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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.

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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

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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,

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All this is merely natural, and to be expected, almost to be welcomed, for, did this scientific conservatism not exist, nobody knows what revolutions might befall science. Progress has to fight an unending battle with the established, the official, the professorial. The anthropological method in mythology (as used by Mr Frazer, Mr Farnell, Mr Hartland, M. Gaidoz, Mannhardt, and many others) has ousted the etymological. But the victors are not happy when they are, practically, invited to subject their charters and title-deeds to a fresh scrutiny. Certain facts in anthropology or psychology, it is urged, 'go through the empty form of taking place.' But the anthropologist, like the psychologist, who is comfortably settled in a theory that does not include these facts, by whomsoever adduced, is almost more than human if he frankly and fully recognises or even deigns to investigate their existence.

Yet it does not follow, so far, that (as many declare) 'anthropology is not a science.' Almost all the sciences pass through continual processes of discovery and of conservative resistance to, resignation to, and acceptance of new ideas. For our own part we would scarcely speak of anthropology, at least in its religious branch, as a 'science,' certainly not as an exact science, like chemistry or physics. It is rather a study, which ought to aim at a strictly scientific method. In the past, anthropology has won several victories. In mythology it holds the lists of combat. Nobody, again, now denies the theory of human advance from the use of rude to that of polished stone weapons, and so to the employment of metals, though there are, of course, faults in the strata of development in some regions. In regard to society, again, perhaps nobody denies that the general tendency has been to advance from the Totem group, with 'exogamy,' to the local tribe; or that recognition of kin on the spindle side has probably, on the whole, preceded the recognition (for purposes of customary law) of male kinship. The various influences, again, which led to discrimination of ranks, to chiefship, and to kingship-influences of a religious, magical, and economical nature-are fairly well understood. We see that the magical pretensions of some individuals, the genius and courage of others, acquired for them influence and property, broke up the equality

and communism which had prevailed, and made conquest and slavery possible; while the introduction of agriculture, and the domestication of animals, gradually conduced to a more settled and organised existence. Anthropologists may dispute as to whether the reverence paid to certain animals-Totems'-led to their domestication, as is the opinion of Mr Jevons; or whether agriculture began religiously, from edible seeds left on the graves of the worshipped dead, as Mr Grant Allen maintained. These are obscure details; but the general trend of events is fairly well ascertained, and anthropology employs the now familiar method of the doctrine of evolution.

So far, the study may be called scientific, just as the study of history may be called scientific. Both pursuits aim at a stricter method of collecting, examining, analysing, and recording evidence. But the evidence available to students in both cases is not, of course, experimental : in the nature of the case experiment is impossible. The historian tries to get his evidence at first hand, in contemporary records, charters, inscriptions, letters, despatches, and so forth. But even such first-hand evidence, being human, is fallible. Not only are there occasional gaps in the series of documents, but the constructors of the documents were perhaps misinformed, or prejudiced, or dishonest. The historian must make himself acquainted with their means and opportunities of knowing the facts, with their characters, their bias, and so forth; he must treat his authorities as a judge treats the witnesses in a case; and he must watch and correct his own bias.

The anthropologist is in a similar but more difficult position. As early undeveloped mankind is one object of his researches, he does not expect to find documentary evidence among races who cannot read and write. The nearest approach to documentary evidence among savages is discovered in their old traditional hymns, which may be very archaic and obscure in language; and next come the newer songs and incantations used in rites, in magic, or as lyrical expressions of sentiment and belief. The Polynesian and Maori hymns, and those of the Zuñis and allied races, are handed down in a careful and elaborate way. Even the Australian natives have their

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