THE HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY 



BY FRANZ BOAS 



[Franz Boas, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York. b. Min-' 

 den, Germany, July 9, 1858. Ph.D. Kiel University, 1881. Member of the Na- 

 tional Academy of Sciences; Corresponding Member of Anthropological Societies 

 of Berlin, London, Moscow, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna, and Washington. 

 Author of The Central Eskimo; Baffin Land; Reports on the Northwestern Tribes 

 of Canada; The Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians ; 

 The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay; Kwakiutl Texts; Chinook Texts; 

 Kathlamet Texts; Trimshian Texts; Indianische Sagen von der Nordpacifischen 

 Koste Amerikas, etc.] 



I HAVE been asked to speak on the history of anthropology. The 

 task that has been allotted to me is so vast, and the time at my 

 disposal is so short, that it will be impossible to do justice to the 

 work of the minds that have made anthropology what it is. It would 

 even be futile to characterize the work of the greatest among the con- 

 tributors to our science. All that I can undertake to do is to discuss 

 the general conditions of scientific thought that have given rise to 

 anthropology. 



Viewing my task from this standpoint, you will pardon me if I do 

 not first attempt to define what anthropology ought to be, and with 

 what subjects it ought to deal, but take my cue rather from what it 

 is and how it has developed. 



Before I enter into my subject, I will say that the speculative 

 anthropology of the eighteenth and of the early part of the nine- 

 teenth century is distinct in its scope and method from the science 

 which is called " anthropology " at the present time, and is not 

 included in our discussion. 



At the present time, anthropologists occupy themselves with pro- 

 blems relating to the physical and mental life of mankind as found 

 in varying forms of society, from the earliest times up to the present 

 period, and in all parts of the world. Their researches bear upon the 

 form and functions of the body as well as upon all kinds of manifest- 

 ations of mental life. Accordingly, the subject-matter of anthropo- 

 logy is partly a branch of biology, partly a branch of the mental 

 sciences. Among the mental phenomena, language, invention, art, 

 religion, social organization, and law have received particular atten- 

 tion. Among anthropologists of our time we find a considerable 

 amount of specialization of the subject-matter of their researches 

 according to the divisions here given. 



As in other sciences whose subject-matter is the actual distribution 

 of phenomena and their causal relation, we find in anthropology 

 two distinct methods of research and aims of investigation: the 



