Reviews, 2 1 1
AUerki-wissenschaft. He may likewise take pride in noting how- many of Professor Letourneau's authorities hail from this side of the Channel. It is matter for regret, however, that these autho- rities belong, anthropologically speaking, to a previous generation. For example, it is next door to labour lost to seek to appreciate the Australian mind and character, whilst utterly ignoring the testimony of Spencer and Gillen. Or again, there are no signs that our author is aware of the fresh light that has been shed on the religious consciousness of early man by such works as The Golden Bough and The Legend of Perseus. Indeed, his whole treatment of religion as a psychological force must be judged decidedly inadequate in the light of the most recent research. It does not belong, perhaps, to the anthropologist as such to decide whether it is historically and psychologically sound to describe Christianity as simply a noxious bacillus which ate its way into the Roman system only when luxury and vice had impaired the national vitality. But the expert will be up in arms when he hears it dogmatically asserted that the couvade was a utilitarian device for bringing home the responsibilities of his position to a savage who had escaped his own notice in becoming a father. Due allowance, however, being made for a certain want of modernity, the book may be recommended to those whose tastes are for a synthetic philosophy of the type which in this country we associate with the name of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Meanwhile, it would seem that there is also room for another kind of ethnic psychology — one that should seek, in so far as the primitive mind is concerned, to lay bare its inwardness as revealed in what may broadly be described as folklore. Such a psychology might at any rate aspire to tell us what the savage is to himself, leaving it to an omniscient positivism to round off his history with the declaration that in " reality " he is but a piece of matter su]ier- fluously self-conscious.
R, R. Marett,
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