J.Jacobs, del.

Drawn out of scale to preserve clearness at extremities.

Dark parts obtained from observation; the rest by interpolation.

DISTRIBUTION OF ABILITY

AMONC

ENGLISHMEN, SCOTCHMEN & JEWS

JP.&W.REmshe lith.

X

in each class in the three races are given in the Table. The English numbers in this are from Mr. Galton's book; the Scotch and Jewish numbers have been calculated from-(1) the number of celebrities; (2) the number of lunatics; (3) the principle illustrated by fig. 1, that the

curves must cross.

Fig. 3 is merely an illustration of the statement on page 361, the crosses marking the percentiles shown to be equal by the same crosses in fig. 2. Properly speaking, the Jewish and Scotch percentile bars ought to be elastic and extend equally on both sides of the English fiftieth percentile. A more accurate representation of the relative ability of each percentile among the three races would be to draw the "ogives" for each so that the ordinates corresponding to the 72nd, 74th, 76th percentile respectively should be equal. This would enable us to determine the relative ability of each percentile. But it would be misleading to attempt such accuracy at present, and the more popular statement of the text may serve as a rough indication in the meanwhile.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL MISCELLANEA.

The SCOPE of ANTHROPOLOGY, and its RELATION to the SCIENCE of MIND. By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL.D.,

Emeritus Professor of Logic, Aberdeen.1

THE science termed Anthropology, in its literal rendering "ManScience," cannot be called new. But the derivation of a Greek name teaches nothing. Man, as the most complex thing in nature, has many aspects, and gives birth to many sciences, and we may not yet have exhausted these. It is the case that, within a few years, a mode of approaching the study of mankind, having certain claims to novelty, has been originated, and been made the basis of a specific treatment, and of societies for conducting that treatment, the present section of the British Association being one.

So recent, however, is the origin of this science, that its precise compass is by no means clearly settled. At all events, I think I can discover some vacillation and incoherence in its details, and especially in the relationship between it and the previously existing sciences of man.

Let me first quote the definition of the subject by the leading authority. According to Professor Huxley, it deals with the whole structure, history, and development of man. Still more specific is the enumeration of its parts, in the article devoted to it, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, also by a great authority. These are six, viz. :-Î. Man's Place in Nature, that is, his relation or standing in the animal kingdom, as a whole; II. His Origin, whether from one pair or otherwise; III. The Classification of the Races, with the delineation of their several characteristics; IV. The Antiquity of Man, which is necessarily connected with his mode of origin, although susceptible of a separate treatment; V. Language, as essentially bound up in the intellectual advancement of mankind; VI. The Development of Civilisation as a whole.

Now it needs a little reflection to discover what brought these six topics together under a new designation. The topics themselves. are not all new; most of them are very old, as well as being provided with understood positions in the framework of our knowledge. The greatest novelty attaches to the antiquity of man. Next is man's place in Nature, which has received a distinctive

A Paper read in the Anthropological Section of the British Association at the Aberdeen Meeting, 1885.

treatment of late years. Allied to this is the question of man's origin; while the three remaining subjects, races, language, and civilisation, are neither new nor unplaced in the cycle of the sciences. These last have usually been discussed in total separation. Language stands entirely by itself, and although necessarily connected with the races, on the one hand, and with the totality of civilisation, on the other, gains nothing by being included in the same book, or in the same society, with these two great departments. Language was in the programme of the British Association long before Anthropology was taken up.

I believe that if the six subjects named were regarded merely as satisfying rational curiosity, and as containing applications to our common utilities, like Chemistry or Human Physiology, they would never have been grouped into the present bundle. The reason must lie deeper. It was very soon obvious that the three most recent of the six departments-Man's Place in Nature, Antiquity of Man, and Origin of Man-had bearings of an altogether transcendent kind. They were seen to relate to the everlasting mysteries of the universe-the Whence, the How, and the Whither of this earth, and its inhabitants, ourselves included: offering alternative and rival solutions to those already in the field. The discussion of man's place in nature has laid before us the view that he is, after all, merely the highest type of the zoological series. The inquiry into his antiquity points back to tens of thousands of years; his origin is transferred from one pair to something entirely different, although not precisely stateable. In order to assist in giving validity to these innovating suppositions, and to contribute other modifications of the traditional creeds, the three remaining sciences, Races, Language, and Civilisation, have been called in. The study of the races is so conducted as to militate against the commencement from one pair. The growth of languages is invoked to show the need of a great extension of the time hitherto allotted to the duration of man on the earth; the history of civilisation is turned to account, as showing the human origin of all our institutions, and especially the greatest of them, Religion. Instead of our own creed, the creed of Christendom, being an exclusive revelation, we are now told to face the alternative solutions—that the religions of mankind are either all equally Divine or all equally human: both views having their representatives.

It is quite true that the British Association carefully and rightly abstains from debating those issues; yet we cannot blink the fact that they alone have afforded a basis of union to the present section. If the subjects were to be viewed in a perfectly cold and dilletanti fashion, they would be very differently distributed. An Anthropology section unconnected with the highest questions would be made up of a very different aggregate: it would leave out some of these, and take in others. Civilisation, for example, is only a part of the vast science of Sociology, which should have a section or sub-section to itself, and include among other things the theory of government. Psychology, as the parent