Edward B.
Tylor
Author(s): Robert H. Lowie
Source: American Anthropologist , Apr. - Jun., 1917, New Series, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Apr. -
Jun., 1917), pp. 262-268
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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EDWARD B. TYLOR
BY ROBERT H. LOWIE
E DWARD B. TYLOR, who died on January 2, 1917, at the
age of eighty-four, had long been an historic personality.
He loomed up as one of the very last figures rooted in the
heroic age of nineteenth century science, as the peer and comrade
in arms of Wallace, Huxley, and Spencer. The dean of ethnologists
for two score years, he represented his science before students of
other branches of knowledge and, thanks to the high literary
quality of his style, before the cultured laity as well. He was read
and cited by psychologist and historian, biologist and philosopher,
by every one interested in the ways and thoughts of primitive man.
And while the circle of his influence widened, he retained the pro-
found and growing respect of his professional colleagues. Even
with the irreverent group of American fieldworkers who turn up
their noses at the classical school of ethnologists his prestige remains
undiminished and their allegiance is of the kind he himself advo-
cated,-no slavish acceptance of tenets but a following of methods
"through better evidence to higher ends."
Edward Burnett Tylor was born at Camberwell on October 2,
1832, and educated at Grove House School, Tottenham. After a
brief business career he traveled for several years and in 1856
visited Mexico in the company of Henry Christy, an anthropologist
to whose personal stimulation he pays a generous tribute in the
second edition of the Researches. The American trip led to Tylor's
first publication, a book on Anahuac; or Mexico and the Mexicans
(1861). Several years later appeared the Researches into the Early
History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization (1865).
This work laid the foundation of his professional fame, which
reached its acme in 1871 with the publication of Primitive Culture:
Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion,
Language, Art, and Custom. In 1881 he wrote a most serviceable
262
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LOWIE] EDWARD B. TYLOR 263
textbook on Anthropology- an In
Civilization.
Though not a university graduate, Tylor became connected with
Oxford, both in the capacity of keeper of the University Museum
and as a lecturer, being "reader in anthropology" from 1884-1895
and "professor" from 1895-1909, when he became an emeritus.
Of the numerous honors conferred on him only two need be men-
tioned here. He was elected to a fellowship by the Royal Society
in 1871 and knighted in 1912. A volume of Anthropological Essays
presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in honor of his Seventy-fifth
Birthday bore testimony to the regard of his fellow-workers. The
bibliography concluding that volume indicates the extraordinary
number of smaller and scattered contributions that fell from his
pen in the course of years, and we learn with deep regret that a great
work he had been preparing for many years was never published,
which was also the fate of his ten Gifford lectures on Natural
Religion, delivered at Aberdeen in 1889-1890.'
The most obvious feature that distinguishes Tylor's work from
that of his English contemporaries and successors is the universality
of his ethnological interests. Others, like Lang and Frazer, were
predominantly occupied with sociological and religious problems
Tylor's vision embraced, to cite his own definition of culture,
that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, cus
tom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member
of society.
He was equally attracted by the description of a Malagasy bellows
and by an account of the South American couvade, by the process
of stone-boiling and by solar mythology.
In Tylor's attitude towards the immense mass of concrete fact
with which his versatility brought him into contact a distinctive
psychological trait is manifest-his intuitive sense of fitness. We
must recall the character of the data available when he commenced
his life work-the hodge-podge of imperfect observation and pro-
1 The biographical data are taken from Lang's sketch in the anniversary volume
cited above and from Professor Haddon's obituary notice in Nature (Jan. II, 1917),
p. 373.
