I go 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVIII. No. 452 



and before their final separation, settled somewhere in Asia. That 

 may seem very small comfort, but for the present it is all that we 

 have aright to say. Even this must be taken witli the limitations 

 which, as all true scholars know, apply to speculations concerning 

 what may have happened, say, five thousand or ten thousand 

 years ago. As to the color of the skin, the hair, the eyes, of those 

 unknown speakers of Aryan speech, the scholar says nothing ; and 

 "when he speaks of their blood he knows that such a word can be 

 taken in a metaphorical sen-e only. If we once step from the 

 narrow domain of science into the vast wilderness of mere asser- 

 tion, then it does not matter what we say. We may say, with 

 Penka, that all Aryas are dolichocephalic, blue-eyed, and blond, 

 or we may say, with Pietrement, that all Aryas are brachycephalic, 

 with brown eyes and black hair (V. d.Gheyn, 1889, p. 26). There 

 is no difference between the two assertions. They are both per- 

 fectly unmeaning. They are vox etprceterea nihil. 



My experiences during the last forty years have only served to 

 confirm the opinion which I expressed forty years ago, that there 

 ought to be a complete separation between philology and physiol- 

 ogy. And yet, if I were asked whether such a divorce should now 

 be made absolute, I should say, No. There have been so many 

 unexpected discoveries of new facts, and so many surprising com- 

 binations of old facts, that we must always be prepared to hear 

 some new evidence, if only that evidence is brought forward ac- 

 cording to the rules wliich govern the court of true science. It 

 may be that in time the classification of skulls, hair, eyes, and skin 

 may be brought into harmony with the classification of language. 

 We may even go so far as to admit, as a postulate, that the two 

 must have run parallel, at least in the beginning of all things. 

 But with the evidence before us at present, mere wrangling, mere 

 iteration of exploded assertions, mere contradictions, will produce 

 no effect on the true jury, which hardly ever consists of more than 

 twelve trusty men, but with whom the final verdict rests. The 

 very things that most catch the popular ear will by them be ruled 

 out of court. But every single new word, common to all the 

 Aryan languages, and telling of some climatic, geographical, his- 

 torical, or physiological circumstance in the earliest life -of the 

 speakers of Aryan speech, will be truly welcome to philologists 

 quite as much as a skull from an early geological stratum is to the 

 physiologist, and both to the anthropologist, in the widest sense 

 of that name. 



But, if all this is so, if the alliance between philology and physi- 

 ology has hitherto done nothing; but mischief, what right, it may 

 be asked, had I to accept the honor of presiding over this section 

 of anthropology? If you will allow me to occupy your valuable 

 time a little longer, I shall explain, as shortly as possible, why I 

 thought that I, as a philologist, might do some small amount of 

 good as president of the Anthropological Section. 



In spite of all that I have said against the unholy alliance be- 

 tween physiology and philology, I have felt for years —and I believe 

 I am now supported in my opinion by all competent anthropolo- 

 gists — that a knowledge of languages must be considered in future 

 as a sine qua non for every anthropologist. 



Anthropology, as you know, has increased so rapidly that it 

 seems to say now, " Nihil huniani a me alienurn puto." So long 

 as anthropology treated only of the anatomy of tlie human body, 

 any surgeon might have become an excellent anthropologist. But 

 now, when anthropology includes the study of the earliest thoughts 

 of man, his customs, his laws, his traditions, his le^^ends, his re- 

 ligions, ay, even his early philosophies, a student of anthropology 

 without an accurate knowledge of languages, without the con- 

 science of a scholar, is like a sailor without a compass. 



No one disputes this with regard to nations who possess a litera- 

 tui-e. No one would listen to a man describing the peculiarities 

 of the Greek, the Roman, the Jew, the Arab, the Chinese, without 

 knowing their languages, and being capable of reading the master- 

 works of their hterature. We know how often men who have 

 devoted the whole of their life to the study, for instance, of Hebrew, 

 differ, not only as to the meaning of certain words and passages, 

 but as to the very character of the Jews. One authority states 

 that the Jews, and not only the Jews, but all Semitic nations, were 

 possessed of a monotheistic instinct. Another authority sho^vs 

 that all Semitic nations, not excluding the Jews, were polytheistic 



in their religion, and that the Jehovah of the Jews was not con- 

 ceived at first as the Supreme Deity, but as a national god only, 

 as the God of the Jews, who, according to the latest view, was 

 originally a fetish or a totem, like all other Gods. 



