September 23, 1909] 



NATURE 



383 



of anthropology which mainly accounts for the shortness 

 of their respective vogues. 



Friedrich Ratzcl : Anthropo-gcoQraphy. 

 At the point which we have now reached in this rapid 

 survey of our science, it was obviously to Geography — the 

 svslematic study of those external forces of Nature as an 

 ordered whole — that Anthropology stretched out its hands ; 

 and it did not ask in vain. But while English geography 

 had remained exploratory, descriptive, and (like English 

 geology) historical in its outlook, the new German science 

 ol Eriikiindc — " earth-knowledge " in the widest sense of 

 the word — had already come into being on the basis of 

 the labours of Ritter and the two Humboldts, and under 

 the guidance of such men as Wagner, Richlhofen, and 

 Bastian ; the last named also an anthropologist of the first 

 rank. It was, thus, to a distinguished pupil of Wagner, 

 Friedrich Ratzel, that anthropology owed, more than to 

 any other man, the next forward step on these lines. In 

 Ratzel 's mind. History and Geography went hand in hand 

 as the precursors of a scientific Anthropology.' History 

 to define when, and in what order, Man makes his con- 

 quests over Nature; Geography to show where, and within 

 V hat limits, Nature presents a conquerable field for Man. 

 Much of this, of course, was already implicit in the teach- 

 ing of Adolf Bastian. whose monumental volumes on " Man 

 in History *' had appeared at Leipzig as early as i860 ; 

 liis " Contributions to Comparative Psychology " in 1868 ; 

 and his " Legal Relations among the Different Peoples of 

 the Earth " in 1872" — three years before Post's first essay. 

 Hut Bastian, inaccessible for years together in Tibet or 

 I'olynesia, was rather an inspiration to a few intimate 

 colleagues than a great propagandist : and besides, it was 

 not until the appearance of his " Doctrine of the Geo- 

 graphical Provinces" in iS86^ that he touched on this 

 precise ground, and by that time Ratzel's " History of 

 Man " had already been out for a year.* 



Epihigiie. 



These examples, I think, are sufficient to show how 

 intimately the growth of political philosophy has inter- 

 locked at every stage with that of anthropological science. 

 Each fresh start on the never-ending quest of Man as he 

 ought to be has been the response of theory to fresh facts 

 about Man as he is. And, meanwhile, the dreams and 

 speculations of one thinker after another — even dreams and 

 speculations which have moved nations and precipitated 

 revolutions — have ceased to command men's reason when 

 they ceased to accord with their knowledge. 



And we have seen more than this. We have seen the 

 very questions which philosophers have asked, the very 

 questions which perplexed them, no less than the solutions 

 which they proposed, melt away and vanish, as problems, 

 when the perspective of anthropology shifted and the stand- 

 point of observation advanced. This is no new experi- 

 ence ; nor is it peculiar either to anthropology among the 

 natural sciences, or to political science among the aspects 

 of the Study of Man. It is the common law of the mind's 

 growth, which all science manifests, and all philosophy. 



And now I would make one more attempt to put on 

 parallel lines the course of political thinking. It is not 

 so very long ago that a great British administrator, return- 

 ing from one of the gravest trials of statesmanship which 

 our generation has seen, to meet old colleagues and class- 

 mates at a college festival, gave it to us as the need he 

 had most felt, in the pauses of his administration, that 

 there did not exist at present any adequate formulation of 

 the great outstanding features of our knowledge (as distinct 

 from our creeds) about human societies and their mode 

 of growth, and he commended it to the new generation of 

 scholarship, as its highest and most necessary task, to 

 face once more the question : What are the forces, so far 

 as v:e can know them now. which, as .\ristotle would 

 have put it, " maintain or destrov States "? 



But if a young student of political science were to set 



J Ratzel, " Anthroro-geo2raphie " T eipzig, vol. i.. 1882: ii., i?Qr. 



- Bastian. " Der iVTencch in d=*r Oe^chicHte " (I.oipzi?. 1S60); " Beitrjiee 

 ztir vrelei'-henden P^ycho'ozie " (Berlin, t863); " Rechtsverhaltnisse bei 

 ver^rheilenen Vcjllcern der Erde " (Berlin, 1S72). 



