A grave danger threatens the scientific character of folk-lore, if a wrong method of investigation be persisted in much longer. I refer to the system of haphazard comparisons arising out of the view that everything done and every rite kept by the folk must of necessity be a survival from extreme antiquity and belong to a period anterior to our modern civilization--a fossil from the age of man's childhood embedded in layers of more recent date. For proof of this theory parallels are sought and found among primitive nations, or those who we believe have not yet left the rude stage of primitive culture. If, then, something is found among them which resembles closely or remotely any of the customs, tales, and beliefs, in our own midst, we are convinced that these customs, tales or beliefs are really remnants of an older stage, through which the modern nations have passed before they reached the present stage of development, and which they have cherished and kept unchanged throughout the ages. The history of comparative philology offers the best analogy for the demonstration of the futility of such reasoning. Nothing contributed so much to make the study of comparative philology a laughing-stock as this endeavour to build up theories of the origin of the language on such arbitrary foundations.
How deceptive such haphazard similarities can be is best demonstrated by the endeavours to derive all the European languages from the Hebrew. This was believed to have been the original language which Adam spoke. Nothing more natural, then, than to trace all the languages back to the Hebrew, which moreover was a holy language. Much ingenuity and immense learning were spent--nay wasted--for centuries in this undertaking. The most trifling incident, the most superficial identity in sound or meaning was looked upon as complete evidence. It has taken close upon half a century to demolish this fabric of philological fallacy, and to place comparative philology on a sound basis. We know now that similarities in different languages may be the result of independent evolution.
The similarities are often quite superficial. No one would, for example, compare a modern English word with an old Latin or Greek stem or with any archaic dialect of these languages, without showing the gradual development of our modern word. He would take it back step by step, and then compare the oldest English form with a contemporary form. Most of the European languages, as we now see, are derived from one common stock, more archaic than any of them. No one would now trace a French word directly to that old Indo-European root, without going first to the Latin; and so with every other language belonging to the same group. Each nation has put the seal of its own individuality on its language, which it has moulded and shaped according to its own physiological and psychical faculties. The one will have retained more primitive forms; for example, local and historical as well as ethnical continuity have kept the Italian much closer to the Latin than Spanish or Portuguese. No one dreams to-day of reducing a French word to a Hebrew root, despite any similarity of form which they might have in common.