Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/408

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The part of L. Scherman in this report consists in a notice of the contributions made during the year 1890 (pp. 1-21), and is largely occupied with discussions concerning the scope and use of the words "folk-lore" and "volkskunde," which have now terminated in favor of a wide definition of such terms. The remainder of the report has been prepared by F. S. Krauss, who has undertaken not so much to give an account of the important publications of the period as to indicate the ideas which have animated the researches of this time. As the fundamental principle of modern scientific theory, he recommends the doctrine of Bastian, as summed up by Steinmeitz, that humanity is to be considered as a single species unequally developed and living under different environments. He refuses to admit the existence of any distinction between folk and nation, as if, in treating the ethnographic material, modern institutions ought to be left out of view; as to likening folk-lore to a branch of ethnography, he remarks that it ought rather to be called a jungle. He agrees with A. H. Post that, according to a new discovery of the last few years, like morals and ideas arise independently under like conditions, and that the individuality of ethnic groups is annihilated, mankind moving in lines of development little affected by historical occurrences, while all psychic activities fall into the frame of natural laws; the national genius, formerly held regulative for each separate people, disappears together with those formerly supposed to regulate the courses of the stars. Folk-lore, therefore, is a detailed account of the life of one people, as included in the frame supplied by the life of all peoples.

Krauss does not attach much value to question-books as a means of obtaining a record of folk-lore; in his experience, the invention of new customs, as well as explanations of custom, constitutes an amusement for the imaginative narrator. On distinctions once made between races in a state of nature and civilized he lays small stress; the former are no more "primitive," or immediately related to nature, than the latter, and the latter only in a degree less "fetishistic" than the former. Of the accuracy of folk-memory he has a poor opinion, opining that its retentiveness is limited to a few centuries. As to the theory of folk-tales, he assents to the opinion according to which such are viewed as a complex of tale-elements arranged by one narrator and propagated in innumerable variants from one centre; but he holds that a free exchange takes place between cultured and uncultured races.

The last forty pages are devoted to a mention of publications sent for review to the Jahresbericht, under the following heads: Introductions to folk-lore, mythology, funeral customs, theory of numbers, popular medicine, folk-songs, games of children, riddles, proverbs, general and special monographs, societies and journals of folk-lore. In the course of his work, the author makes frequent and kindly mention of the Journal of American Folk-Lore.