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i eee PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 625 
i 
great Portuguese conqueror, Albuquerque, for the then new Malay possessioris 
of his country, and the meaning of the numismatic plates of the great French 
traveller Tavernier in the next century. Perhaps the most interesting, and 
anthropologically the most important, discovery was the relation of the ideas 
that led up to the animal currency of the Malays to similar ideas in India, 
Central Asia, China, and Europe itself throughout all historical times. One 
wonders how many people in these isles grasp the fact that our own monetary 
scale of 960 farthings to the sovereign, and the native Malay scale of 1,280 casn 
to the dollar, are representatives of one and the same universal scale, with more 
than probably one and the same origin out of a simple method of counting 
seeds, peas, beans, shells, or other small natural constant weights. But the 
point for the present purpose is that not only will the student find that long 
practice in anthropological inquiry, and the learning resulting therefrom, will 
enable him to make similar discoveries, but also that the process of discovery is 
intensely interesting. Such discoveries, too, are of practical value. In this 
instance they have taught us much of native habits of thought and views of 
life in newly acquired possessions which no administrator there, mercantile or 
governmental, can set aside with safety. 
I must not dwell too long on this aspect of my subject, and will only add 
the following remark. lf any of my hearers will go to the Pitt-Rivers Museum 
at Oxford he will find many small collections recording the historical evolution 
of various common objects. Among them is a series showing the history of the 
tobacco pipe, commonly known to literary students in this country as the 
nargileh and to Orientalists as the hukka. At one end of the series will be 
found a hollow coconut with an artificial hole in it, and then every step in 
evolution between that and an elaborate hukka with its long, flexible, drawing- 
tube at the other end. I give this instance as I contributed the series, and I 
well remember the eagerness of the hunt in the Indian bazaars and the satisfac- 
tion on proving every step in the evolution. 
There is one aspect of life where the anthropological instinct would be more 
than useful, but to which, alas, it cannot be extended in practice. Politics, 
government, and administration are so interdependent throughout the world 
that it has always seemed to me to be a pity that the value to himself of 
following the principles of anthropology cannot be impressed on the average 
politician of any nationality. I fear it is hopeless to expect it. Were it only 
possible the extent of the consequent benefit to mankind is at present beyond 
human forecast, as then the politician could approack his work without that 
arrogance of ignorance of his fellow countrymen on all points except their 
credulity that is the bane of the ordinary types of his kind wherever found, 
with which they have always poisoned and are still poisoning their minds, 
mistaking the satisfaction of the immediate temporary interests and prejudices 
of themselves and comrades for the permanent advantage of the whole people, 
whom, in consequence, they incontinently misgovern whenever and for so long 
as their country is so undiscerning as to place them in power. 
Permit me, in conclusion, to enforce the main argument of this address by 
a personal note. It was my fortune to have been partly trained in youth at a 
University College, where the tendency was to produce men of affairs rather 
than men of the schools, and only the other day it was my privilege to hear the 
present master of the College, my own contemporary and fellow-undergraduate, 
expound the system of training still carried out there. ‘In the government of 
young men,’ he said, ‘intellect is all very well, but sympathy counts for very 
much more.” Here we have the root principle of Applied Anthropology. Here 
we have in a nutshell the full import of its teaching. ‘ke sound administration 
of the affairs of men can only be based on cultured sympathy, that sympathy 
on sure knowledge, that knowledge on competent study, that study on accurate 
inquiry, that inquiry on right method, and that method on continuous 
experience. 
A Joint Discussion with Section L on the Educational Use of Museums 
followed.—See p. 743. 
