Tylor on "The Science
of Culture", from Primitive Culture, Volume I
"The Science of Culture" is the first chapter of Edward
B. Tylor's two-volume work Primitive Culture.
This text is from the 1871 first edition published by J. Murray of London.
I've inserted the original page-breaks, which is a bit clumsy, but at least
serves to break up some of his long paragraphs. The only liberty I've taken
is to put foreign phrases into italics.
CULTURE or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic
sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals,
law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society. The condition of culture among the various societies
of mankind, in so far as it is capable of being investigated on general
principles, is a subject apt for the study of laws of human thought and
action. On the one hand, the uniformity which so largely pervades civilization
may be ascribed, in great measure, to the uniform action of uniform causes;
while on the other hand its various grades may be regarded as stages of
development or evolution, each the outcome of previous history, and about
to do its proper part in shaping the history of the future. To the
investigation of these two great principles in several departments of ethnography,
with especial consideration of the civilization of the lower tribes as
related to the civilization of the higher nations, the present volumes
are devoted.
Our modern investigators in the sciences of inorganic
nature are foremost to recognise, both within and without their special
2
fields of work, the unity of nature, the fixity of its laws, the definite
sequence of cause and effect through which every fact depends on what has
gone before it, and acts upon what is to come after it. They grasp firmly
the Pythagorean doctrine of pervading order in the universal Kosmos.
They affirm, with Aristotle, that nature is not full of incoherent episodes,
like a bad tragedy. They agree with Leibnitz in what he calls "my axiom,
that nature never acts by leaps (la nature n'agit jamais par saut),"
as well as in his "great principle, commonly little employed, that nothing
happens without its sufficient reason." Nor, again, in studying the structure
and habits of plants and animals, or in investigating the lower functions
even of man, are these leading ideas unacknowledged. But when we come to
talk of the higher processes of human feeling and action, of thought and
language, knowledge and art, a change appears in the prevalent tone of
opinion. The world at large is scarcely prepared to accept the general
study of human life as a branch of natural science, and to carry out, in
a large sense, the poet's injunction, to "Account for moral as for natural
things." To many educated minds there seems something presumptuous and
repulsive in the view that the history of mankind is part and parcel of
the history of nature, that our thoughts, wills, and actions accord with
laws as definite as those which govern the motion of waves, the combination
of acids and bases, and the growth of plants and animals.
The main reasons of this state of the popular judgment
are not far to seek. There are many who would willingly accept a science
of history if placed before them with substantial definiteness of principle
and evidence, but who not unreasonably reject the systems offered to them,
as falling too far short of a scientific standard. Through resistance such
as this, real knowledge always, sooner or later, makes its way, while the
habit of opposition to novelty does such excellent service against the
invasions of speculative dogmatism, that we may sometimes even wish it
were stronger than it is. But other obstacles to the investigation of laws
of human nature arise from considerations of metaphysics and theology.
The popular notion of free human will involves not only freedom to act
in accordance with
3
motive, but also a power of breaking loose from continuity and acting without
cause, --a combination which may be roughly illustrated by the simile of
a balance sometimes acting in the usual way, but also possessed of the
faculty of turning by itself without or against its weights. This
view of an anomalous action of the will, which it need hardly be said is
incompatible with scientific argument, subsists as an opinion, patent or
latent in men's minds, and strongly affecting their theoretic views of
history, though it is not, as a rule, brought prominently forward in systematic
reasoning. Indeed the definition of human will, as strictly according
with motive, is the only possible scientific basis in such enquiries.
Happily, it is not needful to add here yet another to the list of dissertations
on supernatural intervention and natural causation, on liberty, predestination,
and accountability. We may hasten to escape from the regions of transcendental
philosophy and theology, to start on a more hopeful journey over more practicable
ground. None will deny that, as each man knows by the evidence of
his own consciousness, definite and natural cause does, to a great extent,
determine human action. Then, keeping aside from considerations of extra-natural
interference and causeless spontaneity, let us take this admitted existence
of natural cause and effect as our standing-ground, and travel on it so
far as it will bear us. It is on this same basis that physical science
pursues, with ever-increasing success, its quest of laws of nature. Nor
need this restriction hamper the scientific study of human life, in which
the real difficulties are the practical ones of enormous complexity of
evidence, and imperfection of methods of observation.
Now it appears that this view of human will and
conduct, as subject to definite law, is indeed recognized and acted upon
by the very people who oppose it when stated in the abstract as a general
principle, and who then complain that it annihilates man's free-will, destroys
his sense of personal responsibility, and degrades him to a soulless machine.
