584 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



continue to be debated indefinitely. The answer to the question 

 is of httle or no practical importance, and for my part I hold no 

 brief either on the one side or on the other. But whether or 

 no human evolution started from a single point, it has certainly 

 run very different courses in different ages and in different parts 

 of the world. It is not merely that the rate of progress has 

 varied in time and place, but that the products, that is, the races, 

 have varied in kind from each other. Hence we cannot arrange 

 the existing races of mankind in a progressive series, and say 

 that in the course of nature the lower would necessarily, though 

 slowly, develop into the higher. We cannot say, for instance, 

 that if we had spared, instead of exterminating, the Tasmanians, 

 they would gradually have acquired all the characteristic 

 features of the Australian aborigines ; that but for our inter- 

 ference the Australian aborigines in their turn might have de- 

 veloped into negroes ; and that, given a fair chance, negroes 

 might change in time into Europeans. No, the march of 

 humanity is not in single file. We are a very awkward squad, 

 who are constantly breaking the ranks and are very far indeed 

 from keeping step with each other. We have no exact standard 

 whereby to measure the precise degree of evolution attained by 

 any one race, because the common stock or stocks from which 

 all have sprung are unknown to us. How then can we single 

 out any particular race of men, whether in the present or in the 

 past, and say that it is, or was, absolutel}'' primitive ? If we 

 could see the whole army of our ancestors marshalled and 

 defiling before us, from the humblest amoebae to the noblest 

 specimens of mankind, could we lay our finger on the exact spot 

 in the long procession where mere animality ceased and pure 

 humanity began ? Surely the change has been too gradual, the 

 transitions too infinitesimal, to allow us thus sharply to define 

 the absolute beginning of our species, to draw a line across our 

 genealogical tree and to say. All our ancestors on the hither side 

 of the line have been men, and all our ancestors on the farther 

 side were beasts. Thus the conception of an absolutely primi- 

 tive human race, whether in the present or in the past, is so far 

 from being maintained by the anthropologist that he even finds 

 it difficult to attach any precise meaning to the words. Yet he 

 is by no means thereby precluded from applying the adjective 

 primitive in a relative sense to distinguish the less from the more 

 advanced races of mankind. In ordinary speech the relative 

 sense of primitive is freely admissible. Why should it be denied 

 to the anthropologist ? 



The province, then, of mental or social anthropology may 

 be defined as the study of the mental and social conditions of 

 the various races of mankind, especially of the more primitive 

 races compared to the more advanced, with a view to trace the 



