The extreme representative of the diffusionist school, Graebner, maintains that all the regularities of cultural process are "laws of mental life" and that "their scientific and methodical study is possible only from the psychological point of view" (Graebner, p. 582, 1923), while Pater Schmidt, Wissler, Lowie, Kroeber and Rivers constantly use psychological interpretations. Thus, no anthropologist nowadays wishes completely to eliminate the study of mental processes, but both those who apply psychological ex planations from the outset and those who want to use them after culture has been "historically analysed" forget that interpretation of culture in terms of individual psychology is as fruitless as mere historical analysis; and that to dissociate the studies of mind, of society and of culture, is to foredoom the results.
The Distribution, Contact and Diffusion of Culture.—As influential and one-sided as the psychological trend is the inter pretation of similarities and analogies of culture by the principle of mechanical transmission. First vigorously propounded by Ratzel as the main problem of ethnology, the study of distribu tion and diffusion has been followed up by Frobenius, Ankermann, Graebner, Pater W. Schmidt, Pater Koppers and subsequently by the late Dr. Rivers. In England Prof. Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry have carried the diffusionist argument even farther, deriving all culture the world over from Egypt.
The merit of moderate anthropological diffusionism lies in its geographical rather than in its historical contributions. As a i survey of facts correlated to their geographical substratum, it is a valuable method of bringing out the influence of physical habitat as well as the possibilities of cultural transmission. The distri butions mapped out for America by Boas, Spinden, Lowie, Wissler, Kroeber, Rivet and Nordenskiold ; the survey of Mel anesian cultures given by Graebner ; of Australian provinces given by W. Schmidt ; of Africa prepared by Ankermann and Hersko vits, will possess lasting value.
The historical hypotheses of Frobenius, Rivers, Schmidt and Graebner, the sweeping identifications of "culture complexes" all over the globe, will not so easily pass muster They suffer from a lifeless and inorganic view of culture and treat it as a thing which can be preserved in cold storage for centuries, transported across oceans and continents, mechanically taken to pieces and recompounded. Historical reconstructions within limited areas, such as have been done upon American material for instance, in so far as they are based on definite records or on archaeological evidence, give results which can be empirically verified, and therefore are of scientific value. Dr. B. Laufer's study on the
potter's wheel and certain contributions to the history of American culture (T. A. Joyce, A. V. Kiddler, N. C. Nelson, H. J. Spinden, L. Spier) are methodologically acceptable, though they belong to archaeology rather than to the science of living races and cultures. Such sound works must be clearly distinguished from the pro ductions in which a conjectural history is invented ad hoc in order to account for actual and observable fact, in which there fore the known and empirical is "explained" by the imaginary and unknowable.
Sociological Theories of Culture.—Robertson Smith is un doubtedly the spiritual father of this movement. He was the first to see that religion must be accounted for quite as much by its social nature, by what it does for tribal cohesion, as by its mean ing and value for the individual. The great American Anthro pologists, Powell and Morgan, also contributed toward our under standing of clan solidarity in savage societies. Durkheim, inspired by their work as well as by that of Bachofen, Wilken and Sir James Frazer, developed a sociological theory of early culture. Kohler and the school of comparative jurisprudence in Germany, Steinmetz in Holland and later, Rivers in England, also studied primitive society from the sociological point of view, overem phasising perhaps the solidarity of and the lack of differentiation within the early horde and clan. The doctrine of primitive legal cohesion and of social structure by direct solidarity given by Durkheim, Steinmetz and Kohler; the subtle and stimulating in terpretation of primitive magic, sacrifice and religion by Durk heim, Hubert and Mauss; the recent analysis of contract and gift by Mauss and Davy, show an enormous advance upon any previous work in the greater precision of concepts, in the con sistent application of the sociological interpretation, in the con scious attempt to preserve native classification, nomenclature and perspective. It is impossible to adopt these views unre servedly because they tend to lapse into metaphysical vagueness. In order to avoid the explanation of culture in terms of individual mental processes, yet fully aware that psychology cannot be ex cluded, these anthropologists compromise by introducing the conception of collective consciousness, which sociologists and anthropologists alike (Ginsberg, Maclver, Radin) have shown to be untenable. The sociological school exaggerates the social nature of primitive man, the importance of the clan and the solidarity of kinship. They neglect the role of individual initiative and variation, the part played by self-interest and the institution of the individual family.