RETROSPECT
On taking a brief final survey of the history of anthropology, one is struck by the fact that, owing to the tendency of students to limit their attention to one of the varied subjects which are grouped under the term Anthropology, the progress of the science has been very irregular.
Physical anthropology has had very numerous devotees, who have approached the subject mainly from the point of view of small anatomical variations; but even at the present day the significance of many of the details is not understood, and very little advance has been made concerning the criteria of racial anatomy. We have yet to discover how adequately to describe or gauge the essential anatomical distinctions between races and peoples. This problem is complicated by our ignorance of the stability of physical characters, and of how far or how speedily they are affected by change of environment. At the present time the effects of miscegenation and of environment afford fruitful fields for research. The imperfection of the geological record is answerable for the relatively slow progress that has been made in tracing the evolution of man as an animal.
Whereas the structural characters of man have been studied by trained scientific men, the history of man from a cultural point of view has mainly been investigated by literary men, who have approached the subject from various sides, and, from lack of experience in the field or by virtue of their natural reliance upon documentary evidence, have often not been sufficiently critical regarding their authorities. The comparative method has yielded most valuable results, but it is liable to lead the unwary into mistakes. To employ biological terms, analogy is apt to be mistaken for homology, since customs or beliefs (which, it must be remembered, are in the vast majority of cases extremely imperfectly recorded) may have a superficial resemblance. If all the facts were known, they might be found to have had a very different origin or significance. Comparisons made within a given area or among cognate peoples have a greater value than those drawn from various parts of the world. What is most needed at the present day is intensive study of limited areas; the studies already so made have proved most fruitful. Although we know a good deal about many forms of social organisation, we find that in very few cases is the knowledge sufficiently precise to explain them, owing to the fact that the data were not collected by adequately trained observers. In other words, cultural anthropology has been too much at the mercy of students who have not received a sufficiently rigorous training.
The objects made by man have only recently been subjected to critical study. In this the archæologists have been in advance of the ethnologists. The distribution of objects and its significance have been studied more in Germany than elsewhere, and already afford promising results.
Anthropology is slowly becoming a coherent and organised science. The chief danger to which it is liable is that its fascination and popularity, touching as it does every department of human thought and activity, tend to premature generalisations.
The history of Anthropology, like that of most other sciences, is full of examples of opposition from the prejudice and bigotry of those who place more reliance on tradition than on the results of investigations and the logical deductions therefrom; but the reactionaries have always had to give way in the end.