Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/26

 § 2.

There may perhaps be some few who, quite apart from the continuity of the Hellenic race, a question with which I must deal later, would be inclined to pronounce the quest of ancient religion in modern folklore mere lost labour. The lapse, they may think, of all the centuries which separate the present day from the age of Hellenic greatness would in itself disfigure or altogether efface any tradition of genuine value. Such a view, however, is opposed to all the lessons that have of late years been gained from a more systematic study of the folklore of all parts of the world. Certain principles of magic and certain tendencies of superstition seem to obtain, in curiously similar form, among peoples far removed both in racial type and in geographical position. It is sometimes urged by way of explanation that the resources of the primitive mind are necessarily so limited, that many coincidences in belief and custom are only to be expected, and that therefore the similarity of form presented by some superstitions of widely separated peoples is no argument in favour of their common origin. But, for my part, when I consider such a belief as that in the Evil Eye, which possesses, I believe, an almost world-wide notoriety, I find it more reasonable to suppose that it was a tenet in the creed of some single primitive people, of whom many present races of the world are offshoots, and from whom they have inherited the superstition, than that scores or hundreds of peoples, who had long since diverged in racial type and dwelling and language, should subsequently have hit upon one uniform belief. Indeed it may be that in the future the study of folklore will become a science of no less value than the study of language, and that by a comparison of the superstitions still held by various sections of the human race it will be possible to adumbrate the beliefs of their remotest common ancestors as clearly as, by a comparison of their various speeches, the outlines of a common ancestral language have been, and are being, traced. The data of folklore are in the nature of things more difficult to collect, more comprehensive in scope, and more liable to misinterpretation, than the data of linguistic study; but none the less, when once there are labourers enough in the field, it is not beyond