wife, widow, relation, family. Thus there is good reason to suspect the development of an etymological myth on the spot; and yet the coincidence, if it be but that, with the Genesis story is most remarkable. But enough has been said to make plain both the intrinsic difficulty of the comparative study of folk-tales, and the inadequacy of the proof that the Biblical creation-myth is derived from a savage original. Naive it certainly is, and the product of a naive way of thinking; but such a mental habit is not peculiar to a low stage of general culture; as witness the fact that a large number of civilised people accept the Bible story to this day.

The treatment of the myth of the fall of man is more convincing. In the first place, it is clearly shown that the tale as we have it is what Tylor would term a partial survival, a re-adaptation of an older theme which has, however, left its mark on the new version in the shape of certain irrelevancies. Thus the tree of life appears in the story without contributing to its point; and this fact by itself leads us to suspect that the somewhat transcendental problem, How came sin into the world? was grafted on to the ingenuous and more downright question, How did death first come? In the second place, the hunt for parallels culminates in the discovery of a genuine story-cycle of the primitive type required. Man is sent a message bidding him live and not die, but the animal deputed as messenger perverts the message, so that man dies. Sometimes the messenger by his lie gets immortal life for himself, as did the frog; for it is well known that frogs come to life again as soon as the rainy season begins. This group of tales belongs to Africa; but outside this area Sir James Frazer collects many stories about animals, and in particular serpents, that, by casting their skin or otherwise, renew their youth and do not die; and some of these narratives from South America, Indonesia, Melanesia, and so on, likewise explain, in one way or another, how man lost or missed the gift of immortality which the animal now has. Meanwhile, not the slightest hint is given how a historical connexion between the Biblical myth and these savage Just-so stories' is to be made out; and the adjacent anthropology that might have supplied an intermediate link is totally neglected. This is 'the more

surprising because a tree of life is known to Babylonian mythology. But Sir James Frazer throughout deals with Babylonian analogies somewhat perfunctorily, perhaps because he feels that so intricate a matter is better left to the special student.

Babylonia, however, is duly made responsible for the stories of Babel and of the Flood. Babel, indeed, seems to mean Babylon. The commentators are probably right in tracing the origin of the story to the deep impression produced by the great city on the simple minds of Semitic nomads.' One of the great temple-towers provides the nucleus of the tale; and ideas have gathered round it concerning the nemesis attending such heavenscaling efforts, and, again, about the origin of language -ideas that can be matched elsewhere among primitive folk, though they are nowhere found in this particular combination. The legend of the Flood, which formed the subject of Sir James Frazer's Huxley lecture, is examined at great length; and his method of handling and interpreting such material is explicitly revealed as nowhere else in the book. He will not seek to rival Winternitz in the attempt to prove historical relationship by reference to the number of elements that different versions have in common, leaving such calculations to those who have a statistical and mathematical turn of mind.' By simple inspection, however, he decides that, though diffusion from local centres may have occurred in certain regions such as America and Polynesia, these deluge-stories have for the most part originated independently. The Bible story, of course, goes back to Babylon and Sumer, and presumably relates to the inundations of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, if not to some particular flood that impressed the popular imagination by its violence. Hence it must be classed as a legend. Certain other tales, however, are to be regarded rather as 'myths of observation.' Thus Sir James Frazer refuses to connect the Greek tradition of Deucalion with the Babylonian group of legends. The Thessalian story is probably nothing but a false inference from the physical geography of the mountain-ringed Thessalian basin and its outlet, the gorge of Tempe.' Whatever be the value of such explanations, it is to be noted that they do not necessarily

carry us far into the backward of time,' merely postulating a pre-scientific habit of mind which, in the case of Sumer, need not even have been pre-literary. The same remark applies to Sir James Frazer's interpretation of the hero-legends of the Jews, as for example those concerning Moses, Samson, Solomon, Elijah, Jonah. It is in respect of quality, not age, that they are primitive, presupposing much the same mental conditions as do the medieval lives of the saints.

Passing on from legend to religion and law, we may note that under the two latter heads customs are mostly examined; and that the method of survivals is more likely to be successful in dealing with customs than with mental habits. Religious and legal institutions tend to be organised in systems, and a given custom that is not in keeping with the prevailing system and lacks its support may with some safety be treated as the relic of an earlier dispensation. To go further, however, and assign each system to its place in a general evolutionary scale would be at best a precarious task. For instance, the centralised and henotheistic system of religion so passionately advocated by the prophets was in principle incompatible with the chaotic polytheism involved in the cult of local baalim, high places, sacred trees and stones, and so forth. The fossil-hunter, however, can by no means claim as his own these manifestations of a cruder faith, seeing that the so-called survivals were in a seething state of revival in ancient Israel, while in modern Judæa their status is almost completely restored, thanks to Mohammedan toleration of the local saint and his shrine.

