d kindred subjects
is that the man of science can hardly be in the nature of things very
frequently a man of the world. He is a student of nature; he is
scarcely ever a student of human nature. And even where this difficulty
is overcome, and he is in some sense a student of human nature, this is
only a very faint beginning of the painful progress towards being
human. For the study of primitive race and religion stands apart in
one important respect from all, or nearly all, the ordinary scientific
studies. A man can understand astronomy only by being an astronomer; he
can understand entomology only by being an entomologist (or, perhaps,
an insect); but he can understand a great deal of anthropology merely
by being a man. He is himself the animal which he studies. Hence
arises the fact which strikes the eye everywhere in the records of
ethnology and folk-lore--the fact that the same frigid and detached
spirit which leads to success in the study of astronomy or botany leads
to disaster in the study of mythology or human origins. It is necessary
to cease to be a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not
necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men. That
same suppression of sympathies, that same waving away of intuitions or
guess-work which make a man preternaturally clever in dealing with the
stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing
with the heart of man. He is making himself inhuman in order to
understand humanity. An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many
men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from
ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world. For
the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be best
learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of
man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or
the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and
taking down their answers in a note-book, although the cleverest man
may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in England; it is
in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why
men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have
discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers. The mystery in the
heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of
scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball. If a
man desires to find ou