Early Beliefs and their Social Influence

Abstract

IT is not given to every anthropologist to be pre-eminent alike in the field and in the study; and it is only when this happy combination of interests occurs that facts and ideas are likely to be brought into harmonious relation. Prof. Westermarck actually started his career as a theorist, obtaining as a comparatively young man the most brilliant success with his “History of Marriage”—a work which later he crowned, if it was scarcely possible to surpass, with his admirably documented treatise on “Comparative Morals”. On the other hand, he has given many of his best years to first-hand study of the social institutions of Morocco, where so many grades of culture exist in juxtaposition that a stratigraphy covering all the transitional phases between savagery and civilisation will reward research, given wide enough acquaintance with the conditions and the requisite analytical acumen. Thus it is fitting that, in the ripeness of his knowledge and experience, such a thinker should set himself to give summary expression to his more general convictions concerning methods and results.

Early Beliefs and their Social Influence.

By Prof. Edward Westermarck. Pp. vi + 182. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1932.) 7s. 6d. net.