Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/10

2 the criterion of right "is the sympathetic feeling of an impartial and well-informed spectator," but it is not easy to select such a spectator from among a crowd of savages. Writers on ethics have exhausted speculation in their efforts to determine the standard of moral action. If such a standard is hard to find among civilized men, it is much harder to find among the uncivilized. The days of the truly unsophisticated savage have passed, and only a meagre record of them remains. It is not easy now to decide how much the ethical notions of a barbarous people may be the result of civilized teaching, example, or law.

Perhaps the safest way to discover the ethical notions of savages is by the study of their myths and traditions; but even here we must proceed with caution, and employ the critical methods of modern science. Among a civilized people, history and tradition teach us only the ethics of the past; this may be true also of the traditions of savages, but in a lesser degree. With us, tradition has been unalterably fixed in type; among savages, it still lives on the tongues of unlettered men; it is yet in a plastic condition. From my own experience in collecting tales among savages, I am aware that even in stories with well-established forms a good deal depends on the disposition and intelligence of the narrator. He embellishes according to his own ideas. He has the power to add or subtract much. Then we know that oral traditions have their growths. If one Indian tells me that the sun-god rides on a horse through the heavens, and another tells me he walks on the holy trail of a rainbow, I have no hesitancy in deciding which is the ancient tale; but when one seems to condemn a certain course of action and another to approve it, I cannot reach a decision so readily. The age and character of the informant and many other things must be considered.

It is nothing to us that a horrid crime (as we regard it) is described in a tale, for the story-tellers of all ages and of all races have delighted to thrill their hearers with such tales, and, as civilization advances, this delight seems to increase rather than to diminish. But if the beneficent gods of the people are represented as approving of the act, or if the author of the myth approved of it and seemed to expect approval on the part of his auditors, we may fairly conclude the action is deemed proper, no matter how repulsive it may be to our ideas. It is fair to presume, too, that an action which meets with a reward is regarded as virtuous. If we find that not once only, but many times, a certain course of conduct is approved, we may feel still more assured that it is thought righteous.

In this short article, I must confine myself, as a rule, to drawing my illustrations from the sources with which I am most familiar. If