(1) The Evolution and Progress of Mankind (2) The Racial History of Man (3) Ancient Man in Britain

Abstract

THE three anthropologists the titles of whose works are given above have approached problems relating to the origin of human races and of their civilisations by totally different routes, but all of them have this in common: they have reached their respective destinations by giving their imaginations the freest of reins. No one who examines the frontispiece of the late Prof. Hermann Klaatsch's book-his death in 1916 at the age of fifty-two robbed German science of one of its boldest exponents-would readily associate his burly body and prize-ring face with fanciful speculations regarding man's evolution. Nor do we expect Prof. Roland B. Dixon, who holds the chair of anthropology at Harvard University, to use a few measurements of the skull as fairy wands wherewith to rear wonderful anthropological castles in the air of long past ages. His castles, we fear, like those which children build on the sands, are doomed to disappear as the incoming tide of reason flows over them-but of this, more anon. There can be no doubt that Dr. Donald A. Mackenzie's imagination is a part of himself; he is a student of Celtic literature, of Egyptian mythology, of primitive folk-lore. He has that invaluable quality, denied to men of strictly scientific training, of entering the primitive human mind, seeing the world through its eyes, and understanding its modes of reasoning. He has used his gifts and training in drawing a word-picture of ancient man in Britain and the sort of life he lived.

(1) The Evolution and Progress of Mankind.

By Prof. H. Klaatsch. Edited and Enlarged by Prof. A. Heilborn. Translated by J. McCabe. Pp. 316. (London T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., 1923.) 25s. net.

(2) The Racial History of Man.

By Prof. R. B. Dixon. Pp. xvi + 583 + 44 plates. (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923.) 25s. net.

(3) Ancient Man in Britain.

By D. A. Mackenzie. Pp. xv + 257 + 16 plates. (London, Glasgow and Bombay: Blackie and Son, Ltd., 1922.) 12s. 6d. net.