REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
Origin of Culture.’ — Notwithstanding the classical works of 
Bastian, Ratzel, and Tylor upon culture history, and the papers of 
others scarcely less eminent, L. Frobenius, in his treatise upon 
African Culture, deplores the fact that so little has been done to dis- 
cover the origin of culture’ and that so little is known of the true 
“ world-history.” He compares the present state of culture with the 
joint or internode at the top of a bamboo stem. That which is 
beneath our internode is unknown to us; in whatever direction we 
may turn we are confronted by unsolved ethnological problems, so 
that our examination of the records of the past speedily terminates 
in the Aryan, Babylonian, and other questions. The author makes 
the usual observation in regard to the need of haste in gathering 
information and specimens from those inferior races who are being 
civilized off the face of the earth. A noteworthy feature of this 
memoir is the stress laid upon the “ natural history method ” of treat- 
ment. Frobenius declares that much has been heard of this method 
but little seen. Culture is continually compared to a living organism 
that has its birth, development, and decay ; it is borne about by man, 
but changes much more slowly than he; it is through its study that 
we shall learn of the migrations of men and come to know something 
of the greater world-history. About 200 pages are devoted to the 
study of the “morphology” and the “comparative anatomy” of 
African culture, in which the internal structure, outward form, and the 
distribution of the huts, weapons, implements, and other artifacts are 
described in detail. Perhaps the most originality appears in the 
third part of the work, which is devoted to the “ culture-physiology ” 
of Africa. By this is meant the status of each art in its own par- 
ticular life cycle ; the declining and stationary arts include those of 
Negritic and Malay-Negritic origin, now represented by artifacts in 
wood and bamboo ; the developing technic arts are of Asiatic and 
African origin, and are confined chiefly to articles of iron, hide, 
1 Frobenius, L. Der Ursprung der afrikanischen Kulturen. Berlin, Gebrüder 
Borntraeger, 1898. 
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