Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/418

 392 Reviews.

ideas about the place and lot of the ghost, and that such self-contra- diction is a mark of the primitive mind : therefore Rohde'sview in his Psyche that Homer's picture of Hades and the fate of the ghost is irreconcilable with ghost-cult is untrue to human nature ; {c), that a powerful ghost of a once-living man may often incarnate itself in an animal and that this animal will be temporarily reverenced ; therefore theriolatry and theriomorphism is not a stage of religion that necessarily preceded anthropomorphism ; the god may have been a man first, a beast afterwards, and simultaneously man and beast. Finally, the theory of the origin of Tragedy from the mimetic representations at the funerals of great men can draw no single piece of valid evidence from Dr. Frazer's book. Our author has wisely kept in reserve his own larger inductions : but one can discern the theory in his mind that ghost-cult has generated much of the ritual and forms of higher religion. We must wait for his later volumes before we try to test this question.

Lewis R. Farnell.

Notes and Queries on Anthropology. Fourth Edition. Edited by B. Freire-Marreco and J. L. Myres. The Royal Anthropological Institute, 191 2. Sm. 8vo, pp. xii-f 288. 5s. net.

While reading the above book my regret was great that I did not meet with it twenty years ago, when I first began to take notes on anthropology. It would have aided me considerably in any work I have done, and would undoubtedly have enhanced the value of that work by helping to a more scientific investigation of the subject. I cannot speak too highly of the suggestions it offers to the student for consideration, nor can I commend it too heartily to my colleagues in Africa, or to those who are living and working, in one capacity or another, among primitive peoples in any part of the world. It will suggest topics for study, will keep the enquirer on the right lines, and help the student to arrive at the heart of things. When the list of experts who prepared Notes and Queries is read down, it may seem most presumptuous either to criticise the