He who will say these things will nevertheless pass much of his own life
in studying the motives which lead to human action, seeking to attain his
wishes through them, framing in his mind theories of personal
4
character, reckoning what are likely to be the effects of new combinations,
and giving to his reasoning the crowning character of true scientific inquiry,
by taking it for granted that in so far as his calculation turns out wrong,
either his evidence must have been false or incomplete, or his judgment
upon it unsound. Such a one will sum up the experience of years spent in
complex relations with society, by declaring his persuasion that there
is a reason for everything in life, and that where events look unaccountable,
the rule is to wait and watch in hope that the key to the problem may some
day be found. This man's observation may have been as narrow as his inferences
are crude and prejudiced, but nevertheless he has been an inductive philosopher
"more than forty years without knowing it." He has practically acknowledged
definite laws of human thought and action, and has simply thrown out of
account in his own studies of life the whole fabric of motiveless will
and uncaused spontaneity. It is assumed here that they should be
just so thrown out of account in wider studies, and that the true philosophy
of history lies in extending and improving the methods of the plain people
who form their judgments upon facts, and check them upon new facts. Whether
the doctrine be wholly or but partly true, it accepts the very condition
under which we search for new knowledge in the lessons of experience, and
in a word the whole course of our rational life is based upon it.
"One event is always the son of another, and we
must never forget the parentage," was a remark made by a Bechuana chief
to Casalis the African missionary. Thus at all times historians,
so far as they have aimed at being more than mere chroniclers, have done
their best to show not merely succession, but connexion, among the events
upon their record. Moreover, they have striven to elicit general principles
of human action, and by these to explain particular events, stating expressly
or taking tacitly for granted the existence of a philosophy of history.
Should any one deny the possibility of thus establishing historical laws,
the answer is ready with which Boswell in such a case turned on Johnson:
"Then, sir, you would reduce all history to no better than an almanack."
That nevertheless the labours of so many eminent thinkers should have as
yet brought history only
5
to the threshold of science, need cause no wonder in those who consider
the bewildering complexity of the problems which come before the general
historian. The evidence from which he is to draw his conclusions
is at once so multifarious and so doubtful, that a full and distinct view
of its bearing on a particular question is hardly to be attained, and thus
the temptation becomes all but irresistible to garble it in support of
some rough and ready theory of the course of events. The philosophy of
history at large, explaining the past and predicting the future phenomena
of man's life in the world by reference to general laws, is in fact a subject
with which, in the present state of knowledge, even genius aided by wide
research seems but hardly able to cope. Yet there are departments
of it which, though difficult enough, seem comparatively accessible.
If the field of inquiry be narrowed from History as a whole to that branch
of it which is here called Culture, the history, not of tribes or nations,
but of the condition of knowledge, religion, art, custom, and the like
among them, the task of investigation proves to lie within far more moderate
compass. We suffer still from the same kind of difficulties which
beset the wider argument but they are much diminished. The evidence
is no longer so wildly heterogeneous, but may be more simply classified
and compared while the power of getting rid of extraneous matter and treating
each issue on its own proper set of facts, makes close reasoning on the
whole more available than in general history. This may appear from
a brief preliminary examination of the problem, how the phenomena of Culture
may be classified and arranged, stage by stage, in a probable order of
evolution.
Surveyed in a broad view, the character and habit
of mankind at once display that similarity and consistency of phenomena
which led the Italian proverb-maker to declare that "all the world is one
country," "tutto il mondo e paese." To general likeness in human
nature on the one hand, and to general likeness in the circumstances of
life on the other, this similarity and consistency may no doubt be traced,
aud they may be studied with especial fitness in comparing races near the
same grade of civilization. Little respect need be had in such comparisons
for date in history or for place on the map; the
6
ancient Swiss lake-dweller may be set beside the medieval Aztec, and the
Ojibwa of North America beside the Zulu of South Africa. As Dr. Johnson
contemptuously said when he had read about Patagonians and South Sea Islanders
in Hawkesworth's Voyages, "one set of savages is like another." How true
a generalization this really is, any Ethnological Museum may show.
Examine for instance the edged and pointed instruments in such a collection;
the inventory includes hatchet, adze, chisel, knife, saw, scraper, awl,
needle, spear and arrowhead, and of these most or all belong with only
differences of detail to races the most various. So it is with savage occupations;
the wood-chopping, fishing with net and line, shooting and spearing game,
fire-making, cooking, twisting cord and plaiting baskets, repeat themselves
with wonderful uniformity in the museum shelves which illustrate the life
of the lower races from Kamchatka to Tierra del Fuego, and from Dahome
to Hawaii. Even when it comes to comparing barbarous hordes with
civilized nations, the consideration thrusts itself upon our minds, how
far item after item of the life of the lower races passes into analogous
proceedings of the higher, in forms not too far changed to be recognized,
and sometimes hardly changed at all. Look at the modern European peasant
using his hatchet and his hoe, see his food boiling or roasting over the
log-fire, observe the exact place which beer holds in his calculation of
happiness, hear his tale of the ghost in the nearest haunted house, and
of the farmer's niece who was bewitched with knots in her inside till she
fell into fits and died. If we choose out in this way things which
have altered little in a long course of centuries, we may draw a picture
where there shall be scarce a hand's breadth difference between an English
plough-man and a negro of Central Africa. These pages will be so crowded
with evidence of such correspondence among mankind, that there is no need
to dwell upon its details here, but it may be used at once to override
a problem which would complicate the argument, namely, the question of
race. For the present purpose it appears both possible and desirable
to eliminate considerations of hereditary varieties or races of man, and
to treat mankind as homogeneous in nature, though placed in
7
different grades of civilization. The details of the enquiry will,
I think, prove that stages of culture may be compared without taking into
account how far tribes who use the same implement, follow the same custom,
or believe the same myth, may differ in their bodily configuration and
the colour of their skin and hair.
