Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/144

 122 departments of physical science which cannot, by dint of a little skilful manipulation, be classed under anthropology when convenient. At Cambridge irreverent outsiders were heard to speak of Section H as a dumping-ground for all the papers the other sections did not want. Would it be possible for a conference of representatives of the societies concerned to come to some agreement as to their respective areas of work? We are all students of human life, but we study it with different ends in view. Anthropologists, and those who specialise in folklore in particular, study institutions to add to the sum of human knowledge; sociologists, to increase human comfort and progress. The work of the one supplies material for the other. Anthropology embraces the physical characteristics of race, the history of language, the rise of all mechanical arts and crafts, the growth and development of social organisation, etc. Sociology, as Professor Kovalovsky points out (p. 237), needs and uses every kind of historical, legal, and economic knowledge,—we might add, every branch of physical science also—to render its labours fruitful. Folklore specialises, as has been said, in the history of human thought and human institutions—religious, political, legal, and social. Like anthropology in general, it is not concerned with the social problems which occupy the attention of the sociologist, but on the other hand the material side of anthropology is outside its limits, and it has relations to literature which are peculiar to itself. So the matter presents itself to one old folklorist at least: but it would surely be well to thrash out such questions as these, whether by means of a verbal conference or a written symposium.

. By H. M. Chadwick. Cambridge University Press.

work before us consists of a series of essays on some of the difficult questions arising out of English history between the sixth and tenth centuries inclusive. As such it is very welcome, for the social history of these five centuries is still excessively obscure