come first. One is aware
of the universe as the whole universe, however much one may be resolved
to study its details one at a time. The scientific mood, however, is
uppermost when one says: Here is a particular lot of things that seem
to hang together in a particular way; let us try to get a general idea
of what that way is. Anthropology, then, specializes on the particular
group of human beings, which itself is part of the larger particular
group of living beings. Inasmuch as it takes over the evolutionary
principle from the science dealing with the larger group, namely
biology, anthropology may be regarded as a branch of biology. Let it
be added, however, that, of all the branches of biology, it is the
one that is likely to bring us nearest to the true meaning of life;
because the life of human beings must always be nearer to human students
of life than, say, the life of plants.

But, you will perhaps object, anthropology was previously identified
with history, and now it is identified with science, namely, with a
branch of biology? Is history science? The answer is, Yes. I know that
a great many people who call themselves historians say that it is not,
apparently on the ground that, when it comes to writing history, truth
for truth's sake is apt to bring out the wrong results. Well, the
doctored sort of history is not science, nor anthropology, I am ready
to admit. But now let us listen to another and a more serious objection
to the claim of history to be science. Science, it will be said by
many earnest men of science, aims at discovering laws that are clean
out of time. History, on the other hand, aims at no more than the
generalized description of one or another phase of a time-process.
To this it may be replied that physics, and physics only, answers to
this altogether too narrow conception of science. The laws of matter
in motion are, or seem to be, of the timeless or mathematical kind.
Directly we pass on to biology, however, laws of this kind are not
to be discovered, or at any rate are not discovered. Biology deals
with life, or, if you like, with matter as living. Matter moves. Life
evolves. We have entered a new dimension of existence. The laws of
matter in motion are not abrogated, for the simple reason that in
physics one makes abstraction of life, or in other words leaves its
peculiar effects entirely out of account. But they are transcended.
They are multiplied by _x_, an unknown quantity. This being