rest of the animals besides man, naturalists have been so active in
their darwinizing that the pre-Darwinian stuff is once for all laid
by on the shelf. When man, however, engages on the subject of his noble
self, the tendency still is to say: We accept Darwinism so long as
it is not allowed to count, so long as we may go on believing the same
old stuff in the same old way.

How do we anthropologists propose to combat this tendency? By working
away at our subject, and persuading people to have a look at our results.
Once people take up anthropology, they may be trusted not to drop it
again. It is like learning to sleep with your window open. What could
be more stupefying than to shut yourself up in a closet and swallow
your own gas? But is it any less stupefying to shut yourself up within
the last few thousand years of the history of your own corner of the
world, and suck in the stale atmosphere of its own self-generated
prejudices? Or, to vary the metaphor, anthropology is like travel.
Every one starts by thinking that there is nothing so perfect as his
own parish. But let a man go aboard ship to visit foreign parts, and,
when he returns home, he will cause that parish to wake up.

With Darwin, then, we anthropologists say: Let any and every portion
of human history be studied in the light of the whole history of mankind,
and against the background of the history of living things in general.
It is the Darwinian outlook that matters. None of Darwin's particular
doctrines will necessarily endure the test of time and trial. Into
the melting-pot must they go as often as any man of science deems it
fitting. But Darwinism as the touch of nature that makes the whole
world kin can hardly pass away. At any rate, anthropology stands or
falls with the working hypothesis, derived from Darwinism, of a
fundamental kinship and continuity amid change between all the forms