470 
NATURE 
[JuLy 9, 1914 
Chapter xii. contains some interesting para- | Europe two thousand years ago, a.continuity was 
doxes, especially those dealing with infinity. One 
of these may be briefly cited (pp. 241-243). If we 
suppose that a straight line is bisected and 
each half again bisected, and so on, and if we 
imagine that a limit exists when the segments be- 
come indivisible, we obtain, according to the 
author, an impossible result when we apply the 
method to the repeated bisection of a side and the 
diagonal of a square. Here, again, the present 
reviewer does not consider that the author of 
this book has quite arrived at the right explana- 
tion. If aline is made up of indivisible elements, 
this would seem to mean that it consists of a series 
of points, and unless the number of such points is 
an exact power of two the process of successive 
bisection will stop short long before the infinite- 
simal elements have been reached. 
In the section dealing with “truth” the author 
classifies the various kinds of truth under different 
headings, such as that which is accepted as true, 
that which has been proved to be true by one or 
more experimental tests, that which has never 
been shown to be false, that which is in agree- 
ment with our laws of thought or with assump- 
tions. He also devotes a whole chapter to the 
discussion of “half truths.” 
In expressing a doubt as to how far the author 
has succeeded in getting “nearer the truth,” it 
must be admitted that the author has every right 
to attempt to place the remarks of the reviewer 
in one of his following categories: ‘‘The decision 
is true,” “The decision is not true,”’ ‘‘ The decision 
is half true,” ‘The decision is only true under 
certain conditions.” But an equal right is pos- 
sessed by any student of philosophy who will read 
the book, and it will probablv be better if this 
test is applied to the book itself rather than to the 
very superficial and impressionistic description of 
a work of 523 pages which has been possible in the 
present limited space. 
PRECURSORS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Reli- 
sions) Byi Poof. J. Gt Prazer. ,oThicd \ediiom 
Part iv., Adonis, Attis, Osiris: Studies in the 
History of Oriental Religion. Third edition, 
revised and enlarged. Vol. i., pp. xvii+317. 
Vol. ii., pp. x +321. (London: Macmillan and 
Co: , ‘Ltd-,51914.). Pree, 2 .vols:, 2es! met: 
HE historical applications of Prof. Frazer’s 
researches in early religion may be said to 
culminate in his study of the distinctive cults of 
ancient Syria, Phrygia, and Egypt. For 
through the agency of these three worships, 
spreading as they did through Greco-Roman 
WO. 2232, -VOLa. 931 
| it, the Christian religion. 
established between the barbarism which was past 
and the civilisation which was coming. The link 
thus formed was, not to put too fine a point upon 
Prof. Frazer regards 
the founder of Christianity as a historical person- 
age, like Buddha, and both religions, so similar in 
their ideals, as ethical revolutions, aiming at a 
| higher life than was possible for the majority of 
mankind. 
“Both systems were in their origin essen- 
tially ethical reforms, born of the generous 
ardour, the lofty aspirations, the tender compas- 
sion of their noble Founders, two of those beau- 
tiful spirits who appear at rare intervals on earth, 
like beings come from a better world to support 
and guide our weak and erring nature. Both 
preached moral virtue as the means of accom- 
plishing what they regarded as the supreme object 
of life, the eternal salvation of the individual soul, 
though by a curious antithesis the one sought that 
salvation in a blissful eternity, the other in a final 
release from suffering, in annihilation.” 
The author goes on to describe the process of 
accommodation— 
“but the austere ideals of sanctity 
inculcated were two deeply opposed, 
which they 
not only to 
the frailties, but to the ‘natural imstmcis or 
humanity ever to be carried out in practice by 
more than a small number of disciples. . . . If 
such faiths were to be nominally accepted by 
whole nations or even by the world, it was essen- 
tial that they should first be modified or trans- 
formed so as to accord in some measure with the 
prejudices, the passions, the superstitions of the 
vulgar.” 
This is much in the style of Gibbon, and has a 
similar, though more sympathetic, spirit. The 
Protestantism of the early Christians was 
“exchanged for the supple policy, the easy toler- 
ance, the comprehensive charity of shrewd 
ecclesiastics, who clearly perceived that if Chris- 
tianity was to conquer the world, it could only 
do so by relaxing the too rigid principles of its 
Founder, by widening a little the narrow gate 
which leads to salvation.” 
One great lesson of these volumes is what may 
be called the permanent appeal of the elements 
of primitive superstition; another is the way in 
which Christianity has taken up those elements 
and transmuted them. It is the eternal com- 
promise between the primitive and the modern 
in man. 
“Yet it would be unfair,” the author well adds, 
“to the generality of our kind to ascribe wholly 
to their intellectual and moral weakness the 
gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity 
from their primitive patterns. For it should 
never be forgotten that by their glorification of 
poverty and celibacy both these religions struck 
straight at the root, not merely of civil society, 
