Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/313

Rh images. Thus the fusion of the religious emotion with the moral emotion snaps the cords which united religion and mythology; but mythology itself has been transformed, and as dogmatic theology has become at once the servant and sovereign of morality.

As formerly did science, now ethics claims its independence and autonomy. It tends to become secular and human, to eliminate all the theological elements that may still survive, to be no longer only the art of regulating the intercourse of men, but to indicate the path which leads to the higher human nature, the ideal of ardent justice, of charity, of strong and harmonious beauty, which is the collective work of the great spirits of all times. But in emancipating itself from religion morality becomes free, and souls can taste religious emotion in all its purity.

Religion is by no means a collection of dogmatic affirmations, nor of moral precepts; it is a harmony of emotional states, of sentiments, and of desires which have their own idiosyncrasies which do not admit of their being identified with others, but which one may fairly compare with esthetic emotions. Religion which has commenced by being purely mythological ends in a mythology; after having traversed a long ethic phase it has again become purely religious.

It will thus be seen that M. Marillier in introducing Mr. Lang's work to French readers has at the same time contributed an essay which will be found full of interest and suggestiveness. We heartily welcome all attempts to place the study of comparative mythology and religion upon a more scientific basis. A. C. H.

book forms the third volume of the "Memoirs of the American Folklore Society," and consists of forty "songs," with their tunes, and thirty-eight stories. The songs are really hymns, not unlike the hymns made popular by Moody and Sankey. They