This is
indeed a fact. We find some few European peasants to-day using
stone mallet-heads; but this proves simply that the old stone
mallet-heads have survived as implements cheap and effective.
The argument from Comparative Ethnology in support of the view
that the tendency of mankind is upward has received strength
from many sources. Comparative Philology shows that in the less
civilized, barbarous, and savage races childish forms of speech
prevail--frequent reduplications and the like, of which we have
survivals in the later and even in the most highly developed
languages. In various languages, too, we find relics of ancient
modes of thought in the simplest words and expressions used for
arithmetical calculations. Words and phrases for this purpose
are frequently found to be derived from the words for hands,
feet, fingers, and toes, just as clearly as in our own language
some of our simplest measures of length are shown by their names
to have been measures of parts of the human body, as the cubit,
the foot, and the like, and therefore to date from a time when
exactness was not required.
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