Der Völkergedanke im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft vom Menschen, und seine Begründung auf ethnologische Sammlungen Die Vorgeschichte der Ethnologie

Abstract

THESE two pamphlets, by Prof. Adolf Bastian, are written to promote the doctrine he is never weary of teaching, that the scientific method of studying man is the museum-method of collecting and classifying his results, whether these be weapons or idols, or myths or superstitions, or what not. When in a group of such things there come into view a common principle or thought, this is a Volksgedanke, a manifestation of the popular mind, a definite something for the science of man to occupy itself about. It was the desire to get at such general principles of human action that led the late Prof. Waitz to compile his Anthropology, and Prof. Bastian has gathered, in the many volumes he has published, an even vaster museum of human facts. In the first-named of the two publica tions above, the reader will find collections of evidence as to many of the problems which are now occupying the minds of anthropologists, such as the primitive relations of the sexes, the development of the family and of pro perty, and the belief in ancestral and patron spirits. The few lines of comment with which the author links toge ther his pages of citations are of especial value, as giving his judgment of the meaning of the facts. In the second pamphlet the author traces the growth of anthropological museums out of the old cabinets of curiosities. Neither treatise is well suited to quote passages from, as these lose their value when disconnected from the rest, like single specimens taken out of the museum. Now and then Prof. Bastian makes a sort of holiday digression, for instance where he collects page upon page about modern European miracles, relics, and pilgrimages, about which he truly says, “the nature-peoples, with their rude, clumsy fetishes, are no match for the subtleties of super-refined civilisation” Der Völkergedanke im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft vom Menschen, und seine Begründung auf ethnologische Sammlungen. (Berlin, 1881.) Die Vorgeschichte der Ethnologie. (Berlin, 1881.)