February 28, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



343 



T?te Development of Ancestral Images in China: 



Beethold Laufer. 



The object of this paper is to show that the 

 so-called ancestral wooden tablets serving at the 

 present time in China for the worship of ancestors 

 have developed from a former and very ancient 

 concept of anthropomorphic ancestral images. The 

 present mode of worship is briefly described, and 

 the coexistence of tablets, conventional paper 

 images and portraits is pointed out. The devel- 

 opment of family ancestral worship is traced to 

 the times of antiquity and explained as having its 

 origin in hero and clan-ancestor worship, in the 

 cult of which stone and wooden images were em- 

 ployed. These were, in course of time, transferred 

 to the individual family ancestors. After a clear 

 distinction between gods and ancestors had been 

 reached, the images were reserved for the gods, 

 the conventional tablets for the ancestors who, 

 under the influence of the growing democratic 

 tendency of this institution, themselves became 

 more and more conventionalized. 



The Separate Origins of Magic and of Seligion: 



James H. Leuba. 



Three types of behavior have been developed by 

 man: 



1. The mechanical behavior is the method of 

 dealing with things. It implies a quantitative 

 relation between cause and effect. 



2. The anthropopathic behavior includes (a) the 

 common relations of men and animals with each 

 other, and (6) those of men with unseen beings. 

 When these beings are gods, we have religion. 



The desired results depend upon an agent en- 

 dowed with intelligence and feeling. 



3. The magical or coercitive mode of behavior, 

 in which neither quantitative nor anthropopathic 

 relations are involved. But magic may be used 

 upon a personal agent. In that ease the agent is 

 neither prayed to, nor conciliated by offerings, but 

 coerced. 



Most of the varieties of magic may be accounted 

 for by the following principles of explanation : 



(a) Playful prohibitions. "If you do this," 

 say our children, ' ' that will happen to you. ' ' The 

 "this" and "that" have usually no logical con- 

 nection. Playful prohibitions may be taken in 

 earnest and acquire a magical significance. 



(6) Threats of untoward happenings made for 

 the purpose of preserving things vital to the life 

 and prosperity of the tribe. 



(c) The motive which leads people to make 

 vows. 



(d) The spontaneous response of the organism 

 to specific situations. The magical dances had 

 probably this origin. 



(e) The deliberate treatment of certain situa- 

 tions according to magical principles, for instance, 

 that like produces like. This source of magic is, 

 of course, relatively a late one, since it presup- 

 poses that a principle of magical procedure has 

 been disengaged from magical practises. 



With regard to the origin of science, Leuba 

 maintains against Frazer, that the ancestor of 

 science is not the magical but the mechanical 

 behavior. The essential presupposition of science 

 is that definite and constant quantitative relations 

 exist. The clear recognition of that proposition 

 means, whenever it appears, the death of magic 

 and the birth of science. This fact indicates the 

 opposition of the magical to the scientific attitude.' 



Man and the Glacial Period in Kansas: N. H. 



WiNCHELL. 



The paper describes the topographic features 

 of northeastern Kansas, relation of the continental 

 moraine of the Kansan epoch, distribution of 

 human stone implements with respect to the 

 moraine and the terraces. It specially bears upon 

 the patination of the artifacts, as indicative of 

 the glacial age of the agent that formed them, 

 calling attention to the similarity of these speci- 

 mens to European paleoliths, and enumerating the 

 kinds of implements that carry the distinctive 

 patination, pointing out the succession of cultural 

 stages that preceded the Neolithic and illustrating 

 the contrasts which they present when compared 

 with the Neolithic. 



Evidences of Man's Great Antiquity: George 



Grant MacCurdy. 



A brief summary of the author 's work in 

 Europe during the past season and of the most 

 important recent discoveries: the human remains 

 of a very early type from Sussex; a Mousterian 

 industry associated with a warm fauna {Elephas 

 antiquus, Bhinoceros mercTcii, Hippopotamus) in 

 the low (fourth) valley terrace at iVIontiferes, near 

 Amiens; Torralba, an old camp site near the 

 crest of the Sierra Ministra, Spain, where eolithic 

 and paleolithic implements have been found inti- 

 mately associated with the remains of Elephas 

 antiquus (perhaps also Elephas meridionalis) , 



' See for developments Parts I. and II. of 

 Leuba 's book, "A Psychological Study of Ee- 

 ligion; its Origin, Function and Future," Mac- 

 millan, 1912. 



