The future progress of the science of folklore depends, as I have already said, upon our relations with, and the help which we can receive from, those sciences with which it is most intimately associated,—psychology, sociology, and ethnography or ethno-geography.
The recent developments in experimental psychology and the improved appliances now available for field-work have done much to extend our knowledge of savage mentality. They help us, for instance, to understand the aptitudes which in different races initiate varied artistic attainments, the differences of sense acuity, powers of memory, association, faculties mental and physical,—all considerations of importance in the study of the growth and transmission of folk-beliefs.
As an example of the service which experimental psychology can confer on folklore I may refer to a paper by Dr. C. S. Myers on the uniformity of belief among savage races and the peasantry of Europe.[1] Hitherto we have been in the habit of assuming that we are entitled to compare the beliefs and customs of the European peasant with those current among savage tribes. But this, though accepted as an axiom, remained unverified, and some critics have not failed to take advantage of this flaw in our armour. Dr. Myers now provides an answer which, with certain reservations, may be accepted. As the result of experiments among the people of Torres Straits he concludes that the mental characters of the majority of the peasant class throughout Europe are essentially the same as those of savage communities, and that the differences which do exist are the result of environment and individual variability.
At the same time, we must remember, firstly, that the observations upon which these conclusions are based are limited in extent; secondly, that we must hesitate to assume more than a general uniformity in savage life as a
- ↑ Papers on Inter-Racial Problems, pp. 73-85.
