But I Soon
Found This Was Very Far From Being The Case.
His idea is a true key
to a certain quantity of facts, but in West Africa only to a limited
quantity.
I do not say, do not read Ethnology - by all means do so; and above
all things read, until you know it by heart, Primitive Culture, by
Dr. E. B. Tylor, regarding which book I may say that I have never
found a fact that flew in the face of the carefully made, broad-
minded deductions of this greatest of Ethnologists. In addition you
must know your Westermarck on Human Marriage, and your Waitz
Anthropologie, and your Topinard - not that you need expect to go
measuring people's skulls and chests as this last named authority
expects you to do, for no self-respecting person black or white
likes that sort of thing from the hands of an utter stranger, and if
you attempt it you'll get yourself disliked in West Africa. Add to
this the knowledge of all A. B. Ellis's works; Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy; Pliny's Natural History; and as much of Aristotle as
possible. If you have a good knowledge of the Greek and Latin
classics, I think it would be an immense advantage; an advantage I
do not possess, for my classical knowledge is scrappy, and in place
of it I have a knowledge of Red Indian dogma: a dogma by the way
that seems to me much nearer the African in type than Asiatic forms
of dogma.
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