304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ence, in that we are honestly endeavoring to lay a definite and 

 stable foundation, upon which in time to come a scientific anthro- 

 pology may be based. 



The materials with which we have to do are fully as varied as 

 were those in my illustration, for we as anthropologists take for 

 our motto the sentiment of Chremes, so often quoted in this sec- 

 tion, humani nihil a nobis alienum putamus (we think nothing 

 human foreign to us), and they are too often fully as fragment- 

 ary. The bones, weapons, and pottery which form our only 

 sources of knowledge concerning prehistoric races of men, gener- 

 ally come to us as much altered from their original forms as are 

 the rusty polyhedra which once were the receptacles of biscuits 

 or sardines. The traditions, customs, and scraps of folk lore 

 which are treasures to the constructive anthropologist, are usually 

 discovered as empty shells, in form as much altered from their 

 original conditions as are those smooth fragments of hollow white 

 cylinders which once held the delicate products of the factory of 

 Keiller or Cairns. 



I have said that anthropology has not yet made good its title 

 to be ranked as an independent science. This is indicated by the 

 difficulty of framing a definition at the same time comprehensive 

 and distinctive. Mr. Galton characterizes it as the study of what 

 men are in body and mind, how they came to be what they are, 

 and whither the race is tending; General Pitt-Rivers, as the 

 science which ascertains the true causes for all the phenomena of 

 human life. I shall not try to improve upon these definitions, 

 although they both are manifestly defective. On the one side our 

 subject is a branch of biology, but we are more than biologists 

 compiling a monograph on the natural history of our species, as 

 M. de Quatrefages would have it. Many of the problems with 

 which we deal are common to us and to psychologists ; others are 

 common to us and to students of history, of sociology, of philol- 

 ogy, and of religion ; and, in addition, we have to treat of a large 

 number of other matters aesthetic, artistic, and technical, which it 

 is difficult to range under any subordinate category. 



In view of the encyclopedic range of knowledge necessary for 

 the equipment of an accomplished anthropologist, it is little 

 wonder that we should be, as we indeed are, little better than 

 smatterers. Its many-sided affinities, its want of definite limi- 

 tation, and the recent date of its admission to the position of an 

 independent branch of knowledge, have hitherto caused anthro- 

 pology to fare badly in our universities. In this respect, how- 

 ever, we are improving, and now in the two great English uni- 

 versities there are departments for the study of the natural his- 

 tory of man and of his works. 



Out of the great assemblage of topics which come within our 



