Now in the study of stories there are no such simple rules all
cut and dried for us to go by. There is no uniform
psychological principle which determines that the three-headed
snake in one story shall become a three-headed man in the
next. There is no Grimm's Law in mythology which decides that
a Hindu magician shall always correspond to a Norwegian Troll
or a Keltic Druid. The laws of association of ideas are not so
simple in application as the laws of utterance. In short, the
study of myths, though it can be made sufficiently scientific
in its methods and results, does not constitute a science by
itself, like philology. It stands on a footing similar to that
occupied by physical geography, or what the Germans call
"earth-knowledge." No one denies that all the changes going on
over the earth's surface conform to physical laws; but then no
one pretends that there is any single proximate principle
which governs all the phenomena of rain-fall, of
soil-crumbling, of magnetic variation, and of the distribution
of plants and animals. All these things are explained by
principles obtained from the various sciences of physics,
chemistry, geology, and physiology. And in just the same way
the development and distribution of stories is explained by
the help of divers resources contributed by philology,
psychology, and history.
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