ANTHROPOLOGY. 



By Otis T. Mason. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The rank and importance of any science are to be measured not only 

 by the iutriusic value of its subject matter, but by the amount of intel- 

 lectual activity which it demands and has evoked, and the contribution 

 which its pursuit has made to human progress and happiness. In claim- 

 ing for anthropology the iirst rank among the sciences, it is only designed 

 to say that it stands pre-eminent in the grandeur and complexit}^ of its 

 theme. Although calling for minds of the highest order, it is beset with 

 so many difficulties, that men of the greatest genius have been rarely 

 attracted to it, and the beneficence of its results are so little apparent, 

 either in the augmentation of happiness or the increase of solid learn- 

 ing, that even inferior minds have been driven to labor in other fields. 



As knowledge becomes more complex its devotees are obliged to be 

 more widely informed, although their cultivation of each subject need 

 not be so profound. The abstract mathematician finds his most arduous 

 labors in the solutions of those problems which have no objective reality. 

 The astronomer, dividing his time between observation and speculation, 

 ehminates the profounder questions of the mathematician. The physicist 

 a.nd the chemist must acquaint themselves with other forces than iner- 

 tia and gravitation, and in the study of molecular dynamics are com- 

 pelled to neglect the processes of the astronomer and to accept his results. 

 The retro-action of knowledge, also, is vividly shown in the assistance 

 which the chemist is able to render to the astronomer in the revelations 

 of the spectroscope. To the investigations of the student of matter the 

 botanist adds the vital phenomena, and the zoologist the study of vol- 

 untary motion. The anthropologist is bound to acquaint himself with 

 all of these, since man is amenable to all the laws of nature, and, more- 

 over, has ever taken their activities into consideration. His bones and 

 relics are buiied in the debris of those geological ages which are beset 

 with the greatest difficulties ; his body is more plastic than that of any 

 other animal, and the forces of nature act upon him with a greater variety 

 of results. Finally he thinks, he subdues nature. There is scarcely a 

 mineral, a plant, or an animal that might not, with a little strain, find 



its way into an anthropological museum, as helpful or hurtful to man. 



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