Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/427

 Rh.

The correspondence which recently appeared in The Times under this heading deserves the attention of folklorists, and, as the folklore side of the question was not touched upon before the correspondence closed, it will not perhaps be considered out of place if I shortly state what the position of folklore is on this important point. The fact that it has arrived at a stage when it can contribute something to what pure science has said, is not without significance to the progress of our study.

In my book on Folklore as an Historical Science, published two years ago, I introduced a chapter on "the psychological conditions," and ventured upon the theory of the continuity of tradition being due to environment. The facts of tradition are sufficiently startling to need some scientific basis to account for them. We have a primitive thought prevalent among savage people side by side with its parallel obtaining amongst the villagers of a civilized country, and it is not enough to say that the latter is a mere survival from a far-off period when these villagers were on a level of culture with the savage. The "amazing toughness of tradition" is of course recognized by all folklorists, but to account for its prolonged persistence requires something more than the mere quality of toughness. This something more is, I venture to think, the important influence of environment. Anthropologists generally have neglected this influence, or at all events have not formulated its position. And yet it is apparent in all recent research. Two notable examples of this are Dr. Frazer's recently published Totemism and Exogamy and Mr. Hartland's Primitive Paternity. Totemism in its earliest stage is clearly not due to formulated theories of social organization; paternity, as originally conceived, is clearly due to the enormous influence of environment upon the sensitive organs of observation which man has always possessed. But these conceptions, carried through the ages, get repeated at different stages of culture whenever environment operates upon similarly constituted minds. Little groups of isolated members of civilized nations, groups of backward intellect, individuals incapable of receiving the advancing culture of their times, recede from the higher