THE PROGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 675 



Like all other persons who have to deal with physical science, we con- 

 fine ourselves to matters which can be ascertained with precision, and 

 nothing is more remarkable than the exactness which has been intro- 

 duced into the mode of ascertaining the physical qualities of man with- 

 in the last twenty-five years. One cannot mention the name of Broca 

 without the greatest gratitude; and I am quite sure that, when Prof. 

 Flower brings forward his paper on cranial measurements on Monday 

 next, you will be surprised to see what precision of method and what 

 accuracy are now introduced, compared with what existed twenty-five 

 years ago, into these methods of determining the physical data of 

 man's structure. If, further, we turn to those physiological matters 

 bearing on anthropology which have been the subject of inquiry within 

 the last score of years, we find that there has been a vast amount of 

 progress. I would refer you to the very remarkable collection of the 

 data of sociology by Mr. Herbert Spencer, which contains a mass of 

 information useful on one side or the other in getting toward the 

 truth. Then I would refer you to the highly-interesting contributions 

 which have been made by Prof. Max Muller and by Mr. Tylor to the 

 natural history of religions, which is one of the most interesting chapters 

 of anthropology. In regard to another very important topic, the de- 

 velopment of art and the use of tools and weapons, most remarkable 

 contributions have been made by General Lane Fox, whose museum at 

 Bethnal Green is one of the most extraordinary exemplifications that I 

 know of the ingenuity, and, at the same time, of the stupidity of the 

 human race. Their ingenuity appears in their invention of a given 

 pattern or form of weapon, and their profound stupidity in this, that, 

 having done so, they kept in the old grooves, and were thus prevented 

 from getting beyond the primitive type of these objects and of their 

 ornamentation. One of the most singular things in that museum is 

 its exemplification the wonderful tendency of the human mind when 

 once it has got into a groove to stick there. The great object of sci- 

 entific investigation is to run counter to that tendency. 



Lastly, great progress has been made in the last twenty years in 

 the direction of the discovery of the indications of man in a fossil 

 state. My memory goes back to the time when anybody who broached 

 the notion of the existence of fossil man would have been simply 

 laughed at. It was held to be a canon of paleontolog} 7 that man could 

 not exist in a fossil state. I don't know why, but it was so ; and that 

 fixed idea acted so strongly on men's minds, that they shut their eyes 

 to the plainest possible evidence. Within the last twenty years we 

 have an astonishing accumulation of evidence of the existence of man 

 in ages antecedent to those of which we have any historical record. 

 What the actual date of those times was, and what their relation is to 

 our known historical epochs, I don't think anybody is in a position to 

 say. But it is beyond all question that man, and not only man, but, 

 what is more to the purpose, intelligent man, existed at times when 



