Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/323

Rh The first point to make is that it is not enough that the picturesque customs and the antiquated beliefs which still linger among our own people are interesting for their own sake. At one time it was probably sufficient that they were regarded as curiosities, and collected just as people collect postage-stamps or snuff-boxes. But the time has gone by when we can expect the younger generation to collect folk-lore on account of its quaintness or its picturesqueness. It is necessary to provide a more definite motive and to show how it may contribute to our better understanding of man and his culture and to the solution of problems with which the student of human society is now confronted.

These problems are very diversified, but two important groups can be clearly distinguished, both having in common the fact that their solution seems most likely to be attained by the comparative study of belief and custom. The main interest of one of the two groups is historical. The problems of this group are attacked in the hope that through comparative study we may gain material by means of which to construct a history of human progress; not a history dealing merely with the conflicts of civilised peoples, with the rivalries of kings and the battles of nations, but a history of the movements of thought; of the long struggle of Man with his environment; and of the countless institutions, beliefs and customs which have been the outcome of this struggle—history of the kind recently attempted by H. G. Wells with a degree of success which only his genius and insight could have made possible.

The other main group of problems which should provide an adequate motive for the collection of folk-lore gains its interest from the fact that the comparative study of human custom and belief provides material for the psychologist. In the last resort every custom and institution of human society is the outcome of mental activity. The history of institutions which I have just put forward as providing a