Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION t AT the International Congress for the History / of Religions held recently in Oxford, several X JL friends who listened to the paper on "The Conception of Mana," which appears fourth in the present collection, were kind enough to suggest that it ought to be published under one cover with various scattered essays wherein aspects of the same subject had previously been examined. The essays in question were: "Pre-Animistic Religion," FolkLore, June 1900, pp. 162-182; "From Spell to Prayer," Folk-Lore, June 1904, pp. 132-165; "Is Taboo a Negative Magic? " Anthropological Essays, presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in honour of his 75th birthday, October 2, 1907, pp. 219-234; and " A Sociological View of Comparative Religion," Sociological Review, January 1908, pp. 48-60. By the kind leave of the Editor of Folk-Lore, the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, and the Editor of the Sociological Review, it has been possible to proceed to the realization of this idea, conceived as I have shown amid the fervent courtesies of a festive occasion. Now, however, that in cold blood one contemplates the accomplished deed, the doubt not unnaturally arises whether, after all, it was worth while to reprint articles that in their original form received, from experts at all events, as full and favourable an attention as their author could venture to expect. It is true that the veteran psychologist, Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig, has, in his important Volkerpsychologie (Vol. II., Pt. II., 171 foil.), done me the honour of associating my name with what, under the designation of die praanimistische Hypothese, he treats as a representative theory of the origin of religion, formulated in direct opposition to the Tylorian "animism."