868 BrOLOGICAL TRAINING AND STUDIES. 



fitting" dress to thought, and an accurate representation of actual 

 fact. 



If we are told that the attempt to harmonise the results, not merely 

 of cranioseopy, but of any and all natural science investigation, with 

 the results of literary and linguistic research, is needless and even 

 futile, this is simply equivalent to saying that one or other of these 

 methods is worthless. For as Truth is one, if two routes purporting 

 both alike to lead to it do not sooner or later converge and harmonise, 

 this can only be because one or other of them fails to impinge upon 

 the goal. It is true that by certain lines of investigation light is 

 thrown upon a problem only at a single point, and that all further 

 prosecution of investigation along that line will but lead us off at 

 a tangent. Still the throwing of even a single ray upon a dark 

 surface is an achievement with a value of its own ; and it is a 

 cardinal rule in our sciences never to ignore the existence of 

 seemingly contradictory data, in whatsoever quarter they may show 

 themselves. For what would be said of an investigator of a subject 

 such as physical geography, who should declare that he would pay 

 no attention except to a single set of data, when he was discussing 

 whether a particular archipelago had been formed by upheaval, or 

 should be held to be the fragments and remnants of a disrupted 

 continent; and that if geological evidence was in crying discord 

 with his interpretation of the facts of the distribution of species, 

 it was not his business to reconcile them ? He would be held to 

 have neglected his business, as you may see by a reference to 

 Mr. Bentham's ^Address to the Linnean Society,' May 24, 1869 

 ('Linn. Soc. Proc' for 1869, p. xcii^). 



The argument from identity of customs and practices to identity 

 of race is liable to much the same objections, and to much the same 

 fallacies, as is the argument from identity of cranial conformation. 

 The case may be found admirably stated in Mr. Tylor's work on the 

 'Early History of Mankind,' p. i']6^ ed. 2 ; and I may say that the 

 means of bringing the problem home to one's-self may be found by 



^ The following references to passages of the kind referred to above as to the un- 

 trustworthiness of craniographical evidence may be useful : — Geographisches Jahrbuch, 

 1 866, p. 481. Hyrtl, 'Topograph, Anatomic,' i. p. 13. Henle, ' System. Anat.' i. 198. 

 Krause, i. 2, p. 251. 'Archiv ffir Anthropologic,' Holder, ihid. ii. i, p. 60. See also 

 His and Riitimeyer, and Ecker in their systematic works severally, the * Crania Hel- 

 vetica ' and the * Crania Germaniae meridionalis.' 



