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History and Theory of Anthropology Preface to the Re-Edition

Geschichte und Theorie der Ethnologie

edited by I herausgegeben von

The re-edition of this volume co-incides with the memorial symposium
Prof. Dr. Klaus-Peter Kopping and exhibition I on the occasion of Bastian's death onehundred years ago
in 1905 and thus can provide a re-examination not only of his ideas
(University of Heidelberg) about the foundations of anthropology but also for a stock-taking and
self-reflection of all those disciplines which are concerned with the phe-
nomenon of culture or the never-ending quest for a grasp of the relation
between culture and nature.
Volume/Band 1 The re-examination of Bastian's ideas within the context of the 19th
century has in the meantime been undertaken for specific questions by
Cover Picture: Bastian at about 34 years of age (source: wood-cut by Ado~f
two outstanding recent publications, one on the struggle about the con-
Neumann as illustration for the article by Bastian entitled 'Mel-
cept of evolution within the emerging discipline of anthropology in Ger-
ne Reise urn und durch die Well". Leipziger lllustricrte Zeitung
many'. one on the much-maligned stylistic quirks of Bastian and his no-
35, 1860. p. 219-222.
tion of the concatenations of thought and matter ~.
These contributions may facilitate a re-appraisal of Bastian's ground-
Bibliographie information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek breaking if futile attempts to forge a theoretical frame-work for a "science
Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche of mankind" J which in the recent decades has been taken on by a number
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data <Ire available in the of other disciplines. in particular by the natural sciences. While anthro-
Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de. pology has largely abandoned the attempt to develop a macro-theoretical
ISBN 3-8258-3989-3
The Museum of Ethnology (Ethnologisches Museum) in Bertin-Dahlem or-
ganizes <l symposium on the heritage of Bastian from the 25th to the 27th
of February 2005 in coordination with a Museum exhibition. At this place I
would also like to thank Dr..Bolz of the Museum for providing the photos of
e LIT VERLAG MUnster 2005
Bastian from his collection.
See: Marie-France Chevron: "Anpassung und Entwicklung in Evolution und
Grevencr StrJFrcsnostr. 2 48159 MUnster Kulturwande!". LIT-Verlag, Berlin. 2004.
Tel. 025 1-6203 20 Fax 0251-231972 See: Klaus-Peter Buchheit: "Die Verkettung dcr Dingo. Stil und Diagnose im
e-Mail: lit@lit-verlag.de http://www.lit-verlag.dc Schreiben Adolf Bastians". Unpublished. PhD thesis. University of Heidel-

Distributed in North America by:

-1 A berg, 2003.
Summaries of Bcsuan's ideas have in the meantime been published: sec
Klaus-Peter Kopping, "Enlightenment and Romanticism in the Work of Adolf
Bastian", in: H.F.Vermeulen and A.A. ROldan (eds.), Fieldwork and Footno-

Transaction Publishers
New BNuw'tk (U.s.A.) aDd Loadoll (u.K.)
Trcnsacuon Publishers
Rutgers University
35 Berruc Circle
Piscataway. NJ llR~5-l.
Tel.: (732)445- 22S11
Fa~:(732)~45-31}~
for orders CU. S. only):
1011free (888) 999.6771<
res. London, 1995:7591: also Klaus Peter Buchheit und Klaus-Peter Kop-
ping. Bastian. in:FccstiKohl (cds.). Hauptwerke der Ethnologie, Stuttgart.
2001:19-25.
 II Preface to the Re-Edition
stance as explanatory model for culture. the natural sciences have pushed
forward to provide such models for human behaviour. be it in the field of
neurology. in the bio-sciences or in robotics. Whether such attempts can
provide more than analogies for human thought and behaviour. must be
left to the discourses developing between the natural sciences and the hu-
manities. But it is.at this decisive cuttingedge of the discussion about the
nature of human cultural production that a re-reading of one of the last
and largely programmatic systems combining the search for regularities
(or "laws") governing nature and culture may be most fruitful.
The present re-editicn of this workon Bastian has therefore abstained
from over-stretching the scientific genealogy by trying to deduce all and
sundry of present theoretical orientations from the incipientnotions of an
"ancestor", be it for the theoretical concerns of the humanities ranging
from post-structuralism through postcolonialism to post-modernism. be
it for the advances in the physics of non-linear models. The re-edition
has intentionally kept to the genealogy of anthropological thinking from
Bastian to Levi-Strauss. This restriction to as well as comparison of two
theories searching for the universals of human thinking is based on my
contention that both attempts at combining science and humanities show
more affinity than appears at first sight. These similarities have to be eva-
luated in the light of the underlying metaphysics as well as reference to
"physics" in both Bastian and Levi-Strauss. i.e. on the basic attempts of
both to bolster their world-view through recourse to models of science
prevailing in their time. Bastian takes recourse to the notion that human
thinking. based on natural foundations. operates according to principles
of a "cosmic harmony" or to put it into older paradigms. on the equi-
~alence of micro-and macrocosmicstructures. This may seem quite an-
tiquated when compared with the Uvi-Straussian program of deducing
from language ("myths") the basic structures of human thinking. Howe-
ver. if one looks at the premise .on which this structural search is ulti-
mately based. we encounter the notion of "entropy" when Uvi-Strauss
remarks.that civil!zation "can be described as prodigiously complicated
m~~hamsm: . . . .. Its true function is to produce whatphysicists call entro-
py ,
When Levi-Strauss thus refers to clvilization or culture 'and human
thinking ~ well as action as an "inertia-producing machine", thisanalogy
puts us ~trectl~ back to Bastian's notion of "entelechy" which he takes
from Ansto~ehan premis~. For Bastian each idea or thought-complex,
seen collectIvely as folk-Idea, has a certain 'potential which in actuali-
<, See: Claude Levi-Strauss: Tristes Tropiques. NewYork 1971. p.397.
' .....\
Preface to the Re-Edition 111
zaticn converts potential to kinetic energy and thus exhausts itself at a
certain point. Both thinkers revert here to the laws of mechanics as well
as thermodynamics. andthey areuncannily similar. as the concrete exam-
ple given by Levi-Strauss may elucidate: "Every scrap of conversation.
every line set up in type. establishes a communication between two inter-
locutors. levelling what had previously existed on two different plances
and had had. for that reason, a greater degree of organization" .
This type of generalization about civilizational levelling or desinte-
gration may provide ample ammunition for both promoters as well as
sceptics of globalization theories. However. the more explosive notion
may be hidden in the analogy between cultures and machines. While al-
ready the 19th century equation between civilisations and organisms was
full of pitfalls which showed the problem of analogisation 7. this beco-
mes the more so in recent times when notions of machines arcextended
to systems of neurological or bio-chemical processing.
While the humanities have in general thought it wise to retreat to the
specificity of cultural productions and human thought and action through
recourse to models of contingency, reflexivity and perforrnativity,the na-
tural sciences have begun to considerjust these terms in their models of
the operation of machines or neurological and bio-chemical processes.
Thus. researchers on non-linearmodes of order operate with such noti-
ons as contingency of systems of low causality and proclaim that seren-
dipidous variations in the microscopic domain may have repercussions
on macro-systems, and roboticists and. computertheoreticians argue in
similarways. II
Are we then back to the physicalist analogies of metaphysical
notions like those of Bastian about the concatenation of ideas, of
their disturbance through the encounter with other ideas and their
final harmonizing of the disturbance (the optimistic notion of cultural
production) or that of the entropy of systems (the negative notion of
(. Op.cit.
For 19th century organicism see also Werner Petermann: "Die Geschichtc
der Ethnologic". Peter Hammer Verlag. Wuppertal 2004. with particular refe-
rence to Bastian and the polemicism around evolution. see pp. 541
11 This refers to the research objectives of the Centre for the Dynamics of
Complex Systems at the University of Potsdam; see Jurgen Kurths and Udo
Schwarz: "Nichtlinearewlssenschcften- neue Paradigrnen und Konzepte", in
Kunstforum, vol, 155. June-July 2001. pp.64- 69. Forthe robotics of Turing
machines (computers) see Manuel Bonik: "Erewhon forever"; in Kunstforum,
op.ch.. pp,70 - 76.
tV Preface to the Re-Edition

Levi-Strauss)? Or should we rather ask whether the same terminology

has different "meanings" in the respective domains of the humanllJes
and the natural sciences? There can be no doubt that one influences
the other and that the dialogue between these domains about the use. of Contents
concepts is as urgent as ever," This is a lesson for which the re-r.. ad~ng
of "ancestors" like Bastian in a wider context of the history of SCIentIfic
discourse may be quite salutary. This leaves questions about human
. agency and freedom of decision making and responsibility still 0l.'"n. as
Levi-Strauss' unabashedly proclaimed in his confession about hIS own
subordination to the "objective will-to-emancipation" 10.
Figures vii
Preface ix
Klaus-Peter Kopping Berlin. October 2004 Notes on Translation xiii
Acknowledgments xvii

PART ONE. ADOLF BASTIAN'S PROGRAMME FOR A SCIENTIFIC

AND HUMANIST SCIENCE OF MAN:
ITS SOURCE AND DEVELOPMENT 1
Bastian, A Neglected Founder of Modern Anthropology 3
2 Life, Voyages, Writings and Personality 7
3 Bastian's Basic Premises for the New Science of Ethnology:
Elementary Idea and Folk Idea 28
4 Theoretical Basis of Folk Idea and Elementary Idea:
Evolution and Entelechy 47
5 The Controversy of Bastian versus Ratzel or ofIndependent
Invention versus Diffusion 60
6 World View and Social Philosophy 69
7 The Sources of Bastian's Concepts: From the Stoa to Neo-Kantian
Psycho-Physics 77
A. Alexander von Humboldt 77
B_ Herder, Romantic Philosophy,
the Stca and Leibniz 79
C. Neo-Kantian Physics and Psychology:
From Herbart to Helmholtz. Fechner and Lotze 88
8 On Primitive Religion, Shamanism, Sexuality and Aberrations
of the Mind 95
9 Culture Contact, Salvage Anthropology and
., The question was addressed by a diversity of disciplines at a symposium. Social Engineering 104 .
conducted in Berlin from 21 23 of October 2003. organized by the author in 10 From Bastian to Modern Anthropology: Disciples. Parallel
collaboration with Christoph Wulfand Bettina Papenburg. The proceedings Developments and Convergence of Ideas 117
win be published in thejournal "Paragrana", second issue of 2005 under [he A. Ehrenreich, Andree, Frobenius and Boas 118
title"Maschinenk6rper-Korpermaschinen". . B: Tyler, Graebner, Kulturkreislehrc. Culture Area Approach
10 op.cit..p.398. and W.H.R. Rivers 126

J
 -----------------------------------------~
---

vi Contents
l
C. Frazer, Evolutionism and Functionalism 137
D. Bastian and Modern Psychology: Wundt and Jung 140
11 Bastian and Levi-Strauss: The Impasse of Structuralism and
the Return to the Subject 147 Figures
PART TWO. TRA.'1SLATION OF SELECTED WORKS OF
ADOLF BASTIAN ISS
I. BASTIA..'l'S WORLD VIEW 157
On Cosmic Harmony 157
n. THE DOMAIN OF ETHNOLOGY 163
Ethnology and Psychology 163 1. Map appearing in Bastian, Das Bestiindige in den
On Cultural Evolution 164 Menschenrassen 134
III. ELEMENTARY IDEAS, FOLK IDEAS AND 2. Map from Anthropologie der Naturvolker 134
GEOGRAPHICAL PROVINCES 170 3. Culture aseas of America, from Kroeber, Anthropology 135
The Folk Idea as Paradigm of Ethnology 170 4. Culture areas of America, from Driver, Indians ofNorth
Geographical, Ethnological and Anthropological America 135
Provinces 176 5. Histogram of connections of ideas pertaining
IV. THE PSYCHIC UNITY OF M~KlND AND to Anthropogeography 138
SOME ELEMENTARY SYMBOLS 179
On the Similarity of Mental Operations, Primitive and
Civilized 179
Space and Time 180
Numbers 182
The Cross 183
V. RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND MENTAL ABERRATIONS 186
The Emergence of Diverse World Views 186
Split in World View and Rise of Prophets 190
On Insanity, Shamanism and Possession States 193
The physiological Roots "Of Morality 208
VI. SALVAGE ANTHROPOLOGY 215
The Waning of Primitive Societies 215
The Heritage of Mankind and the Future of Ethnology 216
VII. BASTIAN AS TRAVELLER 220
A Stay among Buryat Shamans 220

List of Abbreviations 229

List of Technical Termsused by Bastian:
German-English Glossary 230
Notes 231
Bibliography of Selected Works of Adolf Bastian 253
Selected General Bibliography 256
<Index 269

\
1 Bastian, A Neglected Founder of
Modern Anthropology

Mall will not cease searching for harmony. He will not rest until
he has found a rule which, without necessarily being true, is
sufficiently adequate to integrate all previous experience.
Bastian

The Germans have the art ofmaking scienceinaccessible.

Goethe

The life and work of Adolf Bastian illustrate one of those occasions,
rare in the history of any field of scholarship, when later generations
are able to discern the start of a separate discipline. Bastian was one of
the first men to describe carefully the boundaries and domain of social
anthropology or ethnology in its relation to other humanities and the
fields of the natural sciences. He systematically used the tool of induc-
tive research experience in the field. This seminal originality is today all
too easily overlooked, indeed it is forgotten. Instead, the founding of
anthropology as a science is attributed to many other scholars, selected
on dubious grounds frequently tainted by nationalistic pride or deter-
mined by the parochial narrowness of modern scholarship.
One reason given for the rare acknowledgment of Bastian is his
incomprehensible style;' another that his works have never been trans-
lated into English. The first argument has some justification, but he,'
cosmopolitan and multilingual traveller, would have recoiled from the
second.? If we have to have interpreters and translators, then the image
of the "scholarly community" is nothing but a figment of the mind.
This was not always the case; 3 number of nineteenth century
anthropologists were men of many talents, conversant in history,
classical languages and diverse fields of science. However, even for the
nineteenth century. the figure of Bastian seems something of an excep-
tion among the founders of cultural anthropology.
Footnotes in the works of Tylor and Frazer give the impression that

