ETHNOLOGY : ITS SCOPE AND PROBLEMS 553 



purview all conditions, ages, and climes, or, in other words, he studies 

 universal history. 1 Hence it becomes necessary to throw every 

 possible light upon those shadowy beginnings of the culture-nations 

 when all knowledge was stored in human brain-cells. Tradition has 

 handed down to history only the most fragmentary traces of the 

 unwritten lore, and these are totally inadequate to supply the 

 documentary historian with sufficient data to complete his narrative. 

 Here the ethnologist comes to the aid of the baffled historian and 

 supplies him with accounts of existing peoples who have dallied 

 along the road that leads to civilization, and amongst these laggards 

 there can be selected parallels to the various phases through which 

 various civilizations have passed. As geography and ethnology are 

 the open pages of those portions of earth-history, of which strati- 

 graphy and archeology are the pages already turned down, so the 

 history of the earth (geology) and the history of man are consecutive 

 narratives that incorporate the past and the present. 



For the sake of convenience archeology is generally regarded as 

 a subject of equal .rank with anthropography and ethnology, but it 

 bears the same relation to ethnology that paleontology does to bio- 

 logy. The finds are fossil implements, shards, house-sites, and the 

 like, but, as the paleontologist must be a zoologist if his dry bones 

 are to be vivified, so must the archeologist turn to ethnology for 

 existing parallels or for suggestions as to the probable use or mean- 

 ing of particular objects: hence the distinction between the finds 

 of the archeologist and the collections of the ethnologist is not one of 

 degree but merely a question of chronology. 



It is convenient to speak of the less advanced people in civilized 

 communities as the " folk," and folklore is what the folk think and 

 do, and its essential charcter is that it is traditional. Practices were 

 observed and copied, and in this way there has accumulated a vast 

 amount of traditional thought and usage that has been handed down 

 from the childhood of man, and is still being transmitted. Although 

 the bulk of folklore is current among the less educated classes, there 

 is a good deal persisting among the so-called higher classes, and new 

 vagaries are constantly appearing. 2 



speak as if this method was, to say the least of it, the most important part of 

 history. 



1 "What do we mean by a Universal History? Briefly: a History which shall 

 (first) include all the races and tribes of man within its scope, and (secondly) 

 shall bring all these races and tribes into a connection with one another such as 

 to display their annals as an organic whole. Universal History has to deal not 

 only with the great nations, but also with the small nations; not only with the 

 civilized, but also with the barbarous or savage peoples; not only with the times 

 of movement and progress, but also with the times of silence and apparent stag- 

 nation. Every fraction of humanity has contributed something to the common 

 stock, and has lived and labored not for itself only, but for others also through 

 the influence which it has perforce exercised on its neighbors." James Bryce, 

 "Introductory Essay." in The World's History: A Survey of Man's Record. 

 Edited by H. F. Helmolt, 1901, i, p. xxi. 



2 Two examples will suffice: "A lady living within the shadow of the walls of 



