In what ways are people similar to other animals, and in what ways are they different? There are real problems of method about the right approach to this question, but they are nothing to the emotional ones which rise, like a buzzing cloud of insects, as soon as we approach its frontiers. The need to determine answers in advance of investigations is perhaps felt more strongly in this area than in any other outside political history - if indeed it is outside it. Time and again scholars have determined to get this disorderly province of the mind finally under control and to issue a clear map of it. Peter Reynolds, in his admirable book, cites one such map, from an American anthropologist writing in 1901:

LRB 18 August 1983 | PDF Download