460 SUMMARY OF PROGRESS IN ANTHROPOLOGY IN 1891. 
The science of folk-lore has been very much strengthened in Ger- 
many by the founding of Zeitschrift des Vereins fiir Volkskunde, which 
is a new branch of Lazarus and Stanthal’s Zeitschrift fiir Volkerpsy- 
chologie und Sprachwissenschaft. The carefully prepared bibliography 
of journals and other works relating to this science accompanying each 
number obviate the necessity of repeating here the title of every paper 
that has appeared on this subject. 
The friends of the study of comparative religion conducted in the 
University of Pennsylvania a loan collection of objects used in reli- 
gious ceremonies, including charms and implements used in divina- 
tion. The basis of the exhibition was a collection of Oriental idols 
of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church of the 
United States. This is, so far as reported, the first attempt to set up an 
exhibition of this kind, and could be repeated in alinost every city of 
the United States with happy results, not only with religious objects, 
but also to illustrate any class of anthropological concepts. 
The lectures of Count Goblet d’Alviella on the origin and growth of 
the conception of God as iJlustrated by anthropology and history, in 
the Hibbert Course for 1891, define the limits within which the study 
of religion may be considered a part of the natural history of man. 
In these summaries the subject has been made to include the creeds 
and cults of men and of the world. From the side of the spirit world, 
the study has been called daimonology, but this term is entirely too 
narrow. Count d’Alviella employs the word “hierography” as includ- 
ing the study of both creeds and cults. The elements common to all 
organized religions are: 
(1) The belief in the existence of superhuman beings who intervene 
in a mysterious manner in the destinies of man and the course of nature. 
(2) Attempts to draw near to these beings or to escape from them, 
to forecast the object of their intervention and the form it will take, or 
to modify their action by conciliation or compulsion. 
(3) Recourse to the mediation of certain individuals supposed to 
have special qualifications for success in such attempts. 
(4) The placing of certain customs under the sanction of super- 
human powers. 
Primarily, religion is defined as “‘the conception man forms of his 
relations with the superhuman and mysterious powers on which he 
believes himself to depend.” Further on and growing out of this con- 
ception are “ the acts which man’s primitive conception of superhuman 
beings and his relation with them lead him to perform.” 
Commencing with primitive animism, these conceptions have arisen 
through polydemonism and polytheism, through dualism to monotheism. 
The outlook in this author’s mind is most cheering. On the other hand, 
the teachings of the Ecole d’Anthropologie are to the effect that under, 
the clear light of science all religions will be banished from the world. 