4 Part One
. Tylor refers
they were familiar enough with Bastian's writings. Thus. of
particularly in the preface to his Primitive Culture of J 871 to the use of
Bj~tian's materials, when he states, "1 will .,. mention tWO tre.a;l:;S by
which I have made especial use: the Mensch in der Gesch~C l b '
Professor Bastian of Berlin, and the Anthropologie der NalunJo lker, >
the late Professor Waitz of Marburg".3 th t
Yet, if we peruse Tyler's famous work at length, it is apparent
he did not refer for any of his theoretical statements to Bastian dl!ec~Y,
t Bastian can without hesitation be seen as the first writer - besi es
His footnoting only refers to customs not theory. This suggests t at
. ideas
these English scholars were not really conversant with gasnan s. .
although the uncanny similarity between many of Tyler's and Bastian s
concepts has led some historians of the discipline to suggest such a
connection. Tylor also says in his obituary for Bastian that the volumes
of "my honoured friend" occupy "between two and three feet on my
bookshelves".' This would certainly let us believe strongly in a greater
dependence of Tyler's ideas on Bastian than might be warranted. To
dispel this image of Tyler, it is worth quoting the comment by Mare."
on the imputed connection:
A question into which one cannot go here concerns Tylor"s debt to
Continental scholars. Some have put Bastian. the German traveller
and writer, on a par with Tyler as a Creator of the science of Anthro~
po!~gy" and even profess to find signs of his influence in Tylor's
wntmgs. I daub-to however. if Tyler owes much to Bastian. or at any
rate so much as to Klemm and waltz. Indeed, from conversatIon,
and in the course of helping Tylor a little with his literary work
towards the end of his days at Oxford. I gathered that, although he
could find his way through a book in French or Spanish; German or
Dutch, and could even extract the tit-bits from a Greek or Latin
classic, he was not really happy with foreign rcngues.s
This statement by Marett tells us nothing definite about the possible
Impact of Bastian on Tylor, though it tells us something about the
erudition of Tylor. The only fair assessment for the connection
between Tylor and Bastian we can attempt at this time seems to point
to a convergence of ideas of both men. Bastian nevertheless merits a
special position in the period of the rise of anthropological thinking
between 1850 and 1880, as he did leave his arm-chair and collected
many of those very data from which others were to forge their theoreti-
cal insights, He thus combined in his person the interest and the
:b.ilities of the great travellers and explorers between the end of the
fifteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century with the
synthesizing faculty of the great savants of the eighteenth century.
Bastian was not an original philosopher and may thus be classed with
the many eclectic minds of the eighteenth century who derived many
of their basic notions from diverse systems of thought, from Aristotle
Bastian's Programme for a Science of Man 5
to Augustine. from Nee-Platonism to Descartes, from the Stoa to vice.
Leibniz, Spinoza and Kant. . d
Yet. as the SQl'ants of the eighteenth century, Bastian surpasse.
most of his nineteenth century colleagues in the social sciences by hIS
undoubtedly profound erudition and by what the twentieth century
has made its main yard-stock for admitting a writer to the .elevated
ranks of a social scientist - empirical observation. id
Cornte - to delineate carefully the scientific status of ethnology an)d
psychology, understood as ethno-psychology (VolkerpsychOlogze ,
without abandoning the heritage of the humanities. He also rates highly
3$ a truly comparative scholar. since he tries to incorporate the da ta
from the European philosophical heritage of such diverse sources as the
Church fathers, the Greek philosophers, the Enlightenment thmk~r~
and the Kantian system into a coherent. synthesized framew0.rk Wit
data gleaned from various non-European sources such ~s Indian and
Burmese Buddhism, Polynesian and African cosmologies and folk-
traditions of the Americas. By recourse to associationist psychology
and the post-Kantian variety of psycho-physics, he even provided an
epistemological framework for the new "science of man", a label he
reserved for ethnology (Viilk<rkurlde). .
Nineteenth century historians, among them Dilthey, regarded him
as outstanding for his world-wide practical field work, in contras: to
those who merely talked about a truly world hisrory:6 the t:v.enueth
century has swiftly" forgotten the roots of its inte!lec~ual tradition and
any indebtedness to its founders. Most accounts in histories of anthro-
pological theory are at best inadequate and all too often bo:der ~n the
ridiculous, once again slipping into a strong ethnocentnc bias by
covertly concentrating on only one country's conlribution~.'
The scope, scholarly integrity and grand vision of Basuan are rarely
acknowledged. All we find are vague utterings of such slogans as
psychic unity of mankind: this is but a testimony to the ~ack of.depth
and originality, the "deflation" and "inflation" of what IS conSIdered
"scholarly" today. Instead of truly understood systems of th?ugh.t, we
are offered the gruel of pre-chewed bits in the ever-popular ~Istones of
anthropological theory which - with a very few exceptions - are
nothing but what Bastian would have called "thin broth for the
intellect" (geistige Wassersuppen).8 .
I hope that this selection of his writings adds some spice to that.th~
broth with which we are all too familiar. Even if some of Basuan s
works might lead to grave indigestion at times. .'
The problems and issues he raised so clearly are still WI.th .us. What
are the causes for the similarities encounteredin diverse societies? What
is the social function of religion? What are appropriate methods to
 6 Part One
study mankind? What attitude should we displav when studying others?
For Wh,at ends do we engage in comparative ethnography
- at alJ?. What
are cultural "norms" and what can becalled "deviant" and by what
enon 0 f measurement? What are the.
criteri '
organic foundatIons of the
"'super-organic" nature of culture?
These and many other questions are little closer to a solution than In
Bastian's ~mes. A careful look at systems of thought of the ninetee!'t!'
century might alert us to the fact that in spite of its increased sophis tl-
catl~n u: techniques and a greater range of data, modem anthropology
IS still 21V1ng off the capital of the nineteenth century, and many so-
called theoretical advances" are pretentious rather than profound and
not so much innovative as derivative;9
Were thi~ not deplorable enough, the ignorance about the roots of
anthropolOgIcal thinking is even more depressing. Cora du Bois warned
almost twenty years ago that "we are producing a group of young pro-
feSSl~na1s who are uneducated in the history of their disciplineu .10
She IS finally proved right with such arrogant statements as that by
Marvin Harris about the German Africanist Baumann HI don't know
who Baumann is ....., implying at the same time that he couldn't
care less.! 1
a Such gener.ational an.d national parochialism might finally lose
nthropology Its re~utatlOn for a cosmopolitan outlook which made
the field so att~actlve for people from very diverse national back-
!!'ounds, world VIews and religions. Studying other cultures ought to
Include a knowledge of the different approaches to the same problem;
only through the understanding of OUr own roots can we gain insight
into otherness and. also advance to an understanding of the inadequacies
of our own profeSSIOn._ Througha narrowegocentrism and ethnocentrism
the very understanding of the humaneness of other ideas and other
points of view is barred: this was after all the foundation of a science
of mankin? which ultimately was expected to lead to a ''world culture".
Such a VISIon of the Enlightenment was ardently shared by Bastian and
most eloquently defended in this century by Kluckhohn.U
2 Life, Voyages, Writings and Personality
.
Bastian wrote an incredible number of books and articles, some several
hundred, yet little of his personality emerges. There are no diaries, and
if there were ever any personal letters. they are no longer to be found.'
In order to understand what drove Bastian to his ceaseless travels
around the world, what motivated him to publish and accumulate such
a great amount of data on all aspects of almost every historical and
contemporary society, and how he acquired his disciples, we must care-
fully piece together those few hints that have come down to us, most of
them hidden in his own works. One aspect of Bastian's personality
emerges clearly: he must have been a very private kind of person who
shied away from great celebrations.P and hid his own passions, his
enthusiasm and also his compassion, behind the screen of his laboured,
even turgid reporting of "hard facts".
The list of his writings amounted by 1896 to two and a half pages of
books and fourteen quarto pages of articles, book-reviews and
addresses.' and from those, when read carefully and intensively, we can
trace with some accuracy his Weltanschauung, his character and
attitudes to life. For the more personal quirks, which we always want
to know about the great men of science, we have to rely on the few
anecdotes and recollections of the handful of scholars who knew him
best, foremost among them being Karl von den Steinen (1855-1929),
the ethnographer of the Amazonas tribes and the Xingu region, and
Freiherr von Richthofen (1833-1905), the famous traveller and
geographer.'
Bastian was born in 1826, the son of a Bremen merchant, and .!
studied at five universities, enrolling first in jurisprudence and natural
sciences and finishing in Wurzburg with a doctorate in medicine in the
year 1850. s In Wurzburg he established a life-time friendship and
professional collaboration when he took courses with the famous
anatomist, physiologist, and founder of celJular pathology, Rudolf
Virchow (1821-1902) who had first occupied a chair at the university
in 1849.6
From then on, Bastian seems to have rarely stayed in Germany for

8 Part One
' ourneys which, as
more than a few years. being regularly abro ad on J t At b
h . fflnit . to that grea
von Rich t ofen commen ted . showed his a truty . led Bastian severaI
. result of his extensive survey was a small travelogue of 1859 called Ein
traveller,
.
Ibn Battuta (1304-68) . This wandeTlng tv years overseas)
times around the globe (he spent more than (wen ~ . hh .
. untry whic e did
an d one would be hard put to point to a reglon or co . I
not visit. Although he devoured the miles in the field as he did vo urnes
in the library, he always travelled light, without that whole battery of
scientific apparatus necessary to field-workers or even to explore.rs:
one travel bag sufficed. Von den Steinen reports how ~angry Bastl-:n
got when a friend urged him on a cold April day in 187' on the Berlin
train station to take an overcoat with him; finally he grudgmgl~ agreed
to have a coat sent to Hamburg where he was to en:bar~ on ~ Journe;-
to South America. He financed all his travels from his pnvate income.
On rare occasions he would campaign for financial aid, b~t this was
never for himself, always either for the ethnological collecllons of the
Museum or for expeditions which he had encouraged others to under-
take.
It seems useful to organize Bastian's biography in the rhythm of his
voyages and to fit his other activities into them. as such a great part of
his life was spent overseas. The travels provided, after all, the. back-
ground to his conceptual framework which in turn was, by his own
admission, the motivating force' behind his many expeditions.
Bastian embarks on his first voyage around the world in 1851 at
the age of twenty-five, by working asa ship's doctor. This first trip
la~es altogether eight years and leads him by ship to Australia where he
visits several regions such as the interior of Victoria and the gold-
fields, Melbourne and Bendigo, and the Blue Mountains in New South
Wales, as well as parts of Tasmania. From Australia he goes to New
Zealand and then to the West Coast of South America with an extended
viSi~ to Cuzco in Peru. The next stops are the highlands of Mexico and
California. He then recrosses the Pacific and moves into China and from
there to South East Asia, Indonesia and India. Here he explores the
c.ountry far and wide, making boat-trips up the river Ganges and traver-
sing the Deccan, ending his visit in Bombay. From here he intends to
cross Persia, but the country was barred for political reasons. He there-
fore travels to Mesopotamia and Syria and finally to Cairo, from where
he ascends the Nile and crosses the mountains of Kosseir to the shores
of the Red Sea, finally landing in Jidda. He now takes a caravan to
Mocha and Aden, and then a boat to the Seychelles, Mauritius and to
Capetown. The African interior comes next, with a trip up the West
COast to Luanda, to the capital of the mythical Congo-empire San
Salvador,.and then to Fernando Po. He follows the West-African ~oast
~a the Niger-delta, Liberia, Si~rra Leone and Sene gambia, and ends his
oyage In LISbon. After a SWIft trek across Portugal, Spain, Turkey,
'"Sastian's Programme for a Science of Man 9
Russia. Sweden and Norway. he arrives home in Bremen in 1859. The
result of his extensive survey was a small travelogue of 1859 called Ein
a
Besucl: in San Salvador. However insigriiflcant this little publication
appears ~Jl itself, it is noteworthy that he thought it important enough
to publish at all. The seed for his later interest in exploring the interior
of Africa to fill in its last blank spots of unexplored territory was
obviously planted.
He made a more lasting impression with the publication of his major
work. the three volumes entitled Der Menscn in' der Geschichte. The
clarity and organization of these three volumes was virtually unmatched
during Bastian's whole writing career: their appearance in Ig60
coincided with an astounding period vital to the foundations of anthro-
pology, for between 1858 and 1865 came the major works of Darwin,
Lubbock, Bachofen , Maine. Mcl.ennan, Waitz and Tyler. The purely
physical effort of Bastian's achievement is stunning: having completed
a strenuous journey of eight years, he was able to send three volumes
totalling about 1600 pages to the printer within a year, a feat he was to
repeat over and over again though with decreasing lucidity after about
1880.
With his major work scarcely in print, Bastian embarks on his second
voyage in 1861, during which he spends almost live years in Asia. From
Madras he goes to Burma, where he is forced to stay for almost a year
as physician to the Burmese king's court; and then on to Siam,
Cambodia, and Indonesia. He turns north to China, going overland to
Peking and from there to Kiakhta, transversing Siberia to Irkutsk, and
ending his travels in the Caucasus.
This journey results in the six volumes Die Volker des Osrlichen Asiell
(1866-71) which could be considered Bastian's finest descriptive work
of history and ethnography. It includes many good collections of maps,
travel-routes, folk-tales, poetry, religious and historical literature which
gave an insight into the regions of Southeast Asia and its ethnic
complexities at a time when only one French explorer had penetrated
into some of the areas which Bastian covered. As the descriptions in
the main deal with very specific topics of Southeast and East Asian
history, religion and ethnic groups, a deeper analysis of these reports
cannot be undertaken here, but must remain a task for the future. How-
ever, one poin.t should be stressed: it was this second voyage which
awoke m Bastian a great interest in Buddhism and the older Indian
religious systems which remained a life-long preoccupation, and he
was to return to the East as an old man to study the systems of which
he already had a fair knowledge.
In these volumes on Southeast and East Asia we also find some of
the most cogent remarks of Bastian about his style of fieldwork and his
 ---_. __ .. -_.~---
10 Part One
. his trip up the
understanding of ethnographic methods. Dunng th t he took tWO
Irrawady river from Rangoon to Mandalay he tells US a nd Burmese
helpers with him, one being the cook, a Bengali ~: Karen;astian about
extraction. "He was an original in his own way , says 'nstructor to
him, "and he played all the diverse roles wi~lingly, fr~m Burmese, in
shoe-shine boy". 8 Bastian's day starts with learmng k who then
writing, spelling as well as reading of texts from his tO~~ afternoon
took off to the market to get chickens and vegetables. n nd the folk-
Bastian studied with him the written history of Burma a tained me
tales, while in the evening, so he describes it, Uthe co~k en~er dishes,'.9
with citations from the sacred Pall-texts while washIng t ~ en a fast
If we can take Bastian's word for it, he must have rne broken
learning traveller, as he relates that the cook had lear.ned sot: 1as inter-
English in an American mission school which made h':ffi use u derstood
preter for the beginning, but, Bastian continues "luckIly he u~ m then
my Burmese Soon better than I did his English, so. that ro cursion
onwards we only conversed in the vernacular". lo Dunng th~ ex ver the
on the Irrawady in 1861, Bastian constantly wanders offw ene collect
boat stops, to reconnoitre .the area, to visit villages and to even to
snippets of religious practices, to ask people for recItatIons and ites
gather children around and obtain their songs which he then tic: et
down in the vernacular and translates, in the typically roman IC Y
poetic fashion of his time. During this same trip he notes down. an
observation about the objectivity of reporting, insisting on. 3bs~ntlOn
from personal and individual opinions to the highest pOSSIble egree,
adding a comment which gives us an insight into the personal thought
of this intrepid traveller who is otherwise so reluctant to commlt any
personal feelings to paper:
It requires great effort at self-effacement, not to colour t~e ~epor~
subjectively, yet anybody who wishes to become a disople 0
mistress science has to be able to sustain this ascetic outlook and
must not pick the fruit before it is ripe, must not jump to conclus-
ions which are not warranred.t t
Though Bastian's travelogue is full of personal value judgment.", in his
reporting on native views he mostly does retain this self-Imposed
restraint.
At the age of forty-one, Bastian now settled down to his longest
period in Berlin, staying there from 1866 to 1875, apart from a half-
year interlude in 1873. In 1868 he became the president of the
Gesellschaft !iir Erdkunde, the hub of all German geographical societies
which publishes an outstanding journal, and within this society he
founded a sub-section for anthropology and ethnology. During these
middle sixties Bastian's skill as a scholar and administrator came to the
"Bastian's Programme for a Science of Man 11
fore. He acquired his second academic degree which enabled him to
pursue the career of a university professor.
Bastian's major income is, luckily for him, not derived from his
teaching profession, as the academic salary would not have enabled him
to pursue his world-wide travel and collecting interests. His official
title - having achieved his second doctoral degree after his return from
Asia between 1865 and 1873 - was that of an Extraordinary Professor
for Ethnology, a position he held until 1900 when he was promoted to
Regular Honorary Professor.12
As well as being Professor of Ethnology, Bastian became Assistant
to the Director of the Royal Museum, a position from which, together
with his influential friend Virchow, he was to launch an ambitious
project to create a German Museum of Ethnology which was to be
unique both in conception and scope. In 1869 he attended the Con~ess
of the Natural Sciences at Innsbruck and there established the Berliner
Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte which
with its main publication, the journal Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie became
the starting point and outlet for the new "science of man" in the
German speaking area.'3 Rudolf Virchow was elected president of the
society; Bastian and Eduard Hartmann became deputies.!"
Judging from the content of the journal, irs first twenty years owed
much to Bastian, who contributes several major articles on his concep-
tual framework, on specific issues and on the establishment of the
boundaries and aims of ethnology in relation to other sciences.
It cannot be stressed emphatically enough that we owe it to Bastian
that modern cultural anthropology (ethnology) has a clearly delineated
range of objectives. Until the I860s a considerable confusion reigned in
Germany, in France and in England, about even the use and meaning
of the term "anthropology" and how to distinguish this field from
"ethnology". In spite of the early foundation of an "Ethnographic
Society" in Paris in 1839 and again in 1859 and of the "Ethnological
Society" in England in 1842, no definition of the objectives of
ethnology was achieved at that time in discussions in these societies.
The famous book of Waitz, which Tyler mentions in 1871, was still
misleadingly called "Anthropology", although it dealt not with
questions of physical anthropology, but with those of ethnic diversity.
Besides, as Father Wilhelm Schmidt quite correctly observed.P
ethnology was up to 1860 still a step-child of its more famous sister
anthropology, understood as physical anthropology, which had taken
enormous strides since the publications of Buffon's, Linne's and
Blumenbach's classifications of the human races according to physical
traits.' Anthropology had the great advantage of being considered a
scientific field of study while ethnology was not. Bastian perceived the
weakness of the budding field of ethnology as follows:

