At any rate, anthropology stands or falls with the working hypothesis, derived from Darwinism, of a fundamental kinship and continuity amid change between all the forms of human life.
It remains to add that, hitherto, anthropology has devoted most of its attention to the peoples of rude--that is to say, of simple--culture, who are vulgarly known to us as "savages." The main reason for this, I suppose, is that nobody much minds so long as the darwinizing kind of history confines itself to outsiders.

Only when it is applied to self and friends is it resented as an impertinence.
But, although it has always up to now pursued the line of least resistance, anthropology does not abate one jot or tittle of its claim to be the whole science, in the sense of the whole history, of man.
As regards the word, call it science, or history, or anthropology, or anything else--what does it matter?
As regards the thing, however, there can be no compromise.

We anthropologists are out to secure this: that there shall not be one kind of history for savages and another kind for ourselves, but the same kind of history, with the same evolutionary principle running right through it, for all men, civilized and savage, present and past.
* * * * * So much for the ideal scope of anthropology.

Now, in the second place, for its ideal limitations.

Here, I am afraid, we must touch for a moment on very deep and difficult questions.