proceedings: anthropological society 395 



THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



The 512th meeting of the society was a special meeting held on May 

 1 in the Natural History building of the National Museum to hear 

 the address of the retiring president. Dr. John R. Swanton, whose 

 subject was Some Anthropological Misconceptions. 



Dr. Swanton began by calling attention to the cyclic nature of cultural 

 movements and stated that like other beliefs the doctrine of evolution 

 which so dominates the thought of our time is subject to the same law, 

 and bound to have its rise, decline, and disappearance as an object of 

 peculiar interest, and further, that the truth embodied in it will in 

 time become so axiomatic that no particular attention will be paid to 

 it and the chaff will disappear. 



Unfortunately when pioneer anthropologists began to apply evolu- 

 tionary ideas to their science, then in its infancy, they fell into a serious 

 error. They assumed, with some justice indeed, that the existing 

 peoples of the world presented features, some more and some less 

 primitive, features which might be arranged into series showing the stages 

 which mankind as a whole had passed through. But in selecting 

 the "most primitive" features they worked on the false assumption 

 that that which was most foreign to the ideas of the society in which 

 they lived, in the cultural center of western Europe, as the most prim- 

 itive. This resulted in a vast crop of pseudo-scientific evolutionary 

 theories, each based on its author 's own peculiar understanding of what 

 was more and what less primitive. An assistant source of error was an 

 over earnest attempt to find survivals analogous to the "vestigial char- 

 acters" of biology in all kinds of cultural features, many of which were 

 not vestigial at all. The speaker referred to several evolutionary 

 theories of this kind, treating at some length those regarding the evolu- 

 tion of totemism from a matrilineal clan system, the evolution of 

 marriage from a primitive promiscuity, and several theories concerning 

 the origin of religion, such as those of Spencer, Tylor, Frazer, and Lang. 



Secondly, the author took exception to the extreme uniformitarian 

 attitude taken by certain anthropologists. He called attention to the 

 fact that absolute uniformitarianism is impossible since even the in- 

 organic world is based on discrete molecules, atoms, electrons, etc., 

 while the organic world is based on independent organisms. In the 

 same way when we turn to the culture history of mankind we find 

 that ideas, although progressive, do not roll into consciousness with 

 the even motion of a wheel, but come at certain definite times and 

 places. 



Along with this extreme uniformitarianism he believed too much 

 stress had been placed on the unconscious or subconscious side of 

 evolution in human institutions. Important as the latter undoubtedly 

 is and much as it is neglected by the man of average intelligence, it 

 acts less toward the development of new institutions than toward the 

 preservation of institutions already in existence, and is accompanied by 

 degeneration, or at most imitation, rather than by absolute origination. 



