Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/62

 38 matter, because the three sets of beliefs and practices were substantially identical. Who can say that this or that drop of the water flowing under London Bridge comes from Thames-head or from any one of Thames' affluents?

But man does not live by bread alone. He has a fancy to be fed as well as a body, imagination to be gratified as well as passion, a foe to be combated as deadly as fellow-man or the wild-beast—boredom. Hence, everywhere, a form of artistry in words and ideas that only awaits the discovery of the written sign to become literature. And as communities outgrow in part the beliefs and practices that once directed and dominated their every act, so they outgrow in part the fancies that amused or thrilled them. There is, however, this difference: the philosophy of early man, logical and coherent as it is, once its starting point is granted, is to us not only foolish but frequently atrocious. With his artistry, on the other hand, we remain perennially in touch through our children, and it still constitutes the most profound and permanent source of literary achievement. The legends that humanity tells in its childhood not only survive, but are a living inspiration, whilst the beliefs dwindle down to mere museum-specimens.

It is for many reasons likely that the artistic products of the folk-fancy should betray racial influence more readily than the products, designed for severely practical purposes, of folk-speculation. Differ as unwritten, collective, traditional folk-literature does from the individual conscious literature of advanced communities, yet both are children of man's imagination, both share certain essential characteristics. A community will accept the outcome of a train of speculative reasoning if it thinks it has a practical interest in so doing, although the reasoning be alien to its average feeling, and never wholly taken to its heart; but literature, especially in the traditional stage, must make as wide and as sympathetic an appeal as possible if it is to subsist and