12 Part One
The reason has to be seen in the fact that the radiC3lness of the
change was not perceived, since .the whole mass of the unknown
facts which broke suddenly like a wave only led to stupefaction. Not
self-reflection, but belief in miracles was the result, and after satls-
fying its initial curiosity the mind, bored by too many exotic stimu-
lants, looked for even cruder abnormalities to capture the attention,
Only the curiosities, the savage with his anthropophagic orgies with
his heathen abominations ... was desired. That constituted ethn~logy
in this period.J?
When we consider that Prichard in 1841 still defined ethnography as
the "survey of the different races of man, an investigation of their
physical history .. :' ,t8 the achievement of Bastian in allocating to
ethnography and ethnology the task of collecting diverse customs
unrelated to the physical classification of people, attains its true weight:
In 18.63, Hunt still repeated,,'~t ethnology "treats on the history or
science of ~atlons or races. How different and more concisely
focused Bastian sounds when he states in 1867:
The main focus. of. ethnology. in spite of its close connection to
psychology ... l~es In the m~nt~l life of peoples, in the research,
abQu.t the orgaruc laws under which mankind rose to a state of cul..
ture In the developmental process of history ...20
And shortly afterwards even more precisely:
Ethnology will give to culture history, which was until now restr!c,
t:d..to ~he areas of European. Western Asian and Northern African.
clvihz.3tlOn. the ::0015 for comparative equations with which to en..
large Its perspective over all the five continenrs.P'
. The particular reason for Bastian's travels to East Asia are imrned.
lately apparent from this goal: for him, East Asia has undergone a
cultural development uninfluenced by European culture. "Both cultural
developments", he says, "run parallel to each other and therefore
enable us to use them as controls for the derivation oflaws (of culture
h!story) ..." .:2
~e main tool for establishing comparative research is
given for Bastian In the concept of folk ideas, which I shall deal with in
depth In the ne~t section. Suffice it to state that in 1867 Bastian
defines the folk '.deas as the mental manifestations of a group which
precede the individual and which are primarily to be found in diverse
religions because" he says, "religion reflects the psychic life of
people".2J
. Bastian envi~ges a connection between psychology and culture
history by makmg ethnology, through its ethnographic data, the basis
for the findm~ of Psyc~olOgical laws of the mental development of
groups under diverse environmenu in order to use these laws to unravel
the complex culture history of ancient and modern civilizations. To this
~
Bastian's Programme for a Science of Man 13
end. he wants to establish comparisons between areas where cultu~e
contact and "contamination" is most unlikely to have occurred, as this
provides a testing ground for the environmental variable: East Asia was
thus an ideal choice.
During this middle period in Berlin, Bastian completes also whole
volumes as special or supplementary editions to the Journal of the
Society for Ethnology for which he also provides several hun~red book-
reviews introducing to the German audience the major publications in
the fields of physical anthropology. prehistory, comparative religion,
ethnography, linguistics and on explorations and travelogues from over-
seas, reviewing the works of Darwin as wen 3S those of Spencer and
Tvlor at considerable length. Bastian remained on the executive of the
EiJmo!ogica! Society until 1887, and was re-elected president of the
Ceographica! Society in 1872 until von Richthofen assumed that
position in 1873. .
In his capacity as president of the Geographical Society he turns his
interest to the fascinating "Dark Continent" with its unexplored
regions. Bastian is determined to further the German contribution to
its" exploration. He therefore coaxes all regional associations for
geography into contributing special funds for the establishment of an
Afrika-Gesellschaft in Berlin. He has a discerning eye for the very spot
whose successful exploration would fill the last gap in anthropological
and geographical knowledge and incidentally enhance the reputation of
German research: he chooses the kingdoms of the central African
Congo for an expedition to be mounted from the West coast.
Central Africa had been nibbled at from all directions during the
decades between 1850 and 1870: Heinrich Barth and Vogel had
approached from the north into the Sudan and Chad regions in
1850-56, Livingstone had ventured from the east into the inter-
lacustrine regions and south-central Africa between 1852 and 1873,
while Speke, Grant and Baker had made inroads beyond there between
1858 and 1864: Nachtigal went on a famous trip through the Nilotic
Sudan between 1870 and 1874, and the most famous of German ex-
plorers, Schweinfurth, went along the Gazelle river in 1870. Nobody
had ventured into the centre from the West, from the Angolan coast,
and so in 1873 Bastian prepares an exploratory trip to the Loango coast
to find the most feasible route, Yet, far-sighted and inventive as his
scheme was, the expedition proves a failure in many respects. The gee-
graphy of the region was only scantily known, and the money collected
just did not suffice: to pursue a major venture into this forbidding area.
It was left to Stanley in 1877 to make the route from the East, a gee-
graphically more accessible and sound way of approaching the centre.
After Bastian's relative failure during his third voyage in 1873, the
German Imperial Government took over the expenses of the ill-fated
 14 Part One
exped ition, and many great explorers got their .,
. training d urm
. g these
years.. . .. . of a
Bastian S VISit to unknown African territories proved somethmg
dis'appointmenr in other ways particularly for geographers who .rely o~
very accurate mapping and topographical description for rjreir map
construction. Bastian was undoubtedly a man of great courag.e,
grandiose ideas, vision and foresight, and most erudite and versed In
many arts, but mapmaking was not his forte. His maps lacked order
and detail, and for this he was severely criticized by many German
geographers. The two volumes on the expedition to the Loango c.cast
are brimming with information about living conditions of the rnixed
creole. populations of the coastal Strips. about piracy. moral degeneracy
and dishonesty brought about by Culture Contact. This was the debase
merit of the indigenous cultures about which Malinowski was to com-
plain so bitterly seventy years later. Bastian was acute as an observ~r
and industrious in tapping all existing source-materials (mostly . m
~ortuguese). and ~ good linguist to boot, yet his reports were disappom.
tmg for the geographers. The other most prestigious geographlc~
journal in Germany besides the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fur
Erdkunde. namely Perennanns Geographische Miueilungen. severely
castigates Bastian in the issuesof 1874 and 1875, indicating that his
publications on the expedition, in particular on his foray from June
to October 1873, are hazy with regard to geographical descriptions and
dIsastrous with regard to topographical accuracy: every reader of these
volumes must echo the geographers' dissatisfaction. We learn much
about fetishism. but as far as geography and even the extent or exist-
ence of tribal kingdoms is' concerned he relies heavily on informants,
mainly creoles, with secondhand kno~ledge.24
Because of his usual carelessness with sources and footnoting, it is
often difficult to make out what originates with Bastian and what from
POrtuguese SOurces. This- shows a limitation in Bastian's manner of
working which would haunt him more and more the older he became
and which led not merely to the mild expression of von Richthofen,
who said that "Bastian was not a geographer in the ordinary sense","
but to more scathing indictments of his later works, for instanceby
MiihImann who said "his mental power of conceptualization no longer
mastered the richness of the incoming images. His late works are there-
fore abstruse and incoherent ...".26 This judgment was shared by his
disciples, colleagues and those very few scholars who made the effort
to disentangle the "system" of Bastian's thinking, as for instance the
abovementioned ~iihlmann or Lowie. This is not to say that nothing
worthwhile appeared after 1873. On the contrary, he still produced
gems, and many of his articles are full of sparkling and surprisingly
innovative thOUghts which are worth further investigation. His capacity
Bastian's Programme for a Science of Man 15
as traveller, recorder, data-collector and administrator of museological
collections remains undiminished.
I have dwelt at considerable length on the Loango incident of J873
and 1874 because it became one of the chief pretexts for man~ later
writers to dismiss Bastian's ideas summarily. considering them Incom-
prehensible. Bastian was very well aware of this shortcoming, a,od when
it was used as a weapon against him, as for instance in the bitter and
vicious debate Over evolutionism with Haeckel between 181'2 and 1875.
he quite rightly felt annoyed." The attacks against his careless and
incomprehensible style evoke a sharp response from Bastla~ In .1874
which shows another facet of his personality. his aristocraw: ehtl~m.
Bastian, unlike modem gurus. did take the commitment to ~IS calling
seriously; this is clearly shown when he pleads for the s3~vaglng of the
remnants of primitive cultures which were fast disap?ear~n.s under ,the
onslaught of the imperialist powers. 2 S In regard to hIS CrItlCS he writes
the following in an open letter:
You call my books confused, boundlessly confused, and you are
neither the first nor the last to describe them thus. The unruly
among my children have received many other epithets, ~0r:te bad
ones, some inimical and vicious. but I also received appreciati....e and
maybe sometimes all too laudatory comments ",: . Some of mr,
critics consider it more convenient to declare my . book-monsters
unreadable after skimming the first few pages. This saves.them t~e
trouble of reading, and, they think, they can save the reading public
this effort also, .. I do not have any ambition to become a popular
writer (Mode~Schriftsteller),29
In 1898 he puts it with even more acerbity, "AU my writing is incon-
venient for those who wont to be fed with pre-chewed tasteless pap, but
it is a great experience for the palate of the discerning gourmet of
thought ...".30
The only scholar who to my knowledge seemed to ~ave understood
this side of Bastian, this sacrificing of a whole life to hIS chosen profes-
sion, much as priests sacrifice their personal l~fe for ~h~ honour of
serving the divine, was the late Paul Honigsheim, a dl:clple of Max
Weber, who was clearly a kindred spirit in life and teaching, He wrote
on the occasion of Bastian's centenary in 1926 that Bastian was 3 man
for whom love family worldly happiness, aesthetic living and
;h~ readability of hisworks had already long sun~ into the fog of
irrelevancy. whose life on this earth was utterly. ~edlcated to ~s task
of finding the key to the riddle of the positron of man ,m. :he
cosmos, for which he was searching among the neglected pnrmtive
societies before they vanished or were changed through European
influence) I

