ANTHROPOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY (the science of man, ἄνθρωπος, λόγος) denotes the natural history of mankind. In the general classification of knowledge it stands as the highest section of zoology or the science of animals, itself the highest section of biology or the science of living beings. To anthropology contribute various sciences, which hold their own independent places in the field of knowledge. Thus anatomy and physiology display the structure and functions of the human body, while psychology investi gates the operations of the human mind. Philology deals with the general principles of language, as well as with the relations between the languages of particular races and nations. Ethics or moral science treats of man s duty or rules of conduct toward his fellow-men. Lastly, under the names of sociology and the science of culture, are con sidered the origin and development of arts and sciences, opinions, beliefs, customs, laws, and institutions generally among mankind, their course in time being partly marked out by the direct record of history, while beyond the historical limit our information is continued by inferences from relics of early ages and remote districts, to interpret which is the task of prse-historic archaeology and geology. Not only are these various sciences concerned largely with man, but several among them have in fact suffered by the almost entire exclusion of other animals from their scheme. It is undoubted that comparative anatomy and physiology, by treating the human species as one member of a long series of related organisms, have gained a higher and more perfect understanding of man himself and his place in the universe than could have been gained by the narrower investigation of his species by and for itself. It is to be regretted that hitherto certain other sciences psychology, ethics, and even philology and sociology have so little followed so profitable an example. No doubt the phenomena of intellect appear in vastly higher and more complete organisation in man than in beings below him in the scale of nature, that beasts and birds only attain to language in its lower rudiments, and that only the germs of moral tendency and social law are discernible among the lower animals. Yet though the mental and moral interval between man and the nearest animals may be vast, the break is not absolute, and the investigation of the laws of reason and instinct throughout the zoological system, which is already casting some scattered rays of light on the study of man s highest organisation, may be destined henceforth to throw brighter illumination into its very recesses. Now this condition of things, as well as the accepted order in which the sciences have arranged them selves by their mode of growth, make it desirable that anthropology should not too ambitiously strive to include within itself the sciences which provide so much of its wealth, but that each science should pursue its own sub ject through the whole range of living beings, rendering to anthropology an account of so much of its results as con cerns man. Such results it is the office of anthropology to collect and co-ordinate, so as to elaborate as completely as may be the synopsis of man s bodily and mental nature, and the theory of his whole course of life and action from his first appearance on earth. As will be seen from the following brief summary, the information to be thus brought together from contributing sciences is widely different both in accuracy and in soundness. While much of the descriptive detail is already clear and well filled in, the general principles of its order are still but vaguely to be discerned, and as our view quit s the comparatively distinct region near ourselves, the prospect fades more and more into the dimness of conjecture.
I. Man s Place in Nature.—It is now more than thirty years since Dr Prichard, who perhaps of all others merits the title of founder of modern anthropology, stated in the following forcible passage, which opens his Natural History of Man, the closeness of man's physical relation to the lower animals:—
“The organised world presents no contrasts and resemblances more remarkable than those which we discover on comparing man kind with the inferior tribes. That creatures should exist so nearly approaching to each other in all the particulars of their physical structure, and yet differing so immeasurably in their endowments and capabilities, would be a fact hard to believe, if it were not manifest to our observation. The differences are everywhere strik ing: the resemblances are less obvious in the fulness of their extent, and they are never contemplated without wonder by those who, in the study of anatomy and physiology, are first made aware how near is man in his physical constitution to the brutes. In all the principles of his internal structure, in the composition and functions of his parts, man is but an animal. The lord of the earth, who contemplates the eternal order of the universe, and aspires to communion with its invisible Maker, is a being composed of the same materials, and framed on the same principles, as the creatures which he has tamed to be the servile instruments of his will, or slays for his daily food. The points of resemblance are innumerable ; they extend to the most recondite arrangements of that mechanism which maintains instrumentally the physical life of the body, which brings forward its early development and admits, after a given period, its decay, and by means of which is prepared a succession of similar beings destined to perpetuate the race.”
ganisation both in structure and function, through the range of animal life upward to man, and to the article Animal Kingdom for the general classification of the series of invertebrate and vertebrate animals, we have here to show in outline the relations between man and the species most closely approaching him. It is admitted that the Apes and higher apes come nearest to man in bodily formation, and Mr * r ~ that it is essential to determine their zoological resem blances and differences as a step toward ascertaining their absolute relation in nature. " At this point," writes Pro fessor Owen in a paper on the " Osteology of the Apes," " every deviation from the human structure indicates with precision its real peculiarities, and we then possess the true means of appreciating those modifications by which a material organism is especially adapted to become the seat and instrument of a rational and responsible soul." (On the "Osteology of the Chimpanzee and Orang Utan," in Proc.- Zool. Soc., vol. i.) Professor Huxley, in his Man's Place in Nature (London 1863), comparing man with order after order of the mammalia, decides " There would remain then but one order for comparison, that of the Apes (using that word in its broadest sense), and the question for discussion would narrow itself to this is Man so different from any of these Apes that he must form an order by himself ? Or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the same order with them]" This anatomist states the anatomical rela tions between man and ape in untechnical terms suited to the present purpose, and which would be in great measure accepted by zoologists and anthropologists, whether agree ing or not with his ulterior views. The relations are most readily stated in comparison with the gorilla, as on the whole the most anthropomorphous ape. In the general pro portions of the body and limbs there is a marked difference between the gorilla and man, which at ouce strikes the eye. The gorilla s brain-case is smaller, its trunk larger, its lower limbs shorter, its upper limbs longer in proportion than those of man. The differences between a gorilla s rtkull
and a man s are truly immense. In the gorilla, the face,