Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/514

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

known; and how they have languished, when introduced, is equally notorious. The modern languages have fared no better, although, after a long contest, a point has at last been gained in their favor at Cambridge, which is thus described in Nature of June 6th:

"An event occurred on Thursday last at Cambridge, not in itself, perhaps, of imposing magnitude, but yet fraught with very important consequences. For this long while back an agitation has been going on with the purpose of making Greek no longer absolutely essential to the Previous Examination (or 'Little Go,' as it is popularly called), but of allowing French or German, or both, to be substituted for it at the option of the candidate. As any long-headed man might have foreseen, the genuine scholarship and liberal intelligence of the university are in favor of such a change; but the opposition has been neither feeble nor silent. Discussion has abounded more and more, and 'fly-sheets' have fallen like the latter rain. The advocates of the change seem to have been more or less governed by a dislike to many words, and to have had large faith in the merits of their cause; their opponents, on the other hand, appear to have believed in the efficacy of much speaking, and in the effects of arguments drawn from all quarters, and looking all ways; their papers and speeches, all put together, form as pretty a piece of incoherence as may be found in a literary day's march, and would have been a perfect godsend to the great Skepsius when he wrote his famous tract 'An hominibus mens absit.' The reasons, indeed, for making the change were so clear and cogent, that there seemed hardly any hope of its being accomplished. Yet, by one of those freaks of fortune which are met with even in the universities, wisdom prevailed; and by the vote of the Senate on Thursday last, which will, in all probability, be speedily ratified at a second meeting, the student who desires to go out in an 'honors' examination henceforth need not at his Little Go scratch up a smattering of bad Greek, if he satisfies his examiner that he possesses a real knowledge of French or German. We trust that the scientific workers at Cambridge will take heart at this happy issue of the struggle, and gird up their loins for the heavy task of introducing order and system into the chaos in which the natural-science studies at Cambridge are now lost. It is not a little to the credit of this university that she should have been actually the first to remove one more of the old-fashioned swaddling-clothes which have been checking the development of youthful science, and we trust it is an earnest of still greater changes which she means to take in hand. Science has been too long at that old university a sort of blind Samson, bound with many cords, and serving chiefly to make sport for mocking Philistines of the classical and mathematical tribes. It is time his cords were loosed, and his strength made use of for the general advancement of the university."

ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY.

These are hard words, and will be ranked by many among those pestilent "ologies" of which so much is said by the learned, and which are supposed to be of so little use or importance to ordinary people. Yet they are significant and indispensable terms, and stand for very weighty things; and, moreover, they represent subjects which are forcing themselves more and more upon the attention of intelligent people. It is, therefore, desirable to have distinct conceptions of what they mean.

Anthropology is the term now applied to the general science of man. It, therefore, comprehends many things, and has, perhaps, not yet reached its