H.—ANTHROPOLOGY. 165 
I hope that the example I have given will have made it clear that the 
comparative method as used for the synchronic study of culture is some- 
_ thing different in important respects from the older comparative method 
used as a means of arriving at theories of the origin of institutions. 
When we turn to the diachronic problems with which comparative 
_ sociology has to deal, ¢.e. with the problems of how cultures change, the 
comparison of cultures as each of them is at a given moment of history, 
while it may give us a certain amount of help, is not sufficient by itself, 
Thus, the study of the variations that have been produced in a single 
culture, as, for example, in Australia, although we have no observations 
_as to how or when they occurred, can nevertheless give us our preliminary 
4 orientation in the study of how variations do occur. In other words, the 
comparative study of cultures without history is a method of enabling us 
to formulate with some precision the problems with which we shall have 
to concern ourselves in a diachronic study of culture. 
: Ultimately, however, if we are to discover the laws of social change 
we must study the actual processes of change. This we can do to some 
extent by means of historical records, wherever we have records that are 
_ sufficiently reliable and complete. But it is desirable that as soon as 
possible the sociologists themselves should undertake to study the changes 
_ that take place in a culture over a period of years. The comparative 
method in this instance will consist in the careful comparison of accurately 
observed processes of change. 
____In the present organisation of anthropology the social anthropologist 
__ is supposed to confine himself to the study of the peoples without history, 
_ the so-called primitive or savage peoples who still survive outside Europe. 
_ If he considers Europe at all he is supposed to concern himself only with 
_ prehistoric times and with what is called folk-lore, z.e. certain aspects of 
culture which have been regarded as survivals from earlier, more primitive, 
cultures. This division of the peoples of the world into two groups for 
4 e purpose of study was apparently satisfactory enough, as long as 
anthropology was dominated by the historical method. The historian 
could give us the real history of Kuropean languages and cultures through- 
out historic times. It was left to the anthropologist, as ethnologist or 
heologist, to concern himself with the reconstruction of the past in 
se regions and periods that lay outside the field of history proper. 
But for comparative sociology as the generalising science of culture, this 
ision of the historic and the non-historic cultures is entirely unsuitable, 
d indeed detrimental. The sociologist must study all cultures and by 
2same methods. In dealing with historical cultures he is not competing 
conflicting with the historian, for the two follow quite different aims 
d methods. The historian does not or should not seek generalisations. 
is concerned with particulars and their particular and generally 
chronological relations. 
iz 
Sy I am sorry that I have not time in this address to deal properly with 
the relation of the study I have described as comparative sociology, and 
the studies pursued sometimes under the name of sociology or social 
‘science. I can do no more than offer a few brief remarks. First let me 
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me 
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