Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/49

 Presidential Address. 17

tliat he concerns himself from first to hist with the develop- ment of culture. But, on this very ground, it equally deserves the name of a historical method ; his subject being the history of culture neither more wox less. It should, therefore, be clearly understood at the start that a curtail- ment, not to say a downright distortion, of our terms is necessary if we are to use "evolutionary" and "historical" to describe methods that are narrower in scope than the method of the science as a whole. In this restricted sense of the words, an evolutionary explanation is one that regards a custom as of independent origin, that is to say, as the direct outcome of the conditions operating within a given area of culture ; whereas a historical explanation is one that treats it as the result of some connexion in the way of inheritance or of intercourse between the area under investigation and the outside world.

Does Tylor, then, ignore or seek to disparage this so- called historical method .' By no means. On the contrary, he expounds its nature and possibilities at great length, showing by many well-chosen illustrations how historical connexions are to be traced in detail, as notably b\' the study of the geographical distribution of customs.^ Indeed, I am not acquainted with any more recent writer who has succeeded in stating the case for a critical use of this method with so much force and lucidity. Nay, so far is Tylor from showing undue partiality for the theorj^ of spontaneous origination, that he actually thrusts on it the burden of proof as against the mere general presumption of transmission. "Any one," he says, " who claims a parti- cular place as the source of even the smallest art, from the mere fact of finding it there, must feel that he ma\' be using his own ignorance as evidence, as though it were know- ledge. It is certainly playing against the bank for a student to set up a claim to isolation for any art or custom, not knowing what evidence there may be against him, buried

''See Researches i)ilo the Ea)-ly Hislory of iMankiiia", chaps, i. vii. .\ii. \iii. B