Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/37

 Prcsidciiiia/ Addirss. 25

This involves the acceptance of the hypothesis of the origin of culture advocated by Dr Graebner and his fol- lowers. It may be true that his attempt to show the general prevalence of totemism as an universal stage in social de- velopment has failed to win general assent, but there is a tendency to accept his theory of the origin of culture as the result of transmission, not of evolution, — in other words, lateral, not vertical. It must, however, be remembered that this new school has in view more the social than the reli- gious side of culture, with which we are more immediately concerned. Thus the Vv'ithers of the old-fashioned school of folklorists are, in a great measure, unwrung, and, for the present, we may possess our souls in patience until the pen- dulum moves again and the old hypothesis of evolution regains its authority.

Transmission certainly plays an important part in the growth of culture, social organisation, myth, and popular belief. The American ethnologists seem to be agreed that their continent was peopled by immigrants from Asia, who, when their culture was sufficiently advanced to acquire the use of canoes, crossed Behring Straits, or, which is more probable, that they passed during an age of glaciation. In South America, at least, these migrations seem to have occurred at such a remote period that the existing civilisa- tion has been entirely controlled by the Diilicn. On the other hand, the movement of the Polynesians within the Pacific area was comparatively modern. These conclusions are supported by the fact that the myths of north-eastern Asia and those of north-western America form practically a single group, the members of which are allied not by form alone, but by the actual content of the myths themselves.^'*'

Coming nearer home, Mr. G. Coffey has recently proved

^'^ T/ie American Aiithropolo^^isl, vol. xiv. (1912), pp. 1-59; T. A. Joyce, South American ArcJucology, pp. 4 et seq. ; A. Hrdlicka, Remains in Eastern Asia of the Race that Feopled America (Smithsoniajt Miscellaneotis Collectiott)^ vol. Ix., No. 15 (1912).