NATURE 



[September 17, 1914 



way dreading or shirking the use to which their 

 bodies were put. 



In all these and similar cases it is to be noted that 

 the victims (as we are naturally inclined to call them) 

 were more or less indifferent, if, indeed, they were 

 not eagerly consenting parties, to the use (cruel as it 

 seems to us) made of their material bodies. Thus 

 the widows were eager to be strangled, and often 

 even helped to do the deed, in order that they — all 

 that was essential of them, i.e. their souls — should 

 rejoin the deceased. Similarly those others who were 

 killed on the occasion of the funeral were quite willing 

 to give their bodies, which seemed of comparatively 

 little importance, as "grass" to be added to the cut 

 fern and other soft material on which the body of 

 the deceased chief was couched in the grave ; and 

 quite willingly the men told off for that purpose 

 stepped down into the holes in which the house-posts 

 were grounded, that they, or rather their bodies, 

 might thereafter hold up the house, while their souls 

 enjoyed life much as before but without the encum- 

 brance of the body. Others, again, contentedly grew 

 taro for the chiefs to eat, and carried it in when ripe, 

 thinking it of little importance that their mere bodies 

 might be eaten with the iaro. 



In conclusion, having endeavoured to realise for 

 myself, and to show you a glimpse of the enormous, 

 scarcely conceivable difference in habit of thought, 

 and consequently in character, which separates the 

 savage from the civilised man, I will ofTer a sugges- 

 tion which seems to me possibly the most important 

 outcome of my personal experience, now closed, as an 

 anthropological administrator in tropical places where 

 Eastern and Western folk have met, and where the 

 inevitable clash between the two has occurred. 



In such places and circumstances the result has too 

 often been that sooner or later the weaker folk — those 

 whose ancestors have been age-long "savages"- — have 

 died out in the presence of those whose ancestors long 

 ago turned from " savagery " to civilisation. This 

 dying out of the weaker folk has happened even when 

 the stronger people have done their best to avoid 

 this extirpation. 



The real ultimate cause of " the decrease of natives " 

 when in contact with civilised folk lies, perhaps, in 

 the difference in hereditary mentality — in the in- 

 capacity of the "savage" to take on civilisation 

 quickly enough. How^ever sedulously the missionary, 

 the Government official, and others who take a real 

 interest in so doing, may teach civilised precepts to 

 the essential savage, the subject of this sedulous case 

 — however advanced a savage culture he may have 

 attained— will, at least for many generations, remain 

 a savage, i.e. for just so long as he is under influence 

 of the civilised teacher he may act on the utterly 

 strange precepts taught him, but away from that 

 influence he will act on his own hereditary instincts. 



The manner in which the native dies out — even 

 when well looked after — varies. He may be killed 

 out by some disease, perhaps trifling, but new to him, 

 with which he does not know how to cope, and with 

 which — if he can avoid so doing— he simply will not 

 cope in the ways which the civilised man would 

 teach him ; or he may be killed out by the well-meant 

 but injudicious enforcement on him of some system 

 of unaccustomed labour; or, again, he may die out 

 because deprived of his former occupations (e.g. fight- 

 ing and the gathering of just so much food as sufficed 

 for him) and thus restricted to a merely vegetative 

 existence; or in many other more or less similar 

 forms his extermination may come about. 



But all such effective causes are reducible to one, 

 which is that he is not allowed to act on his own 

 hereditary instincts, that he cannot at all times have, 



NO. 2342. VOL. 94] 



and often would not use, judicious and disinterested 

 guidance from civilised folk, and that consequently 

 he, the " savage," cannot and too often does not care 

 to keep alive when in the presence of civilised folk. 



SECTION I. 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



Opening Address by Prof. Benjamin Moore, M.A., 

 D.Sc, F.R.S., President of the Section. 



The Value of Research in the Development of 

 National Health. 



The history of medical science presents to the 

 curious student a remarkable development com- 

 mencing in the latter half of the nineteenth century, 

 and one worthy of special study, both on account of 

 the light that it sheds on the present position and the 

 illumination it affords for future progress. 



If any text-book of medicine or treatise on any 

 branch of medical science written before 1850 be 

 taken up at random, its pages will reveal that it 

 dilTers but little from one written a full century earlier. 

 If such a volume be compared with one written thirty- 

 five years later, it will be found "that the whole outlook 

 and aspect of medicine have changed wFthin a genera- 

 tion. 



_ Erroneous introspective dreams as to the nature of 

 diseases,_ as "idiopathic" as the many strange mala- 

 dies which their authors are so fond of describing 

 have been replaced by fast-proven facts, and medicine 

 has passed from an occult craft into an exact science 

 based upon experimental inquiry and logical deduction 

 from observation. 



What caused this rapid spring of growth, after the 

 long latent period of centuries, and are we now reach- 

 ing the end of the new era in medicine, or do fresh 

 discoveries still await the patient experimentalist with 

 a trained imagination who knows both how to dream 

 and how to test his dreams? 



It is but a crude comparison that represents the 

 earlier age as one of empiricism and imagination, and 

 the later period as one of induction and experiment. 

 Empiricism has always been of high value in science, 

 it will ever remain so, and some of the richest dis- 

 coveries in science have arisen empirically. » 



Imagination also is as essential to the highest 

 scientific work to-day as it was a century ago, and 

 throughout all time the work of the genius is char- 

 acterised in all spheres of human endeavour by the 

 breadth and flight of the imagination which it shows. 

 The great man of science, whether he be a mathe- 

 matician, a physicist, a chemist, or a physiologist, re- 

 quires imagination to pierce forward into the unknown, 

 just as truly as does the great poet or artist. Also, the 

 inspired work of poet or painter must be concordant 

 with a system of facts or conventions, and not outrage 

 certain canons of his art, as certainly as the true and 

 lasting work of the man of science must accurately 

 accord with natural laws. 



The man of science is as little able to prove the 

 fundamental truth or existence of the groundwork 

 upon which modern physical, chemical, and physio- 

 logical theories are built, as the artist is to prove 

 the ethics, or perfect truth, or perfect beauty, of 

 those conventions upon which poetry, painting, or 

 that great group of studies termed the "humanities" 

 find their basis. But the artist or philosopher knows 

 that, using these conventions as the best at present 

 discovered, he can produce works of which the beauty 

 and consistency appeal to all educated human minds 

 capable of appreciation. Similarly, the conventions 

 of natural science, properly understood, appeal to the 



