PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 615 
this head are to be examined, in the first place, the expression of the emotions to 
the eye by physical movements and conditions, and téen by gestures, signs and 
signals, before we vome to language, which is primarily expressed by the voice 
to the ear, and secondarily to the eye in a more elaborate form by the graphic 
arts—pictures, marks and writing. Man further tries to express his emotions 
by what are known as the Fine Arts; that is by modifying the material articles 
which he contrives for his livelihood in a manner that makes them represent to 
him something beyond their economic use—makes them pleasant, representative 
or symbolical—leading him on to draw, paint, enamel, engrave, carve, and mould, 
In purely mental efforts this striving to satisfy the artistic or ssthetic sense 
takes the form of stories, proverbs, riddles, songs, and music. Dancing, drama, 
games, tricks and amusements are other manifestations of the same effort, 
combining in these cases the movements of the body with those of the mind in 
expressing the emotions. 
The mental processes necessary for the expression of his emotions have 
induced man to extend his powers of mind in directions now included in the 
term ‘ Abstract Reasoning.’ This has led him to express the results of his 
reasoning by such terms as reckoning and measurement, and to fix standards for 
comparison in such immaterial but all essential matters as enumeration, distance, 
surface, capacity, weight, time, value and exchange. These last enable him to 
reach the idea of money, which is the measurement of value by means of tokens, 
and represents perhaps the highest economic development of the reasoning 
powers common to nearly all mankind. 
The mental capacities of man have so far been considered only in relation to 
the expression of the emotions and of the results of abstract reasoning; but they 
have served him also to develop other results and expressions equally important, 
which have arisen out of observation of his surroundings, and have given birth 
to the Natural Sciences: astronomy, meteorology, geography, topography and 
natural history. And further they have enabled him to memorise all these 
things by means of records, which in their highest form have brought about what 
is known to all of us as history, the bugbear of impulsive and shallow thinkers, 
but the very backbone of all solid opinion. 
The last and most complex development of the mental processes, dependent 
upon all the others according to the degree to which they themselves have been 
developed in any given variety of mankind, is, and has always been, present in 
every race or group on record from the remotest to the most recent time in some 
form or other and in a high degree. Groups of men observe the phenomena 
exhibited by themselves or their environment, and account for them according 
to their mental capacity as modified by their heredity. Man’s bare abstract 
reasoning, following on his observation of such phenomena, is his philosophy, 
but his inherited emotions influence his reasoning to an almost controlling extent 
and induce his religion, which is thus his philosophy or explanation of natural 
phenomena as effected by his hereditary emotions, producing that most 
wonderful of all human phenomena, his belief. In the conditions, belief, faith, 
and religion must and do vary with race, period and environment. 
Consequent on the belief, present or past, of any given variety of mankind, 
there follow religious practices (customs as they are usually called) based thereon, 
and described commonly in terms that are familiar to all, but are nevertheless by 
no means even yet clearly defined: theology, heathenism, fetishism, animism, 
totemism, magic, superstition, with soul, ghost, and spirit, and so on, as regards 
mental concepts; worship, ritual, prayer, sanctity, sacrifice, taboo, etc., as 
regards custom and practice. 
Thus have the anthropologists, as I understand them, shown that they desire 
to answer the question as to what their science is, and to explain the main 
points in the subject of which they strive to obtain and impart accurate know- 
ledge based on scientific inquiry: that is, on an inquiry methodically conducted 
on lines which experience has shown them will lead to the minimum of error in 
observation and record. 
I trust I have been clear in my explanation of the anthropologists’ case, 
though in the time at my disposal I have been unable to do more than indicate 
the subjects they study, and have been obliged to exercise restraint and to 
employ condensation of statement to the utmost extent that even a long 
experience in exposition enables one to achieve. Briefly, the science of anthro- 
