Anthropology

(ăn-thro-pol'o-je.) [Gr. anthropos, a man, and logos, a discourse.] The science which has man for its object. It undertakes to describe and cla ify the races of men, to point out their similarities and differences, to study their manners and capabilities, and to determine their relationship. Since the races of men, notwithstanding their differences, form an entire group, anthropologists examine that group as a whole, and endeavor to ascertain its position in the scale of organic nature, its relations to other groups, and its common characters, whether under an anatomical, a physiological, or an intellectual point of view. The laws which govern the maintenance or change of these characters, the influence of external conditions, the phenomena of hereditary transmi ion, and the effect on the offspring of intermarriage of nearly related persons, or of persons of different races, are studied, as well as the great subject of the history of humanity through the stages of its development. [s. 35]