Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/64

 32 Presidential Address.

the other hand, they affect, and are affected by, the socio- logical and psychological conditions ; so that, for instance, religion will retain otherwise useless appliances for cere- monial purposes, or, conversely, as Dr. Rivers has so brilliantly suggested, useful arts will be discarded because the accompanying ceremonies are somehow lost.'^^

Thirdly, the social organization of the interacting parties involves a most important class of conditions. Whether the immigrants are i&w or many, whether they are organized for war or come as peaceful traders or settlers, whether they have chiefs and a social system that will bear trans- planting, whether they bring women with tliem, and these women of their own race and culture — all these, and many more, are matters that must largely determine the whole conception of the mixing process ; while the social arrange- ments of the indigenous population form a no less im- portant element in the problem. Kinship and marriage, government and law, and, hardly less directly, the organiza- tion of the economic and of the religious life, are dependent on these facts in such a degree that to consider them abstractly as functions of the social order is quite allowable on the part of a trained thinker ; for he will know that the value of a given abstraction is in inverse ratio to the importance of what is for the moment put out of sight.

Fourthl)', there are psychological conditions that can and must be considered apart in estimating what the combining units severally contribute to the blend. Thus, whether the immigrants have a peaceful or warlike disposition, and whether the local population receive them in the one spirit or the other, is not wholly a matter of numbers and organization, however much the pure sociologist might wish to simplify the problem by supposing so. Again, the facts relating to language, and to oral tradition, arc most naturally dealt with under this head. But I need

•'•'Compare W. H. R. Rivers, "The Disappearance of Useful Arts," in Fcstskrijt ijlkgiiad E. //b/c'r/z/rt;-!-/- (Ilelsingfors, 1912), 109 f.