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This is a translation of Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures, a book which made a considerable stir on its publication in 1910. By some mischance the translation has been delayed, although one has already appeared of the later work La Mentalité Primitive. A review of the latter book appeared in this JOURNAL some time ago (Vol. V, p. 244), and the reader is referred to that review for a general comment on Professor Lévy-Bruhl's work. One may say that the point of view on which it is based is essentially psychological, and that it represents a considerable advance on the psychological anthropology of the earlier British school (Tylor, Frazer, etc.). It would thus be regarded unsympathetically by many of the present-day British school (Elliott-Smith, Perry, etc.).
Although the work takes no account of the contributions made by psycho-analysis in the same field, its general tendency is one that will commend itself to psycho-analysts. Both the views it enunciates and the material it interestingly brings together are of such value that no analyst concerned with the problems of primitive mentality can afford to ignore it.