Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/574

 5 1 o Reviews.

His interpretation, founded thus on the consideration of an isolated sentence or two, may by chance be right, but only by chance, because it is not derived from a consideration of the text in its entirety.

But, while this must be admitted, it is quite a different question how far the practice condemned has actually affected the arguments of anthropologists, whether in this country or abroad, and how far the results they claim to have attained have been vitiated. It requires but little circumspection and experience to avoid a trap so obvious. And if the enquirer does fall into it, some kind friend sooner or later, practising that form of co- operation which is called criticism, points out the error in cogent language. On the whole, therefore, the results attained may not be far amiss ; but there is a further question whether the method is calculated to lead to an understanding of the civilization of any particular people as a whole. To interpret bits here and there of a people's ritual or customs leads us a very little way to the interpretation of its entire life and civilization. It is, however, a preliminary step, though it may be that with fuller knowledge some of these fragmentary results may have to be revised. What is wanted now is to make a thorough ethnographical study, — not a description merely, — of a people typical of its race and culture, examining its institutions, arts, customs, ideas, tales, and so forth in relation to its habitat and probable provenience, the totality of its culture, and the influences which have produced or modified that culture, comparing moreover the various items examined with similar items elsewhere, and discussing the interpretations put upon them. Such a work would really yield us something like a true picture, — at all events the best picture obtainable, — of one definite type of culture ; and a series of such works would effect a revolution in our knowledge of the history of human ideas and civilization. It may be that such a work is not yet feasible ; it may be that it is, and is likely to remain, beyond the powers of one man to do. In any case that is not the work attempted in the volume before us.

What M. van Gennep has here done is to enforce his contention by considering at length a number of the sequences of rites to which he has given the title of Rites of Passage. The details