Chapter XII: Cultural Classification and the Influence of Environment

WE have seen that in its beginning the science of man was little more than a branch of zoology, and that his structural characters were the first to attract attention and to form the material of study; hence all the earlier classifications were based on physical features. Gallatin was one of the first to classify mankind rather by what they _do_ than by what they _are_.

[Sidenote: =Gallatin.=]

Albert Gallatin (1761-1849) was born at Geneva, emigrated to America before he was twenty, and rose rapidly to the position of one of the foremost of American statesmen, becoming United States Minister to France, and later to England. He noted the unsatisfactoriness of groupings by colour, stature, head-form, etc., in the case of the races of America, and made a preliminary classification of the native tribes on the basis of language. Major J. W. Powell (1834-1902) and Dr. Brinton (1837-1899) elaborated the linguistic classification of the American Indians.

[Sidenote: =Wilhelm von Humboldt.=]

Classification by language had already been utilised by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) in the introduction to his great work on the Kawi language of Java, entitled _Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts_, which was published posthumously, 1836-40. The rise of the new science of philology gave a fresh impetus to this method of classification, which was adopted by F. Müller (1834-1898), and utilised recently by Deniker and various other writers.

Other classifications, by means of cultural distinctions, have been attempted. Among these may be noted that based on mythology and religion of Max Müller, on institutions and social organisation of Morgan and Ratzel, or on musical systems of Fétis.

[Sidenote: =Hippocrates.=]

Hippocrates (_c._ 460-377), in his work, _About Air, Water, and Places_, first discusses the influence of environment on man, physical, moral, and pathological. He divided mankind into groups, impressed with homogeneous characters by homogeneous surroundings, demonstrating that mountains, plains, damp, aridity, and so on, produced definite and varying types.

[Sidenote: =Bodin.=]

Bodin, writing in 1577 _Of the Lawes and Customes of a Common Wealth_ (English edition, 1605), contains, as Professor J. L. Myres has pointed out,[128] “the whole pith and kernel of modern anthropo-geography.... His climatic contrasts are based on the Ptolemaic geography ... and he argues as if the world broke off short at Sahara.... On his classification of environments from arctic North to tropic South” he superposes “a cross-division by grades of culture from civil East to barbaric West.”

Footnote 128:

_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1909 (1910), p. 593.

[Sidenote: =Buffon.=]

Buffon followed Hippocrates. Man, said Buffon, consists of a single species. Individual variations are due to three causes—climate, food, and habits. These influences, acting over large areas on large groups of people, produce general and constant varieties. To these varieties he gave the name of _race_. This doctrine was the main support of the monogenists.

[Sidenote: =Alexander von Humboldt, Ritter, and Waitz.=]

The year 1859 marks a crisis in this field of research, as in so many others. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the Prussian naturalist and traveller, spent the later part of his life in writing his classic _Kosmos_, a summary and exposition of the laws and conditions of the physical universe. Karl Ritter (1779-1859), Professor of Geography at the University of Berlin, published, between 1822 and his death, the ten volumes of _Die Erdkunde im Verhältniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen_. These works formed the basis from which was developed the German view of geography as a science of the co-relation of distribution. In 1859 Waitz, in his _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, insisted on the inter-relation between the physical organisation and the psychic life of mankind.

[Sidenote: =Buckle.=]

Between 1857 and 1861 appeared Buckle’s _History of Civilisation_, in which the influence of environment on mankind is strongly emphasised. “To one of these four classes (Climate, Food, Soil, and the General Aspect of Nature) may be referred all the external phenomena by which Man has been permanently affected.”[129] The recognition of the environmental influence has long been a characteristic of the French school. Ripley (1900, p. 4) points out that, wherever the choice lies between heredity and environment, the French almost always prefer the latter as the explanation of the phenomenon. This is seen from the time of Bodin (1530-1596) and Montesquieu (1689-1755), with their objective explanations of philosophy, and Cuvier, who traced the close relationship between philosophy and geological formation, to Turquan (1896), who mapped out the awards made by the Paris Salon, showing the coincidence of the birth-place of the artists with the fertile river basins.

Footnote 129:

_L.c._, chap. ii.

[Sidenote: =Ratzel. Reclus.=]

In Germany the exponents of these theories were Cotta and Kohl, and later Peschel, Kirchhoff, Bastian, and Gerland; but the greatest name of all is that of Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), who has written the standard work on _Anthropo-Geographie_ (1882-91). Another monumental work is that by Élisée Reclus (1820-1905), _Nouvelle Géographie Universelle_ (1879-1894).

