Book Description

To write a popular introduction to any science is one of the greatest services that can be rendered to it, and at the same time one of the most difficult. It is one of the most difficult services, because the further one goes in scientific explorations, the longer is the way back to the starting-point, and the less easy it is to place oneself in imagination in the exact position of the man who is quite ignorant of what has been achieved, and to explain to him the method and aims of the science in such a way as to attract him to it. It is one of the greatest, because the special need of the present age is to spread exact knowledge, so as to enable the popular mind to co-ordinate the results attained by inquiries in all directions, which have led during the present century to so great and beneficent a revolution in human thought, which have freed us from so many ancient blunders, enabled us to raise the standard not merely of material comfort but also of our moral and intellectual life, and given "the promise and the potency" of an indefinite improvement in the condition of mankind, such as we understand by the wordcivilisation. This is especially true of the science of folklore, wherein lies a power, unsuspected by those who have not faced its possibilities, for the liberation of the mind from the shackles imposed by natural phenomena, and by inveterate modes of thought, which is the most imperious condition of advance. In the difficult and important task she has undertaken Miss Cox has won a large measure of success. She begins at the beginning, and reasoning from the state of savagery now fully established as the universally early, if not original, state of humanity, she points out with admirable clearness the relation of antique manners, customs and beliefs, still surviving in the highest culture, to the material remains of what we call primitive man. Her bright and lively style, and the skill with which her examples are marshalled, carry the reader on with unflagging interest to the very last page, and leave him wishing for more. — Folklore, Volume 7 [1896]