Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 17 



human mind" 6 (18), as though it were a magical incan- 

 tation against logical induction, and harping on the so- 

 called "psychological argument" (41), which is directly 

 opposed to the teaching of psychology, are the only 

 excuses one can obtain from the " orthodox " ethnologist 

 for this obstinate refusal to face the issue. Of course it is 

 a historical fact that the discussions of the theory of 

 evolution inclined ethnologists during the last century 

 the more readily to accept the laisser faire attitude, and 

 put an end to all their difficulties by the pretence that 

 most cultures developed independently in situ. It is all 

 the more surprising that Huxley took some small part in 

 encouraging this lapse into superficiality and abuse of 

 the evolution conception, when it is recalled that, as Sir 

 Michael Foster tells us, the then President of the Ethno- 

 logical Society "made himself felt in many ways, not the 

 least by the severity with which he repressed the pre- 

 tensions of shallow persons who, taking advantage of the 

 glamour of the Darwinian doctrine, talked nonsense in 

 the name of anthropological science " (" Life and Letters 

 of Thomas Henry Huxley," Vol. I., p. 263). 



It is a singular commentary on the attitude of the 

 " orthodox " school of ethnologists that, when pressed to 

 accept the obvious teaching of ethnological evidence, they 



G For if any sense whatever is to be attached to this phrase it implies 

 that man is endowed with instincts of a much more complex and highly 

 specialised kind than any insect or bird — instincts moreover which impel a 

 group of men to perform at the same epoch a very large series of peculiarly 

 complex, meaningless and fantastic acts that have no possible relationship 

 to the "struggle for existence," which is supposed to be responsible for the 

 fashioning of instincts. 



But William McDougall tells us that the distinctive feature of human 

 instincts is that they are of "the most highly general type." "The) 

 merely provide a basis for vaguely directed activities in response to vaguely 

 discriminated impressions from large classes of objects." (" Psychology, 

 the Study of Behaviour," p. 171.) There is nothing vague about the extra- 

 ordinary repertoire of the " heliolithic" cult ! 