You know how widely classical scholars differ on the character 

 of Greeks and Romans, on the meaning of their customs, the pur- 

 pose of their religious ceremonies — nay, the very essence of their 

 gods. And yet there was a time, not very long ago, when anthro- 

 pologists would rely on the descriptions of casual travellers, who, 

 after spending a few weeks, or even a few years, among tribes 

 whose language was utterly unknown to them, gave the most mar- 

 vellous accounts of their customs, their laws, and even their re- 

 ligion. It may be said that anybody can describe what he sees, 

 even though unable to converse with the people. I say, decidedly 

 no; and I am supported in this opinion by the most competent 

 judges. Dr. Codrington, who has just published his excellent book 

 on the " Melanesians : their Anthropology and Folk-Lore," spent 

 twenty-four years among the Melanesians, learning their dialects, 

 collecting their legends, and making a systematic study of their 

 laws, customs, and superstitions. But what does he say in his 

 preface? "I have felt the truth," he says, " of what Mr. Fison, late 

 missionary in Fiji, has written : ' When a European has been living 

 for two or three years among savages, he is sure to be fully con- 

 vinced that he knows all about them; when he has been ten 

 years or so amongst them, if he be an observant man, he knows 

 that be knows very little about them, and so begins to learn." " 



How few of the books in which we trust with regard to the 

 characteristic peculiarities of savage races have been written by 

 men who have lived among them for ten or twenty years, and 

 who have learnt their languages till they could speak them as 

 well as the natives themselves. 



It is no excuse to say that any traveller who has eyes to see and 

 ears to hear can form a correct estimate of the doings and sayings 

 of savage tribes. It is not so, and anthropologists know from sad 

 experience that it is not so. Suppose a traveller came to a camp 

 where he saw thousands of men and women dancing round the 

 image of a young bull. Suppose that the dancers were all stark 

 naked, that after a time they began to fight, and that at the end 

 of their orgies there were three thousand corpses lying about wel- 

 tering in their blood. Would not a casual traveller have described 

 such savages as worse than the negroes of Dahomey ? Yet these 

 savages were really the Jews, the chosen people of God. The 

 image was the golden calf, the priest was.Aaron, and the chief 

 who ordered the sacrifice was Moses. We may read the thirty- 

 second chapter of Exodus in a very different sense. A traveller 

 who could have conversed with Aaron and Moses might have un- 

 derstood the causes of the revolt and the necesidty for the massa- 

 cre. But without this power of interrogation and mutual expla- 

 nation, no travellers, however graphic and amusing their stories 

 may be, can be trusted; no statements of theirs can be used by the 

 anthropologists for truly scientific purposes. 



From the day when this fact was recognized by the highest 

 authorities in anthropology, and was sanctioned by some at least 

 of our anthropological, ethnological, and folk lore societies, a new 

 epoch began, and philology received its right place as the hand- 

 maid of anthropology. The most important paragraph in our new 

 charter was this, that in future no one is to be quoted or relied 6n 

 as authority on the customs, traditions, and more particularly on 

 the religious ideas of uncivilized races who has not acquired an 

 acquaintance with their language sufficient to enable him to con- 

 verse vvith them freely on these difiicult subjects. 



No one would object to this rule when we have to deal with 

 civilized and literary nations. But the languages of Africa, 

 America, Polynesia, and even Australia, are now being studied a3 

 formerly Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Sanscrit only were studied. 

 You have only to compare the promiscuous descriptions of the 

 Hottentots in the works of the best ethnologists with the researches 

 of a real Hottentot scholar like Dr. Hahn to see the advance that 

 has been made. When we read the books of Bishop t'allaway on 

 the Zulu, of William Gill and Edward Xregear onthe Pol3-nesians, 

 of Horatio Hale on some of the North American races, we feel at 

 once that we are in sife hands, in tlie haudn of real scholars. 

 E>en then we must, of course, remember l!i.at their knowledge of 