A first step in the study of civilization is to
dissect it into details, and to classify these in their proper groups.
Thus, in examining weapons, they are to be classed under spear, club, sling,
bow and arrow, and so forth; among textile arts are to be ranged matting,
netting, and several grades of making and weaving threads; myths are divided
under such headings as myths of sunrise and sunset, eclipse-myths, earthquake-myths,
local myths which account for the names of places by some fanciful tale,
eponymic myths which account for the parentage of a tribe by turning its
name into the name of an imaginary ancestor; under rites and ceremonies
occur such practices as the various kinds of sacrifice to the ghosts of
the dead and to other spiritual beings, the turning to the east in worship,
the purification of ceremonial or moral uncleanness by means of water or
fire. Such are a few miscellaneous examples from a list of hundreds, and
the ethnographer's business is to classify such details with a view to
making out their distribution in geography and history, and the relations
which exist among them. What this task is like, may be almost perfectly
illustrated by comparing these details of culture with the species of plants
and animals as studied by the naturalist. To the ethnographer, the
bow and arrow is a species, the habit of flattening children's skulls is
a species, the practice of reckoning numbers by tens is a species. The
geographical distribution of these things, and their transmission from
region to region, have to be studied as the naturalist studies the geography
of his botanical and zoological species. Just as certain plants and animals
are peculiar to certain districts, so it is with such instruments as the
Australian boomerang, the Polynesian stick-and-groove for fire-making,
the tiny bow and arrow used as a lancet or phleme by tribes about the Isthmus
of Panama, and in like manner with many an art, myth, or custom, found
isolated in a particular field. Just as
8
the catalogue of all the species of plants and animals of a district represents
its Flora and Fauna, so the list of all the items of the general life of
a people represent that whole which we call its culture. And just as distant
regions so often produce vegetables and animals which are analogous, though
by no means identical, so it is with the details of the civilization of
their inhabitants. How good a working analogy there really is between the
diffusion of plants and animals and the diffusion of civilization, comes
well into view when we notice how far the same causes have produced both
at once. In district after district, the same causes which have introduced
the cultivated plants and domesticated animals of civilization, have brought
in with them a corresponding art and knowledge. The course of events which
carried horses and wheat to America carried with them the use of the gun
and the iron hatchet, while in return the old world received not only maize,
potatoes, and turkeys, but the habit of smoking and the sailor's hammock.
It is a matter worthy of consideration, that the
accounts of similar phenomena of culture, recurring in different parts
of the world, actually supply incidental proof of their own authenticity.
Some years since, a question which brings out this point was put to me
by a great historian --"How can a statement as to customs, myths, beliefs,
&c., of a savage tribe be treated as evidence where it depends on the
testimony of some traveller or missionary, who may be a superficial observer,
more or less ignorant of the native language, a careless retailer of unsifted
talk, a man prejudiced, or even wilfully deceitful?" This question is,
indeed, one which every ethnographer ought to keep clearly and constantly
before his mind. Of course he is bound to use his best judgment as
to the trustworthiness of all authors he quotes, and if possible to obtain
several accounts to certify each point in each locality. But it is
over and above these measures of precaution, that the test of recurrence
comes in. If two independent visitors to different countries, say
a mediaeval Mohammedan in Tartary and a modern Englishman in Dahome, or
a Jesuit missionary in Brazil and a Wesleyan in the Fiji Islands, agree
in describing some analogous art or rite or myth among the people they
have visited, it becomes difficult
9
or impossible to set down such correspondence to accident or wilful fraud.
