William Henry Flower

“ Hence Owen found himself in a situation the duties of which were little more than nominal. Nothing could have served his purpose better. His indomitable industry was given full play in the directions for which his talents were best fitted, and with the magnificent material in the collections of the museum at his command, he set to work with great vigour upon a renewed series of researches, the results of which for many years taxed the resources of most of the scientific societies of London to publish. ”

“ Scarcely anywhere in the animal kingdom do we see so many cases of the persistence of rudimentary and apparently useless organs, those marvelous and suggestive phenomena which at one time seemed hopeless enigmas, causing despair to those who tried to unravel their meaning, but now eagerly welcomed as beacons of true light, casting illuminating beams upon the dark paths through which the organism has traveled on its way to reach the goal of its present condition of existence. ”

“ Green’s teaching was, directly and indirectly, the most potent philosophical influence in England during the last quarter of the 19th century, while his enthusiasm for a common citizenship, and his personal example in practical municipal life, inspired much of the effort made, in the years succeeding his death, to bring the universities more into touch with the people, and to break down the rigour of class distinctions. ”

“ Even among these uncultured children of nature, human pride crops up among the fetters of fashion, which, indeed, are fetters in the worst sense of the word; for fashion in the distant wilds of Africa tortures and harasses poor humanity as much as in the great prison of civilization. ”

“ When any combination of circumstances has occasioned an increase of the numbers of the lemmings in their ordinary dwelling places, impelled by the restless or migratory instinct possessed in a less developed degree by so many of their congeners, a movement takes place at the edge of the elevated plateau, and a migration towards the lower-lying land begins. The whole body moves forward slowly, always advancing in the same general direction in which they originally started, but following more or less the course of the great valleys. They only travel by night ”

“ Although from the peculiarly involved style of Owen's writing, especially upon these subjects, it is sometimes difficult to define his real opinions, it appears that before the publication of the ‘Origin of Species’ he had ‘been led to recognise species as exemplifying the continuous operation of natural law, or secondary cause, and that not only successively but progressively.’ Darwin's special doctrine of ‘natural selection,’ however, he never appreciated. ”

“ Personal good is perceived to be realizable only by making actual the conceptions thus arrived at. So long as these remain potential or ideal, they form the motive of action; motive consisting always in the idea of some “end” or “good” which man presents to himself as an end in the attainment of which he would be satisfied, that is, in the realization of which he would find his true self. ”

“ ONE of the great difficulties with regard to making anthropology a special subject of study, and devoting a special organization to its promotion, is the multifarious nature of the branches of knowledge comprehended under the title. This very ambition, which endeavors to include such an extensive range of knowledge, ramifying in all directions, illustrating and receiving light from so many other sciences, appears often to overleap itself and give a looseness and indefiniteness to the aims of the individual or the institution proposing to cultivate it. ”

“ The study of the works of our earliest known forefathers, "prehistoric archaeology," as it is commonly called, although one of the most recently developed branches of knowledge, is now almost a science by itself, and one which is receiving a great amount of attention in all parts of the civilized world. It investigates the origin of all human culture, endeavors to trace to their common beginning the sources of all our arts, customs, and history. ”

“ Green was thus driven, not theoretically, but as a practical necessity, to raise again the whole question of man in relation to nature. When (he held) we have discovered what man in himself is, and what his relation to his environment, we shall then know his function—what he is fitted to do. In the light of this knowledge we shall be able to formulate the moral code, which, in turn, will serve as a criterion of actual civic and social institutions. ”

“ The truth is that the division of the museum establishment into four distinct departments, each with its own head, left the ‘superintendent’ practically powerless, and Owen's genius did not lie in the direction of such a reorganisation as might have been effected during the critical period of the removal of the collections from Bloomsbury and their installation in the new building. Advancing age also probably indisposed him to encounter the difficulties which inevitably arise from interference with time-honoured traditions. ”

“ It seems, indeed, a strange phenomenon that in such different races, so far removed in locality, customs so singular—to our ideas so revolting and unnatural, and certainly so painful and inconvenient—should either have been perpetuated for an enormous lapse of time, if the supposition of a common origin be entertained, or else have developed themselves independently. ”

“ This good consists in the realization of personal character; hence the final good, i.e. the moral ideal, as a whole, can be realized only in some society of persons who, while remaining ends to themselves in the sense that their individuality is not lost but rendered more perfect, find this perfection attainable only when the separate individualities are integrated as part of a social whole. Society is as necessary to form persons as persons are to constitute society. Social union is the indispensable condition of the development of the special capacities of the individual members. ”

