Excerpt from Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, 1916, Vol. 3 Let us for the present confine our attention to the criterion of form. There are three reasons why this is not objectively applicable. Firstly, the different elements of a culture, for instance the material culture, social organization, myth motives, emotional values, which by the way, are as objectively real as are bows and arrows, cannot be reduced to a common denominator of comparison on account of their essential qualitative heterogeneity. Secondly, the range of cultural possibilities varies in the case of each specific cultural phenomenon.1 Thirdly, cultural phenomena may be transformed qualitatively according to the specific nature of psychic actuality. For the first reason stated, for example, the objective forms of geometric ornaments and the interpretations that may be found associated with them show an absolute disparity of the applicability of the form criterion. For the second reason, - the varying range of possibilities, - languages and forms of descent, for instance, are of extreme inequality in the degree of applicability of the criterion of form; languages on the one hand being infinitely variable; form of descent on the other being necessarily limited in its possibilities. The same point is brought out when forms of philosophic speculation are compared with such heterogeneous phenomena as those of material culture. The monism of Laotse and that of Parmenides show a marked degree of identity or similarity. From what we know of the development of abstract thinking the probability is that a monistic system of speculation IS almost essentially developed in every higher form of culture. But even when one disregards this fact and takes the position of Graebner's postulate of cultural relations, is the necessarily vague applicability of the form criterion to these monistic philosophies in any way at all comparable to its applicability to the pitch of musical instruments,2 for example? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.