These considerations raise a further question as to the employment of the Comparative Method. Natives of the Banks Islands are far in advance of the Arunta in all the arts of life, as well as in relation to Totemism which they seem to have outlived. Is it admissible to take some trait of their life as an example of what may have existed amongst the Arunta at a stage of culture which is generally assumed to have been inferior even to the present? When the antecedents of an institution have been lost amongst any given people, and we set out to supply them from parallel cases amongst other peoples, must we not require the same relative order of development? If a social phenomenon is found in the Banks Islands, its possibility is proved; but strictly it was possible only where it occurred: elsewhere we can expect only something similar, according to the similarity of other relevant circumstances. Comparing the Banks Islands and their people with Central Australia and its people, one discovers hardly anything common to them. And Arunta tradition (whatever worth) shows no sign of anything like the southern Melanesian culture: the Alcheringa ancestors are represented as having been already Totemists. To assume, however, that the former condition of the Arunta was even lower than the present, may not be justifiable: social degeneration is not uncommon. There would be something to guide our judgment if we knew how recently the desiccation of their country approached its present severity. But, in any case, can we suppose it to have been at all like the Melanesian? § 4. ANDREW LANG’S HYPOTHESIS