But towards those who sought him out of idle curiosity, or who showed no consideration for his time, 'men who did not know when their visit had terminated,' he showed little ceremony. 'I went about my business again, answering them from greater and greater remoteness." There is a certain pathos in the solitude of a man like Thoreau, whose life was brought abruptly to a close in his forty-fifth year. He died of consumption on May 6th, 1862. There comes to be a touching significance in the plea which he puts forward for his own idiosyncrasies : 'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.' Johann Georg Zimmermann was a type of what is unhappily a large contingent of the solitary crowd. Ill-health and a restless vanity deprived him of the happiness which he would have found in a true recognition of himself and a calm acquiescence in his superiority. His life brings into prominence the fact that a just estimate of self is the safest basis on which to rest. The great maxim 'Know thyself' is an ordeal through which vanity and the meaner vices cannot pass. He who has accurately taken his own measure has a standard of approval of which none can rob him. He weighs instead of counting his supporters, and is deaf to the babble of the crowd. Disraeli says: That man has done something; he has no right to be conceited.' Carlyle asserts of Zimmermann that Hypochondria was the main company he had.' But there were deeper causes of depression than this. Goethe, who knew and valued him, laments his want of inward satisfaction. Born at Brugg, near Zurich, he rose to high rank in the medical profession, and was in time appointed physician to the King of Hanover. But his fame rests on his literary work, which, by its many translations, gave him a world-wide reputation. He was one of those who could prescribe admirably for others, but could not cure himself. There is the strangest inconsistency between the tolerant philosophy of his writings and the querulous complainings of his private life. He describes himself as working that he might not be forgotten by posterity. It would have sufficed to remember that posterity, at any Vol. 195.-No. 389. N rate, rarely ignores good work. His hatred for the vices of society found expression in the utterance, Who lives with wolves must join in their howls.' But a better course is indicated by the American adage, 'If you deal with dogs, you must have a tail yourself.' He was happy beyond the common lot of genius in his home. He had a multitude of admirers, but he could not forget that he had many detractors. He might have been a happy man had he taken to heart Pope's lines: 'One self-approving hour whole years outweighs And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels, Zimmermann, from his position in literature, has drawn the world's attention to his sorrows. But a host of others have proclaimed in a minor key the fact that the fruits of their solitude were bitter. The explanation is natural. Their solitude was not of choice, but of compulsion. Poets and musicians, with their high-strung organisation, have contributed a melancholy list. Beethoven and Chopin felt that their music ought to entrance the world, as it did themselves; but the world had not, like them, been caught up into the heavens, and could not understand it. As we enter the realm of poetry the regal form of Dante meets us-true type of lonely sadness. The more purely imaginative the work, and the further removed from the commonplace level, the greater will be the yearning for peace. How much solitude went to the creations of Dante's brain? How often did Milton long to retreat within himself from the busy cares which beset him? The philosophic mind of Wordsworth found ample sustenance in Nature; but many and sometimes conflicting influences led such poets as Petrarch, Cowper, Byron, and Shelley to their seclusion. It never found a more ardent advocate than Leopardi. Lovers of this gifted poet will recall his odes to 'Love and Death,' with their sad burden: 'Al gener nostro il fato Non donò che il morire.' How many have turned away baffled by the riddle of such lives as those of Beethoven and Chopin-pride compacted with humility, gentleness with ferocity, the tenderest love towards mankind with the bitterest scorn. Ideals of humanity, dreams of moral and intellectual greatness for a world incapable of its attainment, doomed them to an hourly disillusionment. Both these great men would have been cheered by general recognition, though their aspiration was for the laurel of immortality and not for the bouquet of the opera. Why do we acclaim what their contemporaries only dimly recognised? We shall see what will become of this dreamer. The world has seen many times; one great dreamer revolutionised the world. Yet the cry is still the same. Must we always permit posterity to reverse our judgments? The stereotyped inculcation of charity never gets beyond a plea for condescending tolerance. But let the first step be taken towards perception of character, and the condescension vanishes, and with it the implied rebuke. Then follows a weakening of faith in that well-worn sophism that all men are born equal, and an acknowledgment of