September 14, igu] 



NATURE 



157 



one example to illustrate the difference of standpoint which 

 separates the two schools. Few subjects have attracted 

 more interest in this and other countries than the study of 

 primitive decoration. In the decorative art of all lands 

 there are found transitions from designs representing the 

 human form or those of animals and plants to patterns 

 of a purely geometrical nature. In this country it has 

 been held, I think I may say universally, that in these 

 transitions we have evidence for an evolutionary process 

 which in all parts of the world has led mankind to what 

 may be called the degradation and conventionalisation of 

 human, animal, or plant designs, so that in course of time 

 they become mere geometrical forms. 



To the modern German school, on the other hand, these 

 transitions are due to the blending of two peoples, one 

 possessing the practice of decorating its objects with 

 human, animal, or plant designs, while the art of the other 

 is based on the use of geometrical forms. The transitions 

 which have been taken to be evidence of independent 

 processes of evolution based on psychological tendencies 

 common to mankind are by the modern German school 

 ascribed to the mixture of cultures and of peoples. 

 Further, similar patterns, even one so simple as the spiral, 

 when found in widely separated regions of the earth, are 

 held to have been due to the influence of one and the same 

 culture. 



I have chosen this example because it illustrates the 

 immense divergence in thought and method between the 

 two schools; but the difference runs through the whole 

 range of the subject. In every case where British anthro- 

 pologists see evolution, either in the form of material 

 objects or in social and religious institutions, the modern 

 German school sees only the evidence of mixture of 

 cultures, either with or without an accompanying mixture 

 of the races to which these cultures belonged. 



It will, I think, be evident that this difference of attitude 

 of British and German workers is one of fundamental and 

 vital importance. When we find the chief workers of two 

 nations thus approaching their subject from two radically 

 different and, it would seem, incompatible standpoints, it 

 rs evident that there must be something very wrong, and 

 it has seemed to me that I cannot better use the oppor- 

 tunity given to me by the present occasion than in devoting 

 my address to this subject. 



The situation is one which has an especial interest for 

 me in that I have been led quite independently to much 

 the same general position as that of the German school by 

 the results of my own work in Oceania with the Percy 

 Sladen Trust Expedition. With no knowledge of the work 

 of this school, I was led by my facts to see how much, 

 in the past, I had myself ignored considerations arising 

 from racial mixture and the blending of cultures, and it 

 will perhaps interest you if I sketch briefly the history of 

 my own conversion. 



Much of my time in Oceania was devoted to survey 

 work, in which I collected especially the systems of rela- 

 tionship of every place I visited, together with such other 

 facts concerning social organisation as I was able to 

 gather. I began my theoretical study by a comparison of 

 the various forms of these systems of relationship, dis- 

 regarding at first the linguistic nature of the terms. From 

 the studv of these svstems I was able to demonstrate the 

 existence, either in the present or the past, of a number of 

 extraordinary and anomalous forms of marriage, such as 

 marriage with the daughter's daughter and with the wife 

 of the father's father, 1 all of which become explicable if 

 there once existed widely throughout Melanesia a state 

 which is known as the dual organisation of society with 

 matrilineal descent, accompanied by a condition of domin- 

 ance of the old men which enabled them to monopolise all 

 the young women of the community. Taking this as my 

 starting-point, I was then able to trace out a consistent 

 and definite scheme of the history of marriage in Melanesia 

 from a condition in which persons normally and naturally 

 married certain relatives to one in which wives are pur- 

 chased with whom no relationship whatever can be traced, 

 and I was able to fit many other features of the social 

 structure of Melanesia into this scheme. So far my work 

 was of a purely evolutionary character, and only served to 

 strengthen me in my previous standpoint. 



1 Thes- terms aie u-ed i" ihe clas.-ificatory sense. 



I then turned my attention to the linguistic side of the 

 systems of relationship, and a study of the terms them- 

 selves showed that these fell into two main classes : one 

 class generally diffused throughout Oceania, while the 

 terms of the other class differed very considerably in 

 different cultural regions. Further, it became clear that 

 the terms of the first class denoted relationships which my 

 comparative study of the forms of the systems had shown 

 to have suffered change, while the terms which varied 

 greatly in different parts of Oceania denoted relationships, 

 such as those of the mother and mother's brother, which 

 there was no reason to believe had suffered any great 

 change in status. From these facts I inferred that at the 

 time of the most primitive stage of Melanesian society 

 of which I had evidence there had been great linguistic 

 diversity which had been transformed into the relative 

 uniformity now found in Melanesia by the incoming of a 

 people from without, through whose influence the change 

 I had traced had taken place, and from whose language 

 the generally diffused terms of relationship had been 

 borrowed. It was through the combined study of social 

 forms and of language that I was led to see that the 

 change I had traced was not a spontaneous evolution, but 

 one which had taken place under the influence of the 

 blending of peoples. The combined morphological and 

 linguistic study of systems of relationship had led me to 

 recognise that a definite course of social development had 

 taken place in an aboriginal society under the influence of 

 an immigrant people. 



I turned next to a Melanesian institution, that of secret 

 societies, concerning which I had been able to gather much 

 new material, and it soon became probable that these socie- 

 ties belonged properly neither to the aboriginal culture nor 

 to that of the immigrants, but had arisen as the result 

 of the interaction of the two ; that, in fact, these secret 

 societies had had their source in the need felt by the 

 immigrants for the secret practice of the rites they had 

 brought with them from their former home. A com- 

 parison of the ritual of the secret societies with the institu- 

 tions of other parts of Oceania then made it appear that 

 the main features of the culture of these immigrants had 

 been patrilineal descent, or at any rate definite recognition 

 of the relation between father and child, a cult of the 

 dead, the institution of taboo, and, lastly, certain relations 

 with animals and plants, which were probably allied to 

 totemism, if they were not totemism itself in a fully 

 developed form. 



Further study made it clear that those I have called the 

 immigrant people, though possessing these features in 

 common, had reached Melanesia at different times and 

 with several decided differences of culture, but that prob- 

 ably there had been two main streams : one which 

 peopled Polynesia and became widely diffused throughout 

 Melanesia, which was characterised by the use of kava ; 

 another which came later and penetrated much less widely, 

 which brought with it the practice of chewing betel- 

 mixture. Traces of a third stream, the earliest of all, are 

 probably to be found here and there throughout Melanesia, 

 while still another element is provided by recent Polynesian 

 influence. It became evident that the present condition of 

 Melanesian society has come into being through the blend- 

 ing of an aboriginal population with various peoples from 

 without, and it therefore became necessary to ascertain to 

 which of the cultures possessed by these peoples the 

 present-day customs and institutions of Melanesia belong, 

 always keeping in mind the possibility that some of these 

 institutions may not have belonged to any one of the 

 cultures, but may have arisen as the result of the inter- 

 action of two or more of the blending peoples. 



I must be content with this brief sketch of my scheme 

 of the history of Melanesian society, for my object to-day 

 is to point out that if Melanesian society possesses the 

 complexity and the heterogeneous character I have 

 indicated, and is the resultant of the mixture of three or 

 four main cultures, it cannot be right to take out of the 

 complex any institution or belief and regard it as primitive 

 merely because Melanesian culture on the whole possesses 

 a more or less primitive character. It is probable that 

 some of the immigrants into Melanesia had a relatively 

 advanced culture, possibly even that the institutions and 

 ideas they brought with them had been taken from a 



NO. 2185, VOL. 87] 



