Ethnology

“ I must still deny that all races are equally endowed, or that the position with reference to civilization which the various ethnic groups hold to-day is one merely of opportunity and externalities. I must still claim that the definition of the ethnos is one of the chief aims of ethnology ”

“ The science called ethnology claims as its field of research the study of all racial characteristics of man. It deals not only with his physical features, social grouping, and geographical distribution, but also with the products of his hand and mind, his thoughts and feelings. ”

“ The old term ethnology has a far more limited and definite meaning. It is the study of the different peoples or races who compose the varied population of the world, including their physical characters, their intellectual and moral development, their languages, social customs, opinions, and beliefs; their origin, history, migrations, and present geographical distribution, and their relations to each other. ”

“ During the past seventy years the various tribes, races, and nationalities of mankind have been examined in detail by the students of ethnology, and a comparison of the results shows that the fundamental patterns of life and behavior are everywhere the same, whether among the ancient Greeks, the modern Italians, the Asiatic Mongols, the Australian blacks, or the African Hottentots. ”

“ THE QUESTION OF COMPLEXION.
The tendency of scientific thought in ethnology is in the direction of giving more and more importance to the race characteristics, such as height, color of the hair, eyes and skin, and the formation of the skull and body generally, than to language. The language possessed by a people may be merely the result of conquest or migration. ”

“ Ethnology is the science of the origin of peoples, of their characteristics, and of their distribution over the earth. In this set of problems, psychological traits receive a relatively subordinate place. Apparently insignificant art products and their modifications may be of high importance in the determination of former migrations, fusions, or transferences. It is in this way that ethnology has been of valuable service to history, particularly in connection with prehistoric man. ”

“ Ethnology, as it is understood by some students, has to do with peoples, groups of mankind separated from other groups, linguistically, physically or geographically, but has nothing to do with "race." Race is thought to be purely a zoological question. Others understand ethnology to be the study of races of men, varieties in the zoological sense, and their subdivisions into smaller groups, peoples. ”

“ That certain tendencies of all but universal occurrence are characteristic of culture, no fair observer can deny, and it is the manifest business of ethnology to ascertain all such regularities so that as many cultural phenomena as possible may fall into their appropriate categories. ”

“ In this article it will be convenient to give the term ethnology its widest meaning, and to consider not merely the customs, beliefs, and institutions of various peoples, but also the early history of the human family, its differentiation into races and the significance of their geographical distribution, and the different phases of culture which are found in the various communities even of the same race. ”

“ Even the more limited subject of ethnology must be approached from many sides, and requires for its cultivation knowledge derived from sciences so diverse, and requiring such different mental attributes and systems of training, as scarcely ever to be found combined in one individual. This will become perfectly evident when we consider the various factors or elements which constitute the differential characters of the groups or races into which mankind is divided. ”

“ The second part of the work, that devoted to primary ethnical groups, which may be more properly called ethnology, is valuable as a concise statement of the afTmities of the peoples of the world today and a discussion of some important questions. ”

“ I do claim that it is timely for me to repeat these doctrines and to urge them with vehemence, for they are generally repudiated by the prevailing schools of ethnology and history in favor of the opinion that objective, mechanical influences alone suffice to explain all the phenomena of human life. ”

“ This circumstance, together with the fact that ethnology has often been called upon by other sciences, such as history, sociology, law, ethics, to give a categorical answer to the problems of ultimate origins, is responsible for the over-crowding of anthropological books and journals with fantastic speculations which are at best of interest as material for the ethnologist rather than as contributions to ethnological science. The critical student is therefore doubly concerned about a careful methodology of historic reconstruction in ethnology. ”

“ In the study of ethnology we first recognized the more civilized races. The Aryan, Hamites, Shemites, and Chinese, and the rest were the weeds of humanity—the barbarian and savage, sometimes called Turanians. But, when we come carefully to study these lower people, what numbers of races are discovered! ”

“ But the characteristics of race and language, which are the most important for ethnology, because they are the most ancient in their origin, are not often alluded to by them, and when the modern sciences of anthropology and ethnology had been established on solid principles many of these southern races had already disappeared or intermingled, and scientific inquiry came too late for their investigation. ”

“ The only sure and scientific method of grouping the tribes of men, to show their descent and affiliations, is by the evidence of language. The grouping of men by their languages constitutes the science of ethnology.
2. Ethnologically speaking, the terms "race" and "linguistic stock" are synonymous. The people of each linguistic stock, in their original and unmixed condition, are distinguished from those of other stocks by various peculiarities of physical traits and character, as well as of religion, customs, and arts. ”

“ SOCIOLOGY AND RELIGION Those branches of cultural anthropology which deal with comparative sociology and magico-religious data are sometimes designated as “ethnology.” It frequently happens that students who have written upon these and closely allied subjects have in the same book treated the archæological, technical, and linguistic aspects of cultural anthropology or ethnology in the larger sense. ”

“ Such is the position of ethnology, such are the objects of the ethnologist. The paths or methods, by following which he may hope to reach his goal, are diverse. He may work at man from the point of view of the pure zoologist, and investigate the anatomical and physiological peculiarities of Negroes, Australians, or Mongolians, just as he would inquire into those of pointers, terriers, and turnspits,—"persistent modifications" of man's almost universal companion. Or he may seek aid from researches into the most human manifestation of humanity—language ”

