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A systematic comparative study of how human belief, art, language, and custom develop across cultural stages, arguing for evolutionary growth while recognizing processes of decline. The work sets out methods for classifying cultural phenomena and highlights survivals as traces of earlier stages, supporting arguments with ethnographic and archaeological evidence. It examines magic and divination, animistic conceptions of soul, the origins of myth and ritual, the beginnings of language and numerals, and institutions such as totemic and funerary practices. The approach blends detailed case evidence with theoretical discussion of cultural continuity, change, and the roots of religious and social forms.
In this edition, while I have not found it needful to alter the general argument, the new information which has become available during the last twenty years has made it necessary to insert further details of evidence, and to correct some few statements. For convenience of reference, the paging of the last edition is kept to.
E. B. T.
September, 1891.