PAUL BROCA 

 AND THl' PRHNCIl SCHOOL i)V ANTHROPOLOGY 



Lecture delivered in tlie National Museum, Washington. I >. C April 15, 1SS2. 

 l.v Dr. ROKERT FLETCHER. 



L.vniKs .vNi) Gentlkmkx : 



You have hoard a threat doal in thet^e lalter days ol" llie 

 Scicnc-o of Aiithropolon;y, and wliile many of you, doubtless, 

 havi' hevu followinij its investigations and discoveries with 

 interest and profit, otherswill l)e }>rompted to inquire: What 

 is Anthropology, and when, and hy whom, was it disc-ovei-cd 

 or invented? To the first i>art of tlic (pu-stion it is lui- 

 neeessary for me to reply, as Professor Ma.^on, in the .'^eeond 

 lecture of this course, gave a lucid exi)osition of what 

 constitutes the science in question: hut the reason of its 

 existence, and the circumstances attending its establishment 

 and recognition in the scientific world, it is the purpose of 

 this lecture concisely to explain. 



Taking a comprehensive view of the subject, it would be 

 correct to say that anthropology has existed since the earliest 

 days of human civilization. Classical literature shows 

 us Strabo and the geographers describing races — ethnog- 

 rapliers : Galen and his followers as anatomists and physi- 

 cians — biologists, as we should call them now ; and Plato 

 and the metaphysicians as psychologists. We go back to 

 Justinian for the first records of an important branch of 

 .^ociolotrv, the orijrin of law. and the technoloiiist cannot 

 afford to overlook \'itruvius and X'egetius in tracing out 

 the early history of tools, arms and weapons. But it is not 

 with the separate sciences which together form what wc now 

 call anthropology, tempting as the subject is, that we have 

 to do. for thi' theme is much to(» vast for the time at our 

 disposal. 



I must remind you that the tirni itself has been used 

 with very different meanings by tiie theologian, the anato- 

 mist, and ])hysician. '* Journals of Anthro|)ology," of which 

 there wt-re many in Germany a hundred years ago. were 

 mostly devoted to nifdieine an<l .surgery. It- use in its 

 present comprehensive sense arose with the establishment 

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