Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/374

340 falsehood are strongly repudiated; faults should be overlooked; oppression and stinginess should be avoided; and no mere mischief or needless suffering should be allowed, because it was unpleasant to see as well as to feel. Friendship was looked on as useful, but without any enthusiasm or devotion. Haughtiness was to be eschewed, and geniality cultivated in social intercourse. To superiors, ready submission was commended; and the influences of backstairs and toadying were not to be omitted. But mischief should not be made by repeating strong expressions. To inferiors, fairness and kindness were enjoined; past favours should not be harped upon. Pride, grasping, and brow-beating are all condemned. Trusty servants should be respected, and not humiliated, and animals should be hunted fairly and without deception." In short, the picture given us is pretty much that of the typical Egyptian of to-day.

I cannot part from Professor Petrie's book without protesting against his definition of religion as "the act of belief in what is not provable to the senses." Surely in giving such a definition he was thinking only of intellectual assent to the theological dogmas of a particular creed; it does not apply to religion in the abstract. Religion as such has as much to do with the senses as with the mind, and the question of proof certainly never enters into it.

notice of this curious book may not be out of place. Although it contains few references to folklore proper, yet it is a book which students of ethnology will find useful, and which will be worth getting for all who are interested in China and the Chinese. It consists of notices, in chronological order, of all the Chinese sovereigns of whom there is legend or record, from 3,000 to the present day. Although the author has no graces of style, the narrative is simple, concise, and clear; as for the matter,