August 30, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



251 



appreciate that, in the future, political 

 economy, like history, will have to be re- 

 arranged on lines which this new science 

 dictates. The lessons of the past, their 

 meaning clearly apprehended, will be ac- 

 knowledged as the sole guides for the future. 

 It majr be true, as De Tocqueville said of 

 the United States, that a new world needs 

 a new political science ; but the onlj^ sure 

 foundation for the new will be the old. 



Applied anthropology clearly recognizes 

 that the improvement of humanity depends 

 primarily on the correct adjvistment of the 

 group to the individual ; and, as in ethnol- 

 ogy, its ultimate reference is not to the 

 group, but to the individual. In the words 

 of John Stuart Mill, the first to apply in- 

 ductive science to social evolution, it is that 

 the individual may become ' happier, nobler, 

 wiser,' that all social systems have any value. 



We may profitably recall what the same 

 profound thinker and logician tells us have 

 been up to the present time the prime mov- 

 ers in human social progress. They are : 

 first, property and its protection ; second, 

 knowledge and the opportunity to use it ; 

 and thh-d, cooperation, or the application 

 of knowledge and property to the benefit 

 of the many. 



But Mill was altogether too acute an ob- 

 server not to perceive that while these mo- 

 menta have proved powerful stimulants to 

 the group, they have often reacted injuri- 

 ously on the individual, developing that 

 morbid and remorseless egotism which is so 

 prevalent in modern civilized communities. 

 ISTor should I omit to add that the remedy 

 which he urged and believed adequate for 

 this dangerous symptom is one which every 

 anthropologist and every scientist will fully 

 endorse — the general inculcation of the 

 love of truth, scientific, verifiable truth. 



It seems clear therefore that the teach- 

 ings of anthropology, whether theoretical 

 or practical, lead us back to the individ- 

 ual as the point of departure and also the 



goal. The state was made for him, not 

 he for the state; any improvement in the 

 group must start by the improvement of 

 its individual members. This may seem 

 a truism, but how constantly it is over- 

 looked in the most modern legislation and 

 schemes of social amelioration ! How many 

 even of such a learned audience as this 

 have carefully considered in what respects 

 the individual man has improved since the 

 beginning of historic time? Is he taller, 

 stronger, more beautiful ? Are his senses 

 more acute, his love purer, his memory 

 more retentive, his will firmer, his reason 

 stronger? Can you answer me these ques- 

 tions cori-ectly? I doubt it much. Yet if 

 you cannot, what right have you to say that 

 there is any improvement at all ? 



To be sure, there is less physical suffering, 

 less pain. War and famine and bitter cold 

 are not the sleuthhounds that they once 

 were. The dungeons and flames of brutal 

 laws and bigoted religions have mostly 

 passed away. Life is on the average longer, 

 its days of sickness fewer, justice is more 

 within reach, mercy is more bountifully dis- 

 pensed, the tender eye of pity is ever un- 

 scarfed. 



But under what difficulties have these re- 

 sults been secured ? What floods of tears 

 and blood, what long wails of woe, sound 

 down the centuries of the past, poured forth 

 by humanity in its desperate struggle for a 

 better life ! A struggle which was blind, 

 unconscious of its aims, unknowing of the 

 means by which they should be obtained, 

 groping in darkness for the track leading it 

 knew not whither. 



Ignorant of his past, ignorant of his real 

 needs, ignorant of himself, man has blun- 

 dered and stvimBled up the thorny path of 

 progress for tens of thousands of years. 

 Mighty states, millions of individuals, have 

 been hurled to destruction in the perilous 

 ascent, mistaking the way, pursuing false 

 paths, following blind guides. 



