Conversely in demotic development, which is characterized by
the persistence of the organisms and by the elimination of the bad and the
preservation of the good among qualities only, there is a constant
tendency toward retardation of progress; for in savagery and barbarism as
in civilization, age commonly produces conservatism, and at the same time
brings responsibility for the conduct of old and young, so that
modification, howsoever beneficial, is measurably held in check, and so
that the progress of each generation buds in the springtime of youth yet
is not permitted to fruit until the winter of old age approaches.
Accordingly the mean of demotic progress tends to lag far behind its
foremost advances, and modes of action and especially of thought change
slowly. This is especially true of beliefs, which, during each generation,
are largely vestigial. So the stages in the evolution of mythologic
philosophy overlap widely; there is probably no tribe now living among
whom zootheism has not yet taken root, though hecastotheism has been found
dominant among different tribes; there is probably no people in the
zootheistic stage who are completely divested of hecastotheistic vestiges;
and one of the curious features of even the most advanced psychotheism is
the occasional outcropping of features inherited from all of the earlier
stages. Yet it is none the less important to discriminate the stages.
THE SIOUAN MYTHOLOGY
It was partly through pioneer study of the Siouan Indians that the popular
fallacy concerning the aboriginal "Great Spirit" gained currency; and it
was partly through the work of Dorsey among the cegiha and Dakota tribes,
first as a missionary and afterward as a linguist, that the early error
was corrected.
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