Miscellaneous Papers. 199 



ANTHROPOLOGY AS A SCIENCE. 



T!y Ai,r<i.v TlnwAun Thompson, Topokn. 



npHE study of anthropology has become so fraught with in- 

 * terest in contemplating the progress of the human race 

 in all ages that its tremendous importance is acknowledged 

 nowadays by the most casual observer. As the pursuit of this 

 science is undergoing a marked revival throughout the world, 

 a glance at some of its salient features may not be without in- 

 terest to the specialist as well as to the general student. It is 

 well to study the bearings of any science, not only as regards 

 its economic value but also with reference to the influence it 

 may have upon the general progress of humanity and the va- 

 rious benefits it confers. 



As a preliminary, let us take a glance at the history of an- 

 thropology, which is quite interesting and exhibits the vicissi- 

 tudes of the evolution of a specialty under different conditions. 

 M. Broca has given an account of its development, in an ad- 

 dress before the Anthropological Society of Paris (JL An- 

 throp. Inst. N. Y., vol. 1, p. 25). He says: "In the year 1800 

 the Society of the Observers of Men was founded in Paris, and 

 was devoted mainly to the natural history of man with the 

 special object of directing the observations of travelers among 

 the different races of men, and the hearing and discussing of 

 such observations. But the long and general continental wars 

 put an embargo on travel, and the society devoted its atten- 

 tion to questions of general ethnology. It drifted into politics, 

 philosophy, and philanthropy, and when the oppression of 

 Greece became the absorbing topic of the day it was the resort 

 of the Philhellenes. After three years of languishing ex- 

 istence it was absorbed by the Philanthropic Society and left 

 little trace of its influence upon the science, but it was the first 

 organization having an anthropological aspect. 



"This experiment had long been forgotten when some English 

 philanthropists founded in London, in 1838, the Society for 

 the Protection of the Aborigines, which was political and social 

 rather than scientific. The question of slavery was beginning 

 to be discussed, and hotly so, by the abolitionists and pro- 

 slavery men the world over. England had solved the question 

 for herself by the gradual emancipation of the negroes in her 



