“Dr. Westermarck belongs to no accepted school of moralists. He endorses neither the humanist nor the religious views of society. He is neither a utilitarian nor an intuitionalist. He is both an anthropologist and a historian; he is also a sociologist and a traveller. In neglected lands where he might escape from European prejudices he has lived and studied the problems of the human heart and mind, accumulating at first hand a mass of material which throws much light on the origin and development of peculiar customs and beliefs. This, added to a remark able erudition, a scientific temper, a felicity and abundance of illustration, and a clear and vigorous style, gives us a contribution to ethics, psychology, and sociology which is undoubtedly of the first rank, and, in our opinion, the most comprehensive and luminous work which has yet been written on the subject.”
GLOBE.—
“Both by the clarity and the philosophical insight of its arguments, and the wide range of its investigations and illustrative details, it will claim securely to rank among those epoch-marking works which define the steady progress of mankind in the study and understanding of its sociological developments.”
“Both by the clarity and the philosophical insight of its arguments, and the wide range of its investigations and illustrative details, it will claim securely to rank among those epoch-marking works which define the steady progress of mankind in the study and understanding of its sociological developments.”
PALL MALL GAZETTE.—
“The fuller consideration of Dr. Westermarck’s book as a philosophic treatise must wait; meanwhile we can only congratulate him and the Duchy, of which he is so conspicuous an ornament, on the production of a book that is really epoch-marking.”
“The fuller consideration of Dr. Westermarck’s book as a philosophic treatise must wait; meanwhile we can only congratulate him and the Duchy, of which he is so conspicuous an ornament, on the production of a book that is really epoch-marking.”
SCOTSMAN.—
“One of its prime characteristics is the skill with which it traces out the historical connection between moral opinions and magic and religious beliefs.”
“One of its prime characteristics is the skill with which it traces out the historical connection between moral opinions and magic and religious beliefs.”