For those, however, who take a special interest in the primitive, the book does not contain much that is especially in point. Mr. M'Dougall is, of course, a sound anthropologist who can speak with first-hand knowledge of the conditions of savage life. But it happens that the detailed study of the more rudimentary type of social group is not relevant to his present theoretical purpose. He has his eye mainly on the modern nation. To throw light on the peculiar mentality that it exhibits he considers by way of contrast the psychology of the crowd or mob. From the standpoint of the enlightened individual a crowd is in its psychological aspect a sorry thing. Mobbish feeling is as poisonous as raw spirit. Yet, on the other hand, to be patriotic is to be uplifted and enlarged in spirit. By participation in the mental life of his nation a man achieves self-realization on a higher plane. To resolve the paradox how degradation and exaltation are equally the products of social intercourse is the author's chief object. There is evidently a wrong as well as a right way of feeling, thinking, and acting together; and facts in plenty are within the reach of all that point to the conditions constituting the right way. So why drag in remoter facts such as those belonging to the underworld of the primitive? They can only perplex the plain man, for whom the book is written.
As it is, then, there is little to say about the present work from the strictly anthropological standpoint. The occasional references to the savage are of too general a nature to be especially illuminating. For the same reason it would be unfair to try to pick holes in what are but casual utterances. For instance, to describe the primary form of association under primitive conditions as "the kinship or subsistence group" will just pass so long as no microscope is turned upon the phrase. Yet one passage there is, of almost disproportionate length, dealing with Mr. Cornford's views about the genesis of religion, which is more questionable. Its gist is contained in the following paragraph:
"Mr. Cornford regards the savage idea of a collective consciousness as the germ of the idea of divine power or of God. Now this is connected with the question of animism, preanimism,
