510 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ANTHROPOLOGY A UNIVERSITY STUDY. 



BY JOHN S. FLAGG, 



PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY AND EMBRYOLOGY, AND LECTURER ON ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE COLLEGE 

 OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS, BOSTON, MASS. 



ANTHROPOLOGY, the science of man, has been in the past a 

 -j- term of comparatively narrow significance. Journals of 

 anthropological societies all show a habit of thought along a few 

 restricted lines. Under the old scholastic regime the departments 

 of archaeology and written history comprised nearly the sum total 

 of anthropological study, all other studies appearing to be related, 

 though but slightly, in a fixed cosmogony. Later, ethnology, as a 

 truly scientific study, apart from history and comparative philol- 

 ogy, has crept in as a growing realization of the interdependence 

 of all knowledge arose. 



The marvelous results of scientific investigation with which 

 the workers of this century have blessed us, and above all the 

 far-reaching generalizations which great but exact minds like 

 Darwin's and Spencer's have given us, have so unified scientific 

 thought that the student has been obliged to enlarge his use of 

 the term anthropology to embrace the new and broader concept. 

 He now realizes that every department of study is necessarily a 

 department of anthropology, in that every branch of knowledge 

 has some contribution to make toward the solution of that great- 

 est of all problems to us, What is man how did he originate, and 

 how arose his characters and customs ? As it was realized that 

 man was a result of all precedent causes that had acted in his 

 line, and as no activity, however remote, but had some effect on 

 this line, either mediately or immediately, the concept became 

 ever larger, until now the term anthropology really conveys the 

 idea of a broad synthetic philosophy, built up from verified and 

 ever- verifiable data alone the great law of the evolution of all 

 things and the harmonious mass of laws relating to detail, which 

 shows the universe a logical series of causes and effects. While 

 each separate department of science is busy adding new data to 

 the mass of detail, correcting by careful and constant verification 

 and a juster appreciation of values the false concept that some 

 previous fact has given birth to, anthropology fits each new fact, 

 so far as it bears on the problem of man, into its proper place 

 in the whole ; sees hitherto unknown relationships to facts dis- 

 covered in other lines of research; traces further and further 

 through the web of things the warp threads of unvarying law. 

 As the master builder carries within his mind the concept of the 

 finished building, to whose realization every workman contributes 

 by adding each his stone, so a perfect anthropology can be real- 



