It is needful to come to an understanding as to what the “comparative method” really is. I have observed that, during the last fifteen years or so, there has been a strange misapprehension on this point. Some writers maintain that to compare any facts, no matter what, is to apply the comparative method. They search all over the world for peculiar usages; they cite the legend of the golden age amongst the ancients as if it were an historical fact; they seize upon a trifling circumstance which occurred in the Lipari Isles as if it related to the entire Greek world; they seize upon some custom, such as public repasts or the festivals of the curia; thence they pass to the Russian _mir_ and talk of it as if they knew all about it; then they describe a township or an _allmend_; and, in short, whenever they find an instance of anything that is done in common, at once they suppose that they have discovered community in land. They pretend they have discovered the most widespread institutions of the human race by the help of some few instances that they have sought for far and wide, and that they do not take the trouble to observe accurately. And, what is a more serious matter, they omit and leave out of their consideration facts which are constant, normal, well-authenticated, which are engraven in the laws of all peoples, and which have made up their historical life. They give us a few isolated facts and turn our thoughts away from permanent institutions. This is not the comparative method.