462 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 



that, if there is to be a school of Anthropology at all, it must enjoy a liberal 

 measure of self-government. 



Given, then, an independent, centrally governed school of Anthropology, must 

 it be housed within the walls of a single Institution? Such a requirement Is 

 perhaps to be regarded as a counsel of perfection ; since it may be necessary 

 to make a start, as, for instance, we had to do at Oxford, without commanding 

 the resources needful for the providing of accommodation on a suitable scale. 

 Nevertheless, to bring all the anthropological studies together within the same 

 building is, I think, highly desirable in the interests both of science and of 

 education ; and this building, I suggest, should be for choice an ethnological 

 museum, such as the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. Lacking such 

 a museum altogether, a University can scarcely aspire to teach Anthropology in 

 any form. On the other hand, for teaching purposes the museum need not be a 

 very elaborate or costly affair. I am not competent, indeed, to deal with the 

 vexed question of museum organisation, and must altogether avoid such a 

 problem as whether an ethnological collection should primarily be arranged on a 

 geographical or on a typological plan. But this much at least I would venture 

 to lay down, that it is salutary for any ethnological museum, and especially 

 for one connected with a University, to be associated with the systematic 

 teaching of Anthropology. When this happens it soon becomes plain that, in 

 order to serve educational ends, a museum should abound rather in the typical 

 than in the rare. The genuine student of Anthropology pays no heed to scarcity 

 values, but finds the illustrative matter that he needs largely in common things 

 which have no power to excite the morbid passion known as collector's mania. 

 Or, again, if both the instructor and the pupil have had a sound anthropological 

 education, they will have no use for objects torn by some ' globe-trotter ' from 

 their ethnological context and hence devoid of scientific meaning ; and yet the 

 museums of the world are full of such bric-a-brac, and in former less-enlightened 

 times have done much to encourage this senseless and almost sacrilegious kind 

 of treasure-hunting. 



Further, if all courses of anthropological instruction are held in the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of a rich store of material, osteological, archaeological, and 

 technological, no teacher can afford to treat his particular topic as one wholly 

 relative to ideas as distinct from things. I can conceive of no branch of the 

 subject, with the possible exception of linguistics, that does not stand to gain 

 by association with objects tTiat appeal to the eye and touch. There is a real 

 danger lest Anthropology on its social side be too bookish. Much may be done 

 to supplement a purely literary treatment by the use of a lantern, not to 

 mention the further possibilities of a cinematograph supported by a phonograph ; 

 and I was much struck on the occasion of a recent visit to Cambridge by the 

 copious provision in the way of slides which Professor Haddon has made for 

 lecturing purposes. Even more, however, is to be gathered from experience of 

 the things themselves, more especially if these be so arranged as to bring out 

 their functional significance to the full. Thus, however carefully we might have 

 studied the works of Sir Baldwin Spencer beforehand, those of us who had 

 the privilege two years ago of visiting the Melbourne Museum imder his guid- 

 ance must have felt that but half the truth about the Australian aborigines 

 had hitherto been revealed to us. Or, again, if our buildings and, let me add, 

 our finances were suflSciently spacious, how valuable for educational purposes it 

 would be to follow the American plan, so well exemplified in the great museums 

 of Washington, New York, and Chicago, of representing pictorially, by means 

 of life-size models furnished with the actual paraphernalia, the most charac- 

 teristic scenes of native life ! 



There are many other aspects of this side of my subject on which I could 

 enlarge, did time allow. For example, I might insist on the value of a collec- 

 tion illustrating the folklore of Europe, and that of our own country in 

 particular, as a means of quickening those powers of anthropological observation 

 which oTir students may be taught to exercise on Christians no less intensively 

 than on cannibals. But I must pass on, simply adding that, of course, such 

 an anthropological institution must be furnished with a first-rate library, 

 including a well-stocked map-room. America, by the by, can afford us many 

 useful hints as to the organisation of a library in connection with University 

 education. Thus I lately noted with admiration, not unmixed with envy, how 



