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Society does not want prophets, it never did, and probably never will; the powers that be both in church and state, regarding all such, whatever their credentials and pretensions, as unwelcome and intrusive. But it does want sages and philosophers, at all events can endure them with more equanimity than their kinsmen the seers, perhaps because they do not knock quite so hard at the accepted respectabilities, what we call orthodoxies, as their sterner and more earnest brethren. And yet here also the world had an unspeakable loss in this William of Stratford. Never since the days of Plato has a more spiritually gifted and metaphysically endowed intellect been manifested for the enlightenment of men. Of this, what bright scintillations do we now and then obtain in the ordinary course of his plays, in very truth "sparks from the anvil" at which this Titanic Tecton is labouring, with such demiurgic force, to frame, so far as in him lies, a grim chaos into a beautiful creation.

"Our little life is rounded with a sleep."

What depths of Pythagorean lore, what farstretching glimpses of antenatal existence, what a grasp of the great and glorions thought, that we are not only immortal but eternal, in that pregnant line,

"We are such stuff as dreams are made of,"

is another. What a Brahminical perception of the unreality of appearance, what a profound intuition that all this seemingly solid and substantial world is after all but a cheating semblance, the maia or divine delusion by which the senses are mocked, but through which the soul is nevertheless educated. What more than Platonic spiritualities were in this man, folded up for the most part silently, not being often wanted perchance in that particular craft, to which as court playwright, he was specially devoted. Truly we have had Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, David Hume and Bishop Berkeley, who in their formal and laborious way have endeavoured to cast some few rays of light on the abstruse problems of our inner life, but if we mistake not, here was a master of psychology, who with a few strokes of his magician's wand would have revealed more than they could have put into many volumes. But the world of Queen Bess did not want moral philosophy but amusement, and William of Stratford knew how to supply its necessities.

141

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PARIS.*

THE third number of the French Society's Bulletin, first presents to our notice a continuation of M. Simonot's article (alluded to in the Anthropological Review, vol. i, p. 378), on the peoples of French Senegal. After briefly referring to the difficulty of tracing to a common origin the various languages of Senegambia, the author of the paper sums up in the following brief conclusions :

:

"That the influence of media may induce deviations from a single form, but that these deviations are always in the direction of the original form, and do not constitute an actual transmutation like that produced by crossing."

"That without tradition man would long ago have had his genera, species and varieties, like all the other series of the animal scale.”

"That the primitive unity of language is still a question to be solved; and that its solution will only be definitely arrived at when it is shown that all peoples possess an invariable faculty of articulation."

In order to disprove a statement of M. Bertillon, relative to the diminution of stature of the French people, M. Boudin submitted to the society the following table of the proportion of tall men in 10,000, in the undermentioned years :

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In reply, M. Bertillon said that the difference proceeded from his having calculated from the restoration, whilst M. Boudin's calculations only commenced with 1836. M. Lagneau quoted M. d'Omalius d'Halloy, to show that France was divisible into two great ethnic groups; one including the departments of the North-east, which furnished a great number of tall men; the other, those of the Southwest, containing only a few men of large stature. He then gave an

* Bulletins de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, vol. iv, 3eme Fascicule. May to August 1863.

elaborate account of the various races which had settled in different departments, and from whom local peculiarities of stature might have been derived. M. Boudin remarked, that in 10,000 men examined for military service in 1831, 928 were rejected as below the standard, whilst in 1860, the number rejected only amounted to 594. M. Broca observed that other than ethnic causes might induce diminution of stature; he agreed with the principal part of M. Boudin's statistics. M. Pruner-Bey attributed the low stature of the inhabitants of Silesia and the Black Forest to defective nourishment. This interesting discussion is followed by M. de Quatrefages's description of the Abbeville jaw, which has already been given at length in our columns.

A paper by M. Schaaffhausen on the Neanderthal skull, followed by one on the same subject by M. Pruner-Bey, occupy the next place. M. Schaaffhausen denies that this skull approaches nearer that of the ape, or shows in its general characteristics a smaller degree of development, than the skulls belonging to some savage tribes of our own day. He shows Mr. Huxley's assertion, that the posterior portion of the skull is more abnormal than the anterior, to be without foundation, and that all the peculiarities which he points out are equally discernible in the skulls of other inferior races. The cast of the brain shows a great resemblance to that of an Australian presented to the society at the same time, so far as concerns the smallness of its development.

