TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H, 529 
illness was transferred to two fowls, which were then killed, and various bori 
came and entered the dancers. The patient was so much benefited that she was 
able to dance herself by midnight, and was walking about next day. 
The godiya (‘mare’) having become affected by the inhalation of incense 
gave oracles and answered the questions asked. Several spirits mounted. During 
the inhalation the priestesses rubbed the ground, and during the possession of 
the godiya they knelt and received albaraka, An‘ incantation was sung to each 
spirit on arrival by a special songstress. 
When a person is going on a journey, fowls may be sacrificed after an invoca- 
tion to the bori, and the blood flowing between the traveller’s legs brings the bori, 
who give their albaraka. By the manner in which the blood flows and by its 
appearance the success of the venture may be foretold. 
6. Culiure and Degeneration. By Professor I’. von Luscuan. 
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST’ 19. 
The following Papers were read :— 
1. Is Australian Culture Simple or Complex ? 
By Dr. W. H. BR. Rivers, F.R.S. 
The question whether Australian culture is simple or complex is one of 
great theoretical importance. If this culture does not represent a stage in, 
or an offshoot from, a direct line of social development, but is the result 
of the fusion of a number of elements which reached Australia at long 
intervals, the first step towards any sound knowledge must be the analysis 
of this culture. If such features of Australian culture as its totemism, its 
belief in the reincarnation of the dead, and its practices of mutilation are 
not independent developments, but the results of influences brought to Australia 
from elsewhere, perhaps in relatively recent times and by people whose culture 
was of a higher order than that now found in Australia, the foundation on 
which many recent anthropological speculations have been reared is swept away. 
In considering this question, the first point to be noted is that it is 
impossible to decide whether any culture is simple or complex by a study 
of that culture alone. It is only by comparison with neighbouring and allied 
cultures that the problem can be settled. The first question, therefore, which 
must be asked is whether any culture allied to that of Australia exists in its 
neighbourhood, and there can be no question that Melanesia possesses such a 
culture. Superficially the two are very different, but the more one studies 
those aspects of culture which do not lie on the surface, such as social 
structure and religion, the more apparent does the close relation between 
the two become. The complexity of Melanesian culture is evident, and the 
results of an attempt! to analyse this complexity leave little doubt that some 
of the elements which resemble those of Australia most closely have been 
brought from elsewhere or have arisen out of the interaction between the 
indigenous and immigrant peoples. 
Further, it is almost, if not quite, certain that the cultures which have 
reached Melanesia from without have come from the west, the immediate centre 
of dispersion having been the Malay Archipelago, and it is evident that the 
same influences have reached the remotest parts of Polynesia, as well as 
Madagascar. It seems hardly possible that migrant peoples setting out 
from the Malay Archipelago and reaching such remote islands as Hawaii, 
Easter Island, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and Madagascar, can have 
failed to reach and influence a vast continent which lies quite near their 
home. It is probable that the main path of movements eastward from Malaysia 
lies north of New Guinea, and Australia might thus have escaped, but even if 
it be conceded that all the movements so passed, and this is most unlikely, the 
1 Rivers, History of Melanesian Society, Cambridge, 1914. 
1914. ' M M 
