Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/395

 BOOK REVIEWS 383

Messiahs; Christian and Pagan. WILSON D. WALLIS. Boston:

Richard G. Badger, 1918. 276 pp.

In this volume Dr. Wallis has assembled a vast mass of interesting and curious information bearing on a problem of perennial attractiveness in the study of religion. Both the extent and the diversity of his reading are astonishing. It is regrettable, however, that the innumerable references are nowhere brought together in an alphabetic list, where it would have been best perhaps to divide them into several groups. In- deed, the publisher's bibliographical technique is objectionable. Most of the references are inserted square-bracketed into the body of the text; in one chapter, for no ostensible reason, footnotes in conjunction with the other scheme; and thereafter they persist less prominently until the end.

The strength of Dr. Wallis's book lies in two directions. As already indicated, he describes a very extensive group of data not less interesting to the student of culture because most of them are culled from the annals of the more complicated societies. Secondly, he attacks the old problem of the relation between the individual and society. Not that he solves the enigma. But his insistent formulation of it merits appreciation, and some of his general reflections on the subject are full of common sense.

On the other hand, there is a disproportion between the descriptive and interpretative parts. It seems to me, at all events, that as a rule Dr. Wallis does not come to grips sufficiently with his information but is inclined to discuss it only from the most abstract points of view. This gives a certain pallor to his generalizations even when they are not challengeable.

But whether this criticism be justified or not, the concluding chapter certainly strikes one as disjointed, and its closing section on "The Mission of Jesus " seems out of place in what purports to be a summary of the generic traits of the Messianic idea.

ROBERT H. LOWIE

NORTH AMERICA

Preliminary Account of the Antiquities of the Region between the Mancos

and La Plata Rivers in Southwestern Colorado. EARL H. MORRIS.

(Thirty-third Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology,

PP- 155-206.) Washington, 1919.

This is another of the compact, lucid, and useful reports which we have come to expect from Mr. Morris. The work was done in 1913 and 1914, with less intensive exploration than the author would have liked to conduct. Two types of prehistoric culture were encountered. The

�� �