262-275), might carry off an Egyptian captive with his tales, or the Greek himself might be taken and sold, with his tales, into Libya. Tales might come and go, north and south, with the amber on the Sacred Way. How tales known in the old world could be carried to the Huarochiris, subjects of the Incas, or to Samoa, and there get incrusted in the sacred national myths; entirely puzzles me, nor can I very readily see how a whole mass of our tales came to be diffused among Zulus and Bushmen, Red Indians and Eskimo. But "anything might happen in the great backward of time", as Aristotle says. I do not deny that such diffusion and transmission is possible.
On the other hand, I have frequently said that, given a similar state of taste and fancy, similar beliefs, similar circumstances, a similar tale might conceivably be independently evolved in regions remote from each other. We know that similar patterns, similar art (compare Aztec and Mycenæan pottery in the British Museum), have thus been independently evolved; so have similar cosmic myths, similar fables, similar riddles, similar proverbs, similar customs and institutions. Mr. Fraser's learned and copious work, The Golden Bough, is full of examples. All history is full of examples, and the Spanish missionaries met Baptism, Confession, and a ghastly Communion in Mexico. Is it impossible, then, that, out of similar materials, similar märchen might be independently evolved?
Here M. Cosquin says that, in certain cases at least, it is impossible. He may be right, I am not indissolubly wedded to the theory of possible independent evolution of stories akin let us say, to Cupid and Psyche. As to that tale, and most others, M. Cosquin claims for it an Indian origin. Now, I will grant, for the sake of argument, that this, that, and the other tale may have an original home, was invented once for all, and was diffused into all the regions where it is found. But why is India to be that original home? Here I cannot agree with M. Cosquin. I have shown, in minute detail, that no single incident, or custom, or idea, in Cupid and Psyche, is peculiar to India. All are either universally human, or incidental to a certain ancient state of society, which
