186 LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY

In the field of Anthropology, Western Science had begun, before the
close of the eighteenth century,1 to bring to light 'laws of Nature'
governing the social, cultural, and spiritual life of surviving representa-
tives of Primitive Man who were still lying torpid—after an arduous
climb from a sub-human to a human level which it had taken their an-
cestors hundreds of thousands of years to accomplish—on a ledge from
which Man. in Process of Civilization had begun, within the last five to
six thousand years, to make a number of attempts to climb the cliff-face
above.2

The label 'Anthropology', that had been assigned to this science of
human affairs in the Yin-state into which the primitive societies had
latterly subsided, bore on its face the unintended yet psychologically
none the less significant implication that Man could only vindicate his
title to call himself human so long as he remained torpid, and that Man
in Process of Civilization had divested himself of his humanity in the act
of crying 'excelsior' and resuming Mankind's temporarily interrupted
ascent. In reality, however, it was impracticable for the science of
Anthropology to boycott the study of the civilizations, even if that had
been its intention, since, long before the enterprise of Civilization had
entered on its fifth or sixth millennium, the radiation of one or other of
the historical civilizations that had come and gone by that time had
penetrated, affected, and modified the social fabric and life of all primi-
tive societies that had survived the impact of this formidable parvenue
social force.3

As a consequence of these encounters with civilizations, to which the
primitive societies had been exposed in the course of their latter-day
sabbath rest, and through which an epilogue that was not of these primi-
tives' own making or choosing had been added to the closed dynamic
chapter of their history, it was impossible for latter-day Western anthro-
pologists to lay hands on any pure specimens of the primitive species of
human society that could be certified to be free from all social contamina-
tion by the radioactivity of some civilization or other; and the presence
of this tincture of Civilization in all the primitive social fabric that was
accessible to the anthropologists signified that, if the new science of
Anthropology had really been successful—as, admittedly, it had been4-—
in discovering 'laws of Nature' governing the surviving semi-primitive
or ex-primitive societies in the contaminated state in which these now
presented themselves, a scientific method of ascertaining laws of human
affairs that had thus justified itself empirically by proving to be valid in
this field of ex-primitive culture would also be, to say the least, a promis-
ing line of scientific attack upon the study of societies of the species,
known as civilizations, by which all the surviving primitive societies
studied by the anthropologists had been contaminated in some degree.
In a lull between two world wars, a pair of experienced students of sur-
viving primitive societies had deliberately applied the technique of
Anthropology to the study of contemporary life in a typical city in one

1 The classical pioneer work in the literature of the science of Anthropology was
Martin Dobritzhofer's (DobrizhofTer's) Historia de Abiponibut, Kquestri BttllicosAque
Paraquariae Nations (Vienna 1784, de Kurzbek, 3 vols.).

* See II. i. XQS-S. » See II, i. 187. 4 See I. i, 179.