Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/138

 126 Reviews.

giving him confidence for the exercise of the supernatural power,

the mana, he has acquired. He is what he is, he feels what he

feels, treats himself as he does and is treated as he is treated,

because he is a being whom all the forces of society determine

and drive to fulfil the part.

The questions aroused by this careful and weighty study of the

facts are too large to be considered here. They would demand

an essay as long as that of M. Mauss. I have limited myself to a

bare summary of its contents in order to draw the attention of

those who are interested in the history of the mental and spiritual

evolution of humanity. -^ r.

E. Sidney Hartland.

Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst. Von K. Th.

Preuss. GM:is, LXXXVI, LXXXVII. Sonderabdruck,

PP- 54- Dr. Preuss' "provisional communication" to Globus is, in my opinion at least, of the highest interest and importance. It embodies an almost wholly novel view of cultural, and in particular of religious, origins. A fuller treatment, however, would be welcome. As at present sketched out the theory is somewhat hard to grasp in its completeness, and it may well be that in what follows I have hardly done it justice.

To put it shortly, Dr. Preuss holds magic to lie at the root of all our culture — of religion, of art, of games, of speech itself, not to mention clothing, agriculture, marriage, and a miscellaneous host of other institutions hardly less fundamental. How this and that particular development took place is dealt with mostly by the way. The chief concern throughout is with magic itself as parent source. Now Dr. Preuss, like the sound anthropologist that he is, pursues a concrete method, and is as lavish of illustrations as he is sparing of universal definitions. Two essential characters, however, he seems ready to predicate of magic in general. In, the first place, magic is the exertion of a kind of power — orenda,