May 19, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



115 



the ways in which the science of sentient 

 man touches the sum of human knowledge ; 

 to catalogue all would be an interminable 

 task. 



THE RISE OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 



When the science of man grew up in the 

 North Sea region, it was at first little more 

 than a branch of zoology, and its makers 

 busied themselves with features of the hu- 

 man frame corresponding to those of lower 

 animals; comparative anatomy was culti- 

 vated with assiduity and profit, anthro- 

 pometry flourished, and mankind were ap- 

 portioned into races defined by color of 

 skin, curl of hair, slant of eyes, shape of 

 head, length of limb, and other structural 

 characters — i. e., the methods and prin- 

 ciples of zoology were projected into the 

 realm of humanity. It was during this 

 stage that homologies between human struc- 

 tures and those of lower animals were es- 

 tablished in such wise as to convince at- 

 tentive students that mankind moist be 

 reckoned as the ennobled progeny of lower 

 ancestry; true, the conviction grew slowly 

 against the instinctive antagonism of the 

 investigators themselves and the less effect- 

 ive (though louder) protests of contem- 

 poraries, yet the growth was so sure that 

 the question of the ascent of man is no 

 longer a problem in anthropology. Mean- 

 time the masters— and here Huxley and 

 Darwin must always rank— gave first 

 thought to normal and typ)<"' ' organisms ; 

 their disciples followed the same commend- 

 able course, and as other lines of man-study 

 opened they called their work physical 

 anthropology. One of the collateral lines 

 reverted to the abnormal (in which knowl- 

 edge commonly begins) and recurved to- 

 ward the Mediterranean (where the influ- 

 ence of Alexandria and Athens lingers 

 still) to mature in criminal anthropology — 

 the science of abnormal man; another line 

 led through prehistoric relies to archeology, 

 and still another stretched out to the habits 



and customs of primitive peoples, and 

 eventually to comparison of these with the 

 usages and institutions of civilized life. 

 The last of these lines was laid out in 

 Britain largely by Tylor, and was pur- 

 sued in Germany and other European coun- 

 tries as general anthropology, ethnography, 

 anthropogeography, etc. 



Even before this growth began, a devel- 

 opment not unlike that accompanying the 

 making of Europe (save that the progress 

 was more rapid) was under way in Amer- 

 ica ; 'for the pioneers not only pushed out 

 into their wilderness like their forebears of 

 generations gone, but faced the novel ex- 

 periment of life in contact with savage or 

 barbaric tribes. To this new stimulus their 

 vigorous minds responded promptly; the 

 daily experiences were quickly flocked on 

 distaffs of thought, spun into threads of 

 knowledge, and duly woven intd a web of 

 practical science— a fabric no less inde- 

 pendent in the making than that of Bacon 

 in his day. Notable among the American 

 pioneers was Albert Gallatin (1761-1849), 

 statesman and scientist; he not only per- 

 ceived, like his fellows, that the color and 

 stature and head-shape of tribesmen were 

 of trifling consequence in contrast with 

 their actions and motives, but that the in- 

 dex to their real nature was to be found 

 in what they habitually did ; and he sum- 

 med American experience up to his time in 

 a preliminary classification of the native 

 tribes on the basis of language. This ad- 

 vance marked an epoch in science no less 

 important than that of Linne ; true, it was 

 not minted at a stroke nor finished without 

 aid from others ; yet Gallatin was the coin- 

 er, and the rough-stamped sj^stem was his- 

 tory's most memorable essay toward the 

 scientific arrangement of mankind by what 

 they do rather than w^hat they merely are. 

 Later Morgan (1818-1881) extended prac- 

 tical observation to the institutions of the 

 aborigines in such wise as to found in- 



