August 15, 1907] 



NA TURE 



397 



is crammed, it ceases to afford a real training. " Nature 

 provides a very convenient safety-valve for knowledge too 

 rapidlv acquired." It is even whispered that a new species 

 of crammer has arisen to " prepare " candidates in 

 engineering for the graduate examinations of the Institu- 

 tion of Civil Engineers. The' distinguished framers of 

 this epoch-making report on the education and training 

 of engineers at least give no countenance to any such 

 parasitical development. For the scheme of education and 

 training at which the Committee has aimed is genuinely 

 scientific, a happy federation of the theoretical with the 

 practical. It seeks to place the training on a broad basis, 

 and to secure to every future engineer worthy of the name 

 the advantage of learning his professional work in both 

 its aspects. It seeks, in short, to take advantage of that 

 reflex action between science and its applications in which 

 lies the greatest stimulus to progress. Its adoption will 

 utilise for the young engineer, and therefore for the 

 engineering industry as a whole, the facilities for train- 

 ing now so widely afl'orded throughout the country. If 

 the institutions, schools, and colleges where engineering 

 training is offered are but rightly developed and co- 

 ordinated, the engineers of Great Britain need have no 

 fear as to holding their own against the trained engineers 

 of other countries. It is for the employers to make use 

 of these institutions, and to show that sympathetic interest 

 in their efficiency which is essential to their full success. 



SECTION' H. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Opening .Address bv D. G. Hog.jirth, M.A., President of 

 THE Sectio.n. 



Religions Sitrvivals. 



The science of Anthropology, from its very nature, seldom 

 touches the beliefs or customs of the higher actual civilis- 

 ations ; but exceptions occur when it enters the field of 

 comparative religion. In coming to the aid of this fas- 

 cinating study it can hardly help offending, sooner or later, 

 certain prejudices which :u'e deeply rooted and widely dis- 

 tributed, and that not only when it really contravenes the 

 beliefs of pious minds, but, often enough, when its exponents 

 neither wish to impair these beliefs, nor, as a matter of 

 fact, are taking any steps to do so ; for the opposition which 

 meets science when it concerns itself with religion is very 

 frequently arrayed before the opponent has taken the 

 time or the trouble to ascertain whether anything vital or 

 essential is concerned in the investigation. At any rate it 

 will be allowed that the majority of the treatises on this 

 study written in the English tongue do not, by any lack 

 of reverent treatment or by any obvious oblivion of the 

 responsibility resting on those who inquire into the 

 religious basis of our social order, display any 

 desire to offend. But just because some offence 

 must almost inevitably be given, even by the most 

 reverent anthropologist, in pursuing investigations which 

 involve examination of actual pious beliefs, it is especially 

 incumbent on students of this particular subject to proceed 

 only along the most strictly judicial lines, careful not to 

 force a conclusion from evidence which is in any respect 

 dubious or even incomplete ; and, moreover, to be quite 

 clear in their own minds and to make it clear to others 

 how far their investigation really touches actual religion 

 in vital and essential points of belief as distinguished from 

 mere points of observance or ritual, i.e., religious acci- 

 dents, as they might be called. Obvious as this caution 

 may seem, neglect of it is very general, and has led to 

 much needless suspicion of .Anthropology as a science with 

 covert and far-reaching purpose, subversive of all religion. 



It is in the interests of definition and clearness in a 

 controversial topic among the religious inquiries of anthro- 

 pologist^ that I have chosen my theme to-day. I have 

 small claim to expound the science, as usually understood, 

 to which this Section is devoted, whether on its physical 

 or on its social side, so far as the latter is principally 

 concerned with actual custom and folklore. But as 

 one who has spent more than twenty years in studying the 

 ancient life of that region of the world in which three of 

 the greatest actual systems of religion were developed, and 



NO. 1972, VOL. 76] 



a good part of his time among the modern peasantry of 

 the region itself, I have had my attention particularly 

 directed to the evolution of religious beliefs and observ- 

 ances during long periods of time, which are unusually 

 well illuminated for us from first to last by the light of 

 both monuments and literature; and that attention has 

 often been arrested by striking instances of cuUiis con- 

 tinuity under successive religious systems or dispensations. 

