be studied in himself. If the
individual be ignored by social science, as would sometimes appear
to be the case, so much the worse for social science, which, to a
corresponding extent, falls short of being truly anthropological.
Throughout the history of man, our beginner should be on the look-out
for the signs, and the effects, of personal initiative. Freedom of
choice, of course, is limited by what there is to choose from; so that
the development of what may be termed social opportunity should be
concurrently reviewed. Again, it is the aim of every moral system so
to educate each man that his directive self may be as far as possible
identified with his social self. Even suicide is not a man's own affair,
according to the voice of society which speaks in the moral code.
Nevertheless, lest the important truth be overlooked that social
control implies a will that must meet the control half-way, it is well
for the student of man to pay separate and special attention to the
individual agent. The last word in anthropology is: Know thyself.

CHAPTER II
ANTIQUITY OF MAN

History, in the narrower sense of the word, depends on written records.
As we follow back history to the point at which our written records
grow hazy, and the immediate ancestors or predecessors of the peoples
who appear in history are disclosed in legend that needs much eking
out by the help of the spade, we pass into proto-history. At the back
of that, again, beyond the point at which written records are of any
avail at all, comes pre-history.

How, then, you may well inquire, does the pre-historian get to work?
What is his method of linking facts together? And what are the sources
of his information?

First, as to his method. Suppose a number of boys are in a field playing
football, whose superfluous garments are lying about everywhere in
heaps; and suppose you want, for some reason, to find out in what order
the boys arrived on the ground. How would you set about the business?
Surely you would go to one of the heaps of discarded clothes, and take
note of the fact that this boy's jacket lay under that boy's waistcoat.
Moving on to other heaps you might discover that in some cases a boy
had thrown down his hat on one heap, his tie on another, and so on.
This would help you all the more to make out the general series of
arrivals. Yes, but what if some of the heaps showed signs of having
been upset? Well, you must make allowances for these distur