[Sidenote: =Le Play.=]

A great stimulus to the development of ethnological sociology was given by the school of Le Play in France, the concrete application of whose theories was worked out by Demolins and others, and published in _La Science Sociale_ and separate works. It is the essential procedure of the followers of this school, in their studies in descriptive sociology, to begin with the environment, and to trace its effects upon the occupation of the people, their sociology, and so forth. The method is an extremely suggestive one, and has led to many brilliant generalisations. The danger consists in theorising from imperfect data, and there is a tendency to attribute certain social conditions directly to the influences of environment and occupation, where a wider knowledge of ethnology would show that these or analogous social conditions obtained in other places where they were not produced by the causes suggested.

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_RETROSPECT_

ON taking a brief final survey of the history of anthropology, one is struck by the fact that, owing to the tendency of students to limit their attention to one of the varied subjects which are grouped under the term Anthropology, the progress of the science has been very irregular.

Physical anthropology has had very numerous devotees, who have approached the subject mainly from the point of view of small anatomical variations; but even at the present day the significance of many of the details is not understood, and very little advance has been made concerning the criteria of racial anatomy. We have yet to discover how adequately to describe or gauge the essential anatomical distinctions between races and peoples. This problem is complicated by our ignorance of the stability of physical characters, and of how far or how speedily they are affected by change of environment. At the present time the effects of miscegenation and of environment afford fruitful fields for research. The imperfection of the geological record is answerable for the relatively slow progress that has been made in tracing the evolution of man as an animal.

Whereas the structural characters of man have been studied by trained scientific men, the history of man from a cultural point of view has mainly been investigated by literary men, who have approached the subject from various sides, and, from lack of experience in the field or by virtue of their natural reliance upon documentary evidence, have often not been sufficiently critical regarding their authorities. The comparative method has yielded most valuable results, but it is liable to lead the unwary into mistakes. To employ biological terms, analogy is apt to be mistaken for homology, since customs or beliefs (which, it must be remembered, are in the vast majority of cases extremely imperfectly recorded) may have a superficial resemblance. If all the facts were known, they might be found to have had a very different origin or significance. Comparisons made within a given area or among cognate peoples have a greater value than those drawn from various parts of the world. What is most needed at the present day is intensive study of limited areas; the studies already so made have proved most fruitful. Although we know a good deal about many forms of social organisation, we find that in very few cases is the knowledge sufficiently precise to explain them, owing to the fact that the data were not collected by adequately trained observers. In other words, cultural anthropology has been too much at the mercy of students who have not received a sufficiently rigorous training.

The objects made by man have only recently been subjected to critical study. In this the archæologists have been in advance of the ethnologists. The distribution of objects and its significance have been studied more in Germany than elsewhere, and already afford promising results.

Anthropology is slowly becoming a coherent and organised science. The chief danger to which it is liable is that its fascination and popularity, touching as it does every department of human thought and activity, tend to premature generalisations.

The history of Anthropology, like that of most other sciences, is full of examples of opposition from the prejudice and bigotry of those who place more reliance on tradition than on the results of investigations and the logical deductions therefrom; but the reactionaries have always had to give way in the end.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Camper, P. _Dissertation physique de M. Pierre Camper sur les Différences réeles que présentent les traits de Visage chez les Hommes de différents pays et de différents Âges._ 1791.

Clodd, E. _Tom Tit Tot._ 1898.—_Animism, the Seed of Religion._ 1905.

Darwin, C. _Origin of Species._ 1859.—_Descent of Man._ 1871.—_Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals._ 1872.

Davis, Barnard, and Thurnam, J. _Crania Britannica._ 1865.

Dieserud, J. _The Scope and Content of the Science of Anthropology._ 1908.

Durkheim, E. _De la division du travail social._ 1893.—_Les règles de la méthode sociologique._ 1895.

Evans, J. _The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain._ 1872.—_The Ancient Bronze Implements_, etc. 1881.

Frazer, J. G. Totemism. 1887.—_Totemism and Exogamy._ 1910.

Gallatin, A. _Synopsis of the Indian Tribes._ 1836.—_Notes on the semi-civilised Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, etc._ 1845.

Giddings, F. H. _The Principles of Sociology._ 1896.

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Gomme, A. B. _The Traditional Games of England, etc._ 1894-8.

Haddon, A. C. _The Decorative Art of British New Guinea._ 1894.—_Evolution in Art._ 1895.—_The Study of Man._ 1898.—_Magic and Fetishism._ 1906.—_Races of Man and their Distribution._ 1909.

