LARGER PROBLEMS OF ANTHROPOLOGY 457 



blent with that of Tylor (both profiting by the experiences of British 

 India), and pushed on to several Continental centres during the last 

 two decades of the nineteenth century. 



Toward the close of the old century, what may be called the 

 kinetic and collective characters of humanity were brought out 

 clearly, and the American aborigines (with other peoples as well) 

 were defined by the activities, i. e., by what they do, and this collect- 

 ively for in the realm of humanity no one lives to himself alone, 

 but all are joined in twos and larger groups. Now it cannot be too 

 strongly emphasized that the basis of this definition differs funda- 

 mentally and absolutely from that of any other science; for all 

 other entities stars and planets, molecules and ions, minerals 

 and rocks, plants and animals are defined by what they are 

 (perhaps measurably by the way in which they respond to external 

 forces), while the humans are defined and classed by what they do 

 spontaneously and voluntarily as self-moving and self-moved units 

 or groups. Necessarily this view of humanity awakens inquiry as to 

 why the human entity stands in a distinct class among the objects 

 of nature; yet this is hardly a present problem, since the makers of 

 modern anthropology find full answer in that unique nature-power 

 lying behind the kinetic character of unit or group, viz.: mentality. 

 So in the last analysis the modern definitions of mankind are prim- 

 arily psychic; and it matters little whether men are classed by what 

 they do or by what they think, save that doing is humanity's largest 

 heritage from lower ancestry, and hence precedes thinking; the 

 essential point is that the practically scientific classification of man- 

 kind must rest on a kinetic basis, i. e., on self-developed and self- 

 regulated conduct. 



Of late the activities themselves are grouped as arts, industries, 

 laws, languages, and philosophies, and each group constitutes the 

 object-matter of a sub-science, thus giving form to esthetology, 

 technology, sociology, philology, and sophiology; and these 

 (together called demonomy, or principles of peoples), with soma- 

 tology and psychology, make up the field of fin-de-siecle anthropo- 

 logy the last two corresponding respectively with the physical 

 anthropology of most European schools and the strictly inductive 

 mind-science of current American schools, while the first two include 

 archeology as their prehistoric aspects. These outlines and parti- 

 tions of the groups are essential, although in actual interest they lie 

 beneath the full fruitage of the field, as a wire-hung skeleton lies 

 below the sentient body athrob with vitality and athrill with con- 

 sciousness of power over lower nature. This fruitage is too large 

 and luxuriant for ready listing; it need now be noted only that, in 

 the modern anthropology, sometimes styled the New Ethnology, 

 the peoples of the world are not divided into races (save perhaps in 



