This very scholarly study of certain rituals, particularly the Couvade, the Kol Nidre, and the Shofar, is an important book in more ways than one. It not only is a critical study of these particular usages, involving textual criticism in their interpretation, but it presents a picture of the evolution of human culture which is very significant and full of important implications. It should be realized, however, that the whole social and cultural theoretical structure which the author so carefully builds through the pages of this work are erected upon the assumptions of the primal horde as laid down in Freud's “Totem and Taboo.” If that fundamental assumption is not accepted, then this whole structure, if not entirely destroyed, would need many radical modifications that would result in a very different story.

Without entering into either a description of the views set forth by the author in detail with reference to the various subjects he discusses, it may be said that the picture that one gets of the evolution and development