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parallels show-and the same point might be illustrated in many other ways-joy and sorrow and physical pain hardly exist as distinct values for the 'hair-trigger organisation' that can find no solace save in the nervous discharge, immediate, violent, and almost undirected.

There is not room for more than a brief mention of sundry practices here discussed that can scarcely be referred to any religious system, whether past or still prevailing, but must have always tended to be suspect as unofficial and private dealings with the occult. Saul's visit to the Witch of Endor was at best a hole-and-corner affair, and, on a sterner view of the case, might be set down as a thoroughly disreputable transaction with a professional votary of the black art. Rachel's mandrake, on the other hand, or Joseph's divining cup, or David's bundle of life-presumably some sort of strong box in I which his soul could be stored out of harm's way—are if not actually nefarious, at any rate related to the selfregarding and, as such, shady side of life. As for the vitality of these so-called dry bones of the past, fertility charms are still on sale in the East End of London, while in the West End a séance with a Witch of Endor is doubtless to be obtained for a suitable fee.

To deal, lastly, with the subject of law, it is well known to the student of ancient society that no hardand-fast line can be drawn between religious and legal institutions. Thus Abraham's covenant involves a method of binding the contracting parties by making them pass between the severed portions of a sacrificial victim. On the strength of various analogies Sir James Frazer suggests that the double sanction is implied-first a conditional curse that a like severing may befall him who breaks his word, and secondly a blessing imparted by the holy relics that strengthens each in his moral purpose. An obscurer question bearing on the same topic is why sacrificial skins should be used ceremonially to render a legal adoption valid, as also to make covenants binding. The custom is at present confined to East Africa; but Sir James Frazer, suggesting possible culture-contact with the Semitic world, tries to discover some similar motive in the wearing of kid skins on hand and neck by Jacob when he ousted his brother from the paternal inheritance. Equally dark is the problem why

a slave who refused the offer of freedom and preferred to stay with his master must undergo the painful rite of having his ear nailed to the sacred doorpost as if so to seal the contract with his blood.

Whatever be the answer to these riddles, it is not likely to be found in some clear idea that once issued from the mind of a prehistoric philosopher. The bloodcovenant is rather one of the many crystallisations in custom of a fluid and indeterminate sentiment regarding the power inherent in the sacred-a power at once to heal and to hurt, to fortify the just and punish the unjust. Such a sentiment is no product of a particular age and country, but is as catholic and perennial as the religious consciousness itself. The special institution, on the other hand, has a traceable history; though, being but a variation on a world-wide theme, the odds are all in favour of its constant repetition in forms so much alike as in practice to be indistinguishable. Thus the notion of the two-edged power of the sacred underlies the ordeal, as when at the trial of the adulteress the priest plied her with the bitter water that causeth the curse.' Whether there is historical connexion with the African custom of the poison-ordeal it is hard to say; but mankind has found it profitable to experiment in all sorts of ways upon the susceptibility of a guilty conscience to the threat of supernatural justice; and so it is that, even if ordeals be now out of fashion, modern law is content to retain the oath.

In these cases the sacred or supernatural is approached that it may put forth its power in the interest of man. In other cases its negative aspect is prominent, namely, that in which the contagion of holiness' is chiefly felt as something to be shunned. The bearing of taboo on the law of homicide is a subject on which much might be said. Sir James Frazer touches on it when discussing the mark of Cain. Was it a disguise to protect him from the avenging power of the kindred blood that he had shed? Again, the homicidal ox must be slain, on the world-wide principle, illustrated by the English law of deodand, that everything associated with the act of bloodshed is infectious with the taint of sin. For the rest, his examples show how, while the impulse is uniform, the thought is mixed. The blood is contagious, yet cries

aloud for vengeance and may be baffled by disguise. The ox is at once an accursed thing and a criminal that must be punished. Wherever we look we find the same 'confusion of categories'-of our categories, that is to say. Why is it taboo to seethe the kid in the mother's milk? Is it lest the heat of the fire by sympathetic transference dry up the udder, or lest injury be done to the goat's maternal feelings? To the primitive logic of the heart it is indifferent which reason be given; nor even in these days of criticism is there any guide of life so sure as the bare intuition of the seemly.