the fact that Nature has never left herself without a witness to the contrary. The reviewer of a biography may often find a difficulty in establishing its raison d'être; but the assertion that the public has the right of admission to the inner shrine is a statement too crude for acceptance. Vacuous solitude is impossible to a healthy mind. The world's labourers give their work to the world. That is their life, and it is all to which the world is entitled. All true work bears its individual impress; and it is more profitable to analyse character through its outcome than to seek food for conversation by repeating another's estimate of it. We have adduced ample evidence to show that the conventional majority has made tyrannous use of that divine right which is said to reside in numbers. But since it has failed to extirpate the recalcitrants, it must make terms with them. They ask for no privileges, they merely demand the right to lead their own lives. Art. IX.-ANTHROPOLOGY-A SCIENCE? 1. The Golden Bough. Second edition, revised and en. larged. Three volumes. By J. G. Frazer. London: Macmillan, 1900. 2. The Native Tribes of Central Australia. By Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen. London: Macmillan, 1899. 3. Magic and Religion. By Andrew Lang. Longmans, 1901. London: 4. In the Australian Bush, and on the Coast of the Coral Sea. By Richard Semon. London: Macmillan, 1899. 5. The Sherbro and its Hinterland. By T. J. Alldridge. London: Macmillan, 1901. 6. Malay Magic. By W. W. Skeat. London: Macmillan, 1900. 7. Indian Story and Song from North America. By Alice C. Fletcher. London: David Nutt, 1900. 8. Journal of the Anthropological Institute. 1901. Vol. XXXI. 9. Eaglehawk and Crow. By John Mathew. London: David Nutt, 1899. THE idea of a science of man is no new one: it is at least as old as Aristotle; and we could easily trace a genealogical pedigree affiliating Mr Tylor to that great mind, and Mr Spencer to Epicurus, Euhemerus, and Lucretius. Plenty of anthropological work is to be found among the books of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The difference between our modern theorists or explorers and those of the past is merely that a greater scientific precision, more of critical accuracy, are now demanded, in proportion to the enormous bulk of daily increasing evidence, collected from travellers old and modern, and from the obscurer purlieus of Greek and Sanskrit literature. In presence of fresh anthropological systems, and of hypotheses that grow up like mushrooms (and are less digestible than many of these vegetables), writers like Professor Max Müller and Sir Alfred Lyall, in his Asiatic Studies,' have asked for increased caution and discrimination. Whatever theory you entertain, it is urged, you have but to dip a hand in the lucky bag of missionaries' and travellers' reports, and it will go hard but that you find a fact to buttress your hypothesis. Now it is clear that if anthropology is to be a science, or even a study with a scientific method, the first requisite is a stringent criterion of testimony. An isolated story of remote date, reported on vague hearsay by a traveller or settler, and never corroborated, is obviously not sound material to insert into the edifice of a theory. We cannot but distrust an anthropological hypothesis if such a tale is one of its corner-stones. Accompanying the natural tendency to catch at a friendly fact,' however shadowy, is the tendency not to observe, or to pass lightly over, even well authenticated facts which do not harmonise with one's theory. These hostile facts are apt to hide themselves from the theorist's glance as he studies a traveller's pages. He is not disingenuous, he is only hypnotised by his theory (we 'speak of him but brotherly' as fellow-sinners); very probably the facts really escape his notice, by a negative hallucination. He is merely like the historian who fails to detect the documents which make against his favourite opinion about any disputed event. Happily there are rival historians and rival anthropologists who triumphantly pounce on things which the others have neglected. Even in geology, the owner of an hypothesis has been known, it is said, to roll a boulder down hill because it was two hundred feet too high to suit my theory.' We would not, however, accuse anthropologists of this excess of zeal. In truth the malady of not marking' uncomfortable facts is not unexampled even among professors of the psychological sciences. It is a malady generally incident to human nature, as is the a priori fallacy, to neglect evidence of facts that, to the upholders of this or the other system, seem incompatible with their sacred prejudices, and their ideas of how things ought to exist. However large a bundle of affidavits to a widely-diffused savage belief or custom you may bring forward; however trustworthy the signers of the affidavits may be held on all other points; if the evidence clashes with any student's preconceived ideas of what savages are, he may ignore it, or slip round it, or account for it by an hypothesis that readily satisfies those who wish to be satisfied. The Eternal Evasion' (as Glanvil phrases it) eternally evades, |