Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/123

Rh stories have issued from India will prove—nor even raise a presumption—that a single story outside that number is due to the same origin. M. Cosquin divides his arguments into arguments extrinsic, or historical, and arguments intrinsic, or those which deal with certain traits of the stories. These traits reflect the ideas and practices of India; and M. Cosquin values the intrinsic arguments so highly, that he contends that the true argument against the Indian origin of folk-tales would be to show that they are in contradiction with the ideas prevalent in India; but this proof, he declares triumphantly, will never be forthcoming. That this proof will never be forthcoming may safely be said; but M. Cosquin's triumph will be premature if it turn out that the ideas and practices reflected in the tales are not peculiar to India, but common to mankind. It will then be necessary for him to go on a fresh errand, for the purpose of tracing these ideas and practices back to their cradle in India. This is a contingency the distinguished author of the Contes populaires de la Lorraine does not appear to have contemplated: but nothing less than this, it need hardly be said, is the theory of the anthropological, or, if M. Cosquin prefers, the psychological, school. To set aside the intrinsic arguments thus, throws the burden of proof upon the extrinsic, or historical, arguments. The intrinsic arguments are, indeed, an excursus into the region M. Cosquin assigns especially to Mr. Lang, and to recall him to the historical arguments is to restore him to his own province. Here, however, he is deprived of the presumption arising from the intrinsic arguments, and the history of each particular tale has no avail beyond it.

M. Ploix's little book is an expansion of a paper also read at the Congress of Paris. To speak frankly, it is a disappointing work. It may be perfectly true, as M. Ploix declares, that the foundation of the narrative in our old folk-tales is the description of a natural phenomenon, namely, the break of day after its imprisonment in the