actions really signified, and so we can recover our ancestral religions.

The materials for the study of anthropology are as numerous as the bodily, mental, and moral diversities among mankind. What man is, what he thinks, what he aspires after, what he does-all this is the field of our inquiry. Our object is to record what occurs, and to discover its signifi" cance. These two aims should not be disassociated. A considerable amount of information that has been recorded in the past is comparatively barren because the significance of it was not understood at the time. Many travellers appear to be quite unaware that customs and beliefs, the form of an object and its decoration, may have a meaning that is by no means obvious. Further, it is only on the spot and from the people themselves that this significance can be discovered; those who read my former book on Evolution in Art will clearly see the importance of acquiring local information.

Now is the time to record. An infinitude has been irrevocably lost, a very great deal is now rapidly disappearing; thanks to colonisation, trade, and missionary enterprise, the change that has come over the uttermost parts of the world during the last fifty years is almost incredible. The same can also be said of Europe and of our own country. Emigration and migration, the railway, the newspaper, the Board School-all have contributed to destroy the ancient landmarks of backward culture. The most interesting materials for study are becoming lost to us, not only by their disappearance, but by the apathy of those who should delight in recording them before they have become lost to sight and memory.

Fruitful study results only from those facts of observation which have been fertilised by the mind that can see behind them. Nothing is easier than to burrow among de

tails, to be lost among a multiplicity of facts, and to be overwhelmed by a mass of material.

It is my object in this small book to present certain aspects only of the science of anthropology. I do not pretend to give an abstract of anthropology, nor even a general idea of the subject as a whole. But we will make several excursions, as it were, into the subject, not with the object of attempting to learn something about anthropology, but in order to see what anthropology can teach us about ourselves. For, after all, we are of more interest to ourselves than any study can be. We will then use the methods of anthropology, not for the erection of an academic study, but for the simple purpose of explaining ourselves to ourselves.

Our immediate object, then, is to try and discover what the significance is of certain of our bodily peculiarities, and of a few of the innumerable objects and actions that we see around us.

The theory of evolution throws a bright and far-reaching light on the problems of anthropology, and though we may not be able to explain the processes of, or the reasons for evolution, there can be no doubt as to the fact of its occurrence. There is no need to explain what is usually understood by evolution, but I would like to hint at some of the aspects of the evolution of man.

Speaking in general terms, the structure of man is essentially similar to that of the higher apes. The differences may be superficially striking, but the resemblances are fundamental. The disparity is patent when we see what man can do with his mechanism as opposed to what an ape does with his, but we must not forget that it is these apparently slight differences of structure which make possible the vast differences of functions; the two are intimately bound up together, and so it is not wise to overlook the differences between man and apes.

The akinship then of man and living apes is not one of direct relationship, but of common descent. It is constantly reiterated in books that the lower races of man are more simian than the higher, and the anatomical differences between an Australian or a Negro and a European are often described as "low," or high," as the case may be, the "low" character being regarded as arrested or atavistic. This generalisation must be accepted with great caution; it is only partially true, and some of the characters on which reliance is placed may prove to have another signification.

The three great groups of mankind-the white, yellow, and black races-are probably all divergencies from the same unknown ancestral stock. They have severally specialised along different lines of evolution, and what is important to note is that different traits of their organisation have become arrested, or have specialised in different degrees and in different directions. In some part of their organisation each of these groups is less specialised or more specialised than the other two. While the white man may, for example, be nearer the ape in the character of his hair than the Mongol or the Negro, the usual short body and long legs of the latter also remove him farther from the ape, to whom, in this respect, the other groups are more allied. Of course there can be no doubt that, on the whole, the white race has progressed beyond the black race.

Stress is laid by evolutionists on the resemblances to one another of the young of different divisions of the same group, and this is an argument for the view that these different classes had a common ancestry.

The same holds good for man. The infants of white, yellow, brown, red, and black people wonderfully resemble one another-both as to form, feature, and colour,—and not only so, but they very much more resemble the young of the higher apes than do their respective adults.

In fact it could be argued, with some show of plausibility, that the newly born infant is not purely human, but that it rapidly passes through a pre-human stage.

An English baby is very unlike an English man; apart from evolution there is no reason why their bodily proportions should not be similar, or why their noses should be so dissimilar. It is a very significant fact that among the pigmy peoples, such as the Andamanese and Bushmen, we find many infantile characteristics persisting in the adults, and among the taller races, the yellow people retain several juvenile characteristics. Thus we find that a people may retain infantile characteristics in some respects and be specialised in others; in employing the term "characteristics," I do not limit myself merely to physical features, but include mental and moral traits.

Anthropology also recognises the vast importance of the study of children. Following the strictly scientific method we thus enter the sacred precincts of the nursery, and inquire of the suckling the answer to one of the most momentous questions man can ask, “Whence are we ?" We seek in the youngest man the story of the oldest man, and endeavour to trace in the evanescent characteristics of earliest infancy some of the steps through which man has climbed above the brute.

From the nursery we pass to the school and the playground, endeavouring to discover in the child some evidence as to the direction of man's upward progress. As the newly born babe reveals to us the last traces of an arboreal ancestor and then speedily passes into human-kind, so the child repeats in its growth the savage stage from which civilised man has so recently emerged.

In subsequent chapters I shall refer to primitive survivals in child-life. There is not only a parallelism to some extent in physical features between children and certain savages,

"

but there is in children a persistence of savage psychological habit, and in the singing games of children a persistence of savage and barbaric practice. The courting, marriage, and funeral ceremonies of our savage forefathers are repeated like a faint and degraded echo in village green or school playground.

We leave the child and return to the folk whom I have already defined as the backward people among ourselves, and from their unwritten sagas and stories, their customs and beliefs, we can pick up the threads that have been dropped by the child. In certain of their oral traditions, especially in those which are told to the children, we find an unmistakable record of the clash of opposing races, but of a time long antecedent to history. In some of our fairytales we can recall the momentous struggle of the men of the Stone Age with those of the Age of Metals, and, in addition, we can catch glimpses of the culture, habits, and religion of neolithic man.

In the customs and beliefs of the folk may still be traced many survivals of the pagan observances and religion of our

ancestors.

In the life of the cultured European from his earliest infancy do we find milestones that mark the rate and extent of his progress, and all along this weary road, which it has taken mankind tens of thousands of years to traverse, do we find the tired ones--the laggards in the race of life—who mutely indicate, if we have but discrimination enough to read it, a record of the painful but glorious ascent from the brute to the human.

Wherever man is, there can anthropology be studied. There is no need to travel to the uttermost parts of the earth; we can prosecute researches or find food for reflection in our own nurseries, in the playground, on the village green, even in our cities.