ABSTRACT
I have chosen to discuss a few very broad questions-questions of method. The considerable advances made in social anthropology during the last thirty years and the creation of new departments in several universities would seem to require some reflection on what the subject is, and which direction it is taking, or ought to take, for anthropology has now ceased to be an amateur pursuit and has become a profession. There is a division of opinion on these matters among anthropologists themselves, broadly between those who regard the subject as a natural science and those who, like myself, regard i t as one of the humanities, and this division, which reflects quite different sentiments and values, is apparent whenever there arises a discussion about the methods and aims of the discipline. I t is perhaps at its sharpest when the relations between anthrolopoly and history are being discussed, and since consideration of this difficult question brings out the issues most clearly, I shall devote a large part of my lecture to it. To perceive how these issues have come about it is necessary to cast our eyes back over the period of the genesis and early development of the subject. ·
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ORIGINS
A subject of scholarship can hardly be said to have autonomy before it is taught in the uni-
E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARD
verstities. In that sense social anthropology is a very new subject. In another sense it may be said to have begun with the earliest speculations of mankind, for everywhere and at all times men have propounded theories about the nature of human society. In this sense there is no definite point at which social anthropology can be said to have begun. Nevertheless, there is a point beyond which it is hardly profitable to trace back its development. This nascent period of our subject was the middle and late eighteenth century. I t is a child of the Enlightenment and bears throughout its history and today many of the characteristic features of its ancestry.
