Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/281

Rh the ground in the direction of obtaining a solution, I don't know that I could lay my hand upon much of a very definite character— except as to methods of investigation—save in regard to one point. I have some reason to know that about the year 1860, at any rate, there was nothing more volcanic, more shocking, more subversive of everything right and proper, than to put forward the proposition that as far as physical organization is concerned there is less difference between man and the highest apes than there is between the highest apes and the lowest. My memory carries me back sufficiently to remind me that in 1860 that question was not a pleasant one to handle. The other day I was reading a recently published valuable and interesting work, 'L'espèce humaine,' by a very eminent man, M. de Quatrefages. He is a gentleman who has made these questions his special study, and has written a great deal and very well about them. He has always maintained a temperate and fair position, and has been the opponent of evolutionary ideas, so that I turned with some interest to his work as giving me a record of what I could look on as the progress of opinion during the last twenty years. If he has any bias at all, it is one in the opposite direction to that in which my own studies would lead me. I can not quote his words, for I have not the book with me, but the substance of them is that the proposition which I have just put before you is one the truth of which no rational person acquainted with the facts could dispute. Such is the difference which twenty years has made in that respect, and speaking in the presence of a great number of anatomists, who are quite able to decide a question of this kind, I believe that the opinion of M. de Quatrefages on the subject is one they will all be prepared to endorse. Well, it is a comfort to have got that much out of the way. The second direction in which I think great progress has been made is with respect to the processes of anthropometry, in other words, in the modes of obtaining those data which are necessary for anthropologists to reason upon. Like all other persons who have to deal with physical science, we confine ourselves to matters which can be ascertained with precision, and nothing is more remarkable than the exactness which has been introduced into the mode of ascertaining the physical qualities of man within the last twenty-five years. One can not mention the name of Broca without the greatest gratitude; I am quite sure that, when Professor Flower brings forward his paper on cranial measurements on Monday next, you will be surprised to see what precision of method and what accuracy are now introduced, compared with what existed twenty-five years ago, into these methods of determining the facts of man's structure. If, further, we turn to those physiological matters bearing on anthropology which have been the subject of inquiry within the last score of years, we find that there has been a vast amount of