Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 2.djvu/90

 246 BOOK REVIEWS

Fijian SocmxY, or the Sociology and Psychology of the Fijians. By W. Deane, M.A., B.D. (Macmillan and Co., London, 1921. Pp. 248, Bibliography and Map. Price 16 s.)

The value of this study ot the Fijian lies very largely in the first hand nature of the material it contains. The book is the expansion ot a thesis written tor a degree in Philosophy in the University of Sydney, but the material was collected while the author was in charge of a missionary training college in Fiji, with opportunities of travel among the islands of the group, and in daily contact with Fijians. The sub- title suggests a more exhaustive treatment than is attempted. Description rather than analysis of the considerable mass of evidence is undertaken. The transitions are accordingly at times abrupt, but the various topics are presented with much freshness, and the geographical background in its relation to Fijian culture is indicated with a vividness that is often lacking in works of this kind. The natural connection linking beliefs, customs and the development of the skilled arts with the occup- ations necessarily followed by islanders in quest of food, viz. : fishing and the making of canoes, nets, etc., is abundantly illustrated (the chapter on net-making is remarkably interesting). Again, the folk-tale or legend of the doings of the clan-leader hero, Tanovu, in part a creation-myth, gains imm- ensely by the way it is referred to the geography of Kandavu, an island which with its minor archipelago is separated by a deep sound from the rest of the group. Similarly when Mr. Deane tells us of the myster- ious' paths cut through the forest along the highest ridges of the mountain-ranges of the main islands leading on to lonely spurs of rock overhanging the sea, and yet accessible from the villages where men are born and die, a new comprehension dawns on us of the Path- way of the Souls' (Sala Ni Yalo) described by J. G. Frazer in his 'Belief in Immortality' (Vol. I, p. 462 et. seq. 1913).

The author is of opinion that the inhabitants of Viti Levu are later immigrants from the eaSt and of Polynesian stock, and contrasts their development of chieftainship and ancestor worship with the animism of the purely Melanesian race of the more northerly island of Vanua Levu. This ethnological theory may or may not be justified, but in view of Mr. Deane's recurring emphasis on chieftainship it is surprising that he pays only scant attention to Totemism, dismissing it, in fact, in one paragraph. He constantly recogjnises his debt to Mr. Rivers' 'History of Melanesian Society', and he can scarcely be unaware that in 1908 Mr. Rivers made a careful investigation of the village deities of Rewa in Viti Levu, and pronounced them to be 'totems in process of evol- ving into gods', having definitely slipped, as Frazer puts it, their animal envelopes, hut with the power of resuming them at pleasure, and being moreover now associated with tribes and not with minor divisions or groups. The significance of this Mr, Rivers points out to be that 'the