SCIENCE. 



485 



lOnary, unpractical scheme. It has 

 .\x, in one form or another, by most Eu- 

 -cates. The idea is slowly evolving in con- 

 .oTH with our own government departments, 

 ^e state department has in training a body of con- 

 ijular clerks. The navy details men for special 

 study in Greenwich, Paris, and Baltimore. The 

 war department has also allowed men to study in 

 Baltimore laboratories. Mr. Trenholm, the comp- 

 troller of the currency, says he is going to seJect the 

 brightest young men he can find, and train them 

 for bank-examiners. The idea is in the air at Wash- 

 ington, and it will sooner or later find a lodgement 

 in every department and bureau. You will probably 

 hear of it next week from Col. Carroll D. Wright, 

 commissioner of the bureau of labor, in his address 

 on the study of statistics ia American colleges, be- 

 fore the American economic association, at its meet- 

 ing in Cambridge, May 24, 1887. Statistical science, 

 finance, forestry, agrarian economy, consular duties, 

 and diplomacy have never yet been taught, to any 

 considerable extent, in our American schools and 

 colleges. You might as well expect a corps of mili- 

 tary engineers to evolve from the state militia as to 

 suppose that the higher arts of administration can 

 be acquired by either school or college training. 

 Administration is one of the highest branches of 

 scientific politics, and it seems to me that Science 

 ought to recognize the fact. As to the diplomatic 

 service, a Boston gentleman, who has had much 

 experience in this connection, writes, "I have 

 had a good deal to do with some of our diplomatic 

 servants in Europe, and have often been put 

 to the blush for their incompetency to perform their 

 duties. Why should we not have a diplomatic ser- 

 vice like other nations, and why should we not have 

 a national institution in which the students should be 

 taught, among other things, diplomacy ? " 



Heebeet B. Adams. 

 Johns Hopkins univ., May 16. 



The occurrence of similar inventions in areas 

 vvidely apart. 



The leading idea of Otis T. Mason's writings on 

 ethnology is his attemjDt to classify human inventions 

 and other ethnological phenomena in the light of 

 biological specimens. " They may be divided into 

 families, genera, and species. They may be studied 

 in their several ontogenies (that is, we may watch 

 the unfolding of each individual thing from its raw 

 material to its finished production). They may be 

 regarded as the products of specific evolution out of 

 natural objects serving human wants and up to the 

 most delicate machine performing the same func- 

 tion. They may be modified by their relationship, 

 one to another, in sets, outfits, apparatus, just as the 

 insect and flower are co-ordinately transformed. 

 They observe the law of change under environment 

 and geographical distribution." This method of re- 

 search is founded on the hypothesis that a connec- 

 tion of some kind exists between ethnological phe- 

 nomena of people widely apart. Professor Mason is 

 of this opinion, and expresses it as follows: "An- 

 thropologists assign similar inventions observed in 

 different parts of the world to one of the following 

 causes : 1. The migration of a certain race of people 

 who made the invention. 2. The migration of ideas 

 — that is, an invention may be made hy a certain 

 race or people and taught or loaned to peoples far 



removed in time and place. 3. In human culture, as 

 in nature elsewhere, like causes produce like effects. 

 Under the same stress and resources the same inven- 

 tions will arise." From this stand-point Professor 

 Mason has arranged the ethnological collections of 

 the national museum according to objects, not ac- 

 cording to the tribes to whom they belong, in order 

 to show the different species of throwing-sticks, bas- 

 ketry, bows, etc. 



We cannot agree with the leading f)rinciples of 

 Professor Mason's ethnological researches. In his 

 enumeration of causes of similar inventions, one is 

 omitted, which overthrows the whole system : un- 

 like causes produce like effects. It is of very rare 

 occurrence that the existence of like causes for sim- 

 ilar inventions can be proved, as the elements affect- 

 ing the human mind are so complicated ; and their 

 influence is so utterly unknown, that an attempt to 

 find like causes must fail, or will be a vague hy- 

 pothesis. On the contrary, the development of sim- 

 ilar ethnological phenomena from unlike causes is 

 far more probable, and due to the intricacy of the 

 acting causes. As far as inventions are concerned, 

 the disposition of men to act suitably is the only 

 general cause; but this is so general, that it cannot 

 be made the foundation of a system of inventions. 



But from still another point of view we cannot 

 consider Professor Mason's method a progress of eth- 

 nological researches. In regarding the ethnologi- 

 cal phenomenon as a biological S]Decimen, and trying 

 to classify it, he introduces the rigid abstractions 

 species, genus, and family into ethnology, the true 

 meaning of which it took so long to understand. It 

 is only since the development of the evolutional 

 theory that it became clear that the object of study 

 is the individual, not abstractions from the individ- 

 ual under observation. We have to study each ethno- 

 logical specimen individually in its history and in 

 its medium, and this is the important meaning of the 

 ' geographical province ' which is so frequently em- 

 phasized by A. Bastian. By regarding a single im- 

 plement outside of its surroundings, oiitside of other 

 inventions of the people to whom it belongs, and 

 outside of other phenomena affecting that people and 

 its productions, we cannot understand its meaning. 

 The only fact that a collection of implements used 

 for the same purpose, or made of the same material, 

 teaches, is, that man in diiferent parts of the earth 

 has made similar inventions, while, on the other 

 hand, a collection representing the life of one tribe 

 enables us to understand the single specimen far 

 better. Our objection to Mason's idea is, that classi- 

 fication is not explanation. 



His method, as far as applied to objects which hav^ 

 a close connection with each other, is very go 1. 

 The collection of moon-shaped Eskimo kni-^p^ or 

 labrets from North-west America has given us .>, eat 

 pleasure, and enables us to trace the distributiL Df 

 those implements ; but even they do not fully ant er 

 the purpose of ethnological collections. Ber ^s 

 these, we want a collection arranged according to 

 tribes, in order to teach the peculiar style of each 

 group. The art and characteristic style of apeople can 

 be understood only by studying its productions as a 

 whole. In the collections of the national museum 

 the marked character of the North-west American 

 tribes is almost lost, because the objects are scattered 

 in different parts of the building, and are exhibited 

 among those from other tribes. 



Another instance will show that the arrangement 



