Anthropology, or the Science of Man, a new study: Social Anthropology restricted to the rudimentary phases of human society: not concerned with the practical application of its results: all forms of human society either savage or evolved out of savagery: hence Social Anthropology deals primarily with savagery and secondarily with those survivals of savagery in civilization which are commonly known as folklore: importance of the study of savagery for an understanding of the evolution of the human mind: existing savages primitive only in a relative sense by comparison with civilized peoples: in reality the savages of the present day probably stand at a high level of culture compared with their remote predecessors: for example, the present systems of marriage and consanguinity among savages appear to have been preceded by a period, not necessarily primitive, of sexual communism: survivals of savagery in civilization due to the natural and ineradicable inequality of men: mankind {xi} ultimately led by an intellectual aristocracy: superstition the creed of the laggards in the march of intellect: the wide prevalence of superstition under the surface of society a standing menace to civilization: the lowest forms of superstition the most tenacious of life: function of the Comparative Method in reconstructing the early history of human thought and institutions: its legitimacy based on the ascertained similarity of the human mind in all races: the need of studying savages only of late years understood: urgent importance of the study in consequence of the rapid disappearance of savagery: the duty of our generation to preserve a record of it for posterity: the duty of the Universities and of the State 157-176 INDEX 177-186 ENDNOTES PSYCHE’S TASK {3} I. INTRODUCTION