496 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION K. 



■To-day however, time will not allow me to say more about this psychological 

 analysis, and I must continue the subject from which I have for a moment 

 turned aside. 



Having shown the importance of ethnological analysis, I now propose to 

 consider the process of analysis itself and the principles on which it should and 

 must be based if it in its turn is to have any firm foundation. In the analysis 

 of any culture a difficulty which soon meets the investigator is that he has to 

 determine what is due to mere contact and what is due to intimate intermixture, 

 such intermixture, for instance, as is produced by the pennanent blending of 

 one people with another either through warlike invasion or peaceful settlement. 

 The fundamental weakness of most of the attempts hitherto made to analyse 

 existing cultures is that they have had their starting-point in the study of 

 material objects, and the reason for this is obvious. Owing to the fact that 

 material objects can be collected by anyone and subjected at leisure to pro- 

 longed study by experts, our knowledge of the distribution of material 

 objects and of the technique of their manufacture has very far outrun that 

 of the less material elements. What I wish now to point out is that in dis- 

 tinguishing between the effects of mere contact and the intermixture of peoples,, 

 material objects are the least trustworthy of all the constituents of culture. 

 Thus, in Melanesia we have the clearest evidence that material objects and 

 processes can spread by mere contact without any true admixture of peoples 

 and without influence on other features of the culture. While the distri- 

 bution of material objects is of the utmost importance in suggesting at the 

 outset community of culture, and while it is of equal importance in the final 

 process of determining points of contact and in filling in the details of 

 the mixture of cultures, it is the least satisfactory guide to the actual blend- 

 ing of peoples which must form the solid foundation of the ethnological 

 analysis of culture. The case for the value of magico-religious institutions 

 is not much stronger. Here, again, in Melanesia there is little doubt that 

 whole cults can pass from one people to another without any real intermix- 

 ture of peoples. I do not wish to imply that such religious institutions can pass 

 from people to people with the ease of material objects, but 'to point out that 

 there is evidence that they can and do so pass with very little, if any, admixture of 

 peoples or of the deeper and more fundamental elements of the culture. Much 

 more important is language, and if you will think over the actual conditions 

 when one people either visit or settle among another, this greater importance 

 will be obvious. Let us imagine a party of Melanesians visiting a Polynesian 

 island, staying there for a few weeks and then returning home (and here I 

 am not taking a fictitious occurrence but one which really happens). We can 

 readily understand that the visitors may take with them their betel mixture 

 and thereby introduce the custom of betel-chewing into a new home ; we can 

 readily understand that they may introduce an ornament to be worn in the 

 nose and another to be worn on the chest ; that tales that they tell will be 

 remembered, and dances they perform will be imitated. A few Melanesian 

 words may pass into the language of the Polynesian island, especially as names 

 for the objects or processes which the strangers have introduced, but it is incre- 

 dible that the strangers should thus in a short visit produce any extensive change 

 in the vocabulary and still more that they should modify the structure of the 

 language. Such changes can never be the result of mere contact or transient 

 settlement, but must always indicate a far more deeply seated and fundamental 

 process of blending of peoples and cultures. 



Few will perhaps hesitate to accept this position, but I expect my next pro- 

 position to meet with more scepticism, and yet I believe it to be widely, though 

 not universally, true. 12 This proposition is that the social structure, the frame- 

 work of society, is still more fundamentally important and still less easily- 

 changed except as the result of the intimate blending of peoples, and for that 

 reason furnishes by far the firmest foundation on which to base the process of 

 analysis of culture] I cannot hope to establish the truth of this proposition in 

 the course of a brief address, and I propose to draw your attention to one line- 

 of evidence only. 



12 There are definite exceptions in Melanesia ; place? where the social structure- 

 has been transformed, though the ancient language persists. 



