388 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 874 



sessing the practise of decorating their 

 objects with human, animal or plant de- 

 signs, while the art of the other is based 

 on the use of geometrical forms. The 

 transitions which have been taken to be 

 evidence of independent processes of evolu- 

 tion based on psychological tendencies com- 

 mon to mankind are by the modern Ger- 

 man school ascribed to the mixture of 

 cultures and of peoples. Further, similar 

 patterns, even one so simple as the spiral, 

 when found in widely separated regions of 

 the earth, are held to have been due to the 

 influence of one and the same culture. 



I have chosen this example because it 

 ■ illustrates the immense divergence in 

 thought and method between the two 

 schools, but the diiJerence runs through 

 the whole range of the subject. In every 

 case where British anthropologists see evo- 

 lution, either in the forms of material ob- 

 jects or in social and religious institutions, 

 the modern German school sees only the 

 evidence of mixture of cultures, either with 

 or without an accompanying mixture of 

 the races to which these cultures belonged. 

 It will, I think, be evident that this dif- 

 ference of attitude of British and German 

 workers is one of fundamental and vital 

 importance. When we find the chief work- 

 ers of two nations thus approaching their 

 subject from two radically different, and it 

 would seem incompatible, standpoints, it is 

 evident that there must be something very 

 wrong, and it has seemed to me that I can 

 not better use the opportunity given to me 

 by the present occasion than in devoting 

 my address to this subject. 



The situation is one which has an espe- 

 cial interest for me in that I have been led 

 quite independently to much the same gen- 

 eral position as that of the German school 

 by the results of my own work in Oceania 

 with the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition. 

 With no knowledge of the work of this 



school I was led by my facts to see how 

 much, in the past, I had myself ignored 

 considerations arising from racial mixture 

 and the blending of cultures, and it will 

 perhaps interest you if I sketch briefly the 

 history of my own conversion. 



Much of my time in Oceania was devoted 

 to survey work, in which I collected espe- 

 cially the systems of relationship of every 

 place I visited, together with such other 

 facts concerning social organization as I 

 was able to gather. I began my theoretical 

 study by a comparison of the various forms 

 of these systems of relationship, disregard- 

 ing at first the linguistic nature of the 

 terms. From the study of these systems I 

 was able to demonstrate the existence, either 

 in the present or the past, of a number of 

 extraordinary and anomalous forms of 

 marriage, such as marriage with the 

 daughter's daughter and with the wife of 

 the father's father," all of which become 

 explicable if there once existed widely 

 throughout Melanesia a state which is 

 known as the dual organization of society 

 with matrilineal descent accompanied by a 

 condition of dominance of the old men 

 which enabled them to monopolize all the 

 young women of the community. Taking 

 this as my starting-point, I was then able 

 to trace out a consistent and definite 

 scheme of the history of marriage in Mela- 

 nesia from a condition in which persons 

 normally and naturally married certain 

 relatives to one in which wives are pur- 

 chased with whom no relationship whatever 

 can be traced, and I was able to fit many 

 other features of the social structure of 

 Melanesia into this scheme. So far my 

 work was of a purely evolutionary char- 

 acter, and only served to strengthen me in 

 my previous standpoint. 



I then turned my attention to the lin- 

 guistic side of the systems of relationship, 



° These terms are used in the classifieatory sense. 



