Robert Marett - Anthropology

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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
No. 37

_Editors:_
HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A.
PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, LITT.D., LL.D., F.B.A.
PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.
PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.

_A complete classified list of the volumes of_ THE HOME UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY _already published will be found at the end of this book_.

ANTHROPOLOGY

BY
R.R. MARETT, M.A.

READER IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
AUTHOR OF "THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION," ETC.

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGY . . . 7

II ANTIQUITY OF MAN . . . . . 30

III RACE . . . . . . . . . . . 59

IV ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . 94

V LANGUAGE . . . . . . . . . 130

VI SOCIAL ORGANIZATION . . . . 152

VII LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

VIII RELIGION . . . . . . . . . 204

IX MORALITY . . . . . . . . . 235

X MAN THE INDIVIDUAL . . . . 241

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . 251

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . 254

"Bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, are these half-brutish
prehistoric brothers. Girdled about with the immense darkness of this
mysterious universe even as we are, they were born and died, suffered
and struggled. Given over to fearful crime and passion, plunged in
the blackest ignorance, preyed upon by hideous and grotesque delusions,
yet steadfastly serving the profoundest of ideals in their fixed faith
that existence in any form is better than non-existence, they ever
rescued triumphantly from the jaws of ever-imminent destruction the
torch of life which, thanks to them, now lights the world for us. How
small, indeed, seem individual distinctions when we look back on these
overwhelming numbers of human beings panting and straining under the
pressure of that vital want! And how inessential in the eyes of God
must be the small surplus of the individual's merit, swamped as it
is in the vast ocean of the common merit of mankind, dumbly and
undauntedly doing the fundamental duty, and living the heroic life!
We grow humble and reverent as we contemplate the prodigious
spectacle."

WILLIAM JAMES, in _Human Immortality_.

ANTHROPOLOGY

CHAPTER I
SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGY

In this chapter I propose to say something, firstly, about the ideal
scope of anthropology; secondly, about its ideal limitations; and,
thirdly and lastly, about its actual relations to existing studies.
In other words, I shall examine the extent of its claim, and then go
on to examine how that claim, under modern conditions of science and
education, is to be made good.

Firstly, then, what is the ideal scope of anthropology? Taken at its
fullest and best, what ought it to comprise?

Anthropology is the whole history of man as fired and pervaded by the
idea of evolution. Man in evolution--that is the subject in its full
reach. Anthropology studies man as he occurs at all known times. It
studies him as he occurs in all known parts of the world. It studies
him body and soul together--as a bodily organism, subject to conditions
operating in time and space, which bodily organism is in intimate
relation with a soul-life, also subject to those same conditions.
Having an eye to such conditions from first to last, it seeks to plot
out the general series of the changes, bodily and mental together,
undergone by man in the course of his history. Its business is simply
to describe. But, without exceeding the limits of its scope, it can
and must proceed from the particular to the general; aiming at nothing
less than a descriptive formula that shall sum up the whole series
of changes in which the evolution of man consists.

That will do, perhaps, as a short account of the ideal scope of
anthropology. Being short, it is bound to be rather formal and
colourless. To put some body into it, however, it is necessary to
breathe but a single word. That word is: Darwin.

Anthropology is the child of Darwin. Darwinism makes it possible.
Reject the Darwinian point of view, and you must reject anthropology
also. What, then, is Darwinism? Not a cut-and-dried doctrine. Not a
dogma. Darwinism is a working hypothesis. You suppose something to
be true, and work away to see whether, in the light of that supposed
truth, certain facts fit together better than they do on any other
supposition. What is the truth that Darwinism supposes? Simply that
all the forms of life in the world are related together; and that the
relations manifested in time and space between the different lives
are sufficiently uniform to be described under a general formula, or
law of evolution.

