October 22, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



373 



work with the head and not the hand. One 

 of the functions of the anthropological labora- 

 tory of a great university, one of the func- 

 tions of a- school anthropometric laboratory, 

 shoidd be to measure those physical and 

 mental characters and their inter-relations 

 upon which a man's success in a given career 

 so much depends. Its function should be to 

 guide youth in the choice of a calling, and 

 in the case of a school to enable the head- 

 master to know something of the real nature 

 of individual boys, so that that much-tried 

 man does not feel compelled to hide his igno- 

 rance by cabalistic utterances when parents 

 question him on what their son is fitted for. 

 Wide, however, as is the anthropometric 

 material in our universities and public 

 schools, it touches only a section of the popu- 

 lation. The modern anthropologist has to go 

 further; he has to enter the doors of the 

 primary schools; he has to study the general 

 population in all its castes, its craftsmen, and 

 its sedentary workers. Anthropology has to 

 be useful to commerce and to the state, not 

 only in association with foreign races, but 

 still more in the selection of the right men 

 and women for the staif of factory, mine, 

 office and transport. The selection of work- 

 men to-day by what is too often a rough trial 

 and discharge method is one of the wasteful 

 factors of production. Few employers even 

 ask what trades parents and grandparents 

 have followed, nor consider the relation of a 

 man's physique and mentality to his pro- 

 posed employment. I admit that progress in 

 this direction will be slow, but if the work 

 undertaken in this sense by the anthropologist 

 be well devised, accurate, and comprehensive, 

 the anthropometric laboratory will gradually 

 obtain an assured position in commercial ap- 

 preciation. As a beginning, the anthropolo- 

 gist by an attractive museum, by popular lec- 

 tures and demonstrations, should endeavor to 

 create, as Sir Prancis Galton did at South 

 Kensington, an anthropometric laboratory 

 frequented by the general population, as well 

 as by the academic class. Thus he will ob- 

 tain a wider range of material. But the 

 anthropologist, if he is to advance his science 



and emphasize its services to the state, must 

 pass beyond the university, the school, and the 

 factory. He must study what makes for 

 wastage in our present loosely organized 

 society; he must investigate the material pro- 

 vided by reformatory, prison, asylums for the 

 insane and mentally defective; he must carry 

 his researches into the inebriate home, the 

 sanatorium, and the hospital, side by side 

 with his medical collaborator. Here is end- 

 less work for the immediate future, and work 

 in which we are already leagues behind our 

 American colleagues. For them the psycho- 

 metric and anthropometric laboratory attached 

 to asylum, prison, and reformatory is no 

 startling innovation, to be spoken of with 

 bated breath. It is a recognized institution 

 of the United States to-day, and from such 

 laboratories the " fieldworkers " pass out, find- 

 ing out and reporting on the share parentage 

 and environment have had in the production 

 of the abnormal and the diseased, of the anti- 

 social of all kinds. Some of this work is 

 excellent, some indifferent, some perhaps 

 worthless, but this will always be the case in 

 the expansion of new branches of applied 

 science. The training of the workers must 

 be largely of an experimental character, the 

 technique has to be devised as the work 

 develops. Instructors and directors have to 

 be appointed, who have not been trained 

 ad hoc. But this is remedying itself, and if 

 indeed, when we start, we also do not at first 

 limp somewhat lamely along these very paths, 

 it will only be because we have the advantage 

 of American experience. 



There is little wonder that in America an- 

 thropology is no longer the stepchild of the 

 state. It has demanded its heritage, and 

 shown that it can use it for the public good. 



If I have returned to my first insistence 

 that the problems handled by the anthro- 

 pologist shall be those useful to the state, it is 

 because I have not seen that point insisted 

 upon in this country, and it is because my 

 first insistence, like my third, involves the 

 second for itS' effectiveness — the establishment 

 in our chief universities of anthropological 

 institutes. As Gustav Schwalbe said of an- 



