The Test of Recurrences
Even for travellers’ tales we have a use, we can apply to them Dr. Tylor’s ‘Test of Recurrences.’
‘If two independent visitors to different countries, say a mediæval Mahommedan in Tartary and a modern Englishman in Dahomey, or a Jesuit missionary in Brazil and a Wesley an in the Fiji Islands, agree in describing some analogous art, or rite, or myth among the people they have visited, it becomes difficult or impossible to set down such correspondence to accident or wilful fraud. A story by a bushranger in Australia may perhaps be objected to as a mistake or an invention, but did a Methodist minister in Guinea conspire with him to cheat the public by telling the same story there?’
The whole passage should be read: it was anticipated by Professor Millar in his Origin of Rank, and has been restated by myself. [{101a}] Thus I wrote (in 1887) ‘it is to be regretted that Mr. Max Müller entirely omits to mention . . . the corroboration which is derived from the undesigned coincidence of independent testimony.’
In 1891-1892 he still entirely omits to mention, to his Glasgow audience, the strength of his opponents’ case. He would serve us better if he would criticise the test of recurrences, and show us its weak points.