128 MY LIFE 



combine to produce the recession of waterfalls are numerous, 

 and SO liable to change, that it is impossible to trust to conclu- 

 sions drawn from observations during limited periods. It is 

 evident, for example, that while the Canadian falls have 

 receded nearly one-third of a mile, the American falls have 

 not receded more than ten or twenty feet. 



Although I did not have a single lecture engagement at 

 Washington, I read two short scientific papers there. There 

 was a Woman's Anthropological Society, which invited me 

 to address them, and being rather puzzled what to talk about, 

 I made a few remarks on " The Great Problems of Anthro- 

 pology." These I defined as the problem of race and the 

 problem of language. On the first point I stated that there 

 are three great races or divisions of mankind clearly definable 

 — the black, the brown, and the white, or the Negro, Mon- 

 golian, and Caucasian. If we once begin to subdivide beyond 

 these primary divisions, there is no possibility of agreement, 

 and we pass insensibly from the five races of Pritchard to the 

 fifty or sixty of some modern ethnologists. The other great 

 problem, that of language and its origin, was important, 

 because it was, above all others, the human characteristic, and 

 was the greatest factor in man's intellectual development. I 

 then laid down the outlines of the theory of mouth-gestures, 

 which I afterwards developed in my article on " The Expres- 

 siveness of Speech," showing how greatly it extends the range 

 of mere initiative sounds (which had been ridiculed by some 

 great philologists) and affords a broad and secure founda- 

 tion for the development of every form of human speech. 



The other paper was on " Social Economy versus Political 

 Economy," and was given at the request of Major Powell and 

 a few other scientific friends to a large audience of gentlemen 

 and ladies. It was an attempt to show how and why the 

 old " political economy " was effete and useless, in view of 

 modern civilization and modern accumulations of individual 

 wealth. Its one end, aim, and the measure of its success, 

 was the accumulation of wealth, without considering who got 

 the wealth, or how many of the producers of the wealth 