■' Bastian. " Ziir Lehre von den eeog'aptiisclien Provinzen." Berlin. i?86. 



^ Ratzel. "Viilkerkunde " (Leinzve-, tSS^I. His w(ri'/;,7(;' is best studied in 1 

 the first volume of bis " Anthropo eeographie '" (Leipzig, 18S2). 1 



NO. 2082, VOL. 81] 



himself to this life work, where could he turn for his 

 facts? What proportion of the knowable things about the 

 human societies with which travellers' tales and the atlases 

 acquaint him could he possibly bring into his survey, with- 

 out a lifetime of personal research in every quarter of our 

 planet? 



I have in mind one such student setting out this coming 

 session to investigate, on the lines of modern anthropology, 

 the nature of Authority and the circumstances of its rise 

 among primitive men ; and the difficulty at the outset is 

 precisely as I have described. In the case of the " black 

 fellows " of Australia such a student depends upon the 

 works of some four or five men, representing (at a favour- 

 able estimate) one-twentieth even of the known tribes of 

 the accessible parts of that continent. For British South 

 Africa he would be hardly better served ; for British North 

 America, outside the ground covered in British Columbia 

 by Boas and Hill-Tout, he would have almost the field 

 to himself ; and the prospect would seem to him the drearier 

 and the more hopeless when he compared it with things 

 on the other side of the forty-ninth parallel. 



Now, our neighbours south of that line have the reputa- 

 tion of being practical men ; in other departments of know- 

 ledge they are believed to know well " what pays." And 

 I am forced to believe that it is because they know that 

 it pays, to know all that can still be known about the 

 forms of human society which are protected and super- 

 vised from Washington, that they have gone so far as 

 they have towards rescuing that knowledge from extinc- 

 tion while still there is time. The Bureau of Ethnology 

 of the L^nited States of America is the most systematic, 

 the most copious, and, I think, taking it all in all, the 

 most scientific of the public agencies for the study of any 

 group of men, as men. The only other which can be 

 compared with it is the ethnographical section of the last 

 census of India, and that was an effort to meet, against 

 time, an emergency long predicted, but only suddenly 

 foreseen by the men who were responsible for giving the 

 order. Thus, humanly speaking, it is now not improbable 

 that in one great newly settled area of the world every 

 tribe of natives, which now continues to inhabit it, may 

 at least be explored, and In some cases really surveyed, 

 before it has time to disappear. But observe, this only 

 applies to the tribes which now continue to exist : and 

 what a miserable fraction they are of what has already 

 perished irrevocably ! It is no use crying over spilt milk, 

 as I said to begin with ; the only sane course is to be 

 doubly careful of whatever remains in the jug. 

 An Ethnological Survey for Canada. 

 .And now I conclude with a piece of recent history, 

 which will point its own moral. When the British 

 Association met first outside the British Isles, it celebrated 

 its m.eeting at Montreal by instituting, for the first time, 

 a section for Anthropology ; and it placed in the chair of 

 that section one of the principal founders of modern scien- 

 tific anthropology. Dr. Edward Burnett Tylor, then recently 

 installed at Oxford, and still the revered Professor of our 

 science there. Through his influence mainly, but with the 

 active goodwill of the leading naines in other sciences in 

 Canada, a research committee was formed to Investigate 

 the north-west tribes of the Dominion ; and for eleven 

 consecutive years expeditions wholly or partly maintained 

 by this .Association were sent to several districts of British 

 Columbia. These expeditions cost the .Association about 

 12C0/. in all. I am glad to think that the chief repre- 

 sentative of this Committee's work. Dr. Franz Boas, has 

 long since realised, in his great contributions to knowledge, 

 the high hopes which his early reports inspired. 



When the Association met the second time on Canadian 

 soil, at Toronto, the occasion seemed opportune for a 

 fresh step. Dr. Boas had already undertaken work on a 

 larger scale and under other auspices. But it was thought 

 likely that if a fresh Committee of the Association were 

 appointed, with wider terms of reference and further 

 grants, it would be possible to select and to train a small 

 staff of Canadian observers, and by their means to pro- 

 duce such a series of preliminary reports on typical 

 problems of Canadian anthropology as would satisfy the 

 Dominion Government that the need for a thorough 

 svstematic survey was a real one, and that such a survey 

 would be practicable with the means and the men which 



