Tylor, EDWARD BURNETT

Tylor, EDWARD BURNETT, the most philosophical of our anthropologists, was born at Camberwell, 2d October 1832, and had his education at the Friends' school, Grove House, Tottenham. Meeting the ethnologist Mr Henry Christy in Cuba in 1856, he accompanied him on a scientific journey through Mexico, one result of which was his Anahuac, or Mexico and the Mexicans (1861). Au F.R.S. (1871), an LL.D. of St Andrews (1873), and a D.C.L. of Oxford (1875), he was appointed keeper of the Oxford University Museum (1883), Reader in Anthropology (1883), and Professor of Anthropology (1895). He was in 1888 Gifford lecturer at Aberdeen, and became president of the Anthropological Society in 1891. His Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865) and Primitive Culture (2 vols. 1871; 3d ed. 1891) stand first among works of their class, in learning, arrangement, grasp of principles, and breadth of view. The foundation of his philosophy of man is involved in the new sense which he has given to the word Animism (q.v.). One of the best introductory handbooks to a subject ever written is his Anthropology (1881).