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What Anthropology Is

Man himself is the only final measure of his own activities. To his own force and faculties all other tests are in the end referred. All sciences and arts, all pleasures and pursuits, are assigned their respective rank in his interest by reference to those physical powers and mental processes which are peculiarly the property of his own species.

Hence, the Study of Man, pursued under the guidance of accurate observation and experimental research, embracing all his nature and all the manifestations of his activity, in the past as well as in the present, the whole co-ordinated in accordance with the inductive methods of the natural sciences – this study must in the future unfailingly come to be regarded as the crown and completion of all others – and this is Anthropology.

The Value of Anthropology

The value of the applications of this science can scarcely be overestimated.

In government and law, in education and religion, men have hitherto been dealt with according to traditional beliefs or a priori theories of what they may or ought to be. When we learn through scientific research what they really are, we shall then, and then only, have a solid foundation on which to build the social, ethical and political structures of the future. It is the appreciation of this which has given the extraordinary impetus to the study of Sociology – a branch of Anthropology – within the last decade.

Anthropology alone furnishes the key and clue to History. This also is meeting recognition. No longer are the best histories mainly chronicles of kings and wars, but records of the development and the decline of peoples; and what constitutes a “people,” and shapes its destiny, is the very business of Ethnology to explain.

So likewise in hygiene and medicine, in ethics and religion, in language and arts, in painting, architecture, sculpture and music, the full import and often unconscious intention of human activity can only be understood, and directed in the most productive channels, by such a careful historical and physical analysis as Anthropology aims to present.

Societies and Schools for the Study of Anthropology

The world of science has been recognizing more fully, year by year, the paramount importance of the systematic study of Anthropology to the aspirations of modern civilization.

The first Anthropological Society – that of Paris – was founded by Paul Broca, in May, 1859. It has been rapidly followed by the organization of similar societies in London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Brussels, Munich, Madrid, Florence, Washington, New York, and many other centres of enlightened thought. In 1882 the American Association for the Advancement of Science organized its Section of Anthropology; and in 1884 the British Association for the Advancement of Science followed this example. It is a well known fact that these sections are more attractive to the general public, and are better supplied with material than any other sections in the Associations. This augurs well for the zeal with which students would welcome the creation of special departments for instruction in all branches of the science.

The first School of Anthropology was founded also by Broca, at Paris, in the year 1876. It began with a corps of five professors, a number which it has now doubled, the demand for more extended instruction having steadily increased. The courses have been as well attended as any others, either at the Collége de France, or at the Sorbonne. A second school is organized in connection with the Museum of Natural History at the Jardin des Plantes. It has counted among its instructors various illustrious names, and its courses have also been highly popular.

Several of the German universities have organized a department of Anthropology. In those of Munich, Berlin, Marburg, and Buda Pesth the chairs are filled respectively by Ranke, Bastian, Von den Steinen, and Von Török. In the University of Leipzig, Dr. E. Schmidt is docent in Anthropology; and the same position is held in Berlin by Dr. Von Luschan. In a number of other institutions, lectures on the branch are given. The first degree in Anthropology was conferred by the University of Munich three years ago. The University of Brussels has established a full chair of Anthropology, occupied by Professor Houze; and a similar position is filled in the Musée Polytechnique, at Moscow, by Professor Dimitri Anoutchine.

In the United States, regular courses on Physical Anthropology and Ethnology have been given by me for the last six years, at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. But the only educational institutions which have distinctly recognized the branch are Clark University, Worcester, Mass., where Dr. Franz Boas is docent in Anthropology, and which, in March of this year, conferred the first degree in Anthropology given in America; and the University of Chicago, in which Dr. Frederick Starr is Assistant Professor of Anthropology. I cannot learn that any full professorship of the science has been established in this country.