d belief has already been the subject of inquiry. It is
indeed almost safe to say that all research into custom and belief,
even that of such masters as Tylor, Lang, Hartland, Frazer, and
others, needs re-examination before we can finally and unreservedly
accept the conclusions which have been arrived at.

Such an examination must be directed towards obtaining some necessary
points in the life-history of each custom, rite, and belief. We have
to approach this part of our work guided by the fact that folklore
cannot by any possibility develop. The doctrine of evolution is so
strong upon us that we are apt to apply its leading idea insensibly to
almost every branch of human history. But folklore being what it is,
namely the survival of traditional ideas or practices among a people
whose principal members have passed beyond the stage of civilisation
which those ideas and practices once represented, it is impossible for
it to have any development. When the original ideas and practices
which it represents were current as the standard form of culture,
their future history was then to be looked for along the lines of
development. But so soon as they dropped back behind the standard of
culture, whatever the cause and whenever the event happened, then
their future history could only be traced along the lines of decay and
disintegration. We are acquainted with some of the laws which mark the
development of primitive culture, but we have paid no attention to the
influences which mark the existence of survivals in culture. For this
purpose we must first ascertain what are the component parts of each
custom or superstition; secondly, we must classify the various
elements in each example; and thirdly, we must group the various
examples into classes which associate with each other in motif and
character.

By this treble process we shall have before us examples of the changes
in folklore, and demonstrably they are changes of decay, not of
development. By grouping and arranging these changes it may be
possible to ascertain and set down the laws of change--for that there
are laws I am nearly certain. It is these laws which must be
discovered before we can go very far forward in our studies. Every
item of custom and superstition must be tested by analysis to find out
under which power it lives on in survival, and according to the result
in each case, so may we hope to find out something about the original
from which the survival has des