPTER IV THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE PREDATORY CULTURE