EACE AND CIVILIZATION. 599 



impositions. Such is the healthy response to straightforward dealing 

 with them. 



It is therefore in encouraging a healthy growth of all that is worthy 

 and good in the existing systems of lower civilization, in repressing all 

 mere imitations and senseless copying, and in proceeding on a rigor- 

 ously just yet genial course of conduct, that the safe and true line lies 

 for intercourse with inferior or different civilizations. 



And, lastly, the question comes home to us, In what way is this 

 practical anthropology to be fostered? It is so essentially important 

 to us as a race that we should take good care that "it is understood. 

 Whether it be a question of interference with the customs of higher 

 races, as the Hindu, or of lower savages, as the Australian, momentous 

 questions may often depend on public opinion among a mass of people 

 in England who have no conception at present of the race with whom 

 they are dealing. And still more needful is it for those who take part 

 abroad in the government of other races to have a wide view of the 

 character of various civilizations. Until the present generation, there 

 have been two great educative influences on the view of life taken by 

 Englishmen — the Old Testament and the classics. So long as a boy 

 had his ideas formed in contact with Oriental polygamy and Greek 

 polytheism, he was not in danger of undue narrowness in dealing with 

 the Muslim or the Hindu; but with the pressure of modern require- 

 ments both of these excellent views of other civilizations are being 

 crowded out, and we meet men now to whom the world's history began 

 when they were born. There is great danger in such ignorance. All 

 the painful and laborious experiments in social and political problems 

 during past ages are ignored, rash trials are made on lines which have 

 been repeatedly proved to be impossible, and the real advance in any 

 direction is thwarted by useless repetitions of the well-known failures 

 of the past. 



It is the business of anthropology to step in and make a knowledge 

 of other civilizations a part of all decent education. In this direction 

 our science has a most important field before it, at least as valuable as 

 geography and history, and far more practical in developing ideas than 

 many of the smatterings now taught. To present a view of another 

 civilization, we require to give an insight iuto the way of looking at 

 the world, the modes of thought, the aims of life, the checks and counter- 

 checks on the weaknesses of man, and the construction of society and 

 of government in each case. The origin and utility of the various cus- 

 toms and habits need to be x>ointed out, and in what way they are rea- 

 sonable and needful to the well-being of the community. And, above 

 all, we ought to impress on every boy that this civilization in which he 

 grows is only one of the innumerable experiments of life that has been 

 tried; that it is by no means the only successful one, or perhaps not the 

 most successful, that there has been; that there are many other solu- 

 tions of the problems of community and culture which are as good as 

 our own, and that no one solution will fit a different race, climate, or set 

 of conditions. 



