Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/438

 LORD AVEBURY ON MARRIAGE, TOTEMISM,, AND RELIGION.

BY A. LANG.

Lord Avebury, like Yama the discoverer of Death, "opened a pathway unto many," by his book on P re-historic Times (1865), followed (1870) by his Origin of Civilisation. Though written so long ago, and though concerned with anthropology, these books are still popular, like all that Lord Avebury writes.

It was under Lord Avebury, Mr, E. B. Tylor, and Mr. J. F. M'Lennan that men began their anthropological studies between 1870 and 1880. These teachers, naturally, were not agreed on many points which still divide us. Amongst these the most serious are the questions, " What was the social condition of man before the evolution of the various restrictions on marriage connected with Totemism and Exogamy ; and how were Totemism and Exogamy evolved " ? Again, " By what earliest steps did man attain to religious beliefs " }

My own " early views " have been and must continue to be modified by fresh discoveries and new reflections.

Lord Avebury, on the other hand, in his Marriagey Totemism, and Religion. An Ansiver to Critics (Longmans, 191 1), abides, on the whole, by the conclusions of his book of 1870, and thinks that they "have received additional support from the evidence which has since accumulated '^ (p. vii).