Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/36

 24 Presidential Address.

it does not arise to give a reason : it is representative, another form of utterance, of expression. When the emotion that started the ritual has died down and the ritual though hallowed by tradition seems unmeaning, a reason is sought in the myth and it is regarded as aetiological." ®

In the second place, Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, in a paper recently read before this Society,^ suggests that the study of myths possesses a distinct sociological value. " When a social condition is mentioned incidentally or is revealed by the general colouring of a myth, we can be confident that it is not a pure product of imagination, but has a definite historical value. Social incidents," still less the general colouring of a myth, could never appear unless they had their roots in the social condition either of the people who narrate the myth or of those from whom the myth has been derived." This is old, well-established doctrine. Myth, like belief, springs from the physical and mental environ- ment. The novelty of Dr Rivers' exposition lies in the proof that, in Australia, when the myth deals with the origin of social institutions, it is usually the totemic system which forms the special topic of the narrative, not the dual s}-stem and matrimonial classes, which seem to form the essential basis of the tribal organisation. Hence arises the corollary, that, while man lives undisturbed, his own exist- ence and that of the earth on which he lives form such a part of his established order that his imagination is un- touched. But, when a strange race enters the area which he has hitherto without question occupied, mystery and wonder will be aroused, or, if the strangers possess a culture of which creation myths form a part, these will be trans- ferred and become part of the permanent heritage of the older people. From this it follows that the stratification of myth becomes a test of the type of the social complex resulting from the clash of cultures arising out of migra- tions, and therefore possesses a distinct sociological value.


 * Themis, p. i6. ^ Folk- Lore, vol. xxiii., pp. 311-2.