Address delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, January 22nd, 1884, on the aims and prospects of the study of anthropology / by W.H. Flower.

  • Flower, William Henry, 1831-1899.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, January 22nd, 1884, on the aims and prospects of the study of anthropology / by W.H. Flower. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    derived from sciences so diverse, and requiring such different mental attributes and systems of training, as scarcely ever to be found combined in one individual. This will become perfectly evident when we consider the various factors or elements which constitute the differential characters of the groups or races into which mankind is divided. The most important of these are:— 1. Structural or anatomical characters, derived from diversities of stature, proportions of different parts of the body, complexion, features, colour and character of the hair, form of the skull and other bones, and the hitherto little studied anatomy of the nervous, muscular, vascular, and other systems. The modifi- cations in these structures hi the different varieties of man are so slight and subtle, and so variously combined, that their due appreciation, and the discrimination of what in them is essential or important, and what incidental or merely superficial, requires a long and careful training, superadded to a preliminary know- ledge of the general anatomy of man and the higher animals. The study of physical or zoological ethnology, though it lies at the basis of that of race, is thus necessarily limited to a compara- tively few original investigators. 2. The mental and moral characters by which different races are distinguished are still more difficult to fathom and to describe and define, and although the subject of much vague statement, as there are few people who do not consider themselves compe- tent to give an opinion about them, they have hitherto been rarely approached by any strictly scientific method of inquiry. 3. Language—The same difficulties are met with with in the study of language as in that of physical peculiarities, in the dis- crimination between the fundamental and essential, and the mere accidental and superficial resemblances, and in proportion as these difficulties are successfully overcome will the results of the study become valuable instead of misleading. Though the science of language is an essential part of ethnology, and one which generally absorbs almost the entire energies of any one who cultivates it, its place in discriminating racial affinities is