Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/84

76 now defined, and on which I have been working for many years past. Mr. Sidney Hartland further explains his previously stated definition of Folk-lore as "Anthropology dealing with the psychological phenomena of uncivilized man." And Señor Machado y Alvarez defines it as "The Science which has for its object the study of indifferentiated or anonymous Humanity, from an epoch which may be considered as its infancy down to our own day." But while my definition of Folk-lore as knowledge of Folk-life thus agrees so far with the definitions of these writers it does not agree with Mr. Wheatley's definition (Journal, vol. ii. p. 347): "Folk-lore is the unwritten learning of the people." The people, I would submit, have no learning properly so called, nor do they learn, but imbibe their beliefs and traditions. And this distinction will be at once understood if one considers the different ways in which one of the commonalty, and a pupil of such a caste or order as that of the Brahmins, the Asclepiads or the Druids, acquired unwritten knowledge. Folk-lore, according to my definition, is the lore of the Cultured Class about the Folk. If, therefore, the term "Folk-lore" is used as synonymous with "Folk-customs" or "Folk-tales," it is misused. And it is only from this misuse that arises the anbiguity of the term remarked on by Miss Burne (Journal, vol. iii. pp. 103 and 267). As to the profound importance, for the science of Man's History, of treating the Sciences of Folk-life and of Culture-life as complementary and mutually corrective, the limits, if not the scope, of this paper forbid me to do more than affirm my conviction that it will revolutionize both our conceptions of, and mode of writing, History.

II. The Natural Classification of the Subjects of Folk-lore defined as knowledge of Folk-life must be identical with the Psychological Elements of Folk-life; and these must correspond with the most general facts of Human Consciousness—(1) An External World, (2) Other Beings, and (3) an Ancestral World—and with the most general facts