Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/412

 REVIEWS.

The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead. By J. G. Frazer. Vol. I. The Belief among the Aborig- ines of Austraha, the Torres Straits Islands, New Guinea and Melanesia. (The Gifford Lectures, St. Andrews, 191 1-2.) Macmillan & Co., 1913. 8vo, pp. xxi + 495. i°s. «.

All Dr. Frazer's works are a source both of pleasure and profit to the reader; the present work is pleasant even to the reviewer. Unfatigued by his great work on the history and theory of tote- mism. Dr. Frazer has embarked on a still greater task, the exposi- tion of the beliefs and practices of the primitive and advanced races of the earth in regard to the dead. As a master in the method and art of collecting, selecting, and grouping the facts upon which the great world-inductions of anthropology might be based, he has no rivals ; and he shows himself here, as he has in his former achievements, capable of carrying a project through which might appear to demand a syndicate of coUaborateurs, and of conducting it single-handed better than any syndicate could. In this new field, which promises to yield an inestimable harvest to social anthropology, his prima vifidemiatio is this first volume. It displays all the best qualities, both in respect of style and matter, that characterise his former works, together with a certain reserve and sobriety in theorising that is sometimes lacking in certain chapters of The Golden Bough.- The first object of this new magnum opus is to present us with the facts, to fill a great gap in what we may call sociological history : and the first necessary step is the survey of the existing or the recently recorded primitive races of mankind. Dr. Frazer has here presented us with the