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Who has not heard of that strange volcanic island of Bali? And there are few who would not desire to visit it. Here is an opportunity to go there and see it with eyes and vision much sharper and penetrating than that possessed by most of us. For, as is well known, the author is an artist of unusual seeing ability, and here shows himself to be an anthropologist of no mean order, even if an amateur in this field.
We are brought to the Island, then told of its People, enter into the Community, its Economic Order, Everyday Life. Then more intimate views of the Family, and the Art and Drama of the people. This in Part I in 299 large octavo richly illustrated pages. The rest of the 400 and more pages, with bibliography and index, tells of Rites and Festivals, Witchcraft Beliefs, Ideas of Death and Cremation, with a final chapter of what the missionaries will make of it.
Apart from the charm and distinction of the literary quality of the book, apart from the wealth of illustrative material, which of itself is a rare achievement, the psychoanalytically minded reader will find much to think about, even though there is no intimation of psychoanalytic conceptions in the entire work.
As the author states, “everybody in Bali seems to be an artist.” “Coolies, princes, priests and peasants, men and women alike can dance, play musical instruments, paint or carve in wood and stone.” Repression has not yet annihilated the id, although most of its aggressive manifestations have been brought under a masterly super-ego magic ritual.
One must find one's psychological science by inference and through the vision of the illustrative abundance rather than through any adequate description of anthropological material. We find it an amazingly interesting work.