Abstract
I.
WHEN the commencement of Mr. Buckle's great “Introduction” appeared, some fourteen years ago, no small controversy arose as to the possibility of constructing a Science of History. On the one hand it was argued that for two or three centuries past every generation had demonstrated certain events to be regular and predictable, which previous generations had considered irregular and unpredictable; had generalised facts which it was supposed were incapable of being generalised; and had indicated the existence of order, method, and law, in events which earlier ages had regarded as regulated only by the fitful vagaries of a blind chance, or the inscrutable decrees of a supernatural interference. On the other hand, it was asserted that, even supposing the universal prevalence of law and order to be proved, our necessary nescience would still remain so totally unenlightened with regard to the operation of the law and the sequence of the order, that no ingenuity could achieve such a classification of human motives and actions as could justly be dignified with the name of a science. Since then we have passed through what amounts to a scientific revolution. Not only has archaeology vastly extended the limit of its domain, but the doctrine of evolution-itself the most striking generalisation deduced from a comparison of the world;s present with the world's past-points decisively to archaeology as the most fruitful province of inquiry to the student of the science of History. Before Buckle wrote, archaeology had indeed already discovered more than one new world for the conquest of modern science. In the last generation, the archseology of organic nature, brought to light by geology, had afforded a sure basis for the science of Comparative Anatomy; and in a precisely analogous manner the archaeology of language and religious worship, revealed in the early literary monuments of India, Assyria, and Egypt, had more recently altogether regenerated the science of Comparative Philology, and created that of Comparative Mythology. But the value and importance of archaeological research in other directions had not yet been understood and appreciated. It was not until the discoveries of human implements and remains in the drift and cavern deposits had directed attention to the multifarious problems presented by primitive culture, that investigators began to regard the sciences of Language and Religion as merely departments of the more general and comprehensive science of Comparative Civilisation, and to recognise the fact that the science of Comparative Civilisation is the very corner-stone of any real science of History. As indicating the direction of scientific research, it is significant that Mr. Darwin's last work, which surely should have been entitled the “Ascent” ratherthanthe “Descent of Man,” should be so closely followed by the volumes of Mr. Tyl or on Primitive Culture. The main argument, indeed, of both writers is fundamentally the same. The difference between them is that Mr. Darwin traces it out in connection with what man is, Mr. Tylor in connection with what man does. One applies the theory of evolution to man in relation to organic nature, the other to man in relation to human culture. Both, too, have pursued the same method. It was no part of Mr. Darwin's design to write an exhaustive physical history of mankind, or of Mr. Tylor's to detail the history of civilisation. Each has selected the most salient and significant points to illustrate his argument, and has instanced only sufficient facts to supply a reasonable proof of the propositions enunciated.
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Primitive Culture*. Nature 4, 117–119 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004117a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004117a0