Anthropologist

“ All manner of groups of special students, interested in some particular side of human history, come now-a-days to the anthropologist, asking leave to borrow from his stock of facts the kind that they happen to want. ”

“ It is in details of this nature that the anthropologist finds again and again the most striking proofs of the basal unity of the living races and their necessarily common origin somewhere in the past. ”

“ Now, a man, tribe, or an entire population can in a certain number of years change its social state, its language, religion, etc. They do not on that account modify their external or anatomical physical characters. It is therefore to the latter that the anthropologist will attach most importance, contrary to what the linguist, the philosopher, or the theologian would certainly do. ”

“ In this sense, anthropology is the science that endeavors to reconstruct the early history of mankind, and that tries, wherever possible, to express in the form of laws ever-recurring modes of historical happenings. Since written history covers a brief span of time, and relates in fragmentary records the fates of a few only of the multitude of peoples of the earth, the anthropologist must endeavor by methods of his own to clear up the darkness of past ages and of remote parts of the world. ”

“ The ordinary anthropologist distinguishes a multitude of causes, a variety of processes, which shade into each other and gradually produce the belief in powers invisible, infinite, and divine. What tribe is unacquainted with dreams, visions, magic, the apparitions of the dead? ”

“ The special task that is actually assigned at the present time to the anthropologist is the investigation of the primitive tribes of the world that have no written history, that of prehistoric [Pg 9] remains and of the types of man inhabiting the world at present and in past times. It will be recognized that this limitation of the field of work of the anthropologist is more or less accidental, and originated because other sciences occupied part of the ground before the development of modern anthropology. ”

“ Certainly, history cannot furnish the answer. Here the anthropologist and physiologist come in with their methods, and even those, we think, can throw but an uncertain light on the very 'origin' of institutions, and on strictly primitive man. ”

“ I now go a step further, and pass to the distribution of man. Here, of course, the anthropologist is in his special region. He endeavors to ascertain how various modifications of the human stock are arranged upon the earth's surface. He looks back to the past, and inquires how far the remains of man can be traced. ”

“ The philosophic poet apprehended the significance of various facts, and welded them into a consistent theory of the development of culture, and thereby earned the honour of being the first evolutionary anthropologist. ”

“ But all human races and tribal types, known to us either from historical monuments, or who still live to-day in their primitive homes, in spite of climatic and cultural influences, have reproduced their original types in such a way that the anthropologist can tell, at a glance, the different types of humanity, according to their physiological and psychical characteristics. ”

“ There have been anthropologists, in our own time and before, who have come near to combine both excellences: and in none perhaps are they wholly severed. Least of all do we expect to find both wholly present or wholly absent, in one who has in a sense fallen into anthropology by an accident ”

“ Every anthropologist will see that they bear a remarkable analogy to various reported beliefs of the lower races, and will form his own conclusions as to the bearing the former have on the interpretation of the latter. ”

“ The third and last part of this chapter will show how, under modern conditions of science and education, anthropology is to realize its programme. Hitherto, the trouble with anthropologists has been to see the wood for the trees. Even whilst attending mainly to the peoples of rude culture, they have heaped together facts enough to bewilder both themselves and their readers. ”

“ So, if we examine the writings of anthropologists—if, for instance, we glance over the Journal of the Anthropological Institute—we shall find one set of students devoting themselves to the measurement of skulls, another to the general physical characteristics of races, a third to the growth and effects of material civilisation, a fourth to customs and beliefs, and so on. Each of these studies yields its own contribution to the net conclusions of the science of anthropology. ”

“ Like intelligence and morality, religious feeling has, moreover, its several degrees and manifestations. To seek for these manifestations, to determine their nature and intensity in the various human groups, must be the task of the anthropologist. ”

“ To the scientific mind, anthropologists or ethnologists were a horde who darkly muttered of serpent worship, phallus worship, Arkite doctrines, and the Ten Lost Tribes that kept turning up in the most unexpected places. ”

“ One fundamental principle must be clearly understood; that we can never become anthropologists merely by reading all the existing literature of anthropology, including the voluminous works on kindred studies and the innumerable periodicals; we shall become anthropologists only at the moment when, having mastered the method, we become investigators of living human individuals. ”

“ Our anthropologists, ethnologists and sociologists are just as actively and patiently inquiring into the origins of customs, institutions, law, religion, society. The historian is no longer content to rehearse a story because it is interesting ”

“ My purpose in briefly stating here the evidence of man's antiquity derived from race, language, and culture, is to insist that these arguments stand on their own ground. It is true that the geological argument from the implements in the drift-gravels and bone-caves, by leading to a general belief that man is extremely ancient on the earth, has now made it easier to anthropologists to maintain a rationally satisfactory theory of the race-types and mental development of mankind. ”

“ Though, after occupying themselves with primitive arts and products, anthropologists have devoted their attention mainly to the physical characters of the human races, it must, I think, be admitted that the study of these yields in importance to the study of their psychical characters. ”

“ Anthropologists are rendering a valuable service in their attempts to explore the baffling region of primitive man's mind, and they have hit upon some very suggestive clues, though so far only tentative ones, to the psychological experiences and attitudes which set man's feet on the {xvi} momentous religious trail. ”

