Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/184

154 reflection of a life which differs immeasurably from our own. Yet this reflection or picture must itself be pieced together by the imagination; for imagination, the power of inward vision, is as necessary to science as to poetry, whether our aim is to understand our fellow-men, to unravel the tangled skein of matter, or to explore the starry depths of space. Only we must remember that, if imagination is a necessary, it is not a perfect or infallible instrument of science: it is apt to take its colours from the eye that uses it, to tremble with every vibration that pulses along the nerves of the observer. These things cannot but trouble and distort the images which print themselves on our brain; yet they are inevitable, since we cannot get outside of ourselves and contemplate the world from the standpoint of a purely abstract intelligence. All we can do is to make allowance as far as possible for our individual upbringing, character, and surroundings, to calculate as exactly as we can the personal equation, and to correct our impressions accordingly. If we have done this, and if we are, like Mr. Fison, always ready to pull to pieces the old mental image, at whatever cost, and to build it up again on better evidence, then we have done all that is humanly possible to attain to the truth. When all is done, we may still be in error, but the error will be pardonable.

While Mr. Fison was pursuing his enquiries among the Australian tribes from 1871 to 1875, he was also engaged in ministerial work in New South Wales and Victoria. Returning to Fiji in 1875, he resumed his observations of