Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/143

 Reviews. 121

the. . . phases which have preceded and developed the con- temporary phase" of civilisation, has been the work of the anthropologist, and in a special sense, that of the folklorist, since anthropological study was first seriously taken in hand. Mr. Branford's first and third points mark out an immense and well-defined field for the labours of the sociologist. The omission of the second would remove the danger of overlapping.

Again, in the (unsigned) Preface to the volume, we read that Dr. Westermarck's paper on the Positmi of Women in Early Civilisation "stands here as a type of the research which sociologists are forced to undertake". . . "the sociologist is himself forced to undertake specialist research into such subjects as Marriage, War, Sport, Class distinction, etc.; because these have not been brought adequately within any of the existing sub-sciences into which the sociological province is at present partitioned " (p. x.) Our friends of the Anthropological Institute will share our astonishment at this statement.

After this it is a relief to find our whilom colleague, Mr. J. Stuart Glennie, writing thus on page 234 : " I trust that I may be permitted respeclfuUy to protest against the double use of the term ' Sociology ' to signify both a causal or * pure ' science, ' a theory of the origin, growth, and destiny of humanity ' ; and an applied science — a science concerned with the construction of principles applicable to the ordering of social life. Anthropology is commonly — as by, for instance, the President of Section H at the last meeting of the British Association — used as ' the most general term denoting the study of man in a wide and all-em- bracing sense.' Surely it would be desirable with less vagueness to define both Anthropology and Sociology (or, as I should rather say, Politology) by restricting the connotation of the former term of the Causal, and the other to the corresponding Applied, general science of Man." It is pleasant to find oneself thus in agreement with an old opponent.

It will be remembered by those who were present in Section H on the occasion referred to, that the President, Mr. Henry Balfour, went on to predict that it may eventually become advisable to do something in the way of subdivision of so huge a subject. There is in fact scarcely any subject outside mathematics and some