Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/622

606 mankind as a whole. It investigates his origin and his relations to the rest of the universe. It invokes the aid of the sciences of zoölogy, comparative anatomy, and physiology; and the wider the range of knowledge met with in other regions of natural structure, and the more abundant the terms of comparison known, the less risk there will be of error in attempting to estimate the distinctions and resemblances between man and his nearest allies, and fixing his place in the zoölogical scale. Here we are drawn into contact with an immense domain of knowledge, including a study of all the laws which modify the conditions under which organic bodies are manifested, which at first sight seem to have little bearing upon the particular study of man.

Furthermore, it is not only with man's bodily structure and its relations to that of the lower animals that we have to deal; the moral and intellectual side of his nature finds its rudiments in them also, and the difficult study of comparative psychology, now attracting much attention, is an important factor in any complete system of anthropology.

In endeavoring to investigate the origin of mankind as a whole, geology must lend its assistance to determine the comparative ages of the strata in which the evidences of his existence are found; but researches into his early history soon trench upon totally different branches of knowledge. In tracing the progress of the race from its most primitive condition, the characteristics of its physical structure and relations with the lower animals are soon left behind, and it is upon evidence of a kind peculiar to the human species, and by which man is so pre-eminently distinguished from all other living beings, that our conclusions mainly rest. The study of the works of our earliest known forefathers, "prehistoric archaeology," as it is commonly called, although one of the most recently developed branches of knowledge, is now almost a science by itself, and one which is receiving a great amount of attention in all parts of the civilized world. It investigates the origin of all human culture, endeavors to trace to their common beginning the sources of all our arts, customs, and history. The difficulty is what to include and where to stop; as, though the term "prehistoric" may roughly indicate an artificial line between the province of the anthropologist and that which more legitimately belongs to the archaeologist, the antiquary, and the historian, that the studies of the one pass insensibly into those of the other is an evident and necessary proposition. Knowledge of the origin and development of particular existing customs throws immense light upon their real nature and importance; and, conversely, it is often only from a profound acquaintance with the present or comparatively modern manifestations of culture that we are able to interpret the slight indications afforded us by the scanty remains of primitive civilization.

Even the more limited subject of ethnology must be approached Pulling there dicks