December 19, 1S84, 



SCIENCE. 



549 



the Choctaw dead to pass the dreadful river. In such 

 correspondences of principle we trace, more clearly 

 than in mere repetitions of a custom or belief, the 

 community of human intellect. 



But I must not turn these remarks into what, 

 under ordinary circumstances, would be a lecture. 

 I have been compelled to address myself, not so 

 much to the statement in broad terms of general 

 principles, as to points of detail of this kind, because, 

 it is almost impossible, in the present state of anthro- 

 pology, to work by abstract terms; and the best way 

 of elucidating a working-principle is to discuss some 

 actual case. There are now two or three practical 

 points on which I may be allowed to say a few words. 



The principle of development in civilization, which 

 represents one side of the great problem I have been 

 speaking of, is now beginning to receive especial cul- 

 tivation in England. While most museums have been 

 at work, simply collecting objects and implements, 

 the museum of Gen. Pitt-Kivers, now about to be re- 

 moved from London to Oxford, is entirely devoted to 

 the working-out of the development theory on a scale 

 hardly attempted hitherto. In this museum are col- 

 lected specimens of weapons and implements, so as 

 to ascertain by what steps they may be considered to 

 have arisen among mankind, and to arrange them in 

 consecutive series. Development, however, is not 

 always progress, but may work itself out into lines 

 of degeneration. There are certain states of society 

 in which the going-down of arts and sciences is as 

 inevitable a state of things as progress is in the more 

 fortunate regions in which we live. Anthropologists 

 will watch with the greatest interest what effect this 

 museum of development will have upon their science. 

 Gen. Pitt-Rivers was led into the formation of the 

 remarkable collection in question in an interesting 

 manner. He did not begin life either as an evolu- 

 tionist or as an anthropologist. He was a soldier. 

 His business, at a particular time of his life, was to 

 serve on a committee on small-arms, appointed to re- 

 form the armament of the British army, which at 

 that time was to a great extent only provided with 

 the most untruthful of percussion-muskets. He 

 then found that a rifle was an instrument of gradual 

 growth; for the new rifles which it was his duty to 

 inspect had not come into existence at once and in- 

 dependently. When he came to look carefully into 

 the history of his subject, it appeared that some one 

 had improved the lock, then some one the rifling, and 

 then others had made further improvements; and 

 this process had gone on, until at last there came 

 into existence a gun, which, thus perfected, was able 

 to hold its own in a permanent form. He collected 

 the intermediate stages through which a good rifle 

 arose out of a bad one; and the idea began to cross 

 his niind that the course of change which happened 

 to rifles was very much what ordinarily happens with 

 other things. So he set about collecting, and filled 

 his house from the cellar to the attic, hanging on his 

 walls series of all kinds of weapons and other instru- 

 ments which seemed to him to form links in a great 

 chain of development. The principle that thus be- 

 came visible to him in weapon-development is not 



less true through the whole range of civilization; and 

 we shall soon be able to show to every anthropologist 

 who visits Oxford the results of that attempt. And 

 when the development theory is seen in that way, 

 explaining the nature and origin of our actual arts 

 and customs and ideas, and their gradual growth 

 from ruder and earlier states of culture, then anthro- 

 pology will come before the public mind as a new 

 means of practical instruction in life. 



Speaking of this aspect of anthropology leads me 

 to say a word on another hardly less important. On 

 my first visit to this country, nearly thirty years ago, 

 I made a journey in Mexico with the late Henry 

 Christy, a man who impressed his personality very 

 deeply on the science of man. He was led into this 

 subject by his connection with Dr. Hodgkin ; the two 

 being at first interested, from the philanthropist's 

 point of view, in the preservation of the less favored 

 races of man, and taking part in a society for this 

 purpose, known as the Aborigines' protection society. 

 The observation of the indigenous tribes for philan- 

 thropic reasons brought the fact into view that such 

 peoples of low culture were in themselves of the 

 highest interest as illustrating the whole problem 

 of stages of civilization ; and this brought about the 

 eatablishment of the Ethnological society in England, 

 Henry Christy's connection with which originated 

 his plan of forming an ethnological museum. The 

 foundations of the now celebrated Christy collection 

 were laid on our Mexican journey; and I was witness 

 to his extraordinary power of knowing, untaught, 

 what it was the business of an anthropologist to 

 collect, and what to leave uncollected; how very 

 useless for anthropologic purposes mere curiosities 

 are, and how priceless are every-day things. The two 

 principles which tend most to the successful work of 

 anthropology — the systematic collection of the pro- 

 ducts of each stage of civilization, and the arrange- 

 ment of their sequence in development — are thus 

 the leading motives of our two great anthropological 

 museums. 



To my mind, one of the most remarkable things 

 I have seen in this country is the working of the 

 Bureau of ethnology as part of the general working 

 of the government department to which it belongs. 

 It is not for- me, on this occasion, to describe the 

 working of the Smithsonian institution, with its re- 

 search and publication extending almost through the 

 whole realm of science; nor to speak of the services of 

 that eminent investigator and organizer, Prof. Spen- 

 cer F. Baird. It is the department occupied with the 

 science of man of which I have experience; and I do 

 not think that anywhere else in the world such an 

 official body of skilled anthropologists, each know- 

 ing his own special work, and devoted to it, can be 

 paralleled. The Bureau of ethnology is at present 

 devoting itself especially to the working-up of the 

 United States, and to the American continent in 

 general, but not neglecting other parts of the world. 

 And I must say that I have seen with the utmost 

 interest the manner in which the central organism 

 of the Bureau of ethnology is performing the func- 

 tions of an amasser and collector of all that is worth 



