594 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



evolved, or revealed, at some time subsequent to the emergence 

 of the human species from its purely animal stage. 



And the conception of the human soul and its survival after 

 death, how did man arrive at it ? Was it by meditation on 

 phenomena of dreams ? Was it by observation of the fluctua- 

 tions and final ebbing of the breath ? by the sight of shadows 

 on the grass or of reflections in the pool ? by the apparition of 

 the spirits of the dead, or by the sound of their voices falling 

 mysteriously on the ears of the living from a world beyond the 

 grave ? 



Such are, in the barest outline, a few of the problems with 

 which mental anthropology is called upon to deal, and which 

 she must attempt to solve. Hitherto many of them have been 

 the favourite themes of sophists and ranters, of demagogues and 

 dreamers, who by their visions of a Golden Age of universal 

 equality and universal wealth in the future, modelled on the 

 baseless fancy of a like Golden Age in the past,' have too often 

 lured the ignorant multitude to the edge of the precipice and 

 pushed them over the brink. Hereafter it will be for anthro- 

 pology to treat the same themes in a different spirit and by a 

 different method. If she is true to her principles, she will not 

 seek to solve, or to gloze over, the problems by rhetoric and 

 declamation, by cheap appeals to popular sentiment and 

 prejudice, by truckling to the passions and the cupidity of the 

 mob. She will seek to solve them by the patient accumulation 

 and the exact investigation of facts, by that and by nothing else, 

 for only thus can she hope to arrive at the truth. 



