CHAPTER I
SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGY


In this chapter I propose to say something, firstly, about the ideal
scope of anthropology; secondly, about its ideal limitations; and,
thirdly and lastly, about its actual relations to existing studies.
In other words, I shall examine the extent of its claim, and then go
on to examine how that claim, under modern conditions of science and
education, is to be made good.

Firstly, then, what is the ideal scope of anthropology? Taken at its
fullest and best, what ought it to comprise?

Anthropology is the whole history of man as fired and pervaded by the
idea of evolution. Man in evolution--that is the subject in its full
reach. Anthropology studies man as he occurs at all known times. It
studies him as he occurs in all known parts of the world. It studies
him body and soul together--as a bodily organism, subject to conditions
operating in time and space, which bodily organism is in intimate
relation with a soul-life, also subject to those same conditions.
Having an eye to such conditions from first to last, it seeks to plot
out the general series of the changes, bodily and mental together,
undergone by man in the course of his history. Its business is simply
to describe. But, without exceeding the limits of its scope, it can
and must proceed from the particular to the general; aiming at nothing
less than a descriptive formula that shall sum up the whole series