832 tRAffSACTiONS Ot' SECTION fl. 



Seci-ion H.— anthropology. 



President of the Section. — Professor William HidgewAY, 

 M.A., LL.D., Litt.D., F.B.A. 



TIlUnSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. 



The President JulivereJ the following Address : — 



The, Ajiplication of Zoological Laics to Man. 



Thirty 3'ears a^o in this very city I heard for the first time a Presidential 

 Address at the British Association, and I was singularly fortunate in entering on 

 my novitiate. I had tlie privilege of hearing Professor Huxley deliver his 

 Presidential Address to the embryo of that Section over which I, a very unworthy 

 successor, have this day the honour to preside. On that oacasion Huxley dealt 

 almost exclusively with the physical evolution of man, and the Neanderthal skull 

 played an important part in his discourse. The anthropologists of that day and 

 since have severely criticised, and rightlj' so, the old teleological doctrine that 

 everything except man himself had been created for man's use, and they emphati- 

 cally enunciated the doctrine that man himself has been evolved under the same laws 

 as every other animal. Yet the anthropologists themselves have not always carried 

 out in practice their own principles to their logical conclusions. To-day I shall 

 attempt to show that the chief errors which impede the scientific study of man 

 wjiich lead to the maladministration of alien races, and which beget blunders of 

 the gravest issue in our own social legislation, are due in the main to man's piide 

 in shutting his eyes to the fact that he is controlled by the same laws as the rest 

 of the animal kingdom. 



I, Let us first consider some of the chief problems which at present are being 

 debated by the physical anthropologists. Foremost in importance of these is the 

 stratification of popidations in Europe. It has generally been held as an article 

 of faith that Europe was tirst peopled by a non-Aryan race. Of course it is 

 impossible for us to say what were the physical characteristics of palaeolithic man, 

 bat when we come to neolithic man the problem becomes less hopeless. It has 

 been generally held that the first neolithic men in Europe, whether they 

 were descended or not I'rom their palaeolithic predecessors, had long skulls, but 

 were not Aryan ; that later on a migration of short-skulled people from Asia 

 passed along Central Europe and into France, becoming what is commonly 

 iitrmed the Alpine, by some the Ligurian, by others the Celtic race; that later 

 these two primitive non-Aryan races were overrun by the Aryans, who, when 

 these theories were tirst started, were universally considered to have come 

 I'rom the Hindu Kusli, but are now generally believed, as held by Latham, to 

 have originated in Upper Central Euro(:e. Yet, although the view respecting the 

 cradle of the Aryans has changed, anthropologists have not seen thp important 

 bearing that it has upon the problem of neolithic man. The Aryans are generally 

 held to have had a blonde complexion. 



