Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/42

 28 from everywhere, and handed down, directly or indirectly, by the lettered classes. There can be no doubt that much of the popular literature of to-day—in the widest sense of the word—was the literature of the upper classes of the preceding centuries, remodelled by the people in accordance with the innate instincts and dispositions of each nation. The elements surging up from the depth of antiquity meet newer elements coming down from above, and so shape and mould popular taste and popular feeling. They are the food for the hungry soul of the masses, eager to raise itself from the lower level of ignorance to a higher poetical contemplation.

Having arrived thus far, it behoves us to pause for a moment, and ask what benefit there is in this study of Folklore? The answer is not far to seek. Collection in itself is an instruction, and the objects which we collect influence our æsthetical feeling. There is always great pleasure experienced by every collector. But there is a profound difference between science and aimless dilettantism. Science is not an inscription on a tombstone. To collect the remnants of the past in order to enshrine them in some beautifully adorned cases would be to miss entirely the aim and object of true study and scientific investigation. The real aim, on the contrary, must be to make the past a stepping-stone to the future, a mirror which is held up to us in which to see the virtues and the vices, the greatness and the smallness, the attempts and the failures, so as to shun the one and follow the other. The science of Folklore does not fall short of this expectation. It carries v/ith it a warning and a lesson. A new responsibility together with a greater hope is borne upon us through the study of popular literature. The masses are receptive to an unexpected degree. Constant and systematic influence exercised upon the people generation after generation continues unabated. Nothing can stop that filtering down from one sphere of society