590 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
therefore, that the study of man should lag behind the rest of the sciences, as 
long as any large masses of mankind remained withdrawn from its view; and 
we have only to remember that Australia and Africa were not even crossed at 
all—much less explored—by white men, till within living memory, to realise 
what this limitation means. In addition to this, modern Western civilisation, 
when it did at last come into contact with aboriginal peoples in new continents, 
too often came, like the religion which it professed, bringing ‘not peace but a 
sword.’ The customs and institutions of alien people have been viewed too 
often, even by reasonable and good men, simply as ‘ y* beastlie devices of y* 
heathen,’ and the pioneers of our culture, perversely mindful only of the narrower 
creed, that ‘ he that is not with us is against us,’ have set out to civilise savages 
by wrecking the civilisation which they had. 
Before an audience of anthropologists, I need not labour the point that it is 
precisely these two causes, ignorance of many remoter peoples, and reckless 
destruction or disfigurement of some that are near at hand, which are still the 
two great obstacles to the progress of our science. But it is no use crying over 
spilt milk, and I turn rather to the positive and cheering thought that the pro- 
gress of anthropology has been rapid and sure, in close proportion to the spread 
of European intercourse with the natives of distant lands ; and that its further 
advance is essentially linked with similar enterprises. 
Anthropology and Politics in Ancient G'reece. 
Instances of what I mean are scattered over the whole histéry of anthropo- 
logy. Philosophy, as we all know, begins in wonder ; it is the surest way to 
jostle people out of an intellectual groove into new lines of thought, if they can 
be confronted personally and directly with some object of that numerous class 
which seems uncouth only because it is unfamiliar. The sudden expansion of 
the geographical horizon of the early Greeks, in the seventh and sixth centuries 
B.c., brought these earliest and keenest of anthropologists face to face with 
peoples who lived for example in a rainless country, or in trees, or who ate 
monkeys, or grandfathers, or called themselves by their mothers’ names, or did 
other disconcerting things; and this set them thinking, and comparing, and 
collecting more and more data, from trader and traveller, for an answer to 
perennial problems, alike of their anthropology and of ours. Can climate alter 
character or change physique, and if so, how? Does the mode of life or the 
diet of a people affect that people’s real self, or its value for us? Is the father, 
as the Greeks believed, or the mother who bore them, the natural owner and 
guardian of children ? Is the Heracles whom they worship in Thasos the same 
god as he whose temple is in Tyre? Because the Colchians wear linen, and 
practise circumcision, are they,to be regarded as colonists of the Egyptians ? 
or can similar customs spring up independently on the Nile and on the Phasis ? 
Were, in fact, are all the great problems of modern anthropology, flung out for 
good and all, as soon as ever human reflective reason found itself face to face 
with the facts of other human societies, even within so limited a region as the old 
Mediterranean world. 
And I would have you note that these old Greek problems, like all the 
supreme problems of science old and new, were not theoretical problems merely. 
Each of them stood in direct relation to life. To take only cases such as I 
quoted just now from the Father of History—is there, for example, among all the 
various regions and aspects of the world, any real earthly paradise, any delect- 
able country, where without let or hindrance the good man may lead the good 
life? Is there an ideal diet, an ideal social structure, or in general an ideal 
way of life for men; or are all the good things of this world wholly relative to the 
persons, the places, and the seasons where they occur ? I do not mean that the 
ancient Greeks ever found out any of these things, for all their searching ; or 
even that all ancient seekers after marvels and travellers’ tales were engaged 
consciously in anthropological research at all. I mean only this: that the 
experiences, and the problems, and the practical end of it all, were as certainly 
present to the minds of men like Herodotus and Hippocrates, as they have been 
in all great scientific work that the world has seen. 
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