4 PRESIDENT S ADDRESS 



the late Mr. Maurice Evans, a citizen of Durban, and author of 

 "Black and White in South-East Africa" and other works, would 

 have occupied the President's chair in which I now find myself, 

 and would have discoursed to you from the mellow experience of 

 his life's study of native problems. It is partly the knowledge 

 of your interest in these matters which has influenced me in the 

 choice of my subject. Anthropology is indeed an all-embracing 

 science, taking man in all his aspects; ethnological, archaeological, 

 historical and psychological. Within recent years it has also 

 come to include man as a social being, that is, in his relationship 

 to others as a member of society; and we have the sub-division of 

 Social Anthropology or Sociology. The importance of studying 

 man from this last aspect was strongly urged by Professor Karl 

 Pearson in his Presidential Address before Section H of the 

 British Association last year, and I confess that I have been 

 deeply influenced by his remarks, believing that in a very special 

 sense they apply to our conditions in South Africa. 



Anthropological studies in South Africa have hitherto been 

 largely confined to the description of the habits, customs and 

 beliefs of the natives and accounts of their weapons, implements 

 and drawings, as well as of their bodily characteristics. Excellent 

 work has been done, much of which appears in the Reports of the 

 Association and in the publications of our various Museums. 

 Among more recent contributors the following names stand out 

 prominently: Peringuey, Bleek, Stow, Junod, Miss Lloyd and 

 Miss Tucker. Professor Karl Pearson, as Director of the Galton 

 Laboratory, London, has for a long period taken the lead among 

 anthropologists in the application of statistical and biometrical 

 methods to human studies. Impressed, however, with the 

 world's great problems of human inter-relationships at the present 

 time, he now writes: "I have already tried to indicate that the 

 problems before us to-day, the grave problems that are pressing 

 on us with regard to the future, cannot be solved by old materials 

 and by old methods. We have to make anthropology a wise coun- 

 sellor of the State, and this means a counsellor in political matters, 

 in commercial matters, and in social matters." And again: "The 

 psycho-physical and the psycho-physiological characters are of far 

 greater weight in the struggle of the nations to-day than the 

 superficial measurement of man's body." He then proceeds to 

 show from correspondence and manifestoes emanating from 

 anthropologists in Germany that the professors there are disposed 

 to place the blame for the late disasters of their country largely 

 upon an imperfect knowledge of anthropology. Thus from one 

 manifesto he culls the following: "The sad results of our foreign 

 policy, the collapse of all our calculations as to national frames 

 of mind, were based in no small degree on ethnographic ignor- 

 ance." From it all Karl Pearson sums up as follows: "I think 

 that you will agree with me that rightly or wrongly there is a 

 conviction spreading in Germany that the war arose and that the 

 war was lost because a nation of professed thinkers had studied 

 all sciences, but had omitted to study aptly the science of man. . . 



