192 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



character of all that he poured forth with such astounding speed and 

 profusion during the closing years O'f Ris life. And above all we mourn 

 a teacher who was not merely a man ol science devoted to abstract 

 problems, but who realised the value of and took a keen delight in 

 applying the knowledge gained in his special subject tO' more real and 

 living problems of a. more' concrete, practical, everyday character. 

 Rivers 's careful methods of investigating cutaneous sensibility and the 

 rationale of his successful treatment of tlie psychoneuroses were directly 

 due to his psychological training. So, too, his epoch-making discoveries 

 and his views in the field of anthropology on the spread and conflict of 

 cultures were largely due to the application of that training. Shortly J 

 before his death he was developing, as a. committee member of the 

 Industrial Fatigue Research Board, an intense interest in that youngest 

 application of psychology, viz., to the improvement of human conditions 

 in industrial and commercial work by the methods of experimental 

 psychology applied to fatigue study, motion study, and vocational 

 selection. 



Unhappily, men of such wide sympathies and understanding as 

 Rivers, combined with a devotion to scientific work, are rare. He 

 himself recognised that ' specialisation has ... in recent years reached 

 such a pitch that it has become a serious evil. There is even a 

 tendency,' he rightly said, ' to regard with suspicion one who betrays 

 the possession of knowledge or attainments outside a. narrow circle of 

 interests' (Brit. J. of PsycJwl., vol. x., p. 184). Let his Hfe, his 

 wisdom, his wide interests, sympathies and attainments, and the 

 generosity and honesty of his character, be an example to us in the 

 common object of our meeting — the Advancement of Science. 



