Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/280

272 At that time there was no anthropological department. That study had not yet differentiated itself from zoology, or anatomy, or physiology so as to claim for itself a distinct place. Moreover, without reverting needlessly to the remarks which I placed before you some time ago, it was a very volcanic subject, and people rather liked to leave it alone. It was not until a long time subsequently that the present organization of this section of the Association was brought about; but it is a curious fact that although truly anthropological subjects were at the time brought before the geographical section—with the proper subject of which they had nothing whatever to do—I find, that even then, more than half of the papers that were brought before that section were, more or less distinctly, of an anthropological cast. It is very curious to observe what that cast was. We had systems of language—we had descriptions of savage races—we had the great question, as it then was thought, of the unity or multiplicity of the human species. These were just touched upon, but there was not an allusion in the whole of the proceedings of the Association, at that time, to those questions which are now to be regarded as the burning questions of anthropology. The whole tendency in the present direction was given by the publication of a single book, and that not a very large one—namely, 'The Origin of Species.' It was only subsequent to the publication of the ideas contained in that book that one of the most powerful instruments for the advance of anthropological knowledge—namely, the Anthropological Society of Paris—was founded. Afterwards the Anthropological Institute of this country and the great Anthropological Society of Berlin came into existence, until it may be said that, at the present time, there is not a branch of science which is represented by a larger or more active body of workers than the science of anthropology. . But the whole of these workers are engaged, more or less intentionally, in providing the data for attacking the ultimate great problem, whether the ideas which Darwin has put forward in regard to the animal world are capable of being applied in the same sense and to the same extent to man.

That question, I need not say, is not answered. It is a vast and difficult question, and one for which a complete answer may possibly be looked for in the next century; but the method of inquiry is understood, and the mode in which the materials bearing on that inquiry are now being accumulated, the processes by which results are now obtained, and the observation of new phenomena lead to the belief that the problem also, some day or other, will be solved. In what sense I can not tell you. I have my own notion about it, but the question for the future is the attainment, by scientific processes and methods, of the solution of that question. If you ask me what has been done within the last twenty-one years towards this object, or rather towards