Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/636

Rh 614 ETHNOGRAPHY prevailing among the several peoples of the world, and especially among so-called savages. Ethnologists bring simultaneously under review superstitious, legends, customs, and institutions which, though scattered in distant regions of the earth, have some common basis or significance. Ethnography and ethnology run as easily one into another, as the two sections of general anthropology, viz., (1) anthro pology proper, as expounded by anatomists and physiologists, who deal with the different races of man, their elements, modifications, and possible origin ; and (2) demography, which, as constituted by the researches of Quetelet and his friends and disciples, as Farr, Galton, Guillard, and Bertillon, treats of the statistics of health and disease, of the physical, intellectual, physiological, and economical aspects of births, marriages, and mortality. Ethnography, ethnology, and anthropology are interwoven with philology, jurisprudence, archaeology, geography, and the various branches of history. A fact may require to be investigated successively by linguists, anatomists, and mathe maticians. In current language ethnography and ethnology are often used indiscriminately, but if a distinction is to be made between them, an instinctive perception teaches us to speak of ethnographic facts and ethnological theories, of ethnographic literature and ethnological science, ethnology being related to ethnography as the wine to the grape. II. Division. Just as the lines which separate ethno logy, anthropology, and history one from another are vaguely traced, so are the boundaries of the several provinces of ethnology themselves indefinite We are obliged, for the sake of convenience, to draw up classifica tions, but the more rigorous we make them the more arti ficial they become. &quot; Nature,&quot; as Lamarck has said, ( recognizes neither kingdoms, nor classes, nor orders, nor genera, nor sub-genera; nature recognizes nothing but individuals. The older sciences may be tabulated to a degree which the younger sciences cannot allow, and ethnology is one of the youngest of all, its existence, even its name, not dating further back than the present genera tion. Ethnologists are pioneers in a new field of inquiry, squatters in the Far West of learning. Intent on open ing the first paths through the dark forest of prehistoric times, on driving the first plough through these virgin prairies, they erect no structures which pretend to more than a provisional character. They throw up now a log cabin, and now a wooden shanty, leaving to their successors the work of building substantial houses of brick, and in the far future stately edifices of enduring marble. At first sight it might appear convenient to divide ethnology into two great branches : (1) historic ethnology, comprising researches into the origin, the filiation, the customs and institutions of wild and barbarian tribes still existing, or of whom we have authentic records; (2) pre historic ethnology, comprising similar researches into the early condition of man, but founded necessarily on deduc tions, and not on positive testimony. But the fitness and the simplicity of this division are more apparent than real. The two sections as thus indicated cannot be treated apart, because so few or incomplete are the vestiges of prehistoric man that they cannot furnish a basis for sound theories unless these remains are studied in the light of the know ledge which we possess of tribes existing in the non-civilized state, and who thus form the connecting link between historic and prehistoric man. Being a part of natural his tory, anthropology deals principally with the question of the several races, their anatomy, physiology, and pathology. It seeks to determine which are the permanent varieties, by the crania, by the facial features, by the stature and proportion of the body, by the miscroscopic structure of the hair, by the colour of the skin. It analyses the great problems of evolution. It assigns to food, to climate, to what the French call the milieu, and the Americans &quot;the surroundings,&quot; the share which each has had in producing or fostering the variations of human types. Ethnography does not discuss anew the solutions presented by anthro pology, but accepts them as generally true, and observes if they fit and work satisfactorily in its department. The task, thus limited in order to secure its better execution, is still a gigantic one. Human development branches out into a multitude of ramifications, which may be brought under the following; heads : 1. Material Development, 2. Family ,, 3. Social 4. Intellectual Development 5. Religious ,, 6. Moral III. Method. Astronomy starts from the principle that the laws of mathematics and those of light and matter are universal, that they are true not only on the earth but throughout the universe. Ethnology takes its stand on the assumption that the laws of intelligence have always been what they are, and have always operated as they do now, that man has progressed from the simple to the complex, from the particular to the general. This assump tion does not interfere with the discussion which the anthropologists carry on respecting inonogeny or polygeny, that is to say, the common or multiplex origin of the different races which inhabit the earth, nor does it affirm that the progress has been always continuous and well- marked. It recognizes the fact that some races may have been stationary and some may even have retrograded. It postulates simply that mankind, whatever be its origin, is, or has become, a mass practically homogeneous, more uniform than diverse The wide differences between civilized and uncivilized man are now admitted to be only differences in degree, actual civilization being the adult age, and savagery the infancy of mankind. &quot; The condi tions and habits of existing savages,&quot; says Sir John Lub- bock, &quot; resemble in many ways those of our own ancestors at a period now long gone by ; they illustrate the earlier mental stages through which the human race has passed.&quot; To the casual observer, savages seem to be, as to Dr Johnson, all alike, and in fact they are so in comparison with our selves ; but to the close observer who compares savages with savages, they are easily distinguishable. Although contemporaries, they are separated by differences in cul ture so great that it would seem the work of centuries for the more backward to attain the state already reached by the more advanced. Great, indeed, are the facilities which ethnology confers on the historian who may, for example, explain the condition of the Israelites under the Judges by that of the Maories of New Zealand, as they were almost within the present generation, or may compare the earliest Aryan races with the Malay-Indian populations of to-day. By its aid the philosopher may trace an institu tion through all countries and in every period, accumulating illustrations of its progressive stages, and piecing them together in their natural sequence like the scattered bones of an extinct animal. Uncivilized countries are for us a standing exhibition of prehistoric matters, museums where we find duplicates of objects which were thought to be lost or which were forgotten ; each of them is a Pompeii, exhumed from beneath the rubbish of ages. To study wild tribes is, as it were, to discover in the forests of Central America an ancient city, not crumbling and desolate, but still inhabited by a race preserving the old Maya habits and manners. The laying bare of all these scientific riches gave the impulse to which we owe ethnology. It does not require much reflection to under stand that the principle just developed is an instance of the great law of evolution. According to the naturalist of the modern school, evolution has transformed successively the