164 president's address — section f. 



British View the Only One that can he Reconciled with 

 Scientific A n thropology. 



For ethnology knows nothing of uatural-born slaves, of essen- 

 tially superior races,' of Herrenvolk and Sklavenvolk. Scientific 

 ethnology is unthinkable except upon the hypothesis that all man- 

 kind is more or less closely related, and that what is true of one 

 race at soine^ place and some time, past or present, may be equally 

 true of another entirely different race at some other time or place. 

 I do not intend to' embark upon a disquisition on monogenism and 

 polygenism, nor upon the relation of mankind to' the lower 

 animals; what I wish to assert is that the' value and even the 

 possibility of anthropology in general, and ethnology in particular, 

 depends upon the unity of the human race — not necessarily, I take 

 it, upon unity of descent, but on unitt of spiritual and mental 

 aspirations — and that every advance in these sciences affords addi- 

 tioi]al evidence of this unity. 



Unity of the Human Race. 



To' the practical man, the busy man of affairs who prides 

 himself upon his common sense and his freedom from humbug, 

 the argument from the unity of man must appear to be the 

 merest academic trifling. He is probably prepared to accept 

 that hypothesis as he accepts, for instance, the dogma of the 

 Incarnation, as something which he will admit to be true, but 

 only on condition that it is deprived of all substance and reality ; 

 and he would consider it as little less than an outrage if he 

 were asked to draw from either of them an inferencei which 

 could have the slightest effect upon the actions of his ordinary 

 life. Ht would argue (if he condescended to argue at all) that 

 whatever may have been the origin of mankind, however closely 

 all men — black, white, yellow and red — may be related if you 

 go far enough back, still, as a matter of present fact, they are 

 obviously distinct — in colour, in appearance, in habits, in ways 

 of thought, and in most other particulars that can be enumerated. 

 We should reply that it was true that there were differences, 

 but that they were as naught compared with the fact of our 

 common humanity — in other words, we should say that what is 

 common to all men is not merely more important, but is infinitely 

 more important, than the accidents by which men differ. "To 

 this, if he did not become speechless with rage at being compared 

 with an adjective nigger, he would retort by accusing us of a 

 vetitio 2>rincipii, inasmuch as it is the importance of this common 

 humanity which is in dispute. 



And so the controversy would continue, but it would lead to no 

 result, for both parties are in the right ; the practical man is 

 absolutely right in objecting most strenuously to anything in 

 the nature of a doctrinaire administration, and we are right 



