432 



NATURE 



[September 3, 1S91 



only. Any kind of concession or compromise on either side is 

 simply fatal, and has led to nothing but a promiscuous slaughter 

 of innocents. Separate the two armies, and the whole physio- 

 logical evidence collected by D'Omalius d'Halloy, Latham, and 

 their followers will not fill more than an octavo page ; while the 

 linguistic evidence collected by Benfey and his followers will 

 not amount to more than a few words. Everything else is mere 

 rhetoric. 



The physiologist is grateful, no doubt, for any additional skull 

 whose historical antecedents can be firmly established ; the 

 philologist is grateful for any additional word that can help to 

 indicate the historical or geographical whereabouts of the un- 

 known speakers of Aryan speech. On these points it is possible 

 to argue. They alone have a really scientific value in the eyes 

 of a scholar, because, if there is any difference of opinion on 

 them, it is possible to come to an agreement. As soon, how- 

 ever, as we go beyond these mere matters of fact, which have 

 been collected by real students, everything becomes at once 

 mere vanity and vexation of spirit. I know the appeals that 

 have been made for conce-sions and some kind of compromise 

 between physiology and philology ; but honest students know 

 that on scientific subjects no ^compromise is admissible. With 

 regard to the home of the Aryas, no honest philologist will 

 allow himself to be driven one step beyond the statement that 

 the unknown people who spoke Aryan languages were, at one 

 time, and before their final separation, settled somewhere in 

 Asia. That may seem very small comfort, but for the present 

 it is all that we have a right to say. Even this must be taken 

 with the limitations which, as all true scholars know, apply to 

 speculations concerning what may have happened, say, five 

 thousand or ten thousand years ago. As to the colour of the skin, 

 the hair, the eyes of those unknown speakers of Aryan speech, 

 the scholar says nothing ; and when he speaks of their blood 

 he knows that such a word can be taken in a metaphorical sense 

 oaly. If we once step from the narrow domain of science into 

 the vast wilderness of mere assertion, then it does not matter 

 what we say. We may say, with Penka, that all Aryas are 

 dolichocephalic, blue^-eyed, and blond, or we may say, with 

 Pietrtment, that all Aryas are brachycephalic, with brown eyes 

 and black hair (V. d. Gheyn, 1889, p. 26). There is no differ- 

 ence between the two assertions. They are both perfectly 

 unmeaning. They are vox et pratcrea nihil. 



My experiences during the last forty years have only served to 

 confirm the opinion which I expressed forty years ago, that 

 there ought to be a complete separation between philology and 

 physiology. And yet, if I were asked whether such a divorce 

 should now be made absolute, I should say. No. There have 

 been so many unexpected discoveries of new facts, and so many 

 surprising combinations of old facts, that we must always be pre- 

 pared to hear some new evidence, if only that evidence is brought 

 forward according to the rules which govern the court of true 

 science. It may be that in time the classification of skulls, hair, 

 eyes, and skin may be brought into harmony with the classifica- 

 tion of language. We may even go so far as to admit, as a 

 postulate, that the two must have run parallel, at least in the 

 beginning of all things. But with the evidence before us at 

 present, mere wrangling, mere iteration of exploded assertions, 

 mere contradictions, will produce no effect on the true jury, 

 which hardly ever consists of more than twelve trusty men, but 

 with whom the final verdict rests. The very thin'^s that most 

 catch the popular ear will by them be ruled out of court. But 

 every single new word, common to all the Aryan languages, and 

 telling of some climatic, geographical, historical, or physio- 

 logical circumstance in the earliest life of the speakers of Aryan 

 speech, will be truly welcome to philologists quite as much as a 

 skull from an early geological stratum is to the physiologist, and 

 both to the anthropologist, in the widest sense of that name. 



But, if all this is so, if the alliance between philology and 

 physiology has hitheito done nothing but mischief, what right, 

 it may be asked, had I to accept the honour of presiding over 

 this Section of Anthropology ? If you will allow me to occupy 

 your valuable time a little longer, I shall explain, as shortly as 

 possible, why I thought that I, as a philologist, might do some 

 small amount of go.d as President of the Anthropological 

 Section. 



In spite of all that I have said against the unholy alliance 

 between physiology and philology, I have felt for years — and I 

 believe I am now supported in my opinion by all competent 

 anthropologists — that a knowledge of languages must be con- 

 sidered in future as a sine qud non for every anihropoloTjist. 