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264 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. S., 19, 1917
vincial bias with which he was obliged to deal in order
the mere facts. To be sure, there was excellent materia
like Cranz, Sahagun, or Callaway. But even the most r
of the older writers were prone to state as fact what was
crude misinformation at second-hand or crude misinterp
due to the colored spectacles of European civilization. W
we say when we find Burton declaring that the Arapaho
so scanty a vocabulary that they could hardly converse
another in the dark when gestures were invisible, or Bake
any form of religion to the aborigines of the Upper Nile
In the evaluation of such utterances Tylor showed an almost
unerring instinct, all the more commendable since many of the
wild statements of this type would have fitted admirably into that
general evolutionary scheme of the universe which he himself was
helping to develop.
This critical judgment was apparent in the discussion of problems
as well as in the weighing of travelers' accounts, but here the result
was not so uniformly satisfactory. Indeed, the question obtrudes
itself, whether Tylor's famous caution was not sometimes con-
formity to a scientific ethical ideal of fairness in discussion rather
than a trait inherent in his mental make-up. He certainly carried
the judicial weighing of pros and cons to an exceptional degree.
On re-reading the Researches into the Early History of Mankind,
I can understand Wallace's irritation at its indecisiveness and
Lubbock's misunderstanding of the argument as to the sing
origin or independent development of the couvade. But whatever
formal hedging there may be in the marshaling of arguments, t
conclusion sometimes appears as a thunderbolt out of a blue sk
as when historical connection is used to interpret the existence i
remote areas of the cure by extracting pathogenic agents from t
patient's body.
This illustration, however, brings up a topic which shows Tyl
to the greatest possible advantage in historical perspective. Thou
certainly a strong believer in the independent evolution of cultu
phenomena in distinct areas of the globe, he was very much aliv
to the influence of diffusion. In the Introduction to the Engl
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LOWIE] EDWARD B. TYLOR 265
translation of Ratzel's History of Ma
part of art and custom which any
adapted for themselves" with "the
acquired by adopting from foreign
their own circumstances." Indeed,
he goes much further than at all events modern American eth-
nologists are inclined to follow. The case of cure by suction has
already been cited, while another chapter of the same book pre-
figures in principle the recent hypothesis of a cultural connection
between aboriginal America and the Old World. Whatever we
may think of particular interpretations offered by Tylor, the tradi-
tionial American conception of him as merely an evolutionist of the
classical school is ridiculously false. His suggestive and indeed
conclusive discussion of the Malagasy iron technique alone suffices
to show what a valuable tool he sometimes made of the principle
of historical connection.
Nevertheless, it remains true that Tylor's name will always be
most prominently connected with the doctrine of evolution. In
this context it is very cheap to assume an unhistorically critical
attitude. We must recollect that just as he had to sift the chaotic
mass of ethnographic observations in order to extract the actual
facts so in the interpretation of culture history he had to contend
with a powerful, theologically inspired theory of degeneration
against which the principle of progressive evolution had to be
established and defended. To have accomplished this task so
effectively is in itself no mean achievement to Tylor's credit.
But Tylor further enriched the doctrine of cultural evolution by
the development of a definite and elaborate scheme for the subject
of religion. To enter into a discussion of this theory of animism is
out of the question within the limits of this notice. Suffice it to
say that as presented in Primitive Culture it remains, in spite of all
criticism, the most impressive theory of primitive religion yet
advanced.
To philosophical ethnology Tylor contributed the concept o
survivals and the intimately associated method of "adhesions"
outlined in his ever memorable paper "On a Method of Investigatin
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266 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. S., 19, 1917
the Development of Institutions; Applied to the Laws of M
and Descent," which was presented to the Anthropologica
in November, 1888, and published in vol. xvII[ (1889) of its
It must be reckoned a distinct loss to science that the com
data on which this lecture was based were never published. The
fundamental idea is the application of statistical methods to the
data of ethnography. If two or more cultural traits are repeatedly
found in association, are we dealing with a chance combination or
is there an organic correlation? Tylor compares the number of
times such combinations might be expected to occur on the doctrine
of probabilities if each feature were independent of the others with
the number of occurrences empirically found, and where the latter
is clearly in excess he infers a causal connection. In this manner,
e. g., he establishes a functional relationship between the exogamous
dual organization and the classificatory systems of kinship termin-
ology, between the parent-in-law taboo and matrilocal residence,
and between the couvade and a mixed maternal-paternal organiza-
tion.
