xiv NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN 193 



the audience the interest and importance of the 

 subject as he conceived it. 



Taking Lord Beaconsfield's estimate of the value 

 of "race" as a social factor, he urged that race 

 problems could not be understood unless the history 

 of man were better known from the study of true 

 relationship. 



It is to the want of appreciation of the importance " of natural 

 descent from a common ancestry " that many of the incon- 

 sistencies and shortcomings of government are due, especially 

 the great inconsistency between a favourite English theory and a 

 too common English practice the former being that all men 

 are morally and intellectually alike ; the latter being that all are 

 inferior to himself in all respects, both propositions being egregi- 

 ously fallacious. The study of race is at a low ebb indeed when 

 we hear the same contemptuous epithet of "nigger" applied 

 indiscriminately abroad by Englishmen to the black of the west 

 coast of Africa, the Kaffirs of Natal, the Lascars of Bombay, the 

 Hindoos of Calcutta, the Aborigines of Australia, and even the 

 Maoris of New Zealand. 



This appeal was intended to introduce the natural 

 answer, which was that there were no means in 

 England for the study of the history of the races of 

 mankind, though in Paris in the Mus^e d'Histoire 

 Naturelle, man, as a zoological subject, had a fine 

 gallery allotted to him, abounding in illustrated 

 matter, besides which there was a vigorous Society 

 of Anthropology. 



He also mentioned the curious fact that in Paris 

 there was also what was termed the "School" of 



Anthropology, supported partly by private subscrip- 



o 



