Anthropology / As a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States

Transcriber’s Note

BY DANIEL G. BRINTON, A.M., M.D., LL.D., PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN ARCHÆOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, AND OF GENERAL ETHNOLOGY AT THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES, PHILADELPHIA; CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETIES OF WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, PARIS, BERLIN, ST. PETERSBURG, VIENNA, MUNICH, FLORENCE, ETC.
PHILADELPHIA: 1892.

This very brief presentation of the claims of Anthropology for a recognized place in institutions of the higher education in the United States will, I hope, receive the thoughtful consideration of the officers and patrons of our Universities and Post-Graduate Departments.
The need of such a presentation was urged upon me not long since by the distinguished president of a New England University. Impressed with the force of his words, I make an earnest appeal to our seats of advanced learning to establish a branch of Anthropology on the broad lines herein suggested. It may be but one chair in their Faculties of Philosophy; but the rightful claims of this science will be recognized only when it is organized as a department by itself, with a competent corps of professors and docents, with well-appointed laboratories and museums, and with fellowships for deserving students.
Who is the enlightened and liberal citizen ready to found such a department, and endow it with the means necessary to carry out both instruction and original research?
I do not plead for any one institution, or locality, or individual; but simply for the creation in the United States of the opportunity of studying this highest of the sciences in a manner befitting its importance.

Man himself is the only final measure of his own activities. To his own force and faculties all other tests are in the end referred. All sciences and arts, all pleasures and pursuits, are assigned their respective rank in his interest by reference to those physical powers and mental processes which are peculiarly the property of his own species.