A permanent disadvantage of the study of folk-lore and kindred subjects
is that the man of science can hardly be in the nature of things very
frequently a man of the world. He is a student of nature; he is
scarcely ever a student of human nature. And even where this difficulty
is overcome, and he is in some sense a student of human nature, this is
only a very faint beginning of the painful progress towards being
human. For the study of primitive race and religion stands apart in
one important respect from all, or nearly all, the ordinary scientific
studies. A man can understand astronomy only by being an astronomer; he
can understand entomology only by being an entomologist (or, perhaps,
an insect); but he can understand a great deal of anthropology merely
by being a man. He is himself the animal which he studies. Hence
arises the fact which strikes the eye everywhere in the records of
ethnology and folk-lore—the fact that the same frigid and detached
spirit which leads to success in the study of astronomy or botany leads
to disaster in the study of mythology or human origins. It is necessary
to cease to be a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not
necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men. That
same suppression of sympathies, that same waving away of intuitions or
guess-work which make a man preternaturally clever in dealing with the
stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing
with the heart of man. He is making himself inhuman in order to
understand humanity. An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many
men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from
ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world. For
the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be best
learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of
man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or
the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and
taking down their answers in a notebook, although the cleverest man
may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in England; it is
in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why
men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have
discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers. The mystery in the
heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of
scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball. If a
man desires to find out the origins of religions, let him not go to the
Sandwich Islands; let him go to church. If a man wishes to know the
origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically
speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go
into society.
This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise
to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in
rude lands or ages. The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial
is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a
reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the
reason is generally a very absurd one—absurd because it originates not
in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of
the professor. The teamed man will say, for instance, “The natives of
Mumbojumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food
upon his journey to the other world. This is attested by the fact that
they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with
this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe.” To
any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It
is like saying, “The English in the twentieth century believed that a
dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always
covered his grave with lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly
and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this
action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much
disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the
funeral.” It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man
because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man
because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not
believe that they think anything of the kind. I believe they put food
or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because
it is an exceedingly natural and obvious thing to do. We do not
understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and
natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human
existence it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the
savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself.
And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we
do not understand ourselves either.
The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the
human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of
science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this
mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires
are spiritual, because they are human. Science can analyse a pork-chop,
and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein; but
science cannot analyse any man’s wish for a pork-chop, and say how much
of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a
haunting love of the beautiful. The man’s desire for the pork-chop
remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven.
All attempts, therefore, at a science of any human things, at a science
of history, a science of folk-lore, a science of sociology, are by
their nature not merely hopeless, but crazy. You can no more be certain
in economic history that a man’s desire for money was merely a desire
for money than you can be certain in hagiology that a saint’s desire
for God was merely a desire for God. And this kind of vagueness in the
primary phenomena of the study is an absolutely final blow to anything
in the nature of a science. Men can construct a science with very few
instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could
construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out
the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a
handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and
falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and
earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.
As one of the enormous follies of folk-lore, let us take the case of
the transmigration of stories, and the alleged unity of their source.
Story after story the scientific mythologists have cut out of its place
in history, and pinned side by side with similar stories in their
museum of fables. The process is industrious, it is fascinating, and
the whole of it rests on one of the plainest fallacies in the world.
That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other,
not only does not prove that it never really happened; it does not even
faintly indicate or make slightly more probable that it never happened.
That a large number of fishermen have falsely asserted that they have
caught a pike two feet long, does not in the least affect the question
of whether any one ever really did so. That numberless journalists
announce a Franco-German war merely for money is no evidence one way or
the other upon the dark question of whether such a war ever occurred.
Doubtless in a few hundred years the innumerable Franco-German wars
that did not happen will have cleared the scientific mind of any belief
in the legendary war of ’70 which did. But that will be because if
folk-lore students remain at all, their nature will be unchanged; and
their services to folk-lore will be still as they are at present,
greater than they know. For in truth these men do something far more
god-like than studying legends; they create them.
