6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



syllables of recorded time ; for this, and nothing less than this, 

 is the bold ambition toward which aspires this crowning bough 

 of the tree of human knowledge. 



You will readily understand from this the magnitude of the 

 material which anthropology includes within its domain. First, 

 it investigates the physical life of man in all its stages and in 

 every direction. While he is still folded in the womb, it watches 

 his embryonic progress through those lower forms, which seem 

 the reminiscences of far-ofi: stages of the evolution of the species, 

 until the child is born into the world, endowed with the heritage 

 transmitted from innumerable ancestors and already rich in per- 

 sonal experiences from its prenatal life. These combined decide 

 the individual's race and strain, and potently incline, if they do 

 not absolutely coerce, his tastes and ambitions, his fears and 

 hopes, his failure or success. 



On the differences thus brought about, and later nourished by 

 the environment, biology, as applied to the human species, is 

 based ; and on them as expressed in aggregates, ethnography, the 

 separation of the species into its subspecies and smaller groups, 

 is founded. It has been observed that numerous and persistent 

 although often slight differences arose in remote times, independ- 

 ently, on each of the great continental areas, sufBcient to charac- 

 terize with accuracy these subspecies. We therefore give to 

 such the terms " races " or " varieties" of man. 



All these are the physical traits of men. They are studied by 

 the anatomist, the embryologist, the physician; and the closest 

 attention to them is indispensable if we would attain a correct 

 understanding of the creature man and his position in the chain 

 of organic life. 



But there is another vast field of study wholly apart from 

 this and even more fruitful in revelations. It illustrates man^s 

 mental or psychical nature, his passions and instincts, his emo- 

 tions and thoughts, his powers of ratiocination, volition, and ex- 

 pression. These are preserved and displayed subjectively in his 

 governments and religions, his laws and his languages, his words 

 and his writings, and, objectively, in his manufactures and struc- 

 tures, in the environment which he himself creates in other 

 words, in all that which we call the arts, be they " hooked to some 

 useful end " or designed to give pleasure only. 



It is not sufficient to study these as we find them in the pres- 

 ent. We should learn little by such a procedure. Wliat we are 

 especially seeking is to discover their laws of growth, and this 

 can only be done by tracing these outward expressions of the in- 

 ward faculties step by step back to their incipiency. This leads 

 us inevitably to that branch of learning which is known as 

 archaeology, " the study of ancient things," and more and more 



