y scrutinised, and
preparation made for the conclusion that every genuine myth is a myth
of observation, the observation by men in a primitive state of
culture, of a fact which had struck home to their minds. The question
is, to what part of human history does the central fact appertain?
Here is undoubtedly a most difficult problem. What the student has to
do is to admit the difficulty, and to state, if necessary, that the
fact preserved by tradition is not in all cases possible to discover
with our present knowledge. This is a perfectly tenable position.
Human imagination cannot invent anything that is outside of fact. It
may, and of course too frequently does, misinterpret facts. In
attempting to explain and account for such facts with insufficient
knowledge, it gets far away from the truth, but this misinterpretation
of fact must not be confused with the fact itself. In a word, it must
be borne in mind by the student of tradition that every tradition
which has assumed the form of saga, myth, or story contains two
perfectly independent elements--the fact upon which it is founded, and
the interpretation of the fact which its founders have attempted.

There is further than this. The other branch of traditional material,
namely that relating to custom, belief, and rite, rests upon a solid
basis of historic fact; customs which are strange and irrational to
this age are not in consequence to be considered the mere worthless
following of practices which owe their origin to accident or freak;
beliefs which do not belong to the established religion are not in
consequence to be considered as mere superstition; rites which were
not established by authority are not in consequence to be classed as
mere specimens of popular ignorance. But the difficulties in the way
of getting all this accepted by the historian are many, and, again,
not a few of them are the creation of the folklorist himself. Not only
has he neglected to classify and arrange the scattered items of
custom, belief, and rite, and to ascertain the degree of association
which the scattered items have with each other, but he has set about
the far more difficult and complex task of comparative study without
having previously prepared his material.

The historian and the folklorist are thus brought face to face with
what is expected from both, in order that each may work alongside of
the other, using each other's materials and conclusions at the right
moment and in the