PREFACE. vii 



From this point of view the present may be regarded as a con- 

 tinuous illustration of the first volume, and students of such 

 sociological subjects as the family, clan and tribe, totemic, matri- 

 archal and shamanistic usages, current views on primordial 

 promiscuity and group marriages, early philosophies, theogonies, 

 theories of the universe, assumed revelations involving sublime 

 concepts of a Supreme Being in savage peoples of low cranial 

 capacity, will here find some fresh materials not perhaps unworthy 

 of their consideration. 



Special attention is given to the subject of coincidences in 

 mythologies, folklore tales, and popular superstitions, such as the 

 prevalent belief in the were-wolf (tiger, leopard, jaguar), and other 

 strange but common modes of thought which may now be followed 

 round the globe from Europe through Malaysia to Africa and the 

 New World. The references to these matters, which will be easily 

 found by consulting the index, may help the student in deciding 

 between the antagonistic views of Prof. Max Miiller, who still 

 holds that all such coincidences " have a reason if only we can 

 find it 1 ," and of those anthropologists who think that, where 

 contact and outward influences are excluded by time and space, 

 such parallelisms are proofs rather of the common psychic nature 

 of man, everywhere acted upon by like causes during the early 

 struggle for existence. Certainly the fresh data here brought 

 together seem to lend strong support to the view that all these 

 manifestations of the dawning reasoning faculty have their root in 

 primitive economic conditions. They are associated in the first 

 instance with the question, not of spirit or ancestor- worship, which 

 comes later, but of the food supply, as shown by M. A. Bernard 

 for the taboo of the New Caledonians (pp. 142-3), and by Mr 

 W. E. Roth for the Australian class-marriage system (pp. 153-4). 

 It follows that, like the physical characters of man, such mental 

 phenomena, and especially those reflected in early social and religious 

 observances, can no longer be profitably studied apart from the 

 standpoint of evolution 2 . 



1 Fortnightly Review, Oct. 1898. 



2 See also Mr C. L. Henning's suggestive paper On the Origin of Religion. 

 in The Amer. Anthropologist lot Dec. 1898, which reached me too late to be 

 consulted during the progress of the work. 



