Stone Men of Malekula: Vao

Abstract

HERE indeed is a book, immense, painstaking and prodigious in sheer material. Although not fully competent to appraise its ethnological content, I feel that certain connexions which such a work evokes in the mind of a psychological reader may perhaps be not without interest. An occasion, for example, comes to my mind when visiting Stonehenge with Jung some years ago. Standing at the centre of the mentally reconstructed temple he asked : “What power had that idea which could raise these mighty stones ? ”When reading this formidable work a rather similar thought began to take shape in my mind. What power does the primitive still possess that can command such an impressive tribute ? Why, in fact, are we so compellingly attracted to the study of the primitive mind ? The claims of pure knowledge, answers the anthropologist. Maybe, but the passionate character of anthropological controversy makes one sceptical.

Stone Men of Malekula : Vao

By John Layard. Pp. xxiii + 816 + 24 plates. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1942.) 50s. net.