Chapter VII.
ETHNOLOGY: ITS SCOPE AND SOURCES
Definition.
“Ethnology” is a term which is often loosely used as synonymous with “Anthropology,” to cover the whole field of the science of man. It was in this sense that it first came into prominence, being chosen by M. W. F. Edwards as the title for the Société ethnologique de Paris, in 1839. The society was concerned with what we should now call Anthropology; but it was more especially interested in the origins and relationships of the historical races of Europe, which was the etymological justification for its name. The English Ethnological Society, established in 1843, imitated the French title, and did much to fix the vague and general interpretation of the word. Unfortunately, Professor Tylor, first and foremost of English ethnologists, seems purposely to avoid the use of the word in his Primitive Culture, which he refers to as “rational ethnography.” But, with the development of the subject, its scope became gradually more defined, until it is now generally restricted to the comparative and genetic study of human culture and of man as a social animal.
The materials for the study of ethnology have been always with us, but the study itself is of very recent development, and almost alone among the sciences can reckon its founders among the living. Professor J. L. Myres gives excellent reasons for this “late adolescence” in his opening address at the meeting of the British Association at Winnipeg, 1909:—
Anthropology ... gathers its data from all longitudes, and almost all latitudes, on this earth. It was necessary, therefore, that the study of man should lag behind the rest of the sciences, so long as any large masses of mankind remained withdrawn from its view; and we have only to remember that Australia and Africa were not even crossed at all—much less explored—by white men, until within living memory, to realise what this limitation means. In addition to this, modern Western civilisation, when it did at last come into contact with aboriginal peoples in new continents, too often came, like the religion which it professed, bringing “not peace, but a sword.” The customs and institutions of alien people have been viewed too often, even by reasonable and good men, simply as “ye beastlie devices of ye heathen,” and the pioneers of our culture, perversely mindful only of the narrower creed, that “he that is not with us is against us,” have set out to civilise savages by wrecking the civilisation which they had (pp. 589-590).
Sources.
There are, as Professor Myres points out, two kinds of anthropologists:—
There is an anthropologist to whom we go for our facts: the painful accurate observer of data, the storehouse of infinite detail; sometimes himself the traveller and explorer, by cunning speech or wiser silence opening the secrets of aboriginal hearts; sometimes the middleman, the broker of traveller’s winnings, insatiate after some new thing, unerring by instinct rather than by experience, to detect false coin, to disinter the pearl of great price.... To him we go for our facts....
And there is an anthropologist to whom we look for our light. His learning may be fragmentary, as some men count learning; his memory faulty; his inaccuracy beyond dispute; his inconsistency the one consistent thing about him. But with shattered and ricketty instruments he attains results; heedless of epicycles, disrespectful to the equator, he bequeaths his paradoxes to be demonstrated by another generation of men. He may not know, or reason, perhaps; but he has learnt to see; and what he sees he says (1908, p. 124).