“ The science which concerns itself more especially with the somatological characteristics of the genus Homo, whether considered as a whole in his relation to other animals, or in his varieties, bears the name of anthropology; that which deals with the ethnical characteristics is called ethnography in some countries and ethnology in others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the word before us it means the principles of that department of human knowledge which is denoted by the form Ethno.
Ethnology means the science, not exactly of the different nations of the world, but of the different varieties of the human species. ”

“ Every clan, tribe, state, or nation includes two ideas, a people and its land, the first unthinkable without the other. History, [Pg 290] sociology, ethnology, touch only the inhabited areas of the earth. These areas gain their final significance because of the people who occupy them; their local conditions of climate, soil, natural resources, physical features, and geographic situation are important primarily as factors in the development of actual or possible inhabitants. ”

“ Recent discoveries have revolutionized our conception of primeval man, while still providing abundant material for controversy, and the rapidly increasing pile of ethnographical matter, although a vast amount of spade work remains to be done, is but one sign of the remarkable interest in ethnology which is so conspicuous a feature of the present decade. Even to keep abreast of the periodical literature devoted to his subject provides ample occupation for the ethnologist and few are those who can now lay claim to such an omniscient title. ”

“ Our later investigators are doing their work more and more on the plan of direct visitation, and I make no doubt a science of American ethnology will yet come into existence among us and rise high in public estimation from the important results it will rapidly achieve. ”

“ Ethnologists and anthropologists confine themselves now to systematizing the results obtained in all and each of these sciences; the latter striving to establish the relation existing between the various types of man for a classification of the human species into races; the former trying to analyze the natural and artificial forms of man in his social relations, in order to detect the forces which cause divergences and analogies among them, and to build thereon a classification of the human race into tribes and nations.—The ancient writers contributed very little to ethnology. ”

“ It is also beginning to attract the attention of students who are no longer satisfied with the systematic enumeration of standardized beliefs and customs of a tribe, but who begin to be interested in the question of the way in which the individual reacts to his whole social environment, and to the differences of opinion and of mode of action that occur in primitive society and which are the causes of far-reaching changes. ”

“ There was, undoubtedly, some stage in human evolution where the organic basis for culture had not yet been acquired. Can the several races be regarded as transitional forms, each possessed of certain capabilities determining and limiting its cultural achievement? This question can be viewed in two ways. Comparative psychology may give us direct information as to qualitative and quantitative racial differences that would affect cultural activity. ”

“ It is assumed as a working principle that each ethnic group has or tends to have an individuality of its own, and, moreover, that the members of such a group think, feel, and act primarily as the representatives, so to speak, of that ethnic individuality in which they live, move, and have their being. That is to say, a social as contrasted with an individual psychology must, it is held, pronounce both the first and last word regarding all matters of mythology, religion, and art in its numerous forms. ”

“ Reflections such as these teach us how closely the study of ethnographic science is related to practical politics. Ethnography, indeed, is the necessary basis of correct history and sound statesmanship. It offers to history a foundation on natural law; it explains events by showing their dependence on the physical structure, the mental pecularities, and the geographic surroundings of the peoples engaged in them; it presents, in its present pictures of savage life, the condition of the highest nations in the earlier stages of their culture. ”

“ By definition, ethnography is "the scientific description of nations or races of men, their customs, habits, and differences." [2] Frontier ethnography is the scientific description of the full institutional pattern of a particular group of people, located specifically on a certain frontier, within a certain period of time. That institutional pattern is described from the analysis of data concerning the political and economic systems, and the social structure, including religion, the family, the value system, social classes, art, music, recreation, mythology, and folklore. ”

“ Hence some of the most advanced ethnologists are ready to give up the ethnos itself as a subject of study. Those terms so popular a few years ago, Völkerpsychologie, Völkergedanken, racial psychology, ethnic sentiments, and the like, are looked upon with distrust. The external proofs of the psychical unity of the whole species have multiplied so abundantly that some maintain strenuously that it is not ethnic or racial peculiarities, but solely external conditions on the one hand and individual faculties on the other, which are the factors of culture evolution. ”

“ There is no doubt a grain of truth in this infantile psychology, but it requires as many caveats as that which is called ethnological psychology, which makes us see in the savages of the present day the representation of the first ancestors of our race, and would teach us to discover in their superstitions the antecedents of the mythology and religion of the Aryan or Semitic races. ”

“ Nowhere can the real existence of a race be discovered, but we find two or three types, even among the most savage and most isolated tribes. Special ethnography relates to the description of each people; general ethnography to common questions of manners, customs, aptitudes, industries, beliefs, institutions; to the past of the race, the environment, circumstances in the evolution of humanity ”

“ There is certainly great justice in the remark, and so forcibly have I been struck with the peculiar ease and elegance of this people, together with the diversity of complexions, the various colours of their hair and eyes, the singularity of their language, and their peculiar and unaccountable customs, that I am fully convinced that they have sprung from some other origin than that of the other North American tribes, or that they are an amalgam of natives with some civilized race. ”