The lecture outlines the aims and methods of anthropological research, defining the field as the study of anatomical, physiological, and psychological variation among human groups and the historical processes that produced them. It argues anthropology must integrate biological, psychological, geographical, and social evidence to explain influences such as climate, nutrition, migration, isolation, population density, and cultural contacts. It emphasizes reconstructing the early history of nonliterate and prehistoric peoples, clarifies the discipline's limits amid overlap with biology, psychology, history, and philology, and calls for interdisciplinary training and methods to trace the genesis of human types and social forms.