Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/389

 Rh that; but for me the soul of it consists in having helped the world to sympathize with the child of nature. It is to the eternal schoolboy in us, I believe, that anthropology must speak, if it is to be a real science, and not a farrago of dreary trivialities.

Of the critical side of Andrew Lang's work I would merely say this: Neither the anthropologist nor the folklorist strikes one as especially anxious to accord to criticism its due place and function within his science. The field is so wide, and the labourers are so few, that each investigator has become accustomed to cultivating his own corner in his own way; and is consequently inclined to resent candid comment on his operations as rank intrusion on the part of a busybody. I believe, then, that British anthropology and folklore owe a great debt to Andrew Lang for his ceaseless activity as a critic. Will those who suffered at his hands be prepared to say that he was unfair in his methods of criticism,—that he employed "eristic, not dialectic"? Such an objection, I believe, could only come from those who have no sense of humour. Andrew Lang was, endowed, like Socrates himself, but unlike many who practise the Socratic elenchus, with an unlimited fund of fun. He "ragged" his adversary in fact, partly, but by no means wholly, for the sheer amusement of the thing. There is a theory prevalent at the universities that there must be something wrong with the man who cannot take a ragging in good part. If this principle were applied to those who engage in anthropological controversy, I wonder how many of us would be able to hold up our heads any longer. Andrew Lang would usually fling a jest at one instead of an argument. Would the argument have proved more effective? Surely not, if the main object of criticism, at any rate when it is directed towards an equal, is to arrest, to turn the thinker back upon himself; not to take him in hand and offer him instruction, which might, indeed, savour of impertinence. I can remember in my own case how I argued in Folk-Lore that 'pre-animistic religion' was rooted in awe, but then, unfortunately for myself, went on to refer to the Eskimo who throws dirt at the Aurora Borealis in order to drive it away. Quoth Andrew Lang in criticism:—