THE RELATION OF ANTHROPOLOGY
TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY.
When a want is felt there comes an effort to satisfy it. That there has been within a few years a greater desire than heretofore to study history is clearly evidenced by the efforts that have been made in educational institutions of all grades, to provide increased facilities for its study. The increasing number of special teachers in this subject and the increasing number of departments of the subject, with subdivisions, are indices of the greater interest of students, and of the recognition, by college and university authorities, of the need and importance of history.
Twenty years ago, in many institutions where now a separate department of history is maintained, or at least a department of history and economics, there was no teacher with special training in these subjects. In the college course, however, history was usually included for an hour a day, for from one to three terms. Taught from a text-book, by an overworked instructor in literature or the classics, as a sort of desirable adjunct to other absolutely necessary subjects, little benefit could come of it.
The growing interest in the study of history in colleges and universities has a logical cause. For many years scientists have been pursuing the historic method in the laboratory. Careful examination has been made of animal life from the simplest form up to the most complex. Plant history and animal history, all the way from protoplasm to the forms we see about us, have occupied the student. The doctrine of evolution has revolutionized the methods of investigation. These methods in biology have had a strong influence on all branches of study, and without doubt a new life has been given to historic study by looking upon events as the product of forces, and as the result of development of earlier causes.
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