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TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H.—PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
Section H.—ANTHROPOLOGY. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SEcTION.—ProFEssor G. Exuiot Smiru, M.A., 
M.D., F.RB.S. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
In a recent address Lord Morley referred to ‘evolution’ as ‘the most overworked 
word in all the language of the day’; nevertheless, he was constrained to admit 
that, even when discussing such a theme as history and modern politics, ‘ we 
cannot do without it.’ But to us in this Section, concerned as we are with the 
problems of man’s nature and the gradual emergence of human structure, 
customs, and institutions, the facts of evolution form the very fabric the threads 
of which we are endeavouring to disentangle ; and in such studies ideas of evolu- 
tion find more obvious expression than most of us can detect in modern politics. 
In such circumstances we are peculiarly liable to the risk of ‘overworking’ not 
only the word evolution, but also the application of the idea of evolution to the 
material of our investigations. 
My predecessor in the office of President of this Section last year uttered a 
protest against the tendency, to which British anthropologists of the present 
generation seem to be peculiarly prone, to read evolutionary ideas into many events 
in Man’s history and the spread of his knowledge and culture in which careful 
investigation can detect no indubitable trace of any such influences having been 
at work. 
I need offer no apology for repeating and emphasising some of the points 
brought forward in Dr. Rivers’ deeply instructive Address; for his lucid and 
convincing account of the circumstances that had compelled him to change his 
attitude toward the main problems of the history of human society in Melanesia 
first brought home to me the fact, which I had not clearly realised until then, 
that in my own experience, working in a very different domain of anthropology 
on the opposite side of the world, I had passed through phases precisely analogous 
to those described so graphically by Dr. Rivers. He told us that in his first 
attempts to trace out ‘the evolution of custom and institution’ he started from 
the assumption that ‘where similarities are found in different parts of the 
world they are due to independent origin and development, which in turn is 
ascribed to the fundamental similarity of the workings of the human mind all 
over the world, so that, given similar conditions, similar customs and institutions 
will come into existence and develop on the same lines.’ But as he. became more 
familiar with the materials of his research he found that such an attitude would 
not admit of an adequate explanation of the facts, and he was forced to confess 
that he ‘ had ignored considerations arising from racial mixture and the blending 
of cultures.’ 
I recall these statements to your recollection now, not merely for the purpose 
of emphasising the far-reaching significance of an Address which is certain to be 
looked back upon as one of the most distinctive and influential utterances from 
this presidential chair; nor yet with the object of telling you how, in the course 
