Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/56

 32 In endeavouring to answer this question, the two classes into which I divide folklore must in my judgment be considered separately. I have styled them philosophical and artistic. The terms will serve provided it be clearly understood that folk philosophy is definitely and rigidly practical. Man in the folklore stage philosophises with a view to action; it is in the last degree essential that his philosophy should be sound, as it is to result in action the effects of which involve life or death, dearth or plenty, weal or woe for him. Philosophical speculation in the air, without any definite relation to or bearing upon the practical conduct of life, is one of those benefits of progress which man in the folklore stage not only contrives to do without, but the excellence of which he fails to grasp.

This practical philosophy is necessarily largely conditioned by the sociological surroundings of the community. The agriculturist, the hunter, the warrior have not precisely the same object in view; and as their philosophy is designed to result in action which shall attain the object, it must necessarily differ to some extent. But the variation need not be large; the details of the philosophy may, nay must, vary slightly, but the guiding principles remain the same. Increase of the medium of sustenance, whether it be mainly vegetable or mainly animal, increase in the capacity for offence and defence alike of the community and of the individual against other men, against other animals, against the invisible forces which ever, as storm and drought and pestilence, war against mankind, increase in the capacity for augmenting individual or communal sway over the more primitive human passions, lust and hate and greed—such are the objects aimed at alike by the peasant, the hunter, or the warrior. His philosophy is to help him to achieve them.

It follows, I think, that as regards this, the practical side of the primitive philosophy we style folklore when it confronts our advanced thought, the discrimination of racial