16 Part One
During the period between 1865 and 1875 Bastian published several
major works. despite his. m.~n~otht':r acti~ities a~d dutie~ . .In 1869
appeared his article Das Na(u~lzche System m der Ethnologie In which
he discusses the influence 01 geography on culture. race and other
somatic and social f~:ltures. He was also one of the first to notice that
the distribution of races, assuming they were even definable, has
nothing to do with the distribution of languages or cultures, a point
that w:, ultimately to be proved by Boas and Sapir around 19:!0.32
In 1868. Bastian published one of his most mature pieces of analysis,
the BeiITage ZUT Vergteichenden Psychologie, which deals with the
notion of the soul and its various expressions. In the foreword, Bastian
sugaests -that the ethnographic data contained in the volume, indicate
th;;e main ideas about. or possibilities for. the continuity of the soul
after death. First. it is a spirit that haunts and wanders aimlessly about,
or so!condly, it is a spirit led by a divine being to places of reward or
punishment respectively, or t~irdly ".it is reincarnated on the ladder of
livinz organisms accordmg to Its preVIOUS deeds.
Ths work also puts into sharper focus some of the ideas he had dealt
WIth in his 1860 volumes on the role of shamans and. of psycho-mental
disturbances. He objects strongly to the notion that tribal societies do
not know instances of mental disturbance. On the contrary, Bastian
thinks that tribal groups suffer as much from mental aberrations as do
modern societies. only that the persons so endowed or afflicted are, in
contrast to modern practice. channelled to occupy a social role instead
of being declared insane. Bastian also reasserts that each thought-
system seems appropriate to the particular historical and environmental
conditions of a society, Each idea-system is designed to provide answers
to those questions people might ask at a particular state of societal
complexity. He defines as a system those "thought structures which are
designed to answer specific classes of problems which are raised by the
em.;ronment".33
He insists that the native logic of tribal societies is not intrinsically
different from modern thought in scientific systems. As an example,
he gives the image of a savage who insists that his fever is caused by a
demon; if we call the origin of fever, says Bastian, as lying in the
vapours of the atmosphere. the miasm" the difference is indeed only a
minor one. as we do not know what a miasma is any more than the
native knows what a demon i5.34 Bastian again, as in 1860, promotes a
spirit of scientific enquiry, particularly in fields such as ecstasy,
enthusiasm and intoxication; he rejects all answers which smack of
mysticism in the field of ecstatic experiences and ecstatic individuals as
for instance fire walkers. Instead of speaking about supernatural
influences, Bastian advises recourse to natural causes for such
phenornena.Jf He thus consistently maintains his image of the enlight-
~
Bastian's Programme for a Science of Man 17
enment through scientific inquiries and castigates his century for being
100 easily trapped by the belief in miracles.
In 1871, Die Cultur und lhr Entwicklungsgang auf ethnologischer
Grund/age appeared as a supplement to the Ethnological society
journal, then edited by Bastian. This volume consists of a large collec-
tion of folk tales, myths, and linguistic and historical inquiries on the
origin of diverse ethnic groups in Europe and the Near East and other
ethnological provinces; he identifies areas in which diverse ethnic
croups share what he would call a "circle of ideas" (Gedankenkreis) or
~. in modern parlance ., a "mental horizon". The book's major
theoretical contribution is an elaboration of his 1868 volume Das
Bestandige in den Menschenrassen in which he insists that any attempt
to put diverse cultures on a hierarchical ladder of high or low, according
to the scheme of some evolutionists. is futile. He also cautions against
trying to divide the world into savage and civilized peoples.3 6 The
volume of 1871 could be seen as one of Bastian's strongest statements
against premature generalizations in the face of the complexities of
historical development and the mixture of cultures.
In 1872. he publishes Die Rechtsverhaltnisse bei verschiedenen
Volkem de' Erde. This volume on comparative law was the first
German work in that field of social anthropology made famous in
England by Maine. 37 In this work, Bastian reverses his earlier insist~~ce
on historicity and the individuality of diverse customs by speculating
wildly about the rise of institutions from family to state. In methodo-
logical respects this work must be considered one of the weakest of ~is
major writings. However, in the introduction of the book. Bastian
makes some new and biting remarks on ethnocentrism and colonialism.
on religion and its practitioners, on priestly and aristocratic classes, on.
that is, the "conspiracy of the ruling classes" to which he had already
alluded in his first major work of 1860. 38
His attitude to the ruling classes is one of the most puzzling aspects
of this aristocrat of the mind. Bastian held two apparently opposing
views on the problem. On one hondo he castigates the ruling e~~'.-:",,,"S<>-
throughout history for keeping the mosses of peoplein ignOra~ce(a?~~ t:;;
submission, yet on the other he consistently relterates hIS a~ ~
materialistic stand and it is clear that he considers "socialist doctrines
a very dangerous tool of demagogues.t? Although Bastian never
arknowledges him directly, he was certainly familiar with Karl Marx
'.d the socialist doctrines of his century. He strongly rejects materialist
philosophy because he stresses the spiritual and men tal component in
man's social life which he thinks all materialist doctrines neglect.
Bastian does however subscribe to that form of socialism which would
coincide with his own outlook on the use of science: he looks forward
to the era when a natural morality could be grounded on scientific
 18 Part One
. . I d ouid guarantee the "social health of the state and the
pnnClp es an w . .. " 40
mental health of the mdlVldual .
He is a stout defender of private property and the power of the
. d h considers revolutions as a derangement of the collective
stat . e,
d an T eonsiderable degree BastIan
. sh ares th e t rends 0 fhi s cen tury,
mm. 0 a c b li f i ial
which united the eighteenth century. e : In SOCI progress with the
nineteenth century application of scientific procedures to the whole
range of human problems. He recognizes that the ~omtean and Positivist
slogans, "to know is to predict" ~ ~ould be achieved through experi-
mental psychology, if it were empmcally co.rroborated ~y comparative
ethnology. Bastian deviates from the gene~alldea of the nme about pro-
gress as a unilinear development from pnmrnve .to clvihzed: Instead he
thinks of development as the movement of a spiral, much In the tradi-
tion of a philosophy of history as proposed by Vico. He thinks, as did
Vico that evolution was at times a backward oriented movement with
. ." n41
the appearance of "secondary pnrmnvism .
These are some of the major points which become clear in Bastian's
works between the second and the third voyage. After his relatively
unsuccessful venture into Africa in 1873, Bastian embarks in 1875 on
his fourth voyage, this time for further collection of data in the
Americas. The results of these wanderings appear in three volumes in
1878-89 as Die Culturliinder des alten Amerika which consist of a
travelogue, a general theoretical introduction and a full volume of
source materials on the cultures of the Incas, Aztecs, and other civiliza-
tions of the New World. Of great interest are his comments on the
Spanish colonial policies and the cultural and racial creolization process
as well as on the problems of acculturation and acclimatization, which
had interested him since at least 1868.4 2
Although Bastian does not develop a cohesive theory in these
volumes. several clear statements on various issues emerge. foremost
that of the distinction between savage and civilized nations. The
contrasts in American conditions must have struck Bastian deeply for
. he remarks that the original cultures, which represented - as he
'. .expresses it somewhat exaggeratedly - half of mankind's history, have
'. been destroyed. We now find natural people and cultural people living
. side by side, with the implication that a reconstruction of the original
conditions of the Peruvian or Mexican empires would be difficult from
the ethnic groups now present, as the educated classes had been
extirpated.4 3 How then does Bastian distinguish so-called "natural"
people from civilizations? He states very clearly the minimal conditions
for any development of culture by saying:
Natural people arc the so-called savages or people without culture
which only me.ans that they have a minimum of culture. because
B~tian's Programme for a Science of Man 19
without any form of culture man as a toolmaking animal would be
unthinkable ... Culture in the narrower sense arises when man is no
longer preoccupied with survival tasks and-has time to contemplate
in comfort. For such development we postulate two preconditions;
a mild climate between the extremes and an exchange between
diverse ethnic groups.s-t
Bastian here, in his insistence on the importance of culture contact for
the very existence of dynamic cultural evolution, pulls the rug from
under the feet of all diffusionist schools. The diffusionists after Ratzel
implied that the socio-psychological approach of Bastian - as entailed
in the concept of the elementary idea - could not explain cultural
similarities adequately. as the psychic unity made culture contact a
superfluous concept.4 5
Bastian indeed insists that the primary source of all cultural innova-
tion - in the wide meaning of the word -lies in his "elementary ideas"
which include the response of collectivities to basic needs. Yet he adds
that for the development of civilized life, "culture in the narrower
sense", movement and contact of and between people and ideas is a
necessary precondition.
It should be pointed out that Bastian's use of the term "natural
people" (Naturvolker) carries etymologically and by usage connotations
rather different from the English "savage", "primitive" or "pagan". At
limes the equivalent to "savage" (wi/rI), the wording Naturvolk which
was to dominate German ethnology or Volkerkunde to the present time
goes back to Herder's Ideas (1784-91). The term originally entails the
idea that tribal societies are closer to a virtuous state of nature, after
Rousseau, and not to a savage hell, after Hobbes. In the time of
Bastian's usage of the word in 1860, it had shifted more to the notion
that the institutions of the so-called "natural people" ate the basic
responses to the fulfillment of the minimal needs necessary for survival,
more in line with the understanding of the later functionalist school of
thought. Natural people are for Bastian not so much a part of nature, as
for Rousseau, but precisely those people who are still living under the
"dictates of nature" (Naturzwang). as Ratzel put it. Bastian expresses
it most clearly in 1881 by contrasting the realm of "culture" where "an
apparently (= relative) free will governs" with the realm of the
"untamed" (Wildheit) where "nature exerts a stronger binding force"
and where we find only a "minimum of individual variation" .46
Before seeing the America volumes in print, Bastian embarks upon
his fifth voyage from 1878 to 1880 which brings him via Persia to India.
He then travels. from Assam across the width and breadth of the Pacific
to New Zealand, Hawaii and the North-west coast of North America,
down to Yucatan and back to Germany, where he settles down from
1880 to 1889.4 7 .
20 Part One
In 1886 the Royal Ethnological Museum (Konigliches Museum fiir
Volkerkunde) was finally opened in Berlin under the auspices of
the Crown Prince and the Minister of Education. The Museum was to
become Bastian's unsurpassed bequest to the next generation.4s His
own preoccupation was the accumulation of material culture items
from as many areas as possible in order to supply documentation of the
diverse folk ideas, and to salvage the dying cultures: 1he Museum had of
course many more purposes. According to Virchow, it provided
material for a specialized study of the problem of adaptation of man to
diverse environments, particularly of Europeans to the tropics (a
project supported by the German Colonial Association), and also
provided the raw-materials for a better understanding of the cultures
under colonial rule. In other words, the collections were intended to
serve as starting point for grasping the principles on which the
dominated cultures were based in order to administer them better .49
Ethnology, then, was envisaged not only as a pure science but also
as a practical tool. While the Museum did become the training ground
for such eminent future leaders in the fields of German and American
anthropology as Frobenius, Boas and Radin, or for specialized scholars
for instance in the field of Mexicanistics, neither Virchow nor Bastian
made any bones about the usefulness of the exhibits for the colonial
enterprise.so This is apparent in Bastian's belief, which grows stronger
after the 1880s, that the advantage of other nations over Germany in
colonial policy was partly due to the earlier establishment of their
ethnographic collections and the accruing increase in their knowledge
of other cultures. Thls aspect of rivalry in the cosmopolitan Bastian is
a very surprising but undeniable feature. He states:
The Education Ministry heeded well the comment "videant consules,
ne quid res publica detrimentf captat" (the government must see to
it that the country does not come to grief), when it gave the German
natic:>n a Museum at a time when even the term ethnology was still
foreign to the ears of the public. This is an intellectual. weapon
providing the necessary teaching aids which are needed more than
ever now to COUnter the emerging competition. _. S1
Yet his enthusias:" for German colonialism did not encompass enthus-
iasm for any rivalry between European powers, particularly not
between Germany and England. As late as 1886, Bastian hopes for a
combined effort of England and Germany to explore as well as to
control present-day Uganda and thereby to reach inner Africa.52
Such hopes are expressed by Bastian on the occasion of the death of
the African explorer Gustav Fischer whom Bastian had encouraged to
enter Uganda from the South, at the same time as the famous Emin
Pasha, the German born Eduard Schnitzer (1840-92), had tried to
Bastian's Programme for a Science of Man 21
reach the interior of Uganda from the North. Schnitzer, who had taken
the name Emin Pasha during his nine years of servicewith the Turkish
government, was one of the most gifted and daring personalities among
the explorers of Africa. In 1875 Emin Pasha had joined Gordon in
Khartoum as medical officer and became governor of the Equatorial
Province of the Sudan in 1878. He remained in his precarious position
after the Mahdist uprising and the withdrawal of the British to Egypt.
In 1886, both Bastian and Ratzel independently urged the German
government to relieve him, though this was finally achieved by Stanley
in April 1888, on the instigation and with the support of the Geograph-
ical societies of Germany and England. Stanley had been eager to
obtain Pasha's nonexistent ivory-stash! Pasha subsequently worked for
the German government, but crossed into the Congo Free State after
disagreements with German colonial officials. He was finally assassin-
ated by an Arab ruler who believed that Pasha had handed Arab slave
traders over to the native chiefs which - considering his truly enligh-
tened stand on the matter - was possibly a realistic appraisal of Pasha's
activities.
The other colonial expansion which Bastian looked upon favourably
was the Russian conquest of Siberia and Central Asia.One point which
led him to evaluate this expansion positively was the consideration that
Russia would through this huge task be strained in its resources to such
an extent that countries on its Western border would be safe from
Russian covetousness. Bastian sees the Russian expansion as geographic-
ally and ethnologically quite "natural", as he did not consider the
annexed area as alien or uncongenial "foreign soil", but looked upon
the Russian expansion rather as a shifting of the home-territories. He
thinks Russia has the same "right" to expand its energies on the con-
tiguous Eurasian continent, as has America in its push to the West.S3
Bastian is still opposed to colonies on foreign soil, without geographical
connections and in inimicil climates where the European does "natur-
ally" not belong. In the Russian case he seems rather to think of the
expansion more like the historical continuation of the great migrations
of the nomads from Inner Asia into Europe (only in the opposite direc-
tion) which, or so he thinks, history has proved as a "natural",
geographically determined route of expansion and migration. Besides,
he grants the Slavic populations great abilities for accommodation and
acclimatization (following here also Herder's admiration for Slavic
cultural potential).
Useful though Bastian's Museum position was for influencing and
aiding the colonial enterprise, he felt that this institution was by itself
an inadequate basis for ethnology and its development: his main thrust
is thus for the creation of more chairs for ethnology in Germany. He
defends this with the pragmatic and utilitarian reasoning that informa-

22 Part One
, b t the many diverse ethnic groups would facilitate trade and
tion f or Enan,
gl d or,
1 a. au tion for Germany in, the same way as 11 it did
I
cro thruzat matter for the US. with the establishment of the Bureau of
Eo h r I gya , Bastian seems to h ave adrnired
which y,Ju glng f rom
mire grea tlv.judainz
t n:r~us comments." His hope was ignored: by the late 1920s
~um any had only professorial positions for ethnology in Hamburg and
~;ig, the Berlin chair for anthrop~logy and ethnology havi~g
b me one for physical anthropology 10 1927 at the death of Felix
e~Luschan a disciple and collaborator of Bastian. ss
vo The Muse~m. active support of colonialism, and his various positions
and duties occupied much of this second German sojourn from
1880-89. It is perhaps thus not surprising that his literary output
becomes both obscure and rather stale, though he does still manage to
put some of his ideas in a reasonably clear form. His specialized works
on the psychology of Buddhism and some five volumes on Indonesia
are hardly readable and lack any organizational principle, yet his
writings and editing of materials from his fourth vovage in Polynesia are
both interesting and clear. In travelling through the Pacific islands,
Bastian develops his concept of idea-circles. those geographical regions
on earth where several ethnic groups share a basic world-view. Bastian
was stunned that one single idea-cluster extended over a quarter of the
globe, as he put it, and in Polynesia he finds mythologies with an
astonishing similarity in structure and content to early Greek myths,
particularly to the myths of the Ionian natural philosophers: in both
areas we find, for instance, a succession of different forms of darkness
finally leading to the genesis of light. This is just what Bastian has been
searching for: since diffusion between Greece and Polynesia was really
improbable, there being neither geographical nor historical continuity,
Bastian thinks that the two separate regions must have hit indepen-
dently on very similar concepts, thus providing proof for his idea of
independentinvention.S6
The other major contribution in this time concerns his work of 1881
Der Volkergedank im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft vom Mensehen und
seine Begriindung auf ethnologische Sammlungen, Here Bastian takes
the very clear position - a good two decades before Durkheim - that
the folk idea is prior to the individual, or in modern jargon that the
collective consciousness and its representations mould the thought
processes of the individual through the socialization process. As he says,
"the folk ideas are therefore the primary force within which individual
thought canbe locatedin its relative position".57
Although Bastian never used to talk much in private about his
voyages, these volumes show some glimpses of the fascination, the
almost charismatic attraction he must have had for a great number of
people whom he met, and they show his working style. If there is still
Bastian's Programme for a Science of Man 23
any doubt in anyone's mind about the endurance of this roving
ethnographer, it should disappear when we hear that he spent his time
in Hawaii taking down and transcribing large parts of the Hawaiian
national epic Kumulipo, which he transcribes in Polynesian and
translates with the help of King Kalakaua.'8 It is also in Hawaii that he
again, as so often before, wins somebody to full-time ethnology. The
man in question, von den Stemen, calls Bastian ;.n this context a
"catcher of souls", referring to his uncanny ability to bring out the best
in a discussion partner by encouraging and challenging him at the same
time. 5 9 .
Bastian used to hire assistants for the Museum and new researchers
in ethnography from many diverse fields, and they were often people
who were not necessarily highly educated, but showed imagination. His
appointments to the museum of ethnology were sound, as for example
in the case of the famous Mexicanist Seler (1849-1922) or of many
East Asian specialists, Sometimes, though, men with neither training
nor brains got jobs: Felix von Luschan (1854-1927) was such a man,
at least in the eyes of his students Graebner and Frobenius. The latter
said later on von Luschan that "he was of such boundless ignorance,
more like a layman in this field", while Graebner attested to his "lack
of expertise" .60 .
Von den Steinen himself began his career as anthropologist in 1880
when he visited Hawaii and found the name "Dr. Bastian-Berlin" in a
hotel's guest.book. He recounts that when he travelled in 1880 on the
East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand and met an English
doctor in Napier who was supposed to be a specialist on Maori, he
found him sitting on kiwi mats surrounded by artifacts of greenstone
about which he was writing notes. When the doctor realized that von
den Steinen was a friend of Bastian's he said: "These things are all for
Professor Bastian who was here and has to get them; these manuscripts
are genealogies and myths which I have translated for him from the
Maori."61
If this was indeed Bastian's typical form of collecting and collating
materials and of finding assistants, it shows a far different image ofthe
great ethnologist than we would gain from his own works alone.
Despite his condemnation of the priestly profession and of religion in
an age that adulated science, Bastian was always the first to emphasize
the importance of tapping the memories of missionaries as genuine
specialists of native societies.2 The volumes of materials and of
theoretical discussions, however, give us the impression of an ascetic
man, serious to the point of fanaticism. Vet he must in the flesh have
been quite charming and convincing to people in many walks of life. We
can otherwise hardly explain a personality who was able to chat with
the King of Hawaii as skilfully as with missionaries, doctors, lumber-
24 Part One
jacks, medicine men and native bearers; who ~ould persuade his govern-
ment to build a huge Museum; who could cajole others into financing
projects he considered worthwhile; a~d could impress on traders,
geographers and military personnel the Importance of sending artifacts
to Berlin or taking notes about the life of primitive tribes. As von den
St~inen once said, Bastian was not a stickler for small details but a
man with a grand vision, and we might add, a person who could impart
this vision to others.
. . I must point out that Bastian had a great flair for romantic poetry
as well. He collected songs and poems, in particular love-poems in the
vernacular, for instance in ~urma: and translated them into a style
reminiscent of some Romantic wnters. Here follows an example of a
poem he collected in 1865 when he spent some time in the winter-
quarters of the Kalrnyk tribe, the only Buddhists in Europe. He met the
Kalmyks in their winter camps near the Caucasus; their Lama, the
religioushead, had just died, and the dirge refers to him:
From the ocean's sward
We surged on, with joyous laud.
He was among us, whom all praise.
whom we celebrate in song and phrase.
The black steed which was his love
Is still waiting for its liege,
while reigning in splendid silver.
But he who used to ride the proud horse.
He left us as does a beautiful dream.
To the temple where the gods reside
We gave the white horses he rode,
What has his little brother left. but
the name of a waif?
Away to the monastery with the black steeds
Over which the favourite horse is ruling.
Old servant, what do you cry,
what have you left besides the empty hearth'?
Oh, you friend, who saw them prepare
The funeral pyre. and the bier,
Who returns now with the horse
On the saddle the bones of its master?
Bastian collected the following riddles from the Kalmyks: It is born in
. water and fears the water (salt). - The field is white, the seed is black
(writing On paper).63
In 1889 Bastian departs for his sixth voyage which is to last until
Bastian's Programme for a Science of Man 25
1891 and brings him via the Trans-Caspian railway to Russian Turkestan
and from there to India and East Africa. The seventh voyage beginsin
1896 and, lasting two years, brings him-in close contact with the
Indonesian world of Java and BaIi. Lest the reader think that all these
voyages were but flights from reality or haphazard jaunts, lacking
overall design, it is worthwhile to quote Bastian himself on this matter.
He had a very clear conceptualization as to the purpose of his travels,
namely to enlarge systematically the repertoire of folk ideas. He says:
To establish the existence of elementary ideas, the observation of
the primitive tribes of the earth was most suitable. since they possess
them in still largely unadulterated form. For the other goal, that of
evaluating the cultural growth processes of the budding elementary
ideas, our libraries on the evolution of civilizations of the historically
documented nations were useful enough. In order to gain personal
insight into the high civilizations of the past, I travelled in the years
1853 and 1879, and finally again in 1889. to obtain data on that
ethnic circle (Volkerkreis).64
Bastian goes on, to state that he thinks the similarities between the
Western traditions and the Indian tradition astonishing. In order to
subject his notion about elementary ideas to further control, he plans
to visit Indonesia in 1896, the reason being, as he explains,
that Indonesia seemed the most suitable area, because of the richness
of geographical variations and because of the many historical cross-
movements which have occurred in that area.es
Bastian regards Indonesia at a cross-roads where the impact of many
civilizations can be felt, those impacts reaching from the East African
coast via Madagascar to Polynesia: he considers it as an area of cultural
amalgamation between Hindu, Chinese, Buddhist and Islamic or Semitic
world views, a feature already partially noted by Wilhelm von
Humboldt and Steinthal. In most areas, so continues Bastian, the
primary elements of cultures under contact pressure have been
drowned. In Indonesia he thinks that some of the original traits are still
discernible and he proves the point with reference to the syncretistic
mythology about cosmogonic happenings which shows features of
Hinduism overlaid by Buddhism and finally crowned by Islamic
thinking. Beneath all these foreign intrusions, however, there still
appears what Bastian considers the primary layer of Javanese folk
religion, as for instance the prevailing worship of stones. He further
notes how remarkable it is that all the diverse traits from diverse
cultural streams are still present in the contemporary peasants'
consciousness: whereas no German peasant would be familiar with
Gothic or Nordic epics. the Javanese peasant can, he says, recite
Sanskrit literature. .
26 Part One B;tian's Programme for a Science of Man 27

