was more abundantly filled before the dispersion of the Aryan tribes than we had taken it to be." Sir George proceeds to remark on resemblances between German and Hindoo tales, which shew "the extent to which the folklore of the Aryans was developed while they still lived as a single people" (Mythol. Aryan, i. 145). Thus Sir George Cox accounts, on the whole, for the majority of the resemblances among Aryan household tales, by the theory that these tales are the common inheritance of the Aryan race, such narratives the Aryans possessed "while they still lived as a single people." The difficulties in which this theory lands the inquirer will afterwards be set forth. Here it may be observed that people who are not Aryans none the less possess the stories.
So much for the Diffusion of Aryan Household Tales. They are widely scattered (the theory goes), because the single people which possessed them in its common seat has itself been scattered widely, from Ceylon to Iceland.
Next, what is Sir George Cox's hypothesis as to the Origin of Household Tales? We have seen how he supposes they were diffused. "We have still to ask how such crazy legends were originally evolved. Why are all things animate and inanimate on a level with man in the tales; why do beasts and trees speak; why are cannibalism, metamorphosis, magic, descents into Hades, and many other impossible incidents so common? What, in short, is the Origin of Household Tales?
Here it is not easy to be brief, as we have to give a summary of Sir George Cox's theory of the intellectual human past, from which he supposes these tales to have been evolved. In the beginning of things, or as near the beginning as he can go. Sir George finds men characterised by "the selfishness and violence, the cruelty and slavishness of savages." Yet these cruel and violent savages had the most exquisitely poetical, tender, and
