Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/30

18 ward man reposes in the immortality of the lower creation, and questions the validity of the current explanation to account for the fact. "The savage," he remarks, "it is said, fails to distinguish the visions of sleep from the realities of waking life, and accordingly when he has dreamed of his dead friends he necessarily concludes that they have not wholly perished, but that their spirits continue to exist in some place and some form, though in the ordinary course of events they elude the perception of his senses. On this theory the conceptions, whether repulsive or beautiful, which savages and perhaps civilised man have formed of the state of the departed, would seem to be no more than elaborate hypotheses constructed to account for appearances in dreams." And even assuming, for the sake of argument, that this theory affords a ready explanation of the widespread belief in human immortality which elsewhere he accepts, he disputes its application to the belief current among many races in the immortality of the lower animals. For the old theory he prefers to substitute the savage conception of life as an indestructible form of energy, which he compares with the modern scientific doctrine of the conservation of force.

In recent discussions the question of method holds a leading place. In a criticism of some modern works on the origin of belief and the growth and development of the moral ideas, in The Birth of Humility, Mr. Marett urges (p. 6) that "no isolated fragment of custom or belief can be worth much for the purposes of Comparative Science. In order to be understood, it must first be viewed in the light of the whole culture, the whole corporate soul-life, of the particular ethnic group concerned. Hence the new way is to emphasize concrete differences, whereas the old way was to amass resemblances heedlessly