OF BAEON HUMBOLDT. 171 



man nature would be incomplete and purposeless. 

 The science of man, therefore, or, as it is some- 

 times called, anthropology, must form the crown 

 of all natural science." Bunsen, when address- 

 ing, in 1847, the newly-formed section of Ethno- 

 logy at the meeting of the British Association 

 at Oxford, said : 



"If man is the apex of creation, it seems 

 right, on the one side, that an historical inquiry 

 into his origin and development should never 

 be allowed to sever itself from the general body 

 of natural science, and in particular from phy- 

 siology. But, on the other hand, if he is the 

 end to which all organic formations tend from the 

 very beginning ; if man is at once the mystery 

 and the key of natural science ; if that is the 

 only view of natural science worthy of our age, 

 then ethnological philology, once established 

 on principles as clear as the physiological are, 

 is the highest branch of that science for the 

 advancement of which this association is in- 

 stituted. It is not an appendix to physiology 

 or to anything else ; but its object is, on the 

 contrary, capable of becoming the end and goal 

 of the labours and transactions of a scientific 

 association." * 



* Report of the British Association for the Advancement 

 of Science (1847), p. 257. 



