BOOK REVIEWS 381
contended that such questionings are naive. Yet they occur and will recur. And it would seem accordingly that ethnologists owe it to their consciences to realize clearly how limited the scope of their results is, how little they satisfy the demand be it justified or simple for broad results, or offer formulations that will prevent the average inquirer's relapse into the comforting embrace of easy and unsound theories. Such a realization is not marked in Lowie's volume.
And finally, however firmly scientific ideals may hold us to the tools which we use, we must also recognize that the desire for the applicability of knowledge to human conduct is an inescapable one. That branch of science which renounces the hope of contributing at least something to the shaping of life is headed into a blind alley. Therefore, if we cannot present anything that the world can use, it is at least incumbent on us to let this failure burn into our consciousness.
Serious as this comparative sterility is, it is yet preferable to the point of view which recognizes the demand but attempts to satisfy it with conclusions derived from shallow thinking under the influence of personal predilection. After all honesty is the primary virtue, and Lowie's soberness is a long advance on Morgan's brilliant illusions. But one sometimes sighs regretfully that the honesty of the method which is so successfully exemplified here is not stirred into quicker pulse by visions of more ultimate enterprise.
A. L. KROEBER
Pagan and Christian Creeds; Their Origin and Meaning. EDWARD
CARPENTER. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920. Pp.
319.
Mr. Carpenter is best known for his book on Civilization; Its Cause and Its Cure. In that book he has a chapter entitled "Exfoliation," which in all good conscience may be taken as the forerunner of Bergson's Creative Evolution. The thesis of that chapter is that evolution is as much the unfolding of potentialities within the individual as it is the result of the impact upon him of external forces that he evolves himself. In The Art of Creation Carpenter has carried out this idea with emphasis upon varied phases of the self which he believed, exemplified it. Now, in Pagan and Christian Creeds, he gives this idea application in the realm of religious ideas. His thesis is about as follows:
There is a remarkable similarity between the religious beliefs of peoples, and this similarity is none the less evident if we take for com- parison those creeds usually supposed to be at the opposite poles, namely,
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