Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/434

408 relatives. There are very close personal and individual bonds of union between parents and children. The parental relation seems to be a régime of love, and not of coercion. The father's authority is exercised over his children merely during their early childhood, "i.e. during a period when there is, in a general way, very little room for the display of any serious authority," and comes to an end when the girl marries and the boy is initiated.

Dr. Malinowski's conclusions derive their great value from the extremely careful manner in which he deals with his evidence. This book is a critical study of documents which contain many inconsistent statements, inaccuracies, and hypothetical assumptions represented as actual facts. On controversial points he has skilfully tried to eliminate the contradictions by applying textual criticism to the statements, or by pointing out the possible source of error, or by showing that the contradictions must be set down to local differences between the tribes. He has carefully disintegrated all that is hypothetical in the statements from the observed facts themselves; and he has pointed out which facts are well established and which are more or less uncertain or contradictory. But, in the first place, he has taken care to give us an explicit survey of the evidence, and he has drawn his conclusions in such a manner that his reasons for drawing them are perfectly clear to the reader. From a methodological point of view. Dr. Malinowski's book is a model which ought to be imitated in all future inquiries of a similar kind. Another point of general importance is his long and penetrating discussion of kinship, occupying no less than sixty-five pages, which will be found instructive and stimulating even by those who cannot, in every detail, agree with his views.

My general opinion about Dr. Malinowski's book is that it is one of the best sociological monographs which I have ever read.

Author:Edvard Alexander Westermarck