A story by a bushranger in Australia may, perhaps, be objected to as a
mistake or an invention, but did a Methodist minister in Guinea conspire
with him to cheat the public by telling the same story there? The possibility
of intentional or unintentional mystification is often barred by such a
state of things as that a similar statement is made in two remote lands,
by two witnesses, of whom A lived a century before B, and B appears never
to have heard of A. How distant are the countries, how wide apart
the dates, how different the creeds and characters of the observers, in
the catalogue of facts of civilization, needs no farther showing to any
one who will even glance at the foot-notes of the present work. And
the more odd the statement, the less likely that several people in several
places should have made it wrongly. This being so, it seems reasonable
to judge that the statements are in the main truly given, and that their
close and regular coincidence is due to the cropping up of similar facts
in various districts of culture. Now the most important facts of
ethnography are vouched for in this way. Experience leads the student
after a while to expect and find that the phenomena of culture, as resulting
from widely-acting similar causes, should recur again and again in the
world. He even mistrusts isolated statements to which he knows of
no parallel elsewhere, and waits for their genuineness to be shown by corresponding
accounts from the other side of the earth, or the other end of history.
So strong, indeed, is this means of authentication, that the ethnographer
in his library may sometimes presume to decide, not only whether a particular
explorer is a shrewd and honest observer, but also whether what he reports
is conformable to the general rules of civilization. Non quis, sed quid.
To turn from the distribution of culture in different
countries, to its diffusion within these countries. The quality of
mankind which tends most to make the systematic study of civilization possible,
is that remarkable tacit consensus or agreement which so far induces whole
populations to unite in the use of the same language, to follow the same
religion and customary law,
10
to settle down to the same general level of art and knowledge. It is this
state of things which makes it so far possible to ignore exceptional facts
and to describe nations by a sort of general average. It is this
state of things which makes it so far possible to represent immense masses
of details by a few typical facts, while, these once settled, new cases
recorded by new observers simply fall into their places to prove the soundness
of the classification. There is found to be such regularity in the composition
of societies of men, that we can drop individual differences out of sight,
and thus can generalize on the arts and opinions of whole nations, just
as, when looking down upon an army from a hill, we forget the individual
soldier, whom, in fact, we can scarce distinguish in the mass, while we
see each regiment as an organized body, spreading or concentrating, moving
in advance or in retreat. In some branches of the study of social
laws it is now possible to call in the aid of statistics, and to set apart
special actions of large mixed communities of men by means of taxgatherers'
schedules, or the tables of the insurance-office. Among modern arguments
on the laws of human action, none have had a deeper effect than generalizations
such as those of M. Quetelet, on the regularity, not only of such matters
as average stature and the annual rates of birth and death, but of the
recurrence, year after year, of such obscure and seemingly incalculable
products of national life as the numbers of murders and suicides, and the
proportion of the very weapons of crime. Other striking cases are
the annual regularity of persons killed accidentally in the London streets,
and of undirected letters dropped into post-office letter-boxes. But in
examining the culture of the lower races, far from having at command the
measured arithmetical facts of modern statistics, we may have to judge
of the condition of tribes from the imperfect accounts supplied by travellers
or missionaries, or even to reason upon relics of pre-historic races of
whose very names and languages we are hopelessly ignorant. Now these may
seem at the first glance sadly indefinite and unpromising materials for
a scientific enquiry. But in fact they are neither indefinite nor
unpromising, but give evidence that is good and definite, so far as it
goes. They are data
11
which, for the distinct way in which they severally denote the condition
of the tribe they belong to, will actually bear comparison with the statistician's
returns. The fact is that a stone arrow-head, a carved club, an idol, a
grave-mound where slaves and property have been buried for the use of
the dead, an account of a sorcerer's rites in making rain, a table of numerals,
the conjugation of a verb, are things which each express the state of a
people as to one particular point of culture, as truly as the tabulated
numbers of deaths by poison, and of chests of tea imported, express in
a different way other partial results of the general life of a whole community.
That a whole nation should have a special dress,
special tools and weapons, special laws of marriage and property, special
moral and religious doctrines, is a remarkable fact, which we notice so
little because we have lived all our lives in the midst of it. It is with
such general qualities of organized bodies of men that ethnography has
especially to deal. Yet, while generalizing on the culture of a tribe
or nation, and setting aside the peculiarities of the individuals composing
it as unimportant to the main result, we must be careful not to forget
what makes up this main result. There are people so intent on the separate
life of individuals, that they cannot grasp a notion of the action of a
community as a whole -- such an observer, incapable of a wide view of society,
is aptly described in the saying that he "cannot see the forest for the
trees." But, on the other hand, the philosopher may he so intent upon his
general laws of society as to neglect the individual actors of whom that
society is made up, and of him it may be said that he cannot see the trees
for the forest. We know how arts, customs, and ideas are shaped among
ourselves by the combined actions of many individuals, of which actions
both motive and effect often come quite distinctly within our view. The
history of an invention, an opinion, a ceremony, is a history of suggestion
and modification, encouragement and opposition, personal gain and party
prejudice, and the individuals concerned act each according to his own
motives, as determined by his character and circumstances. 'I'hus
sometimes we watch individuals acting for their own ends with little thought
of their effect on society
12
at large, and sometimes we have to study movements of national life as
a whole, where the individuals co-operating in them are utterly beyond
our observation. But seeing that collective social action is the
mere resultant of many individual actions, it is clear that these two methods
of enquiry, if rightly followed, must be absolutely consistent.