This means that man must, for certain purposes of science, toe the
line with the rest of living things. And at first, naturally enough,
man did not like it. He was too lordly. For a long time, therefore,
he pretended to be fighting for the Bible, when he was really fighting
for his own dignity. This was rather hard on the Bible, which has
nothing to do with the Aristotelian theory of the fixity of species;
though it might seem possible to read back something of the kind into
the primitive creation-stories preserved in Genesis. Now-a-days,
however, we have mostly got over the first shock to our family pride.
We are all Darwinians in a passive kind of way. But we need to darwinize
actively. In the sciences that have to do with plants, and with the
rest of the animals besides man, naturalists have been so active in
their darwinizing that the pre-Darwinian stuff is once for all laid
by on the shelf. When man, however, engages on the subject of his noble
self, the tendency still is to say: We accept Darwinism so long as
it is not allowed to count, so long as we may go on believing the same
old stuff in the same old way.

How do we anthropologists propose to combat this tendency? By working
away at our subject, and persuading people to have a look at our results.
Once people take up anthropology, they may be trusted not to drop it
again. It is like learning to sleep with your window open. What could
be more stupefying than to shut yourself up in a closet and swallow
your own gas? But is it any less stupefying to shut yourself up within
the last few thousand years of the history of your own corner of the
world, and suck in the stale atmosphere of its own self-generated
prejudices? Or, to vary the metaphor, anthropology is like travel.
Every one starts by thinking that there is nothing so perfect as his
own parish. But let a man go aboard ship to visit foreign parts, and,
when he returns home, he will cause that parish to wake up.

With Darwin, then, we anthropologists say: Let any and every portion
of human history be studied in the light of the whole history of mankind,
and against the background of the history of living things in general.
It is the Darwinian outlook that matters. None of Darwin's particular
doctrines will necessarily endure the test of time and trial. Into
the melting-pot must they go as often as any man of science deems it
fitting. But Darwinism as the touch of nature that makes the whole
world kin can hardly pass away. At any rate, anthropology stands or
falls with the working hypothesis, derived from Darwinism, of a
fundamental kinship and continuity amid change between all the forms
of human life.

It remains to add that, hitherto, anthropology has devoted most of
its attention to the peoples of rude--that is to say, of
simple--culture, who are vulgarly known to us as "savages." The main
reason for this, I suppose, is that nobody much minds so long as the
darwinizing kind of history confines itself to outsiders. Only when
it is applied to self and friends is it resented as an impertinence.
But, although it has always up to now pursued the line of least
resistance, anthropology does not abate one jot or tittle of its claim
to be the whole science, in the sense of the whole history, of man.
As regards the word, call it science, or history, or anthropology,
or anything else--what does it matter? As regards the thing, however,
there can be no compromise. We anthropologists are out to secure this:
that there shall not be one kind of history for savages and another
kind for ourselves, but the same kind of history, with the same
evolutionary principle running right through it, for all men,
civilized and savage, present and past.

* * * * *

So much for the ideal scope of anthropology. Now, in the second place,
for its ideal limitations. Here, I am afraid, we must touch for a moment
on very deep and difficult questions. But it is well worth while to
try at all costs to get firm hold of the fact that anthropology, though
a big thing, is not everything.

It will be enough to insist briefly on the following points: that
anthropology is science in whatever way history is science; that it
is not philosophy, though it must conform to its needs; and that it
is not policy, though it may subserve its designs.

Anthropology is science in the sense of specialized research that aims
at truth for truth's sake. Knowing by parts is science, knowing the
whole as a whole is philosophy. Each supports the other, and there
is no profit in asking which of the two should come first. One is aware
of the universe as the whole universe, however much one may be resolved
to study its details one at a time. The scientific mood, however, is
uppermost when one says: Here is a particular lot of things that seem
to hang together in a particular way; let us try to get a general idea
of what that way is. Anthropology, then, specializes on the particular
group of human beings, which itself is part of the larger particular
group of living beings. Inasmuch as it takes over the evolutionary
principle from the science dealing with the larger group, namely
biology, anthropology may be regarded as a branch of biology. Let it
be added, however, that, of all the branches of biology, it is the
one that is likely to bring us nearest to the true meaning of life;
because the life of human beings must always be nearer to human students
of life than, say, the life of plants.

