Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/54

 18 admits that the foundation of the absurd and impossible tales current all round the globe must be sought in the beliefs of savage tribes about themselves and their surroundings, and in their magical and other superstitious practices. But it denies that the mere fact that a given story is found domesticated among any people is of itself evidence of the beliefs or practices of that people, present or past. Stories, we are told, especially some stories, must have been invented once, and once only. It would be too great a draught on our credulity to ask us to believe that a complicated plot, or a long series of incidents, or even a single incident of a very remarkable character, was invented in a dozen different places, however similar may be the working of men's minds. But it may have been handed on from man to man, from tribe to tribe, until it had made the circuit of the world. And we are bidden to note that contiguous countries have a larger number of stories in common than distant ones. Dr. Boas has drawn up quite a formidable list of tales current on the North American continent, which he declares have been disseminated from one tribe to another dwelling in adjacent regions; nor would there be any difficulty in compiling a parallel, or indeed a far longer, list, for the Eastern hemisphere. It is accordingly to the problem of dissemination, rather than to that of meaning, that our attention is called by the advocates of what I may, perhaps, venture to dub the dissemination theory. Having first tracked a story to its birthplace, it will be easy afterwards to say what it means and how it came to be told.

Now, if this contention be well founded, it is enough to take us aback. For all the labours of interpretation have so far been in vain, and the cosmos we had hoped was beginning to be evolved out of the mass of traditions which have been collected is reduced once more to chaos. Nay, we can hardly tell whether the destructive criticism on the theories of Professor Max Müller, or that older romancer Euemeros, was right after all: whether the sun myth or The Wisdom of the Ancients may not rise again from the dead, or whether Bryant and his Noachian Deluge may not come and sweep us all away. We may, perhaps, tranquilly go on sorting and pigeon-holing; but as to making the traditions we have collected instruments to guide our researches into the development of civilisation—it would seem out of the question.