Without constant help from the philologist, anthropology is bound to languish.

To thoroughly understand the speech of the people under investigation is the field-worker's master-key; so much so, that the critic's first question in determining the value of an ethnographical work must always be, Could the author talk freely with the natives in their own tongue?
But how is the study of particular languages to be pursued successfully, if it lack the stimulus and inspiration which only the search for general principles can impart to any branch of science?
To relieve the hack-work of compiling vocabularies and grammars, there must be present a sense of wider issues involved, and such issues as may directly interest a student devoted to language for its own sake.

The formal method of investigating language, in the meantime, can hardly supply the needed spur.

Analysis is all very well so long as its ultimate purpose is to subserve genesis--that is to say, evolutionary history.

If, however, it tries to set up on its own account, it is in danger of degenerating into sheer futility.