Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/39

Rh selves, is capable of being brought about by a special personality.

The stimulus to my choice of a subject for this address came from my desire to solve a problem confronting those who believe that a preponderant part has been taken in the history of human culture by the factor of transmission. The position of those who believe that social development depends on external influence must be insecure until they have explained how the migrating peoples whom they believe to have been the carriers of custom and belief came to have so profound and far-reaching an influence on the peoples among whom they settled. The combination of conservatism and plasticity presents itself among every people of the earth, savage, barbarous and civilised, and in all cases needs explanation. But this need is especially urgent in connection with the transmission of culture, and in this address I have sought to satisfy this need by utilising some of the concepts of modern psychology.