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ON THE ETHNOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 627 
with upon approved and generally recognised principles ; and it is in 
respect of folklore only that no principle has been determined or even 
discussed, upon which to arrange the material placed before us. 
In the following pages I shall attempt to determine such a principle. 
For this purpose [ shall need to select some one custom or belief as an 
illustration of the method of dealing with all items of custom and belief. 
Fortunately there is ample material to select from, and I shall take the 
fire custom at Minnigaff (No. 122) for my purpose. I shall endeavour to 
show how this custom has to be treated if it is to be of value for ethno- 
graphical purposes; and I shall suggest that each single custom and 
belief must be treated in the same way and on the same lines. 
1. The Principles of Analysis and Classification. 
It is generally admitted that much of the custom and belief which is 
known under the name of folklore is ancient. How ancient, or, being 
ancient, how much it contributes to the history of ancient times, has not 
been determined. It is even questionable whether the general admission 
of the antiquity of popular custom and belief is of any value, because, 
although specialists who deal with the myths and early religions of the 
ancestors of civilised people use the evidence of folklore, the general 
historian is always loth to admit such evidence even if he is aware that it 
exists. 
The historian is not altogether to blame. He has nothing very 
definite to work upon. Even the great work of Grimm is open to the 
criticism that it does not prove the antiquity of popular custom and 
belief—it merely states the proposition, and then relies for proof upon the 
accumulation of an enormous number of examples and the almost entire 
impossibility of suggesting any other origin than that of antiquity for such 
a mass of non-Christian material. Then the great work of Grimm, 
ethnographical in its methods, has never been followed up by similar work 
for other countries. The philosophy of folklore has taken up almost all 
the time of our scholars and students, and its contribution to the anthro- 
pology of the civilised races has not been made out. 
In all scientific investigation nothing is accepted as proved except 
upon the most careful and laborious investigation. Darwin’s great work 
is the result of such an accumulation of experiments in all branches of 
natural history that no naturalist could, even if he would, afford to neglect 
such evidence. The mathematical element of proof formed so large a 
proportion of the entire case that it was impossible to upset it unless, by 
following exactly the same laborious methods, it had been found that there 
was a mathematical answer to the problem as stated by Darwin. And no 
such answer has been forthcoming. 
The exact opposite of this process has obtained among investigators 
into the origin of custom and belief. The comparative method of inquiry 
has been used to an extreme extent. The unmeaning custom or belief of 
the peasantry of the western world of civilisation has been taken into the 
domains of savagery or barbarism for an explanation without any thought 
as to what this action really signifies to the history of the custom or belief 
in question. No doubt the explanation thus afforded is correct in most 
eases ; but I question whether such an explanation will be admitted as 
an important element in the history of European peoples until it has been 
proved to be scientifically justified, For it must be obvious that the 
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