ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH OUTSIDE AMERICA. 9 



First and foremost must be put the fact that both officials and mission- 

 aries are busy people, living often in climatic and other surroundings which 

 leave but little energy for the performance of extra work after the necessary 

 tasks of the day have been performed. The daily routine of life may leave 

 time and energy sufficient for the record of impressions but not for the exact 

 and methodical work which is the essence of intensive inquiry. 



A second factor is want of training, and this affects not merely the way 

 in which work is done but, strangely enough, often prevents work from being 

 done at all. I have myself met with persons living among those of rude 

 culture who possess a wide knowledge of native custom and that genuine 

 sympathy with native thought which forms the first requisite for successful 

 work, who have yet made no systematic records of any kind because their 

 want of training has not allowed them to know where to begin, or how to 

 tackle in any exact manner the teeming wealth of strange lore and custom 

 with which they find themselves surrounded. 



Still another difficulty, and perhaps the gravest of all, because it is one 

 which can not be overcome merely by the acquirement of training or leisure, 

 is that the occupations of both official and missionary bring them on occasion 

 into conflict with native ideas and customs, so that their inquiries arouse 

 suspicion in the minds of those whom they are trying more fully to under- 

 stand. The official is necessarily driven at times to interfere with the normal 

 course of native custom, and the mere fact of such interference leads the 

 native to reticence, if not suspicion. He does not understand the point of 

 view of those from another culture who have been set over him, and in order 

 to be on the safe side will keep from the knowledge of his rulers matters 

 which, if he knew better, would furnish no cause for interference but rather 

 lead to measures conducing to his happiness and comfort. 



The position of the missionary is even more difficult from this point of 

 view. The government official does not come with the duty to destroy which 

 is an essential part of the task of the missionary. The latter comes in order 

 to replace a large part of the ideas and customs of the natives by new, and, 

 since the ideas he wishes to change permeate the life of the people far more 

 deeply and widely than he supposes, an atmosphere of reticence is liable to 

 arise which greatly impairs the value of any record, even the most pains- 

 taking and thorough, which the missionary may attempt. The difficulty is 

 so great that it is only the very exceptional man, one who combines scientific 

 zeal with a real sympathy with native thought, who can give us such exact 

 work as is now the need of anthropology. Even in the best work of this kind 

 which has come from missionaries, it is probable that matters have been 

 hidden from them which might have been revealed to others. The total 

 mass of the contribution of missionaries to ethnology is so great that it is 

 difficult to imagine what would have been the position of the science to-day 

 without it, but it is only exceptional men, such as Codrington, Junod, Roscoe, 

 and Strehlow, whose zeal and skill have enabled them to overcome the 



