Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/125

Rh beliefs and customs in modern ages," must, à fortiori, be included. Even on his own showing, therefore, folk-lore is a portion of anthropology.

But I go further than this. I decline to be limited to survivals, or to archaic beliefs and customs. There is, of course, a sense in which every institution, every belief, and every custom now existing is a survival. The British House of Commons is a survival; yet no one contends that it comes within the domain of folk-lore. On the other hand, there are many savage beliefs and customs (which Mr. Gomme expressly, and, no doubt, rightly, calls folk-lore) which yet may not be of ancient date. At all events, we do not study them as fragments of antiquity, or as survivals, but as superstitions now living and vigorous. The problem we set ourselves is other, because wider, than a mere study of survivals. If it were only that, our interest in savage beliefs and customs would be no more than accidental; we should treat them, or such of them as suited our purpose, merely as illustrations; we should appeal to them simply to confirm our conclusions relative to the customs and beliefs found in our own and kindred lands. I cannot assent to any such limitation. Folklore, in my view, is not confined as to its main subject to our own nation, nor even to the Aryan race. It deals with human thought generally in its primitive aspects, and seeks to reveal to us the beginnings and growth of reason. Philosophers who have undertaken to investigate the constitution of the human intellect, as a foundation for their speculations on the universe, have commenced by examining their own minds, hoping to obtain thereby a clue that shall lead them by process of reasoning to unravel the mighty mysteries with which all thinking men find themselves enveloped. But the method of introspection is, like all other deductive processes, liable to error unless checked and confirmed from point to point by the converse process of induction. In our degree of civilisation the mind is acted upon by many and very complex influences; and that thought or perception, which the philosopher thinks he has discovered to be at the root of