There is of course another reason behind Bastian's travel-schedule age of seventy-five, he dashes off again in 1901 to India, to return in
which reaches back to when he was in his early twenties: his admiration the summer of 1903. He stays no more than five months in Berlin
for Alexander von Humboldt, that last product of the Renaissance idea before he is off again to the West Indies. The greatest part of the last
of the universal man to whom Bastian dedicated his three volumes year of his life he spends in Jamaica, sending collections to Berlin",He
De, Mensch in de' Geschichte. Not only does Bastian almost exactly died off the coast of Trinidad on 3 February 1905. and was buried
repeat the voyages of von Humboldt through the Americas and Siberia, unattended in Port of Spain.
he also emulates the great naturalist in his attempt to compose Natur- If we were to summarize Bastian's life-style, his goals. methods and
malereien, written descriptions of nature which evoke a painting, a world view in a few short words, there is no better quote than his
still-life in words. 66 epitaph for Alexander von Humboldt, which could well have been
It might indeed not be too far fetched to assume another affinity Bastian's own.
between Bastian and Alexander von Humboldt on a very personal level.
Both renounced every form of family life for the sake of scientific
[To epitomize the man] an old phrase of man's moral imperative
work, such as do monks. From Bastian we do not have direct evidence,
echoes from the past: it is the commandment to sacrifice our own
just his high praise for the ideals of von Humboldt. However, Alexander personality for the common good, the welfare of all. Rarely has that
von Humboldt himself, very much in contrast to his brother Wilhelm ideal been better served by a living person . .. his work was dedicated
who was a dedicated family man, discussed his pursuit of science and to the best of all mankind ~he strove incessantly for others, forgetting
renunciation of home and family thus: his self.69
I am not destined to become a family man. Besides, I consider
marriage a sin and the procreation of children a crime. 1 am also of
the conviction that everybody who takes the yoke of marriage upon
himself. is not only a fool. but a sinner. A fool, because he gives up
his personal freedom without appropriate compensation: a sinner,
because he puts children into the world, without being able to
guarantee their happiness in life. I despise mankind in all forms and
I can predict that our descendants will be even more unhappy 'than
weare ... 67

These words, this cultural pessimism, might also apply to Bastian, a

man who scathingly condemned the credulity of his times.
We see clearly that Bastian's voyagesare carefully planned excursions
undertaken to provide examples for his main principles of comparative
ethnology. He covered the globe not only intellectually but physically,
becoming familiar with all possible variations of the human mind in
actual life.
It is around the time of his sixth voyage that Bastian's literary
output becomes unintelligible. The same concepts appear over and over
a~in without any noticeable extension and without change of view-
point ..We do not even find so much as a summary Or stocktaking in any
systematic way. He was physically and intellectually exhausted, and
considering the time and efforts he put into his travels, it cannot come
as a surprise that he never had the leisure to sit back and look at his
achievements or to measure his own system against the new literature
which had appeared in the last decade of the nineteenth century in
the social sciences. As von den Steinen said, he returned from his trip
to Indonesia deadly sick, "a walking corpse".6. Vet resolutely, at the
- -_.- ..,..
. .~--_ .... -

I Bastian's World View

On Cosmic Harmony

We are gathered to commemorate a man who is known to everybody. A

hundred years ago he was born. ten years ago he was buried; yet his
mind lives on among us in increasing splendour. and it will shine for
generations to come. The ancient poets sing of heroes whose highest
achievement is to be remembered for their strength and power; they are
the first to achieve veneration. Each nation carries in itself the germinal
seed for historical development. and as such it will at first praise those
heroes who are leaders of warriors and thereby, through the
vanquishing of its enemies, enhance the fame of the nation. The
resulting firm foundation of the national self-esteem and the removal of
the fear of outside interference are necessary for the development of a
state organization from which a particular cultural life can blossom.
Only then can the poet and singer begin to praise. amid peace. the
. deeds of the divine heroes of ancient times. Immortality lies in the
words of the bards. We in our time do not remember the Greek heroes
.because they conquered the insolent city of Troy but rather because it
was Homer who immortalized the event in his verses. and because these
verses. as expressions of human enthusiasm, lived on in the resonant
stream of ballads carried from one group of people to the next.
Yet, the sweet and mellifluous verses of the bards which make the
minds of youth rejoice no longer suffice to quench the doubts of life
when that same mind has woken up and begun to inquire into the
mysteries of existence, into the awesome terrors of the unknown. In
such an age people need to decipher the world, to find the magic key
for the connection of all things, the key that opens the doors to an
understanding of the harmony of the cosmic order.
It is then that solace is taken in religion. At the apex of cultural
cycles each nation tends to produce a long line of prophets who convey
their divinely inspired revelations of things to come to the waiting
populace. Each prophet is the incarnation of his age, and each, through
prophecy, points the way to the realm of ideas to come, each

From: Humboldt (l869b), pp.S-30. in excerptsj emphasis added.

