PROGRESS AND POSITION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 623 



we shall find, the same slow but sure progress evident in each branch 

 of the inquiry. We shall find that nothing - is lost, that no race is abso- 

 lutely destroyed, that everything that has been still exists in a modi- 

 fied form, and contributes some of its elements to that which is. We 

 shall find that this, which no one doubts in regard to physical matters, 

 is equally true of modes of thought. We may trace these to their 

 germs in the small brain of the palaeolithic flint worker; or, if we care 

 to do so, still further back. This principle has, as I understand, been 

 fully accepted in geology and biology, and throughout the domain of 

 physical science — what should hinder its application to anthropology 1 ? 

 It supplies a formula of universal validity, and can not but add force 

 and sublimity to our imagination of the wisdom of the Creator. It is 

 little more than has been expressed in the familiar words of Tennyson — 



"Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, 

 And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns;" 



and supports his claim to be " the heir of all the ages, in the foremost 

 files of time." 



I propose, in briefly drawing your attention to some recent contribu- 

 tions to our knowledge, to use this as a convenient theory and as point- 

 ing out the directions in which further investigations may be rewarded 

 by even fuller light. 



Applying it, first of all, to the department of physical anthropology, 

 we are called upon to consider the discovery by Dr. Dubois at Trinil, in 

 Java, of the remains of an animal called by him Pithecanthropus erectus, 

 and considered by some authorities to be one of the missing links in the 

 chain of animal existence which terminates in man. In his presidential 

 address to this association last year, Sir John Evans said: "Even the 

 Pithecanthropus erectus of Dr. Eugene Dubois from Java meets with 

 some incredulous objectors from both the physiological and the geolog- 

 ical sides. From the point of view of the latter the difficulty lies in 

 determining the exact age of what are apparently alluvial beds in the 

 bottom of a river valley." In regard to these objections, it should be 

 remembered that though the skull and femur in question are the only 

 remains resembling humanity discovered in the site, it yielded a vast 

 number of fossil bones of other animals, and that any difficulty in set- 

 tling the geological age must apply to the whole results of the explora- 

 tion. The physiological difficulties arise in two points — do the skull 

 and femur belong to the same individual? Are they, or either of them, 

 human, or simian, or intermediate? As to the first, it is true that the 

 two bones were separated by a distance of about 50 feet, but as they 

 were found precisely on the same level, accompanied by no other bones 

 resembling human bones, but by a great number of animal remains, 

 apparently deposited at the same moment, the theory that they belonged 

 to different individuals would only add to the difficulty of the problem. 

 With regard to the skull, a projection of its outline on a diagram com- 



