the harbour lights are passed and the ship is in port, it matters little whether the pilot steered by a Jack-o’-lantern or by the stars. [Sidenote: Superstition at the bar. Sentence of death.] That, ladies and gentlemen, is my plea for Superstition. Perhaps it might be urged in mitigation of the sentence which will be passed on the hoary-headed offender when he stands at the judgment bar. Yet the sentence, do not doubt it, is death. But it will not be executed in our time. There will be a long, long reprieve. It is as his advocate, not as his executioner, that I have appeared before you {156} to-night. At Athens cases of murder were tried before the Areopagus by night,[156.1] and it is by night that I have spoken in defence of this power of darkness. But it grows late, and with my sinister client I must vanish before the cocks crow and the morning breaks grey in the east. THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY {157} {158} THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY {159} [_A lecture delivered before the University of Liverpool, May 14th, 1908._] [Sidenote: Social Anthropology.] The subject of the chair which I have the honour to hold is Social Anthropology. As the subject is still comparatively new and its limits are still somewhat vague, I shall devote my inaugural lecture to defining its scope and marking out roughly, if not the boundaries of the whole study, at least the boundaries of that part of it which I propose to take for my province. [Sidenote: Anthropology a study of recent date.] Strange as it may seem, in the large and thriving family of the sciences, Anthropology, or the Science of Man, is the latest born. So young indeed is the study that three of its distinguished founders in England, Professor E. B. Tylor, Lord Avebury, and Mr. Francis Galton, are happily still with us. It is true that particular departments of man’s complex nature have long been the theme of special studies. Anatomy has investigated his body, psychology has explored his mind, theology and metaphysics have sought to plumb the depths of the great mysteries by which he is encompassed on every hand. But it has been reserved for the present generation, or rather for the generation which is passing away, to attempt the comprehensive study of man as a whole, to enquire not merely into the physical and mental structure of the individual, but to compare the various races of men, to trace their affinities, and by means of a wide collection of facts to follow as far as may be the evolution of human thought and institutions from the earliest times. The aim of this, as of every other science, is to {160} discover the general laws to which the particular facts may be supposed to conform. I say, may be supposed to conform, because research in all departments has rendered it antecedently probable that everywhere law and order will be found to prevail if we search for them diligently, and that accordingly the affairs of man, however