THE STUDY OF MAN. 



ADDRESS TO SECTION H (ANTHROPOLOGY) BY 



H. J. E. PEAKE, 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



In all sciences there comes a time when it is well to pause and toi take 

 stock of our labours, to consider our position and to focus our attention 

 upon our ultimate goal. Such a time seems to have arrived in the 

 study of Anthropology, and, though it would have been better that the 

 agent had been one with more right to speak for the science, this 

 occasion seems not unfitting for the purpose. 



During the last ten or twelve years a change has been creeping 

 over the science, and the outlook has altered. Twelve years ago^ anthro- 

 pologists in this country, with scarcely an exception, were devoting their 

 energies to tracing out the evolution of customs, institutions, and 

 material culture, assuming in all cases that, where similarities were 

 found in different parts of the world, they were due tO' independent 

 origins and development. It was assumed that the workings of the 

 human mind were everywhere similar, and that, given similar con- 

 ditions, similar customs and culture would originate and develop on 

 the same lines. The evolution of civihsation was looked upon as a 

 single line of advance, conditioned by the unalterable nature of the 

 human mind, and it was supposed that barbarian and savage cultures 

 were but forms of arrested development, and indicated vei-y closely past 

 stages in tlie history of civilised communities. 



But during the last twelve years a fresh school of thought has come 

 into prominence. According to this new view discoveries are made 

 but once, and when resemblances are found between the cultures of 

 different communities, even though widely separated, this is due to 

 some connection between them, however indirect. According to the 

 new school of thought the development of civilisation has been proi- 

 ceeding by many different paths, in response to as many types of 

 environment, but these various advances have frequently met, and 

 from the clash of two cultures has arisen another, often different, more 

 complex and usually more highly developed than either of its parents. 



The old school looked upon the advance of culture as a single high- 

 way, along which different groups had been wandering at varying paces, 

 so that, while some had traversed long distances, otliers had progi-essed 

 but a short way. The new school, on the other hand, conceives of 

 each group as traversing its own jaarticular way, but that the paths 

 frequently meet, cross or coalesce, and that where the greatest number 

 of paths have joined, there the pace has been quickest. 



The older school, basing its views of the development of civilisation 

 upon the doctrine of Evolution, has called itself the Evolutionary School. 



