![]() ![]() We must, so far as we can, reconstruct the actual history of mankind, before we can hope to discover the laws underlying that history. Thus we have come to understand that before we can build up the theory of the growth of all human culture, we must know the growth of cultures that we find here and there among the most primitive tribes of the Arctic, of the deserts of Australia, and of the impenetrable forests of South America and the progress of the civilization of antiquity and of our own times. We see that the growth of human culture manifests itself in the growth of each special culture. We are still searching for the laws that govern the growth of human culture, of human thought but we recognize the fact that before we seek for what is common to all culture, we must analyze each culture by careful and exact methods, as the geologist analyzes the succession and order of deposits, as the biologist examines the forms of living matter. Our aim has not changed, but our method must change. ![]() We recognize that these are no less important than their similarities, and the value of detailed studies becomes apparent. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. does it not appear from phaenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite space, as it were in his Sensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly by their immediate presence to himself.Īnthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. What is there in places almost empty of Matter, and whence is it that the Sun and Planets gravitate towards one another, without dense Matter between them? Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain and whence arises all that Order and Beauty which we see in the World?. Later Philosophers banish the Consideration of such a Cause out of natural Philosophy, feigning Hypotheses for explaining all things mechanically, and referring other Causes to Metaphysicks: Whereas the main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phaenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the World, but chiefly to resolve these and such like Questions. ![]() And for rejecting such a Medium, we have the Authority of those the oldest and most celebrated Philosophers of Greece and Phoenicia, who made a Vacuum, and Atoms, and the Gravity of Atoms, the first Principles of their Philosophy tacitly attributing Gravity to some other Cause than dense Matter. ![]()
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