pecialised significance, even in their last stages of existence as
survivals, which is not found among the Incas, the African tribes, the
hill tribes of India, and the Chinese, whom he cites as providing the
required parallels. Parallel practices are not necessarily evidence of
parallels in culture, and it is the failure to locate properly the
several examples in relationship to each other which produces a loose
and inadequate conception of the relics of fire worship in European
countries, and the refusal to recognise its special place as the cult
of a tribal people.[160] Another example of this fundamental error
takes us in the very opposite direction to that of Dr. Frazer. Thus
Dr. Gummere, in a recent study dealing with Germanic origins,[161]
sees nothing in the fire cult of the Indo-European people but a
branch, and apparently an undeveloped branch, of general nature
worship, not specially Germanic or Indo-European, not specialised by
the tribes and clans of these people into a cult far more closely
connected with their doings and their life than mere participation in
the general primitive nature worship could have afforded.

The danger of searching for a general system of belief and worship
from the beliefs and rites of peoples not ethnically, geographically,
or politically connected is very great, and I venture to think that
even Mr. Frazer's remarkable researches into the agricultural rites of
European peoples do not take count of one important consideration. I
think his constructive hypothesis is too complex in process and too
systematic in form to have been the actual living faith of the varied
paganism of the European peoples. It would have meant as organised an
institution as the Christian Church itself, and of this there is no
evidence whatever. It would have meant an exclusive agricultural
ceremony, and of this there is strong evidence to the contrary. It
would have meant a deep system of philosophy, penetrating from the
highest to the lowest of the people, and of this there is no evidence.
The plain fact is that the historical conditions have been altogether
left out of consideration in these matters, and we consequently do not
get a complete study. We get the advocate's position. The case for the
mythological interpretation of folklore has been put with full
strength, but it is not the entire case.

V

This short survey of the relationship of tradition to history would
not answer its purpose if we di