epics is by literary artists. Therefore, one and the same tale may be the source of Perrault's Sleeping Beauty, also of a Greek myth, and also of an old tale of illiterate peasantry. This was the opinion held by Lang, who said, "For the roots of stories, we must look, not in the clouds but upon the earth, not in the various aspects of nature but in the daily occurrences and surroundings, in the current opinions and ideas of savage life."
In the savage Märchen of to-day, the ideas and incidents are the inevitable result of the mental habits and beliefs of savages. We gain an idea of the savage mind through Leviticus, in the Bible, through Herodotus, Greek and Roman geographers, Aristotle, Plutarch, Pliny, etc., through voyagers, missionaries, and travelers, and through present savage peoples. Savage existence is based on two great institutions:—
(a) The division of society into clans.—Marriage laws depend on the conception that these clans descend from certain plants, animals, or inorganic objects. There was the belief in human descent from animals and kinship and personal intercourse with them.
(b) Belief in magic and medicine-men, which resulted in powers of metamorphosis, the effect of incantation, and communion with the dead.—To the savage all nature was animated, all things were persons. The leading ideas of savage peoples have already been referred to in the list of motifs which appear in the dif-
