THE EVOLUTION OF I^IAN. 



By Prof. G. Elliot Smith, M. A., M. D., Ch. M., F. R. S. 



THE SCOPE OF EVOLUTION. 



In a recent address Lord Morley referred to "evolution" as "the 

 most overworked word in all the language of the day;" neverthe- 

 less, he was constrained to admit that, even when discussing such a 

 theme as history and modern politics, "we can not do without it.'^ 

 But to us in this section, concerned as we are wdth the problems of 

 man's nature and the gradual emergence of human structure, cus- 

 toms, and institutions, the facts of evolution form the very fabric 

 the threads of which w^e are endeavoring to disentangle; and in such 

 studies ideas of evolution find more obvious expression than most 

 of us can detect in modern politics. In such circumstances we are 

 peculiarly liable to the risk of "overworking" not only the word 

 "evolution," but also the application of the idea of evolution to the 

 material of our investigations. 



My predecessor in the office of president of this section last year 

 uttered a protest against the tendency, to which British anthropolo- 

 gists of the present generation seem to be peculiarly prone, to read 

 evolutionary ideas into many events in man's history and the spread 

 of his knowledge and culture in which careful investigation can 

 detect no indubitable trace of any such influences having been at 

 work. 



I need offer no apology for repeating and emphasizing some of the 

 points brought forward in Dr. Rivers's deeply instructive address; 

 for his lucid and convincing account of the circumstances that had 

 compelled him to change his attitude toward the main problems of 

 the history of human society in Melanesia first brought home to me 

 the fact, which I had not clearly realized until then, that in my own 

 experience, working in a very different domain of anthropology on 

 the opposite side of the world, I had passed through phases precisely 

 analogous to those described so graphically by Dr. Rivet's. He told 



• Address delivered before the Anthropological Section at the Dundee meeting of the British Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science in September, 1912. Keprinted by pcnuission from Nature, London, 

 Sept. 26, 1912. It represents the address as It was delivered at the meet ing; it is a .somewhat condensed 

 and rearranged form of that appearing in the a.ssociat ion's rejiorls. 



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