714 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 



Section H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 

 President of the Section. — W. Crooke, B.A. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



One-and-thirty years have passed since the British Association visited this city. 

 At that time anthropology was in the stage of probation and was represented by a 

 branch of the section devoted to biology. Since then its progress in popularity 

 and influence has been continuous, and its claims to be regarded as a science, 

 with aims and capabilities in no way inferior to those of longer growth, are now 

 generally admitted. Its advance in this country is largely due to the distin- 

 guished occupant of this chair at our last meeting in Sheffield, Dr. E. B. Tylor, 

 who during the present year has resigned the professorship of anthropology in the 

 University of Oxford. Before this audience it is unnecessary for me to describe 

 in detail the services which this eminent scholar and thinker has rendered to 

 science. His professorial work at Oxford; his unfailing support of the Royal 

 Anthropological Institute and of this section of the British Association; his 

 sympathetic encouragement of a younger generation of workers — these are 

 familiar to all of us. Many of those now engaged in anthropological work at 

 home and abroad date that interest in the study of man, his culture and beliefs, 

 which has given a new pleasure to their lives, from the time when they first 

 became acquainted with his " Primitive Culture ' and ' Researches into the 

 History of Mankind.' These words enjoy the almost unique distinction that, 

 in spite of the constant accumulation of new material to illustrate an advancing 

 science, they still maintain their authority ; and this because they are based on a 

 thorough investigation of all the available material and a profound insight into 

 the psychology of man at the earlier stages of culture. He has laid down once 

 for all the broad principles which must always guide the anthropologist : that 

 a familiarity with the principles of the religions of the lower races is as 

 indispensable to the scientific student of theology as a knowledge of the lower 

 forms of life, the structure of mere invertebrate creatures, is to the physiologist. 

 ' Few,' he assures us, ' who will give their minds to master the general principles 

 of savage religion will ever think it ridiculous or the knowledge of it superfluous 

 to the rest of mankind. . . . Nowhere are broad views of historical development 

 more needed than in the study of religion. . . . Scepticism and criticism are the 

 very conditions for the attainment of reasonable belief.' I need hardly say that 

 his exposition of the principles of animism, as derived from the subconscious 

 mental phenomena of dreams and waking visions, has given a new impulse and 

 direction to the study of the religion of savage races. 



Dr. Tylor, on his retirement from the active work of teaching, carries with 

 him the respectful congratulations and good wishes of the anthropologists here 

 assembled, all of whom join in the hope that the Emeritus Professor may be 

 able, to devote some of his well-earned leisure to increasing the series of valuable 

 wscks for which we are already indebted to him. 



In his address from this chair Dr. Tylor remarked that twenty years before 

 that time it wa.s n<? .difficult task to master the available material. ' But now,' he 