In studying both the recurrence of special habits
or ideas in several districts, and their prevalence within each district,
there come before us ever-reiterated proofs of regular causation producing
the phenomena of human life, and of laws of maintenance and diffusion according
to which these phenomena settle into permanent standard conditions of society,
of definite stages of culture. But, while giving full importance
to the evidence bearing on these standard conditions of society, let us
be careful to avoid a pitfall which may entrap the unwary student. Of course,
the opinions and habits belonging in common to masses of mankind are to
a great extent the results of sound judgment and practical wisdom. But
to a great extent it is not so. That many numerous societies of men should
have believed in the influence of the evil eye and the existence of a firmament,
should have sacrificed slaves and goods to the ghosts of the departed,
should have handed down traditions of giants slaying monsters and men turning
into beasts--all this is ground for holding that such ideas were indeed
produced in men's minds by efficient causes, but it is not ground for holding
that the rites in question are profitable, the beliefs sound, and the history
authentic. This may seem at the first glance a truism, but, in fact, it
is the denial of a fallacy which deeply affects the minds of all but a
small critical minority of mankind. Popularly, what everybody says must
be true, what everybody does must be right -- "Quod ubique, quod semper,
quod ab omnibus creditum est, hoc est vere proprieque Catholicum"
--and so forth. There are various topics, especially in history, law, philosophy,
and theology, where even the educated people we live among can hardly be
brought to see that the cause why men do hold an opinion, or practise a
custom, is by no means necessarily a reason why they ought to do so. Now
collections of ethnographic evidence, bringing so prominently into view
the agree-
13
ment of immense multitudes of men as to certain traditions, beliefs, and
usages, are peculiarly liable to be thus improperly used in direct defence
of these institutions themselves, even old barbaric nations being polled
to maintain their opinions against what are called modern ideas.
As it has more than once happened to myself to find my collections of traditions
and beliefs thus made to prove their own objective truth, without proper
examination of the grounds on which they were actually received, I take
this occasion of remarking that the same line of argument will serve equally
well to demonstrate, by the strong and wide consent of nations, that the
earth is flat, and night-mare the visit of a demon.
It being shown that the details of Culture are capable
of being classified in a great number of ethnographic groups of arts, beliefs,
customs, and the rest, the consideration comes next how far the facts arranged
in these groups are produced by evolution from one another. It need
hardly he pointed out that the groups in question, though held together
each by a common character, are by no means accurately defined. To take
up again the natural history illustration, it may be said that they are
species which tend to run widely into varieties. And when it comes to the
question what relations some of these groups bear to others, it is plain
that the student of the habits of mankind has a great advantage over the
student of the species of plants and animals. Among naturalists it is an
open question whether a theory of development from species to species is
a record of transitions which actually took place, or a mere ideal scheme
serviceable in the classification of species whose origin was really independent.
But among ethnographers there is no such question as to the possibility
of species of implements or habits or beliefs being developed one out of
another, for development in culture is recognized by our most familiar
knowledge. Mechanical invention supplies apt examples of the kind of develepment
which affects civilization at large. In the history of fire-arms, the clumsy
wheel-lock, in which a notched steel wheel was turned by a handle against
the flint till a spark caught the priming, led to the invention of the
more serviceable flint-lock, of which a few still hang in the kitchens
of our farm-
14
houses, for the boys to shoot small birds with at Christmas; the flint-lock
in time passed by an obvious modification into the percussion-lock, which
is just now changing its old-fashioned arrangement to be adapted from muzzle-loading
to breech-loading. The medieval astrolabe passed into the quadrant, now
discarded in its turn by the seaman, who uses the more delicate sextant
and so on through the history of one art and instument after another. Such
examples of progression are known to us as direct history, but so thoroughly
is this notion of development at home in our minds, that by means of it
we reconstruct lost history without scruple, trusting to general knowledge
of the principles of human thought and action as a guide in putting the
facts in their proper order. Whether chronicle speaks or is silent on the
point no one comparing a long-bow and a crossbow would doubt that the cross-bow
was a development arising from the simpler instrument. So among the
savage fire-drills for igniting by friction, it seems clear on the face
of the matter that the drill worked by a cord or bow is a later improvement
on the clumsier primitive instrument twirled between the hands. That instructive
class of specimens which antiquaries sometimes discover, bronze celts modelled
on the heavy type of the stone hatchet, are scarcely explicable except
as first steps in the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age,
to be followed soon by the next stage of progress, in which it is discovered
that the new material is suited to a handier and less wasteful pattern.
