THE AIMS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 71 



Such an improvement is broadly referred to as an increased or 

 higher civilization ; and it is the avowed aim of applied anthro- 

 pology accurately to ascertain what are the criteria of civiliza- 

 tion, what individual or social elements have in the past contrib- 

 uted most to it, how these can be continued and strengthened, and 

 what new forces, if any, may be called in to hasten the progress* 

 Certainly no aims could be more immediately practical than these. 



Here, again, anthropology sharply opposes its methods to those 

 of the ideologists, the dogmatists, and the deductive philosophers. 

 It refuses to ask, What should improve man ? but asks only, 

 What lias improved him in the past ? and it is extremely cau- 

 tious in its decision as to what " improvement " really means. It 

 certainly does not accept the definition which up to the present 

 the philosophies and theologies have offered any more than it 

 accepts the means by which these claim that our present civiliza- 

 tion has been brought about. 



This department of anthropology is still in its infancy. We 

 are only beginning to appreciate that, in the future, political 

 economy, like history, will have to be rearranged on lines which 

 this new science dictates. The lessons of the past, their meaning 

 clearly apprehended, will be acknowledged as the sole guides for 

 the future. It may be true, as De Tocqueville said of the United 

 States, that a new world needs a new political science; but the 

 only sure foundation for the new will be the old. 



Applied anthropology clearly recognizes that the improvement 

 of humanity depends primarily on the correct adjustment of the 

 group to the individual ; and, as in ethnology, its ultimate refer- 

 ence is not to the group, but to the individual. In the words of 

 John Stuart Mill, the first to apply inductive science to social 

 evolution, it is that the individual may become " happier, nobler, 

 wiser," that all social systems have any value. 



We may profitably recall what the same profound thinker and 

 logician tells us have been up to the present time the prime mov- 

 ers in human social progress. They are : First, property and its 

 protection ; second, knowledge and the opportunity to use it ; and 

 third, co-operation, or the application of knowledge and property 

 to the benefit of the many. 



But Mill was altogether too acute an observer not to perceive 

 that while these momenta have proved powerful stimulants to the 

 group, they have often reacted injuriously on the individual, de- 

 veloping that morbid and remorseless egotism which is so preva- 

 lent in modern civilized communities. Nor should I omit to add 

 that the remedy which he urged and believed adequate for this 

 dangerous symptom is one which every anthropologist and every 

 scientist will fully indorse the general inculcation of the love of 

 truth, scientific, verifiable truth. 