But, you will perhaps object, anthropology was previously identified
with history, and now it is identified with science, namely, with a
branch of biology? Is history science? The answer is, Yes. I know that
a great many people who call themselves historians say that it is not,
apparently on the ground that, when it comes to writing history, truth
for truth's sake is apt to bring out the wrong results. Well, the
doctored sort of history is not science, nor anthropology, I am ready
to admit. But now let us listen to another and a more serious objection
to the claim of history to be science. Science, it will be said by
many earnest men of science, aims at discovering laws that are clean
out of time. History, on the other hand, aims at no more than the
generalized description of one or another phase of a time-process.
To this it may be replied that physics, and physics only, answers to
this altogether too narrow conception of science. The laws of matter
in motion are, or seem to be, of the timeless or mathematical kind.
Directly we pass on to biology, however, laws of this kind are not
to be discovered, or at any rate are not discovered. Biology deals
with life, or, if you like, with matter as living. Matter moves. Life
evolves. We have entered a new dimension of existence. The laws of
matter in motion are not abrogated, for the simple reason that in
physics one makes abstraction of life, or in other words leaves its
peculiar effects entirely out of account. But they are transcended.
They are multiplied by _x_, an unknown quantity. This being so from
the standpoint of pure physics, biology takes up the tale afresh, and
devises means of its own for describing the particular ways in which
things hang together in virtue of their being alive. And biology finds
that it cannot conveniently abstract away the reference to time. It
cannot treat living things as machines. What does it do, then? It takes
the form of history. It states that certain things have changed in
certain ways, and goes on to show, so far as it can, that the changes
are on the whole in a certain direction. In short, it formulates
tendencies, and these are its only laws. Some tendencies, of course,
appear to be more enduring than others, and thus may be thought to
approximate more closely to laws of the timeless kind. But _x_, the
unknown quantity, the something or other that is not physical, runs
through them all, however much or little they may seem to endure. For
science, at any rate, which departmentalizes the world, and studies
it bit by bit, there is no getting over the fact that living beings
in general, and human beings in particular, are subject to an evolution
which is simple matter of history.

And now what about philosophy? I am not going into philosophical
questions here. For that reason I am not going to describe biology
as natural history, or anthropology as the natural history of man.
Let philosophers discuss what "nature" is going to mean for them. In
science the word is question-begging; and the only sound rule in
science is to beg as few philosophical questions as you possibly can.
Everything in the world is natural, of course, in the sense that things
are somehow all akin--all of a piece. We are simply bound to take in
the parts as parts of a whole, and it is just this fact that makes
philosophy not only possible but inevitable. All the same, this fact
does not prevent the parts from having their own specific natures and
specific ways of behaving. The people who identify the natural with
the physical are putting all their money on one specific kind of nature
or behaviour that is to be found in the world. In the case of man they
are backing the wrong horse. The horse to back is the horse that goes.
As a going concern, however, anthropology, as part of evolutionary
biology, is a history of vital tendencies which are not natural in
the sense of merely physical.

What are the functions of philosophy as contrasted with science? Two.
Firstly, it must be critical. It must police the city of the sciences,
preventing them from interfering with each other's rights and free
development. Co-operation by all means, as, for instance, between
anthropology and biology. But no jumping other folks' claims and laying
down the law for all; as, for instance, when physics would impose the
kind of method applicable to machines on the sciences of evolving life.
Secondly, philosophy must be synthetic. It must put all the ways of
knowing together, and likewise put these in their entirety together
with all the ways of feeling and acting; so that there may result a
theory of reality and of the good life, in that organic interdependence
of the two which our very effort to put things together presupposes
as its object.

