Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/47

 Rh A story could wander as far as mankind wanders, even before Ouida was read from Tangiers to Tobolsk. All this, however, is likely to be discussed. Folk-lorists who think that we neglect ethnology, that we take mankind to be, essentially, too much of the same pattern everywhere, will also have their say. I do not myself believe that some one centre of ideas and myths, India or Central Asia, can be discovered, do not believe that some one gifted people carried everywhere the seeds of all knowledge, of all institutions, and even the plots of all stories. The germs have been everywhere, I fancy, and everywhere alike, the speciality of Race contributes the final form. All peoples, for example, have a myth (or memory) of a Deluge, only the Jewish race gives it the final monotheistic form in which we know it best. Many peoples, as the Chinese, have the tale of the Returned Husband and the Faithful Wife, only the Greek race gave it the final shape, in the Odyssey. Many peoples, from the Turks to the Iroquois, have the story of the Dead Wife Restored, only Greece shaped the given matter into the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. Many races have carved images, only Greece freed Art, and brought her to perfection. In perfecting, not in inventing, lies the special gift of special races, or so it seems to myself.

Let me say a final word for the attraction and charm of our study. Call it Anthropology, call it Folk-lore, the science of Man in his institutions and beliefs is full of lessons and of enjoyment. We stand on a height and look backwards on the movement of the Race, we see the wilderness whence it comes, the few straggling paths, that wander, that converge, that are lost in the oA, or in the bush, or meet to become the road, and the beaten highway, and the railway track. We see the path go by caves and rude shelters, by desolate regions and inhospitable, by kraal and village and city. Verily, we may say, "He led us by a path which we knew not." The world