RACE AND CIVILIZATION. 595 



Succursal, greatly relieving the present overcrowded state of many 

 departments. To sucli a storehouse for students all that does not serve 

 for public education, or that is not portable or of much saleable value, 

 should be consigned. There the piles of architectual fragments which 

 are essential for study, but are useless to show the public, should be 

 stacked in classified order. There the heaps of ix>ttery of ancient and 

 modern races should all be arranged to illustrate every variety of form 

 aud style. There the series of entire tombs of other races and of our 

 own should be set out in their original arrangement, as in the Bologna 

 Museum. There whole huts, boats, etc., could be placed in their proper 

 order and sequence, while photographs of the showy educational speci- 

 mens and valuable in the public museums could fill their places in the 

 arrangement. That such a storehouse is needed may be illustrated 

 by a collection gleaned in a few months' work this year. It represents 

 the small products of a little village and a cemetery of a new race in 

 Egypt. But there is no possibility of keeping such a collection together 

 in any London museum, and but for the new Ashmolean Museum at 

 Oxford having been lately built with a wide view to its increase, it is 

 doubtful if in any place in England such a collection could be kept 

 together. What happens to one excavator this year may happen to a 

 dozen excavators per annum in a generation or two hence, and so long- 

 as space is not available to preserve such collections when they are 

 obtained, invaluable material is being irrevocably wasted and destroyed. 



Besides the theoretical and scientific side of anthropology, there is 

 also a very practical side to it which has not received any sufficient 

 development as yet. Anthropology should in our nation be studied 

 first and foremost as the art of dealing with other races. I can not do 

 better than quote a remark from the address of our previous president, 

 Gen. Pitt Rivers, a remark which has been waiting twenty-three years 

 for further notice. He said: " Nor is it unimportant to remember that 

 anthropology has its practical and humanitarian 'aspect; and that as 

 our race is more often brought into contact with savages than any 

 other, a knowledge of their habits aud modes of thought may be of the 

 utmost value to us in utilizing their labor, as well as in checking those 

 inhuman practices from which they have but too often suffered at our 

 hands." 



The foremost principle which should be always in view is that the 

 civilization of any race is not a system which can be changed at will. 

 Every civilization is the growiug product of a very complex set of con- 

 ditions, depending on race and character, on climate, on trade, and every 

 minutia of the circumstances. To attempt to alter such a system apart 

 from its conditions is impossible. For instance, whenever a total change 

 is made in government, it breaks down altogether, and a resort to the 

 despotism of one man is the result. When the English constitution 

 was swept away Cromwell or anarchy was the alternative. When the 

 French constitution was swept away Napoleon was the only salvation 



