PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
The Psychology of Culture-Contact.
Sir Edward Tylor and Sir Laurence Gomme, two original members of this Society, have lately passed away. Both were master minds; and it would ill become me to venture to institute any comparison between them in respect of their intellectual calibre or the value of their work. If the one was perhaps more widely known to the world, his writings having been translated into many tongues, the other was at any rate more intimately known to us, seeing that he had the best of titles to rank as our founder or co-founder.[1]
Nevertheless, it will be legitimate, and also not without profit at the present time, to compare them in respect of their theoretic interests and methods of research. I would try to prove that wisdom is justified of all her children, though interests be diverse and methods many. We must avoid narrowness of view. There is ever, for instance, a tendency at work among us to magnify some partial aspect of a subject at the expense of the rest. Or, again, it is a common and natural fallacy to suppose that we are initiating fundamental changes in the way of scientific procedure when we are but following up the clues provided by the
- ↑ Gomme himself speaks of W. J. Thoms as "founder" (Folk-Lore, iii. 3), and Sir E. Brabrook repeats this, while calling Gomme "co-founder" (Folk-Lore, xiii. 12, 13); but Thoms himself seems to disclaim the honour (Folk-Lore Record, i. xiii). Thoms was, however, first "director," Gomme succeeding him in the office.
