September 29, 1898] 



NATURE 



531 



habits will spring up again and again, and insensibly modify 

 your own religion, pure as you may suppose it to be. 



Huxley, in his address to the department of Anthropology 

 twenty years ago, said, with the force and candour that were 

 characteristic of him : " Anthropology has nothing to do with 

 the truth or falsehood of religion— it holds itself absolutely and 

 •entirely aloof from such questions— but the natural history of 

 religion, and the <jrigin and the growth of the religions enter- 

 tained by the different kinds of the human race, are within its 

 proper and legitimate province." I do not presume to question 

 that as an absolutely accurate definition of the position — it could 

 not be otherwise ; but if there be any here to whom what I have 

 been suggesting is in any sense novel or startling, I should be 

 ■glad to be allowed to say one word of reassurance to them. 

 When my friend Mr. Clodd shocked some of tlie members of 

 the Folk-lore Society by his frank statement of conclusions at 

 which he had arrived, following the paths I have indicated, it 

 was said we must fall back on the evidences of Christianity. 

 What more cogent evidence of Christianity can you have than 

 its existence ? It stands to-day as the religion which, in most 

 civilised countries, represents that which has been found by the 

 operation of natural laws to be best suited for the present circum- 

 stances of mankind. You are a Christian because you cannot 

 help it. Turn Mahometan to-morrow — will you stop the spread 

 of Christianity ? Your individual renunciation of Christianity 

 will be but a ripple on a wave. Civilised mankind holds to 

 Christianity, and cannot but do so till it can find something 

 better. This, it seems to me, is a stronger evidence of 

 Christianity than any of the loose-jointed arguments I find in 

 evidential literature. 



Upon this thorny subject I will say no more. I would not 

 have said so much, but that I wish to show that these consider- 

 ations are not inconsistent with the respect I entertain, and 

 ■desire now as always to express, for those feelings and senti- 

 ments which are esteemed to !»e precious by the great majority 

 of mankind, which solace them under the adversities of life and 

 nerve them for the approach of death, and which stimulate them 

 to works of self-sacrifice and of charity that have conferred 

 untold blessings on humanity. I reverence the divine Founder 

 of Christianity all the more when I think of him as one who so well 

 ■" knew what was in man " as to build upon ideas and yearnings 

 that had grown in man's mind from the earliest infancy of 

 the race. 



To return. If continuity be the key that unlocks the recept- 

 acle where lie the secrets of man's history — physical, industrial, 

 mental, and moral ; if in each of these respects the like pro- 

 cesses are going on — it follows, as I have already said, that the 

 only satisfactory study of man is a study of the whole man. It 

 is for this reason that I ask you to take especial interest in the 

 proceedings of one of the Committees of this Section, which has 

 adopted such a comprehensive study as the guiding principle of 

 its work — I mean the Ethnographical Survey Committee. I 

 have so often addressed this Section and the Conference of 

 Corresponding Societies on the matter, since the Committee 

 was first appointed at the Edinburgh meeting, on the suggestion 

 of my friend Prof. Haddon, that I can hardly now refer to it 

 without repeating what has been already said 'or forestalling 

 what will be said when its report is presented to you. but its 

 programme so fully realises that which has been in my mind in 

 all that I have endeavoured to say that I must make one more 

 efifort to enlist your active interest in its work. 



The scheme of the Committee includes the simultaneous 

 recording in various districts of the physical characters, by 

 measurement and by photography, the current traditions and 

 beliefs, the peculiarities of dialect, the monuments and other 

 remains of ancient culture, and the external history of the 

 people. The places in the United Kingdom where this can be 

 done with advantage are such only as have remained unaffected 

 by the great movements of population that have occurred, 

 especially of late years. It might have been thought that such 

 places would be very few ; but the preliminary inquiries of the 

 Committee resulted in the formation of a list of between 300 

 and 400. So far, therefore, as the testimony of the very com- 

 petent persons whose advice was sought by them is to be relied 

 on, it is evident that there is ample scope for their work. At 

 the same time, the process of migration from country to town 

 is going on so rapidly, that every year diminishes the number of 

 such places. One thinks with regret how much easier the work 

 would have been one or two or three generations ago ; but that 

 consideration should only iaduce us to put it off no longer. 



