i6 



NATURE 



{Sept. 27, 1888 



three cardinal principles in my Theory of Universal 

 Algebra, between which and Newton's Three Laws of 

 Motion I considered that 1 had succeeded in establishing 

 a one-to-one correspondence. J. J. Sylvester. 



Athenaeum Club, September 22. 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



SECTION H. 



anthropology. 



Opening Address by Lieutenant-General Pitt-Rivers, 

 D.C.L., F.R.S., F.G.S., F.S.A., President of the 

 Section. 



I. 



Having been much occupied up to within the last week in 

 my own special branch of anthropology, and in bringing out the 

 second volume of my excavations in Dorsetshire, which I wished 

 to have ready for those who are interested in the subject on the 

 occasion of this meeting, I regret that I have been unable to 

 prepare an address upon a general subject as I could have wished 

 to do, and am compelled to limit my remarks to matters on 

 which I have been recently engaged. Also, I wish to make a 

 few observations on the means to be taken to promulgate anthro- 

 pological knowledge and render it available for the education of 

 the masses. 



Taking the last-mentioned subject first, I will commence with 

 anthropological museums, to which I have given attention for 

 many years. In my judgment, an institution that is dedicated to 

 the Muses should be something more than a store, it should 

 have some backbone in it. It should be in itself a means of 

 conveying knowledge, and not a mere repository of objects from 

 which knowledge can be culled by those who know where to 

 look for it. A national museum, created and maintained at the 

 public expense, should be available for public instruction, and 

 not solely a place of reference for savants. 



I do not deny the necessity that exists for museum stores for 

 the use of students, but I maintain that, side by side with such 

 stores, there should in these days exist museums instructively 

 arranged for the bem fit of those who have no time to study, 

 and for whom the practical results of anthropological and other, 

 scientific investigations are quite as important as for savants. 



The one great feature which it is desirable to emphasize in 

 connection with the exhibition of archaeological and ethnological 

 specimens is evolution. To impress upon the mind the con- 

 tinuity and historical sequence of the arts of life, is, without 

 doubt, one of the most important lessons to be inculcated. It 

 is only of late years that the development of social institutions 

 has at all entered into the design of educational histories. And 

 the arts of life, so far as I am aware, have never formed part of 

 any educational series. Yet as a study of evolution they are the 

 most important of all, because in them the connecting links 

 between the various phases of development can be better 

 displayed. 



The relative value of any subject for this purpose is not in 

 proportion to the interest which attaches to the subject in the 

 abstract. Laws, customs, and institutions may perhaps be 

 regarded as of greater importance than the arts of life, but for 

 anthropological purposes they are of less value, because in them, 

 previously to the introduction of writing, the different phases of 

 development, as soon as they are superseded by new ideas, are 

 entirely lost and cannot be reproduced except in imagination. 

 Whereas in the arts of life, in which ideas are embodied in 

 material forms, the connecting links are in many cases preserved, 

 and can be replaced in their proper sequence by means of 

 antiquities. 



For this reason the study of the arts of life ought always to 

 prece'de the study of social evolution, in order that the student 

 may learn to make allowance for missing links, and to avoid 

 sophisms and the supposition of laws and tendencies which have 

 no existence in reality. 



To ascertain the true causes for all the phenomena of human 

 life is the main object of anthropological research, and it is 

 obvious that this is better done in those branches in which the 

 continuity is best preserved. 



In the study of natural history, existing animals are regarded 

 as present phases in 1he development of species, and their value 



to the biological student depends, not so much on their being of 

 the highest organism, as on the palfeontological sequence by 

 which their history is capable of being established. In the same 

 way existing laws, institutions, and arts, wherever they are 

 found in their respective stages of perfection, are to be regarded 

 simply as existing strata in the development of human life, and 

 their value from an anthropological point of view depends on 

 the facilities they afford for studying their history. 



If I am right in this view of the matter, it is evident that the 

 arts of life are of paramount importance, because they admit of 

 being arranged in cases by means of antiquities in the order in 

 which they actually occurred, and by that means they serve to 

 illustrate the development of other branches which cannot be so 

 arranged, and the continuity of which is therefore not open to 

 visual demonstration for the benefit of the unlearned. 



It is now considerably over thirty years since I first began to 

 pay attention to this subject. Having been employed in experi- 

 menting with new inventions in fire-arms, submitted to H.M. 

 Government in 1852-53, I drew up in 1858 a paper which was 

 published in the United Service Journal, showing the continuity 

 observable in the various ideas submitted for adoption in the 

 army at that time. 



Later, in 1867-68-69, I published three papers, which, in 

 order to adapt them to the institution at which they were read, I 

 called "Lectures on Primitive Warfare," but which, in reality, 

 were treatises on the development of primitive weapons, in 

 which it was shown how the earliest weapons of savages arose 

 from the selection of natural forms of sticks and stones, and 

 were developed gradually into the forms in which they are now 

 used. I al.-o traced the development of the forms of implements 

 of the Bronze Age and their transition into those of the Iron Age. 

 These papers were followed by others on the same subject read 

 at the Royal Institution and elsewhere, relating to the develop- 

 ment of special branches, such as early modes of navigation, 

 forms of ornament, primitive locks and keys, the distribution of 

 the bow, and its development into what I termed the composite 

 bow in Asia and America, and other subjects. 



Meanwhile I had formed a museum, in which the objects to 

 which the papers related were arranged in developmental order. 

 This was exhibited by the Science and Art Department at 

 Bethnal Green from 1874 to 1878, and at South Kensington 

 from that date to 1885 ; and a catalogue ra/sonnev/a.s published 

 by the Department, which went through two editions. After 

 that, wishing to find a permanent home for it, where it would 

 increase and multiply, I presented it to the University of Oxford, 

 the University having granted 5^10,000 to build a museum to 

 contain it. It is there known as the " Pitt-Rivers Collection," 

 and is arranged in the same order as at South Kensington. Prof. 

 Moseley has devoted much attention to the removal and re- 

 arrangement of it up to the time of his recent, but I trust only 

 temporary, illness, which has been so great a loss to the Univer- 

 sity, and which has been felt by no one connected with it more 

 than by myself, for whilst his great experience as a traveller and 

 anthropologist enabled him to improve and add to it, he has at 

 the same time always shown every disposition to do justice to the 

 original collection. Since Prof. Moseley's illness it has been in 

 the charge of Mr. H. Balfour, who, I am sure, will follow in the 

 steps of his predecessor and former chief, and will do his best to 

 enlarge and improve it. He has already added a new series in 

 relation to the ornamentation of arrow stems, which has been 

 published by the Anthropological Institute. It appears, how- 

 ever, desirable that the same system should be established in 

 other places, and with that view I have for some time past been 

 collecting the materials for a new museum, which, if I live long 

 enough to complete it, I shall probably plant elsewhere. 



Before presenting the collection to Oxford I had offered it to 

 the Government, in the hope that it might form the nucleus of a 

 large educational museum arranged upon the sy.-tem of develop- 

 ment which I had adopted. A very competent Committee was 

 appointed to consider the offer, which recommended that it 

 should be accepted, but the Government declined to do so ; one 

 of the reasons assigned being that some of the authorities of the 

 British Museum thought it undesirable that two ethnographica* 

 museums should exist in London at the same time ; this, how 

 ever, entirely waives the question of the totally different object 

 that the two museums (at least that part of them which relates I 

 ethnographical specimens) are intended to serve. 



The British Museum, with its enormous treasures of art, 

 itself only in a molluscous and invertebrate condition of develop 

 ment. For the education of the masses it is of no use whatev* 



