October 21, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



517 



izations made by these pioneers of modern 

 anthropology. They applied with vigor and 

 unswerving courage the new principles 

 of historical evolution to all the phenomena 

 of civilized life, and in doing so sowed the 

 seeds of the anthropological spirit in the 

 minds of historians and philosophers. An- 

 thropology, which was hardly beginning to 

 be a science, ceased at the same time to 

 lose its character of being a single science, 

 but became a method applicable to all the 

 mental sciences and indispensable to all 

 of them. We are still in the midst of 

 this development. The sciences first to feel 

 the influence of anthropological thought 

 were those of law and religion. But it was 

 not long before ethics, esthetics, literature 

 and philosophy in general were led to ac- 

 cept the evolutionary standpoint in the 

 particular form given to it by the early 

 anthropologists. 



The generalized view of the evolution of 

 culture in all its different phases which is 

 the final result of this method may be sub- 

 jected to a further analysis regarding the 

 psychic causes which bring about the regu- 

 lar sequence of the stages of culture. Ow- 

 ing to the abstract form of the results, this 

 analysis must be deductive. It can not be 

 an induction from empirical psychological 

 data. In this fact lies one of the weak- 

 nesses of the method which led a number 

 of anthropologists to a somewhat different 

 statement of the problem. I mention here 

 particularly Adolf Bastian and Georg Ger- 

 land. Both Avere impressed by the same- 

 ness of the fundamental traits of culture 

 the world over. Bastian saw in their 

 sameness an effect of the sameness of the 

 human mind and terms these fundamental 

 traits ' Elementargedanken, ' declining all 

 further consideration of their origin, 

 since an inductive treatment of this prob- 

 lem is impossible. For him the essential 

 problem of anthropology is the discovery 

 of the elementary ideas, and in further 



pursuit of the inquiry, their modification 

 under the influence of geographical en- 

 vironment. Gerland's views agree with 

 those of Bastian in the emphasis laid upon 

 the influence of geographical environment 

 on the forms of culture. In place of the 

 mystic elementary idea of Bastian, Gerland 

 assumes that the elements found in many 

 remote parts of the world are a common 

 inheritance from an early stage of cultural 

 development. It will be seen that in both 

 these views the system of evolution plays 

 a secondary part only, and that the main 

 stress is laid on the causes which bring 

 about modifications of the fundamental 

 and identical traits. There is a close con- 

 nection between this direction of anthro- 

 pology and the old geographical school. 

 Here the psychic and environmental rela- 

 tions remain amenable to inductive treat- 

 ment, while, on the other hand, the funda- 

 mental hypotheses exclude the origin of the 

 common traits from further investigation. 



The subjective valuation which is char- 

 acteristic of most evolutionary systems, 

 was from the vevj beginning part and 

 parcel of evolutionary anthropology. It 

 is but natural that in the study of the his- 

 tory of culture our own civilization should 

 become the standard, that the achievements 

 of other times and other races should be 

 measured by our own achievements. In 

 no case is it more difficult to lay aside the 

 'Culturbrille'— to use Von den Steinen's 

 apt term — than in viewing our own culture. 

 For this reason the literature of anthropol- 

 ogy abounds in attempts to define a num- 

 ber of stages of culture leading from sim- 

 ple forms to the present civilization, from 

 savagery through barbarism to civilization, 

 or from an assumed presavagery through 

 the same stages to enlightenment. 



The endeavor to establish a schematic 

 line of evolution naturally led back to new 

 attempts at classification in which each 

 group bears a genetic relation to the other. 