Hartland, E. S. _Primitive Paternity._ 1910.

Hobhouse, L. T. _Morals in Evolution._ 1906.

Jevons, F. B. _Introduction to the History of Religion._ 1896.

Lafitau, J. F. _Moeurs des Sauvages comparées aux Moeurs des premiers Temps._ 1723.—_Hist. des Découvertes et des conquêtes des Portugais dans le Nouveau Monde._ 1733.

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Lartet, E. et Christy, H. _Reliquiæ Aquitanicae._ 1865-75.

Latham, R. G. _The Natural History of the Varieties of Man._ 1850.—Preface to the _Germania_ of Tacitus. 1851.—_Descriptive Ethnology._ 1859.

MacRitchie, D. _The Testimony of Tradition._ 1890.—_Fians, Fairies, and Picts._ 1893.

Mannhardt, W. _Roggenwolf and Roggenhund._ 1865.—_Die Korndämonen._ 1868.—_Der Baumkultus der Germanen._ 1875.—_Antike Wald- und Feldkulte._ 1877.—_Mythologische Forschungen._ 1884.

Marett, R. R. _The Threshold of Religion._ 1909.

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INDEX OF AUTHORS

Agassiz, L., 91

Allen, Grant, 142

Aristotle, 6, 14, 51

Avebury, Lord, 131, 141

Bachofen, J. J., 132

Balfour, H., 127

Barclay, 32

Bastian, A., 80, 82, 152

Beard, 120

Beddoe, J., 44

Bernier, F., 88 _sq._

Bertillon, A., 49

Bertrand, A. J. L., 122

Blower, 92

Blumenbach, J. F., 25, 27 _sqq._, 99, 107

Boas, F., 69

Bodin, J., 110, 150 _sq._

Bonstetten, G., 122

Bory de Saint-Vincent, 53, 91 _sq._

Boucher de Perthes, J., 121 _sqq._

Bourgeois, Abbé, 123 _sq._

Boyd Dawkins, W., 115, 123

Breuil, H., 123

Brinton, D. G., 149

Broca, P. P., 35 _sqq._, 53, 71, 93

Brosses, C. de, 139 _sq._

Buckland, W., 116 _sq._

Buckle, H. T., 131 _sq._, 151

Buffon, G. L. L. Comte de, 18, 20 _sqq._, 55, 113, 150

Camper, P., 30 _sqq._

Capellini, 124

Capitan, Dr., 123

Cartailhac, E., 123

Chambers, R., 59 _sqq._

Chantre, E., 122

Christol, Tournal de, 117

Christy, H., 122

Comte, A., 131

Crawley, E., 142

Cunningham, D. J., 64

Cuvier, Baron G. L. C. F., 53, 57 _sqq._, 70, 91, 95, 152

Darwin, C., 62 _sqq._, 96

Daubenton, 32

Davis, J. Barnard, 123

Demolins, E., 152

Deniker, J., 93 _sq._, 108, 150

Dennett, R. E., 82 _sqq._

Desmoulins, A., 91 _sq._, 107

Doornik, J. E., 33

Dorsey, J. O., 142

Draper, J. W., 131

Dubois, E., 76 _sq._

Duckworth, W. H. L., 77, 97

Dupont, E., 117

Dupuis, C. F., 139

Durkheim, É., 135, 143

Ecker, J. A., 123

Edwards, W. F., 99

Ehrenreich, P., 142

Evans, J., 114, 122 _sqq._

Fechner, G. T., 85

Flower, W., 93 _sq._

Fontenelle, B. le B. de, 138

Fouillée, A., 85

Foy, W., 142

Frazer, J. G., 136, 142

Frere, J., 113

Frobenius, L., 142

Fuhlrott, C., 71, 123

Gallatin, A., 149

Galton, F., 47 _sqq._, 85, 87

Gerland, G., 98, 152

Giddings, F. H., 7, 135

Gillen, F. J., 142

Giraud-Teulon, A., 134

Gliddon, G. R., 53, 91, 107

Grattan, J., 33 _sq._

Greef, G. de, 135

Greenwell, Canon, 123

Grimm, J. L. K., 139

Grimm, W. K., 139

Guyot, A. H., 131

Gumplowicz, L., 135

Haeckel, E., 91, 93, 96

Hamy, E. T., 38

Harrison, B., 125

