Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/318

310 therefrom. Now, one interesting result of this analysis shows that in about eighty-five per cent, of instances the mind has consciously selected either parents or an inanimate object in which it was able to trace some similarity with the subject from which it set out. But this likeness is not necessarily external and physical : it is often quite indirect and subjective ; or, if the origin results from an action, the likeness is to be found either in the agent, or in the result of the action. The instances in which there is no apparent resemblance between subject and object, or the parents from which it is born, only amount to about ten per cent. The second part of the category, when there is one, gives the general drift of the preliminary narrative solely with regard to its direct reference to the first part, which, in fact, follows it, and forms the dénouement. It often happens these references are mere hints, but they show that the narrator was gradually working up to a finale, of which he had a clear picture in his mind. For there are origin-stories in which the previous incidents are quite irrelevant to the conclusion, and the origin appears to be merely the result of a chance thought. In so far as they have all been collected within the last hundred years, all these origin-stories are modern. But though their dress belongs to recent times, many of the ideas they embody diverge so greatly from the modern standard of physical law and of reason, that some of them may be regarded as survivals from an older stage of mental development. Though the word survival strictly connotes the notion of uninterrupted continuity between its extreme terms, it does not involve any exact notion of length. Survivals may therefore be of different lengths or ages. If a line A Z be taken to represent the earliest possible survival down to the present time, then F Z, S Z, V Z will represent shorter ones, the alphabetical distance of F, S, V from Z showing their relative distances from