518 



-SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 512. 



Such attempts have been made from both 

 the cultural and the biological point of 

 view. 



It is necessary to speak here of one lin§ 

 of anthropological research that we have 

 hitherto disregarded. I mean the linguistic 

 method. The origin of language was one 

 of the much discussed problems of the nine- 

 teeth century, and owing to its* relation to 

 the development of culture, it has a direct 

 anthropological bearing. The intimate ties 

 between language and ethnic psychology 

 were expressed by no one more clearly than 

 by Steinthal, who perceived that the foi-m 

 of thought is molded by the whole social 

 environment of which language is part. 

 Owing to the rapid change of language, the 

 historical treatment of the linguistic prob- 

 lem had developed long before the historic 

 aspect of the natural sciences was under- 

 stood. The genetic relationship of lan- 

 guages was clearly recognized when the 

 genetic relationship of species was hardly 

 thought of. With the increasing knowl- 

 edge of languages they were grouped ac- 

 cording to common descent, and when no 

 further relationship could be proved, a 

 classification according to morphology was 

 attempted. To the linguist whose whole 

 attention is directed to the study of the 

 expression of thought by language, lan- 

 guage is the individuality of a people, 

 and therefore a classification of languages 

 must present itself to him as a classi- 

 fication of peoples. No other manifesta- 

 tion of the mental life of man can be 

 classified so minutely and definitely as lan- 

 guage; In none are the genetic relations 

 more, clearly established. It is only when 

 no further genetic and morphological re- 

 lationship can be found, that the linguist 

 is compelled to coordinate languages and 

 can give no further clue regarding their 

 relationship and origin. No wonder, then, 

 that this method was used to classify man- 

 kind, although in reality the linguist classi- 



fied only languages. The result of the 

 classification seems eminently satisfactory 

 on account of its definiteness as compared 

 with the results of biological and cultural 

 classifications. 



Meanwhile the methodical resources of 

 biological or somatic anthropology had 

 also developed and had enabled the investi- 

 gator to make nicer distinctions between 

 human types than he had been able to make. 

 The landmark in the development of this 

 branch of anthropology has been the intro- 

 duction of the metric method, which owes 

 its first strong development to Quetelet. 

 A little later we shall have to refer to this 

 subject again. For the present it may suf- 

 fice to say that a clearer definition of the 

 terms 'type' and 'variability' led to the ap- 

 plication of the statistical method by means 

 of which comparatively slight varieties 

 can be distinguished satisfactorily. By 

 the application of this method it soon be- 

 came apparent that the races of man could 

 be subdivided into types which were char- 

 acteristic of definite geographical areas and 

 of the people inhabiting them. The same 

 misinterpretation developed here as was 

 found among the linguists. As they identi- 

 fied language 'and people, so the anatom- 

 ists identified somatic type and people and 

 based their classifications of peoples wholly 

 on their somatic characters. 



The two principles were soon found to 

 clash. Peoples genetically connected by 

 language, or even the same in language, 

 were found to be diverse in type, and 

 people of the same type were found to be 

 diverse in language. Furthermore, the re- 

 sults of classifications according to cultural 

 groups disagreed with both the linguistic 

 and the somatic classifications. In long 

 and bitter controversies the representatives 

 of these three directions of anthropological 

 research contended for the correctness of 

 their conclusions. This war of opinions 

 was fought out particularly on the ground 