“ The argument of the anthropologists is that while all nations have come from one parent-stock, as is claimed also by the philologists, yet the various peoples, in their primitive or savage state, have passed through a like low intellectual condition and growth. ”

“ Historians, who may be described as anthropologists whose work is made easy for them by the possession of written and dated records, have tacitly recognized this situation. They may now and then attribute some event or condition of civilization to an inherent quality of a race, or to an influence of climate or soil or sea. But this is mostly in their introductory chapters. When they really get to grips with their subject, they explain in terms of human thought and action, in other words, of culture. It is true that they dwell more on personalities than anthropologists do. ”

“ If the problems of British ethnology can be solved, history, physical anthropology, archaeology, and philology must combine.
II">THE METHODS OF ANTHROPOLOGY
A lay reader who takes up a treatise on ethnology ought to understand the methods by which anthropologists differentiate the various human types. ”

“ The recent study of anthropologists and archaeologists has brought to light much knowledge of primitive man which may be judged on its own evidence and own merits. The verification of these early cultures by the living races who have reached a similar degree of progress is of great importance. ”

“ Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids, Ethnology, Philology, and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of the upward evolution of humanity since the appearance of man upon our planet. ”

“ While, from this theoretical point of view, anthropology must devote itself to the investigation of human types and human activities and thought the world over, its actual field of work is much more restricted. Biology and psychology on the one hand, and history, economics, sociology, and philology on the other, have taken up anthropological problems, each from its own point of view, and each in connection with its own subject of investigation. ”

“ In so far, then, as anthropology deals with culture, which is, after all, the only distinctly human phenomenon in the objective sense, it conceives of it as historical phenomena and this conception is in so far the soul of its method. But anthropology is something more than the study of culture ”

“ The term anthropology now stands for the specific science of man. Ethnology, archæology, and somatology are merely divisions, or convenient groups of problems within the scope of this science. The ideal of anthropology is to coordinate all the data concerning man's culture, language and anatomy, past and present, with a view to solving the problems of his origin and the interpretation of his culture. ”

“ Ethnology thus treats of the resemblances and differences of the modifications of the human species in their relations to each other, but anthropology, as now understood, has a far wider scope. It treats of mankind as a whole. It investigates his origin and his relations to the rest of the universe. It invokes the aid of the sciences of zoölogy, comparative anatomy, and physiology ”

“ It is precisely the same in the science of humanity, which we may call anthropology. In order to prepare the way for 'applied anthropology' whereby we may dominate the immaterial world, the minds and tempers of men, we must begin with 'pure anthropology'; that is to say, we must idealize and speak of man not as he is but as he would be if certain tendencies which we see in him conducive to social order and individual development, could be infinitely—yes, and we must add, if we limit our horizon to this present life, impossibly—extended. ”

“ The studies of anthropology, whose final object is to solve the problems of the evolution of the human race and man's place in nature, begin with analysis, or the examination of particular characteristics. Human characteristics may be arranged, according to their bearing on anthropology and ethnography, in five orders: External physical traits ”

“ Ethnology, as thus defined, is a branch of anthropology, the great science which unravels the complexities of human structure; traces out the relations of man to other animals; studies all that is especially human in the mode in which man's complex functions are performed; and searches after the conditions which have determined his presence in the world. And anthropology is a section of zoology, which again is the animal half of biology—the science of life and living things. ”

“ The science of anthropology deals with the biological and mental manifestations of human life as they appear in different races and in different societies. The phenomena with which we are dealing are therefore, from one point of view, historical. We are endeavoring to elucidate the events which have led to the formation of human types, past and present, and which have determined the course of cultural development of any given group of men. From another point of view the same phenomena are the objects of biological and psychological investigations. ”

“ So likewise in hygiene and medicine, in ethics and religion, in language and arts, in painting, architecture, sculpture and music, the full import and often unconscious intention of human activity can only be understood, and directed in the most productive channels, by such a careful historical and physical analysis as Anthropology aims to present. ”

“ Anthropology, a science which studies man: his physical constitution in different climates, his races, his physical development, and the evolution of his institutions and social, moral, and religious conceptions. The institutions and the social, moral, and religious conceptions are, however, often considered as part of Ethnology. ”

“ With increasing knowledge of the data of anthropology, the forms of society, of religion, of art, and the development of invention, do not seem quite so simple as they appeared to earlier investigators. Attempts were made to fit the hypothetical typical evolution of mankind to the historical development of culture in different parts of the world, so far as it had been reconstructed. ”

“ It will thus be seen that anthropology differs from history, and resembles the natural sciences in its endeavor to disregard the subjective values of historical happenings; that it tries to consider them objectively, simply as a sequence of events, regardless of their influence upon the course of our own civilization. ”

“ In the end, if we go patiently onward, we shall find that 'pure anthropology' will be of immense practical importance in helping us to control and develop ourselves and individuals around us and all communities of men. ”

“ By 'anthropology' is meant not the anthropology of modern writers, who use the name to denote mainly the history of human culture in its more rudimentary stages, and as exhibited chiefly in material products, but the study of those aspects of psychology which are most closely allied with physiological conditions. ”