Prichard.
James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848) showed, when a boy, a remarkable aptness for foreign languages. He was never sent to school, but was taught by various tutors, from whom he learnt Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and Spanish. His father, a merchant, and member of the Society of Friends, lived for a time in Bristol, and there the boy began his practical study of anthropology, spending his time by the docks, watching the foreign sailors, and chatting with them in their own tongues. Later on he chose medicine for his profession, less on account of any special liking for it than because it afforded him opportunities for indulging his anthropological tastes. His first contribution to the science was his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh, which was entitled De generis humani varietate, published in 1813 in an expanded form as Researches into the Physical History of Man. It was still further expanded in 1826, and a five-volume edition was issued between 1836 and 1847. In 1843 appeared another monumental work, The Natural History of Man, “comprising inquiries into the modifying influence of physical and moral agencies on the different tribes of the human family.”
Speaking of Prichard at the meeting of the British Association in Bristol in 1875, Professor Rolleston remarked: “His works remain, massive, impressive, enduring—much as the headlands along our southern coast stand out in the distance in their own grand outlines, while a close and minute inspection is necessary for the discernment of the forts and fosses added to them—indeed, dug out of their substance in recent times.” The services of Prichard in the field of Anthropology have often been compared with those of his contemporary Blumenbach, by whose fame during his lifetime he was overshadowed; but, though the latter was unequalled on the side of physical anthropology, there is no doubt that Prichard had a wider grasp of the subject, and his works formed the cornerstones of Anthropology in England.
Other Generalisations.
While Prichard was expanding his thesis, Antoine Desmoulins was writing his Histoire naturelle des races humaines, which appeared contemporaneously with Prichard’s revised Researches in 1826. He attempted to discover the origins and relations of the peoples of north-east Europe, north and east Asia, and South Africa, by the evidence of archæology, physiology, anatomy, and linguistics.
The work of systematising the mass of anthropological data and producing an orderly scheme must always be regarded as an almost superhuman task, and those who have attempted it deserve our grateful recognition.
The next Englishman after Prichard was Latham, who published his Natural History of the Varieties of Man in 1850 (the same year as Knox’s Races of Man), and his Descriptive Ethnology in 1859. In the latter year appeared the first instalment of the Anthropologie der Naturvölker of Waitz, the six volumes of which were completed in 1872—a work which largely assisted in laying a secure foundation for the new science. In 1873 Friedrich Müller published his Allgemeine Ethnographie. The following year saw the publication of Peschel’s Völkerkunde. Ratzel’s great work, Völkerkunde, appeared in 1885-88. In America Pickering’s Races of Man was published in 1848, and Nott and Gliddon’s Indigenous Races of the Earth in 1857. Paul Topinard’s L’Anthropologie (1876) is mentioned elsewhere (p. [38]).
The earlier of these generalisations were composed before the acceptance of the theory of evolution, in the new light of which all biological sciences had to start afresh, and all were written before the masses of new material collected by ethnologists and archæologists, working in the field, had brought so much fresh evidence to bear upon the whole geographical and historical aspect of man that it was impossible “to see the wood for the trees.” Thus the time for synthesis had arrived, and with the hour came the man. A. H. Keane’s Ethnology appeared in 1896, to be followed by his Man, past and present in 1899. J. Deniker’s Les races et les peuples de la terre, together with the English translation, appeared in the following year.
Ethnology and the Classics.
In summarising the sources from which the materials for the science of ethnology are derived, stress must be laid on the contributions from classic authors. No student can afford to neglect the histories, annals, poems, and sacred books of the ancients, whether African, European, or Asiatic. Professor J. L. Myres (1908) has pointed out that anthropological investigations and speculations were already afoot in the fifth century B.C. and before, and has outlined the ethnological problems concerning man, his origin and relationships, and the questions connected with his social life that interested and puzzled the ancient Greek world. Not only Herodotus, but other writers, show that these problems were thoroughly familiar to the Greeks. Long before Herodotus, Hesiod refers to a standard scheme of archæology, in which Ages of Gold, Silver, and Bronze succeed each other; primitive man is described as a forest dweller growing no corn, but subsisting on acorns and beech mast; Anaximander and Archelaus have suggestions to solve the mystery of man’s origin, Anaximander taking an “almost Darwinian outlook”[[83]] of the animal kingdom; Æschylus distinguishes the tribes of men by culture, noting the differences in their dress and equipments, religious observances and language.