d vision. The thought which is the measure of his universe is
as yet hardly disciplined by anything beyond his passions.

Nor does the predominance of the imagination issue only in these tales
and in songs--the two modes of expression we most readily attribute to
the imagination. In practical life it issues in superstitious
observances, and in social and political institutions. Social
institutions are sometimes of great complexity, even in the depth of
savagery. Together with political institutions they supply the model on
which are framed man's ideas of the relationship to one another and to
himself of the supernatural beings whom he creates; and in turn they
reflect and perpetuate those ideas in ceremonial and other observances.
The student of Fairy Tales, therefore, cannot afford to neglect the
study of institutions; for it often throws a light altogether
unexpected on the origin and meaning of a story. Tradition must, indeed,
be studied as a whole. As with other sciences, its division into parts
is natural and necessary; but it should never be forgotten that none of
its parts can be rightly understood without reference to the others. By
Tradition I mean the entire circle of thought and practice, custom as
well as belief, ceremonies, tales, music, songs, dances and other
amusements, the philosophy and the superstitions and the institutions,
delivered by word of mouth and by example from generation to generation
through unremembered ages: in a word, the sum total of the psychological
phenomena of uncivilized man. Every people has its own body of
Tradition, its own Folklore, which comprises a slowly diminishing part,
or the whole, of its mental furniture, according as the art of writing
is, or is not, known. The invention of writing, by enabling records to
be made and thoughts and facts to be communicated with certainty from
one to another, first renders possible the accumulation of true
knowledge and ensures a constantly accelerating advance in civilization.
But in every civilized nation there are backward classes to whom reading
and writing are either quite unknown, or at least unfamiliar; and there
are certain matters in the lives even of the lettered classes which
remain more or less under the dominion of Tradition. Culture, in the
sense of a mode of life guided by reason and utilizing the discoveries
and inventions that are the gift of science, finds its way but slowly
among a people, and filters only sluggishly th