The Native Races of America

Abstract

THE issue of the fourth and concluding volume of extracts from the notebooks of Sir James Frazer, edited by Mr. R. A. Downie, must inevitably provoke certain general reflections on the work as a whole. Among these, the first to emerge in the minds of all will be admiration for Sir James's genius, mingled with a profound amazement at the stupendous energy and industry which have extracted and digested the material apt to his purpose from so vast a literature as has been sampled in these four volumes. With a penetrating insight into the working of what might be termed the 'traditional' mind of primitive man, he has disentangled from an enormous body of recorded fact the significant threads in the evolutionary development of religious beliefs and emotional reactions in a vast variety of forms of the social environment. The task has demanded a logical grasp and a power of generalization which have been equalled by the lucidity and persuasive eloquence with which the argument has been presented to the world. The supplementary evidence contained in "Anthologia Anthropologica"is no less an integral part of the monument, which is Sir James Frazer's life work, than "The Golden Bough"or "Totemism". For its publication we are deeply indebted to Lady Frazer and the editor, to both of whom Sir James pays well-deserved and graceful tribute in a foreword.

The Native Races of America

A Copious Selection of Passages for the Study of Social Anthropology from the Manuscript Notebooks of Sir James George Frazer. Arranged and edited from the MSS. by Robert Angus Downie. (Anthologia Anthropologica.) Pp. x + 352. (London: Percy Lund, Humphries and Co., Ltd., 1939.) 35s.