Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/59

 GOLDENWEISER] A NEW APPROACH TO HISTORY 47

society, a discovery which cannot but change the perspective in which the processes which may, perhaps, be shown to be responsible for the emergence of the more modern type of political organization, will appear to the investigator. Further, the authors " constants," in so far as indicated in this preliminary study, are subject to criticism. The constant " climate-migration," while no doubt having a basis of fact, falls far short of representing a necessary or constant causal succession, for while it may be provisionally ad- mitted that climatic changes of sufficient magnitude and destruc- tiveness will probably always result in mass migration, migrations can also be shown to be due to a great variety of other factors. Again the "migration-political organization" constant, whatever the result of the author's attempt to demonstrate it for a particular type of political organization, amounts at best but to one of many fac- tors involved in the process, for migrations not accompanied by the formation of political organization (even of the more centralized variety) are as common as political organizations the roots of which do not rest in migrations. Adverse climatic change desiccation migration en masse conflicts at the terminal point of the route of travel occupation of invaded territory conflict of idea-systems dissolution of established custom and belief liberation of the individual criticism creativeness advance, these constitute, Pro- fessor Teggart would have us believe, the "processes of history," and in their uniformity lies the "homogeneity "of history. We have seen how much truth there may lie in certain aspects of this complex; perhaps the author's subsequent demonstrations will enhance the probability of certain further parts of his theory, but in its entirety, as representing the "processes of history" and as proof of historic homogeneity, the theory must be rejected. It is, moreover, incumbent upon those who may see the author's conr tribution in the light of the present writer, to lay bare its failings before the interested students of society, for the theory, not unlike the anthropo-geographical ideas of Ratzel, is by no means devoid of those alluring features of simplicity, definiteness and grandiose- ness, to which the mind of man, ever eager for finality and repose, continues to fall an easy prey.

NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH, NEW YORK

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