We next find a continuation of M. Bertillon's paper on Anthropological Method, in which he cites various passages from Quatrefages, Isidore Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, etc., as examples of what he calls the syllogistic or scholastic system, as opposed to the scientific. His definition of this system, the tendency of which he denounces as scientifically vicious, is that it consists in foreseeing, and consequently interpreting, the observation of facts from the point of view of a sort of fixed idea, the fascination of which greatly prejudices our logic, and influences the healthy interpretation of the small number of facts possessed by Anthropology, which do not authorise us to arrive at any general conclusion. Ultimate conclusions would appear to be the enemy against which M. Bertillon considers it his duty to keep himself and his brethren ever on the watch. His notion of the mission of a scientific body is, "to collect facts, to arrange them in series, to group them, to draw from them prudently immediate (prochaines) conclusions, and to throw aside every other desire but that of discovering truth." This is certainly very good advice, especially to a society which is commencing a new subject of study, and which is,

therefore, more likely to attach undue importance to discoveries, which wider investigation in the same field may show to have no very general signification. M. Bertillon gives a somewhat happy illustration from the case of the President (at that time M. Quatrefages), and Secretary, M. Broca, of the French Society, who he declares possess an equal knowledge of Anthropological facts with equal powers for their application, and yet they have arrived at exactly opposite results by inductive reasoning from those facts. He then expounds his system of classification, which consists in arranging all measurements of the same species in order and size, and publishing the entire series which results from this arrangement. He gives several examples of the practical application of this system, as in the case of measurements of recruits, &c. The last portion of this very able and elegantly written paper is devoted to a consideration of the fallacies, which the author considers have arisen from giving an undue importance to the influences of media. A description by M. Pruner-Bey, of a brachycephalic skull, belonging to the stone age forms, the subject of the next paper. This skull measured 129 millimetres in length. The thickest part of the cranial walls was 12 millimetres. The forehead appeared deficient ; it is retrocedent above the supraciliary arches, which are much developed as in the apes. The upper border of the orbit is quite straight, from which it might be inferred that the angulus externus palpebrarum was elevated as in the Chinese. He considers that the brachycephalic type of a part of the ancient Tuscan inhabitants, belonged, probably, to the Iberian and Ligurian stocks. Brachycephali have also been observed in the Abruzzi, and in Sicily.

M. de Quatrefages furnishes a short paper upon the influence of media, in which he adduces the origin in America of the Niassa ox, and the species without horns. He placed before the society a photograph of the only head of the former species at present in Europe, the face of which he describes as appearing to have suffered a general contraction, and to present some analogy; and to present an appearance somewhat analogous with that of the bull-dog, the inferior maxillary protruding beyond the superior. He observes that, as this conformation renders feeding more difficult; man would have no inducement to encourage the perpetuation of this variety, yet it retains its peculiar characters in spite of constant crossing, and transmits them in every cross with the ordinary species. M. de Quatrefages deduces from this fact conclusions in favour of the powerful influence of media upon the animal organism.

An interesting paper upon the remains found on the site of the

Convent of the Mathurins at Paris, in June 1863, is given by M. Louis Leguay, from the researches of M. Arthur Forgeais. These remains, consisting of two skulls with a portion of a third, would appear, from the objects discovered with them, consisting of specimens of medieval pottery, to belong to the twelfth or thirteenth century.

M. Bonté contributes an elaborate paper occupying seventy pages of the Bulletin, entitled an "Analytical résumé of facts addressed in support of Medial Influence," which he considers one of the most fundamental questions of Anthropological science. The end which he proposes to himself in this communication, is to bring to their just value all the facts which have been considered up to the present time to be proofs of the influence of media. M. de Quatrefages describes a medium as "the collection of whatever conditions or influences, physical, intellectual or moral, are capable of acting upon organised beings." Taking this definition as his starting point, M. Bonté first discusses the proposition, that as media possess an immense influence upon animals and plants, they ought necessarily to have the same effect upon the human race; he shows that the analogy fails, in the first place, because, whereas nature has placed plants and animals in certain determined positions upon the earth's surface, she has endowed man with a desire of moving from place to place. Therefore, if man be cosmopolitan, and can adapt himself to any climate, it proves that climate has no influence upon his organisation; if man be incapable, on the other hand, of existing in all climates, it is a proof that his organsation is inflexible, and cannot be altered by, or accommodated to, the new climates in which he may find himself. The second argument against this analogy is founded upon the difference between the chemical composition of man and the vegetable; and the third on the difference in their relations with the atmosphere. Lastly, M. Bonté considers that the influences brought to bear upon plants or animals have been for the most part human or artificial influences, and cannot, therefore, be adduced as proofs in argument upon the operations of nature; that the fact of an animal being domesticated is an instance of violence done to nature, and its being restored to its savage state a mere cessation of that violence which results in a return to the natural state. He then goes on to say that one of two things must exist, viz.: either that the influence of media upon man is evident, as has been maintained, in which case man himself will furnish sufficient proof without looking elsewhere; or, on the contrary, this action is doubtful, in which case it will be better to wait until we obtain more evidence on the subject. With reference to the in

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