And thus, in the other branches of our history, there will come again and
again into view series of facts which may be consistently arranged as having
followed one another in a particular order of development, but which will
hardly bear being turned round and made to follow in reversed order. Such
for instance are the facts I have here brought forward in a chapter on
the Art of Counting, which tend to prove that as to this point of culture
at least, savage tribes reached their position by learning and not by unlearning,
by elevation from a lower rather than by degradation from a higher state.
Among evidence aiding us to trace the course which
the civilization of the world has actually followed, is that great class
of
15
facts to denote which I have found it convenient to introduce the term
"survivals." These are processes, customs, opinions, and so forth, which
have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of society different
from that in which they had their original home, and they thus remain as
proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer
has been evolved. Thus, I know an old Somersetshire woman whose hand-loom
dates from the time before the introduction of the "flying shuttle," which
new-fangled appliance she has never even learnt to use, and I have seen
her throw her shuttle from hand to hand in true classic fashion; this old
woman is not a century behind her times, but she is a case of survival.
Such examples often lead us back to the habits of hundreds and even thousands
of years ago. The ordeal of the Key and Bible, still in use, is a survival;
the Midsummer bonfire is a survival; the Breton peasants' All Souls' supper
for the spirits of the dead is a survival. The simple keeping up of ancient
habits is only one part of the transition from old into new and changing
times. The serious business of ancient society may be seen to sink into
the sport of later generations, and its serious belief to linger on in
nursery folk-lore, while superseded habits of old-world life may be modified
into new-world forms still powerful for good and evil. Sometimes old thoughts
and practices will burst out afresh, to the amazement of a world that thought
them long since dead or dying; here survival passes into revival as has
lately happened in so remarkable a way in the history of modern spiritualism,
a subject full of instruction from the ethnographer's point of view.
The study of the principles of survival has, indeed, no small practical
importance, for most of what we call superstition is included within survival,
and in this way lies open to the attack of its deadliest enemy, a reasonable
explanation. Insignificant, moreover, as multitudes of the facts
of survival are in themselves, their study is so effective for tracing
the course of the historical development through which alone it is possible
to understand their meaning, that it becomes a vital point of ethnographic
research to gain the clearest possible insight into their nature.
This importance must justify the detail here devoted to an examination
of survival, on the
16
evidence of such games, popular sayings, customs, superstitions, and the
like, as may serve well to bring into view the manner of its operation.
Progress, degradation, survival, revival, modification,
are all modes of the connexion that binds together the complex network
of civilization. It needs but a glance into the trivial details of
our own daily life to set us thinking how far we are really its originators,
and how far but the transmitters and modifiers of the results of long past
ages. Looking round the rooms we live in, we may try here how far
he who only knows his own time can be capable of rightly comprehending
even that. Here is the honeysuckle of Assyria, there the fleur-de-lis of
Anjou, a cornice with a Greek border runs round the ceiling, the style
of Louis XIV, and its parent the Renaissance share the looking-glass between
them. Transformed, shifted, or mutilated, such elements of art still carry
their history plainly stamped upon them; and if the history yet farther
behind is less easy to read, we are not to say that because we cannot clearly
discern it there is therefore no history there. It is thus even with the
fashion of the clothes men wear. The ridiculous little tails of the German
postillion's coat show of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd
rudiments; but the English clergy-man's bands no longer so convey their
history to the eye, and look unaccountable enough till one has seen the
intermediate stages through which they came down from the more serviceable
wide collars, such as Milton wears in his portrait, and which gave their
name to the "band-box" they used to be kept in. In fact the books of costume,
showing how one garment grew or shrank by gradual stages and passed into
another, illustrate with much force and clearness the nature of the change
and growth, revival and decay, which go on from year to year in more important
matters of life. In books, again, we see each writer not for and
by himself, but occupying his proper place in history; we look through
each philosopher, mathematician, chemist, poet, into the background of
his education, --through Leibnitz into Descartes, through Dalton into Priestley,
through Milton into Homer. The study of language has, perhaps, done more
than any other in removing from our view of
17
human thought and action the ideas of chance and arbitrary invention, and
in substituting for them a theory of development by the co-operation of
individual men, through processes ever reasonable and intelligible where
the facts are fully known. Rudimentary as the science of culture still
is, the symptoms are becoming very strong that even what seem its most
spontaneous and motiveless phenomena will, nevertheless, be shown to come
within the range of distinct cause and effect as certainly as the facts
of mechanics. What would be popularly thought more indefinite and uncontrolled
than the products of the imagination in myths and fables? Yet any systematic
investigation of mythology, on the basis of a wide collection of evidence,
will show plainly enough in such efforts of fancy at once a development
from stage to stage, and a production of uniformity of result from uniformity
of cause. Here, as elsewhere, causeless spontaneity is seen to recede
farther and farther into shelter within the dark precincts of ignorance;
like chance, that still holds its place among the vulgar as a real cause
of events otherwise unaccountable, while to educated men it has long consciously
meant nothing but this ignorance itself. It is only when men fail
to see the line of connexion in events, that they are prone to fall upon
the notions of arbitrary impulses, cause-less freaks, chance and nonsense
and indefinite unaccountability. If childish games, purposeless customs,
absurd superstitions are set down as spontaneous because no one can say
exactly how they came to be, the assertion may remind us of the like effect
that the eccentric habits of the wild rice-plant had on the philosophy
of a Red Indian tribe, otherwise disposed to see in the harmony of nature
the effects of one controlling personal will. The Great Spirit, said these
Sioux theologians, made all things except the wild rice; but the wild rice
came by chance.
