Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/31

 Presidential Address. 19

or may not be speculatively agreeable ; but in any case it does not come within the range of practical policy for those who work seriously at the subject.

Now downright materialism in these days is somewhat out of fashion, and with it for the nonce has been relegated to the lumber room that plain-sailing variety of determinism which philosophers denominate " hard." But there exists a " soft " determinism as well, which, instead of professing to reduce the spiritual to the material, insists that unchanging rigidity of form is common to them both ; the difference be- tween physical change and purposive development being treated as negligible, since movement of either kind is equally incompatible with the notion of an absolute system. Now as part of an ultimate philosophy this doctrine may appeal to some. I am not here to-night to discuss meta- physics ; and, if anyone find peace in the contemplation of a fossil universe, I shall not go out of my way to pronounce him moon-struck. All I insist on here is that at the level of science we keep metaphysical postulates at arm's length, and deal with facts according to the appear- ances which they present after their distinguishable kinds. And, if this working principle be granted, I go on to maintain that the brute earth and the live purposive man are such distinguishable kinds, of which the latter offers the appearance of not merely changing but developing, not merely being moulded from without but growing from within in response to an immanent power of selfhood and will.

What, then, of sociology, considered in its bearing on folklore .^ Has it a right to limit itself to a purely exterior view of human life } I answer that it has a perfect right so to do. But has it likewise a right to impose this same limited outlook on folklore, on the study of survivals ; so as, at this or any other stage of the development of this branch of science, to leave psychology out in the cold .-' I answer with no less assurance that it has no such right. Let me develop these points very shortly.