62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



This emphasizes the importance of a prolonged and profound 

 investigation of the few savage tribes who still exist, for, al- 

 though none of them is as rude or as brutelike as primitive man, 

 they stand nearest to his condition, and, moreover, so rapid now- 

 adays is the extension of culture that probably not one of them 

 will remain untouched by its presence another score of years. 



Another discovery, also very recent, has enabled us to throw 

 light on the prehistoric or forgotten past. We have found that 

 much of it, thought to be long since dead, is still alive and in our 

 midst, under forms easily enough recognized when our attention 

 is directed to them. This branch of anthropology is known as 

 folklore. It investigates the stories, the superstitions, the beliefs, 

 and customs which prevail among the unlettered, the isolated, and 

 the young ; for these are nothing less than survivals of the my- 

 thologies, the legal usages, and the sacred rites of earlier genera- 

 tions. It is surprising to observe how much of the past we have 

 been able to reconstruct from this humble and long-neglected 

 material. 



From what I have already said, you will understand some of 

 the aims of anthropology, those which I will call its " immediate " 

 aims. They are embraced in the collection of accurate informa- 

 tion about man and men, about the individual and the group, as 

 they exist now and as they have existed at any and all times in 

 the past, here where we are and on every continent and island 

 of the globe. 



We desire to know about a man his weight and his measure, 

 the shape of his head, the color of his skin, and the curl of his 

 hair ; we would pry into all his secrets and his habits, discover 

 his deficiencies and debilities, learn his language, and inquire 

 about his politics and his religion yes, probe those recesses of his 

 body and his soul which he conceals from wife and brother. This 

 we would do with every man and every woman, and, not content 

 with the doing it, we would register all these facts in tables and 

 columns, so that they should become perpetual records, to which 

 we give the name " vital statistics." 



The generations of the past escape such personal investigation, 

 but not our pursuit. We rifle their graves, measure their skulls, 

 and analyze their bones ; we carry to our museums the utensils 

 and weapons, the gods and jewels, which sad and loving hands 

 laid beside them ; we dig up the foundations of their houses and 

 cart off the monuments which their proud kings set up. Nothing 

 is sacred to us ; and yet nothing to us is vile or worthless. The 

 broken potsherd, with half-gnawed bone, cast on the refuse heap, 

 conveys a message to us more pregnant with meaning, more in- 

 dicative of what the people were, than the boastful inscription 

 which their king caused to be engraved on royal marble. 



