ETHNOLOGY : ITS SCOPE AND PROBLEMS 555 



pies, culled from his own wide experience in various parts of 

 Oceania, of present-day illustrations of events that happened 

 before the walls of Ilios, or parallels in custom between the Micro- 

 nesians and the ancient Germans. In my own small experience l 

 I have passed in a week or two from the stone-age savagery of 

 the Papuans to the barbarism of Borneo, which recalls in many 

 respects the stage of culture at which Europe had arrived at the 

 time when iron was replacing bronze. 



It has often been noted that the history of human culture is 

 largely the history of the domination of nature by man; at first 

 man was simply a creature of circumstances like any other animal, 

 then gradually he commenced his work of subduing the earth. 

 The donning of clothes and the discovery of fire rendered man 

 less dependent upon purely geographical conditions. As the Right 

 Honorable Jarrfes Bryce says: "We need not pursue his upward 

 course, at every stage of which he finds himself better and still 

 better able to escape from the thralldom of nature, and to turn 

 to account the forces which she puts at his disposal. But although 

 he becomes more and more independent, more and more master 

 not only of himself, but of her, he is none the less always for many 

 purposes the creature of the conditions with which she surrounds 

 him. ... In the earlier stages he lies helpless before her, and 

 must take what she chooses to bestow . . . but in the later stages 

 of his progress he has, by accumulating a store of knowledge, and 

 by the development of his intelligence, energy, and self-confidence, 

 raised himself out of his old difficulties. ... As respects all the 

 primary needs of his life, he has so subjected nature to himself 

 that he can make his life what he will. . . . Thus his relation 

 to nature is changed. It was that of a servant, or indeed that of 

 a beggar, needing the bounty of a sovereign. It is now that of a 

 master needing the labor of a servant, a servant infinitely stronger 

 than the master, but absolutely obedient to the master, so long 

 as the master uses the proper spell." 2 The elucidation of this 

 evolution of culture has been the work of ethnology. 



The interrelations between man and his environment are mani- 

 fest in multifold ways, since, as is evident to all, the physical 

 conditions of a country, including the climate, the vegetation, 

 and the indigenous animals, affect the life of the human inhabit- 

 ants of that country. The main occupation of a people reacts upon 

 its social life; thus, within certain limits, the character of the organ- 

 ization of the family, the nature of larger social groupings, and 

 the regulation of public life are products of the environment. Not 

 less has the environment impressed itself upon the arts of life and 



1 Head-Hunters : Black, White and Brown, 1901. 

 J J. Bryce, loc. cit., pp. xxvi, xxvii. 



