Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/75

Rh from bias. It deprecates alike enthusiasm and antipathy. Like Spinoza's god, nullum amat, nullum odit. Its aim is to compare dispassionately all the acts and arts of man, his philosophies and religions, his social schemes and personal plans, weighing and analyzing them, separating the local and temporal in them from the permanent and general, explaining the former by the conditions of time and place, referring the latter to the category of qualities which make up the oneness of humanity, the solid ground on which he who hereafter builds "will build for aye."

This, then, briefly stated, is the aim of that department of anthropology which we call ethnology. In yet fewer words, its mission is "to define the universal in humanity," as distinguished from all those traits which are the products of fluctuating environments.

This universal, however, is to be discovered, not assumed. The fatal flaw in the arguments of most philosophers is that they frame a theory of what man is and what are the laws of his growth, and pile up proofs of these, neglecting the counterevidence, and passing in silence what contradicts their hypotheses.

Take, for instance, the doctrine of evolution as applied to man. It is not only a doctrine but a dogma with many scientists. They look with theological ire on any one who questions it. I have already said that in the long run and the general average it has been true of man. But that we have any certainty that it will continue true is a mistake; or that it has been true of the vast majority of individuals or ethnic groups is another mistake. As the basis for a boastful and confident optimism it is as shaky as sand. Taken at its real value, as the provisional and partial result of our observations, it is a useful guide; but swallowed with unquestioning faith as a final law of the universe, it is not a whit more inspiring than the narrowest dogma of religious bigotry.

We have no right, indeed, to assume that there is anything universal in humanity until we have proved it. But this has been done. Its demonstration is the last and greatest conquest of ethnology, and it is so complete as to be bewildering. It has been brought about by the careful study of what are called "ethnographic parallels"—that is, similarities or identities of laws, games, customs, myths, arts, etc., in primitive tribes located far asunder on the earth's surface. Able students, such as Bastian, Andree, Post, Steinmetz, and others have collected so many of these parallels, often of seemingly the most artificial and capricious character, extending into such minute and apparently accidental details from tribes almost antipodal to each other on the globe, that Dr. Post does not hesitate to say: "Such results leave no room for