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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 874 



into the study of culture; but where we 

 have no such historical evidence, the com- 

 plexity of culture is almost wholly ignored 

 by those who use these cultures in their at- 

 tempts to demonstrate the origin and course 

 of development of human institutions. 



I have now fulfilled the first purpose of 

 this address. I have tried to indicate that 

 evolutionary speculations can have no firm 

 basis unless there has been a preceding 

 analysis of the cultures and civilizations 

 now spread over the earth's surface. 

 Without such analysis it is impossible to 

 say whether an institution or belief pos- 

 sessed by a people who seem simple and 

 primitive may not really be the product of 

 a relatively advanced culture forming but 

 one element of a complexity which at first 

 sight seems simple and homogeneoiis. 



Before proceeding further I should like 

 to guard against a possible misconception. 

 Some of those who are interested in the eth- 

 nological analysis of culture regard it not 

 only as the first but as the only task of the 

 anthropology of to-day. I can not too 

 strongly express my disagreement with this 

 view. Because I have insisted on the im- 

 portance of ethnological analysis, I hope 

 you will not for a moment suppose that I 

 underrate the need for the psychological 

 study of customs and institutions. If the 

 necessity for the ethnological analysis of 

 culture be recognized, this psychological 

 study becomes more complicated and diffi- 

 cult than it has seemed to be in the past, 

 but that makes it none the less essential. 

 Side by side with ethnological analysis 

 there must go the attempt to fathom the 

 modes of thought of different peoples, to 

 understand their ways of regarding and 

 classifying the facts of the universe. It is 

 only by the combination of ethnological 

 and psychological analysis that we shall 

 make any real advance. To-day, however, 

 time will not allow me to say more about 



this psychological analysis, and I must 

 continue the subject from which I have for 

 a moment turned aside. 



Having shown the importance of ethno- 

 logical analysis, I now propose to consider 

 the process of analysis itself and the prin- 

 ciples on which it should and must be 

 based if it in its turn is to have any firm 

 foundation. In the analysis of any culture 

 a difficulty which soon meets the investi- 

 gator is that he has to determine what is 

 due to mere contact and what is due to 

 intimate intermixture, such intermixture, 

 for instance, as is produced by the perma- 

 nent blending of one people with another 

 either through warlike invasion or peaceful 

 settlement. The fundamental weakness of 

 most of the attempts hitherto made to 

 analyze existing cultures is that they have 

 had their starting-point in the study of ma- 

 terial objects, and the reason for this is 

 obvious. Owing to the fact that material 

 objects can be collected by any one and sub- 

 jected at leisure to prolonged study by ex- 

 perts, our knowledge of the distribution of 

 material objects and of the technique of 

 their manufacture has very far outrun that 

 of the less material elements. What I wish 

 now to point out is that in distinguishing 

 between the effects of mere contact and the 

 intermixture of peoples, material objects 

 are the least trustworthy of all the constit- 

 uents of culture. Thus, in Melanesia we 

 have the clearest evidence that material 

 objects and processes can spread by mere 

 contact without any true admixture of 

 peoples and without influence on other 

 features of the culture. While the distri- 

 bution of material objects is of the utmost 

 importance in suggesting at the outset com- 

 munity of culture, and while it is of equal 

 importance in the final process of deter- 

 mining points of contact and in filling in 

 the details of the mixture of cultures, it is 

 the least satisfactory guide to the actual 



