Note 2 — Chapter III · RELIGIOUS AND MAGICAL BELIEFS

The present position of ethnological studies may well be regarded as anomalous. Many of the observers engaged in recording the customs of primitive people are very imperfectly acquainted with modern theories of sociology. One result of this is that they often neglect to record anything concerning matters that are of fundamental importance for the theorist2. On the other hand those engaged in elaborating hypotheses do not, as a rule, observe for themselves the facts to be explained, but have to rely on what are in many cases imperfect documents, being thus unwittingly led into errors that might have been avoided. In this science, as in others, if progress is to be made, the elaboration of hypotheses and the observation and classification of facts must be carried on as interdependent parts of one process, and no advantage, but rather great disadvantage, results from the false division of labour whereby theorists and observers work independently and without systematic cooperation. The most urgent need of ethnology at the present time is a series of investigations of the kind here attempted, in which the observation and the analysis and interpretation of the institutions of some one primitive people are carried on together by the ethnologist working in the field.