PREFACE By PROFESSOR A. R. RADCLIFFE-BROWN
Tune et amicitiam coeperunt jungere habentes Finitima inter se, nee laedere, nee violate. Non tamen omnimodis poterat concordia gigni; Sed bona, magnaque pars servabant foedera casti: Aut genus humanum jam turn foret omne peremptum, Nee potuisset adhuc perducere saecla propago.
LUCRETIUS.
comparative study of political institutions, with special -L reference to the simpler societies, is an important branch of social anthropology which has not yet received the attention it deserves. The publication of this volume affords an opportunity for a brief statement of the nature of that study as it is conceived by the Editors and myself.
The task of social anthropology, as a natural science of human society, is the systematic investigation of the nature of social institutions. The method of natural science rests always on the comparison of observed phenomena, and the aim of such comparison is by a careful examination of diversities to discover underlying uniformities. Applied to human societies the comparative method used as an instrument for inductive inference will enable us to discover the universal, essential, characters which belong to ail human societies, past, present, and future. The progressive achievement of knowledge of this kind must be the aim of all who believe that a veritable science of human society is possible and desirable.
But we cannot hope to pass directly from empirical observations to a knowledge of general sociological laws or principles. The attempt to proceed by this apparently easy method was what Bacon so rightly denounced a§ leading only to a false appearance of knowledge.1 The immense diversity of forms of human society must first be reduced to order by some sort of classification. By comparing societies one with another we have to discriminate and define different types. Thus the Australian aborigines were
1 Novum Organuniy I, civ.