Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/340

32 common feature of similar organisations in widely separated regions raises in a definite form the question whether these organisations are historically connected with one another. If further knowledge should lead us to this conclusion we shall be furnished with an opening of the most promising kind for the study of the modifications which social institutions undergo as they pass from place to place over the earth's surface. If there is any historical connection between the rites of rebirth in India and the ceremonial of the graded fraternities of Melanesia, and that there is such a connection seems to me at least an hypothesis worthy of serious consideration, we shall have a striking case of the process whereby in the course of their diffusion religious rites are changed and modified. I cannot now consider such evidence as we possess for the historical connection between the rites of the two regions or for the various ways in which they may be related. I cannot consider, for instance, whether the rebirth of the Indian rites of initiation and the ceremonial death of the Melanesian secret ritual are two different products of some original rite, in which death and rebirth were equally important and were equally symbolised in ceremonial. I must be content to point out that the psychological interest upon which I have chiefly dwelt in this address is always intertwined with the historical to give to every belief and custom of Man a meaning of the most important kind.

The collector of folk-lore, whether of our own or any other country, never knows when he may strike some belief or custom hidden away in the recesses of the folk-mind which may take an important place in building up the chain of evidence whereby we may be enabled to understand the development of human thought and custom. Whether it be our aim to understand the mysteries of childhood, the ravages which disease makes in the human mind, or the phantasies of that second life we live in