ETHNOLOGY: ITS SCOPE AND PROBLEMS 567 



More than once * have I pointed out that it is well from time to 

 time to take stock of our knowledge and of our methods of in- 

 quiry, to see whether we are working on sound lines. As the busi- 

 ness man finds it necessary to go over his stock periodically and 

 to balance his books, so also the scientific man, especially the 

 biologist, should perform an analogous operation, lest perchance 

 he finds out too late that he has been entering on a comparatively 

 unprofitable piece of work, or has been neglecting valuable oppor- 

 tunities. 



We can, perhaps, gain a clearer view of the question by look- 

 ing at it from the standpoint of our successors. What opinion will 

 the sociologist and the historian of a hundred, or of a thousand, 

 years hence have of the work now being done? What is the re- 

 search they would wish us to have undertaken? The question is 

 not a difficult one to answer. They will certainly and most justly 

 complain if we busy ourselves entirely with problems that can 

 wait, which they can solve as well as we, while at the same time 

 we neglect that work which we alone can do. 



Our obvious and immediate duty is to save for science those 

 data that are vanishing. This should be the watchword of the 

 present day. It is difficult to suggest an object more worthy of 

 liberal support than this. In sober earnestness, therefore, I appeal 

 to all those who are interested in the history and character of 

 man, whether they be theologians, psychologists, historians, socio- 

 logists, or anthropologists, to face the fact that a later generation 

 may employ itself in working-up the results garnered by ourselves 

 or in studying other subjects, but to this generation, and to this 

 alone, is appointed the task to which I have now drawn your atten- 

 tion. 



1 Nature, January 28, 1897, p. 305; Popular Science Monthly, January, 1903, 

 p. 222. 