.~-

158 Part Two
recognizes through his vision those signals in the present age which
speak of their growth and fulfilment in time's bosom, thus pointing to
the enduring realm of indestructible ideals. Man has two precious gifts
with which to combine the microcosmic and the macrocosmic realm
in lasting harmony: these are the gifts of religion and science, those
twin-sisters who are all too often torn apart in misconceived zealotry.
On the one side are the prophets who speak of things to come in the
symbolic language of faith, on the other side are men already speaking
in the language of well-defined formulae of science, the veil of dreams
being lifted by the inquiring mind.
Such a hero for our age is Alexander von Humboldt, who has given
us, with the broad basis of comparative science, the platform on which
to erect the temple of the harmonious cosmos by inductive research.
In this time of the critical spirit many heroes and saints have had to
abandon their pedestal, yet the true sponsors and heroes of cultural
development, who have gained their title only after the strictest
scrutiny, surpass the confines of a national idolatry and become the
guiding stars for the whole of mankind. They are, though, as much
rooted in history as are the prophets: they grow in personal achieve
ment through being tied to the constellations of their time, and as
much as they are products of their time, they in turn imprint the age
they live in, being both products of and innovators in their age.
When Humboldt was born in the middle of the eighteenth century,
all those fields of science which are now coming to fruition were in
their incipient stages: the manifold and muddled lines of obscure
alchemy were fashioned into the science of chemistry; Priestley
published his experimental research on gases in 1773, and the observa-
tions of Galvani lead to a theory of electricity in 1789. These and many
other new leads in time became the guiding principles for the new age.
The experiments of Galvani for instance, which created such a
commotion everywhere because he was touching the realm of life itself,
made it clear that the natural sciences were more than an idle game
with plants and rocks: the connection between the inorganic and the
organic realms of nature was taking shape. That period was the turning
point of our age and for Our world view, foreshadowing the final
victory of the natural sciences and their method of induction which
alone can sow the seeds of progress.
It is of importance to remember that Humboldt actively participated
in unravelling a part of the mystery of the organic through his work on
the stimulation of nerves and muscles in 1792-97. Another of his first
publications deals with the basalt formations of the Rhine valley in
1789: from 1791 onwards he concentrated his research on the field of
mineralogy, that is on that particular field of the natural sciences which
had to lay the systematic foundation for other fields. Humboldt's
~.'.""'~
Translation of Selected Works 159
voyages then led him into botany. However, in that field the eell-theory
had not yet been advanced, and it needed that further step to free
physiological research from philosophical meddling.
Each present idea is but an expression of its own age, indelibly
connected to a preceding period in history where the germ of the
present achievement was laid. Such a hub both for our age and for that
of Humboldt was the Renaissance. The conquest of Constantinople!
led to the migration of the scholars of Hellenism to Italy from where
these sources of antiquity were to spring anew. The same conquest
which closed the Pontus,z and with it the caravan routes to India and
the East for Europe, became the impulse for the maritime explorations
of the Spaniards and Portuguese on the western promontory of
Christianity. Two very radical and revolutionary changes occurred con-
currently: Copernicus reduced the former focus of the universe to an
insignificant speck of dust, and Magellan, following in the steps of
Columbus and da Gama, widened the flat disc to the planetary globe
of the inhabited world.' Within a few decades the cosmic as well as the
telluric position of man underwent a total revolution. This revolution-
a ary change precipitated the fall of the existing scientific systems since
their foundations were pulled away under them.
The older system did not fall immediately from one day to the next.
The colossal construction of millennia which was built by the thinkers
of Rome and Greece, by the wise men of India and the priesthood of
Egypt and Babylonia, which was elaborated by Arab philosophers and
the scholastics of the medieval period, this immense treasure house was
not given up without a fight. People tried to paper over the gaps, to
prop up the sinking structure. Three centuries passed in this frantic
restoration until fmally it dawned on people that there was no remedy
and that what was needed was the search for a new foothold. Thus the
eighteenth century age of revolution began in science. but soon under-
mined the political system and proved that the hitherto impregnable
pillars of the state were vulnerable, With the crumbling of all ethical
principles the very foundations of the Occident were in jeopardy,
foundations for the well-being, indeed for the existence, of society
itself, for there was no replacement foundation available. In the
metropolis of intellectual life of the time, in Paris, people decreed the
abolition of a derided deity, and reason was the new God. But what
reason! It was the bloodthirsty deity of the delirious mass-mind to
which human blood was sacrificed. The heads which rolled to the feet
of that deity were those considered to have humiliated the sovereignty
of the people through their generosity, namely the heads of scientific
thought: their judges said, "We do not need scholars"."
The fate of occidental civilization was at stake. With the spreading
armies of Napoleon began the rule of madness in Europe. There was no
160 . Part Two
hope of stemming this tide with ideas of the past. It became necessary
to erect a dam against these floods, to regain the centre of gravity Or
balance through a new ethics which would give the milling and mindless
masses a roof over the hall in which the most noble of man's pursuits
namely the educating sciences, could find shelter. ' While geography has in OUf times gained one victory after the other,
Th~ task of rebuilding at first fell to Germany where a number of
gr~at ~t~l1ects arose. One thought system after the otherwas created at
un~verslt~es and academies in order to fashion a new bond of ethics to
unify faith and scien~e. Ye~) while the giants of speculative systems
fought across the continent in battles of the pen, the birth occurred of
an Olympian thinker amid silent contemplation of the rain-forests of
South America, of that man who would draft the outlines of the
comparative scientific methodology needed for bUilding the theory of
the harmony of the cosmos.
Humboldt is first in the long line of scientific travellers so few
before his time. He measured the temperature of ocean currents
anal~ed the air pressure at different altitudes, dissected molluscs:
de~cnbed the southern skies, and, in climbing the Pic of Tenerife
gal~ed the first inkling of the laws of geographical distribution on the
limited scale of vertical areas which later became the basis for the
analysIS of the geography and botany of the New World.
Our modern world view takes its unique character from its accept.
an.ce ~f the whole of the earth's surface for comparative purposes of
scIentIfic deductions. ~e basis for such systems and the accompanying
methOdology of analyzing parts and synthesizing individual data into
whole complexes was laid by Alexander von Humboldt as scholar and
traveller.
. In the horizontal divisions of the Andes from icy top to tropical
ram-roresr base, a great number of climate changes are apparent: else.
where, these are usually widely .separated. Humboldt's great system of
plant1eography grew m tropical South America and became the
paradigm for other comparative sciences, for since him we have been
forced t~ consider the earth as a whole, and to widen Our knowledge of
details U\ order to :,stablish a comparative science in other fields.
Alth~Ugh Humboldt s research was mainly directed towards the
physical conditions of the earth, he maintained the view in his publica.
nons that the gradual progression of the sciences would lead to a final
fulfilment 0. man's destiny. If there are laws in the universe, their rules
and harmonies should also be in the thought processes of man.
Ideas of similar importance to those derived from his South
Ame?can experience wc!e gained by Humboldt's travels on the Asian
contment!wherehe considered the dividing lines of eastern and western
cul~ure history. He could not reconcile his scientific altitude with the
limited and particularistic view of traditional historiography,
Translation of Selected Works 161
Repeatedly he stressed the importance of consulting the sacred books
of Persia, the Vedas of old India, the Chinese chronicles as well as the
Japanese and Indonesian annals to understand the mainsprings of
Eurasian history which still mould the destiny of the continent.t
the field of history which we so smugly lable "world-history" has
stagnated in the narrow confines of occidental antiquity and does not
dare to venture beyond. What new perspectives could but be gained if
the phenomenology of the mind of man, the development of which is
after all our history, did not stick to well-worn tracks but included
comparative materials which would lead to the discovery of new
regularities. European culture history is almost unmanageable due to its
complex bifurcations resembling a tree that grew for thousands of
years. By contrast, with tribal groups we find organisms analogous to
plants which grow according to the same law: as the mighty rree, but
whose growth and decline arc easier to see. since we are looking at a
limited field of observation which could be compared to an experiment
in the laboratory. After we have found the rules of periodical growth in
these smaller groups, it will be easier for us to unravel the regularities
in more complex structures.
The travels of Humboldt in South America' opened up this study of
the growth phases of the historical populations of the New World back
to their prehistory. This German scholar, who went by canoe up the
Orinoco and Cassiquiare, had daily contact with the savage Indian
hordes among which the formative phases of human sociability could
be observed in its so-called lowest stages, and so for the first time we
were able to retrace the process of primitive societal formation in its
genetic development as has been done in the realm of nature. In the
diaphanous and simple forms of social life among savages without
cul lure we can find the Tedthread which can become the methodologi-
cal tool for unravelling the more complex civilizations. The basis of this
assumption was acknowledged by Humboldt: human nature is uniform
all over the globe. This point is driven home by him not only in his
scientific writings but also in his emotional plea against forms of slavery
in Venezuela and Cuba.
It was Humboldt who first made the comparisons between the
American savannahs and prairies and the African deserts and Asian
steppes not only in their purely geographical respect but also in regard
to the dependence of man on his environment in those areas. His
methodological anticipation of ethnology as a comparative science is
his great contribution. For the scientific mind, history without a basis
in geography is an artificial growth made by minds who cook up useless
sophistries in the armchair.
Were we to think only of such achievements, Humboldt would be
162 Part Two
just one among many excellent and outstanding minds. Yet. the
position of Humboldt as a universal figure of importance is grounded in
his advocacy of the scientific method and its application to reality ~ to
penetrate the laws of nature by the mind of man. This in turn led him
to suggest that all systems-construction remains mere metaphysical
illusion unless knowledge of the details has been accumulated. It is thus
that Humboldt brought the canons of Bacon to fruition. Since the
research of Humboldt, the acquisition of knowledge is no longer
confined to a small caste of metaphysical speculators in whose minds
genius and madness are often such dangerous bedfellows. for the
scientific method has become the stock in trade of everybody and the
man in the street, the average person, has become our measure and
norm.
Humboldt only rarely stepped out of the discussion of inorganic
matter, yet in this he was acting in accordance with the true spirit of
science, for the empirically exact gathering of data had not advanced to
the area of man's ideas and thoughts. If, however, anybody today,
with the border between physiology and psychology long washed away,
would be satisfied with the formulae of physics, and only physics, he
is just blind to the miracles that lie hidden in, for instance, religious
symbolism. Misunderstanding of this kind cannot be blamed on
Humboldt for he did not give us a rigid system. He presented us with a
method. Systems are ephemeral by their nature, whereas Humboldt's
method is everlasting.
With the figure of Humboldt an old phrase of man's moral
imperative echoes from the past: it is the commandment to sacrifice
.our own personality for the common good, the welfare of all. Rarely
has that ideal been better served by a living person than by Humboldt
whose work was dedicated to the best of all mankind, and who strove
incessantly for others, forgetting his self.
II The Domain of Ethnology
Ethnology and Psychology
Ethnology and ethnography have distinct and different tasks: the
former. among other things, is attempting to transform psychologyinto
a natural science, whereas the latter surveys the world that it might
order the variations of mankind according to geographical areas. The
question of just what the above-mentioned task of ethnology implies
has often been asked: I will here try to answer. It is essential that the
inductive method becomes the guiding principle of psychology.as that
is the only way to arrive at a synthesis which comprehends groups
ranging from the simple to the complex. The results of our research.
encapsulated in the synthesis, must be constantly controlled by
comparison and accepted only if, and only as long as, they show
inevitable and invariable relations.
A second question concerns the method and the purpose of the
transformation of psychology through ethnology. I shall answer the
second point first: if we can provide psychology with a sound base in
natural science, we may erase that supposedly existing opposition
between science and philosophy.
I said supposed opposition because I feel the separation is more
apparent than real, for science has made leaps of faith at least as daring
as those in metaphysics. Let me explain. When the so-called natural
sciences arrived one after th, other. from chemistry through to
'physiology, they stood next to the realm of the mind, but. unable to
find a mediating link betweenthe particular scientific pursuit and the
unknown operation of the mind.. they tried to leapfrog the mind, to
pretend its contents were of no importance.
This equalled metaphysics in daring though not skill: the sciences
have ignominiously failed. There is a mediating link, however,and that
is psychology. If psychology follows the methods of natural science,
these can then be transferred to philosophy, which should become
more anthropologically oriented: the" marriage of anthropology and
philosophy must find its basis in scientific psychology.
From: HdJige Stzee (l881b), pp. 217 -22, in excerpts:emph.asis :l.dded.
-
164 Pari Two
We need to know the conditions and limits of the natural and every-
day laws which guide our cognitive processes; what better place to look
than in the objective realizations of man's mind as it appears in various
guises amongst all ethnic groups existing now and in the past.
The question now arises as to where scientific psychology would
find its building blocks or elements, its foundation stones. This is
central to the endeavour I outlined. Folk ideas 1 represent these bricks,
these. elements, and ethnology can uncover them. As I have often
explained the primary thought, the social thought or collective repre-
sentation." which is in its specific sense the thought of an ethnic
group. This primary idea arises because the innate societal characteristics
of man require that individual thought rises to consciousnessas part of
the whole which is pre-given.
The natural sciences are now sufficiently sophisticated to tackle the
most mysterious problems of philosophy. For this, they will need
relevant material. material which. should be available in the clearly
spelled-out folk ideas, once enough of these have been accumulated to
be statistically useful. It is perfectly possible to use a statistical
approach, for the thought system of world view of each ethnic group
represents a closed or bounded organism. The same idea arises
everywhere with unwavering necessity, and though we can always find
variations conditioned through geographical and historical development.
these variations can be reduced to mere types, or interpretations. of the
same basic ideas.
The gaps in our understanding of culture can only be filled if we are
successful in pinning down those variations that are so swiftly vanishing
before our very eyes. In days gone by, we would not have cared one
iota if the unadulterated creations of the savage mind, as it was then
called, passed into nothingness. Yet now we realize that we cannot
readily penetrate those primary thought processes, and it is through
such study that we have acquired a point of direction with which to
orientate ourselves amid the complexity of cultural creations.
Mathematical precision will have to wait a while until we have
exhausted all the ethnic variations in the ideas of mankind as they
appear allover the globe in their social, aesthetic and religious
dimensions.
On Cultural Evolution
In our ~urvey of the history of modern civilization we can distinguish
two main stages of cultural development, as far as the Occident is COn.
From: "Die Cultur U?d ihr EntwickJungsgang auf ethnologischer Grundlagc",
Z/E 3 (1871a): I-XV, in excerpts; emphasis added.
Translation of Selected Works 165
cemed: the first is that of classical antiquity which in turn is based on
older Assyrian and Egyptian patterns. and the second starts with the
Germanic tribes, both separated by a gap which is partly filled by the
Islamic movement. Oriental studies have furthered our understanding of
the rudiments of Indian civilization as well as the position of East Asia
in history. The explorations of the Americas gave us a glimpse of those
cultures that were disappearing in the wake of the discovery, cultures
which hitherto had blossomed in favourable parts of the continent. It
must be left to future deliberations whether and to what extent we
include communities encountered in Polynesia in the realm of civiliz-
ations: certainly they stood far above the Australian savages if we
consider the moral and social order. but yet still lack any incentive for
historical elaboration, or so it appeared to the first Europeans.
The simple environment of the oases of the Pacific water-desert
or the forests of America suggested to some people that such was man's
natural state and that from such a rudimentary seed grew ever more
~~S~:;~~I::~tt;~~sp~~:~ ~~~~O:i~~s idea, of the ascent of man, is
There is a quite opposite idea. held by most mythologies, in which
the golden age is the pinnacle, followed by a decline to the present age.
It is impossible to define an absolute beginning to organicgrowth.and
so we must do research into the organic laws which govern the growth
processes of all culture. The difference between the so-called civiliza-
tions and natural societies) is only a relative one anyway, since all
human existence presupposes at least a minimum of culture, which in
turn requires interaction in communal life.
The burgeoning of culture does not happen in extreme environrnen-
tal conditions: neither in the harsh hostile polar regionsnor in the lazy
luxuriant tropics did culture blossom, but rather in cool, temperate
zones. To survive and flourish, cultures need a multitude of outside
stimuli provided by rivers flowing past varying landforms, by coastal
areas with raggedly-shaped bays open to the outside, or by those
equatorial mountain areas where height tempers heat and permits a
habitat in zones with marked contrasts on a small scale.
Among all the multitude of culture areas on earth - Egyptian,
Assyrian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Polynesian, Toltec, Greek. Roman
- only our own, the Romano-Germanic area, is open to our purview
from relatively fixed beginnings through all phases of development:
the process is not complete yet, for it sprouts anew in the Americasand
we cannot be quite sure of its final direction or tendency.
We can consider the Hellenic-Roman culture as an already closed
system or cycle, since it falls into the full light ofhistorica1 knowledge
from its apex to its last tremor and demise although its beginningsare
lost to us.
166 Part Two
Therefore these two trees of culture can well provide us with a
complete picture of the organic growth of the average culture. It is
patent that we cannot here apply the theory that culture began in one
place and time, nor the theory that man was once an animal and is only
now perfected; we lack the hard facts for such speculations. One could
perhaps use such ideas for careful projections and classifications: but
for nothing else. All we can know is that development occurs in the
form of a returning cycle; the idea of a process of evolution to higher
forms in which mankind progresses to ultimate perfection can be no
more than a hypothesis for we do nor know the final goal. It is easy to
see why such an idea was acclaimed: people think our own culture has
reached a high level; so high indeed that it will envelop the whole earth
at some future date.
This idea of extending their particular culture into a-more universal
and general one for mankind would have been strange for the ancients.
The Chinese civilization felt revulsion for those outside the Middle
Kingdom; they certainly do not invite them to join it. People often
reject such an invitation. For example, the all-loving Buddhist and the
African bound to his individual fetish believe themselves destined more
for that particular religion which expresses their world view than for
the religion offered by the missionaries, these so-called pioneers of
civilization.
Hellenic culture began on Greek soil as a mixture of Phoenician,
Egyptian, Phrygian and Thracian elements, blended with indigenous
Ideas. There was a splendid period during which all the stimuli of the
vicinity were absorbed and exhausted and equilibrium achieved: then
the culture declined. S0011 decay followed and Macedonia poured a
stream of its best blood into Asia with scarcely any effect on that vast
realm.
Then? within the culture area of the Mediterranean, there arose a
mighty rival on the Italian Peninsula for the hegemony of the whole
region. Her specific character came into fruition only through the sea-
explorations at the end of the middle ages. Those voyages, however,
were a result of the political conditions which started with the Crusades
and reached a critical climax in the clash with the advancing Ottomans.
This peculiarly European drive of expansion was not a necessary
result of a natural evolution of culture as such. since the flowering of
c.iviliZ3tion is possible without that drive. but it has existed as a germ
since Roman times; it came into its own in the age of discovery. and
will not come to rest until the whole earth has been explored. It is
almost second nature to us, but is not necessarily connected with the
rise of other cultures: neither the Chinese nor the Greeks displayed it,
and the reason is logical. At various times. the Chinese undertook quite
far-reaching sea-voyages, for instance under the T'ang, the Yuan and the
Translation of Selected Works 167
Ming dynasties," and they reached not only Indian harbours, with
which continent an exchange of ideas existed since olden times, but
came even to Madagascar and possibly America. All those voyages were
only undertaken in times of peace and increasing wealth by enterprising
merchants; none were of intrinsic interest to the Chinese state. The
continental mass of China is edged by a relatively small coast-line.and
any possible curiosity aroused through the stories of sea-farers would
have been restricted to "these provinces. leaving no trace or impact in
the wide interior of the Chinese realm. Even when the state did
participate in the explorations. as for instance when the yearly tribute
from as far as Tidore on New Guinea was received, there was no
systematic effort to explore further, to reach. for instance, Polynesia.
Where discoveries were made, they were forgotten and had to be made
again.
Conditions in Europe were quite different. because Europe surpasses.
any other region on earth in terms of coast-line. When Europe
discovered new worlds, it also entered a period of self-doubt and
querying, a period of the awakening of the spirit of curiosity, and from
the coastal centres of Portugal, Spain, England, Holland, Italy and
France, the news of foreign parts spread like wild-fire into the interior.
The discoveries then led to wild competition between the emerging
nation-states and, through often precarious and insecure internal
political conditions, to the idea of populating these newly discovered
areas.
The Greeks had not been easily persuaded to leave the Mediterranean
Basin, for they were choosy about climate and hemmed in by the world
view: they stopped short of the Pillars of Heracles.f The first impetus
to explore beyond that point came from the maritime populations, and
the Greeks could not have entered the open ocean even had they
wished, for their ships were adequate only for the Mediterranean. and
not for the stormy Adz .t C ocean. We shall unfortunately never know
how far the Phoenicians really sailed along the coast-lines of Mauretania
in West Africa. for the Carthaginian archives were destroyed. The
Romans .. who were mainly interested in annexations and lucrative
conquests, did not bother to prepare special exploratory expeditionsto
boost trade, a pursuit to which they were indifferent.
No factual evidence exists for the postulate of an uninterrupted
and constant progression in the evolution of culture, a regularly
ascending line from lowerto higherstages: rather do we find a multitude
of astonishing phenomena which remain twisted and knotty enigmas
for research, It could be argued that the Roman civilization was
reaching a higher level than the Etruscan, but at the time when Spain
was declared a Roman province,6 Rome was already on the decline.
The same applies to Greece which was already declining when Rome
took over,7 and even the apex of Greek cultural development was
168 Part Two
separated by an unknown gap from those splendid days of prehistoric
greatness.s The descendants of the sons of Menes? fell deeper tha
their pyramids were high, and the inheritors of Assur crawled back Uttn
the mud from whence the so-called monsters of the beginning had como
in the first place. The same picture appears in India: the great epics O~
the Ganges and Indus river regions, which talk of the splendid courts Of
the past, are now recited by paltry rajahs and bigoted sultans, and man
a Persian poet has sung in melancholy dirges of the halls of rubble
