TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. DEPT. ANTHROPOLOGY. OYO 



Section of to-day is to have a highly interesting paper hy Sir John Lubbock on the 

 habits of ants. Ants have a polity, and exhibit a certain amount of intelligence, and 

 all these matters are proper subjects for the study of the zoologist as far as he deals 

 with the ant. There is yet a third point of view in which you may regard every animal. 

 It has a distribution. Not only is it to be found somewhere on the earth's surface, but 

 palaeontology tells us, if we go back in time, that the great majority of animals have 

 had a past history — that they occurred in epochs of the world's history far removed 

 from the present. And when we have acquired all that knowledge which we may 

 enumerate under the heads of anatomy, physiology, and distribution, there remains 

 still the problem of problems to the zoologist, which is the study of the causes of 

 those phenomena, in order that we may know how they came about. All these 

 different forms of knowledge and inquiry are legitimate subjects for science, there 

 being no subject which is an illegitimate subject for scientific inquiry, except such 

 as involves a contradiction in terms, or is itself absurd. Indeed, I don't know that 

 I ought to go quite so far as this at present, for undoubtedly there are many be- 

 nighted persons who have been in the habit of calling by no less hard names con- 

 ceptions which the President of this Meeting tells us must be regarded with much re- 

 spect. If we have four dimensions of space we may have forty dimensions, and that 

 would be a long way beyond that which is conceivable by ordinary powers of imagina- 

 tion. I should, therefore, not like to draw too closely the limits as to what may be 

 contradiction to the best-established principles. Now, let us turn to a proposition 

 which no one can possibly deny — namely, that there is a distinct sense in which man is 

 an animal. There is not the smallest doubt of that proposition. If anybody entertains 

 a misgiving on that point he has simply to walk through the museum close by, in 

 order to see that man has a structure and a framework which may be compared, 

 point for point and bone for bone, with those of the lower animals. There is not the 

 smallest doubt moreover that, as to the manner of his becoming, man is developed, 

 step by step, in exactly the same way as they are. There is not the smallest doubt 

 that his activities — not only his mere bodily functions, but his other functions — are 

 just as much the subjects of scientific study as are those of ants or bees. What we 

 call the phenomena of intelligence, for example (as to what else there may be in 

 them, the anthropologist makes no assertion) — are phenomena following a definite 

 casual order just as capable of scientific examination, and of being reduced to defi- 

 nite law, as are all those phenomena which we call physical. Just as ants form a 

 polity and a social state, and just as these are the proper and legitimate study of the 

 zoologist, so far as he deals with ants ; so do men organise themselves into a social 

 state. And though the province of politics is of course outside that of anthropology, 

 yet the consideration of man, so far as his instincts lead him to construct a social 

 economy, is a legitimate and proper part of anthropology, precisely in the same way 

 as the study of the social state of ants is a legitimate object of zoology. So with re- 

 gard to other and more subtle phenomena. It has often been disputed whether in 

 animals there is any trace of the religious sentiment. That is a legitimate subject 

 of dispute and of inquiry ; and if it were possible for my friend Sir John Lubbock to 

 point out to you that ants manifest such sentiments he would have made a very 

 great and interesting discovery, and no one could doubt that the ascertainment of 

 such a fact was completely within the province of zoology. Anthropology has 

 nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of religion — it holds itself absolutely and 

 entirely aloof from such questions — but the natural history of religion, and the origin 

 and the growth of the religions entertained by the different kinds of the human race, 

 are within its proper and legitimate province. I now go a step farther, and pass to 

 the distribution of man. Here, of course, the anthropologist is in his special region. 

 He endeavours to ascertain how various modifications of the human stock are 

 arranged upon the earth's surface. He looks back to the past, and inquires how far 

 the remains of man can be traced. It is just as legitimate to ascertain how far the 

 human race goes back in time as it is to ascertain how far the horse goes back in 

 time ; the kind of evidence that is good in the one case is good in the other; and the 

 conclusions that are forced on us in the one case are forced on us in the other also. 

 Finally, we come to the question of the causes of all these phenomena, which, if 

 permissible in the case of other animals, is permissible in the animal man. What- 

 ever evidence, whatever chain of reasoning justifies us in concluding that the horse, 



