DECE3IBEE 18, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



901 



THE LIMITATIONS OF THE COMPARATIVE 

 METHOD OF ANTHROPOLOGY* 



Modern Anthropology has discovered 

 the fact that human society has grown and 

 developed everywhere in such a manner 

 that its forms, its opinions and its actions 

 have many fundamental traits in common. 

 This momentous discovery implies that laws 

 exist which govern the development of 

 society, that they are applicable to our soci- 

 ety as well as to those of past times and of 

 distant lands ; that their knowledge will be a 

 means of understanding the causes further- 

 ing and retarding civilization ; and that, 

 guided by this knowledge, we may hope to 

 govern our actions so that the greatest bene- 

 fit to mankind will accrue from them. 

 Since this discovery has been clearly formu- 

 lated, anthropology has begun to receive 

 that liberal share of public interest which 

 was withheld from it as long as it was be- 

 lieved that it could do no more than record 

 the curious customs and beliefs of strange 

 peoples ; or, at best, trace their relationships, 

 and thus elucidate the early migrations of 

 the races of man and the affinities of peoples. 



While early investigators concentrated 

 their attention upon this purely historical 

 problem, the tide has now completely 

 turned, so that there are even anthropolo- 

 gists who declare that such investigations 

 belong to the historian, and that anthropo- 

 logical studies must be confined to re- 

 searches on the laws that govern the growth 

 of society. 



A radical change of method has accom- 

 panied this change of views. While for- 

 merly identities or similarities of culture 

 were considered incontrovertible proof of 

 historical connection, or even of common 

 origin, the new school declines to consider 

 them as such, but interprets them as results 

 of the uniform working of the human mind. 

 The most pronounced adherent of this view 



* Paper read at the meeting of the A. A. A. S. at 

 Buffalo. 



in our country is Dr. D. Gr. Brinton, in Ger- 

 many the majority of the followers of Bas- 

 tian, who in this respect go much farther 

 than Bastian himself. Others, while not 

 denying the occurrence of historical con- 

 nections, regard them as insignificant in re- 

 sults and in theoretical importance as com- 

 pared to the working of the uniform laws 

 governing the human mind. This is the 

 view of by far the greater number of living 

 anthropologists. 



This modern view is founded on the ob- 

 servation that the same ethnical phe- 

 nomena occur among the most diverse 

 peoples, or, as Bastian says, on the appall- 

 ing monotony of the fundamental ideas of 

 mankind all over the globe. The meta- 

 physical notions of man may be reduced to 

 a few types which are of universal distribu- 

 tion ; the same is the case in regard to the 

 forms of society, laws and inventions. 

 Furthermore, the most intricate and ap- 

 parently illogical ideas and the most curious 

 and complex customs appear among a few 

 tribes here and there in such a manner that 

 the assumption of a common historical ori- 

 gin is excluded. When studying the cul- 

 ture of any one tribe, more or less close 

 analoga of single traits of such a culture 

 may be found among a great diversity of 

 peoples. Instances of such analoga have 

 been collected to a vast extent by Tylor, 

 Spencer, Bastian, Andree, Post and many 

 others, so that it is not necessary to give 

 here any detailed proof of this fact. The 

 idea of a future life, the one underlying 

 shamanism ; inventions such as fire and the 

 bow ; certain elementary features of gram- 

 matical structure — these will suggest the 

 classes of phenomena to which I refer. It 

 follows from these observations that when 

 we find an analogon of single traits of cul- 

 ture among distant peoples, the presump- 

 tion is not that there has been a common 

 historical source, but that they have arisen 

 independently. 



