Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/56

 24 Presidential Address.

Culture-contact is a notion that has loni^ been famihar to this Society. I find the actual term in use in early days,^'' while the principle that it stands for was constantly to the front ; as, notably, during the protracted battle over folk- tales between the " diffusionists " and the " casualists," namely, the parties that severally favoured " dissemination from a common centre " and " parallel invention." Looking back on this ancient controversy, one is able to perceive that the two schools were at loggerheads because therr_ prevailing^ interests, rather than their theories of method,, were diverse. The one group fixed their attention^anjlie particular history of some tale as a whole. Th e oth er group, on the contrary, were for the most part bent_on_ extracting from it some particular feature, say, an odd piece of magic, or a reminiscence of animism, so that they might forthwith explain such an isolated element as the outcome of some world-wide habit of mind. At all events, it would be quite unfair, as was done then and is some- times done now, to name the doctrine of independent origins the "anthropological" view, as if to impl}' that anthropology tends to reject the principle of diffusion by culture-contact altogether. It has been shown already how Tylor strove to render equal justice to the evolutJonary and the historical points of view. And, if Tylor was not a typical anthropologist, who is ?

Now Gomme in so many words declares that his own point of view — he even terms it a " bias " — is anthropo- logical.^'' He belongs to the " anthropological " school as contrasted with the " literary " in regard to the study of folk-tales. In other words, his interest lies, not in the particular history of the tale as such, but in the general history of culture as explained by the analysis of the tale in question. Nor will he join with those who wiTTIiave

^'See J. Jacobs in Iiiteruat. Folk-Lore Congress {\^<^\), 83: cf. Folk-Lore, iv. (1893), 236.

'^^ Folk-Loj-e, iii. (1S92), 4 ; compare ib. ii. (1S91), 2 ; iv. (1893), iS.