428 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



try to-day; it is the psychometry and what I have termed the vigo- 

 rimetry of white- as well as of dark-skinned men that must become 

 the main subjects of our study. 



Some of you may consider that I am overlooking what has been 

 contributed both in this country and elsewhere to the science of folk 

 psychology. I know at least that Wilhelm Wundt's 3 great work runs 

 to ten volumes. But I also know that in its 5,452 pages there is not 

 a single table of numerical measurements, not a single statement of 

 the quantitative association between mental racial characters, nor, 

 indeed, any attempt to show numerically the intensity of association 

 between folk mentality and folk customs and institutions. It is folk 

 psychology in the same stage of evolution as present-day sociology 

 is in, or as individual psychology was in before the advent of expe- 

 rimental psychology and the correlational calculus. It is purely de- 

 scriptive and verbal. I am not denying that many sciences must for 

 a long period still remain in this condition, but at the same time I 

 confess myself a firm disciple of Friar Roger Bacon 4 and of Leo- 

 nardo da Vinci, 5 and believe that we can really know very little 

 about a phenomenon until we can actually measure it and express its 

 relations to other phenomena in quantitative form. Now you will 

 doubtless suggest that sections of folk psychology like language, 

 religion, law, art — much that forms the substance of cultural an- 

 thropology — are incapable of quantitative treatment. I am not con- 

 vinced that this standpoint is correct. Take only the first of these 

 sections — language. I am by no means certain that there is not a 

 rich harvest to be reaped by the first man who can give unbroken 

 time and study to the statistical analysis of language. Whether he 

 start with roots or with words to investigate the degree of resem- 

 blance in languages of the same family, he is likely, before he has 

 done, to learn a great deal about the relative closeness and order of 

 evolution of cognate tongues, whether those tongues be Aryan or 

 Sudanese. And the methods applicable in the case of language will 

 apply in the same manner to cultural habits and ideas. Strange as 

 the notion may seem at first, there is a wide field in cultural an- 

 thropology for the use of those same methods which have revolu- 

 tionised psychometric technique, to say nothing of their influence on 

 osteometry. 



The problems of cultural anthropology are subtle, but so indeed 

 are the problems of anthropometry, and no instrument can be too 



s Its last volume also bears evidence of the non-judicial mind of the writer, who ex- 

 presses strong opinions about recent events in the language of the party historian rather 

 than the man of science. 



* lie who knows not mathematics can not know any other science, and what is more 

 can not discover his own ignorance or find its proper remedies. 



5 NMssuna humana investigatione si po dimandare vera scientia s'essa non passa per le 

 matbematice dimostratione. 



