Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/826

 8i2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

very late. I think not until the seventh century a. d. So adoption was the only means of transmitting the property. As the Romans had a horror of dying intestate so the Hindus had a horror of dying without male issue. A male descendant was necessary to offer obligations to gods in behalf of the dead, for without them the dead could not reach heaven. An adopted son is to a modern person merely a legal fiction but to an orthodox Hindu he was a real son, capable of offering such oblations. Again Hindu law recog- nized a wife's right to adopt children for her dead husband, because the wife was half of the husband's body incarnate. To the intellectual classes it was merely a legal fiction. With less intellectual classes it was and is a super- stition.

J. L. GiLLEN^ University of Iowa Dr. Shotwell has certainly put us under a debt of obligation by his splendid paper on "The Role of Magic." I desire to call attention to two points in that paper by way of expansion. Not only in the Catholic church has magic played a very important role but even in our Protes- tant chuches the same is true. Luther's protest was a breaking-away from the superstition that existed in connection with church ceremonials in his day but how short-lived was that protest is shown by the fact that his followers and the Protestant sects in general, soon reverted to the magical interpretations of church rites and church doctrines which he had repudi- ated. Every succeeding edition of Melancthon's Loci Communes becomes more retrogressive than its predecessor. Soon among the Protestants grace was conveyed to the infant by the waters of baptism just as much as it had been in the Catholic church. The communion bread and wine had magical power just as it had had before Luther protested. Even pietism, protest of protests, together with a demand for return to the simplicity and earnest- ness of primitive Christian life, contained also a reversion to the magical ideas of Catholicism concerning ceremonials and rites. Many of these beliefs still persist. Almost numberless are the Protestants even to this day who to some extent believe in the magfical power of ecclesiastical rite and ceremony, and of the ministration of consecrated hands.

The other point to which I wish to call attention is with reference to Professor Coe's report on the Census Bulletin 103. The fig^ures of that bulletin seem to show an increasing number of sects in the United States in the last few years. A part of that is real and part merely apparent. There is no doubt that the immigration of alien people has increased the number of religious bodies to a certain extent. It is doubtless also true that there have been formed new sects by division of bodies already exist- ing. For example, the Christian Science sect, etc. On the other hand, without doubt the last fifty years has seen a great growth of like-minded- ness among the various sectarian organizations. Religion which was long