PREHISTORIC AND SAVAGE MAN.i 



rriHAT ' the proper study of mankind is man ' ! is a truth 

 -■- which is brought home to us with pecuHar force by 

 the circumstances of our o\vn time. For what is the main 

 end of all our pursuit of knowledge but to obtain sure rules 

 to guide our conduct ; and what knowledge can be so efficient 

 for this purpose as a correct appreciation of man's true 

 place in nature, the objects of his legitimate hope or prudent 

 dread, and the laws which govern human progress and 

 human retrogression ? 



But some of my hearers may perhaps object that a 

 knowledge of the civiHsed world and of the epochs reckoned 

 as 'historicar are aU that we practically require, and that 

 a consideration of prehistoric relics and of the barbarous 

 customs of existing savages (however curious or interesting), 

 can but be of small if of any real utility to us. 



Such objectors must be little familiar with the course of 

 recent speculative thought, or they can but very inadequately 

 appreciate its far-reaching consequences. I have myself no 

 hesitation in saying that in our own day Anthropology — the 

 science of man — is the most practically important of all the 

 sciences, and that now, far more forcibly than in the days of 

 Terence, one should say — 



• Homo sum, et nihil humanum a me alienum puto.' 



Moreover, such objectors cannot have reflected that 

 nothing is well known to us unless we know, not only what 



^ An address delivered at the opening of the Loan Exhibition of Pre- 

 historic Antiquities and Ethnography, etc. , Liverpool. 



