Esoteric Buddhists, _Satanistes_,
Occultists, Christian Scientists, Spiritualists, and Astrologers, as the
Arkites and Lost Tribesmen haunted the cradle of anthropology.

But there was found at last to be reason in the thing, and method in the
madness. Evolution was in it. The acceptance, after long ridicule, of
palaeolithic weapons as relics of human culture, probably helped to bring
Anthropology within the sacred circle of permitted knowledge. Her topic
was full of illustrations of the doctrine of Mr. Darwin. Modern writers on
the theme had been anticipated by the less systematic students of the
eighteenth century--Goguet, de Brosses, Millar, Fontenelle, Lafitau,
Boulanger, or even Hume and Voltaire. As pioneers these writers answer to
the early mesmerists and magnetists, Puysegur, Amoretti, Ritter,
Elliotson, Mayo, Gregory, in the history of Psychical Research. They
were on the same track, in each case, as Lubbock, Tylor, Spencer,
Bastian, and Frazer, or as Gurney, Richet, Myers, Janet, Dessoir, and Von
Schrenck-Notzing. But the earlier students were less careful of method and
evidence.

Evidence! that was the stumbling block of anthropology. We still hear, in
the later works of Mr. Max Mueller, the echo of the old complaints.
Anything you please, Mr. Max Mueller says, you may find among your useful
savages, and (in regard to some anthropologists) his criticism is just.
You have but to skim a few books of travel, pencil in hand, and pick out
what suits your case. Suppose, as regards our present theme, your theory
is that savages possess broken lights of the belief in a Supreme Being.
You can find evidence for that. Or suppose you want to show that they have
no religious ideas at all; you can find evidence for that also. Your
testimony is often derived from observers ignorant of the language of the
people whom they talk about, or who are themselves prejudiced by one or
other theory or bias. How can you pretend to raise a science on such
foundations, especially as the savage informants wish to please or to
mystify inquirers, or they answer at random, or deliberately conceal their
most sacred institutions, or have never paid any attention to the subject?

To all these perfectly natural objections Mr. Tylor has replied.[1]
Evidence must be collected, sifted, tested, as in any other branch of
inquiry. A writer, 'of course, is bound to use his best judgment as to
the trustworthiness of all authors he quotes, and, if possi