general reading of Plato as the English-speaking world, with its masterful Jowett, or Germany, with Müller and Schleiermacher.
W. A. H.
American Archæology and Linguistics in the University of Pennsylvania.
New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1897.—pp. xiv, 264.Professor Brinton has long since earned the right to be listened to upon the subject of primitive religions. This little work, admirable for its conciseness and lucidity, is made up of six lectures, of which the first two discuss the method of study and the origin of religion, the next three deal with the three forms of early religious expression—the word or myth, the object, and the rite, while the last treats of the lines of development. In the chapters dealing with the object and the rite, Dr. Brinton has adduced in an interesting way sufficient evidence to prove that the religious customs of widely separated peoples may have a common psychical source. His interpretation of the myth may not meet with the same general acceptance. In one place (p. 101), he says that the strange power attributed to words is due to their being "intense psychical stimulants," while in another place (p. 91) they are said to be "the very efflux and medium of the divine power itself." These two statements do not seem to be in entire harmony, since in one case the word is regarded as ultimate, while in the second case it is said to be representative or suggestive. When the medicine-man utters his curse, it is not the simple word that withers but the word of the medicine-man. When the huge carved head in New Zealand "spake and by the might of its words slew all who approached it" (p. 92), the power of the word must be found in the mysterious character of the carved head. If so, the word and the object which gives meaning to the word do not stand upon the same level of religious expression. Further, if it be admitted that to the similarity of the word for light (yekkhaih) to the yelp (khaih) of the fox is to be ascribed the myth that "the fox was the animal who first called for the light, and by the magical power of the word obtained it" (p. 1 16), it must also be held that this myth, resting as it does upon a formed language, is a wholly artificial product, and cannot be an expression of early religious feeling.
Dr. Brinton has rightly sought for the origin of religious feeling in the human mind, and is enabled by means of the distinction between consciousness and sub-consciousness to deal sympathetically with all religions, however primitive. At the same time his references to the 'sub-liminal consciousness' are in some cases hard sayings. "The idea of the superhuman," he says, "is developed from the unconscious human powers of mind" (p. 60). "Man owes less to his conscious than to his sub-conscious intelligence, and of this religion has been the chief interpreter" (p. 227). "There can be no question of the irreconcilable conflict between religion and science. They arise in totally different tracts of the human mind,
