122 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the Popular Science Monthly for June, 1890, 

 Mr. Huxley expressly states that the term 

 " Agnostic " was not suggested by the pas- 

 sage to which Mr. Button refers, but came 

 into his mind " as a fit antithesis to ' Gnos- 

 tic ' the ' Gnostics ' being those ancient 

 heretics who professed to know most about 



those very things of which I am quite 

 sure I know nothing." As the use of the 

 term in theological discussion has become 

 universal, it is interesting to know how 

 Prof. Huxley came to introduce it 



J. T. GORMAN. 

 OPELIKA, ALA., September 14, 1895. 



's Jgufcle. 



THE PRESENT POSITION OF 

 ANTHROPOLOGY. 



A MONG the scientific addresses 

 f* of the present year we are dis- 

 posed to assign a high place in point 

 of interest and general merit to that 

 on The Aims of Anthropology, de- 

 livered at the August meeting of the 

 American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science by the retir- 

 ing president, Prof. Brinton, and 

 reprinted in this number of the 

 Monthly. Like others who have ad- 

 vocated the claims of that science, 

 the professor almost overwhelms us 

 with the enumeration of all its tribu- 

 tary streams of knowledge ; but more 

 successfully than most, he enables us 

 to keep in view the unity of aim in 

 anthropological study. He makes 

 us feel that it is concerned not with 

 unrelated or but slightly related de- 

 tails in regard to man, but with man 

 himself, as a great organic fact, as 

 the crowning product of creation, 

 whom to know is for each of us 

 in the truest sense self-knowledge. 

 " Hearken unto me," said the prophet 

 of old, il all ye that love righteous- 

 ness! Look unto the rock whence 

 ye are hewn, and the hole of the pit 

 whence ye are digged." It is in the 

 same spirit, we imagine, that Dr. 

 Brinton asks us to look into our ori- 

 gins, and into whatever else can 

 throw light upon what we really 

 are. As regards the origin of man, 

 science, he asserts, has now estab- 



lished beyond cavil that, far from 

 having fallen from some original 

 high estate and forfeited a pristine 

 paradise, the earliest man was also 

 " the lowest, the most ignorant, the 

 most brutish, naked, homeless, half 

 speechless." Such as he was, how- 

 ever, he had within him that which 

 made possible for him a progress 

 denied to all other animal races, that 

 secured for him long since the mas- 

 tery of the planet, and that holds 

 out to him the prospect of a future 

 civilization far in advance of any- 

 thing he has heretofore enjoyed. 



The most vitalizing discovery 

 that has been made within recent 

 years, in its bearings upon anthro- 

 pology, Dr. Brinton considers to be 

 that of the psychical unity of man- 

 kind, u the parallelism of his devel- 

 opment everywhere and in all times ; 

 nay, more, the nigh absolute uni- 

 formity of his thoughts and actions 

 when in the same degree of develop- 

 ment, no matter where he is or in 

 what epoch living." Seeing that 

 savage tribes represent a stage of 

 human culture which has left traces 

 in ourselves, but the perfect mani- 

 festation of which will soon have 

 passed away forever, he calls ear- 

 nestly for a prolonged and profound 

 study of such savage races as still 

 exist, though none of them are in 

 his opinion quite low enough to rep- 

 resent fully primitive man. He 

 also strongly recommends the study 



