Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/317

Rh same kind as that employed by our Society in analysing folk-tales. It is more abstract. My object has been rather to lay bare the mental process by stripping off every particle of individuality till nothing is left but a formless, though still a differentiated residuum. Reduced to this state, we can view in a small compass the different threads of thought, twenty-seven in number, on which smaller groups of origins are strung. When arranged in systematic order, they form a series, progressing from those that consist of one central thought, of one single germ, to others that exhibit various degrees or modes of development by means of an accompanying narrative. And in order to show the universality of these threads of thought or categories, as we may now call them, they have been illustrated, whenever I could do so, by examples drawn from the origin-stories and myths of other peoples in different parts of the world. Though it must not for a moment be supposed that all known origins can be compressed into twenty-seven categories. That is very far from being the case.

Each category, expressed in about a couple of lines, consists generally of two parts: (i) The central thought, such as S. (any subject), originates from O. (an object); and (2) the drift of the narrative in its bearing upon S. or O. With one exception, the case in which a given subject is created by God, the central thought possesses two terms. First, the subject, such as wolf, snake, oak; secondly, the parents from which it is born, or the inanimate object from which it originates. Further, there must be mentioned one very important factor which is inherent in the nature of the subject and object, and that is their likeness or unlikeness to each other. It is evident that, when the idea of seeking for the origin of anything entered the mind, that the imagination, starting from a given subject, had to find either suitable parents, or an object of some kind from which to derive it. The mind had to pass in rapid review the stores laid up in the memory, and to make choice