October 21, 1904.} 



■SCIENCE. 



519- 



of the so-called Aryan question, and only 

 gradually did the fact come to be under- 

 stood that each of these classifications is the 

 reflection of a certain group of facts. The 

 linguistic classification records the histor- 

 ical fates of languages and indirectly of 

 the people speaking these languages; the 

 somatic classification records the blood re- 

 lationships of groups of people and thus 

 traces another phase of their history ; while 

 the cultural classification records historical 

 events of still another character, the dif- 

 fusion of culture from one people to an- 

 other and the absorption of one culture by 

 another. Thus it became clear that the at- 

 tempted classifications were expressions of 

 historical data bearing upon the unwritten 

 history of races and peoples, and recorded 

 their descent, mixture of blood, changes of 

 langTiage and development of culture. 

 Attempts at generalized classifications 

 based on these methods can claim validity 

 only for that group of phenomena to which 

 the method applies. An agreement of their 

 results, that is, original association between 

 somatic type, language and culture, must 

 not be expected. Thus the historical view 

 of anthropology received support from the 

 struggles between these three methods of 

 classification. 



We remarked before that the evolution- 

 ary method was based essentially on the ob- 

 servation of the sameness of cultural traits 

 the world over. On the one hand, the 

 sameness was assumed as proof of a regu- 

 lar, uniform evolution of culture. On the 

 other hand, it was assumed to represent the 

 elementary idea which arises by necessity 

 in the mind of man and which can not be 

 analyzed, or as the earliest surviving form 

 of human thought. 



The significance of these elementary ideas 

 or universal traits of culture has been 

 brought into prominence by the long con- 

 tinued controversy between the theory of 

 their independent origin and that of their 



transmission from one part of the world to 

 another. This struggle began even before 

 the birth of modern anthropology, with the 

 contest between Grimm's theory of the 

 origin and history of myths and Benfey's 

 proof of transmissions, which was based on 

 his learned investigations into the literary 

 history of tales. It is still in progress. 

 On the one hand, there are investiga- 

 tors who would exclude the consideration 

 of transmission altogether, who believe it 

 to be unlikely and deem the alleged proof 

 irrelevant, and who ascribe sameness of 

 cultural traits wholly to the psychic unity 

 of mankind and to the uniform reaction of 

 the human mind upon the same stimulus. 

 An extremist in this direction was the late 

 Daniel G. Brinton. On the other hand, 

 Friedrich Ratzel, whose recent loss we 

 lament, inclined decidedly to the opinion 

 that all sameness of cultural traits must 

 be accounted for by transmission, no mat- 

 ter how far distant the regions in which 

 they are found. In comparison with these 

 two views the third one, which was men- 

 tioned before as represented by Gerland, 

 namely, that such cultural traits are 

 vestiges or survivals of the earliest stages 

 of a generalized human culture, has found 

 few supporters. 



It is evident that this fundamental ques- 

 tion can not be settled by the continued 

 discussion of general facts, since the vari- 

 ous explanations are logically equally prob- 

 able. It requires actual investigation into 

 the individual history of such customs to 

 discover the causes of their present distri- 

 bution. 



Here is the place to mention the studies 

 in folklore which have excited considerable 

 interest in recent times and which must be 

 considered a branch of anthropological re- 

 search. Beginning with records of curious 

 superstitions and customs and of popular 

 tales, folklore has become the science of 

 all the manifestations of popular life. 