The very idea of introducing into a branch of knowledge that
is so often the happy hunting-ground of the curiosity-seeking
dilettante something of the rigor of the exact sciences is one of
wellnigh unparalleled magnificence. Nothing that Tylor ever did
serves so decisively to lift him above the throng of his fellow-workers.
Without that paper he might have ranked as a sort of super-Lang
or super-Frazer-more universal in his grasp than either, more
serious and erudite than the one, far more trustworthy in his
judgment than the other. But the paper on Method raises him at
once into an entirely different category of intellectual being.
In the appraisal of this contribution several points should be
considered separately. In the first place, quite apart from the
main argument, Tylor here first conceptualized certain phenomena
which have since loomed more or less prominently in ethnographic
literature, viz., teknonymy and cross-cousin marriage. Secondly,
he was fully aware of the fact that it is one thing to establish the
mere fact that two features are causally related and quite another
to determine the reason for the association. The former is by far
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LOWIE] EDWARD B. TYLOR 267
the more important methodologicall
be advanced against Tylor's specifi
the correlation does not affect the core of the method. This like-
wise remains valid even if we reject the evolutionary interpretation
which Tylor gave to certain of his observed correlations. Finding
no instances of the couvade among matrilineal tribes, twenty cases
among peoples with a mixed system, and eight in patrilineal
communities, Tylor not only inferred that the institution had
originated in the mixed system and dwindled away with paternal
descent but also that this established the priority of matrilineal
descent. Obviously, this conclusion does not follow from the
empirical facts of correlation but already involves the acceptance
of a unilinear scheme of evolution.
The essential objection to Tylor's paper, as pointed out in the
oral discussion by Galton and Flower, rests on his neglect of dif-
fusion. If the same combination recurs a hundred times among
tribes that have had no historical connection, we have indeed
established a rule of organic correlation; but if the combination
has been disseminated from a single point of origin there is no
means of proving that we are dealing with more than a mere chance
association. We in America who accept diffusion to a considerable
extent but at the same time admit independent development are
confronted with the fact that exactly the same usages are found in
remote regions of the globe between which any connection remains
unproved. On the other hand, these similarities do seem to go hand
in hand with certain other similarities, with which therefore they
seem to be functionally related. This means that where one of
the traits occurs, we can legitimately infer its one-time association
with the correlated trait. We must insist against Tylor that the
particular tribe in question may have borrowed the feature isolated
from its old context; but to assert that such a correlation as that
between the avunculate and a matrilineal organization is due to
sheer chance is ridiculous, more so than the wildest Graebnerism,
which at least does not blink at the observed fact of complete
cultural identity. The best evidence for such an organic correlation
seems to me to have been advanced in the field of kinship nomencla-
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268 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. S., 19, 1917
ture, where Tylor himself established the relation of t
ficatory system with exogamy. But the method is app
an ir.definite number of similar problems, and ethnologis
well to turn to Tylor's extraordinarily stimulating and
mode of investigation.
Over and above his specific contributions, Tylor had
vision of the place of ethnology in modern civilization. Th
of primitive life were to him not mere specimens for a mu
psychological oddities nor was he altogether satisfied w
them as bricks for a theory of 'cultural development. Bey
academic aspects he maintained that "such research has
tical side, as a source of power destined to influence the c
modern ideas and actions." The sight of mankind painfully
through the ages from the crude fist hatchet to modern te
must inspire active endeavor to add to the heritage of
But ethnology also reveals in modern law, ethics, and t
innumerable survivals from primitive savagery, which it m
for destruction, being in Tylor's own words "essentially a re
science."
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY,
NEW YORK CITY
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