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Defending the validity of the testimony on which anthropologists reason about the evolution of religion, custom, manners, mythology, law, Mr. Tylor writes:
Having thus justified our evidence for the savage belief in supernormal phenomena, as before anthropologists, we turned to a court of psychologists in defence of our evidence for the fact of exactly the same supernormal phenomena in civilised experience.
To reject because one cannot understand is the arrogance of the "clerico-academic" type of William James. No one can read the stories of travelers or the writings of anthropologists without concluding that codes of belief and action arise out of the efforts of groups to understand and to influence nature and that out of this practical effort AND seeking of a harmonious reality arises morality.
Moreover, of wonder-working things, some are good and some are bad. To get all the good kind of wonder-workers on to his side, so as to confound the bad kind that is what his religion is there to do for him. "May blessings come, may mischiefs go!" is the import of his religious striving, whether anthropologists class it as spell or as prayer.
The origin of the religious idea is a quite different enquiry, and is adequately dealt with in the writings of men like Tylor, Frazer, Spencer, and other representatives of the various schools of anthropologists. My present purpose is of a more restricted kind.
"It is remarkable," proceeded Psmith placidly, with the impersonal touch of one lecturing on generalities, "how frequently, when a murder has been committed, one finds men confessing that they have done it when it is out of the question that they should have committed it. It is one of the most interesting problems with which anthropologists are confronted. Human nature "
Where these tribes came from is a question yet unsolved by anthropologists, though the theory has many supporters that most of the isolated peoples are allied to the original stock of the once mighty Caribs, who journeyed from the south to the sea.
So far back as the anthropologists can trace the history of Swedish people, the boundaries of their land have remained the same.
The lowest races studied by anthropologists which, however, represent, of course, the result of ages of evolution have commonly an elaborate provision for the guidance of the young into the paths of the tribal morals. Further, all occasions upon which the tribe gets together for common work or play strengthen the group loyalty and make the group welfare appeal to the member as his own good.
The formation of later races of mankind from these types has not yet been traced, if it occurred at all. Some anthropologists consider, however, that the Peking Man possessed already certain characteristics peculiar to the yellow race. The Peking Man lived in caves; no doubt he was a hunter, already in possession of very simple stone implements and also of the art of making fire.
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