ANTHROPOLOGY A BRANCH OF BIOLOGY
A word must here be said as to the importance—more especially to the biological student who aims at social work—of some knowledge of Anthropology. Biology is, in fact, incomplete without anthropology; for in its absence there is a danger of applying biological principles too summarily, and therefore unscientifically, to humanity. Anthropology, of course, goes behind art and history and the literary ideas current among civilised peoples. It gives life and meaning to customs, legends, handicrafts, details of dress, ornament, and furniture which otherwise go unheeded or misunderstood. It helps to interpret for us the ways of contemporary peoples and classes which are on a level different from our own. It gives a unity in infinite diversity to our whole conception of humanity. When more widely studied, there can be little doubt that it will cause us to reconstruct many of our judgments, both concerning the history of the past and concerning the civilisations of the present day.
We cannot but believe that a time will come when it will be assumed of all women that they know the broad truths of biology, just as it is now assumed that they know the alphabet. It will be taken for granted that they have mastered the essential domestic arts with their own hands, 69 just as we now take for granted they can write with their own hands. We shall have reached then the beginning of a new era—an era which we may hope will unite the excellences, moral, æsthetic, and hygienic, of earlier times, with the excellences, more purely intellectual and scientific, of our own day.