250 



SCIENCE. 



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



Perhaps what I have said sufficiently ex- 

 plains the aims of ethnology. Some one 

 has pertinently called it ' the natural sci- 

 ence of social life,' because its methods are 

 strictly those of the natural sciences, and 

 its material is supplied by man living in 

 society. 



The final arbiter, however, to whom it 

 appeals, is, I repeat, not the ethnos, not the 

 social group, but the individual. I think 

 it was Goethe who, nearlj' a centurj' ago, 

 uttered the pithy remark: " Man makes 

 genera and species ; Nature makes only in- 

 dividuals." Hence, the justification of any 

 result claimed by ethnology must come 

 from the psychology of the individual ; in 

 his personal feelings and thoughts will be 

 discovered the final and only complete ex- 

 planation of the forms of sociology and the 

 events of history. As I have elsewhere 

 urged, man himself, the individual man, is 

 the only final measure of his own activities, 

 in whatever direction they are directed.* 



On the other hand, the only rational psy- 

 chology — using that term as a science of 

 the mental processes — must be the outcome 

 of anthropology conducted as a natural 

 science. For thousands of years other 

 plans have been pursued. The philosopher 

 would delve in his ' inner consciousness;' 

 the theologian would turn to his revelation ; 

 the historian would reason on his undi- 

 gested facts; but the psychologist of the 

 future, taking nothing for granted, will de- 

 fine the mentality of the race by analyzing 

 each of its lines of action back to the indi- 

 vidual feelings which gave them rise. 



It is quite likely that some who have 

 heard me thus far, and have agreed with 



* " Man himself is the only final measure of his 

 own activities. To his own force and faculties all 

 other tests are in the eud referred. All sciences and 

 arts, all pleasures and pursuits, are assigned their 

 respective ranks in his interest by reference to those 

 physical powers and mental processes which are pe- 

 culiarly the property of his own species." Anthro- 

 polo/jij as a Science, etc., p. 3. 



me, are still dissatisfied. On their lips is 

 that question which is so often put to, and 

 which so often puzzles, the student of the 

 sciences, cui bono. What practical worth 

 have these analyses and generalizations 

 which have been referred to ? 



Fortunatel}', the anthropologist is not 

 puzzled. His science, like others, has its 

 abstract side, seemingly remote from the 

 interests of the workaday world ; but it is 

 also preeminently an applied science, one 

 the practicalitj' and immediate pertinence 

 of which to dailj^ aifairs render it utilitarian 

 in the highest degree. 



Ajjplied anthropology has for its aims to 

 bring to bear on the improvement of the 

 species, regarded on the one hand as groups, 

 and on the other as individuals, the results 

 obtained by ethnography, ethnology and 

 psychology. 



Such an imj^rovement is broadly referred 

 to as an increased or higher civilization ; 

 and it is the avowed aim of applied anthro- 

 pology accurately to ascertain what are the 

 criteria of civilization, what individual or 

 social elements have in the past contribu- 

 ted most to it, how these can be continued 

 and strengthened, and what new forces, if 

 any. may be called in to hasten the prog- 

 ress. Certainly no aims could be more im- 

 mediately practical than these. 



Here again anthropologj^ sharply opposes 

 its methods to those of the ideologists, the 

 dogmatists, and the deductive philosophers. 

 It refuses to ask, What should improve man ? 

 but asks only, What has improved him in 

 the past ? and it is extremelj^ cautious in its 

 decision as to what ' improvement ' really 

 means. It certainly does not accept the 

 definition which up to the present the philo- 

 sophies and theologies have offered ; any 

 more than it accepts the means bj' which 

 these claim that our present civilization has 

 been brought about. 



This department of anthropologj' is still 

 in its infancy. We are only beginning to 



