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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- ‘The Comparative Study of Ghost Stories’, Nineteenth Century (April 1885)
- ‘Superstition and Fact’, Contemporary Review (December 1893)
- ‘Preface to the Second Edition’, Cock Lane and Common Sense, 2nd edition
- ‘Anthropology and Religion’ II, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
‘Anthropology and Religion’ II, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
from 5 - ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- ‘The Comparative Study of Ghost Stories’, Nineteenth Century (April 1885)
- ‘Superstition and Fact’, Contemporary Review (December 1893)
- ‘Preface to the Second Edition’, Cock Lane and Common Sense, 2nd edition
- ‘Anthropology and Religion’ II, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
Summary
Among the various forms of science which are reaching and affecting the new popular tradition, we have reckoned Anthropology. Pleasantly enough, Anthropology has herself but recently emerged from that limbo of the unrecognised in which Psychical Research is pining. The British Association used to reject anthropological papers as ‘vain dreams based on travellers’ tales.’ No doubt the British Association would reject a paper on clairvoyance as a vain dream based on old wives’ fables, or on hysterical imposture. Undeniably the study of such themes is hampered by fable and fraud, just as anthropology has to be ceaselessly on its guard against ‘travellers’ tales,’ against European misunderstandings of savage ideas, and against civilised notions and scientific theories unconsciously read into barbaric customs, rites, traditions, and usages. Man, ondoyant et divers, is the subject alike of anthropology and of psychical research. Man (especially savage man) cannot be secluded from disturbing influences, and watched, like the materials of a chemical experiment in a laboratory. Nor can man be caught in a ‘primitive’ state: his intellectual beginnings lie very far behind the stage of culture in which we find the lowest known races. Consequently the matter on which anthropology works is fluctuating; the evidence on which it rests needs the most sceptical criticism, and many of its conclusions, in the necessary absence of historical testimony as to times far behind the lowest known savages, must be hypothetical.
For these sound reasons official science long looked askance on Anthropology. Her followers were not regarded as genuine scholars, and, perhaps as a result of this contempt, they were often ‘broken men,’ intellectual outlaws, people of one wild idea. To the scientific mind, anthropologists or ethnologists were a horde who darkly muttered of serpent worship, phallus worship, Arkite doctrines, and the Ten Lost Tribes that kept turning up in the most unexpected places. Anthropologists were said to gloat over dirty rites of dirty savages, and to seek reason where there was none. The exiled, the outcast, the pariah of Science, is, indeed, apt to find himself in odd company. Round the camp-fire of Psychical Research too, in the unofficial, unstaked waste of Science, hover odd, menacing figures of Esoteric Buddhists, Satanistes, Occultists, Christian Scientists, Spiritualists, and Astrologers, as the Arkites and Lost Tribesmen haunted the cradle of anthropology.
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- Information
- The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Selected Writings of Andrew LangAnthropology, Fairy Tale, Folklore, The Origins of Religion, Psychical Research, pp. 246 - 252Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015