Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/114

 106 life in which the beliefs, sentiments, affections— in a word, all the spiritual energies of a people, are crystallized— appears to me to be a science to which we may give the name of demo-biography, if I am right in thinking that this, with demo-psychology (which I shall explain presently) constitutes the two fundamental branches of folklore, those which Mr. E. Sidney Hartland calls Folk-thought and Folk-practice, or, still better. Folk-wont.

Folk-lore, from the second point of view, the study of popular habits and customs, has close relations with sociology, since the data which it offers to this science, also in its infancy, are of incalculable value. The people stores up in its songs and proverbs—in the first from a sentimental stand-point, in the second from an empirical and inductive point of view—the beliefs and ideas which it has concerning those social relations, which, gathered into gradually more complex groups, constitute the whole of society. The man of the people is not only a lover, a husband, a father, son, brother, friend, but he is also, after his manner, a judge, a chancellor of the exchequer, a privy councillor, a member of parliament, a professor, a workman, an apprentice, &c. &c., and in each one of these conditions, some inherent to humanity and others to the peculiar office or profession of each individual, he learns some social data, facts, or even laws of life, which he quickly stores up in those productions, and without which sociology, if it aspire to be really a science founded on facts, cannot take a step. Folk-lore has, in my opinion, most certainly a sociological aspect; it falls, within certain limits, within the sphere of sociology, as will be readily understood if we consider that the term folk signifies people — the human race: that is, man in the aggregate—the collective man, but not man as an individual. The existence of customary law, and the facts which Mr. Gomme must surely have studied for his work (whether already published or only in preparation we know not) Folk-Moots in the Open Air, will have established this truth for our illustrious colleague [published in 1880 under the title of Primitive Folkmoots'].

It follows from what has been said that though folk-lore, in my opinion, has something in common with psychological biology, something in common with sociology, and, of course, with anthropology