What, then, are to be the relations between anthropology and
philosophy? On the one hand, the question whether anthropology can
help philosophy need not concern us here. That is for the philosopher
to determine. On the other hand, philosophy can help anthropology in
two ways: in its critical capacity, by helping it to guard its own
claim, and develop freely without interference from outsiders; and
in its synthetic capacity, perhaps, by suggesting the rule that, of
two types of explanation, for instance, the physical and the biological,
the more abstract is likely to be farther away from the whole truth,
whereas, contrariwise, the more you take in, the better your chance
of really understanding.

It remains to speak about policy. I use this term to mean any and all
practical exploitation of the results of science. Sometimes, indeed,
it is hard to say where science ends and policy begins, as we saw in
the case of those gentlemen who would doctor their history, because
practically it pays to have a good conceit of ourselves, and believe
that our side always wins its battles. Anthropology, however, would
borrow something besides the evolutionary principle from biology,
namely, its disinterestedness. It is not hard to be candid about bees
and ants; unless, indeed, one is making a parable of them. But as
anthropologists we must try, what is so much harder, to be candid about
ourselves. Let us look at ourselves as if we were so many bees and
ants, not forgetting, of course, to make use of the inside information
that in the case of the insects we so conspicuously lack.

This does not mean that human history, once constructed according to
truth-regarding principles, should and could not be used for the
practical advantage of mankind. The anthropologist, however, is not,
as such, concerned with the practical employment to which his
discoveries are put. At most, he may, on the strength of a conviction
that truth is mighty and will prevail for human good, invite practical
men to study his facts and generalizations in the hope that, by knowing
mankind better, they may come to appreciate and serve it better. For
instance, the administrator, who rules over savages, is almost
invariably quite well-meaning, but not seldom utterly ignorant of
native customs and beliefs. So, in many cases, is the missionary,
another type of person in authority, whose intentions are of the best,
but whose methods too often leave much to be desired. No amount of
zeal will suffice, apart from scientific insight into the conditions
of the practical problem. And the education is to be got by paying
for it. But governments and churches, with some honourable exceptions,
are still wofully disinclined to provide their probationers with the
necessary special training; though it is ignorance that always proves
most costly in the long run. Policy, however, including bad policy,
does not come within the official cognizance of the anthropologist.
Yet it is legitimate for him to hope that, just as for many years already
physiological science has indirectly subserved the art of medicine,
so anthropological science may indirectly, though none the less
effectively, subserve an art of political and religious healing in
the days to come.

* * * * *

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. The time has come to do some sorting;
or rather the sorting is doing itself. 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. Thus he, as general
storekeeper, is beginning to acquire, almost unconsciously, a sense
of order corresponding to the demands that are made upon him. The goods
that he will need to hand out in separate batches are being gradually
arranged by him on separate shelves. Our best way, then, of proceeding
with the present inquiry, is to take note of these shelves. In other
words, we must consider one by one the special studies that claim to
have a finger in the anthropological pie.

Or, to avoid the disheartening task of reviewing an array of bloodless
"-ologies," let us put the question to ourselves thus: Be it supposed
that a young man or woman who wants to take a course, of at least a
year's length, in the elements of anthropology, joins some university
which is thoroughly in touch with the scientific activities of the
day. A university, as its very name implies, ought to be an
all-embracing assemblage of higher studies, so adjusted to each other
that, in combination, they provide beginners with a good general
education; whilst, severally, they offer to more advanced students
the opportunity of doing this or that kind of specific research. In
such a well-organized university, then, how would our budding
anthropologist proceed to form a preliminary acquaintance with the
four corners of his subject? What departments must he attend in turn?
Let us draw him up a curriculum, praying meanwhile that the
multiplicity of the demands made upon him will not take away his breath
altogether. Man is a many-sided being; so there is no help for it if
anthropology also is many-sided.

