THE INFLUENCE OF THE LATE W. H. R. RIVERS 



(PRESIDEirr ELECT OF SECTION J) 



ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 

 IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



ADDRESS TO SECTION J (PSYCHOLOGY) BY 



0HABI.:ES S. MYEES, C.B.E., M.A., M.D., Sc.D., F.E.S., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



A MOURNFUL gloom has been cast over the proceedings of our newly 

 born Section. Since its inauguration twelve months ago this Section,, 

 as, indeed, Psycliology in general, has suffered an irreparable loss 

 through the sudden death, on June 4 last, of him who was to have 

 presided here to-day. When, only a few weeks ago, it fell to me, as 

 one of his first pupils, to occupy Elvers "s place, I could think of little 

 else than of him to whom I have owed so much for nearly thirty years 

 of intimate friendship and invaluable advice; and I felt that it would 

 be impossible for me then to prepare a Presidential Address to this 

 Section on any other subject than on his life's work in psychology. 



William Halse Eivers Elvers was born on March 12, 1864, at Luton, 

 near Chatham, the eldest son of the Eev. H. F. Eivers, M.A., formerly 

 of Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards vicar of St. Faith's, 

 Maidstone, and of Elizabeth, his w'ife, nee Hunt. Many of his father's- 

 family had been officers in the Navy — a fact responsible, doubtless, for 

 Eivers 's love of sea voyages. The father of his paternal gTandfather, 

 Lieutenant W. T. Eivers, E.N., was that brave Lieutenant W'illiam 

 Eivers, E.N., who as a, midshipman in the Victory at Trafalgar was 

 severely wounded in the mouth and had his left leg shot away at the 

 very beginning of the action, in defence oi Nelson or in trying tO' 

 avenge the latter's mortal wound. So at least runs the family tradi- 

 tion ; also according to which Nelson's last words to his surgeon were : 

 'Take care of young Eivers.' A maternal uncle of Eivers was Dr. 

 James Hunt, who in 1863 founded and was the first President of the 

 Anthropological Society, a precursor of the Eoyal Anthropological 

 Institute, and from 1863 to 1866 at the meetings of this Association 

 strove to obtain that recognition for anthropology as a distinct Sub- 

 section or Section which was successfully won for Psychology by his 

 nephew, who presided over us at the Bournemouth meeting in 1919, 

 when we were merely a Sub-section of Physiology. 



Our ' young Eivers ' gave his first lecture at the age of twelve, at a 

 debating society of his father's pupils. Its subject was 'Monkeys.' 

 He w^as educated first at a preparatory school at Brighton, and from 



