70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sure foundation for legislation ; not a priori notions of the rights 

 of man, nor abstract theories of what should constitute a perfect 

 state, as was the fashion with the older philosophies and still is 

 with the modern social reformers. The aim of the anthropolo- 

 gist in this practical field is to ascertain in all their details, such 

 as religions, language, social life, notions of right and wrong, 

 etc., wherein lie the idiosyncrasies of a given group, and frame 

 its laws accordingly. 



Perhaps what I have said sufficiently explains the aims of eth- 

 nology. Some one has pertinently called it " the natural science 

 of social life," because its methods are strictly those of the natu- 

 ral sciences, and its material is supplied by man living in society. 



The final arbiter, however, to whom it appeals is, I repeat, not 

 the ethnos, not the social group, but the individual. I think it 

 was Goethe who, nearly a century ago, uttered the pithy remark, 

 "Man makes genera and species; Nature makes only individ- 

 uals." Hence the justification of any result claimed by ethnol- 

 ogy must come from the psychology of the individual ; in his 

 personal feelings and thoughts will be discovered the final and 

 only complete explanation of the forms of sociology and the 

 events of history. As I have elsewhere urged, man himself, the 

 individual man, is the only final measure of his own activities, in 

 whatever direction they are directed. 



On the other hand, the only rational psychology using that 

 term as a science of the mental processes must be the outcome of 

 anthropology conducted as a natural science. For thousands of 

 years other plans have been pursued. The philosopher would 

 delve in his " inner consciousness " ; the theologian would turn to 

 his revelation ; the historian would reason on his undigested facts ; 

 but the psychologist of the future, taking nothing for granted, 

 will define the mentality of the race by analyzing each of its lines 

 of action back to the individual feelings which gave them rise. 



It is quite likely that some who have heard me thus far, and 

 have agreed with me, are still dissatisfied. On their lips is that 

 question which is so often put to, and which so often puzzles, the 

 student of the sciences, cui bono ? What practical worth have 

 these analyses and generalizations which have been referred to ? 



Fortunately, the anthropologist is not puzzled. His science, 

 like others, has its abstract side, seemingly remote from the inter- 

 ests of the workaday world ; but it is also and pre-eminently an 

 applied science one the practicality and immediate pertinence of 

 which to daily affairs render it utilitarian in the highest degree. 



Applied anthropology has for its aims to bring to bear on the 

 improvement of the species, regarded on the one hand as groups, 

 and on the other as individuals, the results obtained by ethnog- 

 raphy, ethnology, and j)sychology. 