fallen dynasties, anticipating the fate of their own time. We only haVe
:r
accurate knowledge of such rises and falls when written records have
been preserved, and that is rare. If we have to rely purely on oral trans_
mission. once-accurate knowledge will become completely jumbled ill a
few generations, for it is not difficult to perceive the pattern or guid Utg
principles if a particular culture did favour architecture, as did Chinese
Japanese. or Indians, or if the materials did outlast time, as <lid
Egyptian and Peruvian monuments. _ not only the peasant but also the nomad.
New inhabitants of an old region often did not show any interest
in the former civilization. The empire of the Toltecs disappeared under
the silent canopy of the rain-forest when the Chichimecas entered and
contributed to the disappearance of Toltec monuments by destrOYing
them. The primitive conditions of life now on the Polynesian islands do
not preclude previous relations to the sophisticated Malay regions by
. past sea-voyages, as the linguistic connection indicates, or even a
culture-historical connection to America; it is a known fact that
enforced isolation can quickly lead to the impression of primitiveness.
The contrast between savagery and culture seems to be clearly
delineated, yet it would indeed be difficult to draw a definite border_
line. The Eskimos have been forced by climatic conditions to develop
many skills which made the environment at least habitable, while the
Indian of the. South American rainforest roams about with few tOols:
both, however, would nevertheless be classified as cultureless, since the
above differences derive from the geographical environment and in
neither has the mind been awakened to that form of consciousness
which leads to free and deliberate activity.
Needs of the body and the mind are not absent from even the
lowest scale of mankind's development, and both are essential. Mental
activity in the beginning is confined to a religiously inspired creation of
demons expressed in mythological poetry. Culture as such only began
when, basic needs being satisfied, the mind became receptive to the
more subtle enticements of the good and the beautiful, to the super-
fluous but titillating nourishment of luxury. The artistic drive is one of
the first impulses which stirs up an awareness for harmony and
therewith stimulates the mind to become creative, to free itself from
constraints, and to enter the field of thinking for its own sake.
Translation of Selected Works 169
Those prevailing generalizations which rely on material from our
own historical past are often contradicted by-examples collected from
other areas, in particular by studies on cultures that developed
separately in the Americas and with divergent results. We must presume
settled life as one precondition for culture, because nomadic existence
precludes mental contemplation, not only because of the imperative.to
move but also because there is no incentive for a lasting material
creation due to the constant shifting. Even astronomical observations
can only be employed when herders practise agriculture. Agriculture
indeed. with its rest-periods, stimulates mental activities, such as the
inventing of gadgets to make life easier. Sedentary life will inevitably
transform an initial set of ideas into stereotypes and these will endure
as long 3S there are no new stimuli, which come most plentifull~ from
densely populted city-centres. in particular from those With an
extensive trading network. Inventions which derive from cities benefit
If we stick to a study of the educated elite, we will fmd that it is a
rather similar class everywhere with almost identical complex mental
processes; this is so among the Fulani or the Mongols, an~ thus we
cannot deny these ethnic groups the possession of culture. In the real
sense. It would be far different if our judgment were denved from a
study of the average person of 3 population grou~: in our own
European civilization for example, we would most certainly fmd.a form
of mental barbarism that not only equals that of the Afncan or
American Indian. but surpasses in stupidity any savage society. This
difference could also be due to the fact that natural peoples do not
have such high regard for the preservation of mentally or somatically
deficient members of their group as does our culture; even the laws of
the twelve tablets, to name but one example, permitted the abandoning
of monstrous. offspring.
Were we to accept writing in any form as a neat delineation of the
state of evolution of culture beyond the stage of stagnant and savage
unculturedness there are still so many gradations among those ethnic
groups which did not develop writing systems that it is difficult. to
accept any unity among them. One thing does seem clear: any :nbal
group which does not come into contact with other groups of diverse
development will stagnate at a certain level. We cannot. from that,
assume that cultuml evolution always follows a stmight line from
lower to higher. The products of gold-smithing, for example, as found
among the Fan people today, speak of a degree of sophistication that
could only have been reached through long trial and error and th.a t
evolved in different and more refined societal circumstances than exist
there today.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-,---~~~~~-----------
III Elementary Ideas, Folk Ideas and
Geographical Provinces . just at the right time. If pursued and developed with care, these fields
The Folk Idea as Paradigm ofEthnology
. . is to find an adequate methodology fer
The goal of modern ethnology vide the material for SUch
scientific psychology. Eu:ndology haso~~;::~n of the social character e~
psychology through the In uc~ve c
man in all its ethnic manifestatlOnsi- the present time can only be sehed
The burning SOCial questions 0 t rn can only be found if
by accurate and reliable answers. These In u pIe the thoughts tha:~e
communal thoughts of the a~e.rage mass 0 f pet~g 'the majority' of th's,
of the average social indlVldual represen . dae i
populace are taken into account. This implies th~~ we JUd g~ ISSUes On
the level 'where elemenrary ideas mesh with fOfk I eas an e average
folk-opinion is the place where this parallelism haPp;nsthnly SUch
comparison provides. . al f ounaa
a ration dation of planmng ror e gOOd 0 f
the whole community. id li .
The practical value of the notion of elementary I eas .es. in the
contribution it can make to solving the urgent .proble~s of the time~ be
they social problems or questions of colonIal pohcy. In the latter
instance, the thunder of cannons has all too. often. unfortunately
drowned more subtle forms of persuasion, persuasIon which would have
put the savage into the shackles of his own thinking and thu~ kept him
dependent. This would only have required a careful uncovering of the
logic and the functioning of his thought processes, which could then
have been applied to mutual advantage. . .
The faster culture progresses in this time of the steamship and of
electricity, the greater will be the gap between the upper levels of
civilization and its lower estates, where at the base the thoughts of the
masses are brought to violent fermentation by propaganda. As long as
researchers are revolted by the idea of descending to the lower levels to
From: Controversen I (1893-94). pp.IX-XII, 1-6,20-21, 25, 28, 36,53,54,
56.58-61; Coruroversen 1Il (1894), pp.11l-V, and postscript pp.I-IIl, Vll-IX,
84; VV (1900.), pp. 8-12, 20-2t, 26-27,98-100, 129-30; in excerpts;
emphasis added.
~.-~.-
Translation of Selected Works 171
listen to the psychological attitudes of the uneducated but educable
masses, the possibility of making these problems intelligible remains
remote. It is ignorance about these matters in particular which makes
scholars into "screw-balls", as the popular phrase has it.
The new research branches of folklore and ethnology have arisen
might after all find the remedies for the evilsof the spirit of our times,
before it is too late.
When other people enter the historical horizon of awareness, the
"observation of otherness" can clarify much and in a more objective
way than any subjective navel-gazing could ever achieve; the critical
decision which has to be made about this research has been initiated by
the astronomical and geographical revolution in thought. We now have
a cosmic outlook, but with this acknowledgment of the infinity of the
universe has come an awareness of the terrestrial sphere as a bounded
global unit; the classical notion of the apeiron, which has a negative
connotation of the "infinite", has been turned into a positive assess-
ment of the communality of mankind sharing the same orbis 'e"arum.'
Man as the son of mother earth has had to look on himself in order to
gain an understanding of his own role, and to use his own mind to
e understand the enigma of his humanity. Now, by patient collecting of
the facts of man as the "logical animal", we are rediscovering those
initial idea-complexes, those thought-seeds or logoi spermatikoi- which
encapsulate the inherent potential for the growth of man's mind.
The new psychology based on the principles of the natural sciences
will, through the further development of psycho-psychics, eventually
unravel the unseen universe of the world of the mind. The main object
of psycho-physics has become research on patterns of thought as they
are acquired in socialization processes and"as they aremanifested in the
collective representations of man as social animal.
As far as these social collective representations (Gesellschaftsgedan.
ken) are concerned, we already have ample research data to hand in the
form of folk ideas from all over the globe. The main aim for ethnology
has become the securing and collecting of these folk ideas. which will
thereby prepare and lay the foundations for a scientific psychology.'
In contrast to the classical sciences of minerals, plants and animals,
the science of man has to take cognisance of the subjective angle, the
object being man himself in the subjectively created world of ideas. The
collective representations, the ideas, are mirrored in the psychology of
the individual, which is embedded in its specific social sphere. The aim
of the science of man is to retrace the interdependence between
organism and geographical environment in form of the folk ideas.
Like the physical habitus, so does the psychic habitus carry the
imprint of the climatical agents, and thus we find the elementary
 , -;::::::----- i
172 Part Two
ideas embedded in their specific milieu. Only when the elementary
ideas of the savage tribe come into contact with outside stimuli do they
develop their inherent potential through a growth process in historical
forms of cultural development. The goal or the science of man will have
been achieved when a statistic of ideas of all possibilities of thought in
space and time has been won in order to establish the "natural laws in
the spiritual world". The first requirement of an inductively grounded
psychology is to obtain materials about the social ideas and collective
representations in their various ethnic variations; we will find these
much more easily among the savage tribes.
The study of thought as it appears among the different civilized
groups must be related to their ethnic customs. We can explicate the
philosophical systems of the educated classes of past civilizations, yet
this very effort, this knowledge of surface structures of represented
thought, pushes the thought processes of the masses further back into
darkness. into those hazy realms of the forgotten. just as the childhood,
dreams -of a grown man fade away from conscious memory. It is true
that the natural sciences have become the dominant form of thought in
our times, but they tackle the merely material realm. and have not yet
touched on the essential qualities of man as human being, qualities
which are seen in the social realm as collective representations.
Our aim is therefore to start with the simplest layers of man's social
thought. namely those elementary ideas of tribal societies which appear
in each, albeit veiled in historically and geographically inspired clothing
as folk ideas. Such ideas constantly recur and are open to constant
rearrangement by and in each culture.
Geographical provinces are those areas in which the whole system of
organic life appears to be of a specific pattern and character due to the
overlapping botanical. zoologicaland anthropological areas.
Two particular agents direct the organism: those are the shape of the
surface features of the area and the particular orientation of a place to
the sun. Scientists who deal with the botanical province were
principally and systematically concerned with the question of adapm,
tion. Biology is certainly important for ethnology, and for the
delineation of geographical provinces, in that it can ascertain the
equilibrium achieved by an organism in relation to the environment, If
we use orography. hydrography. geography. climatology and biology
to give us the invariants or constant factors for each geographical
province, we will be able to detect the internal variations.. In other
words, each geographical province contains the latent and potential
orlginary "seeds", a potential which can, under appropriate stimulation,
be awakened and spring forth to fill the growing organismwith energy
and thus actualize the potential.
This idea was one of thc elemenrary ideas of scholastic thinking and
Translation of Selected Works 173
philosophical debate for almost two thousand years before being
experimentally proved. We could -draw the following analogy: the
dynamic potential of the transparent medium of the air becomes
actualized energy in the form of hail-stones, hail being but the result
of the turbulent mixture of cold and hot and humid air-masses. In other
cultures these concepts which we now explain by physical laws have
been disguised in myth-images of, for example. the thunderbolt which
the Zulus compare to the hail-stones, believing that they would hit a
wrongdoer to punish him for his deeds. All these products of the
imaginative savage mind are nothing but representations of the
elementary ideas in a symbolic disguise, and these very same ideascan
now. as we see, be transposed and reformulated into scientific lawsand
even be measured in mathematical form.
If we say that the anthropological character of any organismis deter-
mined by heredity and environment. it has to be added that the
hereditary element is in turn determined by those environmental
factors which brought about the genetic endowment. The evolution of
an organism can be explained by heredity and environment, an~ t?e
maintenance of an organism over time is certainly grounded In Its
milieu: such a premise would ultimately lead us to the inorganic
beginning. Yet, instead of reasoning thus, we have in the ethnological
field to posit another starting point, that of the existence of the total
organism. The development of the idea syst~s of .mankind, if totally
based on organic laws, would lead to stagnation. In a stable environ-
ment, because the mental horizon would end in a harmonious canopy
with all incoming stimuli being manifested and integrated. As Spencer
said hWere there no changes in the environment, but such as the
organism had adapted to meet, and were it never to ~ail in the
efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal exrstence and
eternal knowledge". Yet an eternal .life would require an eternal,
meaning ftxed , environment. Human history and mental development
have never stood still; there is constant change and movement due to
new stimuli.
The folk ideas are rooted in the geographical provinces and ~ey
represent changes of the psychologically determined elementary ideas
which have evolved throughout history. There is no unbridgeable gap
between a psychological and a geographical interpretation in ethno-
graphy or anthropogeography; rather one is a precondition for the
other.
The attacks against the folk idea which have arisen in anthropogeo
graphy are irrelevant. The folk idea has always been rooted in the
geographical provinces as a specifically psychi.c phenomenon. We
cannot make the' folk idea the one and only paradigmof ethnolo~ and
the sole determinant of man's existence; we must cultivate the atutude
 'v ........
174 Part Two
of restraint, of epoche;" in this field as in biology. lest we indulge in
wild speculations. The term folk idea is certainly arbitrary, and I would
welcome a more suitable substitute. Yet the German word seems most
appropriate for conveying the myriad variations of the elementary
ideas; for an international and polyglot ethnology, I would welcome a
variety of terms, as these help to maintain a balanced interpretation.
and I find the terms milieu. surrounding. and even survivals rather
useful here. What counts is not slavish adherence to a concept, but
active application to detailed monographs; only in this way. against a
geographical back-drop, will the comparative method of ethnology
progress. The geographical area or province becomes a culture area
through the inclusion of the historical dimension: I certainly prefer the
term culture area to cultural zone. since the latter has a mainly
geographical connotation. The parallelism of origin of those breast-
plates which aroused- such a controversy in the field of anthropogeo-
graphy belongs as a folk idea to the abstract category as does the cross-
bow of the Nicobar Islanders, or the idea of the imitation of wooden
rifles among Fijians. Why somebody could ever imagine that the bow
was only invented in one place. on Tonga or Tahiti indeed. where it is
but a toy, is beyond my understanding. . in relation to geographical provinces, we would say that they grow from
What I am getting at here is that the bow is a very good example of
the folk idea. because we meet the basic principles everywhere, on aU
continents. but variously modified, or absent, according to the
geographical province. In the shortening of the spear to the arrow used
with the bow, we find the first step from an instrument which is an
extension of the body organs to an instrument which is a manufactured
product. The significance of geography on the weapon is in the availa-
bility of the wood, metal or bone for the arrow or spear tips. Again.
whether we find as a first transitory step between the long spear and
the arrow the intermediate form of the spear-thrower which allows a
short yet swift shaft, or the bola or lasso, depends only on the available
material in the geographical surrounding: the wood might for instance
be too brittle for bow construction. as seems the case in Australia.
We find this particular folk idea variously and naturally manifest by
the bow in Melanesia and in the forests of South America (there with
the addition of the blow-pipe), and by the bola on the treeless steppe-
like pampas of South America. The folk idea itself, if used merely as a
mental crutch, is useless unless it is supported by detailed micro-studies
in each case. All the attacks by anthropogeographers against the folk
idea arc really unwarranted, for [ have always stressed that they are
rooted in the geographical provinces. The folk ideas are not intended to
be a cure-ail for ethnological problems; such a prescription would mean
stagnation amid the rather paltry arsenal of the elementary idea. The
more material we can add to the formation of a variety of folk ideas
Translation of Selected Works 175
through the study of diffusion, bur only where diffusion can be proved.
the better it will be.
Vitruvius s said that the different races of man were created for and
suited to the climatic surroundings, for every species at every period
was created in the most perfect relation to the environmental circum-
stances. We must however consider not only dependency and determin-
ation by the environment in the geographical province, but a mutual
relationship and inter-dependent action.
Many scientists, and philosophers too. have with good reason
pointed out that the correspondence between physiological and psychic
activities has not yet been proved. in spite of Fechner's great advances
in psycho-physics, which indeed still owe us an answer. The psychologi-
cal approach in philosophy ceased with Beneke and Waltz. Even with
the help of Herbert's tool of statics and mechanics we did not get a
step further in this question, since we worked with false assumptions:
most scholars operate from the viewpoint of individual psychology,
whereas the mental products of man are basically social representations.
The introduction of the concept of elementary ideas unites both the
physical and the psychic realm. If we are considering elementary ideas
the environmental conditions as a kind of crystallization of them. If we
look at elementary ideas in relation to the laws of cultural evolution
they then become the individual cells or atoms which evolve. according
to organic laws of growth, into different streams of ideas. ~e ve~
thought that man as mankind is the essential object of study If man IS
to understand himself as a social animal appears all over the world as
one almost intuitively conceived elementary idea. This implies that we
ethnologists should look for man in the average man who represents the
whole of mankind in the statistical mean; for this we need a "soci~l
physics" (physique sociale). As Herder said, with great amazement, It
is about time that, having studied the kingdom of minerals, plants and
animals we make an attempt to understand man.6
Ethnology is really directed towards the study of the "ethnos",
the collective representations of social groups or what I have called
social thoughts (Geselischafrsgedanken).7 The social circles (Gesells
chafrskreise) or ranges of societies of the world are at different stages of
development, from the initial bud of the savage state to the full
flowering cultures. a flowering which we find in the ethos of a civiliz-
ation. in its world view.
The physical uniry of the species man has been anthropologically
established, and as a consequence we now look for the psychic umty
of mankind. The psychic unity of social thought (collective representa-
tions) underlies the basic elements of the body social. The world.over
we will find a monotonous sub-stratum of identical elementary ideas.
 ------------------------------------'"
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176 Part Two
identical in spite of local variations. These few elementary ideas exist
in all natural savage conditions and also under the artificial veneer
of every civilization; they are indeed those seminal ideas from which
civilizations have grown. Comparative research on elementary ideas,
and only that, will give us the practical answers to the pathological
factors in social life. Where are these ideas to be found? No individual
can completely recapture his dreams of childhood. and nor can civiliza-
tions, for prehistoric thought patterns have dimmed. The only way to
discover the infancy of civilization's thought is to consider the savage
tribes, for they are still in that childhood stage.
If we wish to consider the idea of universal patterns. we must look
first at the projections and reflections of the psychic forces in the mind
of savage man, for these are the foundations for the inquiry into the
much elaborated constructs of the mind of civilized societies.
What we need are researchers and field-workers, well versed in anth-
ropology and linguistics, who will make useful ethnological collections
in topically detailed monographs: we need detail since broad outlines
and generalizations have already been sufficiently established.
Geographical, Ethnological and Anthropological Provinces
In stressing the mutual influence between organism and changing
environmental conditions. I have with special care emphasized that this
milieu has to be understood in a sense now wider. now more narrow.
according to circumstances. The natural tribe receives its character from
the geographical province; the civilized society by cOntrasl lives under
[he influence ofan historically determined horizon. My terminology for
this differentiation has changed in recent years. Sometimes 1 have
referred to the geographical provinces, when their influence upon the
natural society is considered, as "anthropological" ones. because they
exert such a strong impact upon the physical and psychological
characteristics of individuals. In the case of civilized societies, I have
used the expressions "ethnological" or "ethno-anthropolcgical" and
"ethno-geographical" provinces, At earlier times I have also used" the
combination "physical-geographical", and have separated the geograph-
ical from the historical aspects, since I believe that for ethnological
science the interpretation of geography and history has to be equally
acknowledged. It is in this particular aspect that we have to acknowledge
the importance of Ritter's work for the development of a genuine
culture history.
From: "Etbnolcgische Ercrterung", ZfE 9 (1877): 183-87; in excerpts; title
supplied:emphasisadded.
.~
Translation of Selected Works 177
The inextricable interdependence of geography and history and the
pursuit of this point in ethnology has always been of the utmost
importance to me; indeed,l have touched upon it in almost all of my
published works. Here foUow some of the statements 1 have made up to
now.
In regard to the assessment of the relative impact of the anthrc-
polcgical and ethnological provinces, which condition the basic
characteristics of their inhabitants. it is inadvisable to be restricted
to geographical conditions alone. Historical conditions must also be
taken into account, since man has to be studied not only in his
physiological. but also in his psychological. aspects.?
The influence of the geographical provinces has 3. physiological and
also a historical dimension; both influences merge and are combined
in man. The effects of both dimensions of the geographical province
have resulted in particular characteristics of indigenous types, and
those are the elements of an anthropological province.t?
The qualitative value of the anthropological province has to be seen
in the sum total of minute items of the geographical environment.
and of all the historical conjunctions. I I
The first step of evolution has been achieved when an ethnic group
has struck a balance with its geographical and historical environment
and reached a stage of equilibrium.t a
The impact upon man of the historical aspect of the geographical
province only becomes evident when the influences of climate and
the botanical and zoological environment have been assessed. Both
aspects, mind and place, are important. and we must also take
cognisance of a group's psychological climate or predisposition
which. by contact with. adjacent population "groups. will create the
national character.O
Man as social animal is dependent on the physical milieu of his
particular geographical province with its prevailing zoological and
botanical conditions: man is also. and similarly. dependent on the
political milieu which is based on topographical configurations and
defines his human character and specific ethnic bcrizcn.t'"
The Science of Mankind focuses on a group's ethnic development
which is based on geography and which evolves to ever higher forms
of complexity through a continuous historical process of expansion
and contraction. 1 S
As far as those divisions, which appear in my work of 1868, are
concerned, they no longer make much sense to me either, since they
sprang from the spur of the moment and are basically only geographic-
ally determined areas. However, for practical purposes I would like to
retain that particular division into provinces or areas which I proposed
178 Part Two

