Anthropology is the science of the sense of humour: An introduction to Julius Lips’ The savage hits back, or the white man through native eyes

Anthropology is the science of the sense of humour. +Superscript 1 -Superscript It can be thus defined without too much pretention or facetiousness. For to see ourselves as others see us is but the reverse and the counterpart of the gift to see others as they really are and as they want to be. And this is the +Italic métier -Italic of the anthropologist. He has to break down the barriers of race and cultural diversity; he has to find the human being in the savage; he has to discover the primitive in the highly sophisticated Westerner of today, and, perhaps, to see that the animal, and the divine as well, are to be found everywhere in man.