Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/567

 Revieivs. 525

the social influence is everything. Judgements, for them, are not dictated by the individual reason, but by social forces. We owe much to Prof. Durkheim and his disciples for calling attention to the social side of religion. The tendency of the English school of anthropologists was too greatly to neglect it. But, after all, the emotions arise in the individual. They are emphasized and organized by contact with those of other individuals collected in a group, whether that group be a howling mob of rioters or the bedizened knights and councillors and dames of a Primrose League. What anthropologists have to do in retracing the history of civilization is to balance accurately the one set of forces with the other, and to allot to either no more than its fair share in originating and impelling the movements of human progress.

E. Sidney Hartland.

The Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man. Being an Explanation of the Evolution of Religious Doctrines from the Eschatology of the Ancient Egyptians. By Albert Churchward. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 19 10. gf" x 6"> pp. xxiii + 849. Col. etc. ill.

The title of the book is somewhat misleading, as the object is not so much to explain the evolution of religious doctrines as to set forth a pet theory of the author in regard to Freemasonry. The author finds the root of all true religious knowledge in the Egyptian religion, especially as set forth in the Book of the Dead, and, as has been done before, traces Egyptian influence to almost very clime and people. The book is written ad majorem gloriam Freemasonry, and with Freemasonry, as such, we find no fault.

To judge by the author's frequent remarks, such as, — "a statement too absurd for any kind of argument," "an assertion sufficiently ridiculous to prove his complete want of knowledge of the subject" (p. xii.), "so lamentably ignorant of the whole subject" (p. xiii.), "in ignorance of anything pertaining to the subject" (p. xiii.), when speaking of those who disagreed with him