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Preface to the First Edition
The present volumes, uniform
with the previous volume of ‘Besearches into the Early History of Mankind’
(1st Ed. 1865; 2nd Ed. 1870), carry on the investigation of Culture into
other branches of thought and belief, art and custom. During the past six
years I have taken occasion to bring tentatively before the public some of
the principal points of new evidence and argument here advanced. The
doctrine of survival in culture, the bearing of directly-expressive language
and the invention of numerals on the problem of early civilization, the
place of myth in the primitive history of the human mind, the development of
the animistic philosophy of religion, and the origin of rites and
ceremonies, have been discussed in various papers and lectures, before being
treated at large and with a fuller array of facts in this work.
The authorities for the facts stated in the text are fully specified in the
foot-notes, which must also serve as my general acknowledgment of
obligations to writers on ethnography and kindred sciences, as well as to
historians, travellers, and missionaries. I will only mention apart two
treatises of which I have made especial use: the 'Mensch in der Geschichte,’
by Professor Bastian, of Berlin, and the ‘Anthropologie der Naturvolker,’ by
the late Professor Waitz, of Marburg.
In discussing problems so complex as those of the development of
civilization, it is not enough to put forward theories accompanied by a few
illustrative examples. The statement of the facts must form the staple of
the argument, and the limit of needful detail is only reached when each
group so displays its general law, that fresh cases come to range themselves
in their proper niches as new instances of an already established rule.
Should it seem to any readers that my attempt to reach this limit sometimes
leads to the heaping up of too cumbrous detail, I would point out that the
theoretical novelty as well as the practical importance of many of the
issues raised, make it most unadvisable to stint them of their full
evidence. In the course of ten years chiefly spent in these researches, it
has been my constant task to select the most instructive ethnological facts
from the vast mass on record, and by lopping away unnecessary matter to
reduce the data on each problem to what is indispensable for reasonable
proof.
E. B. T.
March, 1871.
Primitive Culture
Volume 1 |
Volume 2 |
