Progress and Religion: An Historical Inquiry (The Works of Christopher Dawson)

III. Anthropology and the Theory of Progress: The Material Foundations of Culture

i i i Anthropology and the Theory of Progress The Material Foundations of Culture H itherto we have said nothing of the sciences of anthropology and ethnology which have as their special province the study of man’s origins and the development of primitive societies. For these sciences are of more recent origin than either sociology or the philosophy of history; indeed they have only recently acquired their autonomy, and even at the present day there is considerable diVerence of opinion with regard to their legitimate methods and scope. Anthropology, in particular, owes its origin to the Darwinian movement ,1 and its early representatives, such as Tylor, Lewis Morgan and Bastian were inspired by the ideal of applying the Darwinian theory of Evolution to the history of human development. Consequently, like Herbert Spencer, whose teaching also had an important influence on their thought, they tended to regard all social changes as the result of a single immutable law which followed a similar course in every part of the world and amongst every race and people. This point of view is well summarized by one of the leading American anthropologists of the 19th century, D. G. Brinton, in the following passage: “These two principles or rather demonstrated truths—the unity of the mind of man, and the substantial uniformity of its action under like conditions—form the broad and secure foundations for Ethnic Psychology .l.l.l. As there are con1 . Professor Marrett writes: “Anthropology is the child of Darwin. Darwinism makes it possible. Reject the Darwinian point of view, and you must reject anthropology also.” For “anthropology stands or falls with the working hypothesis derived from Darwinism, of a fundamental kinship and continuity amid change between all forms of human life.”— Anthropology, by R.R. Marrett, pp. 8 and 11. 47 ditions that are universal, such as the structure and functions of the body, its general relations to its surroundings, its needs and powers, these developed everywhere at first the like psychical activities or mental expressions. They constitute what Bastian has happily called the ‘elementary ideas’ of our species. In all races, over all continents, they present themselves with a wonderful sameness , which led the older students of man to the fallacious supposition that they must have been borrowed from some common centre.”2 Hence the numerous and striking resemblances that exist between the cultures of primitive peoples in diVerent parts of the world were ascribed , not to any process of culture-contact or borrowing, but to the innate uniformity of the human mind, which was held to follow everywhere the same line of development. Tylor writes: “The institutions of man are as distinctly stratified as the earth on which he lives. They succeed each other in a series substantially uniform over the globe, independent of what seems the comparatively superficial diVerences of race and language, but shaped by similar human nature acting through successively changed conditions in savage, barbaric and civilized life.”3 For example, since totemism is found in Australia as a characteristic institution of one of the most backward and primitive peoples of the world, it was assumed that every people must have passed through a similar stage, and that totemism everywhere precedes the development of more advanced social institutions, even in cases where no trace of it is to be found in historical times. Hence the anthropologists believed not merely that it was possible to go behind history, but that their new science supplied a series of general laws which explained the whole course of social evolution. They regarded history as non-scientific—a mere literary exercise or a cataloguing of disconnected events, whereas their own theories stood on the higher plane of exact scientific method. They did not realize that nothing is less scientific than to transfer the methods of one science to another, and that theories of social evolution divorced from history become mere a priori dogmatism. Nevertheless their point of view long reigned unchallenged, and even today it has not lost its in48 Anthropology and the Theory of Progress 2. D.Brinton, The Basis of Social Relation: A Study in Ethnic Psychology, 1902, p. 20. 3. Tylor, Journal of Anthrop. Inst., XVIII (1889), pp. 245–272.—Nineteenth Cent., XL, 1896, pp. 81–96. fluence: in fact it still inspires many popular works on human evolution and the development of society and culture. It was a...