Anthropology : an introduction to the study of man and civilization / [by] Edward B. Tylor.

  • Tylor, Edward B. (Edward Burnett), 1832-1917.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Anthropology : an introduction to the study of man and civilization / [by] Edward B. Tylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    PREFACE. In times when subjects of education have multipHed, it may seem at first sight a hardship to lay on the already heavily-pressed student a new science. But it Avill be found that the real effect of Anthropology is rather to lighten than increase the strain of learning. In the mountains we see the bearers of heavy burdens contentedly shoulder a carrying-frame besides, because they find its weight more than compensated by the convenience of holding together and balancing their load. So it is with the science of Man and Civilization, which connects into a more manage- able whole the scattered subjects of an ordinary education. Much of the diflSculty of learning and teaching lies in the scholar's not seeing clearly what each science or art is for, what its place is among the purposes of life. If he knows something of its early history, and how it arose from the simpler wants and circumstances of mankind, he finds him- self better able to lay hold of it than when, as too often happens, he is called on to take up an abstruse subject not at the beginning but in the middle. When he has learnt something of man's rudest means of conversing by gestures and cries, and thence has been led to see how the higher