Man in the making : an introduction to anthropology / by R.R. Marett.

  • Robert Ranulph Marett
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Man in the making : an introduction to anthropology / by R.R. Marett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    particular scheme of values into harmony with the universal laws of human life. To turn now to those friends of anthropology who are on the right side for wrong reasons, exception must also be taken to the not uncommon view that savagery stands for the simple life at its best, and consequently that in adopting civilized ways man has turned his back on the golden age. But, surely, the golden age lies, if anywhere, in the unknown future. Our savage ancestors were excessively dirty, though they did not realize that they were dirty; excessively poor, though they made the most of such resources as they had; excessively liable to disaster, though they cheerfully took daily peril as a matter of course. To secure such animal well-being as went with this toughness of fibre, what community of civilized men would care to pay the price of readaptation, with all the loss of life incidental to the reversion of any domesticated stock to a wild condition? From an office stool it might seem that camping out savage- fashion must amount to a perpetual holiday; but the reality would prove about as trying to the average constitution as winter in the trenches. But it is not so much materially as spiritually that our forefathers were worse off as compared with ourselves. Though they felt just as strongly, they had not yet learned to think; and the result was that they were perpetually haunted by distressing, fancies. Now, human en¬ lightenment being at all times relative, no doubt there were always leaders of opinion—masters of magic, as would be the savage way of putting it—who after a fashion kept their heads, while the rest were but as nervous children in the dark. Yet even these leaders led gropingly, blindly. Their only stand-by was custom, their only maxim “ carry on.” Though the mind of man was already engaged in its unending struggle to get the better of circumstance, that sense of intellectual freedom which comes only with steady