The Anthropologist Respects History, But He Does

Just As The Individual Is Not Alone In The Group, Nor Anyone In Society Alone Among The Others, So Man Is Not Alone In The Universe.

Objects Are What Matter. Only They Carry The Evidence That Throughout The Centuries Something Really Happened Among Human Beings.

While I Complain Of Being Able To Glimpse No More Than The Shadow Of The Past, I May Be Insensitive To Reality As It Is Taking Shape At This Very Moment, Since I Have Not Reached The Stage Of Development At Which I Would Be Capable Of Perceiving It. A Few Hundred Years Hence, In This Same Place, Another Traveller, As Despairing As Myself, Will Mourn The Disappearance Of What I Might Have Seen, But Failed To See.

The Dogma Of Cultural Relativism Is Challenged By The Very People For Whose Moral Benefit The Anthropologists Established It In The First Place. The Complaint The Underdeveloped Countries Advance Is Not That They Are Being Westernized, But That The Westernization Is Proceeding Too Slowly.

In The Old Days, People Used To Risk Their Lives In India Or In The Americas In Order To Bring Back Products Which Now Seem To Us To Have Been Of Comically Little Worth, Such As Brazilwood And Pepper, Which Added A New Range Of Sense Experience To A Civilization Which Had Never Suspected Its Own Insipidity... From These Same Lands Our Modern Marco Polos Now Bring Back The Moral Spices Of Which Our Society Feels An Increasing Need As It Is Conscious Of Sinking Further Into Boredom, But That This Time They Take The Form Of Photographs, Books, And Travelers Tales.