Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/353

 The Sociological Significance of Myth. 331

of humanity, the terminology of the present classificatory system ? " So long as we regard the narrative as an indi- genous account of the origin or creation of mankind, so long will it be contradictory and not to be explained save as the uncontrolled and meaningless product of the rude imagination. If, on the other hand, the narrative records, though in mythical form, the settlement of one people among another who, though far inferior to the strangers in material culture and intelligence, yet possessed the classi- ficatory system of relationship, it is no longer obscure or contradictory, but one which will, I hope, fit in with and confirm other results of the ethnological analysis of Aus- tralian culture.

W. H. R. Rivers.