Anthropology and the Humanities--on verbal grounds one might suppose
them coextensive; yet in practice they divide the domain of human
culture between them. The types of human culture are, in fact,
reducible to two, a simpler and a more complex, or, as we are wont to
say (valuing our own achievements, I doubt not, rightly), a lower and a
higher. By established convention Anthropology occupies itself solely
with culture of the simpler or lower kind. The Humanities, on the other
hand--those humanizing studies that, for us at all events, have their
parent source in the literatures of Greece and Rome--concentrate on
whatever is most constitutive and characteristic of the higher life of
society.
What, then, of phenomena of transition? Are they to be suffered to
form a no-man’s-land, a buffer-tract left purposely undeveloped,
lest, forsooth, the associates of barbarism should fall foul of the
friends of civilization? Plainly, in the cause of science, a pacific
penetration must be tolerated, nay, encouraged, from both sides at
once. Anthropology must cast forwards, the Humanities cast back. And
there is not the slightest reason (unless prejudice be accounted
reason) why conflict should arise between the interests thus led to
intermingle.
Indeed, how can there be conflict, when, as in the case of each
contributor to the present volume, the two interests in question,
Anthropology on this side and Classical Archaeology and Scholarship
on that, are the joint concern of one and the same man? Dr. Evans
both is a leading authority on prehistoric Europe, and likewise, by
restoring the Minoan age to the light of day, has set Greek history
in a new and juster perspective. Dr. Lang is an anthropologist of
renown, and no one, even amongst his peers, has enriched the science
with so many original and fertile hypotheses; nevertheless he has found
time (and for how much else has he found time as well!) not only to
translate Homer, but also to vindicate his very existence. Professor
Murray can turn his rare faculty of sympathetic insight now to the
reinterpretation of the music of Euripides, and now to the analysis of
the elemental forces that combine and crystallize in the Greek epic.
Principal Jevons is famous for his brilliant suggestions in regard
to the early history of religion; but he has also laboured in the
cause of European archaeology, and his edition of Plutarch’s _Romane
Questions_ is very precious to the student of classical antiquities.
Professor Myres, whilst he teaches Greek language and literature as the
modern man would have them taught, and is a learned archaeologist to
boot, yet can have no greater title to our respect than that, of many
devoted helpers, he did the most to organize an effective school of
Anthropology in the University of Oxford. Finally, Mr. Warde Fowler,
living embodiment as he is in the eyes of all his friends of the
Humaner Letters, both is the historian of the Graeco-Roman city-state,
and can wield the comparative method so as to extort human meaning from
ancient Rome’s stately, but somewhat soulless, rites. Unless, then,
dual personality of some dissociated and morbid type is to be
attributed to these distinguished men, they can scarcely fail, being
anthropologists and humanists at once, to carry on nicely concerted
operations from both sides of their subject, just as the clever
engineer can set to work on his tunnel from both sides of the mountain.
It is but fair to add, however, that in the present case the first move
has been made from the anthropological side. The six lectures composing
this volume were delivered during the Michaelmas Term of 1908, at the
instance of the Committee for Anthropology, which from the outset of
its career has kept steadily in view the need of inducing classical
scholars to study the lower culture as it bears upon the higher.
Anthropology, to be sure, must often divert its attention to lines of
development branching off in many a direction from the track of advance
that leads past Athens and Rome. For us, however, and consequently
for our science, the latter remains the central and decisive path of
social evolution. In short, the general orientation of Anthropology, it
would seem, must always be towards the dawn of what Lecky so happily
describes as ‘the European epoch of the human mind’.
Lastly, a word may be said in explanation of the title chosen.
‘Anthropology and the Classics’ is exactly suited to express that
conjunction of interests of which mention has already been made--the
conjunction so perfectly exemplified by the life-work of each
contributor to the volume. But some myopic critic might contend that,
however well fitted to indicate the scope of the work as a whole, the
title hardly applies to this or that essay taken by itself. It surely
matters little if this be so; yet is it so? Dr. Evans’s lecture is
introductory. To gather impetus for our imaginative leap into the
classical period we start, it is true, from the cave-man, but have
already crossed the threshold in arriving at the Cretan. Homer, Hesiod,
Herodotus--the claims of these to rank as classics are not likely to
be assailed. There remain the Roman subjects, magic and lustration. In
what sense are they classical? Now, to use the language of biology,
whereas Greek literature is congenital, Roman literature is in large
part acquired. Therefore it includes no ‘songs before sunrise’; for
it the ‘father of history’ cannot be born again. Spirit no less than
form is an importation. In particular, the magico-religious beliefs
of Latium have lost their hold on the imitator of Greece and the
Orient. Yet primal nature will out; and the Romans, moreover, were a
pious people who loved to dwell on their _origines_. To appreciate the
greatest of Latin classics, Virgil--to glance no further afield--one
must at least have gained the right to greet him as fellow-antiquary.
For the rest, these essays profess to be no more than _vindemiatio
prima_, a first gleaning. When the harvest has been fully gathered in,
it will then be time to say, in regard to the classics both of Greece
and of Rome, how far the old lives on in the new, how far what the
student in his haste is apt to label ‘survival’ stands for a force
still tugging at the heart-strings of even the most sophisticated and
lordly heir of the ages.