Various other sciences, in conformity with the above definition, must be regarded as subsidiary to anthropology, which yet hold their own independent places in the field of knowledge. Thus anatomy and physiology display the structure and functions of the human body, while psychology investigates the operations of the human mind. Philology deals with the general principles of language, as well as with the relations between the languages of particular races and nations. Ethics or moral science treats of man's duty or rules of conduct toward his fellow-men. Sociology and the science of culture are concerned with the origin and development of arts and sciences, opinions, beliefs, customs, laws and institutions generally among mankind within historic time; while beyond the historical limit the study is continued by inferences from relics of early ages and remote districts, to interpret which is the task of prehistoric archaeology and geology.
I. _Man's Place in Nature._--In 1843 Dr J.C. Prichard, who perhaps of all others merits the title of founder of modern anthropology, wrote in his _Natural History of Man_:--
"The organized world presents no contrasts and resemblances more remarkable than those which we discover on comparing mankind with the inferior tribes. That creatures should exist so nearly approaching to each other in all the particulars of their physical structure, and yet differing so immeasurably in their endowments and capabilities, would be a fact hard to believe, if it were not manifest to our observation. The differences are everywhere striking: the resemblances are less obvious in the fulness of their extent, and they are never contemplated without wonder by those who, in the study of anatomy and physiology, are first made aware how near is man in his physical constitution to the brutes. In all the principles of his internal structure, in the composition and functions of his parts, man is but an animal. The lord of the earth, who contemplates the eternal order of the universe, and aspires to communion with its invisible Maker, is a being composed of the same materials, and framed on the same principles, as the creatures which he has tamed to be the servile instruments of his will, or slays for his daily food. The points of resemblance are innumerable; they extend to the most recondite arrangements of that mechanism which maintains instrumentally the physical life of the body, which brings forward its early development and admits, after a given period, its decay, and by means of which is prepared a succession of similar beings destined to perpetuate the race."