628 PROGRESS AND POSITION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCES. ' 



tiou. Already, for three or four years, a day has been given at our 

 meetings to folklore papers, and at the Liverpool meeting an exceeding 

 philosophic, and at the same time practical, paper was read by Mr. 

 Goinine, and is printed in extenso in the proceedings as an appendix 

 to the report of the ethnographic survey committee. The term "folk- 

 lore" itself is not without a certain charm. It is refreshing to find a 

 science described by two English syllables instead of by some compound 

 Greek word. The late Mr. W. J. Thorns had a happy inspiration when 

 he invented the name. It is just twenty years since the Folklore 

 Society was established under his direction. It has accumulated a 

 vast amount of material and published a considerable literature. It 

 is now rightly passing from the stage of collection to that of system- 

 atization, and the works of Mr. J. G. Frazer, Mr. B. Sidney Hartland, 

 and others are pointing the way toward researches of the most 

 absorbing interest and the greatest practical importance. 



A generalization for which we are fast accumulating material in folk- 

 lore is that of the tendency of mankind to develop the like fancies and 

 ideas at the like stage of intellectual infancy. This is akin to the 

 generalization that the stages of the life of an individual man present 

 a marked analogy to the corresponding stages in the history of mankind 

 at large, and to the generalization that existing savage races present 

 in their intellectual development a marked analogy to the condition of 

 the earlier races of mankind. The fancies and ideas of the child 

 resemble closely the fancies and ideas of the savage and the fancies 

 and ideas of primitive man. 



An extensive study of children's games, which had been entered into 

 and pursued by Mrs. Gomme, has been rewarded by the discovery of 

 many facts bearing upon these views. A great number of these games 

 consist of dramatic representations of marriage by capture and mar- 

 riage by purchase — the idea of exogamy is distinctly embodied in 

 them. You will see a body of children separate themselves into two 

 hostile tribes, establish a boundary line between them, demand the one 

 from the other a selected maiden, and then engage in conflict to deter- 

 mine whether the aggressors can carry her across the boundary or the 

 defenders retain her within it. 



There can be little doubt that these games go back to a high antiq- 

 uity, and there is much probability that they are founded upon customs 

 actually existing or just passing away at the time they were first 

 played. Games of this kind pass down with little change from age to 

 age. Each successive generation of childhood is short. The child who 

 this year is a novice in a game becomes next year a proficient and 

 the year after an expert, capable of teaching others, and proud of the 

 ability to do so. Even the adult recollects the games of childhood and 

 watches over the purity of the tradition. The child is ever a strong 

 conservative. 



Upon the same principle, next to children's games, children's stories 



