M. PAUL BE OCA. 263 



Broca had a high opinion of the value of statistics, and employed 

 them extensively in his researches, as constituting a sure basis for 

 sound conclusions. He uttered a very expressive appreciation of them 

 when he said once in the Academy of Medicine : " Statistics are the 

 anatomy and physiology of the social body. Without them, we 

 grasp only little groups, our judgments are mere impressions, and, even 

 if these impressions do not deceive us, they make us but imperfectly 

 acquainted with facts that are only partial, and the laws of which 

 escape us." Applying the method of means derived from statistics 

 to anatomy, he renovated and almost created anthropology. 



After 1859, Broca pursued a double purpose. Without neglecting 

 any of his manifold medical duties, he undertook the considerable 

 task of founding a new society, and almost of a new science. The 

 incidents which led to this step date from 1847, when Broca, as medi- 

 cal assistant, was appointed for the study of the bones, upon a special 

 commission charged with making a report on the excavations in the 

 Church of the Celestins. In preparing to draw up his report, he 

 was led to read the works in which craniology was discussed ; and 

 thenceforth, although his competitions drew him to different studies, 

 he continued to read with a lively interest the books, then rare, which 

 treated of man and the human races. The ethnology of the day 

 tended to contract its programme around the then overshadowing 

 question of monogeny or polygeny, and the Ethnological Society of 

 Paris had so exhausted itself with the reiteration of its narrow debates 

 that it had ceased to meet in 1848. Ten years afterward, Broca, hav- 

 ing brought out certain facts in hybridity, desired to communicate 

 them to the Society of Biology. He had not foreseen the pusillanimity 

 of some of his colleagues. Some of his positions were contradictory 

 of the doctrine of the monogenists, and Rayer, president of the society, 

 alarmed at the views contained in it, asked Broca to withhold his com- 

 munications on the subject.- He accordingly sought another channel 

 for the publication of his memoir. 



This incident, which greatly disturbed the Biological Society, sug- 

 gested the necessity of founding a new society, in which questions 

 relating to mankind could be given free scope. The project had to 

 make its way against difficulties. Broca wanted to obtain twenty 

 members, but, after a whole year of effort, he had to begin with nine- 

 teen. Then there was trouble in getting an authorization for the 

 meeting of the society. The Government officers were afraid of its 

 name, apprehending that the strange word " anthropology " might 

 cover some political or social scheme. Finally, the prefect of the 

 police, judging that a meeting of one short of twenty persons did not 

 require special authorization, gave Broca permission to meet with his 

 friends, on condition that he should be personally responsible for all 

 that might be said against society, religion, or the Government, and 

 that an agent of police should always be present in citizen's dress to 



