Cultures and Migration

Abstract

THIS volume is one of a series entitled “The International Library of Psychology, Philosophy, and Scientific Method.” Rivers was above all a master of method, and had he lived to write a book on method in the historical investigation of human cultures, he would have added to the already great debt anthropologists owe him. The present work is a collection of lectures and essays, dealing mainly with the constant theme of the historical school of anthropology, the unity of culture. The greater number were delivered to somewhat mixed audiences, hence there comes about an almost wearisome reiteration of the hypotheses, and perhaps—apart from pan-Egyptianism—some over-emphasis of the differences between the views put forth by the historical or diffusionist school and by other anthropologists. The chapters have not been arranged chronologically to show Rivers's contribution to method—indeed, his first and by far his most important contribution, “A Genealogical Method of Collecting Social and Vital Statistics” (Jour. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., vol. 30, 1900), has been omitted—but come under a few selected headings.

Psychology and Ethnology.

By Dr. W. H. R. Rivers. (International library of Psychology, Philosophy and scientific Method.) Pp. xxviii + 324. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc., 1926.) 15s. net.