136 L SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. ^ 



I am afraid I am a scientific heretic — an outcast from the true ortho- 

 dox faith — I do not beheve in science for its own sake. I beheve only in 

 science for man's sake. You will hear on every side the argument that 

 it is not the aim of science to be utile, that you must pursue scientific 

 studies for their own sake and not for the utility of the resulting dis- 

 coveries. I think that there is a great deal of obscurity about this 

 attitude, I will not say nonsense. I find the strongest supporters of 

 ' science for its own sake ' use as the main argument for the pursuit 

 of not immediately utile researches that these researches will be useful 

 some day, that we can never be certain when they will turn out to be 

 of advantage to mankind. Or, again, they will appeal to non-utile 

 branches of science as providing a splendid intellectual training — as if 

 the provision of highly trained minds was not itself a social fimction 

 of the greatest utility ! In other words, the argument from utility is 

 in both cases indirectly apphed to justify the study of science for its 

 own sake. In the old days the study of hyperspace — space of higher 

 dimensions than that of which we have physical cognisance — used to 

 be cited as an example of a non-utile scientific research. In view of 

 the facts: (i.) that our whole physical outlook on the universe — and 

 with it I will add our whole philosophical and theological outlooks — are 

 taking new aspects under the theory of Einstein; and (ii.) that study 

 of the relative influences of Nature and Nurture in Man can be 

 reduced to the trigonometry of polyhedra in hyperspace — we see how 

 idle it is to fence off any field of scientific investigation as non-utile. 



Yet are we to defend the past of anthropology — and, in particular, 

 of anthropometry — as the devotion of our science to an immediate non- 

 utile which one day is going to be utile in a glorious and epoch-making 

 manner, like the Clifford-Einstein suggestion of the curvature of our 

 space? I fear we can take no such flattering unction to our souls. 

 I fear that ' the best is yet to be ' cannot be said of our multitudinous 

 observations on ' height- sitting ' or on the censuses of eye or hair 

 colours of our population. These things are dead almost from the day 

 of their record. It is not only because the bulk of their recorders were 

 untrained to observe and measure with scientific accuracy, it is not only 

 because the records in nine out of ten cases omit the associated factors 

 without which the record is valueless. It is beciause the progress of 

 mankind in its present stage depends on characters wholly different 

 from those which have so largely occupied the anthropologist's atten- 

 tion. Seizing the superficial and easy to observe, he has let slip the 

 more subtle and elusive qualities on which progress, on which national 

 fitness for this or that task essentially depends. The pulse -tracing, 

 the reaction-time, the mental age of the men under his control are far 

 more important to the commanding officer — nay, I will add, to the 

 employer of labour — than any record of span, of head-measurement, 

 or pigmentation categories. The psycho-physical and psycho-physio- 

 logical characters are of far greater weight in the struggle of nations 

 to-day than the superficial measurements of man's body. Physique, 

 in the fullest sense, counts something still, but it is physique as 

 measured by health, not by stature or eye-colour. But character, 

 strength of will, mental quickness count more, and if anthropometry 



