would plan, design, and calculate without reference to
scientific physics and mathematics, so also in political
action, reason and experience must be given the fullest
play.

Our modern civilization is perhaps now facing its
final destruction. We are careful to use only the most
qualified specialists in all mechanical engineering.
Yet as regards the control of political, social, and
moral forces, we Europeans are yielding more and more
to madmen, fanatics, and gangsters. A tremendous
arraignment of force, controlled by individuals without
a sense of responsibility or any moral obligation to keep
faith is accumulating on the one side of the dividing
line. On the other side, where wealth, power, and
effectives could still be made overwhelmingly strong,
we have had during the last few years a consistent and
progressive display of weakness, lack of unity, and a
gradual whittling down of the sense of honour and of
the sanctity of obligations undertaken.

I have read Dr. Fei's clear and convincing arguments
as well as his vivid and well-documented accounts
with genuine admiration, at times not untinged with
envy. His book embodies many of the precepts and
principles which I have been preaching for some time
past, without, alas, having the opportunity of practising
them myself. Most of us forward-looking anthro-
pologists have felt impatient with our own work for its
remoteness, exoticism, and irrelevancy--though per-
haps these may be more apparent than real. But
there is no doubt that my own confession that "Anthro-
pology, to me at least, was a romantic escape from our
over-standardized culture," was essentially true.

The remedy, however, is at hand. If I may be
allowed to quote some of my other reflections, "the
progress of anthropology towards a really effective
analytic science of human society, of human conduct,
and of human nature, cannot be staved off." To
achieve this, however, the science of man has first

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