Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/515

 Reviews. 469

has no cult (Sundermann in Warneck's Allgemeine Missions- zeitschrifi, vol. xi., p. 1884).

M. Hoffmann next studies America, and finds All Fathers in abundance. He briefly recapitulates their characteristics and attributes, and explains their tendency to pass into the background of belief, and to fade into the shadow of a name. He next remarks on the singular omission of notice of these beings by many recent theorists, such as Herbert Spencer and Chantepie de la Saussaye, and he argues against the theory that the All Father is borrowed from Christian teachers ; or is developed out of ghost-worship, or nature-worship, by peoples who neither worship nature nor ghosts. He concludes that the All Father belief, so far, is ^^ irreductible" ; and he declines to advance any theory of its origin, or to enter into metaphysics. He fears that he has "fait la part trop belle" for the All Father, and, in fact, his exposition of the chroniqiie scandaleuse of that being does come rather late in the work (pp. 1 13-1 16). It might have been wiser to state, at the beginning, that many All Fathers are as capable of incon- sequences and etourderies as Zeus himself. But M. Hoffmann holds, and here he will not, I think, satisfy Mr. Hartland, that the higher aspects of the All Father rise from a deeper stratum of the savage consciousness, and that the light myths, comic or obscene, rise from faculties of playfulness. This view, he remarks, may be considered arbitrary ; we may have no right to distinguish between the religious and the mythological, but "cette distinction ce n'est pas nous qui la faisons, mais les sauvages eux-memes." On this, and other points, M. Hoffmann will probably not make many converts. But his thesis offers an excellent synopsis of the facts in the All Father belief, facts which, I ; gree with him, were in some danger of being overlooked. He informs me that he will be pleased to send copies of his thesis to persons interested in his topic, but perhaps students may prefer to order it from his publisher, "Imprimerie Romet, 26 Boulevard Georges-Favori, Geneva."

A. Lang.