inquiry; and if it were possible for my friend, Sir John Lubbock, to point out to you that ants manifest such sentiments, he would have made a very great and interesting discovery, and no one could doubt that the ascertainment of such a fact was completely within the province of zoology. Anthropology has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of religion—it holds itself absolutely and entirely aloof from such questions—but the natural history of religion, and the origin and the growth of the religions entertained by the different kinds of the human race, are within its proper and legitimate province. I now go a step farther, and pass to the distribution of man. Here, of course, the anthropologist is in his special region. He endeavors to ascertain how various modifications of the human stock are arranged upon the earth's surface. He looks back to the past, and inquires how far the remains of man can be traced. It is just as legitimate to ascertain how far the human race goes back in time as it is to ascertain how far the horse goes back in time; the kind of evidence that is good in the one case is good in the other; and the conclusions that are forced on us in the one case are forced on us in the other also. Finally, we come to the question of the causes of all these phenomena, which, if permissible in the case of other animals, is permissible in the animal man. Whatever evidence, whatever chain of reasoning justifies us in concluding that the horse, for example, has come into existence in a certain fashion in time, the same evidence and the same canons of logic justify us to precisely the same extent in drawing the same kind of conclusions with regard to man. And it is the business of the anthropologist to be as severe in his criticism of those matters in respect to the origin of man as it is the business of the paleontologist to be strict in regard to the origin of the horse; but for the scientific man there is neither more nor less reason for dealing critically with the one case than with the other. Whatever evidence is satisfactory in one case is satisfactory in the other; and if any one should travel outside the lines of scientific evidence and endeavor either to support or oppose conclusions which are based upon distinctly scientific grounds, by considerations which are not in any way based upon scientific logic or scientific truth—whether that mode of advocacy was in favor of a given position, or whether it was against it, I, occupying the chair of the section, should, most undoubtedly, feel myself called upon to call him to order, and tell him that he was introducing topics with which we had no concern whatever.
I have occupied your attention for a considerable time, yet there is still one other point respecting which I should like to say a few words, because some very striking reflections arise out of it. The British Association met in Dublin twenty-one years ago, and I have taken the pains to look up what was done in regard to our subject at that period.
