has undoubtedly consulted them. Perhaps the most common fault is to attribute to an entire continent or large ethnographical area, types or characteristics which are found only in limited areas. This is likely to leave a very wrong impression upon the reader not familiar with the given territory and not trained in ethnological discrimination. To cite but one of the many cases in point: "Among the North American Indians ecstatic fasting is regularly practised. A faster writes down his visions and revelations for a whole season. They are then examined by the elders of the tribe, and if events have verified them, he is recognized as a supernaturally gifted being, and rewarded with the chieftancy." ("Asceticism," by Conybeare.) Now, as a matter of fact, you might exhaust the literature on a great many North American tribes before you would find confirmation of this writer's assertion; and it is not unfair to say that the statement is as true and a bit more definite, if in place of "North American Indians," were inserted "the Americans north of the equator." One can not too much deplore the use of these general and false rather than specific and true assertions.

In physical anthropology we have an article on "Primates" excellently illustrated and condensed, but little on the much needed topic of comparative anatomy. An admirable account of "Albinism" is given and in the articles on "Dog" and "Wolf," as well as in numerous others, there is much of interest and profit if not for the physical at least for the cultural anthropologist. Technology receives but scant and imperfect treatment in regard to the simpler forms, and seldom have these topics been assigned to anthropologists.

The articles that fall within the scope of social anthropology have been dealt with in various, and sometimes almost contrasting, ways. In the articles on "Animism" and "Taboo" (both by N. W. Thomas) for example, there is, in the main, merely a convenient arrangement and subdivision of the facts with a selection of those that seem most important. Other topics, such as "Ritual" and "Religion-Primitive" (both by R. R. Marett), are treated in quite a different manner. In the latter the attempt is rather to interpret, criticise, and explicitly or implicitly to put the emphasis upon method. Some of these show a keen, penetrating insight and express in a sentence some idea that most writers could elucidate only in a paragraph. Perhaps the essential characteristic of primitive peoples has never been so well expressed as in the phrase: "Savagery-the stage of petty groups pursuing a self-centered life of inveterate custom, in an isolation almost as complete as if they were marooned on separate atolls of the ocean." (See "Religion.")

Again we read "primitive religions are like so many similar heads on a string, to wit, the common conditions of soul and society that make, say, totemism, or taboo, very much the same thing all the savage world over, when we seek to penetrate to its essence" (ibid.). Even so; in this day of ready-made generalizations and rapid "Evolutions" we need the caution: "The fact is that comparative religion must be content to regard all its classifications alike as pieces of mere scaffolding serving temporary purposes of construction" (see "Ritual").

On almost every phase of anthropology the student will get much help from the Encyclopedia. At the end of each article is a bibliography of a few books bearing on the topic, and these have, almost without exception, been selected with great care. Perhaps not the least part of its usefulness will be the information it gives on numberless topics germane to that part of anthropology in which the student is immediately interested. For example, if your field reporter fails to give desired details about the fauna, flora, or topography of the country about whose inhabitants he is writing, seek in the Encyclopedia Britannica and ye shall find.

W. D. WALLIS.

The Idea of God in Early Religions. By F. B. JEVONS. (The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature.) Cambridge University Press, 1910. Pages x, 170. (Price I shilling.)

This is a comprehensive survey of almost every phase of "early religions," from the influences of social environment, the theories of animism, fetishism, magic and the magico-religious, through mythology, ritual, sacrifice, prayer, communion, to such conceptions as the idea and being of God. No one should hope to treat religion at once so broadly and so tersely. The work gives one the feeling that the author has not done justice to any of his topics rather than that such a hasty review enables one to see these various aspects in their organic relations.

Aside from this, the vagueness of the treatment will always be an objection to the immediate or permanent value of the book. The author does not hint at what he means by "God"-whether personified or not -by "idea of God"-whether conscious reflection-or by “early religions." The latter seems to include anything from the Australian and "the jungle-dweller of Chata Nagpur"-a favorite of the author-to Socrates and David. Hence we are always left in doubt as to what tribe or people is meant when a generalization as to religious condition or advance is made. As, for example, on page 30, where he says: "As

polytheisms have developed out of polydæmonism, that is to say, as the personal beings or powers of polydæmonism have, in course of time, come to possess proper names and a personal history, some idea of divine personality must be admitted to be present in polydæmonism as well as in polytheism; and in the same way, some idea of a personality greater than human may be taken to lie at the back of both polydæmonism and fetishism." Either the author has some one or more particular tribes in mind when he makes such generalizations or he believes them applicable to all tribes and peoples alike—unless we suppose that he merely evolves these conceptions out of his inner consciousness from a sense of the general fitness of things. Whatever his authority for these statements may be, the treatment is always unsatisfactory when we are given no clue at all as to what tribal group is meant.

