In connection with this topic (the nature of anthropological evidence),
Mr. Max Muller (i. 205-207) repeats what he has often said before. Thus
he cites Dr. Codrington's remarks, most valuable remarks, on the
difficulty of reporting correctly about the ideas and ways of savages. I
had cited the same judicious writer to the same effect, {95} and had
compiled a number of instances in which the errors of travellers were
exposed, and their habitual fallacies were detected. Fifteen closely
printed pages were devoted by me to a criterion of evidence, and a reply
to Mr. Max Muller's oft-repeated objections.
'When [I said] we find Dr. Codrington taking the same precautions in
Melanesia as Mr. Sproat took among the Ahts, and when his account of
Melanesian myths reads like a close copy of Mr. Sproat's account of
Aht legends, and when both are corroborated [as to the existence of
analogous savage myths] by the collections of Bleek, and Hahn, and
Gill, and Castren, and Rink, in far different corners of the world;
while the modern testimony of these scholarly men is in harmony with
that of the old Jesuit missionaries, and of untaught adventurers who
have lived for many years with savages, surely it will be admitted
that the difficulty of ascertaining savage opinion has been, to a
great extent, overcome.'
I also cited at length Dr. Tylor's masterly argument to the same effect,
an argument offered by him to 'a great historian,' apparently.