What could be more stupefying than to shut yourself up in a closet and swallow your own gas?
But is it any less stupefying to shut yourself up within the last few thousand years of the history of your own corner of the world, and suck in the stale atmosphere of its own self-generated prejudices?
Or, to vary the metaphor, anthropology is like travel.
Every one starts by thinking that there is nothing so perfect as his own parish.

But let a man go aboard ship to visit foreign parts, and, when he returns home, he will cause that parish to wake up.
With Darwin, then, we anthropologists say: Let any and every portion of human history be studied in the light of the whole history of mankind, and against the background of the history of living things in general.
It is the Darwinian outlook that matters.

None of Darwin's particular doctrines will necessarily endure the test of time and trial.

Into the melting-pot must they go as often as any man of science deems it fitting.

But Darwinism as the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin can hardly pass away.