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By W. J. Perry, M.A. 1923. (Methuen & Co., Ltd., London. Pp. v + 212. Price 6 s.)
The Growth of Civilization. By W. J. Perry, M.A. 1924. (Methuen & Co., Ltd., London. Pp. v + 224.)
The columns of this JOURNAL are not the place for criticism or appreciation of the general theories of the historical school of ethnologists, and we may confine ourselves to the consideration of those aspects of Mr. Perry's argument which are of particular interest to psychologists. The general importance of the theory is not to be over-estimated. It is clear that in dealing with psychological material drawn from the comparative study of the various cultures, we are bound in the future to have regard to the historical relationships of the latter. It is no longer possible for us to bring together a heterogeneous mass of belief and custom and ritual, gathered from travellers' tales of the peoples of the world as they are to-day; to treat these without any consideration of the migrations and contact of cultures and naïvely to apply the word 'primitive' to all those that differ markedly from our own.
Mr. Perry's strictures on vague generalizations of this sort, and the crude attempt to draw parallels and conclusions based on such usage, are fully justified and not unnecessary even at this date. And yet it is clear