498 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 



still in use unchanged. I was able to obtain a full account of the system as 

 actually used at the present time, and found it to be exactly the same as that re- 

 corded forty years ago by Morgan and Hyde, and I obtained evidence that the 

 system is still deeply interwoven with the intimate mental life of the people. 



If then social structure has this fundamental and deeply-seated character, 

 if it is the least easily changed and only changed as the result either of actual 

 blending of peoples or of the most profound political changes, the obvious infer- 

 ence is that it is with social structure that we must begin the attempt to 

 analyse culture and to ascertain how far community of culture is due to the 

 blending of peoples, how far to transmission through mere contact or transient 

 settlement. 



The considerations I have brought forward have, however, in my opinion, 

 an importance still more fundamental. If social institutions have this relatively 

 great degree of permanence, if they are so deeply seated and so closely inter- 

 woven with the deepest instincts and sentiments of a people that they can only 

 gradually suffer change, will not the study of this change give us our surest 

 criterion of what is early and what is late in any given culture, and thereby 

 furnish a guide for the analysis of culture ? Such criteria of early and late are 

 necessary if we are to arrange the cultural elements reached by our analysis In 

 order of time, and it is very doubtful whether mere geographical distribution 

 itself will ever furnish a sufficient basis for this purpose. I may remind you 

 here that before the importance of the complexity of Melanesian culture had 

 forced itself on my mind, I had already succeeded in tracing out a course for 

 the development of the structure of Melanesian society, and after the com- 

 plexity of the culture had been established, I did not find it necessary to alter 

 anything of essential importance in this scheme. I suggest, therefore, that while 

 the ethnological analysis of cultures must furnish a necessary preliminary to any 

 general evolutionary speculations, there is one element of culture which has so 

 relatively high a degree of permanence that its course of development may 

 furnish a guide to the order in time of the different elements into which it is 

 possible to analyse a given complex. 



If the development of social structure is thus to be taken as a guide to 

 assist the process of analysis, it is evident that there will be involved a logical 

 process of considerable complexity in which there will be the danger of arguing 

 in a circle. If, however, the analysis of culture is to be the primary task of the 

 anthropologist, it is evident that the logical methods of the science will attain a 

 complexity far exceeding those hitherto in vogue. I believe that the only logical 

 process which will in general be found possible will be the formulation of hypo- 

 thetical working schemes into which the facts can be fitted, and that the test 

 of such schemes will be their capacity to fit in with themselves, or as we gener- 

 ally express it, ' explain ' new facts as they come to our knowledge. This is the 

 method of other sciences which deal with conditions as complex as those of 

 human society. In many other sciences these new facts are discovered by ex- 

 periment. In our science they must be found by exploration, not only of the 

 cultures still existent in living form but also of the buried cultures of past ages. 



And here is the hopeful aspect of our subject. I believe our present store 

 of facts, at any rate on the less material sides of culture, to form but a very 

 small part of that which is yet to be obtained, and will be obtained unless we 

 very wilfully neglect our opportunities. Waiting to be collected there is a vast 

 body of knowledge by means of which to test the truth of schemes of the 

 history of mankind, not only of his migrations and settlements but of the 

 institutions and objects which have arisen at different stages of this history 

 and developed into various forms throughout the world. 



And this brings me to my concluding topic. I have tried to show that any 

 speculations concerning the history of human institutions can only have a sound 

 basis if cultures have first been analysed into their component elements, but I 

 do not wish for one moment to depreciate the importance of attempts to seek for 

 the origin and early history of human institutions. To me the analysis of cul- 

 ture is merely the means to an end which would have little interest if if; did 

 not show us the way to the proper understanding of the history of human in- 

 stitutions. The importance of the facts of ethnology in the study of civilised 

 culture is now generally recognised. You can hardly take up a modern work 



