E-Book Content
Franz Boas
TWENTIETH CENTURY LIBRARY HIRAM HAYDN,
EDITOR
Published:
FRANZ BOAS
by Melville J. Herskovits by Haridas T. Muzumdar OSWALD SPENGLER by H. Stuart Hughes SIGMUND FREUD by Gregory Zilboorg JOHN DEWEY by Jerome Nathanson
MAHATMA GANDHI
JAMES JOYCE by W. Y Tindall CHARLES DARWIN by Paul B. Sears ALBERT EINSTEIN by Leopold Infeld
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW by Edmund Fuller FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY by Rene Fueloep-MiUer WILLIAM JAMES by Lloyd Morris THORSTEIN VEBLEN by David Riesman
In Preparation:
KARL MARX by Max Lerner ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD by Stanley Newburger HENRI POINCARE by Tobias Dantzig JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES by Seymour Harris FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
by James Gutmann
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MELVILLE
J.
HERSKOVITS
Franz Boas THE SCIENCE OF MAN IN THE MAKING
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S CHARLES SCRIBNER'S
SONS,
NEW YORK
SONS, LTD.,
1953
LONDON
v 1953, BY SCI^IS ^ER/S SO3STS
IPrinted in the
&&
United States of
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a
A
arty
form
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance given me in the preparation of this work by the staff of Deering Library, Northwestern University, where the Boas reprint collection is
housed; to Mr. Albert C. Gerould, Librarian of Clark University, for making available the rare copies of early catalogues of that
when Boas taught there; to Mr. Macmillan Company, New York, for
institution, covering the years
Henry McCurdy
of the
sending to me the Mind of Primitive
Man, and
file
of reviews of the second edition of Boas' of his Race,
Language and Culture;
Alexander Lesser, Executive Director of the Association on Indian Affairs, with whom I was able to check my impressions concerning Boas' participation in programs of action having to do with the American Indian. M. J. H.
and
to Dr.
Evanston, Illinois 7 November, 1952
CONTENTS I.
FROM THE COLOR OF WATER TO THE STUDY OF
MAN
1
MAN, THE BIOLOGICAL ORGANISM
25
HI.
MAN, THE CULTURE-BUILDING ANIMAL
46
IV.
MAN, THE CREATOR
73
H.
V.
THE SCIENTIST AS CITIZEN
102
APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE
123
CHRONOLOGY
127
SELECTIVE INDEX
129
Boas
CHAPTER ONE
FROM THE COLOR OF WATER TO THE STUDY OF MAN
the 20th of June, 1883, the schooner Germania, a veteran of the polar seas, sailed once more from Hamburg, bound for the far north. In 1869-70 she had transported an expedition to East Greenland, and in 1882 the personnel of a German polar station had travelled in her. Now she was return-
ON
ing, to bring these men home after their long winter's isolation. this time she carried a young physicist-geographer and his
And
on
Cumberland Sound. physicist-geographer was Franz Boas, and his trip was to have consequences far beyond its immediate objective of geographical exploration. For in the hard Arctic winter he was to spend with the Eskimos, Boas was to discover values in their personalities and ways of life that constituted a challenge he would devote the rest of his life to meeting. servant,
their
way
to
The young
Three years
after his return, he wrote this paragraph: After a long and intimate intercourse with the Eskimo, it was with feelings of sorrow and regret that I parted from my Arctic friends. I had seen that they enjoyed life, and a hard life, as we do; that nature is also b