Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/546

 5 1 o Reviews.

in the avowals made by the tortured victims, such as marks of anaesthesia, hallucinations, and illusions, as so many proofs of mental derangement, auto-suggestion, and hypnotism; the accused were nothing but innocent victims of neuropathia, the result of ignorance, misery, and sexual abnormalities mixed up with ancient popular traditions exaggerated by the trials of the victims. Witchcraft spread as a moral and pathological epidemic from country to country, the author tracing the course which was taken by this epidemic. A terrible indictment against the action of the Churcli is drawn up by the author of the book, who, in support, publishes in his Appendix Bulls and other official documents hitherto inedited.

The book is at the same time an important contribution to the study of the darker side of popular superstitions and beliefs, some of which survive to this very day, and shows how deep the influence has been which morbid nervous diseases grafted upon ancient traditions and primitive conceptions have exercised upon the mind of the people, and how much of it is still reflected in the folklore of Europe.

M. Gaster.

The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilisation. By Angelo Mosso. Trans, by Marian C. Harrison. T. Fisher Unwin, 1910. 25 x 16 cm., pp. xxiii + 424. 203 ill. A well-illustrated description of the explorations by Sir A. Evans and other archaeologists in the Mediterranean area, as a supplement to the shorter reviews of the question by Professor R. M. Burrows and Mr. and Mrs. Hawes, was wanted. This has now, to some extent, been provided in the present work and in the author's previously published book on the palaces of Crete and their builders. Signer Mosso, who has unhappily passed away since the publication of this book, was more an anthropologist and geologist than an archaeologist. His investigation of these problems was undertaken late in life, and he was inadequately