LIV. CONCLUSION.
Reading edition
Lastly, it may be urged that the thoughtful consideration of this subject will not be without results of importance to science. It shows us, if we may employ a mathematical expression, that by integrating the equation of man’s development between the limits zero, in which these disgusting practices had full sway, and the limit of A.D. 1891, the precise extent of his advancement in all that we call civilization can better be understood.
The biologist and psychologist may find material to demonstrate to what extent primitive man, in corresponding environment in different regions of the world, will display the same instincts and act under identical impulses.
The student of comparative mythology will certainly discover much to interest and instruct him.
The student of folk-lore should find here a field promising the most prolific results. Folk-usage, especially in folk-medicine,—which is simply the crystallization of the mythology and religious medicine of the most primitive ages,—should respond most generously to any demands that may be made upon this and other points which the ordinary writer believes to be too unclean for his pen.
To the author it has been a work involving apparently endless research, much of it barren of result, and a correspondence with scholars in all countries, whose contributions have been of the first importance in determining that the filthy rite of urine-drinking as seen among the Zuñis of the United States was paralleled by the orgies of other savages, and had its counterparts and imitations in the “survivals,” often distorted into burlesque, of nations of high enlightenment.
Verily, it may be said in concluding, as in beginning this volume, the proper study of mankind is man; the study of man is the study of man’s religion.