If the bearing of the foregoing remarks has been mainly psychological, it is because it seemed that from this point of view the significance of survivals for the science of man might be apprehended in a new light. A surface-view of history as a welter of chance clashings and collocations shows change and decay everywhere. Seeking deeper, however, we come upon tendencies and motives that are, humanly speaking, everlasting. Yet equal justice must be done to passing and to permanent conditions. Thus, where the psychologist prefers to lay stress on the continuity of the mental life, the sociologist, working at another level of thought, may legitimately choose rather to insist on the relativity of custom, its dependence on the circumstances and convenience of the moment. Two of Sir James Frazer's most elaborate arguments sound this latter note. He deduces from the story of Jacob's displacement of Esau a former law, now surviving as a bare memory, by which the younger son succeeds. This practice of junior right or ultimogeniture -our Borough English-he explains, after a careful study of its distribution, as due to some migratory form of the economic life which causes the children as they grow up to desert the family dwelling, so that the youngest is left last in charge and possession. Again, Jacob's marriage with the daughters of his maternal uncle furnishes the text for what amounts to a complete treatise on this type of matrimonial arrangement, so prevalent in the primitive world. Sir James Frazer argues with great plausibility that it is the result of the exchange of sisters and daughters at a stage of society when this is the easiest and cheapest way of obtaining

a wife. But it is impossible here to do justice to these sociological researches which, for the pure anthropologist, constitute-if it may be said without prejudice to the rest-the cream of the book. Suffice it to say that in this field of speculation the method of survivals is seen at its best.

In conclusion, let what has been said be construed as no grudging testimony to the worth of a work that on forty separate main topics, not to take stock of the infinite number of other matters that are touched on by the way, has brought to bear the searchlight of a vast erudition, illuminating by its means wide tracts of the mental and social history of man. The method employed is that of the traditional anthropology; and, granted the validity of this method, the results cannot but be wholeheartedly approved. If certain apparent limitations of this method have been dwelt on here, it does not follow that for a science of history as distinguished from a philosophy it is altogether practicable or even desirable to transcend them. At any rate, the master of a more fruitful method has not yet appeared in this field. Meanwhile, the ultimate question is how the study of survivals is to serve as a pathway to reality. Just as all symbols are as nothing in themselves, their reality consisting in their meaning, so, it has been suggested, the crude conceptual and institutional forms of an age more inarticulate than ours must be interpreted, not by reference to the shifting shapes themselves, but in the light of the persistent vital purposes that they embody and in their own way express. The truth, if it is to be touched at all, will not consist in the dying letter, but in the spirit that lives on.

R. R. MARETT.

Art. 12.-THE LATE GERMAN COLONIES IN AFRICA. The German African Empire (1916): South-West Africa during the German Occupation (1916): German East Africa (1917): The Cameroons (1917). By A. F. Calvert. London: Werner Laurie.

German Colonies; A Plea for the Native Races. By Sir Hugh Clifford, K.C.M.G., Governor of the Gold Coast. London: Murray, 1918.

Native Races and their Rulers. By C. L. Temple, C.M.G., late Lieutenant-Governor, Northern Provinces, Nigeria. Cape Town: Argus Printing Co. London: Way, 1918. WHEN the German Empire determined, in 1884, to embark on the policy of founding a colonial dominion, its acquisitions were made suddenly and as it were at one blow. There was no gradual foundation of small settlements more or less casually made and spreading almost insensibly, it may almost be said inevitably, as has been the case with the colonial dominions of England and France, but great blocks of country in which no previous settlement had taken place were rapidly placed under German protection. They were called Schützgebiete (Protectorates'), but they were actually annexations, and have ever since been administered as such. In the course of the great war these Protectorates have fallen into the possession of the Allies; German power has crumbled to ruins; and it remains for the Peace Conference to decide on the question of their future government. Speculation as to the exact nature of the decisions which will be arrived at would be inopportune, but it has been officially announced that in any case they will not be returned to Germany, and that in some way or other the Allies must administer them. No one who is acquainted with the history of these regions can seriously advocate their abandonment by European Governments. Anarchy, internecine struggles, and the revival of the slave-trade, would be the inevitable results: the annihilation of peaceful and progressive communities by the more savage and warlike would follow.

Great Britain and France are the countries more immediately interested, and Belgium and Portugal also require full consideration. At the present moment two

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