Alfred C. Haddon

“ There are, as Professor Myres points out, two kinds of anthropologists:—
There is an anthropologist to whom we go for our facts: the painful accurate observer of data, the storehouse of infinite detail; sometimes himself the traveller and explorer, by cunning speech or wiser silence opening the secrets of aboriginal hearts; sometimes the middleman, the broker of traveller’s winnings, insatiate after some new thing, unerring by instinct rather than by experience, to detect false coin, to disinter the pearl of great price.... ”

“ The Negro and His Relation to the Human Family! The Negro a beast, but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may be of service to his master—the White man. The Negro not the Son of Ham, neither can it be proven by the Bible, and the argument of the theologian who would claim such, melts to mist before the thunderous and convincing arguments of this masterful book. ”

“ The genius of Linnæus lay in classification. Order and method were with him a passion. In his Systema Naturæ he fixed the place of Man in Nature, arranging Homo sapiens as a distinct species in the order Primates, [14] together with the apes, the lemurs, and the bats. He went further and classified the varieties of man, distinguishing them by skin colour and other characters into four groups—a classification which holds an honourable place at the present day. ”

“ CULTURAL CLASSIFICATION AND THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT We have seen that in its beginning the science of man was little more than a branch of zoology, and that his structural characters were the first to attract attention and to form the material of study; hence all the earlier classifications were based on physical features. Gallatin was one of the first to classify mankind rather by what they do than by what they are. ”

“ It is one of the most important functions of stay-at-home synthetic students laboriously to cull data from the vast literature of anthropology, travel, and ancient and modern history, and to weld them into coherent hypotheses. The student at home in this way suggests fresh inquiries to the field ethnologist, and a richer harvest is the result. The most valuable generalisations are made, however, when the observer is at the same time a generaliser; but “doubtless,” as Maharbal said to Hannibal after the battle of Cannae, “the gods have not bestowed everything on the same man. ”

“ Language and Race. From claiming too much the swing of the pendulum brought linguistics into disrepute with ethnologists, and for a time the evidence of language was looked upon with suspicion. Even philologists were accused of going too far in this direction.
Professor Sayce [126] says: “Identity or relationship of language can prove nothing more than social contact.... Language is an aid to the historian, not to the ethnologist.” ”

“ Fortunately, there is a quite different state of affairs for the study of the mind—or Psychology—though even in this field there is yet a great deal of work to be done.
During the eighteenth century the term “Anthropology,” which was very vaguely employed, was often used to designate a comprehensive psychology dealing with the entire mental side of man, as well as the relations between soul and body. Later, as its scope became widened, the centre of gravity shifted over to physical man; but anthropologists have always maintained their right to deal also more or less with psychology. ”

“ LINGUISTICS Linguistics as a department of Anthropology may be regarded from many points of view. To the evolutionist language forms one of the tests dividing the Hominidæ from the other anthropoids; the somatologist is interested in correlating the phonetic system with the structure of the organs connected with the mechanism of speech; and the ethnologist studies language for the evidence it affords of ethnic affinity or social contact, or as a means of determining the grade of culture to which a particular people has attained, or, again, as a reflection of their character or psychology. ”

“ It was necessary, therefore, that the study of man should lag behind the rest of the sciences, so long as any large masses of mankind remained withdrawn from its view; and we have only to remember that Australia and Africa were not even crossed at all—much less explored—by white men, until within living memory, to realise what this limitation means. In addition to this, modern Western civilisation, when it did at last come into contact with aboriginal peoples in new continents, too often came, like the religion which it professed, bringing “not peace, but a sword.” ”

“ THE SYSTEMATISERS OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY Hitherto we have been dealing with the great pioneers in Anthropology, those who laid the foundations, brought order out of chaos, and suggested the outlines of future work. Henceforward Anthropology may claim the name of a science, and the work developed on definite lines. ”

“ Definition. “Ethnology” is a term which is often loosely used as synonymous with “Anthropology,” to cover the whole field of the science of man. It was in this sense that it first came into prominence, being chosen by M. W. F. Edwards as the title for the Société ethnologique de Paris, in 1839. The society was concerned with what we should now call Anthropology; but it was more especially interested in the origins and relationships of the historical races of Europe, which was the etymological justification for its name. ”

“ The Vestiges became at once the centre of scientific discussion, denounced by the orthodox, and held “not proven” by most of the men of science of the time. Its supporters were called “Vestigiarian,” a term which implied also “unscientific,” “sentimental,” and “absurd.”
The curious point is that in the Vestiges we find much of what was subsequently called the Darwinian theory already enunciated. According to Wallace, it clearly formulated the conception of evolution through natural laws, and yet it was denounced by those who soon after were to become the champions of Darwinism. ”

“ For years past it has become evident that the great need of anthropology is that its methods should be strengthened and systematised. The world has not been unjust to the growing science, far from it. Wherever anthropologists have been able to show definite evidence and inference, for instance, in the development series of 130arts in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford, not only specialists, but the educated world generally, are ready to receive the results and assimilate them into public opinion. ”

“ Though no one measurement can be used for purposes of race discrimination, yet a series of measurements on a sufficiently large group of subjects, together with observations on the colour of the skin, hair, and eyes, 48the form of various organs—such as the nose and ears—and other comparisons of a similar nature, are invaluable in the study of the races of mankind. It is only in this way that the mixtures of the population can be sorted out, their origins traced, and some idea gained of the racial migrations which have taken place since man first appeared. ”