NO. II 40, VOL. 44] 



Anthropology, as you know, has increased so rapidly that it 

 seems to say now, " Nihil hjimani a me alienuin puto." So long 

 as anthropology treated only of the anatomy of the human body, 

 any surgeon might have become an excellent anthropologist. 

 But now, when anthropology includes the study of the earliest 

 thoughts of man, his customs, his laws, his traditions, his legends, 

 his religions, ay, even his early philosophies, a student of an- 

 thropology without an accurate knowledge of languages, without 

 the conscience of a scholar, is like a sailor without a compass. 



No one disputes this with regard to nations who possess a 

 literature. No one would listen to a man describing the pecu- 

 liarities of the Greek, the Roman, the Jew, the Arab, the 

 Chinese, without knowing their languages, and being capable 

 of reading the master-works of their literature. We know how 

 often men who have devoted the whole of their life to the study, 

 for instance, of Hebrew, differ, not only as to the meaning of 

 certain words and passages, but as to the very character of the 

 Jews. One authority states that the Jews, and not only the 

 Jews, but all Semitic nations, were possessed of a monotheistic 

 instinct. Another authority shows that all Semitic nations, not 

 excluding the Jews, were polytheistic in their religion, and that 

 the Jehovah of the Jews was not conceived at first as the Supreme 

 Deity, but as a national god only, as the God of the Jews, who, 

 according to the latest view, was originally a fetish or a totem, 

 like all other gods. 



You know how widely classical scholars differ on the character 

 of Greeks and Romans, on the meaning of their customs, the 

 purpose of their religious ceremonies — nay, the very essence of 

 their gods. And yet there was a time, not very long ago, when 

 anthropologists would rely on the descriptions of casual travel- 

 lers, who, after spending a few weeks, or even a few years, 

 among tribes whose language was utterly unknown to them, 

 gave the most marvellous accounts of their customs, their laws, 

 and even of their religion. It may be said that anybody can 

 describe what he sees, even though unable to converse with the 

 people. I say, Decidedly no ; and I am supported in this 

 opinion by the most competent judges. Dr. Codrington, who 

 has just published his excellent book on the " Melanesians : 

 their Anthropology and Folk-lore," spent twenty-four years 

 among the Melanesians, learning their dialects, collecting their 

 legends, and making a systematic study of their laws, customs, 

 and superstitions. But what does he say in his preface? " I have 

 felt the truth," he says, "of what Mr. Fison, late missionary in 

 Fiji, has written : ' When a European has been living for two 

 or three years among savages, he is sure to be fully convinced 

 that he knows all about them ; when he has been ten years or 

 so amongst them, if he be an observant man, he knows that he 

 knows very little about them, and so begins to learn.' " 



How few of the books in which we trust with regard to the 

 characteristic peculiarities of savage races have been written by 

 men who have lived among them for ten or twenty years, and 

 who have learnt their languages till they could speak them as 

 well as the natives themselves. 



It is no excuse to say that any traveller who has eyes to see 

 and ears to hear can form a correct estimate of the doings and 

 sayings of savage tribes. It is not so, and anthropologists know 

 from sad experience that it is not so. Suppose a traveller came 

 to a camp where he saw thousands of men and women dancing 

 round the image of a young bull. Suppose that the dancers 

 were all stark naked, that after a time they began to fight, and 

 that at the end of their orgies there were three iliousand corpses 

 lying about weltering in their blood. Would not a casual tra- 

 veller have described such savages as worse than the Negroes 

 of Dahomey ? Yet these savages were really the Jews, the 

 chosen people of God. The image was the golden calf, the 

 priest was Aaron, and the chief who ordered the massacre was 

 Moses. We may read the 32nd chapter of Exodus in a very 

 different sense. A traveller who could have conversed with 

 Aaron and Moses might have understood the causes of the revolt 

 and the necessity of the massacre. But without this power of 

 interrogation and mutual explanation, no travellers, however 

 graphic and amusing their stories may be, can be trusted ; no 

 statements of theirs can be used by the anthropologist for truly 

 scientific purposes. 



From the day when this fact was recognized by the highest 

 authorities in anthropology, and was sanctioned by some at least 

 of our Anthropological, Ethnological, and Folk-lore Societies, a 

 new epoch began, and philology received its right place as the 

 handmaid of anthropology. TThe most important paragraph in 

 our new charter was this, that in future no one is to be quoted 



