Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/388

 364 the interests of the Classical School at Oxford; and, if our imaginations were fired by what we were told about Aryan origins, the study of Sanskrit roots proved a dry affair. Be this as it may, Andrew Lang's polemics carried us off our feet; and his indeed proved the winning side, though not because we shouted on it.

Oxford, I believe, is reputed to be in general stronger on the side of letters than on that of science. Where precisely the line is to be drawn between letters and science, especially in their relation to the subject of Man, is a question, I confess, on which I am rather vague, perhaps because I have enjoyed an Oxford education. In any case, Andrew Lang surely shows himself a true son of his alma mater in his handling of anthropology. He envisages it primarily as does the man of letters. Facts are facts, of course; but, in the case of human history, the facts are almost one with the values that they stand for. Thus, there is room in the branch of history known as anthropology for the writer whose taste and gift are less for description than for evaluation,—for the appreciation of the bearing of the facts on the universal hopes and loves and aspirations of mankind. Now Andrew Lang was no philosopher; and his appreciation of the facts of primitive life did not therefore take the turn of unfolding the moral or political implications. Indeed, one can imagine him jeering in a friendly way at the solemn persons to whom such considerations are dear. But he was a poet; and, as a poet, could thoroughly appreciate and express the glamour of the far past of man. Without conscious effort he could communicate to his readers a sense of the elemental quality of unsophisticated humanity's ambition for 'a place in the sun.' Clean-minded as he was, and full of boyish vivacity, he could recover something of the fresh feel of those morning hours through which the race has passed. Like his own Homer, he would, perhaps, shut his eyes to certain unseemly accompaniments of man's upward struggle, preferring to dwell on the healthy vital forces that, after all, have pulled mankind through. "The savage is an absurd fellow, but on the whole a sportsman," I have heard him remark. There is much that might be said about his constructive work which would emphasize the value of this theory or