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This is a new and popularly priced edition of the abridgement of Frazer's classic made some years ago. The significance of the work in blazing the way for new evidences and methods in anthropology is familiar to the readers of this Review. Its special bearing to psychoanalytic study has been often stressed. There may be mentioned in this respect a critical review of the work published in these pages (v. Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. III, No. 1, January, 1916) in which Louise Brink dealt at length with the light thus thrown on the problem of the common determinism basing ontogenetic and phylogenetic psychical phenomena.
The present issue is a reprint of the one volume edition prepared by Frazer in order to bring the substance of the whole work to a larger group of readers. The task has been to retain the chief principles, together with sufficient evidence to illustrate them clearly, while at the same time removing a great part of the original text and evidential matter. There has been some condensation of the text but in the main the original language has remained unchanged. All notes and references to earlier authorities have been removed; thus necessitating the reader in search of sources for particular points to have recourse to the full documentation and bibliography of the larger work.
The volume has been admirably prepared, and brings to the student the whole compass of Frazer's work in some sixty chapters. The author has performed a valued service in thus making a wider use of his great work possible.