METHOD OF MENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY 587 



marked aberrations from the intellectual and moral standards 

 of the community, is likely to contribute to the same end. I 

 have been told that the wild fancies of patients in asylums 

 sometimes resemble the superstitious notions of savages. It 

 seems not improbable that cases of mental deficiency are often 

 the result of arrested development or of reversion to an ancestral 

 type ; and if that is so, the observation of them should be 

 instructive, since on that hypothesis they reproduce for us 

 phases of the mind which normal men and women have long 

 transcended, and of which, but for these curious reversions, we 

 might perhaps have no inkling. 



The third of the avenues by which we may approach the 

 childhood of humanity is the study of uncivilised races in 

 the present and in the past. The study of uncivilised races in 

 the present is obviously feasible, though fraught with many diffi- 

 culties. But how are we to study uncivilised races in the past ? 

 They are gone and have left no written records behind them. 

 For we may perhaps best define an uncivilised race as one which 

 is ignorant of the art of writing : the acquisition of the art of 

 writing is the touchstone of civilisation. Our knowledge of 

 uncivilised races in the past is derived from two sources : 

 first, it is derived from the written, painted, or sculptured 

 records of them bequeathed to us by civilised peoples who 

 observed these vanished races ; and, second, it is derived from 

 the skeletons or fragments of skeletons of the races themselves, 

 together with the relics of their handiwork, whether in the form 

 of manufactured articles or of paintings and sculptures on rocks. 

 In regard to the former source, the ancient Egyptians have trans- 

 mitted to us many graphic representations of the barbarous 

 peoples with whom they came into contact ; and the ancient 

 Greek, Latin, and Chinese writers have left accounts of many of 

 the more primitive tribes lying on the outskirts of civilisation ; 

 but for the most part these accounts are very superficial and 

 probably inaccurate. 



When we come to uncivilised races which have vanished, 

 and of which no written records survive, we depend for our 

 knowledge of them, as I have said, on the meagre remains of 

 their mouldering bones and on the somewhat more abundant 

 remains of their handiwork. The task of studying these 

 remains is the province of that branch of the science of man 

 which is known as prehistoric archaeology or prehistoric anthro- 

 pology. The study was first raised to the rank of a science 

 about the middle of the nineteenth century. In the prosecution 

 of it France led, and still leads, the way. Of her splendid 

 achievements in that great work the Institute of Human 

 Palaeontology, recently founded at Paris by the enlightened 

 liberality of the Prince of Monaco, is a noble monument" 



