Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Tylor, Edward Burnett
TYLOR, Sir EDWARD BURNETT (1832–1917), anthropologist, the third son of Joseph Tylor, brass-founder, by his wife, Harriet Skipper, was born at Camberwell 2 October 1832, and educated at Grove House, Tottenham, a school belonging to the Society of Friends, of which his parents were members. Their second son was Alfred Tylor, the geologist [q.v.]. Entering his father's foundry at the age of sixteen, he was obliged in 1855 to abandon business and travel for the sake of his health. In a Havana omnibus he happened to make acquaintance in 1856 with the ethnologist, Henry Christy [q.v.], whom he thereupon accompanied on an expedition to Mexico. Here, under expert guidance, he found ample opportunity for developing a taste for archaeological and anthropological studies. In 1861 appeared his first book Anahuac, or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern, in which a spirited account is given of these travels. Four years later he established his reputation as a scientific student of human origins by the publication of Researches into the Early History of Mankind. But his fame rests chiefly on his next work, Primitive Culture, which first saw the light in 1871 and has since become known throughout the world as a classic. It is in these pages, for instance, that he elaborates the theory of animism with which his name will always be associated. His only other book was a useful manual, Anthropology, published in 1881. But many of his scattered articles are likewise of first-rate importance, such as a paper suggesting how a statistical method may be applied to the development of institutions (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1888).
Apart from his influence as a writer, Tylor's work as organizer and teacher helped greatly to secure for anthropology a place among the acknowledged sciences. Thus, he led the movement which resulted in the creation of an anthropological section of the British Association, and in 1884 acted as its first president. Again, the university of Oxford, which awarded him its D.C.L. as early as 1875, was repaid by services extending from 1883 until the final decline of his powers. He was appointed successively keeper of the university museum (1883), reader in anthropology (1884), and professor of anthropology (1896), being the first occupant of a chair in that subject at Oxford. On his retirement in 1909 he received the title of emeritus professor. That a school of anthropology flourishes at Oxford to-day is due to Tylor's pioneer efforts, whereby a subject which students of the humanities at first regarded with suspicion became gradually invested with a dignity corresponding to the personal eminence of its originator and chief exponent. Tylor was also elected the first Gifford lecturer at Aberdeen University in 1888, president of the Anthropological Society in 1891, and honorary fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1903. He was knighted in 1912. After his retirement from active work in Oxford he lived at Wellington, Somerset, where he died 2 January 1917.
The secret of Tylor's eminence lies in his infinite respect for facts. A stout Darwinian, he had all his master's patience in eliciting the universal from a multitude of particulars. With Tylor, as with Darwin, the facts seem almost of themselves to crystallize into generalizations. Yet, although building so solidly, Tylor had the literary art to make the whole construction appear graceful, because well-poised and simple in its lines. Such simplicity of design is matched by a simplicity and straightforwardness of expression which makes his writing intelligible to every educated reader. Dealing as he does with the thoughts and actions of primitive people, he eschews in his interpretations the language of the learned, deeming it more appropriate to describe such simple-mindedness, as it were, in terms of itself.
Tylor's genius, which is to say his power of divination, was shown by his ability to grasp the true scope and method of anthropology from the outset. As regards scope, he set himself to study the evolution of man from every side at once and together, comprising not only his body and its environing conditions but also his soul with all the activities issuing therefrom in the shape of language, religion, law, morality, and art. Tylor's own studies covered all this wide ground, embracing physical anthropology, ethnology, prehistorics, technology, social anthropology, and linguistics. That British anthropology retains its synthetic character to-day is largely owing to Tylor. As regards method, he realized from the first that the inward springs of human behaviour rather than its outward conditions afford the best clue to its history, and hence that a psychological method must be paramount. He was quite aware, however, that due weight must be given to outward conditions, and especially to those movements and clashings of peoples whereby culture is quasi-physically distributed through the world. Perhaps some of his psychological interpretations hardly took into sufficient account the effects of culture-contact; for, after all, his outlook was limited by the imperfections of the evidence then available. Even so, he must ever rank as a great seer—vir sublimis ingenii qui veluti ex rupe omnia circumspiciebat.
Tylor married in 1858 Anna, daughter of Sylvanus Fox, of Wellington, Somerset. There were no children of the marriage.
There is a portrait of Tylor by George Bonavia in the National Portrait Gallery, and another by W. E. Miller at Balliol College.
[Appreciation by Andrew Lang in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907; bibliography of his writings by B. W. Freire-Marreco, ibid.; personal knowledge.]