So much for the practical corollaries suggested by our flying visit to
Prehistoric Europe. But, even if any detailed lessons to be drawn from
such fragmentary facts have to be received with caution, you need not
hesitate to pursue this branch of study for its own sake as part of the
general training of the mind. Accustom yourselves to a long perspective.
Cultivate the eagle's faculty of spacious vision. It is only thus that
one can get the values right--see right and wrong, truth and error,
beauty and ugliness in their broad and cumulative effects. Analytic
studies, as they are termed, involving the exploration of the meaning of
received ideas, must come first in any scheme of genuine education. We
must learn to affirm before we can go on to learn how to criticize. But
historical studies are a necessary sequel. Other people's received ideas
turn out in the light of history to have sometimes worked well, and
sometimes not so well; and we are thereupon led to revise our own
opinions accordingly. Now the history of man has hitherto stood almost
exclusively for the history of European civilization. Being so limited,
it loses most of its value as an instrument of criticism. For how can a
single phase of culture criticize itself? How can it step out of the
scales and assess its own weight? Anthropology, however, will never
acquiesce in this parochial view of the province of history. History
worthy of the name must deal with man universal. So I would have you all
become anthropologists. Let your survey of human progress be age-long
and world-wide. You come of a large family and an ancient one. Learn to
be proud of it, and then you will seek likewise to be worthy of it.
BOOKS FOR REFERENCE
W. J. Sollas, _Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives_, 2nd
edition, 1915.
E. A. Parkyn, _Introduction to the study of Prehistoric Art_.
R. R. Marett, _Anthropology_ (Home University Library).
J. L. Myres, _Dawn of History_ (Home University).
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Presidential Address to the International Folk-Lore Congress, 1891,
p. 9.
III
PROGRESS AND HELLENISM
F. MELIAN STAWELL
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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