Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/174



the title nor the introduction to this work gives a clear indication of its multitudinous contents; nor is it quite easy to do so. It opens with speculations regarding the Indo-Aryas before they crossed the Hindu-Kush; it sometimes reaches down to the present day; and it ends with a sketch of social and political conditions in mediaeval Europe. Its main subject is the religious philosophy, explicit or implied, in certain great religions; but it has a secondary aim to show the influence religion had on the social polity, more especially in Christendom and Islam. Many other matters, ancient history and ethnology, folk-lore and magic, Nestorian and Buddhist missions, these and half a hundred other subjects pass under review. The author's sympathies are generous and large, his reading is wide, and his learning is great. He has a lively sense of similarities, often superficial but sometimes worthy of attention; and he occasionally has keen flashes of insight. We may smile when we are told that Buddha was a Saco-Thracian and that his native clan of the Sakyas were the Scythian Sacae; but Dr. Bussell is seldom dull, and even his idiosyncrasies are entertaining. He has a strong objection to the use of capital letters, although this is by no means consistently carried out. We recognise old friends under new names; for instance Pelagius is Morgan: and Dr. Bussell holds pronounced views on many subjects. He thinks democracy is near allied to absolutism, in illustration of which he might have cited the Ultramontanes