244 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 35. 



From wliat I have already said, you will 

 understand some of the aims of anthro- 

 pology, those which I will call its ' imme- 

 diate ' aims. They are embraced in the 

 collection of accurate information about 

 man and men, about the individual and 

 the group, as they exist now, and as they 

 have existed at any and all times in the 

 past; here where we are, and on every con- 

 tinent and island of the globe. 



We desire to know about a man, his 

 weight and his measure, the shape of his 

 head, the color of his skin and the curl of 

 his hair ; we would pry into all his secrets 

 and his habits, discover his deficiencies and 

 debilities, learn his language, and inquu-e 

 about his politics and his religion, yes, 

 probe those recesses of his body and his 

 soul which he conceals from wife and 

 brother. This we would do with every 

 man and every woman, and, not content 

 with the doing it, we would register all 

 these facts in tables and columns, so that 

 they should become perpetual records, to 

 which we give the name 'vital statistics.' 



The generations of the past escape such 

 personal investigation, but not our pursuit. 

 We rifle their graves, measure their skulls, 

 and analyze their bones; we carry to our 

 museums the utensils and weapons, the 

 gods and jewels, which sad and loving 

 hands laid beside them; we dig up the 

 foundations of their houses and cart otf the 

 monuments which their proud kings set up. 

 Nothing is sacred to us; and yet nothing to 

 us is vile or worthless. The broken pot- 

 sherd,, the half-gnawed bone, cast on the 

 refuse heap, convej'S a message to us more 

 pregnant with meaning, more indicative of 

 what the people were, than the boastful in- 

 scription which their king caused to be en- 

 graved on royal marble. 



This gleaning and gathering, this collect- 

 ing and storing of facts about man from all 

 quartei-s of the world and all epochs of his 

 existence, is the first and indispensable aim 



of anthropologic science. It is pressing 

 and urgent beyond all other aims at this 

 period of its existence as a science ; for here 

 more than elsewhere we feel the force of the 

 Hippocratic warning, that the time is short 

 and the opportunity fleeting. Everj^ day 

 there . perish priceless relics of the past, 

 every year the languages, the habits and 

 the modes of thought of the surviving 

 tribes which represent the earlier condi- 

 tion of the whole species, are increasingly 

 transformed and lost through the extension 

 of civilization. It devolves on the scholars 

 of this generation to be up and doing in 

 these fields of research ; for those of the 

 next will find many a chance lost forever, 

 of which we can avail ourselves. 



And here let me insert a few much needed 

 words of counsel on this portion of my 

 theme. Why is it that even in scientific 

 circles so little attention is paid to the 

 proper training of observers and collectors 

 in anthropology ? 



We erect stately museums, we purchase 

 costly specimens, we send out expensive ex- 

 peditions; but where are the universities, 

 the institutions of higher education, that 

 train young men how to observe, how to 

 explore and collect in this branch ? As an 

 eminent ethnologist has remarked, in any 

 other department of science, in that, for in- 

 stance, which deals with flowers or with 

 butterflies, no institution would dream of 

 sending a collector into the field who lacked 

 all preliminary training in the line, or 

 knowledge of it; but in anthropology the 

 opinion seems universal that such prepara- 

 tion is quite needless.* Carlyle used to say 

 that every man feels himself competent to 

 be a gentleman farmer or a crown prince ; 



* See the pertinent remarks of Dr. S. E. Steinmetz 

 in the Einleitnng to his ElhnologiscTie Stndien zur Ers- 

 ien Eniwicldiniff iler Strafe (Leiden, 1894). I have 

 nrped tliis point further in a pamphlet entitled .4)1- 

 tliropoI(ir/i/: an a. Science and as a branch of Unirersily 

 Education in the Cniled States (Philadelphia, 1892). 



