My
contribution to the history of the human mind consists of little more
than a rough and purely provisional classification of facts gathered
almost entirely from printed sources. If there is one general conclusion
which seems to emerge from the mass of particulars, I venture to think
that it is the essential similarity in the working of the less developed
human mind among all races, which corresponds to the essential
similarity in their bodily frame revealed by comparative anatomy. But
while this general mental similarity may, I believe, be taken as
established, we must always be on our guard against tracing to it a
multitude of particular resemblances which may be and often are due to
simple diffusion, since nothing is more certain than that the various
races of men have borrowed from each other many of their arts and
crafts, their ideas, customs, and institutions. To sift out the elements
of culture which a race has independently evolved and to distinguish
them accurately from those which it has derived from other races is a
task of extreme difficulty and delicacy, which promises to occupy
students of man for a long time to come; indeed so complex are the facts
and so imperfect in most cases is the historical record that it may be
doubted whether in regard to many of the lower races we shall ever
arrive at more than probable conjectures.
Since the last edition of _The Golden Bough_ was published some thirteen
years ago, I have seen reason to change my views on several matters
discussed in this concluding part of the work, and though I have called
attention to these changes in the text, it may be well for the sake of
clearness to recapitulate them here.
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