ABSTRACT
The anthropologist works on genealogies, sifts and winnows data, delves into the technicalities of adjustments in kinship terminology and discovers principles. In the process, the day-to-day existence in the camp with its play of temperament, the foraging for food, the discussions of scandal that are rarely virulent and generally tolerant, the moments of excitement and tension-all these tend to recede into the remote background. The dust and heat of native life are replaced by the somewhat sterile atmosphere, precision, order, and cloistral quiet of the laboratory. Natives are gradually denuded of their humanity as the anthropologist strives to cut to the bone of truth; vital personalities are reduced to skeletons to give an almost diagrammatic representation of the principles enunciated. Unfortunately the attempt to explain occupies more time and space than the bare description. It is one of the penalties that the scientist has to pay that he cannot take statements at their face value, but must endlessly seek to burrow to their inner significance. In so doing he is likely to be plunged into a bottomless pit of analysis and never touch reality again.
