598 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. | 
and how such ideas—even those which seem childishly simple and obvious to us— 
were treasured as priceless possessions and handed on from tribe to tribe, what 
becomes of the current theories of independent evolution of customs and culture ’ 
What room is there for hypotheses of ‘similar workings of the human mind 
leading to the development of similar inventions’? Really original ideas were 
far too rare in the youth, and in fact also in the full flush of adult age, of man- 
kind, for us seriously to consider the possibility that merely similar circumstances 
would tend to call forth similar ideas. This brings us back to the place from 
which we started. ‘The very essence of intelligence is the uncertainty of the 
response it gives to ‘similar circumstances’; the blind forces of environment 
working in two organisms may lead to similar results, but who can predict the 
final issue when intelligence interferes ? 
The modern problems of anthropology that we have to solve, those which 
relate to Man and his inventions since the time of his world-wide distribution 
and differentiation into distinct races, are not so much questions of independent 
evolution, but rather those concerning the migrations, the intermixtures and the 
hlendings of different races and cultures. The hypothesis of the ‘fundamental 
similarity of the working of the human mind’ is no more potent to explain the 
identity of customs in widely different parts of the world, the distribution of 
megalithic monuments, or the first appearance of metals in America, than it is to 
destroy our belief that one man, and one only, originally conceived the idea of 
the mechanical use to which steam could be applied, or that the electric battery 
was not independently evolved in each of the countries where it is now in use. 
In these discursive remarks I have attempted to deal with old problems in 
the light of newly-acquired evidence; to emphasise the undoubted fact that the 
evolution of the Primates and the emergence of the distinctively human type of 
intelligence are to be explained primarily by a steady growth and specialisation 
of certain parts of the brain; that such a development could have occurred only 
in the Mammalia, because they are the only plastic class of animals with a true 
organ of intelligence; that an arboreal mode of life started Man’s ancestors on 
the way to pre-eminence, for it gave them the agility, and the specialisation of 
the higher parts of the brain incidental to such a life gave them the seeing eye, 
and in course of time also the understanding ear; and that all the rest followed 
in the train of this high development of vision working on a brain which 
controlled ever-increasingly agile limbs. 
If I have made these general principles clear, however clumsily set forth, 
and with whatever crudities of psychological statement they may be marred, I 
shall feel that I have not laboured in vain. 
The following Papers were then read :-— 
1. The Disappearance of Useful Arts.* 
By W.-H. R. Rivers, M.D., F.R.S. 
In many parts of Oceania there is evidence that objects so useful as the canoe, 
pottery, and the bow and arrow have once been present in places where they are 
now unknown or exist only in degenerate form. It is often impossible to find 
adequate motives for this loss in such obvious factors as lack of raw material or 
unsuitability to a new environment. Social factors not at once obvious, and even 
magical or religious beliefs and practices, have to be brought in to explain the 
loss. 
The limitation of the manufacture of useful objects to small bodies of crafts- 
men liable to be destroyed through disease or war has probably been an important 
factor, but this alone would not have been sufficient if the religious character of 
the craft had not prevented other members of the community from following it 
when the craftsmen disappeared. 
Some of the widely accepted theories of anthropology depend on the assump- 
tion that useful arts would never be allowed to lapse. This assumption, which 
rests on the application of our utilitarian standards of conduct to cultures widely 
1 Published in full in Festschrift Tilldgnad Edvard Westermarck. Helsing- 
fors, 1912, pp. 109-130. 
