ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 59 



sciences of geology and astronomy, or at best to rank it with the 

 biological studies of botany and geology. Some have already taken 

 this ground, driven, as they afifirm, by the stern logic of observed 

 facts. Sentient being appears to them as one of the phases of evo- 

 lution of physical nature, and subject to the same laws as other 

 physical phenomena. Such a theory may seem delightfully simple, 

 but it is fearfully suicidal, since it hopelessly invalidates all the acts 

 of thought and intelligence by which this or any other truth can 

 be known. 



Doubtless sociology and civilization have their laws of evolution 

 as potential if not also as clear as those of the physical sciences ; 

 and these laws may be studied in the savage and archaic stages of 

 society as well as in the more recent and more complex. Some- 

 times a law will be seen even more clearly in the earlier and 

 simpler stages of evolution ; but the higher evolution ordinarily in- 

 volves forms and functions wholly unknown to the lower; and the 

 complex modern civilization exhibits classes of phenomena of which 

 the savage gives no hint or promise, or gives it only in so rudi- 

 mental a form as to be unrecognizable, except in the light of fuller 

 development. 



If now, we accept the conclusions that civilization is essentially 

 internal, that its external phenomena are the necessary outcome of 

 the nature of man and of society ; if we further agree that our study 

 of civilization must begin with it as it exists, here and now ; if we 

 accept as a guiding truth that there is nothing in the essential 

 nature and attributes of man which does not find its expression in 

 history, and that there is nothing essential in history which does not 

 find its root and explanation in the nature of man, then our search 

 for the elements of civilization narrows its field to a study of those 

 common and universal principles, or instinctive activities, in the 

 human being which work outwardly into the facts and usages of 

 society, meeting and modified as they must be by environment ; or, 

 to state the same thing objectively, it is to select, classify, and study 

 all common universal social phenomena in the light of our conscious 

 instincts, needs, and activities. In physics we ascend from effects 

 to causes ; from phenomena to forces ; in sociology the cause is a 

 conscious one and we may safely descend from force to phenomena. 



Our method being explained and defended, we march to results. 