NO. 1509, VOL. 58] 



The work done by the lamented Dr. Walter Gregor for this 

 Committee in Dumfriesshire and other parts of Scotland is an 

 excellent type of the way in which such work should be done. 

 His collections of physical measurements and of folk-lore have 

 been published in the fourth and fifth reports of the Committee. 

 There can be no doubt that few men possess the faculty he had 

 of drawing forth the confidence of the villagers and getting them 

 to tell him their superstitions and their old customs. He suc- 

 ceeded in recording from their lips not fewer than 733 items of 

 folk-lore. They not merely form exceedingly pleasant reading, 

 such as is perhaps not often met with in a British Association 

 report, but they also will be found to throw considerable light 

 on the views which I have ventured to lay before you. It is 

 much to be wished that others who have the like faculty, if even 

 in a lesser degree, could be induced to take up similar work 

 in other districts, now that Dr. Gregor has so well shown the 

 way in which it ought to be done. 



The work done by the Committee for the Ethnographical 

 Survey of Canada ; the completion of the Ethnographical 

 Survey of the North-western tribes which has been ably con- 

 ducted for many years ; and the progress made in the Ethno- 

 graphical Survey of India will also be brought under your 

 notice, the latter in a paper by Mr. Crooke, who has worked 

 with Mr. Risley upon it. 



Another movement, which was originated by this Section at 

 the Liverpool meeting, and was referred to in the report of the 

 Council of the Association last year, has made some progress 

 since that report was presented. Upon the recommendation of 

 this Section, the General Committee passed the following 

 resolution and referred it to the Council for consideration and 

 action : — 



" That it is of urgent importance to press upon the Govern- 

 ment the necessity of establishing a Bureau of Ethnology for 

 Greater Britain, which, by collecting information with regard to 

 the native races within and on the borders of the Empire, will 

 prove of immense value to science and to the Government 

 itself." 



The Council appointed a Committee, consisting of the 

 President and General Officers, with Sir John Evans, Sir John 

 Lubbock, Prof. Tylor, and your esteemed Vice-President. Mr. 

 Read, the mover of the resolution. Their report is printed at 

 length in last year's Report of Council, and shows clearly how 

 useful and how easily practicable the establishment of such a 

 Bureau would be. The Council resolved that the Trustees of the 

 British Museum be requested to consider whether they could 

 allow the proposed Bureau to be established in connection with 

 the Museum. I understand that those Trustees have returned a 

 favourable answer ; and I cannot doubt that the joint repre- 

 sentations which they and this Association will make to Her 

 Majesty's Government will result in the adoption of a scheme 

 calculated to realise all the advantages which we in this Section 

 have so long looked for from it. In the Secretary of State for 

 the Colonies and the Chancellor of the Exchequer we have 

 statesmen who cannot fail to appreciate the benefits the com- 

 munity must derive from acquiring accurate and scientific know- 

 ledge of the multifarious races which compose the Empire. 



Those of us who visited the United States last year had the 

 opportunity of observing the excellent work which is done by 

 the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, and those who stayed 

 at home are probably familiar with the valuable publications of 

 that department. An Act of Congress twenty years ago appro- 

 priated 4000/. a year to the Smithsonian Institution for the con- 

 tinuance of researches in North American anthropology. The 

 control of the Bureau was entrusted to the able hands of Major 

 Powell, who gathered round him a band of skilled workers, 

 many of whom had been previously engaged en ethnographic 

 research under the direction of the Geographical and Geological 

 Survey of the Rocky Mountain region. In field work and in 

 office work, to use Major Powell's convenient distinction, ample 

 return has ever since been rendered to the United States 

 Government for the money thus appropriated, which has since 

 been increased to 8000/. a year. Our own Bureau of Ethnology 

 would have a wider sphere of operations, and be concerned 

 with a greater number of races. It would tend to remove from 

 us the reproach that has in too many cases not been without 

 foundation — that we have been content to govern races by the 

 strong hand without caring to understand them, and have thus 

 been the cause of injustice and oppression from ignorance rather 

 than from malevolence. If that were only a record of the past, we 

 might be content with mere unavailing regret ; but the colonial 



