CURRENT LITERATURE
Tim comprehensive works written by such scholars as Spencer
and Gillen and by their less talented forerunners are now for the first• time critically exhausted in this psycho-analytic study by a- brilliant Hungarian anthropologist. The origin
and essential substance of totemism has hitherto been a com- plete mystery ; we have occasionally imagined the veil lifted a little, but on reconsideration the outline of the problem was as dim as ever. It cannot be claimed even now that
everything is dlear. Dr. Roheim merely applies the principles of psycho-analysis to this baffling outcrop of the aboriginal
mind. The author would probably be the first to point out where his speculatiOns fail to satisfy, and he is by no means contented with his present achievement. His book is, how- ever, the most complete scientific examination of totemism in Australia yet published. Nearly four hundred tribes are dealt with in this work and numerous cross-references aid the student in his comparative researches. It is not a book for the general reader, but the anthropologist and ethnologist will be well repaid for the hours spent in reading Dr. Ritheim's findings. The book was written by the author in English : it _ is not a translation—an achievement almost as remarkable as his successful analysis of the aboriginal mind.
Previous page