“ I shall speak of deformity in the sense of alteration of the natural form of any part of the body, and those cases of voluntary deformation will be considered which are performed, not by isolated individuals, or with special motives, but by considerable numbers of members of a community in imitation of one another—in fact, according to fashion, "that most inexorable tyrant, to which the greater part of mankind are willing slaves."
Fashion is now often associated with change, but in more primitive communities fashions of all sorts are more permanent than with us ”

“ Self-reflection gradually reveals to us human capacity, human function, with, consequently, human responsibility. It brings out into clear consciousness certain potentialities in the realization of which man’s true good must consist. ”

“ Ethnology thus treats of the resemblances and differences of the modifications of the human species in their relations to each other, but anthropology, as now understood, has a far wider scope. It treats of mankind as a whole. It investigates his origin and his relations to the rest of the universe. It invokes the aid of the sciences of zoölogy, comparative anatomy, and physiology ”

“ Green represents primarily the reaction against doctrines which, when carried out to their logical conclusion, not only “rendered all philosophy futile,” but were fatal to practical life. By reducing the human mind to a series of unrelated atomic sensations, this teaching destroyed the possibility of knowledge, and further, by representing man as a “being who is simply the result of natural forces,” it made conduct, or any theory of conduct, unmeaning; for life in any human, intelligible sense implies a personal self which (1) knows what to do, (2) has power to do it. ”

“ All we know of the origin of limbs shows that they commence as outgrowths upon the surface of the body, and that the first-formed portions are the most distal segments. The limb, as proved by its permanent state in the lowest vertebrates, and by its embryological condition in higher forms, is at first a mere projection or outward fold of the skin, which, in the course of development, as it becomes of use in moving or supporting the animal, acquires the internal framework which strengthens it and perfects its functions. ”

“ I HAVE to ask your attention this evening to certain outward manifestations of a propensity common to human nature in every aspect in which we are acquainted with it—the most primitive and barbarous, and the most civilized and refined—but one which is, as far as I know, peculiar to human nature. ”

“ When it once became an established custom in any tribe, it was almost inevitable that it should continue, until put an end to by the destruction either of the tribe itself, or of its peculiar institutions, through the intervention of some superior force, for a standard of excellence in form, which could not be changed in those who possessed it, was naturally followed by all who did not wish their children to run the risk of the social degradation which would follow the neglect of such a custom. ”

“ It seems perfectly marvelous that any one who had ever looked at a healthy pair of human feet could have thought of the possibility of wearing a stiff, unyielding shoe of identical form for both right and left, and yet the very trifling difference which is at present allowed is a comparatively modern innovation, and is even now too frequently disregarded, especially where most needed, as in the case of children. ”

“ All these questions, then, should be carefully studied by those who have any share in the government of people of races alien to themselves. A knowledge of their special characters and relations to one another has a more practicable object than the mere gratification of scientific curiosity; it is a knowledge upon which the happiness and prosperity, or the reverse, of millions of our fellow-creatures may depend. ”

“ The external adornment of the body, the costume, the ornaments, the mutilations which individuals undergo—in short, the general fashions—have all a distinctive character of their own. The most remarkable is the revolting, because unnatural, manner in which the women pierce and distort their lips; they seem to vie with each other in their mutilations, and their vanity in this respect, I believe, surpasses anything that may be found throughout Africa. ”

“ There is no other race of men which have heads in the least resembling theirs. At first, usage was the principal cause of the length of their head, but now Nature coöperates with usage. They think those the most noble who have the longest heads. It is thus with regard to the usage: immediately after the child is born, and while its head is still tender, they fashion it with their hands, and constrain it to assume a lengthened shape by applying bandages and other suitable contrivances, whereby the spherical form of the head is destroyed, and it is made to increase in length. ”

“ Many naturalists have been tempted to think that the whales represent a still further stage of the same kind of modification. But there is to my mind a fatal objection to this view. The seal, of course, has much in common with the whale, inasmuch as it is a mammal adapted for an aquatic life, but it has been converted to its general fish-like form by the peculiar development of its hind-limbs into instruments of propulsion through the water; for, though the thighs and legs are small, the feet are large and are the special organs of locomotion in the water, the tail being quite rudimentary. ”

“ When we see identical and most strange customs, such as particular modes of mutilation of the body, showing themselves among races the most diverse in character and remote geographically, we can not help coming to the conclusion that these customs have either been communicated in some hitherto unexplained manner, or are the outcome of some common element of humanity, in either of which cases they tell nothing of the special relations or affinities of the races which practice them. ”