Hartland, E. S., 142

Hauser, O., 73

Haworth, S., 17

Hellwald, F. A. H. von, 135

Herder, J. G. von, 110

Herodotus, 101, 108

Herschel, W., 49

Heusinger, 92

Hippocrates, 13, 150

Hobbes, T., 110

Hobhouse, L. T., 143

Hovelacque, A. A., 53

Howitt, A. W., 133

Hubert, H., 137, 143

Humboldt, A. von, 102, 151

Humboldt, W. von, 144, 149

Hundt, Magnus, 6

Hunt, J., 53, 64 _sq._, 67 _sq._, 79

Huxley, T. H., 60 _sqq._, 71, 92, 96

Jevons, F. B., 132, 136, 142

Kames, Lord, 53

Keane, A. H., 91, 95, 108

Keller, F., 119 _sq._

Kölliker, 92

Kollmann, J., 19

Knox, R., 53, 107

Lamarck, J. B. A., 57

Lang, A., 137, 139, 141 _sq._

Lartet, E., 122

Latham, R. G., 107, 147

Lawrence, Sir W., 16, 55 _sq._

Le Play, 152

Letourneau, C., 134

Lindenschmidt, L., 123

Linnæus, K., 20 _sqq._, 54, 89 _sq._, 95

Lissauer, A., 123

Locke, J., 110

Lubbock, J. _See_ Avebury

Lucretius, 101 _sq._

Lyell, C., 117, 121 _sqq._

McDougall, W., 7, 86, 136

MacEnery, J., 117 _sq._

McLennan, J. F., 132 _sq._

MacRitchie, D., 19

Maine, H., 133

Mannhardt, W., 140, 142

March, H. Colley, 127

Marett, R. R., 142

Mason, Otis T., 127

Mauss, M., 137, 143

Meigs, J. A., 32, 35

Mercati, 113

Monboddo, J. B., 56

Montelius, O., 123

Montesquieu, C. de S., Baron de, 110, 152

Morgan, L. H., 132 _sqq._, 150

Mortillet G. de, 123 _sq._

Morton, S. G., 33

Müller, Friedrich, 93, 107, 150

Müller, F. Max, 140 _sq._, 145 _sqq._, 150

Myers, C. S., 46, 86

Myres, J. L., 99 _sqq._, 108, 110

Nicolucci, G., 123

Noetling, F., 124

Norris, E., 95

Nott, J. C., 53, 91, 107

Novicow, M., 135

Nyerup, R., 114

Owen, R., 64, 121

Pearson, K., 47, 87

Pengelly, W., 118, 120 _sq._

Peschel, O., 107, 152

Peyrère, de la, 52, 113

Peyrony, M., 73

Pickering, C., 107

Piette, E., 123

Pitt-Rivers, A. H. Lane-Fox, 126 _sq._

Post, H., 134

Powell, J. W., 149

Prichard, J. C., 53, 55, 95, 104 _sqq._

Pruner Bey, F., 92

Quatrefages, A. de, 18, 35, 38, 44, 53

Quetelet, L. A. J., 47

Ratzel, F., 104, 107, 150, 152

Read, C. H., 127

Reclus, J. Élisée, 104, 152

Retzius, Anders, 33 _sq._

Ribeiro, C., 124

Ridgeway, W., 109

Ripley, W. Z., 91

Ritter, K., 151

Rivers, W. H. R., 86, 134

Rivière, E., 122

Rolleston, G., 123

Ross, A., 139

Ross, E. A., 136

Saint-Hilaire, E. G., 59

Saint-Hilaire, I. G., 92

Schmerling, Dr., 117

Schoetensack, O., 73

Semper, G., 127

Sergi, G., 40

Serres, Marcel de, 117

Smith, W. Robertson, 142

Sollas, W. J., 75, 77, 125

Spencer, B., 142

Spencer, H., 62, 85, 132

Sperling, J., 17

Stolpe, H., 127

Strabo, 102

Tarde, G., 135

Thurnam, J., 123

Topinard, P., 35, 37, 93, 108

Tylor, E. B., 99, 104, 129 _sq._, 141 _sq._

Tyson, E., 17 _sqq._

Vesalius, 15

Virchow, R. L. K., 39, 44, 71, 123

Virey, J. J., 53, 91

Vogt, C., 65, 96

Waitz, F. T., 92, 95, 107, 151

Westermarck, E., 135, 143

White, C., 43

Windle, B. C. A., 19

Worsaae, J. J. A., 115

Wundt, W., 86

Wilde, W. R., 111, 118 _sq._

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