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SCIENCE 



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



tions and objects which have arisen at dif- 

 ferent stages of this history and developed 

 into various forms throughout the world. 



And this brings me to my concluding 

 topic. I have tried to show that any 

 speculations concerning the history of hu- 

 man institutions can only have a sound 

 basis if cultures have first been analyzed 

 into their component elements, but I do not 

 wish for one moment to depreciate the im- 

 portance of attempts to seek for the origin 

 and early history of human institutions. 

 To me the analysis of culture is merely the 

 means to an end which would have little 

 interest if it did not show us the way to 

 the proper understanding of the history of 

 human institutions. The importance of the 

 facts of ethnology in the study of civilized 

 culture is now generally recognized. You 

 can hardly take up a modern work dealing 

 with any aspect of human thought and 

 activity without finding reference to the 

 customs and institutions of savage or bar- 

 barous peoples. It is becoming recognized 

 that a study of these helps us to understand 

 much that is obscure in our own institu- 

 tions or in those of other great civilizations 

 of the present or the past. Further, there 

 can be no doubt that we are only at the 

 threshold of a new movement in learning 

 which is being opened by this comparative 

 study. 



It is a cruel irony that just as the impor- 

 tance of the facts and conclusions of eth- 

 nological research is thus becoming recog- 

 nized, and just as we are beginning to 

 learn sound principles and methods for use 

 both in the field and in the study, the 

 material of our science is vanishing. Not 

 only is the march of our own civilization 

 into the hitherto undisturbed places of the 

 earth more rapid than it has ever been be- 

 fore, but this advance has made more easy 

 the spread of other destroying agencies. 

 In many parts of such a region as Mela- 



nesia, it is even now only from the old men 

 that any trustworthy information can be 

 obtained, and it is no exaggeration to say 

 that with the death of every old man there 

 and in many other places there goes, and 

 goes forever, knowledge the disappearance 

 of which the scholars of the future will re- 

 gret as the scholars of the past regretted 

 such an event as the disappearance of the 

 library of Alexandria. There is no other 

 science which is in quite the same position. 

 The nervous system of an animal, the 

 metabolism of a plant, the condition of the 

 South Pole, for instance, will a hundred, 

 or even a thousand, years hence be essen- 

 tially what they are to-day, but long before 

 the shorter of those times has passed, most, 

 if not all, of the lower cultures now found 

 on different parts of the earth will have 

 wholly disappeared or have suffered such 

 change that little will be learned from 

 them. Fortunately the need for ethno- 

 graphical research is now forcing itself on 

 the attention of those who have to deal with 

 savage or barbarous peoples. Statesmen 

 have begun to recognize the practical im- 

 portance of knowledge of the institutions 

 of those they have to govern, and mission- 

 ary societies are beginning to see, what 

 every wise missionary has long known, that 

 it is necessary to understand the ideas and 

 customs of those whose lives they are try- 

 ing to reform. Still, we must not be con- 

 tent with these more or less official move- 

 ments. There is ample scope, indeed urgent 

 need, for individual effort and for non- 

 official enterprise. It is not all who can 

 go into the field and do the needed work 

 themselves, but there are none who can not 

 in some way help to promote ethnograph- 

 ical research. We have before us one of 

 those critical occasions which must be 

 seized at once if they are to be seized at all : 

 the occasion of a need which to future gen- 

 erations will seem to have been so obvious 