For one thing, he must sit at the feet of those whose particular concern
is with pre-historic man. It is well to begin here, since thus will
the glamour of the subject sink into his soul at the start. Let him,
for instance, travel back in thought to the Europe of many thousands
of years ago, shivering under the effects of the great ice-age, yet
populous with human beings so far like ourselves that they were alive
to the advantage of a good fire, made handy tools out of stone and
wood and bone, painted animals on the walls of their caves, or engraved
them on mammoth-ivory, far more skilfully than most of us could do
now, and buried their dead in a ceremonial way that points to a belief
in a future life. Thus, too, he will learn betimes how to blend the
methods and materials of different branches of science. A human skull,
let us say, and some bones of extinct animals, and some chipped flints
are all discovered side by side some twenty feet below the level of
the soil. At least four separate authorities must be called in before
the parts of the puzzle can be fitted together.

Again, he must be taught something about race, or inherited breed,
as it applies to man. A dose of practical anatomy--that is to say,
some actual handling and measuring of the principal portions of the
human frame in its leading varieties--will enable our beginner to
appreciate the differences of outer form that distinguish, say, the
British colonist in Australia from the native "black-fellow," or the
whites from the negroes, and redskins, and yellow Asiatics in the
United States. At this point, he may profitably embark on the details
of the Darwinian hypothesis of the descent of man. Let him search
amongst the manifold modern versions of the theory of human evolution
for the one that comes nearest to explaining the degrees of physical
likeness and unlikeness shown by men in general as compared with the
animals, especially the man-like apes; and again, those shown by the
men of divers ages and regions as compared with each other. Nor is
it enough for him, when thus engaged, to take note simply of physical
features--the shape of the skull, the colour of the skin, the tint
and texture of the hair, and so on. There are likewise mental characters
that seem to be bound up closely with the organism and to follow the
breed. Such are the so-called instincts, the study of which should
be helped out by excursions into the mind-history of animals, of
children, and of the insane. Moreover, the measuring and testing of
mental functions, and, in particular, of the senses, is now-a-days
carried on by means of all sorts of ingenious instruments; and some
experience of their use will be all to the good, when problems of
descent are being tackled.

Further, our student must submit to a thorough grounding in
world-geography with its physical and human sides welded firmly
together. He must be able to pick out on the map the headquarters of
all the more notable peoples, not merely as they are now, but also
as they were at various outstanding moments of the past. His next
business is to master the main facts about the natural conditions to
which each people is subjected--the climate, the conformation of land
and sea, the animals and plants. From here it is but a step to the
economic life--the food-supply, the clothing, the dwelling-places,
the principal occupations, the implements of labour. A selected list
of books of travel must be consulted. No less important is it to work
steadily through the show-cases of a good ethnological museum. Nor
will it suffice to have surveyed the world by regions. The
communications between regions--the migrations and conquests, the
trading and the borrowing of customs--must be traced and accounted
for. Finally, on the basis of their distribution, which the learner
must chart out for himself on blank maps of the world, the chief
varieties of the useful arts and appliances of man can be followed
from stage to stage of their development.

Of the special studies concerned with man the next in order might seem
to be that which deals with the various forms of human society; since,
in a sense, social organization must depend directly on material
circumstances. In another and perhaps a deeper sense, however, the
prime condition of true sociality is something else, namely, the
exclusively human gift of articulate speech. To what extent, then,
must our novice pay attention to the history of language? Speculation
about its far-off origins is now-a-days rather out of fashion. Moreover,
language is no longer supposed to provide, by itself at any rate, and
apart from other clues, a key to the endless riddles of racial descent.
What is most needed, then, is rather some elementary instruction
concerning the organic connection between language and thought, and
concerning their joint development as viewed against the background
of the general development of society. And, just as words and thoughts
are essentially symbols, so there are also gesture-symbols and written
symbols, whilst again another set of symbols is in use for counting.
All these pre-requisites of human intercourse may be conveniently
taken together.

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