Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/144

 134 Psychology and Ethnology.

Gothic architecture. There we hear little of architects, but we hear much of styles and periods, of foreign influence and provincial peculiarities, of problems of vaulting and lighting, of their attempted and successful solutions, of the influence of ritual and economic conditions ; all these and many more questions can be answered without our knowing by whom a church was built or why.

Already the study of kinship and social organization, having dispensed with Mind, is fast advancing to a high degree of exactness, and Dr. Rivers can already be said to have annexed this province to exact method.^"^

I will not encroach upon territories won by so much patient strategy and faith. I will merely show how even religion is threatened with subjugation, though, as yet, but little impression has been made upon it.

At kava-making in Tonga, food is set down before the chiefs {'eiki) by the common people ; the chiefs, however, do not eat of it; it is removed by their respective grandchildren and sister's children. The psychologist would say that the chiefs consider it below their dignity to take notice of the food. But where is his evidence that such is their state of mind "■ If we proceed historically the explanation is a very simple one : we know from independent evidence that the chiefs represent spirits. Now, in making an offering to the spirits, the worshippers offer up the food, which is then removed and eaten. The chiefs are spirits. Therefore offerings made to them are removed and eaten. Q.E.D. If any one is dissatisfied with this explanation, it cannot be on psychological grounds, for there is nothing in all this contrary to psychological laws.

There is no attempt in this to get at the back of the brown man's mind, and yet we would seem to have proved something, with the hope of proving more hereafter.

Ethnology may be compared to a moving picture ;

"Nor must Kohler be forgotten, whose monograph, " Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe," will delight all those who enjoy mathematical precision.