ustom or belief of the peasantry
of the Western world of civilisation must not be taken into the
domains of savagery or barbarism for an explanation without any
thought as to what this action really signifies to the history of the
custom or belief in question. No doubt the explanation thus afforded
is correct in most cases, and perhaps it was necessary to begin with
the comparative method in order to understand the importance and scope
of the study of apparently worthless material. A new stage in
comparative folklore must now be entered upon. It must be understood
what the effective comparison of a traditional peasant custom or
belief with a savage custom or belief really amounts to. The process
includes the comparison of an isolated custom or belief belonging,
perhaps secretly, to a particular place, a particular class of
persons, or perhaps a particular family or person, with a custom or
belief which is part of a whole system belonging to a savage race or
tribe; of a custom or belief whose only sanction is tradition, the
conservative instinct to do what has been done by one's ancestors,
with a custom or belief whose sanction is the professed and
established polity or religion of a people; of a custom or belief
which is embedded in a civilisation, of which it is not a part and to
which it is antagonistic, with a custom or belief which helps to make
up the civilisation of which it is part. In carrying out such a
comparison, therefore, a very long journey back into the past of the
civilised race has been performed. For unless it be admitted that
civilised people consciously borrow from savages and barbaric peoples
or constantly revert to a savage original type of mental and social
condition, the effect of such a comparison is to take back the custom
or belief of the modern peasant to a date when a people of savage or
barbaric culture occupied the country now occupied by their
descendants, the peasants in question, and to equate the custom or
belief of this ancient savage or barbaric culture with the custom or
belief of modern savage or barbaric culture. The line of comparison is
not therefore simply drawn level from civilisation to savagery; but it
consists, first, of two vertical lines from civilisation and savagery
respectively, drawn to a height scaled to represent the antiquity of
savage culture in modern Europe, and then the level horizontal line
drawn to join the two vertical lines. Thus the line of comparison is