Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/91

Rh We fancy that lie does not appreciate the labours of the late Mr. Lewis Morgan, and on points that Mr. Morgan has certainly much to tell us Mr. Lang is, in our opinion, deficient. But it is in the marvellously adroit use to which he puts his discoveries in local observances that Mr. Lang is really at his best. No one before him has seen that while at Athens or Sparta the worship of the gods would be attended by ceremonies which were more in keeping with the most advanced Greek life the lesser towns would use their own ceremonial, which, like the examples of Ombi and Tentyra, afford evidence of the old savage stage of culture. Mr. Lang does not often refer to Roman history, but if he had done so in this respect he would have found that local ritual and practices among the Romans reveal a similar state of things.

Where everything is so well done, and where we agree so completely as we do with Mr. Lang, it may seem almost trivial to note small blemishes, but we must confess to a frequent feeling of irritation that in so distinctively a scientific book expressions belonging to the humorous side of Mr. Lang's many-sided nature constantly crop up. This may be, perhaps, a fault of our's rather than of Mr. Lang's, but we are content to record our protest on the simple ground that in the hands of some imitator who would not be the literary artist that his master is, the practice would be simply unbearable.

Totemism is perhaps one of the most well-known features of savage society as it has been made popular by the histories and fictions dealing with the American Indians. The late Mr. McLennan discovered that so far from being confined to one people or comitry there was almost certain evidence that it existed universally at certain stages of human culture. Few inquirers have followed up the hints conveyed by Mr. McLennan in his articles which appeared in the Fortnightly Review, but first Mr. Lang, and now Mr. Frazer, recognise the importance of the subject. In all inquiries into phenomena which take a prominent place iu human history, it is pre-eminently necessary to obtain a complete summary of the features which distinguish them in various parts of the world, and we cannot conceive of any more