Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/128

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describes its extremely varied developmtnt, and at the same time supplies us with a good deal of information as to its outward appearance and internal arrangements. Originally, as he shows, the custom was, in a stage in which the absence of buildings precludes the possibility of more definite arrangements, for the unmarried males to sleep on their own side of the camp fire. With the decline of nomadic habits and the origin of permanent habitations a house distinguished from family dwellings by its large size came into existence for their benefit. This bachelors' house develops on the one hand into a men's house, frequented by all the males, on the other into a boys' house, to which adults are no longer attracted. In other cases again it becomes a centre of amusements, from which married women and children are no longer excluded, a public restaurant, and a bath. On another line of development again it becomes, as the residence of the warriors, the place of assembly and centre of political life and, when the war chief becomes supreme in times of peace, the residence of the chief of the tribe ; or on the other hand it may become the guard house, the prison, or the treasury. On the religious side it tends to become the centre of a cult of the dead with a possibility of development in the direction of the temple, which again the sexual liberty which is the privilege of the unmarried tends to turn into a temple of Venus. It further fulfils the function of a lodging-house for strangers, and may thus have been the lineal ancestor of the modern inn. Finally it is frequently transformed into the w'orkshop of several trades, more often of only one, and is in this respect a predecessor of the village smithy.

The third section of the book deals with the secret societies which are found in North America, West Africa, and Melanesia, w'ith the dance societies of North America, and with other volun- tary associations of primitive societies, all of which Dr. Schurtz is disposed to regard as evolved from the Altersklassen.

On the whole it may be said that the book is a singularly clear and stimulating presentation of facts and carefully worked out theories. At the same time there are naturally numerous points at which it is open to criticism. It seems, for example, mislead- ing to classify the Altersklassen and still more the Heirats- klassen of Australia among voluntary associations. Membership of the former hardly depends on any voluntary act of the indi-