Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/74

 38 In pointing out to you, as I have done this morning, what I venture to think is the minor importance of the place of origin of a tradition, and some of the difficulties of testing its transmission from an alien birthplace, I have run the risk of wearying you by saying at greater length than I had intended what is perhaps not particularly new. But I hope I may be absolved from what you may deem the lesser sin of exhibiting too active a partisanship in this chair. A story is told (I offer this to you as a genuine, if modern, tradition) of a judge in the Far West, who when the plaintiff and his witnesses had given evidence, declined to hear the defendant, saying: "Stop, stop! my mind is now made up, and you will only unsettle it." This may, or may not, have happened in a court of law: in the court of opinion it happens daily. Nothing in disputed questions is commoner than to close the mind against one set of arguments; the decision then becomes charmingly easy. If I have tried to place before you some arguments on one side, I trust I have shown myself at the same time not altogether insensible to the weight of arguments on the other side. I hope I have made it clear that I do not undervalue researches which have for their object to trace the migration of traditions. Every inquiry conducted in a truly scientific spirit must advance our knowledge and sometimes in ways none the less valuable because unexpected. It is the pursuit of knowledge, the search for truth, in relation to the past history of our race which draws us together here. It is with this we are concerned, and not, I hope, with any merely dialectic victory. I for one am ready to welcome any new argument, any fresh information, be its effect what it may. Nor do I envy the man who, whatever his opinions, is unwilling to look the contrary opinions full in the face, judge them in the light of reason, and take the consequences.

Mr. A. R. Wright, of Her Majesty's Patent Office, a member of the Congress, has since courteously furnished me with the following note based on his experience in the Patent Office: "As regards the probability of the parallel invention of folk-tales, there may be found in the history of mechanical and chemical invention indications even more suggestive than the unconscious plagiarisms of literature. Unlike the author, the inventor has known that plagiarism on his part, or even the unwitting agreement of his invention with something published (not necessarily patented) in any form at an earlier