Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/115

 Rh also, it cannot be confounded with any of these sciences, nor even form a mere chapter of any one of them. The addition of Mr. Sidney Hartland, which reduces folk-lore to that part of anthropology which treats of the psychological phenomena of uncultured man, seems to me to be correct, but insufficient; correct, because it excludes from the dominion of folk-lore the physiological phenomena of man, which at present can only be studied by means of physiology, and because it substitutes for the words primitive man uncivilized man; insufficient, because there is also matter for folk-lore even in civilized man, and because it does not indicate with sufficient clearness the character of the aggregated, or of aggregation, which the people presents, and precisely by means of which, as we have said, the study of it falls within the province of sociology.

But what is the proper sphere of folk-lore? What are the limits which distinguish it and separate it from the other analogous sciences?

Folk-lore, in my opinion, from one point of view, embraces the whole of life and all the sciences, and is, in its turn, a phase or aspect of them all. To explain myself: Every branch of knowledge which we call scientific has been folk-loric in its origin, and perhaps continues to be so in a very small degree. Since, in fine, human reason and intellect are the media of knowledge, and, from the fact that all men are endowed with intellect and reason, the people, which is an aggregation of men, has some knowledge, more or less imperfect, of all things. A thousand times it has been repeated that alchemy preceded chemistry; astrology, astronomy; counting on the fingers, mathematics; and in the arts, the rude instrument which imitates the monotonous dripping of water as it falls on the ground preceded the infinite and varied tones of the violin; the shapeless sketches, drawn by a pointed instrument on rocks or on the bark of trees, preluded the works of the great masters of sculpture; the staining in monochrome or with a single colour, the pictured marvels which we now admire. Not one of the scientific or artistic wonders of which humanity is so proud has sprung, like light in the Bible record, spontaneously and suddenly from the human intellect.

But if folk-lore, in its extension, embraces the matter of all the sciences by the quality and the degree of knowledge which it