28 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s. t 22, 1920
been advanced to account for the differences of the various types of man "as he has come to be." 1 The upshot of the author's critique is that
it has not seemed necessary to the exponents of these views to show how the factors described could have produced the differences which we see around us (p. ii).
In view of the tenacity with which the so-called economic in- terpretation of history still possesses the mind of man (as he has come to be), the author's censure on Marx's doctrine is particularly welcome; " He [Marx] neither considered the entire field of economic activity in modern life," writes Dr. Teggart, "nor the conditions of labor in any other than the capitalistic form of society;" and again: "this theory ... is based upon a limited view of the facts, and represents the projection of a single factor upon the complexity of human experience" (pp. 16-17). Follows a brief discussion and critique of the concept of progress, which is as unusual as it is just, leading up to this categorical statement:
If we look a little further, it will be to discover that human history is not unitary, but pluralistic; that what we are given is not one history, but many; and, that the concept of 'progress' is arrived at by the maintenance of a Europocentric tradition and the elimination from consideration of the activities of all peoples whose civilization does not at once appear as contributory to our own (p. 24).
Rather than
to create narratives based upon the selection of events which seem to us of im- portance in view of some unverified theory of progress,
the author recommends that we
compare these several histories [of different peoples] with the object of ascertain- ing what it is they hold in common (p. 25).
From this point on to the end of the first chapter the discussion takes us right to the kernel of the author's conception. Human history is here put on a level with
other fields of history, such as astronomy, geology and biology (p. 26), [for] it comes to be seen that historical method is the same whatever the history in- vestigated whether that of the stellar universe, of the earth, of the forms of life upon the earth, or of man (p. 33).
1 It must all along be remembered that "man" throughout this discussion often stands for "civilization," in its material as well as psychic manifestations.
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