Nor do the effects and importance of these studies end here; they are also the necessary foundation of true and rational sociology.  In fact, the relations of the individual to the world, the manifold conditions caused by the relations of persons to each other, the constitution of all social order, and the various modifications of that order; all these are resolved into the primitive thought, and into the emotional impulses of mythical prejudices and fancies, and in these they have also their natural sanction, and the cardinal point on which they rest and revolve.  There is no society, however rude and primitive, in which all these relations, both to the individual and to society at large, are not apparent, and these are based on superstitious and mythical beliefs.  Take the Tasmanians, for example, one of the peoples which has recently become extinct, and regarded as one of the most debased in the social scale, and we have in a small compass a picture of the acts and beliefs to be found in their embryonic association.

In every society, however rudimentary, these are held to be important facts:  the birth of individuals, which is their entrance into the society itself, and into the possession of its privileges; marriages, funerals, reciprocal obedience between persons and classes, or to the chief; public assemblies, and the existence of powers equal or superior to living men.

Among the Tasmanians, the placenta was religiously venerated, and they carefully buried it, lest it should be injured or devoured by animals.  If the mother died in childbirth her offspring was buried alive with her.  When a man attained puberty, he was bound to submit to certain ceremonies, some of them painful, and dictated by phallic superstitions.  Funeral rites were simple:  the corpse was either burnt, with howls and superstitious functions, or it was placed in the hollow trunk of a tree in a sitting position, with the chin supported by the knees, as was the custom with Peruvian mummies; and the belief in another world prompted them to place the weapons and utensils used, during life beside the corpse.  Sometimes a wooden lance, with fragments of human bones affixed to it, was placed below the tumulus, as a defence for the dead during his long sleep.  It appears from these customs, and from others mentioned by Clarke, that they had a vague idea of another life, holding that the shades went up to inhabit the stars, or flew to a distant island where they were born again as white men.  These beliefs were necessarily connected with the rites which they fulfilled when living, and served as a kind of obscure sanction for them.