Presidential Address, 2^
Mr. Lang's theory of degeneration ? Here are savages who, like children, form theories of death, of dreams, and of creation. The infancy of human life corresponds with the infancy of civilisation. As human life goes on, and as civilisation goes on, the early childish theories are shed, and theories based upon more accurate observation of facts and sounder reasonings take their place. Is this degeneration ? Surely not : it is evolution. Mr. Lang's ascription of a superior purity to the savage idea is the same as an ascrip- tion of superior purity to the ideas of a child. If the man throws them off, and adopts others less artless and more commending themselves to his reason, that is not degenera- tion. The religious systems of the Greeks and Romans were not less pure than those of the Australian savages. They were only more developed.
I am not concerned to assert, and therefore I do not assert, that this progress of which I speak is constant and regular, or, as Miss Kingsley has happily put it, " in a neat tidy line." As one of our Council says, it is rather like the tide, forwards and backwards ; but as the result is on the whole forwards, there is no room for *' the old degeneration theory " :—
" For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main."
A. n. Clough.
Turning from this subject, upon which I apologise for having detained you so long and in so controversial a manner, I ask leave to ofTer a few observations on some of the papers that have been read before the Society during the year. Mr. im Thurn's excellent paper on the Games of the Red-men of Guiana, affords further examples of the charm which attaches to " make-believe." In one of the games the players imitate the forward rolling motion of along and well-manned canoe; in another, the incidents of the
