208 
further than inquiry into the physical structure of the 
human races. Man, ‘unlike other animals, habitually 
reinforces and enhances his natural qualities and force 
by artificial means.’’ He does, or gets done for him, 
all sorts of things to his body to improve its capacities 
or appearance, or to protect it. He thus supplies him- 
self with sanitary appliances and surroundings, with 
bodily ornamentation and ornaments, with protective 
clothing, with habitations and furniture, with protec- 
tion against climate and enemies, with works for the 
supply of water and fire, with food and drink, drugs 
and medicine. And for these purposes he hunts, fishes, 
domesticates animals, and tills the soil, and provides 
himself with implements for all these, and also for 
defence and offence, and for the transport of goods, 
involving working in wood, earth, stones, bones, shells, 
metals and other hard materials, and in leather, 
strings, nets, basketry, matting and weaving, leading 
him to what are known as textile industries. Some of 
this work has brought him to mine and quarry, and to 
employ mechanical aids in the shape of machinery, 
-however rude and simple. The transport of himself 
and his belongings by land and water has led him to 
a separate set of industries and habits: to the use of 
paths, roads, bridges, and halting places, of trailers, 
sledges, and wheeled vehicles; to the use of rafts, 
floats, canoes, coracles, boats, and ships, and the 
means of propelling them, poles, paddles, oars, sails, 
and rigging. The whole-of these subjects is grouped 
by anthropologists under the term technology, which 
thus becomes a very wide subject, covering all the 
means by which a people supplies itself with the 
necessaries of its mode of livelihood. 
In order to carry on successfully what may be 
termed the necessary industries or even to be in a 
position to cope with them, bodies of men have to act 
in concert, and this forces mankind to be gregarious, 
a condition of life that involves the creation of social 
relations. To understand, therefore, any group of 
mankind, it is essential to study sociology side by 
side with technology, The subjects for inquiry here 
are the observances at’crucial points in the life-history 
of the individual—birth, puberty, marriage, death, 
daily life, nomenclature, and so on; the social 
organisation and the relationship of individuals. On 
these follow the economics of the social group, pas- 
toral, agricultural, industrial, and commercial, together 
with conceptions as to property and inheritance (in- 
cluding slavery), as to government, law and order, 
politics and morals; and finally the ideas as to war 
and the external relations between communities. 
We are still, however, very far from being able to 
understand in all their fulness of development even 
the crudest of human communities without a further 
inquiry into the products of their purely mental activi- 
ties, which in the ‘‘ Notes and Queries” are grouped 
under the term ‘‘ Arts and Sciences.’’ Under this head 
are to be examined, in the first place, the expression 
of the emotions to the eye by physical movements and 
conditions, and then by gestures, signs and signals, 
before we come to language, which is primarily ex- 
pressed by the voice to the ear, and secondarily to the 
eye in a more elaborate form by the graphic arts— 
pictures, marks and writing. Man further tries to 
express his emotions. by what are known as the fine 
arts; that is by modifying the material articles which 
he contrives for his: livelihood in a manner that makes 
them represent to him something beyond _ their 
economic use—makes them pleasant, representative 
or symbolical—leading him on to draw, paint, enamel, 
engrave, carve and mould. In purely mental efforts 
this striving to satisfy the artistic or esthetic sense 
takes the. form of stories, proverbs, riddles, songs, 
and music. Dancing, drama, games, tricks and 
amusements ate other manifestations of the same 
NO, 2294, VOL. 92] 
NATURE 
[OcToBER 16, 1913 
effort, combining in these cases the movements of the 
body with those of the mind in expressing the 
emotions. ; 
The mental processes necessary for the expression 
of his emotions have induced man to extend his powers © 
of mind in directions now included in the term 
“abstract reasoning.’’ This has led him to express 
the results of his reasoning by such terms as reckoning | 
and measurement, and to fix standards for comparison — 
but all essential matters as 
enumeration, distance, surface, capacity, 
time, value, and exchange. ‘These last enable him to 
reach the idea of money, which is the measurement 
of value by means of tokens, and represents perhaps 
the highest economic development of the reasoning 
powers common to nearly all mankind. 
The mental capacities of man have so far been con- 
sidered only in relation to the expression of the 
emotions and of the results of abstract reasoning; 
but they have served him also to develop other results 
and expressions equally important, which have arisen 
out of observation of his surroundings, and have given 
birth to the natural sciences: astronomy, meteorology, 
geography, topography, and natural history. And 
further they have enabled him to memorise all these 
things by means of records, which in their highest 
form have brought about what is known to all of us 
as history, the bugbear of impulsive and shallow 
thinkers, but the very backbone of all solid opinion. 
The last and most complex development of the 
mental processes, dependent upon all the others 
according to the degree to which they themselves have 
been developed in any given variety of mankind, is, 
and has always been, present in every race or group on 
record from the remotest to the most recent time in 
some form or other and in a high degree. Groups of 
men observe the phenomena exhibited by themselves 
or their environment, and account for them according 
to their mental capacity as modified by their heredity. 
Man’s bare abstract reasoning, following: on his o 
servation of such phenomena, is his philosophy, but 
his inherited emotions influence his reasoning to an 
almost controlling extent and induce his religion, 
which is thus his philosophy or explanation of natural 
phenomena as effected by his hereditary emotions, 
producing that most wonderful of all human pheno- 
mena, his belief. In the conditions, belief, faith, and 
religion must and do vary with race, ‘period, and 
environment. : 
Consequent on the belief, present or past of any 
given variety of mankind, there follow religious prac- 
tices (customs as they are usually called) based thereon, 
and described commonly in terms that are familiar to 
all, but are nevertheless by no means even yet clearly 
defined: theology, heathenism, fetishism, animism, 
totemism, magic, superstition, with soul, ghost, and 
spirit, and so on, as regards mental concepts; worship, 
ritual, prayer, sanctity, sacrifice, taboo, &c., as regards 
custom and practice. 
Thus have the anthropologists, as I understand 
them, shown that they desire to answer the question 
as to what their science is, and to explain the main 
points in the subject of which they strive to obtain 
and impart accurate knowledge based on scientific 
inquiry: that is, on an inquiry methodically con- 
ducted on lines which experience has shown them will 
lead to the minimum of error in observation and 
record. Y 
I trust I have been clear in my explanation of the 
anthropologists’ case, though in the time at my dis- 
posal I have been unable to do more than indicate the 
subjects they study, and have been obliged to exercise 
restraint and to employ condensation of statement to 
the utmost extent that even a long experience in 
exposition enables one to achieve. Briefly, the science 
in such immaterial 
weight, 
ee m 
