Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/377

Rh not contain the true explanation; we refuse to believe that the scarcity of soil in the island of Kambara in Fiji was due to the god throwing it down anyhow in a fit of temper, instead of spreading it carefully. Yet it would be rash to conclude that the legend was devised on purpose to explain the barrenness of Kambara; in "The Common Sense of Myth," I showed that on the contrary it is based on a fact, on the custom of carrying the sacred soil on migrations, and on the actual carriage of this soil from the mainland to Kambara, and that the story was afterwards used to explain a fact of nature, and was not invented for the purpose. Where such a procedure differs from ours is that we should never think of using a fact of human history to explain a fact of geology; but then our training has been different, and also our capacity for impersonal reasoning is much greater.

Let us return to the origin of painting. There is one detail which obviously does not correspond to fact, and is a later addition, namely the god Brahma's part in the story. This is but another example of that economy of memory which takes such a large share in modifying traditions; for there is a limit to what a man can conveniently carry in his head, but tradition is always accumulating; it is, therefore, necessary to simplify the old in order to make place for the new; names are especially hard to remember, and therefore they drop out faster than the episodes in which they figure; the tendency is, therefore, to refer all deeds of note to one or two mighty personages that stand forth among the more obscure crowd. The Hindus traced all inventions to Brahma. The Buddha attracted to himself all the fabled actions not only of men, but of animals, thanks to the doctrine of transmigration which gave him innumerable lives to fill with action. No one in Europe has succeeded in making such a corner in history; yet the Devil has appropriated a great deal in the region of the marvellous and Cromwell in sober history. I need not