Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/142

 1 26 J^ez'ieivs.

tliat several gods of different origin may have, from the first, divided the attention of the community, and these sources may have been effective not simultaneously, but successively."

The discussion of magic is equally interesting. Magic and religion have had independent origins; magic contributed little to the making of religion, and in its simpler forms probably antedated religion: but, as the ends of both are identical, magical and religious practices are closely associated. Religion is social and beneficial: magic individual and often evil, and it is of shorter duration than religion. Science is closely related neither to magic nor religion, but to the mechanical type of behaviour.

Even this summary will show that the book, as a whole, is interesting and instructive. The results will be seen to be far from revolutionary, but so many actively disputed doctrines are discussed that it is certain to arouse controversy.

\\. Crooke.

Geburt, Hochzeit und Tod. Beitriige zur vergleichenden Volkskunde von Ernst Samter. Leipzig: Teubner, 191 1. 8vo, pp. vi + 222. 7 Ab. im Text + 3 Tafeln. 6 m.

Professor Samter's book is not perhaps exhilarating reading: it is not the German way to beguile the journey through the wilder- ness of fact with any cajoleries of style, and inevitably much of the contents of this book is too familiar to students of folklore to be very exciting. But, if it is a little tedious as an armchair com- panion, the book is quite a compendious and useful little book of reference for the study. It contains an examination of various practices connected with birth, marriage, and death, the motive of which is assigned to the aversion or [ilacation of the spirits which threaten mankind at these crises of existence.

As regards the folklore of Germany and Central Europe, the author seems well equipped. Many of his illustrations, even where the practice illustrated is familiar, are new and interesting. His knowledge of the foreign literature of folklore and of the anthro- pological evidence appears to be more haphazard, and for savage