SECTION H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 



THE ENGLISHMAN OF THE FUTURE. 



ADDRESS BY 



PROF. F. G. PARSONS, F.R.C.S., F.S.A., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



You will believe me when I tell you that, after hearing the honour which 

 you had done me in making me the president of your section, I thought 

 long and anxiously upon the subject which I should choose for my presi- 

 dential address, and upon how best I might hope to gain and to hold the 

 interest of a very varied audience, while contributing at the same time 

 my slender share to the advancement of our knowledge. 



It was quite clear to me that I must choose the physical side of 

 Anthropology, since on that side lay most of my experience and all my 

 training. Indeed, on thinking the matter over, I began to see that, 

 granting my claim to be an authority at all, I could only hope to be one 

 upon the various races which have helped to make the modern English- 

 man. And thus my choice slowly narrowed itself until I almost feared 

 that I could do nothing more than repeat the time-honoured though 

 somewhat threadbare process of weighing our ancestors in the balance 

 and in many ways finding them wanting ; for, though I should greatly 

 like to have dealt with some local subject, in well-deserved honour to the 

 place in which we are meeting, my want of first-hand knowledge stood in 

 the way, and I found that I could do little or nothing which could not 

 be better done by the local antiquaries and ethnologists. 



As I thought over the matter, however, it was borne in upon me, little 

 by little, that some of the characteristics of the Englishman of to-day 

 do not seem to be hereditary at all, and that in some things we, in our 

 development, are not following any Mendelian laws ; nor are we harking 

 back to Long Barrow, Bronze Age, Celtic or Saxon types, but that 

 gradually we are building up a new kind of man, differing in certain ways 

 from all of these. 



And yet, if I choose for the title of my address ' The Englishman of 

 the Future,' you must not expect me to come before you as a prophet, 

 foretelling that which shall surely come to pass, but rather as a watchman 

 on the wall, who, thinking that he sees dim signs of things stirring, would 

 report them to you and talk over with you what they foreshadow, if 

 nothing happens to stop them meanwhile. 



Perhaps, however, it will be well for me if I drop my metaphors before 

 they get me into trouble, and take up my story, which I will make as 

 simple and straightforward as I may. 



I must remind you that, during the last fifty years — long before Sir 

 William Arbuthnot Lane and the Daily Mail began their health campaign — ■ 

 there has been a steady and rational interest in Hygiene, particularly in 



