Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/325

 Presidential Address. 17

main object of his interest and of his study. Valuable, indeed essential, as is the knowledge of the individual mind, it is clear that new factors must come into action in deter- mining collective behaviour. We cannot be content to apply the findings of the psychology of the individual when we seek out the springs of social conduct. Social psy- chology needs material derived directly from the study of social behaviour, and for this material it must look to the observer of the rites, customs and institutions which are the objects studied by the ethnologist and the folk-lorist. In my address last year I dealt with a problem in the study of which psychology can help the ethnologist. I propose to-day rather to consider how the comparative study of rite and custom can help the psychologist in the solution of certain problems which are now an especial object of his interest. The problems I shall consider centre round the subject of symbolism, and the example by which I shall illustrate how we, as folk-lorists, can contribute to their solution is the symbolism of rebirth.

Many different lines of research are now leading students towards the conviction that symbolism is, and still more has been in the past, a process of vast importance in the history of human thought. Even to-day it is difficult to over- estimate the importance of symbols in the behaviour of mankind. Especially important are they in collective behaviour, bringing into activity early phases of thought and sentiment which might seem to have passed into the background of the mental activity of the individual, at any rate of the more educated individual of the time. We have only to consider the importance among ourselves of the flag as a symbol of nationality and of the crown as a symbol of empire to see how great a hold symbolism still has upon the most advanced civilisations of the day. In many hnes of study we are coming to see that such symbols as the flag and the crown are only conspicuous instances of the activity of a process which takes, and has taken, a leading