1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 239 It is impossible in a notice of this kind to enter into the numerous and sometimes intricate questions dealt with in this study of tribal customs and organizations. Enough to say that the book is a contribution of the highest value to the early history of law. It is marked not only by wide learning but by the sound and temperate judgement brought to topics ob- scure in themselves and in some measure darkened by hasty assumptions. It seems to go pretty nearly as far as the data at our present disposal permit us to go in the way of a synthesis of the continually increasing materials, for much still remains to be done in the way of connecting customs with primitive religions and those phenomena which are loosely described as folk-lore. Fustel de Coulanges may have laid rather too much weight on such phenomena in his explanation of the Greco-Italian communities by ancestor-worship and cognate facts, but he indicated a method which may be profitably applied to many other communities. A few sentences (p. 368) deserve quotation as indicating a truth which well states the utility of these investigations and evidences a clear grasp of the economic conditions of primitive society : Jurisprudence even in its most modern phases is bound to be historical in so far as it takes stock of the social conditions which call forth legal principles : it is also bound to be analytical in so far as it examines the logical consequences of these principles and their rational combinations. The results are never quite rational or simple : various side influences and cross-currents bring in unexpected turns and complicate actual developments. Opposition and compromises between conquerors and conquered, psychological peculiarities, industrial discoveries, the pressure of economic needs, produce all sorts of variations which it would be impossible to reduce by dialectic process to the evolution of one or the other principle. Bryce. The Ancient History of the Near East. By H. R. Hall, M.A., F.S.A. (London : Methuen, 1919.) Mr. Hall, whose work reached its fourth edition in 1919, may well con- gratulate himself that in a time of such uncertainty, when publication has become so expensive, his book has been so cordially accepted by the necessarily rather limited public, which seeks to know the early period of ancient history. He has certainly succeeded well in carrying out the aim which he set for himself. As he says, his book is intended mainly for the use of students in the School of Literae Humaniores at Oxford, and he lays down the correct principle that the history of Greece cannot be fully understood without a competent general knowledge of the early history of the western Oriental world. Every scholar will agree with the words that 1 Greece was never a land by itself, fully Western in spirit, supremely civilised in a world of foolish Scythians and gibbering black men '. Nor will the great majority of scholars differ from him in thinking that Greece originally ' was as much or as little Oriental as Egypt '. The illustrations are well chosen, well reproduced, and calculated to interest the reader and give added effect to the story related in the text. The portrait of King Amenhetep III is a good example. It is so lifelike and so highly individual in type as to throw a strong ray of light on the very interesting account which Mr. Hall gives of the Egyptian king and
