JOHN WKSI.KV I'OUKU, DAVIS 



in the Bureau of Ethnology were divided according to it, 

 although this required the division of one man's work under 

 different headings. 



TRUTH AND ERROR. 



Reflection upon these broad subjects seems to have devel- 

 oped the ambition to systematize all accumulated knowledge 

 and philosophies, from those of the savage and lower barbarian 

 to those of the modern scientific world, thus "framing a cosmic 

 compendium at once broader and simpler than any previously 

 conceived." He was in this way carried from the concrete 

 study of human races to the more and more abstract study of 

 human thought. The field that he sought to cover was more 

 extensive than any that he had previously cultivated, and it is 

 to be questioned whether so vast an ambition was not less a 

 sign of continued strength than of approaching weakness. He 

 planned to arrange the entire content of knowledge in a system 

 of three parts, the first to deal with Nature, the second with 

 Man, and the third with Mind; and with a view to giving his 

 results a "general, and hence permanent, character, the work 

 was given the form of a trilogy," and was "modeled after 

 artistic rather than technical standards." The first part of 

 this heavy undertaking was published under the title of "Truth 

 and Error; or, the science of intellection" (1898) ; the second 

 part appeared in a series of papers in the American An- 

 thropologist, having for titles the names of the pentalogic 

 scries given above, and designed for reprinting with additions 

 under the name of "Good and Evil." The third part was left, 

 unfinished. 



A devotedly loyal disciple of Powell's says of this work : 

 "The breadth and depth of its foundations were little realized 

 by co-workers, still less by the critics of the preliminary 

 essays ; indeed, the modesty of the author seldom permitted 

 him to see in its full magnitude the mighty task to which he 

 was impelled by the same powerful instinct that inspired his 

 military and exploratory efforts ;" but the same disciple went 

 so far in eulogizing his master that we must prefer the esti- 

 mate of another of Powell's intimates, a man of more even 



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