"Man," said Wilhelm von Humboldt, "ever connects
on from what lies at hand (der Mensch knupft immer an Vorhandenes an)."
The notion of the continuity of civilization contained in this maxim is
no barren philosophic principle, but is at once made practical by the consideration
that they who wish to understand their own lives ought to know the stages
through which their opinions and habits have become what they are.
Auguste
18
Comte scarcely overstated the necessity of this study of development, when
he declared at the beginning of 'Positive Philosophy' that "no conception
can be understood except through its history," and his phrase will bear
extension to culture at large. To expect to look modern life in the
face and comprehend it by mere inspection, is a kind of philosophy that
can easily be tested. Imagine any one explaining the trivial saying, "a
little bird told me," without knowing of the old belief in the language
of birds and beasts, to which Dr. Dasent in the introduction to the Norse
Tales, so reasonably traces its origin. To ingenious attempts at explaining
by the light of reason things which want the light of history to show their
meaning, much of the learned nonsense of the world has indeed been due.
Mr. Maine, in his 'Ancient Law,' gives a perfect instance. In all
the literature which enshrines the pretended philosophy of law, he remarks,
there is nothing more curious than the pages of elaborate sophistry in
which Blackstone attempts to explain and justify that extraordinary rule
of English law, only recently repealed, which prohibited sons of the same
father by different mothers from succeeding to one another's land. To Mr.
Maine, knowing the facts of the case, it was easy to explain its real origin
from the "Customs of Normandy" where according to the system of agnation,
or kinship on the male side, brothers by the same mother but by different
fathers were of course no relations at all to one another. But when this
rule "was transplanted to England, the English judges, who had no clue
to its principle, interpreted it as a general prohibition against the succession
of the half-blood, and extended it to consanguineous brothers, that is
to sons of the same father by different wives." Then, ages after, Blackstone
sought in this blunder the perfection of reason, and, found it in the argument
that kinship through both parents ought to prevail over even a nearer degree
of kinship through but one parent. Such are the risks that philosophers
run in
19
detaching any phenomenon of civilization from its hold on past events,
and treating it as an isolated fact, to be simply disposed of by a guess
at some plausible explanation.
In carrying on the great task of rational ethnography,
the investigation of the causes which have produced the phenomena of culture,
and the laws to which they are subordinate, it is desirable to work out
as systematically as possible a scheme of evolution of this culture along
its many lines. In the following chapter, on the Development of Culture,
an attempt is made to sketch a theoretical course of civilization among
mankind, such as appears on the whole most accordant with the evidence.
By comparing the various stages of civilization among races known to history,
with the aid of archaeological inference from the remains of pre-historic
tribes, it seems possible to judge in a rough way of an early general condition
of man, which from our point of view is to be regarded as a primitive condition,
whatever yet earlier state may in reality have lain behind it. This
hypothetical primitive condition corresponds in a considerable degree to
that of modern savage tribes, who, in spite of their difference and distance,
have in common certain elements of civilization, which seem remains of
an early state of the human race at large. If this hypothesis be true,
then, notwithstanding the continual interference of degeneration, the main
tendency of culture from primaeval up to modern times has been from savagery
towards civilization. On the problem of the relation of savage to civilized
life, almost every one of the thousands of facts discussed in the succeeding
chapters has its direct bearing. Survival in Culture, placing all along
the course of advancing civilization way-marks full of meaning to those
who can decipher their signs, even now sets up in our midst primaeval monuments
of barbaric thought and life. Its investigation tells strongly in favour
of the view that the European may find among the Greenlanders or Maoris
many a trait for reconstructing the picture of his own primitive ancestors.
Next comes the problem of the Origin of Language. Obscure as many parts
of this problem still remain, its clearer positions lie open to the investigation,
whether speech took its origin among mankind in the savage state, and the
result of the enquiry is that, consis-
20
tently with all known evidence, this may have been the case. From the examination
of the Art of Counting a far more definite consequence is shown. It may
be confidently asserted, that not only is this important art found in a
rudimentary state among savage tribes, but that satisfactory evidence proves
numeration to have been developed by rational invention from this low stage
up to that in which we ourselves possess it. The examination of Mythology
which concludes the first volume, is for the most part made from a special
point of view, on evidence collected for a special purpose, that of tracing
the relation between the myths of savage tribes and their analogues among
more civilized nations. The issue of such enquiry goes far to prove that
the earliest myth-maker arose and flourished among savage hordes, setting
on foot an art which his more cultured successors would carry on, till
its results came to be fossilized in superstition, mistaken for history,
shaped and draped in poetry, or cast aside as lying folly.
