SECTION II., 1895. [67] Trans. R.S. C. 
II. The Present Position of American Anthropology. 
By Tue REVEREND JoHN CAMPBELL, LL.D. 
—_— 
(Read May 16th, 1895.) 
Every science is in danger of being discredited by the vague theories 
of early investigators into the problems which its subject matter pre- 
sents. Such has been the case with studies regarding the nature and 
origin of our aborigines, and that so signally as almost to have brought 
the labours of the Americanist into contempt. The connection of these 
aborigines with the lost tribes of Israel has long been abandoned, and 
their association with the Mongols of Kublai Khan has now hardly a 
defender, but occasionally an advocate of a Chinese original airs his 
views, and otherwise wise men put faith in Plato’s mythic Atlantis. 
Necessarily the first stage of every science is one of speculation on the 
basis of a few carelessly observed phenomena, These phenomena fur- 
nished a starting point which was straightway, according to the reason- 
ing of our grandfathers, converted into a logical premise major or minor ; 
the corresponding second term was found in the peculiarities, histories 
or traditions of certain Old World peoples ; and the conclusion was drawn 
with a dialectic certainty that despised fact. Many years ago a great 
revulsion set in against this method in the line of Voltaire’s dictum that, 
as God made America’s flies, He could also make her human beings. 
Hence the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, which more than any 
other institution, has worked in the department of American anthro- 
pology, pays little heed to speculation, and the associated Americanists 
of Europe act largely upon the principle, America for the Americans. 
Yet it must be evident to all students of comparative philology alone 
that this principle is a false one, since its application in the case of 
Europe, Asia and Africa would have deprived science of its classifications 
of the Indo-European, the Ural-Altaic, and the Mbantu families of 
languages and peoples. The broadest extent of anthropological know- 
ledge is quite compatible with the most minute and comprehensive intent 
of one of its sections. The student of our Canadian flora, for example, 
is not at liberty to treat that of the rest of the world with contempt, for 
his acquaintance with its orders and alliances is incomplete without some 
knowledge of the links furnished by the botanical observations made in 
other lands. 
The days of Agassiz are gone by and few now believe in faunal and 
floral centres, including six protoplasts of American man. ‘T'heories of evo- 
lution, which have largely displaced his belief, can find no basis for the 
