Ethnische Elementargedanken in der Lehre vom Menschen

Abstract

PROFESSOR BASTIAN has here added to his numerous works on ethnology what must be regarded as, in some sense, the crown of the edifice he has spent his life in rearing. It is an attempt to trace out the elementary ideas of mankind. For long ages every historical people, shut up within a very limited area, both physically and mentally, when inquiring through its foremost thinkers into the mental constitution of the race, had no other means of finding an answer to its questions than an analysis of the individual mind. The philosopher examined his own consciousness, forgetful that it was the consciousness of an individual in an advanced stage of civilisation, and that what might seem to him elementary, from his familiarity and the familiarity of those with whom he came into contact with it from earliest years, might really be the result of long development, or an amalgam of numerous, perhaps but slightly related, ideas. The results, therefore, of his inquiries were shifting, uncertain, in many cases absolutely untrue. And, when he came to apply those results objectively to the society in which he found himself, still greater uncertainties and divergencies of course followed. What was needed, was an external means of checking and comparing the conclusions arrived at from time to time. For want of this, the conclusions themselves remained without practical influence, or (especially, it may be added, when applied to social and political organisations) became positively disastrous. Man did not really know himself; and thinking that he did not he often committed great and deplorable blunders.

Ethnische Elementargedanken in der Lehre vom Menschen.

By A. Bastian. 2 vols. pp. xvi + 314; xlv + 224. (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1895.)