le, when they have no
right to such a place in the history of man. It is not only
distasteful to the inquirer, but almost impossible to dislodge any
item of folklore once so placed, and thus much of the value of the
material supplied by folklore is lost or discounted.

Custom, rite, and belief treated in this fashion become veritable
monuments of history--a history too ancient to have been recorded in
script, too much an essential part of the folk-life to have been lost
to tradition. We may hope to restore therefrom the surviving mosaic of
ancient institutions, ancient law, and ancient religion, and we may
further hope, with this mosaic to work upon, to restore much of the
entire fabric which has been lying so many centuries beneath the
accumulated and accumulating mass of new developments representing the
civilisation of the Western world.

III

It is only here that we can discover the point where we may properly
commence the work of comparative folklore. An item of folklore which
stands isolated is practically of no use for scientific investigation.
It may be, as we have seen, that the myth is in its primary stage as a
sacred belief among primitive people, in its secondary or folk-tale
stage as a sacred memory of what was once believed, in its final or
legendary stage when it does duty in preserving the memory of a hero
or a place of abiding interest. It may be, as we have seen, that the
custom, rite, or belief is a mere formula without purpose or result, a
mere traditional expression of a purpose without formula or result, a
mere statement of result without formula or purpose. We must know the
exact position of each item before we begin to compare, or we may be
comparing absolutely unlike things. The exact position of each item of
folklore is not to be found from one isolated example. It has first to
be restored to its association with all the known examples of its
kind, so that the earliest and most complete form may be recorded.
That is the true position to which it has been reduced as a survival.
This restored and complete example is then in a position to be
compared either with similar survivals in other countries on the same
level of culture, or within the same ethnological or political sphere
of influence, or with living customs, rites, or beliefs of peoples of
a more backward state of culture or in a savage state of culture.
Comparison of this kind is of value. Comparison of a less technical or
comprehen