in the map accompanying Das Bestiindige in den MenschenrQSsen.

The scheme given there could be defended as well as any other. Yet I
have repeatedly warned against devising schemes and categorizations of
ethnological materials unless we have a clear conception of what we
want to classify and for what reason: to act otherwise would be to act
prematurely.tv IV The Psychic Unity of Mankind and Some
Elementary Symbols

On the Similarity ofMental Operations, Primitive and Civilized

Being part of the totality that constitutes the world, man can only
. perceive those connections through which the world relates to him.
Absolute truth requires a position outside this world and therefore
cannot exist for man. for he knows neither his beginning nor his end,
and lives but for the twinkling of an eye. In fact, he know, of no truth
at all. except the one he may recognize in the law of his organic
development. Being juxtaposed in space, all things react to each other.
Because inasmuch as their totality makes up the whole of the universe,
they must. as parts. be interdependent. The changes caused by their
interaction may lead to the appearance of forces which, as modifying
and modified aggregate-states. may stand in opposition to matter as it
exists in space. The impressions of the higher senses, in particular of the
eye sensitive to light. lead to products in man's mind the perceptions of
which are not supported by material evidence. as is the case with the
sense of touch. This difference in subjective perceptions has since olden
times given rise to the postulate of an essential opposition between the
consciousness of purely mental concatenations of thought and the
physical oscillations of the nerves. Thus an independent microcosmic
realm was postulated as against the macrocosmic one. Yet the
microcosm is in reality -only a mental distillation of the macrocosmic
realm in an individuality which is but a part of it. Properly speaking,
the mind and the body are one, and together make man. This unity of
mind and matter, created anew each moment, is the essence of the
nature of man. ,
The more culture progressed. and the richer and more complex its
intellectual life became. the more the mind appeared to be independent,
self-sustaining and quite different from the physical body which is so
constrained by the narrow limits of its environment. World views,

From: MG. vel. 1(1860), subtitled Psychology as Natural Sderice; in excerpts,

co~eet pagination supplied in fcctnctes; emphasis and titles added.
 -
214 Part Two
it is said, the human soul mates in a mystical union with God or where
God, the creator of the world, bedded wisdom (sophia) in order to give
birth to the logos. Such preciousnessof sensibility, such delicacy, which
finds its apex with the pietists who kiss the feet of Jesus, have private
talks with him, and arc taken in ecstatic rapture, was unknown in the
ancient world. During the ceremonies to mourn the death of Adonis.
women went to the temple to offer their virginity. of which they were
indeed relieved, while during the festival of Radha, Krishna's wife, the
offerings were made by naked women. When the Roman men prayed in
the grove of Juno for the fertility of their women, a voice told them
that their women had to be fucked by a goat, but luckily there was a
priest from Etruria at hand to explain that it would be sufficient to hit
the women with goat-belts, as Ovid says is done in the ceremonies of
the Lupercalia.
These ceremonies were soon stopped by the institutions of the state.
The worship of the divine was separated into female and male sections,
and this separation very soon led to rather bizarre forms of sacred
lesbianism and the use of eunuchs respectively. When the state and its
rulers wished to give their administrators more power. the custom of
eunuch's rule becomes strong, particularly in China during the rang
period when the government wanted to avoid a resurgence of the old
feudalism. We indeed find widespread customs among native popula-
tions of a reversal of sex-roles, as when men among American Indians
chose to behave and remain like women and serve great warriors. The
custom of women who played the man's role was well known too
among North American Indians and is also reported from the Scythians
by Hippocrates and Herodotus. They relate that the Scythians con-
sidered persons who were "non-men" as sacred. The authors tell us that
the Scythians believed this condition due to the long practice of riding
horses, and to their bleeding themselves behind the ears in the belief
that that was associated with semen production. If they fail to perform
with their women more than three times. the Scythians think that a
deity has been offended, and thereafter don women's garb arid rnein.
VI Salvage Anthropology
The WaningofPrimitive Societies
The demise of primitive societies is foreshadowed by historical Jaws
which can neither be halted nor diverted. Thesolejustification forour
interference in them can be the goal of salvaging the lingering Jast
survivals of those originals which are now swiftly disappearing, and
putting them on paper or in museums. In this way, we can provide
future generations with research materials which they will not be able
to gather, but from which they - working inductively - will be able to
write a history of mankind.
Native tribes disappear like snow in the midday sun,apart from the
peoples of Africa for whom geography and population density afforda
greater resilience. This situation pertained in the Eastern United States
fifty years ago and is now magnified one hundredfoid in the wake of
increased communication by steamship, railroad and telegraph: more is
destroyed in a singleyear than previously went in a decade.
Let us take the example of Oregon. Thisregion was first traversed in
1805 when Lewis and Clark reached the mouth of the Columbia River,
and between then and its settlement, initially in 1830and effectively in
the 1840" there was but sporadic contact with the sea-coast. The land
that once teemed with a multitude of tribes is now a desolate place of
death, and a scene of such destruction and devastation that would make
any anthropologist melancholy. Those remnants herded into remote
reservations apart, there is now no trace whatsoever of Indians in the
western region. Memories of the aborigines arealmost asdistant for the
presentday inhabitants of California and Oregon as those of the
Germanic tribes of Tacitus are for us.
When historical civilization disappears from the stage, we can
probably recover those substantive materials essential for a reconstruc-
tion of the original organism at Some future date. and by our excava-
From: Heilige Sage (1881a), PI'. 63-66; in excerpts.
----------------------------------------------"
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216 Part Two
lions. we can elicit its concrete and creative moments and ideas. Native
societies. on the other hand. are but ephemeral creations, one-day flies
or butterflies that must be caught on the wing for, once gone. their
essence can never be recaptured.
What precious jewels we own with Tacitus' descriptions, and how
much more would be appreciated it had we such jewels of descriptive
monographs on the Iberians. Ligurians, Umbrians and other early tribes;
how different would be our purview of antiquity. and how different
and therewith more correct and penetrating would be our view about
the base of our own culture.
Everything encountered was too weird in the early days of discovery
to enable a fruitful exchange of ideas on what was found. Yet it is
different now. There is much more intellectual communication with the
increased possibility of contact? and we are now conscious of the need
for ethnological' research and its importance for the science of man:
we cannot, and must not, toss aside the responsibility laid upon us. As
Chamisso said when he visited Hawaii in 1837:
All keys to unlock one of the most important enigmas which the
history of mankind presents in the migrations over the earth are
thrown into the sea of oblivion at the' same hour when they are
handed to us.!
The Heritage ofMankind and the Future ofEthnology
Ethnology? that newly rising star of science, seemed to offer a ray of
hope. hope that we might finally find a solution to the contemporary
situation in which our world view is both unsure and fragmented.
Ethnology seemed to offer the chance to put the Science of Man on
that same solid base of actual proof as we find now in the natural
sciences. Such inductively reached proofs in ethnology, that last and
most magnificent' blossom on the trees of science, would enable us to
create a set pattern, a tool, with which to give judgment, exactly and
definitely, on any social and religious problem,
This hope entranced and enticed us: we began with fresh vigor to
pursue ethnological enquiries, and indeed our efforts proceeded most
smoothly and pleasantlyv Although serious ethnological studies were
but recently begun, we nevertheless presumed we would be able to
recognize groupings of like people in distant realms of the globe from
the materials collected since the age of discovery. Armed with this
knowledge, we would then trace their migration patterns and
encapsulate their essential characteristics in a bird's-eye view. The next,
From: HeHige Sage (lSBIa), preface, pp. v.-xu: in excerpts.
Translation of Selected Works 217
or final, step would be to jot down these very general outlines in a
handful of chapters in ethnological handbooks, Yet these daring
intentions soon began to crumble to dust 3S we looked into the more
intricate depths of the materials so copiously accumulated) and as the
mountain of publications grew to an awesome height.
It is my considered opinion, and the situation corroborates this, that
we must abandon the aim, indeed the very idea, of achieving one
comprehensive and comprehensible whole from all the materials thus
far presented to us: such an achievement is not for our generation. We
must therefore unconditionally assume the responsibility for preserving
and transmitting the basic materials as we pass the burden of building
ethnology onto the shoulders of the next generation. If we fail on that
point the whole endeavour wilI again fade away into that lata morgana
of philosophical deductionisrn: fading into obscurity will be the lot of
our desire to see the potential of ethnology and comparative
psychology achieved. for they would not then take their place as the
crowning glory ot the scientific temple of our times.
Should this be the case and we fail to preserve the materials. we
would, I surmise, be bitterly resented by our descendants. Even now,
material perishes in front of our eyes through our inconsiderate neglect;
?Ie could have salvaged and collected so much more than we have
through our contact with living native societies. Indeed each year. each
day. nay each hour. things disappear from this earth: and we look on
without moving so much as a little finger. Some time in the future. men
will be able to gain insight with statistical surveys into the whole
multitude of variations which appear among the different peoples of
the earth: then will each gap be keenly felt. and then will our
generation rightly bear the brunt of blame for the irretrievable loss.
Increasingly. as I travel the globe. I seem to walk amid ruins and
rubble. By rubble, I mean not merely that rubble of monumental and
enigmatic works of art which bear silent witness to perished cultures,
but also the rubble of more ephemeral, or less concrete, creations. I
surely need not emphasize that nothing can be disregarded as irrelevant,
for it may help us judge the significance of a cultural item. Now. we
appreciate that the roughly chiselled and unfinished stone may be of
greater importance than the finished sculpture: in the future, many a
custom and many a thought among native people may be seen to have
greater significance for comparative psychology than have the complex
ornaments and elaborations of those cultures which have progressed.
This would in no small measure be due to the fact that native societies,
in their simplicity, are easier to penetrate. It is impossible to determine
in advance how important any item will be. Our guiding.principle.
therefore. in anthropology. prehistory or ethnology. should be to
collect everything, lest we overlook the perfect pearl in the bed of
-----------------------------------------------,

218 Part Two Translation of Selected Works 219

oysters, or lest we overlook the valuable amid the apparently insignifi- cannot generate sufficient trust to plumb the depths of those religious
cant. Collecting clearly has its difficulties.. which might be coped with ideas which would only parsimoniously and superficially be revealed,
if we can gradually send abroad only ethnologically trained travellers. for they are normally transmitted in dire secrecy.
This need or shortcoming in collecting became obvious to me during Let us take the example of Polynesia further. The whole of the
my last voyage; I had the chance to stop over on the return trip at some literature put together by a handful of writers since the time of
places in Polynesia. and there found some instructive examples. discovery a hundred years ago contains nothing but a few unconnected
The Polynesian realm of thought (Gedankenkreis) is, besides the fragments on the essence of the religious idea in that area. It is already
Buddhist one. the most extensive on earth. Rather than the fragmenta- too late to remedy that situation, as it is elsewhere. for the carriers
tion typical of America and Africa. we find in Polynesia and the whole of the unadulterated traditions, accumulated and transmitted in
width of the Pacific a surprising homogeneity, and this becomes all the seemingly everlasting succession. are dying away, and with them the
more stunning if we include Micronesia and Melanesia as far as the library of memories is buried.
Malay world in our purview. One homogeneous thought pattern It is therefore imperative to keep in mind that the hour is late.and
(Gedankenbau) covers a quarter of the entire globe,encompassing 120 we must do what we can, and that now. Should we delay. should we
degrees of longitude and 70 degrees of latitude. A phenomenon of such refrain from acting immediately. then we shall lose any chance whatso-
impressive proportions should not be excluded from the realm of ever for a science of ethnology. At the moment, we stand by the cradle
proper study, even if it is commonly thought of as the realm merely of of a newly born science. a science which needs many centuries of
cannibals. What, though, do we actually know of this huge creation of nurture to reach maturity. When she attains her majority, she will hope-
the mind, this quarter part of the globe? fully be able to describe what knowledge man has about man; she might
Should we look in travelogues and essays, we would find a bizarre not be able to reveal the deepest secrets of existence, but she will be
pot-pourri of mythical tales from various island groups put down as able to touch upon them.
fact. It would hardly have been difficult to realize that these tales are This generation's contribution to that work may seem menial or
but mere distortions of religious ideas, so often produced in the daily even trivial. to do bits and pieces in order to get the science on her feet:
round of folk-humour. yet all these snippets were thrown together in a yet we feel carried forward on the wave of the great folk ideas which,
wretchedly indigestible mixture. It would be similarly misleading if a made up as they are of individual thought particles, will grow
stranger had concocted a dish from odd. and ends of religious ideas, inexorably by established norms to their completion in the collective
distorted legends about saints, myth and folk-superstitions which he representations of mankind (Menschheitsgedtznken).
picked up on our shores. and then presented this as a true reflection of
the European world view. We appreciate that our folk tales are only
understandable in their relation to the Edda.Likewise, the complicated
mythologies of India only became clear after the finding of the Vedic
scriptures; and the core of Greek religion. far from residing in the myth-
figures of those deities so brazenly derided on stage, lay hidden in the
sacred epic of the Theogony of Hesiod, in the Orphic and Dionysian
songs and the mystery-cults. The case is exactly similar with the tales
and mythologies of aU other ethnic groups, and as long as we ignore
this fact, and choose to remain ignorant about the religious background
into which they fit. the reports on the myths of native populations will
continue, in the main, to be meaningless caricatures.
It will be no easy task to unravel the background for the priests,
the schoalrs within native societies, wrap their religious systems in
mythical symbols, symbols understood only by the initiates. This point,
while always present, is rarely stressed, unless it be by some traveller to
whom strange chance made patent the situation. Even in that case, we
could glean but little , for a passing traveller who pauses but fleetingly