May 19, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



Ill 



anthropology of most European schools and 

 the strictly inductive mind-science of cur- 

 rent American schools, while the first two 

 include archeology as their prehistoric as- 

 pects. These outlines and partitions of the 

 groups are essential, although in actual in- 

 terest they lie beneath the full fruitage of 

 the field as a wire-hung skeleton lies below 

 the sentient body athrob with vitality and 

 athrill with consciousness of power over 

 lower nature. This fruitage is too large 

 and luxuriant for ready listing; it need 

 now be noted only that, in the modern an- 

 thropology sometimes styled the new eth- 

 nology, the peoples of the world are not 

 divided into races (save, perhaps, in sec- 

 ondary and doubtful fashion), but grouped 

 in culture-grades, and that these culture- 

 grades are of special use and meaning in 

 that they correspond with the great stages 

 of human progress from the lowly and un- 

 written prime to the brightness of human- 

 ity's present. 



The culture-grades (and progress-stages) 

 may be defined in terms of arts or of indus- 

 tries, of law, of languages or of philos- 

 ophies, and the definitions will coincide so 

 closely as to establish the soundness of the 

 system, though it is customary to define 

 them in terms primarily of law (or social 

 organization) and secondarily of faith or 

 philosophy. So defined the grades (and 

 stages) are: (1) savagery, in which the so- 

 cial organization is based on kinship traced 

 in the maternal line, while the beliefs are 

 zootheistic; (2) patriarchy or barbarism, 

 in which the law is based on real or as- 

 sumed kinship traced in the paternal line, 

 and in which belief spreads into pantheons 

 including impressive nature-objects as well 

 as beasts; (3) civilization, in which the 

 laws relate mainly to tenure of territorial 

 and other proprietary rights, while the phi- 

 losophies grow metaphysical and the beliefs 

 spiritual; and (4) enlightenment, in which 

 the law rests on the right of the individual 



to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- 

 ness, and in which the philosophy is scien- 

 tific or rational, while the faiths grow per- 

 sonal and operate as moral forces. The 

 peculiar excellencies of this classification 

 lie in its simplicity, and in the fidelity with 

 which it reflects the unique nature-power 

 lying behind the kinetic character of the 

 human entity, i. e., mentality; for, in the 

 last analysis, the stages but portray and 

 measure the normal growth of knowledge. 

 Thereby the system sets milestones in the 

 path of human progress, in numbers suffi- 

 cient to outline its trend with satisfactory 

 certainty; and it is especially notable that 

 this trend is from the lower toward the 

 higher with respect to every distinctively 

 human attribute. 



So anthropology came up, chiefly on the 

 western hemisphere and under the stimulus 

 of unique and strenuous experiences; and 

 so it has assumed form and substance and 

 spread widely over the world during two 

 decades past. Viewed from its own high 

 plane, the growth of the science presents 

 no puzzling problem; yet, since no mind 

 leaps lightly from classification on a static 

 basis (as in somatology and its parent 

 zoology)" to classification on a kinetic basis 

 (as in demonomy), the modern aspects of 

 the science are full of problems to' some 

 students. 



PROBLEMS OF CLASSIFICATION. 



While the essential characters of man- 

 kind reside in mind-shaped activities, it 

 remains true that the mental mechanism is 

 planted in a physical structure derived 

 from lower ancestry by uncounted genera- 

 tions of development; and the problem as 

 to the weight properly assignable to hered- 

 itary structural characters in classifying 

 men and peoples remains, in many minds, 

 a burning one. As an academic problem, 

 this may be said to distinguish the new 

 anthropology from the old, and to divide 



