Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/172

 1 44 Eth n logical Da ta in Fo Ik lo re.

Before joining issue with my critic, I wish to express regret at my apparent failure to make it clear that the scope of my address only allowed the broadest statement of the problem (with what seemed to me the best means of ensuring its solution) and forbade aught but the briefest reference to other views. Adequate discussion of Mr. Gomme^s work in this field would have exhausted the time at my disposal. But had I anticipated an interpretation of the silence, necessarily imposed upon me, as disregard of work which I value highly, I should certainly have added a few words of explanation.

In the address to which exception is taken I divided the elements of folklore into two main classes, philosophical and artistic, or, if the terms be preferred, practical and imaginative. I urged that the second, the imaginative, artistic element is more likely to yield clues for race dis- crimination. I did not, as Mr. Gomme imagines, identify traditional literature with folklore, I merely emphasised its importance for the special object I had in view. Mr. Gomme's criticisms bear chiefly upon a side issue which I must clear away before saying a few words in defence of my position.

My statement " that man in the folklore stage philoso- phises with a view to action, and that it is essential that his philosophy should be sound, as it is to result in action " is objected to on the ground that the philosophies of primi- tive man are notoriously unsound. From our point of view, that of civilised men, yes ; but I was reasoning from the standpoint of the folklore philosopher, the man whose knowledge is at once " empirical and traditional," not of his civilised critic. The word " empirical " as used in medical science will illustrate my point. Empiricism, for the modern practitioner, is unsoundness itself; his whole training is directed to obliterate empirical and substitute scientific reasoning. But for the folk empiricism is the only conceivably sound doctrine. The stress of my argument