Sir James Frazer does not attempt to present a conspectus of the customs prevailing at this lower level of religion, though passing hints would seem to show that such practices as religious prostitution and human sacrifice were especially characteristic of this phase. He does, however, illustrate certain aspects in a very interesting way, arguing, for example, that the sacred groves were probably such remnants of primæval forest as agriculture had spared in deference to the spirit of the wood, whose last resting-place it would be dangerous to disturb. He has also much to say about the attribution of sacredness to stones. He might, however,

with advantage have distinguished between the cult of the natural rock rendered impressive by its shape or situation, and the reverence shown towards the rude stone monuments of a vanished race; while the actual setting up of stones with some religious end in view might have furnished him with a third topic. The examples given chiefly relate to the first of these subjects. But, seeing that the dolmen, the stone circle and the cairn, each distributed through a different region, abounded in Judæa, it would have been instructive to compare the attitude of the immigrant Israelites towards such mysterious relics of the past with that of the European peasant, say, the Breton, whose awe is ever tempting him towards acts of positive worship. Again, here and there stones are still being erected, as by the Khasis and Nagas; and it might have proved worth while to analyse such imperfect information as we have concerning the motives on which the usage rests.

Some of the customs discussed, however, belonged to the established system of religion, and in such a case rank as survivals only in the sense that their grounds were now obscure; though whether these had once been clear must remain somewhat doubtful. Thus the priest who ministered in the sanctuary wore golden bells on the skirts of his robe, and these must sound as he entered and when he came forth lest he should die. The underlying idea is supposed to be that evil influences are scared away by the sound of metal; and such may well have been the reason for the Christian practice of ringing the passing bell, while the value of church bells for averting thunderstorms and the like was widely recognised in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, Sir James Frazer wisely deems it not irrelevant to illustrate the power of bells to touch the heart, so that, as a religion of fear develops into a religion of love, there is not loss, but change and even gain, of meaning in respect of the traditional symbol. He adds: A study of the emotional basis of folk-lore has hardly yet been attempted; inquirers have confined their attention almost exclusively to its logical and rational, or, as some might put it, its illogical and irrational elements.' Truly, the bane of the psychological study of human belief is a shallow intellectualism. Reasons of the heart are far more

6

universal and abiding than reasons of the head; and to them must primarily be referred those astonishing similarities that crop up spontaneously wherever human institutions embody the sentiments of the many rather than the opinions of the few. Thus it is by sympathetic insight rather than by the parade of unreal explanations extorted from bewildered savages and rustics that we may hope to arrive, if at all, at the inwardness of many a vague belief precipitated in custom. Why, for instance, did the Jews object to taking a census? So the savage will not mention the number of his children. So, too, the European shepherd will not number his flock, nor the fisherman his draught of fishes. No explicit reason for the prejudice has ever been formulated by these simple-minded folk. But perhaps we can detect in ourselves a sense of some nemesis attaching to the arrogance that would hold fortune to strict account,

Again, why did the Jews have priests who bore the title of Keepers of the Threshold? Sir James Frazer collects endless instances of rites, mostly rites of avoidance, that show the threshold, not only of a temple, but likewise of the private house or tent, to have been esteemed sacred all the world over. Yet no plain reason for the belief is in evidence anywhere, since the occasional practice of burying the dead under the threshold will hardly account for it. Nevertheless, the emotion we ourselves experience in taking a decisive step, in crossing a Rubicon, may afford us an inkling of the motive that prompts a ceremonial passage across the limit that marks off from the profane outer world the temple precinct or the scarcely less sacred home. At the same time, whereas all men have much the same emotions, their expression varies greatly with the stage of culture reached. Due restraint in the matter of expression does not desiccate the feelings. On the contrary, by transforming a transient excitement into a diffused fervour it perpetuates the mood, enriches it with internal rhythm, promotes its alliance with ideal elements, and in a word fosters that refinement of mind which is the supreme end of culture. Thus Sir James Frazer is justified in treating such phenomena as cutting for the dead,' and weeping by way of salutation, as features of low-grade mind and society. As the savage