INTRODUCTION. 



ANTHROPOLOGY, as yet, occupies but an uncertain and indefinite 

 position among the various sciences relating to man. Accord- 

 ing to its name, it aspires to be the science of man in general ; 

 or, in precise terms, the science of the nature of man. To 

 the zoologist, and to naturalists in general, Man seems to be 

 neither more nor less than the most organized parasite of the 

 earth, the highest mammal ; to the theologian he appears as a 

 being, by his mortal body belonging to nature ; by his spiritual 

 endowment rising far above, standing in strict contrast to it, 

 and occupying, by the Divine breath which has animated him 

 only, a privileged position between God and nature. Whoever 

 acknowledges in nature a spiritual power and an inconceivable 

 wisdom to which he turns with a certain religious worship, 

 might feel inclined to designate one part of the conflict be- 

 tween these two views as a mere logomachy, but only one part 

 of it ; for the question, whether man at least in one aspect of 

 his nature stands beyond and above, and not in nature, would 

 still be left in doubt, as well as the other question allied to it 

 with reference to the priority of spirit or of matter. 



A third view, which, in a certain sense, endeavoured to re- 

 concile both the above theories, has only contributed to expose 

 the conflict between them, it is the theory according to which 

 the spirit of humanity is the spirit of God himself, the same 

 one and absolute spirit which, unconscious of itself, creates 

 the world, and only reaches the end of its development in man 

 as the sole agent of divine self-consciousness. A self-evident 

 sequence of this conception is, that knowledge of God and 



B2 



