the people. These simple plots have a very wide distribution, and are worked up with great variety of detail. The selection of details may be due to some process of wish formation, or to the simple exaggeration of daily experience, or to a tendency to materialise all objects which appear fearsome. The precise turn given to the detail in a particular region is, in general, due to social institutions or beliefs current in that region. Both myths and folk tales may be observed in process of formation in this area, and they are each determined by a play of imagination upon the events of daily life, in so far as their general plot is concerned. For the explanation of both plot and detail, a knowledge of the social structure, traditions and history of the community concerned is required.
Hocart, in a most interesting article entitled The Common Sense of Myth,[1] argues to the same effect. He gives a number of illustrations to show how myth may often originate from actual social fact or custom, and puts his general conclusion with the utmost clearness: "So long," he says, "as the mythologist is content with taking myths in isolation and constructing a rationalised version out of his own head he can never get any further. There are so many possible ways of rationalising a myth according to the temperament, bias, nationality and age of the mythologist;[2] but each of these remains a bare possibility with no power to convince anyone. The truth may be very different from what we all expected, and that is only to be attained by a systematic study of the whole culture to which the myth belongs, together with neighbouring cultures. Then the facts will force the conclusion on us, and not we on the facts."
- ↑ American Anthropologist, N.S. 18, 1916, pp. 307-18.
- ↑ Symbolism is really only one form of rationalisation—see e.g. my article in Folk-lore, March, 1920, pp. 30-37—and Hocart's remark about rationalisation is, as I have already urged, peculiarly applicable to symbolic interpretation.
