Professor Max Muller, who presided over the Anthropological Section of the British Association, said that if one tried to recall what anthropology was in 1847, and then considered what it was now, its progress seemed most marvelous. These last fifty years had been an age of discovery in Africa, Central Asia, America, Polynesia, and Australia, such as could hardly be matched in any previous century. But what seemed to him even more important than the mere increase of material was the new spirit in which anthropology had been studied during the last generation. He did not depreciate the labors of so-called dilettanti, who were after all lovers of knowledge, and in a study such as that of anthropology, the labors of these volunteers, or franc-tireurs, had often proved most valuable. But the study of man in every part of the world had ceased to be a subject for curiosity only. It had been raised to the dignity and also the responsibility of a real science, and was now guided by principles as strict and rigorous as any other science. Many theories which were very popular fifty years ago were now completely exploded; nay, some of the very principles by which the science was then guided had been discarded.

Among all serious students, whether physiologists or philologists, it was by this time recognized that the divorce between ethnology and philology, granted if only for incompatibility of temper, had been productive of nothing but good.

Classification

Instead of attempting to classify mankind as a whole, students were now engaged in classifying skulls, hair, teeth, and skin. Many solid results had been secured by these special researches; but as yet, no two classifications, based on these characteristics, had been made to run parallel. The most natural classification was, no doubt, that according to the color of the skin. This gave us a black, a brown, a yellow, a red, and a white race, with several subdivisions. This classification had often been despised as unscientific; but might still turn out far more valuable than at present supposed. The next classification was that by the color of the eyes, as black, brown, hazel, gray, and blue. This subject had also attracted much attention of late, and, within certain limits, the results have proved very valuable. The most favorite classification, however, had always been that according to the skulls. The skull, as the shell of the brain, had by many students been supposed to betray something of the spiritual essence of man; and who could doubt that the general features of the skull, if taken in large averages, did correspond to the general features of human character? We had only to look around to see men with heads like a cannon ball and others with heads like a hawk.

This distinction had formed the foundation for a more scientific classification into brachycephalic, dolichocephalic, and mesocephalic skulls. If we examined any large collection of skulls we had not much difficulty in arranging them under these three classes; but if, after we had done this, we looked at the nationality of each skull, we found the most hopeless confusion. Pruner Vey, as Peschel told us in his "Volkerkunde," had observed brachycephalic and dolichocephalic skulls in children born of the same mother; and if we consider how many women had been carried away into captivity by Mongolians in their inroads into China, India, and Germany, we could not feel surprised if we found some long heads among the round heads of those Central Asiatic hordes.

Differences In Skulls

Only we must not adopt the easy expedient of certain anthropologists who, when they found dolichocephalic and brachycephalic skulls in the same tomb, at once jump to the conclusion that they must have belonged to two different races. When, for instance, two dolichocephalic and three brachycephalic skulls were discovered in the same tomb at Alexanderpol, we were told at once that this proved nothing as to the simultaneous occurrence of different skulls in the same family; nay, that it proved the very contrary of what it might seem to prove. It was clear, we were assured, that the two dolichocephalic skulls belonged to Aryan chiefs and the three brachycephalic skulls to their non-Aryan slaves, who were killed and buried with their masters, according to a custom well known to Herodotus. This sounded very learned, but was it really quite straightforward? Besides the general division of skulls into dolichocephalic, brachycephalic, and mesocephalic, other divisions had been undertaken, according to the height of the skull, and again according to the maxillary and the facial angles. This latter division gave us orthognatic, prognathic, and mesognathic skulls.

Lastly, according to the peculiar character of the hair, we might distinguish two great divisions, the people with woolly hair (Ulotriches) and people with smooth hair (Lissotriches). The former were subdivided into Lophocomi, people with tufts of hair, and Eriocomi, or people with fleecy hair. The latter were divided into Euthycomi, straight haired, and Euplocomi, wavy haired. It had been shown that these peculiarities of the hair depended on the peculiar form of the hair tubes, which in cross sections were found to be either round or elongated in different ways. All these classifications, to which several more might be added, those according to the orbits of the eyes, the outlines of the nose, and the width of the pelvis, were by themselves extremely useful. But few of them only, if any, ran strictly parallel. Now let them consider whether there could be any organic connection between the shape of the skull, the facial angle, the conformation of the hair, or the color of the skin on one side, and what we called the great families of language on the other.

Connection Of Language And Physical Conformation

That we spoke at all might rightly be called a work of nature, opera naturale, as Dante said long ago; but that we spoke thus or thus, cosi o cosi, that, as the same Dante said, depended on our pleasure - that was our work. To imagine, therefore, that as a matter of necessity, or as a matter of fact, dolichocephalic skulls had anything to do with Aryan, mesophalic with Semitic, or brachycephalic with Turanian speech, was nothing but the wildest random thought. It could convey no rational meaning whatever; we might as well say that all painters were dolichocephalic, and all musicians brachycephalic, or that all lophocomic tribes worked in gold, and all lisocomic tribes in silver. If anything must be ascribed to prehistoric times, surely the differentiation of the human skull, the human hair and the human skin would have to be ascribed to that distant period. No one, he believed, had ever maintained that a mesocephalic skull was split or differentiated into a dolichocephalic and a brachycephalic variety in the bright sunshine of history. Nevertheless, he had felt for years that knowledge of languages must be considered in future as a sine qua non for every anthropologist. How few of the books in which we trusted with regard to the characteristic peculiarities of savage races had been written by men who had lived among them for ten or twenty years, and who had learned their languages till they could speak them as well as the natives themselves. It was no excuse to say that any traveler who had eyes to see and ears to hear could form a correct estimate of the doings and sayings of savage tribes.

Travelers' Impressions

It was not so, as anthropologists knew from sad experience. Suppose a traveler came to a camp where he saw thousands of men and women dancing round the image of a young bull. Suppose that the dancers were all stark naked, that after a time they began to fight, and that at the end of their orgies there were three thousand corpses lying about weltering in their blood. Would not a casual traveler have described such savages as worse than the negroes of Dahomey? Yet these savages were really the Jews, the chosen people of God. The image was the golden calf, the priest was Aaron, and the chief who ordered the massacre was Moses. We might read the 32d chapter of Exodus in a very different sense. A traveler who could have conversed with Aaron and Moses might have understood the causes of the revolt and the necessity of the massacre. But without this power of interrogation and mutual explanation, no travelers, however graphic and amusing their stories might be, could be trusted; no statements of theirs could be used by the anthropologist for truly scientific purposes. If anthropology was to maintain its high position as a real science, its alliance with linguistic studies could not be too close.

Its weakest points had always been those where it trusted to the statements of authorities ignorant of language and of the science of language. Its greatest triumphs had been achieved by men such as Dr. Hahn, Bishops Callaway and Colenso, Dr. W. Gill and last, not least, Mr. Man, who had combined the minute accuracy of the scholar with the comprehensive grasp of the anthropologist, and were thus enabled to use the key of language to unlock the perplexities of savage customs, savage laws and legends, and, particularly, of savage religions and mythologies. If this alliance between anthropology and philology became real, then, and then only, might we hope to see Bunsen's prophecy fulfilled, that anthropology would become the highest branch of that science for which the British Association was instituted.