Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/71

 Rh century, earlier than they did, it is very doubtful whether they would have found a home here. We have positive literary evidence of the transmission from one country to another of the stories embodied in Æsop's Fables and The Seven Wise Masters. But, in the absence of such direct and unmistakeable evidence, is it more reasonable to think that a story has been transmitted from abroad than that it has been evolved from within with the evolution of the culture of which, in the case supposed, it forms an intimate and indistinguishable part? Most of the stories in this category will be found to be developments of a single theme, where the incidents follow naturally in their order. If such a story can be evolved once, why may it not be independently evolved twice, thrice, fifty times? Which is more likely—that an analogous series of incidents should have been invented separately by more tribes than one, all in stages of civilisation in which the ideas expressed in the story are commonly known and accepted, or that all the tribes among which it is current, save one, should have taken it over from a foreign people? In judging of this we must set the conservative and exclusive instincts of savages over against their imitative instincts.

But there is a further consideration we must not overlook, namely, that with few exceptions all plots are nothing but changes rung upon the universalcharacteristicsof human life—birth, death, the passions, the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, master and slave, and so forth. These universal characteristics are limited in number; and though their combinations may be manifold, yet certain sequences are much more readily suggested than others. Moreover, in the same plane of civilisation the same sequences in tales are frequently worked out independently, even to minute details. We deal with traditional fiction only; and indeed the science of literary fiction has yet to be invented. When it is invented we may expect some remarkable results. It might be thought that civilised life, with its greater complexity, would offer a greater variety of plots to the story-teller than savage life can offer. Where two geniuses, however, of the highest order come to relate a story of unfounded conjugal jealousy and of wife-murder, the substance and even many of the accidents of Othello are reproduced in Kenilworth, down to the last damning proof of Amy's guilt afforded by her embroidered glove, which Varney