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nydus/Argonauts of the Western PacificPublic
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Table of Contents

Chapter XXII The Meaning of the Kula

The study of Ethnology—so often mistaken by its very votaries for an idle hunting after curios, for a ramble among the savage and fantastic shapes of “barbarous customs and crude superstitions”—might become one of the most deeply philosophic, enlightening and elevating disciplines of scientific research. Alas! the time is short for Ethnology, and will this truth of its real meaning and importance dawn before it is too late?

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