8 president's addbess. 



among people of the same nation; there is more that calls for 

 mutual- forbearance and tolerance, and a manifestation of the 

 spirit of sympathy. Our peculiar difficulties are clearly appre- 

 ciated by anthropologists elsewhere. Thus Dr. Keith in his paper, 

 "Nationality and Race," remarks: "In South Africa we find 

 problems of race and nationality in a more acute and tangled form 

 than anywhere else in the world." Questions will arise as to how 

 far we are all to be moulded into a semblance of one another, or 

 how far we shall retain our original racial and national distinc- 

 tions. Moreover, human society is never stationary. It is moved 

 by different principles and ideals at different times; the relation- 

 ships are for ever changing, and no present attainment is immut- 

 able. Hence the need for the continued study of the psychological 

 attributes as well as of the material welfare of our peoples, and 

 for their guidance in the light of the historic past and of accepted 

 sociological principles. Much of the study calls for that personal 

 detachment and freedom which we hold to be one of the preroga- 

 tives of the man of science. Though it may not be usual to regard 

 these problems as subjects of scientific enquiry, yet in the course 

 of my address I hope to show the urgent need for the methods 

 which science can apply, and that it is fitting that questions of 

 this nature should receive the attention of the Association. We 

 do not encroach upon the stormy preserves of the politician. We 

 "assist by the elaboration of facts and principles for him to apply 

 in practice, among the varied and often divergent interests of 

 the whole population; and at the same time may help in the 

 building up of correct ideals for the public. 



It may well be asked what claim a zoologist has to speak on 

 human affairs, seeing that in general he limits his work to the 

 lower animals. He is, however, accustomed to study his animals 

 in their entirety — their development, their evolution, and their 

 constitution, as well as their activities. He is accustomed to 

 account for what a creature does, and he is under no delusions; 

 he knows that with a certain constitution an animal can perform 

 only certain actions under certain conditions. To him _the real 

 nature of the animal is for all practical purposes unchangeable 

 from generation to generation, though it may be largely influenced 

 by its environment. The attitude of mind engendered by studies 

 of this kind may, I venture to think, be at times applied with 

 advantage to man himself; moreover, an intimate personal 

 experience of the Negro and other coloured races, gained by resi- 

 dence in the West Indies, the Northern and Southern States of 

 America, and in the Islands of the Pacific, may well be of assist- 

 ance as supplementary to that which one acquires in South Africa. 



Change of Attitude Towards the Native. 

 Africa is often proclaimed as the "Black Man's Continent." 

 Certainly the Bantu is with us at every turn in South Africa, but 

 historically we Europeans have just as much right of occupancy as 

 he has, for, as I have shown, we are all recent immigrants who 

 have dispossessed the diminutive, unadaptive Bushman. More- 

 over, there is every reason to expect that both white and black 



