THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF 

 MENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY^ 



By sir JAMES GEORGE FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D., F.R.S. 



The lectures which I have the honour to dehver in this place 

 deal with a branch of savage society and religion— the Belief 

 in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead in Polynesia. 

 As the subject may be novel, and the reasons for studying it 

 obscure to some of my hearers, I propose to devote the first 

 lecture to a general introduction, in which I will endeavour to 

 explain why savage society is worth studying and how we 

 should study it. 



The study of savage society forms part of the general science 

 of man or anthropology. That science is one of the latest born 

 in the sisterhood of the sciences, being hardly older than about 

 the middle of the nineteenth century ; in fact, the science is 

 contemporary with not a few of its exponents who have not yet 

 reached the extreme limit of old age. Not very many years 

 have elapsed since two of its founders in England, Lord Avebury 

 and Sir Edward Tylor, passed away. But, though young in 

 years, the science has grown so rapidly that already it is hardly 

 possible for any one man to embrace the whole of it. The 

 principle of the division of labour, which is essential to economic 

 progress, is no less essential to scientific progress. The time has 

 gone by when the comprehensive intellect of an Aristotle or a 

 Bacon could take all knowledge for its province. More and 

 more each inquirer has to limit his investigations to a small 

 patch of the field, to concentrate the glow-worm lamp of his 

 intelligence on a tiny circle, almost a speck, in the vast expanse, 

 which we dimlj'- perceive stretching out to infinity on every side 

 of us. Only by multiplying these glow-worm lamps, glimmering 

 side by side, can we hope, step by step, to diffuse the light of 

 knowledge through the boundless region of the unknown. 



In our particular science the first broad and sharp division 

 is between the study of man's body and the study of his mind. 

 The one is known as physical anthropology ; the other is now, 

 at least in this country, commonly called social anthropology, 



* An introductory lecture delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge, 

 November 4, 192 1. 



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