672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is not the smallest doubt that his activities not only his mere bodily 

 functions, but his other functions are just as much the subjects of 

 scientific study as are those of ants or bees. What we call the phe- 

 nomena of intelligence, for example (as to what else there may be in 

 them, the anthropologist makes no assertion), are phenomena follow- 

 ing a definite causal order just as capable of scientific examination, and 

 of being reduced to definite law, as are all those phenomena which we 

 call physical. And just as ants form a polity and a social state, and 

 just as these are the proper and legitimate study of the zoologist, so 

 far as he deals with ants, so do men organize themselves into a social 

 state ; and, though the province of politics is of course outside that of 

 anthropology, yet the consideration of man, so far as his instincts lead 

 him to construct a social economy, is a legitimate and proper part of 

 anthropology, precisely in the same way as the study of the social state 

 of ants is a legitimate object of zoology. So with regard to other and 

 more subtile phenomena. It has often been disputed whether in ani- 

 mals there is any trace of the religious sentiment. That is a legiti- 

 mate subject of dispute and of 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 com- 

 pletely within the province 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 dif- 

 ferent kinds of the human race, are within its proper and legitimate 

 province. 



I now go a step further, 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 ascer- 

 tain 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 per- 

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

 Whatever evidence, whatever chain of reasoning justifies us in con- 

 cluding that the horse, for example, has come into existence in a cer- 

 tain 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 thro- 

 pologist 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 