 I enjoyed the advantage of beginning travel in the Nearer 

 East in the company of the acute observer who is now 

 Sir Williain Martin Ramsay, and to his comments on what 

 we saw together in the Phrygian highlands as long ago 

 as i8<S7 I owe inuch of my earliest interest in the question 

 of religious survival and my direction towards the lines on 

 which I have since tried to study it. Some day let us hope 

 that, prompted by such a lectureship as the Gifford Found- 

 ation, or encouraged by some discerning publisher, Sir 

 William Ramsay may collect from his many bcoks the 

 observations scattered here and there upon the religious 

 elements which survived from .Anatolian heathendom into 

 both Christian and Moslem observance, and adding to 

 them others from the storehouse of his memory and his 

 notebooks, produce a volume parallel to that " Religion of 

 the Semites " which is the abiding memorial of his dead 

 friend and ally. 



I have called " Religious Survivals " a controversial 

 topic. That is to put it mildly. Indeed, few anthropo- 

 logical topics generate so much heat. In addition to a 

 common distaste with which one may sympathise, even if 

 one does not share it, manifested by many reverent minds 

 for all objective discussion of things religious, this topic 

 challenges a certain very widespread prejudice, as irra- 

 tional as it is strong — namely, the prejudice against the 

 inclusion of orthodox religious beliefs and observances 

 under the general maxim, " There is nothing new under 

 the sun." The more sacred a man holds anvthing the less 

 will he believe that evolution has had anything to do with 

 it — evolution with its inevitable implication of embryonic 

 and imperfect stages. The Athenian loved to think' that 

 the great patron goddess of his city sprang fully grown 

 and fully armed from (he head of the King of heaven. 

 The devotees of all creeds have wished to believe that 

 when the first founders of systems proclaimed their mis- 

 sions the old things passed away like a burning scroll 

 and a wholly new earth and heaven began. Nothing is 

 more repugnant to the ordinary orthodox Moslein than the 

 suggestion that the Prophet borrowed theology and doctrine 

 from earlier Semitic systems, notably the Hebraic, and 

 that much of the ceremonial and observance now followed 

 by the faithful in their most religious moments, those of 

 the Meccan pilgrimage, survive from the times of ignorance. 

 Vet what contentions are less controvertible in fact than 

 these? The devotee can believe that every detail of a new 

 dispensation was known from all time in heaven, but will 

 refuse to allow that anything can have been known on 

 earth. With that direct revelation which he thinks to have 

 been vouchsafed at a given moment froin on high, the 

 slate of time must have been wiped clean of all previous 

 religious thought and practice. I do not, of course, speak 

 for one moment of the enlightened and scholarly doctors 

 of our own creed or any other. These have always seen 

 and often stated that the religious systems by which they 

 hold have assimilated much from systems of earlier date ; 

 nor in admitting that have they found their faith take any 

 harin. 



How natural and compelling, however, is the prejudice 

 in question may be estimated by the fact that it is ex- 

 tended to dispensations in other fields than the religious. 

 For example, that message to civilisation w^hich it was 

 given to the pagan Hellene to deliver does not admit in 

 the view of certain devout Hellenists of the view that the 

 Greek artistic sense had any pedigree in pre-classical times. 

 They resent as an insolent innuendo the contention that 

 what is essential in the Greek spirit can be detected in the 

 work of peoples living in the Hellenic area long before the 

 rise of classic Hellenic art, and that from these peoples 

 and from others who possessed older civilisations the fabric 

 of Hellenism was built up in strata, which can still be 

 observed, and referred to their pre-Hellenic authors. So 

 close akin is odium archcvologictnn to odium theologicum ! 

 A'et, perhaps, in this case they are really one and the 

 same, for perfervid Hellenism is the last half-conscicus 



