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'My dear young lady, spare a worn-out philosopher any new anthropologic theories. We really must push on a little faster, if we intend to reach Ostia to-night. But, for some reason or other, Raphael sneered no more for a full half-hour. Long, however, ere they reached Ostia, the night had fallen; and their situation began to be more than questionably safe.
I was at Niagara Falls lecturing, and after the lecture I went to the hotel, and when I went up to the desk there stood there a millionaire's son from New York. He was an indescribable specimen of anthropologic potency. He carried a gold-headed cane under his arm more in its head than he had in his. I do not believe I could describe the young man if I should try.
What is more singular, although they differ surprisingly among themselves in language, they have marked anthropologic similarities, physical and psychical. Virchow has emphasized the fact that the skulls from the northern point of Vancouver's Island reveal an unmistakable analogy to those from the southern coast of California; and this is to a degree true of many intermediate points.
The Anglicans of that time, who held intrinsically the same anthropologic notions, and yet wanted the courage and sincerity to carry them out as honestly, neither could nor would throw any light upon the controversy; and the only class who sided with the poor playwrights in asserting that there were more things in man, and more excuses for man, than were dreamt of in Prynne's philosophy, were the Jesuit Casuists, who, by a fatal perverseness, used all their little knowledge of human nature to the same undesirable purpose as the playwrights; namely, to prove how it was possible to commit every conceivable sinful action without sinning.
I must tell you about a rich man's son at Niagara Falls. I came in from the lecture to the hotel, and as I approached the desk of the clerk there stood a millionaire's son from New York. He was an indescribable specimen of anthropologic potency. He had a skull-cap on one side of his head, with a gold tassel in the top of it, and a gold-headed cane under his arm with more in it than in his head.
Let us confine ourselves, at least in the present infantile state of the anthropologic sciences, to facts; to ascertaining honestly and patiently the thing which has been done; trusting that if we make ourselves masters of them, some rays of inductive light will be vouchsafed to us from Him who truly comprehends mankind, and knows what is in man, because He is the Son of Man; who has His own true theory of human progress, His own sound method of educating the human race, perfectly good, and perfectly wise, and at last, perfectly victorious; which nevertheless, were it revealed to us to-morrow, we could not understand; for if he who would comprehend Luther must be more than Luther, what must he be, who would comprehend God?
Men like Behmen, Novalis, and Fourier, who can soar into the inner cloud-world of man's spirit, even though they lose their way there, dazzled by excess of wonder men who, like Wordsworth, can give utterance to such subtle anthropologic wisdom as the "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," will for that very reason most humbly and patiently "consider the lilies of the field, how they grow."
Besides, this precaution is also a postulate of anthropologic science. For spiritual and ethical facts have at least the same truth and reality as the material, and a still higher value, and can therefore not permit any injury to their full recognition. But religion also must require this acknowledgment.
This little volume is the third of a series designed to promote anthropologic researches among the North American Indians. The first was prepared by myself and entitled "Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages," the second by Col. Garrick Mallery entitled Introduction to the Study of Sign Language among the North American Indians.
Taking the Bible story as they found it, they agreed with Humboldt's reason, and not with his science; or, to speak correctly, agreed with Humboldt's self, and not with the shallow anthropologic theories which happened to be in vogue fifty years ago; and their new hosts were in their eyes immortal souls like themselves, "captivated by the devil at his will," lost there in the pathless forests, likely to be lost hereafter.
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