PA 11. i;kuca. ' 127 



attack upon government, i('li<.jion, or social order; and, to 

 ensure the realization ol" these prudent precautions, ho 

 directed that a police officer, in plain clothes, should attend 

 each meet inu" and report to the prefect the teiuiie of, the 

 proceedings. 



Does not this sound as it' we were diseoursing of somc- 

 tiiing that took ])lace under Louis (piatorze, or IMiilip the 

 second? And yet it occurred in our own day, .■^onie twenty 

 years ago, in the most civilized city of Paris. We are ac- 

 customed io look upon our own absolute freedom in such 

 atiairs as a matter of course, but it may not be unjJroHtable 

 to occasionally stop to consider it in the light of comparison. 



It was under the conditions described that the Society of 

 Anthropology of Paris held its first meeting, on the 10th 

 May, 1859. The woi-<l anthropology was substituted for 

 ethnology to show the far wider scope proposed. It in- 

 cluded, in effect, the entire natural history of the human 

 race, whether in the present, in the past, in its general char- 

 acters, in its subdivisions into races or varieties, in its oriirin, 

 or in its relations with the rest of nature. This ])rogramme 

 comitrehended not only ethnology, or the .study of human 

 races, but anthropology, or the study of mankind. It in- 

 cluded, also, a great number of auxiliary sciences: zoology, 

 comjnirative anatomy, geology. i>alieontologv, prehistoric 

 and protohistoric arclueolog}', linguistics, mythology, his- 

 tory, psychology, and medicine itself And as among all 

 these diverse and divergent studies it was necessary to es- 

 tablish some central basis, the founders of the society, who 

 were all young physicians, determined, in accordance witli 

 the views of their leader, to select that which is most fixed 

 in man, namely, his organization and functions; in a word, 

 his anatomy and i)hysiol(>gy. 



With such a va.st field before it, there was no reason to 

 fear that the new .society would perish for want of susten- 

 ance like its predecessor, the Society of Ethnology. As its 

 programme became known, new mend)ers eagerly joine<l it, 

 and when the first vohnne of its bulletins was j»ul»lished, 

 the detiance and distrust which it had excited rafiidlv sub- 



