THE ECOLOGY OF MAN—SEARS 393 
Mother Hubbards, to drink beer, and to buy things from us instead 
of gathering them from sea and strand or making them from the 
simple materials about them? I even suspect that the average in- 
dividual, given a shot of truth serum and asked to describe the archi- 
tecture of his own personal Heaven, would have less to say of a city 
of jasper, golden streets, and gates of pearl than of blue seas, wav- 
ing palms, gentle breezes, and gentle people. 
One of the newer achievements of science is the means of judging 
fairly cultures other than our own. How new this is may be judged 
from the prevalence of chauvinism, assorted snobberies such as rac- 
ism, and such durable terms as barbarian, gentile, provincial, and 
heathen. Even among trained observers the traditional approach 
has long been to judge other groups in terms of one’s own culture 
as a standard. This might lead to contempt if not pity, or as in 
the French glorification of the American Indian during the 17th 
century, to a sentimental appraisal equally far from the truth. The 
Hebrews who had, we must admit, a precious ethical concept at stake, 
had harsh words for those who married outside the nation. Later 
than this, renascent Europe dubbed Marco Polo a liar for his remark- 
able account of Cathay. In Mexico, a tough old soldier, Bernal Diaz, 
came nearer to clear and honest observation than his contemporaries, 
bent as they were on erasing what they found. 
But just as in geology a revolution came about through assuming 
that the past was to be explained by processes going on today before 
our eyes, so the study of man has been revolutionized by a simple as- 
sumption. This is, in effect, the assumption that any culture has its 
own internal logic that makes sense, so to speak, from the inside. Dif- 
ferences, per se, are not disgraceful and certainly not pathological. 
They are instead a means of understanding culture itself, to be ap- 
proached with respect and in the context of environment, past and 
present, physical, biological, and social. Working on this assumption 
for not much more than a generation, anthropologists have given us 
not only a great deal of information but a most useful perspective 
on human cultures, including our own. 
It follows that in working with any culture, no matter how generous 
our intent or how advanced our own technical knowledge and practice 
may be, we must approach the problem with an open mind. For each 
culture, like each landscape, is in some respects unique, and has its own 
values, its own rationale, and its own instrumentalities of change. 
We are rather given, because of the dazzling achievements of our 
own culture, to assume that what we regard as good for it must neces- 
sarily be good for all. This iseven true as we look about us within our 
own culture. We are inclined to fee! sorry for anyone who must drive 
a small car instead of a big one, and who must take his vacation near 
home instead of in Bermuda, and to consider such a situation as a flaw 
