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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE, 1905.
THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF ANTHROPOLOGY.1
BY SIR RICHARD TEMPLE. THERE has lately been established at Cambridge a Board of Anthropological Stadies, the object of which is to add a working knowledge of mankind to tho equipment of those already possessed of a matured, or at least a considerable, acquaintance with science or literature generally. The aim is, in fact, to impart a human interest to scholarship or to scientific attainment, which are otherwise apt to become mere exercises of the intellect :- an aim rendered practicable by the research and study, in certain directions, during quite recent years, of a number of independent students, hailing from all parts of the civilized world. The particular directions in which Anthropological Science has thus been developed, to an extent that has obtained for it a recognised and important position among the sciences, are in Archæology, Ethnology, and Physical and Mental Anthropology. The archæologists have included enquiries into Prehistoric and Historic Anthropology in their researches, the ethnologists have included Sociology, Comparative Religion and Folklore, while Mental Anthropology covers a study of the whole field of psychological investigation.
Now, when we are started on a new line of research, when we add a new course of studies to & University curriculum, there is a question that we cannot help facing - a question, in fact, that ought to arise - What is the good of it all? What is the good of Prehistoric Anthropology, for instance, or of Comparative Religion, to an undergraduate about to undertake a course of study, which is to enable him to embark fittingly on the practical affairs of life? This is the problem that it is proposed to tackle now.
Let us commence a survey of the trend of this last development of scientific effort with a truism. Every successful man has to go on educating himself all his life, and the object of a University training is to induce in stadents a habit of self-education, which is in the future to stand them in such good stead. Before those freshly passed through an English University there is a very wide field spread. Year by year whole batches of them are destined to go forth to all parts of the world to find a livelihood; to find places where work, lucrative, dignified and useful, awaits them; to find themselves also in a human environment, strange, alien And utterly unlike anything in their experience. It is a fair question to ask: - Will not a sound grounding in anthropology be a help to such as these? There is a patter saying: - . The proper study of mankind is man.' Will not & habit, acquired in a University, of systematically pursuing this study, of examining intelligently, until their true import is grasped, castoms, modes of thought, beliefs and superstitions, physical and mental capacities, springs of action, differences and mutual relations, and the causes leading up to existing human phenomena, be of real value to the young Englishmen sent among aliens ? Will it not be a powerful aid to them in what is called understanding the people'?
And do not let us run away with the idea that such knowledge is easily or quickly acquired because one is in the environment. There is another patter saying:-- One half the world does not know how the other half lives. This is applied to, and is only too true of those who belong to the same religion, who have been born, as it were, with the same social instincts, and are endowed presumably with the same mental and physical capacities. How many English Roman Catholics, living among Protestants, could tell one, on enquiry, anything of practical value as to Protestant ideas, and vice versd? How many of the gentry can project themselves successfally into the minds of the peasantry? And how many peasants understand the workings of the gentleman's mind, or the causes leading to his actions? How often do
1 An Address delivered at Cambridge, on November 17th, 1904.
