Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/25

 Rh objection, I should suspect him to be one of the "Little-Englanders" of folklore,—one of those who believe not only that folklore, like charity, should begin at home, (a doctrine with which I cordially agree), but that it should stay at home for good and all. Dr. Frazer's, I contend, is the better way. He sees that, if folklore is to take rank as science, it must push beyond mere description in the direction of explanation; and that the explanation of the beliefs and practices of our own peasants is not to be fully achieved, unless we also take due cognizance of the kindred beliefs and practices of ruder and remoter types of mankind. Hence, taking as his base of operations that mass of European folk-customs into which the genius of Mannhardt had already read no inconsiderable measure of meaning by sheer intensive study of their specific features, Dr. Frazer boldly undertakes all manner of excursions into the outer wilderness of savagery; in the hope that, by such an extensive method, he will be able finally to verify principles which must otherwise remain purely hypothetical, since not yet proved to be conformable with the universal nature of man.

Now. in regard to various matters of detail, I may have had occasion in the past to adopt a somewhat critical attitude towards Dr. Frazer's theories; but to-night, when it is his general method that calls for review, I can wholeheartedly declare that I come, not to bury Caesar, but to praise him. All honour be to Dr. Frazer for never losing sight of the truth that the ultimate aim of folklore and of its ally, social anthropology, is to illustrate and explain the workings of the human soul. It is to Psychology, the rightful queen of the historical methods, that he proffers an unswerving fealty. That the workings of the human soul are influenced by external conditions, and notably by that particular group of external conditions constituting what is known as social tradition or culture, he would of course be perfectly ready to allow. Were it not so, indeed, it would