The origin of the moral idea has also been discussed from the ethnological point of view, as Hobhouse (1906) and Westermarck (1906) have exemplified in their great books.
Magic, religion, and morality have, as we have seen, especially of late years, been regarded almost entirely from the anthropological standpoint. But a new school of French students has arisen who maintain that these are essentially social phenomena. The writings of Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss[[120]] have initiated a new method of study which promises to have far-reaching results.
[120]. The work of this school is mainly to be found in L’Année sociologique (1898).
Chapter XI.
LINGUISTICS
Linguistics as a department of Anthropology may be regarded from many points of view. To the evolutionist language forms one of the tests dividing the Hominidæ from the other anthropoids; the somatologist is interested in correlating the phonetic system with the structure of the organs connected with the mechanism of speech; and the ethnologist studies language for the evidence it affords of ethnic affinity or social contact, or as a means of determining the grade of culture to which a particular people has attained, or, again, as a reflection of their character or psychology. The linguistic classifications of Gallatin, Humboldt, and Müller are referred to later.
The Aryan Controversy.
The connection between linguistics and anthropology assumed its greatest importance in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the discoveries and theories of philologists were adopted wholesale to explain the problems of European ethnology, and the Aryan controversy became the locus of disturbance throughout the Continent. “No other scientific question, with the exception, perhaps, of the doctrine of evolution, was ever so bitterly discussed or so infernally confounded at the hands of Chauvinistic or otherwise biassed writers.”[[121]]
[121]. Ripley, 1899, p. 453.