Anthropology | Page 4

course, in the sense that things are somehow all akin--all of a piece. We are simply bound to take in the parts as parts of a whole, and it is just this fact that makes philosophy not only possible but inevitable. All the same, this fact does not prevent the parts from having their own specific natures and specific ways of behaving. The people who identify the natural with the physical are putting all their money on one specific kind of nature or behaviour that is to be found in the world. In the case of man they are backing the wrong horse. The horse to back is the horse that goes. As a going concern, however, anthropology, as part of evolutionary biology, is a history of vital tendencies which are not natural in the sense of merely physical.
What are the functions of philosophy as contrasted with science? Two. Firstly, it must be critical. It must police the city of the sciences, preventing them from interfering with each other's rights and free development. Co-operation by all means, as, for instance, between anthropology and biology. But no jumping other folks' claims and laying down the law for all; as, for instance, when physics would impose the kind of method applicable to machines on the sciences of evolving life. Secondly, philosophy must be synthetic. It must put all the ways of knowing together, and likewise put these in their entirety together with all the ways of feeling and acting; so that there may result a theory of reality and of the good life, in that organic interdependence of the two which our very effort to put things together presupposes as its object.
What, then, are to be the relations between anthropology and philosophy? On the one hand, the question whether anthropology can help philosophy need not concern us here. That is for the philosopher to determine. On the other hand, philosophy can help anthropology in two ways: in its critical capacity, by helping it to guard its own claim, and develop freely without interference from outsiders; and in its synthetic capacity, perhaps, by suggesting the rule that, of two types of explanation, for instance, the physical and the biological, the more abstract is likely to be farther away from the whole truth, whereas, contrariwise, the more you take in, the better your chance of really understanding.
It remains to speak about policy. I use this term to mean any and all practical exploitation of the results of science. Sometimes, indeed, it is hard to say where science ends and policy begins, as we saw in the case of those gentlemen who would doctor their history, because practically it pays to have a good conceit of ourselves, and believe that our side always wins its battles. Anthropology, however, would borrow something besides the evolutionary principle from biology, namely, its disinterestedness. It is not hard to be candid about bees and ants; unless, indeed, one is making a parable of them. But as anthropologists we must try, what is so much harder, to be candid about ourselves. Let us look at ourselves as if we were so many bees and ants, not forgetting, of course, to make use of the inside information that in the case of the insects we so conspicuously lack.
This does not mean that human history, once constructed according to truth-regarding principles, should and could not be used for the practical advantage of mankind. The anthropologist, however, is not, as such, concerned with the practical employment to which his discoveries are put. At most, he may, on the strength of a conviction that truth is mighty and will prevail for human good, invite practical men to study his facts and generalizations in the hope that, by knowing mankind better, they may come to appreciate and serve it better. For instance, the administrator, who rules over savages, is almost invariably quite well-meaning, but not seldom utterly ignorant of native customs and beliefs. So, in many cases, is the missionary, another type of person in authority, whose intentions are of the best, but whose methods too often leave much to be desired. No amount of zeal will suffice, apart from scientific insight into the conditions of the practical problem. And the education is to be got by paying for it. But governments and churches, with some honourable exceptions, are still wofully disinclined to provide their probationers with the necessary special training; though it is ignorance that always proves most costly in the long run. Policy, however, including bad policy, does not come within the official cognizance of the anthropologist. Yet it is legitimate for him to hope that, just as for many years already physiological science has indirectly subserved the art of medicine, so anthropological science may indirectly, though none the less effectively, subserve an