Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/421

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analogous to those of its birthplace. The further it spread east- ward, — to Persia, India, China, and the Malayan area, — the more it suffered deformation. In studying Moslem civilization it is essential to take a typical example of that civilization. Such an example the author finds ready to his hand in Morocco. There, once it had been conquered by Islam, a fairly stable Mohammedan civilization had been developed, in isolation from Christian and modern influences, by a people not brilliant indeed, but of average mental and physical endowments, and under a climate not too far removed from that which had given birth to the religion of the Prophet. There the type had been preserved almost unaltered for ages ; perhaps without exaggeration it may be said that there of all Mohammedan countries the purest Moslem civilization had been preserved. This is not to say that under the predominant Mohammedanism there may not be discerned many traces of more ancient religious practices. A new religion, — it is a commonplace of anthropology, — never succeeds in wholly effac- ing the old. Islam has been .more successful than most in doing so, and Islam has never been able to make a clean sweep of its predecessors, even in its own birthplace. In Morocco not a few customs exist which, though not forbidden, are looked at askance by the more pious and precise. They are left to women and children, or to the lower strata of the population. Two of the most interesting chapters in the volume before us are dedicated to the Carnival as it is practised in Morocco, and other periodical celebrations and rites which, whatever they may be, are not trace- able to Mohammedanism, but are far earlier in origin. Other chapters are concerned with magicians and magical rites, incanta- tions, talismans, divination, and sacrifice.

But the core of the work is to be found in the discussion on the relations between magic, science, and religion. The author holds with MM. Hubert and Mauss that magic is a techtiiqtie. It springs from the emotions, the desires, and is an attempt to give effect to them. It does not, however, imply the notion of an invariable relation between cause and effect : it is not a false science. Founded in savagery, it is rooted in the savage nature. Now the savage is emotional rather than ratiocinative. He has not yet attained to the notion of the invariable relation between cause