PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 677 



ings and the relation of these surroundings to himself. We must judge of tliem 

 as they are represented iu the heliefs and actions of modern savages and in tliose 

 of gi'eat historical nations. For we are all agreed that the history of the human mind 

 has heen that of a slow evolution from something lower than the lowest savagery 

 known to-day, that it has not everywhere evolved in the same way or to the same 

 degree, and that the course it has taken has left traces, discoverahle by close in- 

 spection, upon every mental product and in every civilisation throughout'the world . 

 The records on which we have to rely in the investigation are of the most various 

 value, and often most difficult of interpretation, relating as they do to subjects 

 which cannot be reduced within the terms of any mathematical formula, and de- 

 pendent as they are upon the uncertainties of human testimony. I need not 

 trouble you with a general defence of the evidence upon which anthropological 

 facts repose. After all criticisms have been made there remains a solid body of 

 evidence from which we may confidently reason. What can we learn from it on 

 the point under discussion ? 



The first thing I want you to notice is the fluidity of the savage concept of 

 personality. It is not confined within the bounds of one stable and (if I may so 

 say) unchangeable body. You and I may quite easily he transformed into some- 

 thing more than metaphorical representatives of the British Ass. Your next-door 

 neighbour, for whom you have the profoundest respect as a prosperous man of 

 business and a churchwarden of exemplary piety, may startle you some morning 

 with a sudden change into a noisy little street-arab, not a tenth of his own portly 

 dimensions, turning a wheel all down his garden path, or into a melancholy cow 

 cropping a bare pittance of grass from his closely trimmed lawn. He and his 

 magnificent wife may even become, like Philemon and JJaucis, an oak and a lime 

 tree before your eyes, or a pair of standing stones upon the moor. None of these 

 metamorphoses would be accounted impossible by peoples in the lower culture. 

 The personality which they have known I'unning in one mould can, in their 

 opinion, be directed into and will run as freely in another mould, and yet be the 

 same. So hard do such archaic beliefs die, that in remote parts of our own country 

 it is still firmly believed that a witch may assume the form of a hare, and if any 

 bold sportsman succeed in wounding it, the injury will afterwards be found on the 

 witch's proper person, testifying beyond dispute to the preservation of her indi- 

 viduality under the change of shape and species. 



Shape-shifting, as it is called, may even take place by means of death and a new 

 birth without loss of identity. Miss Kingsley tells us that in \Yest Africa ' the new 

 babies as they arrive in the family are shown a selection of small articles belonging 

 to deceased members whose souls are still absent : the thing the child catches hold 

 of identifies him. " \Yhy, he's Uncle John ; see! he knows his own pipe ;" or, 

 " That's Cousin Emma ; see ! .she knows her market calabash," and so on.' ' This 

 belief and corresponding practices are found over a large part of the world. Nor 

 is it necessary that the deceased should be born again in human form, or even of 

 the same sex. A Mongolian tale relates that a certain Khotogait prince, having 

 been beheaded for conspiracy against the Chinese emperor, twice reappeared as a 

 child of the empress, and was identified by the cicatrice on his neck. Both chil- 

 dren were successively destroyed, and he was then born as a hairless bay mare, 

 whose hide is still preserved. In the same way, fish, fruit, worms, stones, any 

 object, indeed, may, if it can once (no matter how) enter the body of a woman, be 

 born again and become human. This is surely implied by the legends of super- 

 natural birth and the practices corresponding therewith for the purpose of obtain- 

 ing children — legends and practices found over the whole earth. As developed by 

 animism, the doctrine of a new birth has become what we know as that of the 

 Transmigration of Souls, which has played a part in more religions than one. But 

 from the beginning it was not so, for animism was unknown. 



Moreover, detached portions of the per.son, as locks of hair, parings of finger- 

 nails, and so forth, are not dead, inert matter. They are still endued with the life 

 of their original owner. Nay, garments once worn, or other objects which hav& 



' Travels in We)t Africa, p. 49.3. 



