1
, I
96 BOOK REVIEWS
contained in Freud's 'Totem and Taboo' were not taken up and elaborated in this connection.
The eighth chapter is devoted to ' The Death of Jesus '. Here, after dwelling on the mythical, mystical and ritual significance of death and re-birth, Dr. Berguer returns to the theme we have already discussed in dealing with the Preface— the importance of Christ's ' having translated into real life the secular dream of peoples ', of his having really died whereas his predecessors in other religions died in imagination only.
The last chapter treats of the Resurrection, which event is regarded as due to a process of materialisation as time passed — this process depending itself on a tendency to projection: the spiritual meaning of fresh life being exteriorised and converted into the idea of a literal revival from death.
An appendix on 'The Poetry of Jesus' and a useful bibliography extending to twenty-five pages bring the book to an end.
One cannot close the book without a regret that more use has not been made of the comparative method, which the author shows occas- sionally that he is well able to handle. A comparison of Christ with the numerous array of 'Pagan Christs' would, we believe, have thrown light on many points that still remain obscure as regards the actual psychology of Christ himself and would certainly have been of great utility in understanding the general attitude of mankind to Christ's life and teaching. Dr. Berguer has, we are inclined to think, been so intent on giving prominence to what he regards as the essential difference between Christ and those who have resembled him as regards the mythical details of their lives, that he has omitted to give due consideration to the advantages to be gained from psycho-analytic inquiry into the points of similarity in question.
Another matter which the reader will regret to find but slightly treated is the content (as distinguished from the form) of Christ's ethical and social teachings— his insistence on humility, love and mercy, his rejection of hostility between man and man and his substitution of a reign of clemency for the harsher patriarchal regime of Judaism. These matters are of immense importance as regards the psychological appeal of Christianity and to many, we suspect, they will seem far more significant than the historicity of Christ as an exceptionally sublimated individual to which Dr. Berguer attaches so much weight. They axe matters too on which it would seem that psycho-analysis might have thrown much light
However, we are not justified in expecting a complete exploration
of the whole field at a first endeavour to apply modern psychology to
the understanding of Christ's personality pr. Berguer's book was, we
. understand, written quite independently and without knowledge of
Stanley Hall's recent work on the same subject), especially since
%
