ANTHROPOLOGY. 
319 
ANTHROPOLOGY, ITS MEANING AND AIM. 
BY JOSEPH SMITH, JUN., M.A.I. 
( Continued from page 291.) 
Up to the time of Buffon, although naturalists had 
studied the various creatures of the animal and vegetable 
worlds, it had not occurred to those entering into scientific 
investigation to study man from the same point. He had been 
regarded and studied as an individual; and Anthropology 
may be looked upon as having originated with the great 
thought of Buffon, that man must be studied as a species. 
Buffon was the first to investigate and regard man as a 
species, and he devoted his attention to the examination of 
his colour, physique, and external traits and characteristics. 
He was succeeded by Camper, a Dutchman, who began the study 
of skulls, showing that if we would understand the position of 
man this comparison must be of great importance in any laws 
of Anthropology. He compared the Negro skull with that of 
the European and the Ourang-outang, pointing out the 
facial angle, and drawing certain conclusions from it; but 
Blumenbacli, a doctor of the German school, who may 
be regarded as the legitimate father of the science, pointed 
out the unsatisfactory results of these facial angular 
measurements, resulting from the union of two lines, 
one of which touches the forehead, and the other, drawn 
from the orifice of the ear, meets the former line at 
the orifice of the front teeth ; and argued that the study of 
skulls, to be of any scientific value, must not be made indi¬ 
vidually but in lots, and subject to recognised rules. It was 
he who made the fundamental division of the human race 
into five sections, viz. :— 
The European, or white race ; 
The Asiatic, or yellow race ; 
The African, or black race ; 
The American, coloured ; and 
The Malay, 
on which, up to recent times, anthropological investi¬ 
gations have been principally based. This division, how¬ 
ever, is far from perfect, and forms at the present time 
one of the most obscure problems of scientific anthropology. 
The great ideal of Blumenbacli was the Unity of mankind, 
which, in his days, was not a generally accepted fact, and it was 
in opposition to the assertions, grave descriptions, mythologi¬ 
cal ideas, and theories regarding this human unity, which had 
