otherwise, we must ask, can the history of the universal symbol be studied, than by a consideration of the "historical pedigree" of the story in which it occurs? The value of a study of the process of development of the symbol is that it makes clear the varied complexes within which, at different times, the sign which is a symbol has found a place. Now these complexes may vary considerably, as Ricklin himself shows, from time to time, and the symbol may undergo many successive processes of abbreviation, condensation and so on. Even if we have to do with a purely individual symbol, we cannot learn much as to its actual association and its final signification if we confine our attention to the mental processes themselves involved in the use of the symbol. When we have to do with a "universal" symbol the case is yet more clear. Our only way of learning its history is to study how it has actually occurred in the various complexes to which its character is suited. The contention that much of the symbolism of the fairy tale comes directly from myth, legend, or religious custom, only serves to point the same conclusion. To interpret a symbol we must know through what myths, what legends, what succession of customs it has come to its place within the particular story which is attracting our attention.
The sole way out of this would be to urge that there are, in fact, certain original, unanalysable and perfectly universal symbols used in all dreams; and that these symbols, precisely in their original dream form, appear in the popular story. There is hardly a shred of evidence either for the first, or for the second, of these assumptions.
In the second place, the fact that all symbols have a history is clear; but as to the psychological use that may be made of such a history Ricklin is far from sufficiently careful. The argument sometimes appears to run: "This sign has, as a matter of fact, been associated with such and such a complex; therefore it now, as a matter of meaning,
