Miscellaneous Papers. 201 



equality of all men and the absence of any moral right what- 

 ever for one race to enslave another." This was in 1847. The 

 debates became more animated at each meeting, the speeches 

 found their way into the public press, and the outside world 

 became interested and willingly believed that ethnology, of 

 which it heard for the first time, was not a science, but a 

 something between politics and philanthropy. This absorbing 

 question lasted nearly a year, and would have dragged out 

 longer if the provisional government of February had not 

 ended it by abolishing slavery itself. This question had so 

 absorbed the society that with the abolition of its subject, 

 slavery, it seemed to have nothing else to live for and gradu- 

 ally sank out of existence, leaving a blank in the science in 

 Paris that was only filled up eleven years later. 



There remained the Ethnological Societies of London and 

 New York, which had had neither equally brilliant careers nor 

 similar misfortunes. They passed quiet lives, collecting ma- 

 terial and publishing proceedings and memoirs of value. But 

 they too made the mistake of separating ethnology from natu- 

 ral history and thus losing the influence and assistance of men 

 accustomed to vigorous methods of observation. It was not 

 through these then that the chief work of the next few years 

 in anthropology was carried forward. "The science was aided 

 by individuals and museums in all lands, essays were read be- 

 fore other societies and scientific bodies, and, by the publica- 

 tion of many valuable works, the science advanced toward ex- 

 actness." 



In America there was about this time increasing activity 

 and interest in the subject, but the study of the races of men 

 became involved in the inevitable slavery question. Dr. Samuel 

 George Morton, of Philadelphia, had amassed a collection of 

 skulls that for many years was unrivaled in the world. He 

 had published his incomparable Crania egyptiaca and Crania 

 americana when envious death called him from a place that 

 has never yet been filled. "He perfected methods of crani- 

 ometry, and he and his disciples understood better than his 

 predecessors the indispensable value of scientific methods and 

 of the mutual value of geology, archeology and zoology in re- 

 lation to the science of man." Says M. Broca, significantly: 

 "All that was lacking to the American school was that calm 

 philosophy which places scientific investigation above and be- 

 yond political and religious animosities." Morton died in 



