Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/408

 354 Correspondence.

the ground cross-wise with a stone at each end of the straws and one in the middle to keep the wind from blowing them away. The cross had to be laid in the open, and not under cover, presumably for a reason similar to that which led the irate farmer to take his barometer, pointing to "Set Fair," out into the rain to "look for itself" I had a firm belief, based on experience, that the charm would put a stop to the rain, sooner or later.

Dan. M'Kenzie.

Pre-Animistic Stages in Religion. {Ante, pp. 238-9.)

Dr. Jevons's interesting and suggestive review of Mr. Marett's Threshold of Religion includes kindly reference to my paper on "Pre-Animistic Stages in Religion," read at the Oxford Congress and published in full in the Fortnightly Review of June, but, presumably, after Dr. Jevons's review was written. His recognition that the subject of the existence of stages of spiritual evolution prior to what is commonly understood by the term " Animistic " is " likely to engage an increasing amount of attention from students of early religion " is welcome as admission that we have hitherto taken for granted a sharp division between man as religious and as non- religious. Had Dr. Jevons been able to read my paper in full, instead of in meagre extract, there would have been no modifica- tion of his remark as to the non-production of " evidence to show the actual existence of pre-animistic religion." For, from the nature of the case, such evidence is non-producible. But, as I said in my paper, " the argument is not without force that, in the necessary absence of examples from the remote period in which their presence may be predicated, the higher is the value of examples " from the lowest plane of extant religions in which elements of primitiveness may be detected. For the doctrine of continuity involves the perpetuation of germinal ideas, however modified these may have become. In brief, one is following the scientific method of adopting a working hypothesis as explicable of certain phenomena. If there be no break in the chain which connects animal and