12 ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH OUTSIDE AMERICA. 



results may be obtained. The inadequate results of many anthropological 

 expeditions are due to the fact that their primary aim has been the collection 

 of materia] objects for museums. Persons who visit a savage or barbar- 

 ous people with the idea of collecting for museums as their primary motive 

 must inevitably come into conflict with the most cherished emotions and 

 sentiments of the people. Any object used by a savage has not merely a 

 utilitarian interest, so that the object can be replaced by another like it; it 

 has, as I have already indicated, a wide aesthetic and religious interest. The 

 man of rude culture is often bound to his implements and utensils, not only 

 by the affectionate familiarity of long usage or even by hereditary interest, 

 but often by emotions of reverence and awe associated with the religious 

 character of the useful arts to which I have already referred. It is no mere 

 coincidence that we so often read the record of the collection of so many 

 thousand museum specimens side by side with the statement that the religious 

 ideas and practices of the peoples were found to be wholly inaccessible. A 

 man of rude culture is not likely to unbosom himself and reveal his most 

 sacred thoughts and rites to one who begins his acquaintance by depriving 

 him, even by honest and generous trade, of objects which stand in the closest 

 relations to these thoughts and rites. To anyone who understands the place 

 taken by his religion in the life of savage and barbarous man it is not sur- 

 prising that expeditions organized to enrich museums should so often show 

 so little acquaintance with the deeper elements of human nature. 



This view by no means implies anj'^ depreciation of the value of museums 

 or of the collection of objects to illustrate the arts and modes of life and 

 thought of people of rude culture. When the intensive worker has found his 

 way into the confidence and affection of those among whom he is working, 

 he may often obtain objects ungrudgingly which would never even be seen 

 by the mere collector. Still more important is the fact that everything which 

 he obtains will have an infinitely wider and deeper meaning than anything 

 which can be obtained by the cursory visitor. His collection will not consist 

 of objects to hang on museum walls as meaningless structures, perhaps even 

 as sources of misunderstanding and confusion, but will be definite and valu- 

 able contributions to the understanding of the history of human thought and 

 action. What would otherwise be empty forms become full of meaning and 

 interest in relation to the culture of which they are an integral part. An 

 expedition which makes its collections the means of illustrating other knowl- 

 edge rather than its primary and self-sufficient motive will perhaps obtain a 

 smaller number of objects than a rapid and superficial survey, but each object 

 wiU have a value which perhaps surpasses that of the whole collection of an 

 expedition which tears the objects from their surroundings without adequate 

 inquiry. Further, it is only by intensive work that it is possible to work out 

 the processes of manufacture, and their illustration by the preservation of 

 successive stages of a process, which are even more important than the col- 

 lection of the finished object. 



