144 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



human experiences and our own nature that it must 

 contain terrible passages, which some, perhaps, would 

 fear to look upon. 



In the study of anthropology there is, perhaps, the 

 most legitimate field for the constructive imagination. 

 So much may be seen in the realm of history, the brief 

 portion of the story of man with which we are partially 

 acquainted. A history without imagination is but a false 

 and dusty record, a sketch in black and white of what was 

 once a glowing fresco. The shelves of libraries are full 

 of such dead documents, and only occasionally does the 

 reader light upon a work, or even a passage in a work, 

 to which the realizing imagination has given a sense of 

 motion and life. Such a passage is to be found in Pro- 

 fessor Murray's Rise of the Greek Epic, when he describes 

 vividly, and with convincing power, the probably course 

 and conduct of an early migration in the ^Egean Sea. 

 It is a matter for regret that even anthropology, with all 

 its immense implications, should exhibit much of that 

 restricting tendency of scientific men to confine themselves 

 to special rather than general fields. Yet just as its study 

 throws light upon the conduct and behaviour of living races, 

 so many special studies, that, perhaps, of Pelasgian myth 

 or history, may help to solve the mysteries of the un- 

 historic past. Even if it does not do so directly, it will 

 show specialists that to ignore the imagination is to deprive 

 themselves of the most powerful weapon in the whole 

 armoury of research. If in the course of some daring and 

 slenderly based speculations their rash author makes one 

 possible suggestion, he is as much justified as the poet who 

 writes but one memorable line. In such a fluctuant, 

 inchoate branch of learning, it cannot be said that know- 

 ledge has yet reached the period when theory is held to be 



