TRANSACTIOXS OF 8ECTI0x\ H. — PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 670 



Section H.^ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 President of the Section — E. Sidney Hahtland, F.S.A. 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 2. 



The President delivered the following Address: — 



A French anthropologist lately reviewing two worlis, one by an Englishman 

 and the other by a German, on the Masai, remarked that, speaking generally, 

 English and German observers, while applying the same methods of observation 

 and making use of the same questioyinnires, do not interest themselves equally or 

 in the same way in the social life of peoples in the lower culture ; for whereas the 

 German explorers by preference describe, and that with praiseworthy minuteness, 

 the nature of the country and the material civilisation of the people, the English, 

 on the other hand, interest themselves more in the intellectual products, the 

 traditions and beliefs. In other words, he said, the German is more of an 

 ethnographer, the Englishman is more of a student of folklore and psychologist. 

 1 am not disposed to contest this expression of opinion. To me there is an element 

 of extreme fascination in the attempt to trace the course of human thought on the 

 great subjects of life and death, of mind and matter, in the endeavour to mount 

 again to the source and beginning of speculation, by means of careful observation 

 and comparison of the ideas, and their expression in word and deed, of races 

 as yet guiltless of elaborate philosophical systems, races to which writing, and 

 therefore literature, are unknown. It is beyond question, moreover, that the 

 problems of savage religion and savage philosophy, and their relation to the early 

 history of the human species, have during the last thirty or forty years taken a 

 deep hold of the imagination and occupied the attention of English anthropologists 

 and philosophical writers. This is, perhaps, owing in part to the seriousness with 

 which as a nation we take our religion, and which has led in other fields to Ritual 

 Commissions and to bitter controversy over our elementary schools. In part, 

 however, it is due to the impetus given by the greatest of my predecessors in this 

 chair by the publication of his book on Frimitive Culture at a time when the public 

 mind was slowly settling to the acceptance of Dai-win's teaching. From that hour 

 to the present there has been no pause in the investigations. One champion has 

 overthrown the pretty philological theories of Professor Max Miiller, and quenched 

 the Sun Myth in everlasting night. The researches of another, adopting and 

 greatly developing the conclusions of Mannhardt, who had rebelled against the 

 same theories in Germany, have proved to be among the most stimulating influences 

 in anthropological study, both in this country and abroad. Other scholars have 

 applied the same principles in different ways to different subjects. Whether their 

 particular conclusions are right or wrong, they have borne witness to the unfail- 

 ing interest of the problems ; and by the discussions they have aroused they have 

 helped to clear away misconceptions, and have contributed, often materially, to 

 the ultimate solution of the questions at issue. 



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