The miserable records of witchcraft illustrate in a way no other
subject can how the human mind, when untouched by the influences of
advanced culture, has the tendency to revert to traditional culture,
and they demonstrate how strongly embedded in human memory is the
great mass of traditional culture. The outside civilisation, religious
or scientific, has not penetrated far. Science has only just begun her
great work, and religion has been spending most of her efforts in
endeavouring to displace a set of beliefs which she calls
superstition, by a set of superstitions which she calls revelation.
Not only have the older faiths not been eradicated by this, but the
older psychological conditions have not been made to disappear. The
folklorist has to make note of this obviously significant fact, and
must therefore deal with both sides of the question, the traditional
and the psychological, and because by far the greater importance
belongs to the former it does not do to neglect the importance, though
the lesser importance, of the latter.

It assists the student of tradition in many ways. People who will
still explain for themselves in primitive fashion phenomena which they
do not understand, and who remain content with such primitive
explanations instead of relying upon the discoveries of science, are
just the people to retain with strong persistence the traditional
beliefs and ideas which they obtained from their fathers, and to
acquire other traditional beliefs and ideas which they obtain from
neighbours. One often wonders at the "amazing toughness" of tradition,
and in the psychological conditions which have been indicated will be
found one of the necessary explanations.

FOOTNOTES:

[237] Dalyell, _Darker Superstitions of Scotland_, 197-198.

[238] Robertson, _Agriculture of Inverness-shire_. For Argyllshire see
_New Stat. Account of Scotland_, vii. 346; Brown, _Early Descriptions
of Scotland_, 12, 49, 99.

[239] Wilde, _Catalogue of Museum of Royal Irish Academy_, 99; Joyce,
_Social Hist. of Anc. Ireland_, ii. 27.

[240] _Tour in Ireland_, 1775, p. 144; _Gent. Mag._, v. 680.

[241] Hutchinson, _Hist. of Cumberland_, i. 216.

[242] James Clarke, _Survey of the Lakes_, 1789, p. xiii; _Berwickshire
Nat. Field Club_, ix. 512.

[243] Clarke, _Survey of the Lakes_, pp. x, xv. Referring to the
statutes enacted as a result of the Commissioners' work the facts are
as follows: There were certain franchises in North