Man and his Superstitions: By Carveth Read, M.A. (Cantab.), Emeritus Professor in the University of London. (Cambridge University Press, 1925. Pp. ix + 278. Price 12 s. 6 d. net.)

Originally this book was published together with one previously

reviewed in this JOURNAL (Vol. VI, p. 353) in one volume. It has now been revised and issued separately. The range it covers will be seen from the following list of chapter headings:

I. Belief and Superstition; II. Magic; III. Animism; IV. The Relations between Magic and Animism; V. Omens; VI. The Mind of the Wizard; VII. Totemism; VIII. Magic and Science.

To the author the great problem of the origin of man is how he became a social or political animal. The explanation he gave in the former book was that at first men were sociable 'because they lived by hunting as a pack, and as a pack they had their customs and leaders determined by personal superiority'. The question then arises: What kept man a social animal after hunting ceased to be the chief means of livelihood? The present book attempts to answer this question.

The answer given is 'through beliefs in magic and animism (here called superstition)'. Carveth Read contravenes Wundt's view that magic proceeded from animism, and considers that the two originated independently. Nor does he agree with Frazer that magic developed into religion, for he thinks that this also had a separate origin, which he does not discuss.

A clinical psychologist will miss in this book above all a due appreciation of the dynamics of the beliefs that are described so interestingly. There is throughout no reference to psycho-analysis or to Freud, omissions which are especially striking in the discussion of ghosts and totemism.

The book contains a mass of useful material and is written in the author's well-known attractive style. But he would be the first to admit that it does not speak the last word on the subject.