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trace, more clearly than in mere repetition of a custom or belief, 

 the community of human intellect. 



But I must not turn these remarks into what, under ordinary cir- 

 cumstances, would be a lecture. I have been compelled to address 

 myself, not so much to the statement in broad terms of general 

 principles, as to points of detail of this kind, because it is almost 

 impossible, in the present state of anthropology, to work by abstract 

 terms ; and the best way of elucidating a working-principle is to 

 discuss some actual case. There are now two or three practical 

 points on which I may be allowed to say a few words. 



The principle of development in civilization, wliich represents 

 one side of the great problem I have been speaking of, is now be- 

 ginning to receive especial cultivation in England. While most 

 museums have been at work, simply collecting objects and imple- 

 ments, the museum of Gen. Pitt-Rivers, now about to be removed 

 from London to Oxford, is entirely devoted to the working out of 

 the development theory on a scale hardly attempted hitherto. In 

 this museum are collected specimens of weapons and implements, 

 so as to ascertain by what steps they may be considered to have 

 arisen among mankind, and to arrange them in consecutive series. 

 Development, however, is not always progress, but may work itself 

 out into lines of degeneration. There are certain states of society 

 in which the going-down of arts and sciences is as inevitable a state 

 of things as progress is in the more fortunate regions in which we 

 live. Anthropologists will watch with the greatest interest what 

 effect this museum of development will have upon their science. 

 Gen. Pitt-Rivers was led into the formation of the remarkable col- 

 lection in question in an interesting manner. He did not begin 

 life either as an evolutionist or as an anthropologist. He was a 

 soldier. His business, at a particular time of his life, was to serve 

 on a committee on small-arms, appointed to reform the armament of 

 the British army, which at that time was to a great extent only pro- 

 vided with the most untrustworthy of percussion-muskets. He then 

 found that a rifle was an instrument of gradual growth ; for the new 

 rifles which it was his duty to inspect had not 'come into existence 

 at once and independently. When he came to look carefully into 

 the history of his subject, it appeared that some one had improved 

 the lock, then some one the rifling, and then others had made fur- 

 ther improvements ; and this process had gone on until at last there 

 came into existence a gun, which, thus perfected, was able to hold 



