ANTITROPOL'OGY (ante), the "science of man," or natural history of mankind; in the general classification of knowledge, the highest section of zoology or the science of animals, which is itself the highest section of biology or the science of living beings. To A. contribute the sciences of anatomy, physiology, ethics, sociology, prehistoric archaeology; although each of these branches of investigation pursues its own subject, having no further contact with A. than when its research concerns man. It is the office of A. to collect and set forth, as completely as possible, the synopsis of man's physical and mental nature, and the theory of his course of life and action from his first appear ance on the planet. Looking at man's place in nature, we see that the higher apes come nearest to him in bodily formation, and here it is the office of zoology to point out resemblances and differences, and to ascertain relations. "At this point," says prof. Owen, in a paper on the bony structure of apes, "every deviation from the human structure indicates with precision its real peculiarities, and we then possess the true means of appreciating those modifications by which a material organism is especially adapted to become the swat and instrument of a rational and responsible soul." Huxley, in comparing man with other orders of mammalia, decides—" There would remain then but one order for comparison, that of the apes, and the question for discussion would narrow itself to this: Is man so different from any of these apes that he must form an order by himself ? Or does lie differ less from them than they differ from oue another, and hence must lie take his place in the same order with them?" Here the reference plainly limits itself to the human body. Huxley compares man with the gorilla, which is on the whole the most man-like of all the apes. The gorilla has a smaller brain-case, larger trunk, shorter legs, and longer arms than man. The differences in the skulls are remarkably apparent. the gorilla the face, formed largely by the massive jaw-bones, predominates over the brain-case; in man these proportions are reversed. In man the skull is set evenly on the spine, the spinal cord being just behind the center of the base of the skull; brit in the gorilla, which usually goes on all-fours, the skull is inclined forward and the spinal cord is further back. In man the surface of the skull is nearly smooth, the ridges of the brow having but slight projection, while in the gorilla these ridges are enormous. The capacity of the largest gorilla skull yet measured was but 34i cubic in.; that of the smallest human cranium is almost 63 in. The gorilla's large facial bones and great projection of jaws give its face a brutal expression, and its teeth differ from mans in size and in the number of fangs. The gorilla's arm is one sixth longer than its spine; man's is one fifth shorter. The legs differ not so much, but
the hands and feet of the gorilla are longer than in man. The vertebral column and the narrow pelvis differ from those of man; the thumb is much shorter and the hand clum sier than man's. But a radical difference is in the amount of brain, that of the gorilla being 20 oz., while in man it is seldom less than 32. Prof. Huxley, restoring in principle the classification of Linnaus, would include man in the order of primates, and divide that order into seven families: 1, anthropini, consisting of man only; 2, eatarhini, or old world apes; 3, platyrhint, including all new world apes except the marmoset; 4, arelopitheeini, or marmosets; 5, lemurini, or lemurs; 6, cheiromyini, or bats; and 7, galeo pitheeini, or flying lemurs.
In fixing man's place in nature on physiological grounds, much greater difficulty is met. There is here an enormous gulf between the most brute-like of men and the most man-like of apes; a chasm not to be accounted for by minor structural differences. The bold investigations and speculations of science have not yet been able to eradicate the opinion, deeply rooted in modern as in ancient thought, that only a distinctively human element can account for the wide severance between m .n and the highest animal below him. Mere mechanical differences do not explain the divergence. An ape with a man's hand and voice would still have to rise .through a long structural growth to be indeed a man. The greater amount of brain in man comes nearer to explain the difference; but even that fails. In some of the senses man is quite inferior; he cannot equal the eagle in sight, the (log in scent, nor one of a dozen animals in hearing; though in the senses of tasting and feeling he may be superior to any of them. We must conclude that it is by superi ority in quality, as well as in quantity, of brain, and, because of that superiority, by the possession of a highly organized language, that man has the power of co-ordinating the impressions of his senses, which enables him to understand the world in which he lives, and, by understanding. to use, resist, and rule it. This power of using what his senses reveal to him is clearly expressed by man in his language. He shares with beasts and birds the power to express feelings by emotional cries; the parrot approaches him in utterance; and by association of ideas, some of the lower animals understand to a certain extent what he says. But the abstract power of using words, in themselves meaningless, as symbols by which to convey complex intellectual processes—in which mental con ceptions are suggested, compounded, combined, and even analyzed, and new ones created—is a faculty scarcely to be traced in any other animal than man.