ANTHROPOLOGY. 
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called to the social forces which do their work independently of men in 
authority, and make society possible, even when there is little visible 
authority at all. The machinery of government described in books is 
often much less really powerful than public opinion, which controls 
men’s conduct in ways which are so much less conspicuous that they 
have hardly yet been investigated with the care they deserve. 
Beligion and Mythology .—While great religions, like Mohammedanism 
and Buddhism, have been so carefully examined that European students 
often know more about their sacred books than the believers themselves, 
yet the general investigation of the religions of the world is very im¬ 
perfect, and every effort should be made to save the details from being 
lost as one tribe after another disappears, or passes into a new belief. 
Missionaries have done much in recording particulars of native religions, 
and some have had the skill to describe them scientifically; but the point 
of view of the missionary engaged in conversion to another faith is un¬ 
favourable for seeing the reasons of the beliefs and practices he is striving 
to upset. The object of the anthropologist is neither to attack nor defend 
the doctrines of the religion he is examining, but to trace their rational 
origin and development. It is not only among the rudest tribes that 
religious ideas which seem of a primitive order may be met with, but 
these hold their place also among the higher nations who profess a 
“book-religion.” Thus the English or German peasant retains many 
ideas belonging to the ancestral religion of Thor and Woden, and the 
modern Burmese, though a Buddhist, carries on much of the old worship 
of the spirits of the house and the forest, which belong to a far earlier 
religious stratum than Buddhism. It is in many districts possible for 
the traveller to obtain at first hand interesting information as to the 
philosophical ideas which underlie all religions. All over the world, 
people may be met with whose conception of soul or spirit is that belong¬ 
ing to primitive animism, namely, that the life or soul of men, beasts, or 
things, resides in the phantoms of them seen in dreams and visions. 
Quite lately, a traveller in British Guiana had serious trouble with one of 
his Arawaks, who, having dreamt that another had spoken impudently 
to him, on waking up went quite naturally to his master to get the 
offender punished. So it is reported that our officials in Burma have 
considered themselves disrespectfully treated when the wife or servant 
of the person they have come to see has refused to wake him, the 
