First, I should rank Language. Not only is it the medium of intelligible intercourse, of thought-tranference, but thought itself is powerfully aided or impeded by the modes of its expression in sound. As “spoken language,” in poetry and oratory, its might is recognized on all hands; while in “written language,” as literature, it works silently but with incalculable effect on the character of a people.[10-1]
Next to this I should place Government, understanding this word in its widest sense, as embracing the terms on which man agrees to live with his fellow man and with woman, family, therefore, as well as society ties. This includes the legal standards of duty, the rules of relationship and descent, the rights of property and the customs of commerce, the institutions of castes, classes and rulers, and those international relations on which depend war and peace. I need not enlarge on the profound impress which these exert on the traits of the people.[10-2]
After these I should name Religion, though some brilliant scholars, such as Schelling and Max Müller,[10-3] have claimed for it the first place as a formative influence on ethnic character. No one will deny the prominent rank it holds in the earlier stages of human culture. It is scarcely too much to say that most of the waking hours of the males of some tribes are taken up with religious ceremonies. Religion is, however, essentially “divinatory,” that is, its chief end and aim is toward the future, not the present, and therefore the impress it leaves on national character is far less permanent, much more ephemeral, than either government or language. This is constantly seen in daily life. Persons change their religion with facility, but adhere resolutely to the laws which protect their property. The mighty empire of Rome secured ethnic unity to a degree never since equalled in parallel circumstances, and its plan was to tolerate all religions—as, indeed, do all enlightened states to-day—but to insist on the adoption of the Roman law, and, in official intercourse, the Latin language. I have not forgotten the converse example of the Jews, which some attribute to their religion; but the Romany, who have no religion worth mentioning, have been just as tenacious of their traits under similar adverse circumstances.
The Arts, those of Utility, such as pottery, building, agriculture and the domestication of animals, and those of Pleasure, such as music, painting and sculpture, must come in for a full share of the ethnologist’s attention. They represent, however, stadia of culture rather than national character. They influence the latter materially and are influenced by it, and different peoples have toward them widely different endowments; but their action is generally indirect and unequally distributed throughout the social unit.
These four fields, Language, Government, Religion and the Arts, are those which the ethnologist explores when he would render himself acquainted with a nation’s character; and now a few words about the methods of study he adopts, and the aims, near or remote, which he keeps in view.
He first gathers his facts, from the best sources at his command, with the closest sifting he can give them, so as to exclude errors of observation or intentional bias. From the facts he aims to discover on the above lines what are or were the regular characteristics of the people or peoples he is studying. The ethnic differences so revealed are to him what organic variations are to the biologist and morphologist; they indicate evolution or retrogression, and show an advance toward higher forms and wider powers, or toward increasing feebleness and decay.
To understand them they must be studied in connection and causation. Hence, the method of the ethnologist becomes that which in the natural sciences is called the “developmental” method. It may be defined as the historic method where history is lacking. The biologist explains the present structure of an organ by tracing it back to simpler forms in lower animals until he reaches the germ from which it began. The ethnologist pursues the same course. He selects, let us say, a peculiar institution, such as caste, and when he loses the traces of its origin through failure of written records, he seeks for them in the survivals of unwritten folk-lore, or in similar forms in primitive conditions of culture.
Here is where Archæology renders him most efficient aid. By means of it he has been able to follow the trail of most of the arts and institutions of life back to a period when they were so simple and uncomplicated that they are quite transparent and intelligible. Later changes are to be analyzed and explained by the same procedure.[12-1]
This is the whole of the ethnologic method. It is open and easy when the facts are in our possession. There are no secret springs, no occult forces, in the historic development of culture. Whatever seems hidden or mysterious, is so only because our knowledge of the facts is imperfect. No magic and no miracle has aided man in his long conflict with the material forces around him. No ghost has come from the grave, no God from on high, to help him in the bitter struggle. What he has won is his own by the right of conquest, and he can apply to himself the words of the poet:
“Hast du nicht alles selbst vollendet,
Heilig glühend Herz?” (Goethe).