Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/526



is a science which has so many aspects that it has appealed to a large number of men of diverse interests and aptitudes, comparatively few of whom can be said to have been trained to observe, record, or generalise. The consequence has been that the data available for the student are of very unequal value, since the workers in the field have too frequently been biassed, their lack of training has caused them to overlook many essential facts, and too frequently there has been deliberate suppression of data. These blunders of omission and commission are often apparent when the writers endeavour to summarise their observations or to theorise thereon. Even the student at home has not always followed a rigorous scientific method, with the natural consequence that ethnology has not been able to take her rightful place among her sister sciences.

With a view to improving this state of affairs, Dr. F. Graebner has written a small book on the methods of ethnology which deserves to be studied by all investigators and writers on ethnology. He emphasises the close connection of ethnological to historical method; quite a different method is necessary to account for a special social organisation from that needed to examine the nature of radioactivity or the formation of chemical compounds. The main difference is that the appreciation of the individual facts prohibits a general application of induction, relegating to it a secondary function. Dr. Graebner deals with the criticism of