458 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H 



Section H.— ANTHROrOLOGY. 



PRERinEKT OF THE SECTION : K. Pi. MaRETT, B.Sc. 



The President, rleliverefl tlie following A<lclress on Friday, September S : — 



AntJtropology and UiiiversHij Edncation. 



Had Fate been more kindly, we of this Section woidd to-day have been listening 

 to a Presidential Address delivered by Sir Laurence Gonime. Thus, on meeting 

 together, our first thought is about the gap in the ranks of science caused by 

 his death. He studied and enriched Anthropology chiefly on the .side of folk- 

 lore, having been in no small part responsible for the foundation and subsequent 

 development of the well-known society that devotes itself to this branch of 

 the subject. As one who is officially connected with the society in question, 

 I am under a special obligation to honour his memory. If its researches have 

 all along been conducted on strictly scientific lines, if it be not unworthy to 

 take its place by the side of the Royal Anthropological Institute as a body 

 of co-workers and co-helpers who participate in precisely the same intellectual 

 ideals (and a proof of such a recognised community of aim is to be found in 

 the fact that most of us are proud to be members of both organisations alike), 

 the credit is largely due to Sir Laurence Gomme, to Lady Gomme who shared 

 in his labours to such good purpose, and to those many personal friends of 

 his who, kindled and kindling by mutual give and take, inspir&d each other 

 to cultivate Anthropology in the form in which it lies nearest to our doors. 

 A busy Londoner, if ever there was one, and, what is more, a Londoner loving 

 and almost worshipping his London, Sir Laurence Gomme yet managed to 

 cultivate the sense of the primitive, and, amid the dusty ways of the modern 

 city, could himself repair, and could likewise lead others, to fresh and quiet 

 spots where one may still overtake the breath of the morning. 



I shall not attempt now to deal in detail with his diverse contributions to 

 science. They have become classical, forming by this time part and parcel 

 of our common apparatus of ideas. But it may be in point here to suggest 

 eome considerations of a general nature touching his enlightened conception 

 of anthropological method. In the first place, he would never suffer Anthro- 

 pology to be thrust into a corner as a mere sub-section of History. On the 

 contrary, he perceived clearly that History in the sense of the "history of 

 European civilisation is but a sub-section of the universal history of man, in 

 other words, of Anthropology ; which is just such a history of rmiversal man 

 conceived and executed in the spirit of science. Perhaps the folklorist is in a 

 better position to appreciate the continuity of human history than his anthropo- 

 logical colleague, the student of backward races. For it is constantly borne 

 in upon him how the civilised man is only a savage evolved ; whereas how the 

 actual savage is ever to be civilised is, alas ! usually not so evident. Moreover, 

 Sir Laurence Gomme's interests lay chiefly among such problems as pertaiii 



