TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 523 
view of the anthropological situation in Sovth Africa, without burdening my 
remarks with details, and at the same time I have made bold to publish some of 
the conclusions which this survey has suggested; but there are other points on 
which I feel constrained to touch. 
Recently Sir Richard Temple delivered an Address on ‘ The Practical Value of 
Anthropology,’ in the course of which he said: ‘ We often talk in Greater Britain of 
a “good” magistrate or a “sympathetic” judge, meaning thereby that these 
officials determine the matters before them with insight; that is, with a working 
anthropological knowledge of those with whom they have to deal. .. . It is, 
indeed, everything to him to acquire the habit of useful anthropological study 
before he commences, and to be able to avail himself practically and intelligently 
of the facts gleaned, and the inferences drawn therefrom, by those who have gone 
before him. . . . Take the universally delicate questions of revenue and taxation, 
and consider how very much the successful administration of either depends on a 
minute acquaintance with the means, habits, customs, manners, institutions, 
traditions, prejudices, and character of the population. In the making of laws too 
close a knowledge of the persons to be subjected to them cannot be possessed, and 
however wise the laws so made may be, their object can be only too easily 
frustrated if the rules they authorise are not themselves framed with an equally 
great knowledge, and they in their turn can be made to be of no avail unless an 
intimate acquaintance with the population is brought to bear on their administra- 
tion, For the administrator an extensive knowledge of those in his charge is an 
attainment, not only essential to his own success, but beneficial in the highest 
degree to the country he dwells in, provided it is used with discernment. And 
discernment is best acquired by the “ anthropological habit.” . . . The habit of 
intelligently examining the peoples among whom his business is cast cannot be over- 
rated by the merchant wishing continuously to widen it to profit; but the man who 
has been obliged to acquire this kind of knowledge without any previous training 
in observation is heavily handicapped in comparison with him who has acquired 
the habit of right observation, and, what is of much more importance, has been 
put in the way of rightly interpreting his observations in his youth.’ 
In referring to civil-servants, missionaries, merchants, or soldiers, Sir Richard 
Temple went on tosay : ‘Sympathy is one of the chief factors in successful dealings 
of any kind with human beings, and sympathy can only come with knowledge. 
And not only does sympathy come of knowledge, but it isdmowledge that begets 
sympathy. In a long experience of alien races, and of those who have had to 
govern and deal with them, all whom I have known to dislike the aliens about 
them, or to be unsympathetic, have been those that have been ignorant of them ; 
and I have never yet come across a man who really knew an alien race that had not, 
unless actuated by race-jealousy, a strong bond of sympathy with them. 
Familiarity breeds contempt, but it is knowledge that breeds respect, and it is all 
the same whether the race be black, white, yellow, or red, or whether it be 
cultured or ignorant, civilised or semi-civilised, or downright savage.’ 
I have quoted at length from Sir Richard Temple, as the words of an ad- 
ministrator of his success and experience must carry far greater weight than 
anything I could say. I can, however, add my personal testimony to the truth of 
these remarks, as I have seen Britons administering native races on these lines in 
British New Guinea and in Sarawak, and I doubt not that I shall now have the 
opportunity of a similar experience in South Africa. 
In this connection I ought to refer to what has been already done in South 
Africa by the Government. In the year 1880 the Government of Cape Colony, 
confronted by the problem of dealing with the natives, appointed a Commission to 
inquire into the native laws and customs which obtained in the territories annexed 
to the Colony, especially those relating to marriage and land-tenure, and to suggest 
legislation, as well as to report on the advisability of introducing some system of 
local self-government in the native territories annexed to the Colony. The example 
was shortly afterwards followed by the Government of Natal, which had native 
problems of its own. These two Commissions collected and published a consider- 
able amount of evidence, valuable not only for the immediate purpose in view, but 
