ali2 REPORT— 1905. 
shall not mechanically amass material of which no immediate use can be made, 
but they will be so directed that all their energies can be exercised in solving 
definite problems or in filling up gaps in our information, with knowledge which 
is of real importance. 
This tendency, which I have indicated as affecting the science of zoology, is 
merely one phase of an attitude of mind that is influencing many departments of 
thought. There are psychologists and theologians who deem it worth while to 
find out what other people think and believe. Arm-chair philosophers are 
awakening to the fact that their studies have hitherto been confined almost 
exclusively to the most highly specialised conditions, and that in order to compre- 
hend these fully it is necessary to study the less and the yet less specialised con- 
ditions; for it is only possible to gain the true history of mind or belief by a 
combination of the observational with the comparative method. A considerable 
amount of information has already been acquired, but in most departments of 
human thought and belief vastly more information is needed, and hitherto the 
reliability of a great deal that has been published is not above suspicion. 
The comparative or evolutionary historian also needs reliable facts concerning 
the social condition of varied peoples in all stages of culture. The documentary 
records of history are too imperfect to enable the whole story to be unravelled, so 
recourse must be had to a study of analogous conditions elsewhere for side-lights 
which will cast illuminating beams into the dark corners of ancient history. 
When the historian seriously turns his attention to the mass of data accumulated 
in books of travel, in records of expeditions, or the assorted material in the 
memoirs of students, he will doubtless be surprised to find how much there is 
that will be of service to him. 
Sociologists have not neglected this field, but they need more information 
and more exhaustive and precise analyses of existing conditions. The available 
material is of such importance and interest, that the pleasure of the reader is apt 
to dull his critical faculty ; as a matter of fact, the social conditions of extremely 
few peoples are accurately known, and sooner or later—generally sooner—the 
student tinds his authorities failing him from lack of thoroughness. 
I have alluded to the subjects of psychology, theology, history, and sociology, 
because they all overlap that area over which the anthropologist prowls. Indeed 
it is our work to collect, sift, and arrange the facts which may be utilised by our 
colleazues in these other branches of inquiry, and to this extent the ethnologist is 
also a psychologist, a theologian, a historian, and a sociologist. 
Similarly the anthropographer provides material for the biologist on the one 
hand, and for the geographer on the other. 
Asa general rule those who have investigated any given people in the field 
nave alluded to the general features of the country they inhabit, so that usually it 
is possible to gain some conception of them in their natural surroundings, Thus, to 
a certain extent, materials are available for tracing that interaction between life 
and environment and between organisms themselves, to which the term cecology 
is now frequently applied, but we still need to have this interdependence more 
recognised in such branches of inquiry as descriptive sociology or religion. 
Just. as the arts and crafts of a people are influenced by their environment, so 
is their social life similarly affected, and their religion reflects the stage of social 
culture to which they have attained: for it must never be overlooked that the 
religious conceptions of a people cannot be thoroughly understood apart from their 
social, cultural, and physical conditions. 
This may appear a trite remark, but I would like to emphasise the fact that very 
careful and detailed studies of definite or limited areas are urgently needed, rather 
than a general description of a number of peoples which does not exhaust any ong 
of them—in a word, what we now need is thoroughness. 
Three main groups of indigenous peoples inhabit South A frica:—The Bushmen, 
the Hottentots, and various Bantu tribes; in more northerly parts of the Conti- 
nent there are the Negrilloes, commonly spoken of as Pygmies, the Negroes proper, 
and Hamitic peoples, not to speak of Semitic elements, 
