The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

IX. It was necessary to recall all the facts and theories which I have just summed up, in order to facilitate the comprehension and the justification of the method which alone can guide us in anthropological studies.

The object of anthropology is the study of man as a species. It abandons the material individual to physiology and medicine; the intellectual and moral individual to philosophy and theology. It has, therefore, its own special field of study, and on that account alone its special questions, which often could not be solved by processes borrowed from cognate sciences.

In fact, in some questions, and in some of the most fundamental ones, the difficulty lies in the interpretation of phenomena connected with those which are characteristic of all living beings. For the very reason that they are to a certain extent obscure in man, we cannot seek for an explanation of them in man, since he becomes, so to speak, the unknown quantity of the problem. An endeavour to solve the problem by the study of man, who is the object of it, would be equivalent to a mathematician representing the value of x in terms of x itself.

How does the mathematician proceed? He seeks in the data of the problem for a certain number of known quantities equivalent to the unknown quantity, and by means of these quantities he determines the value of x.

The anthropologist must act in the same manner. But where must he seek for the known quantities which will enable him to state the equation?

The answer to this question will be found in what we have said above, and in the table of kingdoms. Man, although he has his special and exclusively human phenomena, is above all an organised and living being. From this point of view he is the seat of phenomena common to animals and plants; he is subjected to the same laws. In his physical organisation he is nothing more than an animal, somewhat superior in certain respects to the most highly developed species, but inferior in others. From this point of view he presents organic and physiological phenomena identical with those of animals in general, and of mammalia in particular; and the laws which govern these phenomena are the same in both cases.

Now plants and animals have been studied for a much longer period than man, and from an exclusively scientific point of view, without any trace of the prejudice and party feeling which often interferes with the study of man. Without having penetrated very deeply into all the secrets of vegetable and animal life, science has acquired a certain number of fixed and indisputable results which constitute a foundation of positive knowledge, and a safe starting point. It is there that the anthropologist must seek the known quantities of which he may stand in need.

Whenever there is any doubt as to the nature or signification of a phenomenon observed in man, the corresponding phenomena must be examined in animals, and even in plants; they must be compared with what takes place in ourselves, and the results of this comparison accepted as they are exhibited. What is recognised as being true for other organised beings cannot but be true for man.

This method is incontestably scientific. It is similar to that of modern physiologists, who, since they are unable to experiment upon man, experiment upon animals, and form their conclusions upon the former from the latter. But the physiologist devotes his attention to the individual only, and, therefore, examines little more than those groups which in their organisation approach most nearly to the being whose history he wishes to explain. The anthropologist on the contrary studies the species. The questions with which he has to deal are much more general, so he is forced to direct his attention to plants as well as to animals.

This method is accompanied by its criterion; it allows the control of the various, answers which are often made to one question. The means of estimation are simple and easily applied.