Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/505

 Reviews. 459

he calls it "a possession for ever," and adds that "no book can ever supersede it." In the restraint, effectiveness, and dignity of its style ; in the skilful weaving of huge masses of materials into a text which they illumine and never confuse ; and in the scientific caution and circumspection which inform it, Prvnitive Culture remains unequalled. It is the Canon of Anthropology. To it may be accorded Professor Freeman's verdict on Gibbon's Decline and Fall: "It must ever keep its place ; whatever else is read, it must be read too. The ease and mastery with which he lifts the enormous burden are appreciated in proportion to the information and abilities of his critic."

It is to be wished that Dr. Lang, or some one equally skilled in exposition, had taken advantage of the present opportunity to have given a retrospective survey of a science which, "old as the hills," was for centuries in a state of suspended animation, and revivified barely fifty years ago ; a science which, more than any other, has affected, and will for all time to come affect, man's attitude towards, and explanation of, his surroundings. The reluctance, following on M. Boucher de Perthes' discovery of artificially-shaped flints in the Somme Valley, shared alike by theologians and men of science, to accept these tools and weapons as demonstrating the enormous antiquity and primitive savagery of man, was due to the conviction that his place in nature is wholly exceptional. The strength of that conviction explains Darwin's reticence as to the application of the theory of natural selection to man ; a reticence which, in the Descent of Man, published in 1871, twelve years after the Origin of Species, he admitted was due to a desire " not to add to the prejudice against his views." Heedless of the warning of an eminent friend that his prospects of success in his career would be ruined by so rash a venture, Huxley published his lectures on the Evidence as to Mans Place in Nature, wherein he extended the doctrine of evolution to human psychology. That was in 1863, the year in which Lyell pubHshed his Antiquity of Afan, the hesitating tone of the book about "species, still less, man," evoking deep regret from Darwin. And for how long had Anthropology, the Cinderella of the sciences, to wait before