Abstract
TWO problems, above all, have engaged the attention of thinking men, since man first began to think: the ‘riddle of the universe’ and the ‘meaning of history’. The study of each has come to have its proper technique and discipline. But central in one, and conspicuous in the field of the other, stands man himself: the ‘proper study of mankind’ is at the same time anthropology and literce humanissimce. Like the ‘man in the street’, with his guesses at ‘what we are and whence we came’, the anatomist, too, “cannot help puzzling over the behaviour of his fellows” and studies “the dead past of man and his strivings”, mummification, gold-quest, warfare, and the like, “as a means of interpreting the living present”.
Human History.
By G. Elliot Smith. Pp. 509. (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1930.) 21s. net.
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MYRES, J. Human History . Nature 127, 47–51 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/127047a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/127047a0
