In the early days of anthropology, it was not quite clear whether the new arrival was an infant prodigy, or simply a know-all adolescent. If the claims of the first generations of anthropologists were correct, marvellous keys had been discovered for tracing the prehistory of the family and the origins of religion; but the development of the subject brought about their rejection, though Morgan’s scheme of the evolution of the family was absorbed into the ossified dogmas of Soviet Communism (from which it has by now been quietly dislodged), while Sir James Frazer’s mythology of corn spirits and dying gods not only impressed Freud but gave English-speaking intellectuals their abiding image of traditional religion.

Professional social anthropology meanwhile followed the path of academic respectability, the elaboration of its own methodology and, more particularly, its own academic language, which admirably fulfilled the related functions of revealing its mysteries by successive degrees to the initiated while concealing them from outsiders. Respectability once attained, however, has a way of losing its charm, and we now seem to be on the verge of a new wave of anthropologists as prophets. Dr Roy Willis presents himself as one of the first of the band, with his revelations contained in Man and Beast, the first of a new series, entitled Approaches to Anthropology, under the general editorship of Professor Mary Douglas.

Let it be said at once that Dr Willis is a singularly urbane prophet and his kerygma contains little that menaces doom, though much that stirs up thought.