REASONS FOR NEGLECT 307 



elements, and with the group of social processes we 

 call Religion which, among most of the peoples of 

 the earth, binds together into one complicated thread 

 the manifold activities of social life. Whatever 

 may have been the preoccupations of the anthro- 

 pologist in the past, his chief interest to-day is in 

 just those regions of human activity with which the 

 art of Government is daily and intimately concerned. 



A second reason for the failure to recognise the 

 value of scientific work in the art of government is 

 that the minds of rulers are already occupied with 

 an organised body of knowledge, the fruit of the 

 gradually acquired experience of those who have 

 been concerned in the work of government in the 

 past. It is in the satisfaction of rulers with this 

 knowledge and in their failure to recognise its 

 incompleteness, and even its too frequent falsity, 

 that there lies the chief obstacle to the recognition 

 of the value of science in their work. 



The general acceptance of these incomplete and 

 false bodies of knowledge concerning the cultures 

 of subject peoples is due to certain well recognised 

 characteristics partly of the subject peoples, partly 

 of the rulers themselves. 



The chief characteristic of savage or barbarous 

 peoples which leads to the formation of such a body 

 of false knowledge is the attitude of respect towards 

 their rulers which makes them very loath to con- 

 tradict or correct them. The mode of action of 

 this attitude shows itself with especial definiteness 



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