Note 18 — Chapter VIII · Conclusion.

In cases like that of The Grateful Dead, however, the matter is entirely different. The theme is comparatively a complicated one, and it is found only in lands whose inhabitants are connected either by blood or by social and political intercourse.18 It has preserved its integrity for nearly a score of centuries, though suffering many changes of details, and a variety of combinations with other themes. To my mind such an involved relationship as that worked out in the preceding chapters proves conclusively that the story is one, that the connection between variants is more than fortuitous. Inductive logic makes the belief inevitable. Any other theory would involve us in a bewildering net of contradictions, from which escape could be found only in the avowal that nothing whatever can be known about narrative development.