ANTHROPOLOGY.
ANTHROPOLOGY
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF
MAN AND CIVILIZATION.
BY
EDWARD B. TYLOR, D.C.L., F.R.S.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1881.
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.
London:
R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
In times when subjects of education have multiplied, itmay seem at first sight a hardship to lay on the alreadyheavily-pressed student a new science. But it will be foundthat the real effect of Anthropology is rather to lightenthan increase the strain of learning. In the mountains wesee the bearers of heavy burdens contentedly shoulder acarrying-frame besides, because they find its weight morethan compensated by the convenience of holding togetherand balancing their load. So it is with the science ofMan and Civilization, which connects into a more manageablewhole the scattered subjects of an ordinary education.Much of the difficulty of learning and teaching lies in thescholar’s not seeing clearly what each science or art is for,what its place is among the purposes of life. If he knowssomething of its early history, and how it arose from thesimpler wants and circumstances of mankind, he finds himselfbetter able to lay hold of it than when, as too oftenhappens, he is called on to take up an abstruse subject notat the beginning but in the middle. When he has learntsomething of man’s rudest means of conversing by gesturesand cries, and thence has been led to see how the higher[vi]devices of articulate speech are improvements on suchlower methods, he makes a fairer start in the science oflanguage than if he had fallen unprepared among thesubtleties of grammar, which unexplained look likearbitrary rules framed to perplex rather than to inform.The dislike of so many beginners to geometry as expoundedby Euklid, the fact that not one out of threeever really understands what he is doing, is of all thingsdue to the scholar not being shown first the practicalcommon-sense starting point, where the old carpentersand builders began to make out the relations of distancesand spaces in their work. So the law-studentplunges at once into the intricacies of legal systemswhich have grown up through the struggles, the reforms,and even the blunders of thousands of years; yet hemight have made his way clearer by seeing how lawsbegin in their simplest forms, framed to meet the needsof savage and barbaric tribes. It is needless to makea list of all the branches of education in knowledge andart; there is not one which may not be the easier andbetter learnt for knowing its history and place in thegeneral science of Man.
With this aim in view, the present volume is an introductionto Anthropology, rather tha