LVIII PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



In fact, it liad, at last, to be realized tliat animal life was one 

 long process of gradual development, some forms halting on tlie 

 way or branching off, as it were, sideways; others, incapable of 

 carrying on the struggle, turning back and degenerating; others, 

 with endless travail, ever straining upwards. 



In Australia we have yet remaining with us, though in rapidly 

 diminishing numbers, representatives of what is probably the most 

 backward human race now extant. It reveals to us in many 

 aspects stages that have been passed through during the early 

 develoi:>ment of mankind. 



The science of anthropology is divided into two distinct 

 branches — (1) that of physical anthropology concerned with the 

 structure of the human body; and (2) social or cultural anthro- 

 pology. In regard to the first, a considerable amount of work has 

 already been done, so far as Australia is concerned. So long as 

 any aborigines or their skeletons remain, they may be studied 

 from a somatological point of view; but, in regard to the second, 

 the matter is entirely different. 



To study scientifically the beliefs and customs of a savage tribe 

 —I do not mean to write casual papers, of which we have far too 

 many — is a very different, and even a more difficult, task. It 

 requires a peculiar faculty quite distinct from that of making 

 physical measurements, a faculty which very few of those who 

 have written on the beliefs and customs of Australian natives 

 possess, of freeing themselves from their own inherited beliefs 

 and endeavouring to see things from the point of view of a savage. 



I shall deal first with certain aspects of the social or cultural 

 anthropology of Australian aborigines, and more especially with 

 their social organization, as illustrating an early stage in the 

 development of mankind and affording us an insight into certain 

 beliefs held and customs practised by our far-away ancestors; and, 

 second, with the difficult question of the origin of their complex 

 culture. 



The Australian aboriginal, though probably the most backward, 

 is, however, very far removed from anything like primitive man — 

 a much greater gap probably separates him from, say, JSTeanderthal 

 man than from ourselves, and, again, an even greater one separartes 

 Neanderthal man from the earliest beings to whom the term 

 human could be applied. 



There have been many writers on various branches of social 

 anthropology in Australia, but only a few of them have been 

 trained in scientific work; and, after the perusal of very many 

 publications, it has been brought home to me that what we need 

 most of all in regard to Australian anthropology, from the cultural 

 side, is an " index expurgatorius." More especially it is essential 

 to recognise that -in matters concerned with their customs, beliefs. 



