150 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



those of physical asti'dllomy, and we are not going to solve theiii with 

 rusty weapons, nor solve them at all unless we can persuade the 

 ' brainy boys ' of our universities that they are worthy of keen minds. 

 Hence it seems to me that the most fertile training for academic pur- 

 poses in anthropology is that which starts from anthropometry in its 

 broadest sense, which begins to differentiate caste and class and race, 

 bodily and mental health and disease, by measurement and by the 

 analysis of measurement. Once this sound grounding has been reached 

 the trained mind may advance to ethnology and sociology, to prehistory 

 and the evolution of man. And I shall be surprised if equal accuracy 

 of statement and equal logic of deduction be not then demanded in 

 these fields, and I am more than half convinced, nay, I am certain, 

 that the technique the student will apply in anthropometry can be 

 equally well applied in the wider fields into which he will advance in 

 his later studies. Give anthropology a technique as accurate as that 

 of physics, and it will forge ahead as physics have done, and then 

 anthropologists will take their due place in the world of science and 

 in the service of the State. 



Francis Galton has a claim upon the attention of anthropologists 

 which I have not. He has been President of your Institute, and he 

 spoke just thirty-five years ago from the chair I now occupy, pressing 

 on you for the first time the claims of new anthropological methods, 

 in Galton 's words: ' Until the phenomena of any branch of knowledge 

 have been submitted to measurement and number it cannot assume the 

 status and dignity of a Science.' Have we not rather forgotten those 

 warning words, and do they not to some extent explain why our 

 universities and learned societies, why the State and statesmen, have 

 turned the cold shoulder on anthropology? 



This condition of affairs must not continue; it is good neither for 

 anthropology, nor for the universities, nor for the State if this funda- 

 mental science, the science of man, remains in neglect. It will not 

 continue if anthropologists pull together and insist that their problems 

 shall not fail in utility, that their scientific technique shall be up to 

 date, and that anthropological training shall be a reality in our univer- 

 sities — that these shall be fully equipped with museums, with material, 

 with teachers and students. 



It is almost as difficult to reform a science as it is to reform a 

 religion ; in both cases the would-be reformer will offend the sacrosanct 

 upholders of tradition, who find it hard to discard the faith in which 

 tliey have been reared. But it seems to me that the difficulties of our 

 time plead loudly for a broadening of the purpose and a sharpening of 

 the weapons of anthropology. If we elect to stand where we have 

 done a new science will respond to the needs of State and Society; it 

 will spring from medicine and psychology, it will be the poorer in 

 that it knows little of man's development, little of his history or pre- 

 history. But it will devote itself to the urgent problems of the day. 

 The future hes with the nation that most truly plans for the future, 

 that studies most accurately the factors which will improve the racial 

 qualities of future generations either physically or mentally. Is 

 anthropology to lie outside this essential function of the science of 