The author's doctrines become intelligible only by admission of two suppressed principles, which he nowhere states but throughout inferentially takes as granted: First, evolution of religious thought has always taken one fixed and given direction; second, this form of evolution in a more or less advanced state is to be found with every tribe and people. Admit these and the book is of real value; deny them, and it is difficult to say in what its value consists. It is true that Dr Jevons himself speaks of a dispersive evolution which takes many turns and twists and does not move steadily along in a uniform groove. Notwithstanding his recognition of this theory, however, his seems to be a case in which rival and contradictory theories can be held without discarding the one where practice dictates following the other-and this the unjustifiable

one.

W. D. WALLIS.

Modern Theories of Religion. By ERIC S. WATERHOUSE. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1910. Pp. xi and 448 (441-8, index). (Price 5 shillings net.) Only a limited portion of this work (pp. 333-363) deals with anthropological material. Despite the fact that Dr Waterhouse seems unacquainted with the source material, it must be admitted that he has handled the various theories with regard to primitive religions in a critical manner and with considerable understanding of their implications. While this can never compensate for first-hand and thorough knowledge of the literature on which these theories are based, the manner of handling his data and interpreting the phenomena is a good objectlesson for an ethnographer interested in the meaning and significance of the facts of savage tribal life. It is matter of surprise that no reference

is made to the works of Marett nor to any of the L'Année Sociologique school; and the absence of an acquaintance with them is the more remarkable since Dr Waterhouse's interests in anthropological theories center around the works of Tylor and Frazer, and the topics of animism and super-naturalism, magic and religion, and the emotional basis of religion.

On the last-mentioned the author holds that:

"between the lowest man and the highest brute, it may be assumed there is no break, that continuity is complete; but that must not prevent the facts beings handled as we have them, and they are these: that, whilst the emotions that are religious in man exist in brutes, they do not exist as religion in brutes; but their religious quality is something added to them in their passage to man, a something that belongs to man as man" (353).

The writer is certainly correct in saying that:

"Amongst the special difficulties of dealing with religion must be placed the fact that religion, from its nature, asserts itself amongst all customs, and intermingles with primitive science, philosophy, magic, mythology, superstition, ancestor-worship and the like. Seeing that the anthropologists cannot agree upon a definition of the thing to be sought, it must follow that a good deal of confusion between religion and those things with which it manifests itself must arise, and will arise, until there is closer agreement as to what constitutes the essence of primitive religion.

"Further still must it be remembered that religious beliefs and observances, on account of their sacred associations and the natural reticence of the believer, together with dread of breaking taboo, and dislike of alien curiosity, are generally the least understood and worst reported of all anthropological facts, and evidence concerning them must be earmarked accordingly."

It is sometimes well to see ourselves as others see us. Perhaps the anthropologist himself is somewhat to blame for the mistaken theories of psychologists and of students of religion with regard to the import of the facts collected by the field-worker. For this reason if for no other a knowledge of Dr Waterhouse's use of the anthropological material at his command should repay every anthropologist. For, after all, savages are human beings and—though field-workers seem prone to forget it-ethnography is but one phase of the history of man.

W. D. WALLIS.

The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man. By the RIGHT HON. LORD AVEBURY, P.C. Sixth Edition (1902). Reissue with a New Preface. London, New York, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1911. 83⁄44 × 53⁄4, pp. xxxii + 577. (Price 7s. 6d. net.)

Lubbock's celebrated book hardly requires an introduction at this late day, for even the new preface accompanying this edition is merely a restatement of the author's position in reply to his critics, and has been recently superseded by a fuller rejoinder in a distinct publication. There are some references to Spencer and Gillen's investigations on Australia, but otherwise there is little attempt to bring the work up to date even in the mere matter of selecting authorities. Sproat is still the chief authority cited on the Northwestern tribes of America, and the discussion of fetishism has not been modified by the illuminating researches of Pechuel-Loesche and the publications of the Tervueren Museum. From a certain point of view the lack of novelty is hardly to be regretted. For Lord Avebury's book represents, perhaps more clearly than any other ethnological work, the theoretical standpoint of a certain period in the history of anthropology. In this sense it may well be compared with the popular works of Haeckel, the later editions of which also show a rather limited comprehension of modern methods of research, but which remain invaluable documents for the historian of biological science. And, as the sane zoölogist of today can not deny the great impetus given to biological study by Haeckel's writings, so the ethnologist with a proper historical perspective will never fail to recognize the place of The Origin of Civilization as one of the earliest expositions of culture-history from the evolutionary standpoint and as a successful attempt to familiarize the lay world with some of the most interesting data of ethnology.

ROBERT H. LOWIE.

SOME NEW PUBLICATIONS

D'ALVIELLA, Comte GOBLET. Croyances, Rites, Institutions. Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1911. 3 vols., 10 × 61⁄2, pp. 386, 412, 389, ills.

BARRETT, S. A. The Dream Dance of the Chippewa and Menominee Indians of Northern Wisconsin. (Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, vol. I, art. IV, pp. 251-406, pls. ix-xxv, Milwaukee, Nov. 1911.

BEECH, M. W. H. The Suk, their Language and Folklore. Introduction by Charles Eliot. Oxford, 1911.

BLAIR, E. H. Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi and the Great Lakes Region. Cleveland, 1912.