26 SATURDAY LECTURES. 



directly liumun. Biography, as such, is not anthropology, 

 unless it connotes generic data. History, the biography of 

 political societies, is only anthropological so far as it is not 

 merely biographical. 



Physicians were the first and are now the best anthro- 

 pologists, yet not all in medicine belongs to the science. 

 The same is true of every other profession and craft of men 

 and women under the sun, each has in it a great deal that 

 is not, but more that is anthropological. 



Anthropology is the natural history of man in its widest 

 sense. It embraces all that we mean by such terms as 

 humanity, mankind, the human species, human nature. 

 Nay, more. As we cannot study any species as a detached 

 group, so we must include in our science all those natural 

 objects, relations, forces, and facts, that have furnished the 

 material, the impulse, or the limitation to human progress. 



What human events and products are anthropological ? 

 I answer, those that are human, generic, tribal, capable of 

 scrutiny over large areas, by statistics or by instruments of 

 precision ; whatever is customary, whatever can be shown 

 to be a child of the past or a parent of the future. Elimi- 

 nating those local eddies of thought and action which begin 

 and end with the individual, and which constitute his bio- 

 graphy, it takes notice only of those great currents of human 

 phenomena that echo round the world. It therefore both 

 includes and excludes, — includes, and day by day increas- 

 ingly — all phenomena, material and psychical, related to the 

 development of our race; excludes even human activities 

 that are onl}^ the dust upon the mosaic of civilization. 



By what methods does the anthropologist prosecute his 

 work? I answer, by the most vigorous and exacting 

 methods. By careful observation of multitudes of facts, 

 by judicious discrimination of those marks which have 

 true scientific value, by careful induction or classification, 

 by cautious and modest deductions he plods his weary way. 



Who may be an anthropologist? Every man, woman, 

 and child that has sense and patience to observe, and that 

 can honestly record the thing observed. There is not 



