“Ethnography.” The election of Dr. Brinton, who in 1886 had been vice-president of the Anthropological Section, to the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for the year 1894, was a deserved and fitly bestowed honor. His retiring address on “The Aims of Anthropology” was a masterly and thoroughly sympathetic presentation of the raison d’être of the science, and of the unitary concept of the human race and its manifold phenomena, physical, mental, and spiritual. No devotee of Anthropology ever held higher ideals of the science, whose servant he was, than did Dr. Brinton, and his eloquence and logical power never failed to meet the occasion. In this spirit he made his plea for “Anthropology as a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States” (Philadelphia, 1892, pp. 15). Worthy of all emulation is the address delivered at the Anniversary Celebration of the New Jersey Historical Society, in 1896, on “An Ethnologist’s View of History,” in which he gives expression to the new historical genius which must characterize the future’s study of the past. His address as President of the International Congress of Anthropology, at Chicago, in 1893, was a noble interpretation of the thought of Browning:—
A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer thought of one.
In an article in the “Forum” for December, 1893, Dr. Brinton discussed, in characteristic fashion, “The Origin of Man,” inclining to look upon the human race, like genius itself, as a “sport.”
When, therefore, in 1886, Dr. Brinton was awarded—the first American to be so honored—the medal of the Société Américaine de France for his “numerous and learned works on American Ethnology,” the prize was well allotted. Dr. Brinton was a member and a contributor to the programme of the Société Internationale des Américanistes, and an active or honorary member of many European learned and scientific societies and associations.
In 18 1 he received from the Jefferson Medical College the degree of LL. D. “in recognition of his scientific researches in the fields of Anthropology and Ethnology.”
In 1890, under the title, “Essays of an Americanist” (Philadelphia, 1890, 489 pp.), were gathered together in revised form many of his scattered essays and studies of an anthropologic nature. The volume contains 24 articles, of which 5 treat of ethnology and archæology, 6 of mythology and folk-lore, 6 of graphic systems and literture, and 7 of linguistic topics.
Dr. Brinton’s best work, in many respects, is his “Religion of Primitive Peoples” (New York, 1897, pp. 264), which fitly appeared