Nowhere, perhaps, are broad views of historical
development more needed than in the study of religion. Notwithstanding
all that has been written to make the world acquainted with the lower theologies,
the popular ideas of their place in history and their relation to the faiths
of higher nations are still of the mediaeval type. It is wonderful to contrast
some missionary journals with Max Muller's Essays, and to set the unappreciating
hatred and ridicule that is lavished by narrow hostile zeal on Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Zoroastrism, beside the catholic sympathy with which deep and
wide knowledge can survey those ancient and noble phases of man's religious
consciousness; nor, because the religions of savage tribes may be rude
and primitive, compared with the great Asiatic systems, do they lie too
low for interest and even for respect. The question really lies between
understanding and misunderstanding them. Few who will give their minds
to master the general principles of savage religion will ever again think
it ridiculous, or the knowledge of it superfluous to the rest of mankind.
Far from its beliefs and practices being a rubbish-heap of miscellaneous
folly, they are consistent and logical in so high a degree as to begin,
as soon as even roughly classified, to display the prin-
21
ciples of their formation and development; and these principles prove to
be essentially rational, though working in a mental condition of intense
and inveterate ignorance. It is with a sense of attempting an investigation
which bears very closely on the current theology of our own day, that I
have set myself to examine systematically, among the lower races, the development
of Animism; that is to say, the doctrine of souls and other spiritual beings
in general. The second volume of this work is in great part occupied
with a mass of evidence from all regions of the world, displaying the nature
and meaning of this great element of the Philosophy of Religion, and tracing
its transmission, expansion, restriction, modification, along the course
of history into the midst of our own modern thought. Nor are the questions
of small practical moment which have to be raised in a similar attempt
to trace the development of certain prominent Rites and Ceremonies - customs
so full of instruction as to the inmost powers of religion, whose outward
expression and practical result they are.
In these investigations, however, made rather from
an ethnographic than a theological point of view, there has seemed little
need of entering into direct controversial argument, which indeed I have
taken pains to avoid as far as possible. The connexion which runs through
religion, from its rudest forms up to the status of an enlightened Christianity,
may be conveniently treated of with little recourse to dogmatic theology.
The rites of sacrifice and purification may be studied in their stages
of development without entering into questions of their authority and value,
nor does an examination of the successive phases of the world's belief
in a future life demand a discussion of the arguments that may be adduced
upon it for our own conviction. Such ethnographic results may then be left
as materials for professed theologians, and it will not perhaps be long
before evidence so fraught with meaning shall take its legitimate place.
To fall back once again on the analogy of natural history, the time may
soon come when it will be thought as unreasonable for a scientific student
of theology not to have a competent acquaintance with the principles of
the religions of the lower races, as for a physiologist to look with
22
the contempt of fifty years ago on evidence derived from the lower forms
of life, deeming the structure of mere invertebrate creatures matter unworthy
of his philosophic study.
Not merely as a matter of curious research, but
as an important practical guide to the understanding of the present, and
the shaping of the future, the investigation into the origin and early
development of civilization must be pushed on zealously. Every possible
avenue of knowledge must be explored, every door tried to see if it is
open. No kind of evidence need be left untouched on the score of remoteness
or complexity, of minuteness or triviality. The tendency of modern enquiry
is more and more toward the conclusion that if law is anywhere, it is everywhere.
To despair of what a conscientious collection and study of facts may lead
to, and to declare any problem insoluble, because difficult and far off;
is distinctly to be on the wrong side in science; and he who will choose
a hopeless task may set himself to discover the limits of discovery.
One remembers Comte starting in his account of astronomy with a remark
on the necessary limitation of our knowledge of the stars: we conceive,
he tells us, the possibility of determining their form, distance, size,
and movement, whilst we should never by any method be able to study their
chemical composition, their mineralogical structure, &c. Had
the philosopher lived to see the application of spectrum analysis to this
very problem, his proclamation of the dispiriting doctrine of necessary
ignorance would perhaps have been recanted in favour of a more hopeful
view. And it seems to be with the philosophy of remote human life somewhat
as with the study of the nature of the celestial bodies. The processes
to be made out in the early stages of our mental evolution lie distant
from us in time as the stars lie distant from us in space, but the laws
of the universe are not limited with the direct observation of our senses.
There is vast material to be used in our enquiry; many workers are now
busied in bringing this material into shape, though little may have yet
been done in proportion to what remains to do; and already it seems not
too much to say that the vague outlines of a philosophy of primaeval history
are beginning to come within our view.
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