592 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Mental anthropology, as I have said, is in great measure a 

 science of human origins. It investigates, or will hereafter investi- 

 gate, the origins of language, of the arts, of society, of science, of 

 morality, of religion. To take, for example, the arts of life, it asks, 

 How did man discover the use of fire and the modes of kindling 

 it ? How did he become acquainted with the metals and learn 

 to fashion them into tools and weapons ? How did he come to 

 tame wild animals and to breed them for his comfort and con- 

 venience ? How did he first hit upon the idea of sowing seed 

 and waiting for months till the seed should ripen and bear fruit ? 

 In other words, how did he arrive at the conception of agri- 

 culture, a conception which has even yet not dawned on some 

 of the rudest races of mankind ? And in regard to the origin 

 of all the useful arts we must ask, was the origin multiple or 

 single ? In other words, was each of the arts discovered 

 independently in various places and at various times ? or was 

 each of them discovered once for all at a single place, from which 

 it gradually spread, through the contact or migration of peoples, 

 to other parts of the world ? 



Or to turn to the origin of society, we have to ask, How did 

 men first come to herd together ? did they do so while they were 

 still in the purely animal stage ? and are our gregarious instincts 

 inherited from our bestial ancestors, who hunted, perhaps, in 

 packs ? Or was man, when he first emerged from the beasts, 

 a solitary creature, like some of the higher apes, his near kins- 

 folk ? Again, when the first social groups of men and women 

 were formed, how were they organised internally ? What 

 was the relation of the sexes to each other? Was there a 

 complete communism of women ? or was marriage already insti- 

 tuted ? and if so, was it a marriage of groups, or of individuals ? 

 Again, in these groups, what was the relation of parents to 

 their children ? Was the relation known or unknown ? or 

 was it partly known and partly unknown? Did a man, as 

 some people think, know his mother but not his father ? 

 his brothers and sisters and his sisters' children, but not his 

 own children or his brothers' children ? And how did he 

 come to refuse to marry women who stood to him in certain 

 definite relationships and to regard, as he often did, any such 

 marriage as a horror punishable with death ? These and similar 

 questions have to be faced by anthropology in investigating the 

 internal organisation of the primitive social groups. Some of 

 them have a more than antiquarian interest ; for, if we could 

 solve them, we might at the same time facilitate the work of the 

 modern legislator and social reformer, who has sometimes to 

 deal with practical problems not altogether dissimilar. 



When we inquire into the government of the primitive social 

 groups, we hare to ask. Was it despotic, or oligarchic, or demo- 



