Section F. 



ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY. 



ADDKESS BY THE PRESIDENT: 



DR. W. RAMSAY SMITH, 



Permanent Head of the Department of PuUio Health of South Australia. 



AUSTRALIAN CONDITIONS AND PROBLEMS 



from the standpoint of 



PRESENT ANTHROPOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE. 

 " Mirantur homines altitudities montium, ingentes fluctus 

 maris, altissimos lapsus fluminum et oceani amhitiim et gyros 

 tiderum — et reUnquunt seipsos, nee mirantur." — St. Augustine. 



The injunction of the oracle, " Know Thyself," written over the 

 gates of the temj^le at Delphi, has been accepted as the text of all 

 religions, and the motto of all philosophies. Expressed in modern 

 scientific thought-currency, it is " Study Anthropology." Anthro- 

 pology, in helping man to know himself, is concerned with the 

 questions — Vv^hat are we ? Whence are we ? How are we 1 For 

 it deals with man, present-day man, individually and in bulk, 

 with the rock out of which he was hewn or the pit out of which 

 he was digged, and with the process of the making or the moulding. 

 It imposes on the searcher an inquiry into ancestry, relatives, and 

 relationships. To echo metaphysics. Anthropology studies man in 

 the phases of being and becoming. To bori'ow a phrase from a 

 religious book, it deals with how man works out his own salvation. 

 It is also prompted to ask whither, as a race, we are going, and 

 how we can affect our destination, or our destiny, and control the 

 conditions of the journey. 



The indifference of the natural man to this study, absolutely 

 and relatively, has been set forth by St. Augustine: "Men go 

 to gaze wonderingly at the lofty mountain peaks, the great sea 

 billows, the deep flov/ing rivers, and the stars in their courses, 

 and take no stock of themselves, see nothing worth looking at." 



Till within a few years ago. Anthropology, or, as it was called, 

 the Natural History of Man, was little else than an enumeration 

 of the physical characters of the various peoples of the earth, with 

 some reference to extinct races and the specific characters of man. 

 It had no connecting or unifying principles. The allied science, 

 or pastime, of archaeology interested itself in a casual way with 



