tion will account for this;
and, consequently, a migration is assumed. The view, being reasonable,
is generally adopted; and the fact of a migration having absolutely
taken place becomes the current belief. The men who speak of this in the
fourth or fifth generation, speak of it as an actual occurrence. So,
perhaps, it is. But it is no tradition notwithstanding; since the record
cannot be traced up to the event. All that posterity has had
handed-down from its ancestors, is an _inference_; which, even if it be
as good as the historical account of an absolute event (as it sometimes
is), is anything but a tradition in the strict sense of the term. Of
course, the existence of the inference itself can be reduced to a fact,
and, as such, produce a tradition. But this is not the tradition which
is wanted--not the tradition which gives the fact in question.

These _ex post facto_ traditions may be of any amount of value, or of
any degree of worthlessness. They may be inferences of such accuracy and
justice as to command the respect of the most critical; or they may
involve impossibilities. The extremes are the best; the former for their
intrinsic value, the latter from their unlikelihood to mislead. The most
dangerous are the intermediate. Possibly, plausible, or, at any rate,
without any outward and visible marks of condemnation--

"They lie like truth, and yet most truly lie."

What proportion do these _ex post facto_ traditions bear to the true
ones? This is difficult to say. A nickname, a genealogy, a tune may well
be transmitted by tradition. So may charms, formulae, proverbs, and
poems; yet when we come to proverbs and poems we are on the domain of
unwritten literature, a domain which can scarcely be identified with
that of tradition. A local legend, when it is not too suspiciously
adapted to the features of the place to which it applies, may also be
admitted as traditional. These and but little beyond. Men rarely think
about transmitting narratives until it is too late for an authentic
account.

On the other hand, the very mental activity which employs itself upon
the attempt to account for an unexplained phenomenon is a sign of
attention; and where there is the attention to speculate, there is
likely to be the desire to transmit. If so, it is probable that the
proportion of transmitted speculations to true traditions is
immeasurably large. But there is an other reason for ignoring the
so-called traditions. When