Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/80

 70 the general editor of this translation. He says in the preface, "Many are the pieces of folklore which have floated about the world for ages as stray waifs of literature, and are liable everywhere to be appropriated by any casual claimant." This, with all deference to Professor Cowell, is a rather casual remark in more than one sense of the word. Folklore cannot float in the air, it must live in men's minds, and be passed from mind to mind by oral tradition. One of the problems of folklore is to trace the origin and diffusion of these "stray waifs," and the importance of the Jātaka, for folklore consists in the help it gives towards the solution of this problem. Perhaps Professor Cowell considers that his chief business is to get the Jātaka translated, and then the folklorist can make what use of it he will. If so, he will do well to leave the comparative study of the stories alone, if his pupils are not to deal with that side of the problem of the Jātaka in an adequate way. Under any circumstances we must be grateful for the service done to folklore by presenting us with a faithful translation of the earliest collection of folk-tales.

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. London: David Nutt, 1895.

To write a popular introduction to any science is one of the greatest services that can be rendered to it, and at the same time one of the most difficult. It is one of the most difficult services, because the further one goes in scientific explorations, the longer is the way back to the starting-point, and the less easy it is to place oneself in imagination in the exact position of the man who is quite ignorant of what has been achieved, and to explain to him the method and aims of the science in such a way as to attract him to it. It is one of the greatest, because the special need of the present age is to spread exact knowledge, so as to enable the popular mind to co-ordinate the results attained by inquiries in all directions, which have led during the present century to so great and beneficent a revolution in human thought, which have freed us from so many ancient blunders, enabled us to raise the standard not merely of material comfort but also of our moral