president's address — SECTION G. 151 



Kurnai ought to be ashamed of themselves for having been 

 perverse enough to arrive at their system by a different road, 

 which further inquiry showed us most conclusively that they 

 did. Students of anthropology who have read our work, 

 and who still survive, will please accept this intimation that 

 the theory aforesaid is not worth a rush. 



Even more mischievous is the habit of looking at the facts 

 in savagery from our own standpoint. Some of our modern 

 anthropologists' books are full of errors arising from this 

 evil habit — errors which are "gross and palpable " to any 

 one who has lived long among savages, and taken the pains 

 to learn to see with their eyes. " You can feel the mistakes 

 with a stick," said a good Lutheran missionary, one of Mr. 

 Howitt's correspondents, who had been reading the statements 

 about the Austrahan blacks in a work which is generally 

 considered to be of great authority, and has passed through 

 many editions. To get at the real meaning of the facts we 

 must learn to see in them what the savage sees, and in order 

 to do this we must get out of our own mind-world and into 

 his. We must unlearn before we can begin to learn. It 

 is the lack of this which makes the evidence — or, rather, the 

 opinions — of the mere passing traveller so extremely un- 

 trustworthy. As long as he confines himself to telling what 

 he has actually seen, his statements, if he be a truthful man, 

 are of value, but as soon as he begins to talk about what is 

 in the facts, in nine cases out of ten he is sin'e to go 

 far astray. 



The best way of getting at the meaning of the facts is to 

 go and live with the natives long enough to learn their 

 language and to thoroughly gain their confidence — say, from 

 ten to twenty years ; but, as this is impossible to all but a 

 very few, the next best way is to get information from the 

 men who are living among them. This can be done by cor- 

 respondence, and my own experience shows that men are to 

 be found who are willing to give information and to prosecute 

 inquiry — in Australia, squatters, police-troopers, and others 

 who have aboriginal tribes still living in their neighbourhood — 

 and missionaries and traders in the South Sea Islands. 

 There is still a large unworked field in Australia, and I 

 venture to indulge a faint hope that these words of mine 

 may possibly induce a student here and there to take up the 

 work which both Mr. Howitt and myself have been com- 

 pelled by the stress of other occupations to lay aside, at least 

 for the present. The tribes are rapidly dying out, and with 