There are two kinds of stories which the scientists say cannot be true,
because everybody tells them. The first class consists of the stories
which are told everywhere, because they are somewhat odd or clever;
there is nothing in the world to prevent their having happened to
somebody as an adventure any more than there is anything to prevent
their having occurred, as they certainly did occur, to somebody as an
idea. But they are not likely to have happened to many people. The
second class of their “myths” consist of the stories that are told
everywhere for the simple reason that they happen everywhere. Of the
first class, for instance, we might take such an example as the story
of William Tell, now generally ranked among legends upon the sole
ground that it is found in the tales of other peoples. Now, it is
obvious that this was told everywhere because whether true or
fictitious it is what is called “a good story;” it is odd, exciting,
and it has a climax. But to suggest that some such eccentric incident
can never have happened in the whole history of archery, or that it did
not happen to any particular person of whom it is told, is stark
impudence. The idea of shooting at a mark attached to some valuable or
beloved person is an idea doubtless that might easily have occurred to
any inventive poet. But it is also an idea that might easily occur to
any boastful archer. It might be one of the fantastic caprices of some
story-teller. It might equally well be one of the fantastic caprices of
some tyrant. It might occur first in real life and afterwards occur in
legends. Or it might just as well occur first in legends and afterwards
occur in real life. If no apple has ever been shot off a boy’s head
from the beginning of the world, it may be done to-morrow morning, and
by somebody who has never heard of William Tell.
This type of tale, indeed, may be pretty fairly paralleled with the
ordinary anecdote terminating in a repartee or an Irish bull. Such a
retort as the famous “je ne vois pas la necessite” we have all seen
attributed to Talleyrand, to Voltaire, to Henri Quatre, to an anonymous
judge, and so on. But this variety does not in any way make it more
likely that the thing was never said at all. It is highly likely that
it was really said by somebody unknown. It is highly likely that it was
really said by Talleyrand. In any case, it is not any more difficult to
believe that the mot might have occurred to a man in conversation than
to a man writing memoirs. It might have occurred to any of the men I
have mentioned. But there is this point of distinction about it, that
it is not likely to have occurred to all of them. And this is where
the first class of so-called myth differs from the second to which I
have previously referred. For there is a second class of incident
found to be common to the stories of five or six heroes, say to Sigurd,
to Hercules, to Rustem, to the Cid, and so on. And the peculiarity of
this myth is that not only is it highly reasonable to imagine that it
really happened to one hero, but it is highly reasonable to imagine
that it really happened to all of them. Such a story, for instance, is
that of a great man having his strength swayed or thwarted by the
mysterious weakness of a woman. The anecdotal story, the story of
William Tell, is as I have said, popular, because it is peculiar. But
this kind of story, the story of Samson and Delilah of Arthur and
Guinevere, is obviously popular because it is not peculiar. It is
popular as good, quiet fiction is popular, because it tells the truth
about people. If the ruin of Samson by a woman, and the ruin of
Hercules by a woman, have a common legendary origin, it is gratifying
to know that we can also explain, as a fable, the ruin of Nelson by a
woman and the ruin of Parnell by a woman. And, indeed, I have no doubt
whatever that, some centuries hence, the students of folk-lore will
refuse altogether to believe that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert
Browning, and will prove their point up to the hilt by the
unquestionable fact that the whole fiction of the period was full of
such elopements from end to end.
Possibly the most pathetic of all the delusions of the modern students
of primitive belief is the notion they have about the thing they call
anthropomorphism. They believe that primitive men attributed phenomena
to a god in human form in order to explain them, because his mind in
its sullen limitation could not reach any further than his own clownish
existence. The thunder was called the voice of a man, the lightning
the eyes of a man, because by this explanation they were made more
reasonable and comfortable. The final cure for all this kind of
philosophy is to walk down a lane at night. Any one who does so will
discover very quickly that men pictured something semi-human at the
back of all things, not because such a thought was natural, but because
it was supernatural; not because it made things more comprehensible,
but because it made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and
mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the
conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she
has no power with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a
top-heavy monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one
leg. But so long as a tree is a tree, it does not frighten us at all.
It begins to be something alien, to be something strange, only when it
looks like ourselves. When a tree really looks like a man our knees
knock under us. And when the whole universe looks like a man we fall
on our faces.