The third and last part of this chapter will show how, under modern
conditions of science and education, anthropology is to realize its
programme. Hitherto, the trouble with anthropologists has been to see
the wood for the trees. Even whilst attending mainly to the peoples
of rude culture, they have heaped together facts enough to bewilder
both themselves and their readers. The time has come to do some sorting;
or rather the sorting is doing itself. All manner of groups of special
students, interested in some particular side of human history, come
now-a-days to the anthropologist, asking leave to borrow from his stock
of facts the kind that they happen to want. Thus he, as general
storekeeper, is beginning to acquire, almost unconsciously, a sense
of order corresponding to the demands that are made upon him. The goods
that he will need to hand out in separate batches are being gradually
arranged by him on separate shelves. Our best way, then, of proceeding
with the present inquiry, is to take note of these shelves. In other
words, we must consider one by one the special studies that claim to
have a finger in the anthropological pie.
Or, to avoid the disheartening task of reviewing an array of bloodless
"-ologies," let us put the question to ourselves thus: Be it supposed
that a young man or woman who wants to take a course, of at least a
year's length, in the elements of anthropology, joins some university
which is thoroughly in touch with the scientific activities of the
day. A university, as its very name implies, ought to be an
all-embracing assemblage of higher studies, so adjusted to each other
that, in combination, they provide beginners with a good general
education; whilst, severally, they offer to more advanced students
the opportunity of doing this or that kind of specific research. In
such a well-organized university, then, how would our budding
anthropologist proceed to form a preliminary acquaintance with the
four corners of his subject? What departments must he attend in turn?
Let us draw him up a curriculum, praying meanwhile that the
multiplicity of the demands made upon him will not take away his breath
altogether. Man is a many-sided being; so there is no help for it if
anthropology also is many-sided.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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