3»4 



NATURE 



[hhll KMhhK I, 1923 



All this seemed foolish enough, and that practical 

 consequences would follow was not to be expected. 

 Nevertheless, Mr. William Jenninj^s Bryan, with a 

 profound knowledge of the electoral heart, saw that 

 something could be made of it and introduced the 

 topic into his campaign, which, though so far harmless 

 in the great cities, has worked on the minds of simpler 

 communities. In Kentucky a bill for suppressing all 

 evolutionary teaching passed tlic House of Representa- 

 tives, and was only rejected, I believe, by one vote, 

 in the Senate of that State. In Arkansas the lower 

 house passed a bill to the same effect almost without 

 opposition, but the Senate threw it out. Oklahoma 

 followed a similar course. In Florida, the House of 

 Representatives has passed, by a two-thirds vote, a 

 resolution forbidding any instructor " to teach or 

 permit to be taught Atheism, agnosticism, Darwinism, 

 or any other hypothesis that links man in blood 

 relation to any form of life." This resolution was 

 lately expected to pass the Senate. A melancholy case 

 has been brought to my notice of a teacher in New 

 Mexico who has been actually dismissed from his 

 appointment for teaching evolution. This is said to 

 have been done at the instigation of a revivalist who 

 visited the district, selling Mr. Bryan's book. 



The chief interest of these proceedings lies in the 

 indications they give of what is to be expected from a 

 genuine democracy which has thrown ofT authority 

 and has begun to judge for itself on questions beyond 

 its mental range. Those who have the capacity, let 

 alone the knowledge and the leisure, to form independent 

 judgments on such subjects have never been more than 

 a mere fraction of any population. We have been 

 passing through a period in which, for reasons not 

 altogether clear, this numerically insignificant fraction 

 has been able to impose its authority on the primitive 

 crowds by whom it is surrounded. There are signs 

 that we may be soon about to see the consequences 

 of the recognition of " equal rights," in a public 

 recrudescence of earlier views. In Great Britain, for 

 example, we may witness before long the results which 

 overtake a democracy unable to tolerate the Vaccina- 

 tion Act, and protecting only some 38 per cent of its 

 children. 



As men of science we are happily not concerned to 

 consider whether a return to Nature, as a policy, will 

 make for collective happiness or not. Nor is it, perhaps, 

 of prime importance that the people of Kentucky or 

 even of " Main Street " should be rightly instructed 

 in evolutionary philosophy. Mr. Bryan may have 

 been quite right in telling them that it was better to 

 know " Rock of Ages " than the ages of rocks. If 

 we are allowed to gratify our abnormal instincts in the 

 search for natural truth, we must be content, and we 



NO. 2809, VOL. 112] 



may be thankful if we are not all hanged like the 

 Clerk of Chatham, with our ink-horns about our necks. 

 For the, present we in Europe arc fairly safe. A 

 brief outbreak on the part of ecclesiaKtical ; ' 

 did follow the publication of the " Origin of 

 but that is now perceived to have been a mistake. 

 The convictions of the masses may be trusted to 

 remain in essentials what they liave always been; 

 and I suppose that if science were to declare to-morrow 

 that man descends from slugs or from centipedes, no 

 episcopal lawn would be ruffled here. Unfonunately 

 the American incidents suggest that our destinies may 

 not much longer. remain in the hands of that exahcd 

 tribunal, and that trouble may not be so far ofif as 

 we have supposed. W 



The Unity of Anthropology. 



Die Kultur der Gegenwart : ihre Entwicklung utia ikre 

 Ziele. Herausgegeben von Paul Hinnel)erg. Dritter 

 Teil : Mathematik, Naturwissenschaften, Medizin. 

 Fiinfte Abteilung : Anthropologic. Unter Leitung 

 von G. Schwalbe und E. Fischer. Pp. viii + 684 -f- 29 

 Tafeln. (Leipzig und Berlin : B. G. Teubner, 1923). 

 22^. ^d. ; cloth, 275. 4^. 



ANTHROPOLOGY, the science of man— a proud 

 name indeed ! But, alas, there is little at 

 present but the name which stands for the unity of 

 this science. Its subject matter it has to share with 

 anatomy, biology, theories of heredity and variation, 

 geology, sociolog}', and social psychology-. Its methods 

 are borrowed from several natural and humanistic 

 sciences. Its aim and scope seem at first but arbitrarily 

 claimed and loosely circumscribed by man's excessive 

 conceit about his own importance as a central object 

 of study. After all, man is physically but one animal 

 species among others, while his soul has been for a 

 long time already in the keeping of another science — 

 that of psychology'. 



The unfortunate fact is that man has been created 

 with a body and a soul as well, and this original sin, 

 after having incessantly haunted the reflective mind 

 through myth, religion, theology, and metaphysics, 

 comes now to lay its curse on anthropology. Physical 

 and cultural anthropology are divided by the deep 

 rent between soul and body, matter and mind, which 

 is no easier to bridge over in science than in the some- 

 what looser speculations which precede it. 



An anthropologist has to be a Jack-of -all-trades as 

 matters now are, however much he may deplore it, 

 and he needs a good handbook of his science, wherein 

 to store that part of his stock in trade which is not 

 kept fresh by constant handling in his own specialist's 



