Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/565

 Reviews. 523

priest, and I as un capricieux, — against the anthropologically orthodox doctrine of the rise of religion in Animism. But I have no a priori objection to that doctrine, for, like Malvolio, "I think nobly of the soul," and, if we have no souls, I have no interest in religion. The truth is that, the more I studied early religion, the less did the hypothesis of Animism as the origin of belief in the All P'ather seem to colligate the facts. None the less, Animism has, of course, had an enormous influence on the development of religion, an influence often very hostile to Theism; in other cases complementary to Theism.

As Pere Schmidt has not yet given us his own theory of the origin of the idea of God, I do not know what his theory is, or in what way his bias afl"ects, if at all, his logic. But let me insist that every man of us has a bias, and a strong bias, a circumstance which our opponents, — whose strong point is not a sense of humour, — do not seem to be able to understand. Whether or not the scientific bias caused the chapter of the All Father of backward tribes to be ignored, it is not for me to say, but ignored it was, too frequently, by students in the last century. In that chapter there is nothing to alarm them, if they see the obvious conclusion which, — with their opinions, — they can draw from the early belief.

A, Lang.

MELANGES d'Histoire des RELIGIONS. Par H. Hubert et M. Mauss. Paris : F. Alcan et Guillaumin, 1909. 8vo, pp. xlii + 236.

L'Ann^e Sociologique. Publiee sous la direction de Emile DURKHEIM. Tome xi. (1906-1909). Paris: F. Alcan et Guillaumin, 1910. 8vo, pp. iii + 822.

The Birth of Humility. By R. R. Marett. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 19 10. Svo, pp. ii + 31.

The first two books are in continuation of the valuable series of publications initiated by Prof. Durkheim, of which an account has been laid before the Folk-Lore Society on previous occasions,