“ The Aryan Controversy. The connection between linguistics and anthropology assumed its greatest importance in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the discoveries and theories of philologists were adopted wholesale to explain the problems of European ethnology, and the Aryan controversy became the locus of disturbance throughout the Continent. “No other scientific question, with the exception, perhaps, of the doctrine of evolution, was ever so bitterly discussed or so infernally confounded at the hands of Chauvinistic or otherwise biassed writers.” [121] ”

“ The next twenty-five years were mainly spent in voyages of research in all parts of the world, and always with one object in view—the collection of materials for a comparative psychology, on the principles of a natural science. His first journey, which occupied eight years, resulted in the publication in 1860 of the first of a long series of writings. When not engaged in travel, his life was filled with his work in connection with the Berlin Museums. Great though these services were, Bastian’s main interest was always concentrated on psychology. ”

“ This, then, is the lesson that the latest results of investigations into the antiquity of man has taught us—that brain, not brawn, has been the essential factor in the evolution of man. The human brain had developed at a greater rate than the body, which even then retained unmistakable evidence of man’s lowly origin. How long had this evolution been progressing before Mousterian times? [56] The ruder 76stone implements of the Acheulian and Chellian epochs carry us an appreciable time backward; and if even some of the eoliths are artifacts, we can project tool-using man to yet earlier times. ”

“ The whole scientific and literary world, even the whole educated public, accepts, as a matter of common knowledge, the origin of species from other allied species by the ordinary process of natural birth. ”

“ The interest of Anthropology in religion was defined by Huxley. [112] “Anthropology has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of religion—it holds itself absolutely and entirely aloof from such questions—but the natural history of religion, and the origin and growth of the religions entertained by the different tribes of the human race, are within its proper and legitimate province.” ”

“ The objects made by man have only recently been subjected to critical study. In this the archæologists have been in advance of the ethnologists. The distribution of objects and its significance have been studied more in Germany than elsewhere, and already afford promising results.
Anthropology is slowly becoming a coherent and organised science. The chief danger to which it is liable is that its fascination and popularity, touching as it does every department of human thought and activity, tend to premature generalisations. ”

“ When materials began to accumulate they were detrimental to the polygenist theory. Especially was this the case with regard to the proof of what Broca termed “eugenesis”—i.e., that all the Hominidæ are, and always have been, fertile with each other. This, which formed a test between species and varieties in Botany and Zoology, was claimed also in Anthropology, and the polygenists had to seek for support elsewhere. They found it in Linguistics; “language as a test of race” bulked large in ethnological controversy, and is not yet entirely extinct. ”

“ In this little book some of the earlier builders on the scrap-heap will be noted—the Greek philosopher, Aristotle; the Belgian anatomist, Vesalius; the Englishmen, Tyson and Prichard; the Swede, Linnaeus; the Frenchman, Buffon; and the German, Blumenbach. These laid the foundations of the science, and each is claimed as the true founder of Anthropology. After these the workers become more numerous and more specialised, and they will be dealt with under the separate headings of the various branches of the subject in which they laboured, rather than in a continuous chronological order. ”

“ What is most needed at the present day is intensive study of limited areas; the studies already so made have proved most fruitful. Although we know a good deal about many forms of social organisation, we find that in very few cases is the knowledge sufficiently precise to explain them, owing to the fact that the data were not collected by adequately trained observers. In other words, cultural anthropology has been too much at the mercy of students who have not received a sufficiently rigorous training. ”

“ Although Max Müller wrote nearly twenty years ago, “I believe the time will come when no anthropologist will venture to write on anything concerning the inner life of man without having himself acquired a knowledge of the language in which that inner life finds its truest expression,” we are obliged still to echo his lament: “How few of the books in which we trust with regard to the characteristics or peculiarities of savage races have been written by men ... who have learnt their languages until they could speak them as well as the natives themselves!” [127] ”

“ The first branch to attract workers was Somatology, the physical aspect of man, of which we have already noted the inception: not until the nineteenth century can Archæology, or Prehistoric Anthropology, be said to have developed into a science; while the scientific study of Ethnology, or Cultural Anthropology, is barely half a century old. ”

“ When the remains were first exhibited by their discoverer at Bonn, doubts were freely expressed as to their human character. Virchow pronounced his opinion that the cranium was diseased; in the long controversy which raged over this skull his wide pathological experience, his distrust of merely morphological considerations, his agnostic position with regard to the origin of species in general and of man in particular, led him, perhaps, to propound this extreme view. Broca declared it to be normal. Huxley recognised the skull as human, but declared it to be the most ape-like ever discovered ”

“ Vogt. Carl Vogt (1864) , who, like so many other zoologists then and since, was led to study anthropology, pointed out that “the ape-type does not culminate in one, but in three, anthropoid apes.” On examining the species of mankind and their history, he arrived at similar results (see also p. 66) .
In the second volume of his Generelle Morphologie 97 (1866) Haeckel applied the theory of evolution to the whole organic kingdom, including man, and drew up the first “genealogical trees.” ”

“ While Prichard was expanding his thesis, Antoine Desmoulins was writing his Histoire naturelle des races humaines, which appeared contemporaneously with Prichard’s revised Researches in 1826. He attempted to discover the origins and relations of the peoples of north-east Europe, north and east Asia, and South Africa, by the evidence of archæology, physiology, anatomy, and linguistics.
The work of systematising the mass of anthropological data and producing an orderly scheme must always be regarded as an almost superhuman task, and those who have attempted it deserve our grateful recognition. ”