ADDRESS BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 271 



inquiry; and if it were possible for my friend, Sir John Lubbock, to 

 point out to you that ants manifest such sentiments, he would have 

 made a very great and interesting discovery, and no one could doubt 

 that the ascertainment of such a fact was completely within the prov- 

 ince of zoology. Anthropology has nothing to do with the truth or 

 falsehood of religion — it holds itself absolutely and entirely aloof from 

 such questions — but the natural history of religion, and the origin and 

 the growth of the religions entertained by the different kinds of the 

 human race, are within its proper and legitimate province. I now go 

 a step farther, and pass to the distribution of man. Here, of course, 

 the anthropologist is in his special region. He endeavors to ascertain 

 how various modifications of the human stock are arranged upon the 

 earth's surface. He looks back to the past, and inquires how far the 

 remains of man can be traced. It is just as legitimate to ascertain how 

 far the human race goes back in time as it is to ascertain how far the 

 horse goes back in time; the kind of evidence that is good in the one 

 case is good in the other; and the conclusions that are forced on us in 

 the one case are forced on us in the other also. Finally, we come to 

 the question of the causes of all these phenomena, which, if permissible 

 in the case of other animals, is permissible in the animal man. What- 

 ever evidence, whatever chain of reasoning justifies us in concluding 

 that the horse, for example, has come into existence in a certain 

 fashion in time, the same evidence and the same canons of logic 

 justify us to precisely the same extent in drawing the same kind of 

 conclusions with regard to man. And it is the business of the an- 

 thropologist to be as severe in his criticism of those matters in respect 

 to the origin of man as it is the business of the paleontologist to be 

 strict in regard to the origin of the horse; but for the scientific man 

 there is neither more nor less reason for dealing critically with the 

 one case than with the other. Whatever evidence is satisfactory in one 

 case is satisfactory in the other; and if any one should travel outside 

 the lines of scientific evidence and endeavor either to support or oppose 

 conclusions which are based upon distinctly scientific grounds, by con- 

 siderations which are not in any way based upon scientific logic or 

 scientific truth — whether that mode of advocacy was in favor of a 

 given position, or whether it was against it, I, occupying the chair of 

 the section, should, most undoubtedly, feel myself called upon to call 

 him to order, and tell him that he was introducing topics with which 

 we had no concern whatever. 



I have occupied your attention for a considerable time, yet there is 

 still one other point respecting which I should like to say a few words, 

 because some very striking reflections arise out of it. The British 

 Association met in Dublin twenty-one years ago, and I have taken the 

 pains to look up what was done in regard to our subject at that period. 



