Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/403



M. Emile Durkheim and his associates in the publication of L'Annee Sociologique have made many invaluable contributions to the science of Social Anthropology. All the studies of this French school have been written from what may be called the "socio-centric" view-point. The distinguishing feature of their method of investigation is the tendency to attribute the origins of social institutions to the social group as a physical and psychical entity reacting in a more or less automatic manner to the influence of environment. The part played by the individual in the early stages of social evolution is held to be negligible, and is accordingly ignored.

M. Levy-Bruhl in the present work has attempted to formulate the laws of a primitive psychology entirely sui generis and conforming to the socio-centric bias. Recently Mr. Wm. M'Dougall, in his Introduction to Social Psychology, analyzed the individual psychical processes which are of predominant importance socially. But this work was not strictly speaking a "social psychology" in the sense that M. Levy-Bruhl's book may be so called, inasmuch as the former took the individual mind as the subject of analysis, while the latter deals with the social mind alone. Moreover, Mr. M'Dougall did not limit his treatment to savages and lower types of society, but, having made his observations both upon civilized and uncivilized subjects, deduced principles of general application. This exemplifies the characteristic difference between the French and English schools of anthropologists. The French