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288 involving neither superiority nor inferiority take a prominent part, and men and animals act readily in concert in response to common needs. In fact, there is clear and abundant evidence that the social tendencies of impressionability, of assertion, and of submission find constant expression in the folk tale, and also that the first of these is not capable of reduction without remainder to the second and third.

These fundamental impulses of impressionability, superiority and inferiority, coming definitely and strongly into play in a social environment, exercise a general determination of the matter of the popular story. The tale must deal in the main with social relationships which are at first of a relatively simple kind. But this consideration is clearly of so general a character that it applies in some measure to almost all tales, and not exclusively to the early stories which are now under discussion.

The next consideration concerns the formal rather than the material character of the tales. The folk story is a popular expression, not only in that it is preoccupied with social relationships, but in that it is actually narrated to a community of people. This at once introduces new factors and tendencies to bear a part in shaping its form of presentation. So far as I know a complete treatment of these new conditions has never yet been attempted, and at this stage of an already long paper I cannot essay the task. But I would point out that two impulses which are immediately brought into operation are the tendency to produce laughter, and the tendency to create astonishment and wonder, or to secure dramatic effects. Both of these tendencies are influential in fashioning the fantastic and often times comic character of the stories, and both