Alfred C. Haddon

“ In future those who write on decorative art will have to prove that any pattern or design is a purely arbitrary form; that assumption is no longer permissible.
We have left the lotus far behind, and though it is hard to believe that the multitudinous designs of so many ages and of such diverse countries are all derived from the sacred flower of Ancient Egypt, yet it may well be that the oldest stock was a lotus derivative, and that the symbolism of that flower gave to it sufficient vitality to spread and multiply and replenish the earth. ”

“ The phonologist should collect his evidence, arrange his classes, divide and combine as if no Blumenbach had ever looked at skulls, as if no Camper had ever measured facial angles, as if no Owen had ever examined the base of a cranium. His evidence is the evidence of language, and nothing else; this he must follow, even though in the teeth of history, physical or political.... There ought to be no compromise between ethnological and phonological science. It is only by stating the glaring contradictions between the two that truth can be elicited. [124] ”

“ If the originating artist lost something out of his own handiwork, it is no wonder that a copyist should lose more, especially when the latter may not have access to the original, but base his reproductions on copies several times removed from it. A late stage of degeneration of pictorial art, through more or less incompetent copying, is seen in the cheap lithographs which occupy, without adorning, the walls of houses of the country folk, many of which, like the analogous frescoes of Pompeii, are the pictorial echoes of the works of masters of the craft. ”

“ While the conception of the fetish as the vehicle of communication between spirit and worshipper raises fetishism to a higher plane in religious evolution, the conception of the fetish as an instrument by which the spirit acts lowers it to a stage which is not necessarily religious at all, to a stage where the fetish is often regarded merely in the light of a charm or an amulet. ”

“ There are, as Professor Myres points out, two kinds of anthropologists:—
There is an anthropologist to whom we go for our facts: the painful accurate observer of data, the storehouse of infinite detail; sometimes himself the traveller and explorer, by cunning speech or wiser silence opening the secrets of aboriginal hearts; sometimes the middleman, the broker of traveller’s winnings, insatiate after some new thing, unerring by instinct rather than by experience, to detect false coin, to disinter the pearl of great price.... ”

“ Now we are scudding along over the sea, the dirty green colour of which shows that we are above the reefs, the waves being crested by the continuously blowing south-east trade wind; the lavender-coloured sky is studded with clouds which ever belie their pluvial appearance. ”

“ Rather are we dealing with the elaborated gain of ages of scientific knowledge, with the thoughts of a people whose very temples were oriented to particular stars, or to critical points in the journey of the sun; whose representations of Art, on frieze and pediment, in tragedy and epic, were governed by what would at first appear to be a tyrannical convention, which convention, however, so far from hampering their genius, seems, under the influence of a wholesome restraint, to have moulded their art into more beautiful, more poetic, and more sanctified forms.... ”

“ In the processions round the platform of turtle trophies, the men of Mabuiag, I was informed, marched invariably sun-wise, with whirling bull-roarers. Should one inadvertently march in the counter-direction the turtle would swim away from the island.
In one dance a man advanced singly and danced with stamping feet, illustrating the putting out of a fire; in another the men continually stood on one leg and rapidly moved the other up and down, or, it may be, jumped with both legs. ”

“ I have already suggested that the isolation of a people and uniformity in their existence will tend to stagnation in art, and that intercourse with other peoples, whether by trade, war or migration, serves as a stimulus to artistic expression.
To return to our more immediate subject, consciousness of purpose has extremely little to do with human evolution, nor has it much more to say to the evolution of patterns among primitive peoples. ”

“ We walked along the coast to the village where the chief lives, and saw Captain H⸺, and I made arrangements with Koko Lifu, a South Sea man, to lighter our goods off the Governor Cairns and to take the cargo and our three comrades to Murray Island.
Captain H⸺ is one of those remarkable men one so constantly meets in out-of-the-way places. It is the common man one comes across at home. On the confines of savagery and civilisation one meets the men who have dared and suffered, [6] rugged like broken quartz, and maybe as hard too, but withal streaked with gold—ay, and good gold too. ”

“ And again: “La nature ne connait pas nos definitions; elle n’a jamais rangé ses ouvrages par tas, ni les êtres par genres.”
Nevertheless both rendered incalculable service to the science. Linnæus “found biology a chaos and left it a cosmos.” “L’anthropologie,” says Flourens, “surgit d’une grande pensée de Buffon; jusqu-là l’homme n’avait été étudié que comme individu, Buffon est le premier qui l’ait envisagé comme espèce.”
But Buffon was no believer in the permanent stability of species. “Nature is far from subjecting herself to final causes in the formation of her creatures.” ”

“ Behind early Hellenic civilisation was all the wisdom of Egypt and the East, and the first Greeks of whom we have knowledge looked upon the old Heaven and the old Earth not with the half-open, wondering eyes of wakening intelligence, but with perceptions trained in an ancient inheritance of accumulated learning. ”

“ One slide was of especial interest, as it was the photograph of a village that Gewe and others had subsequently sacked and burnt. One wonders what was passing in the mind of the warrior, as in front of him was the representation of the “before,” and in his mind’s eye he must have seen the “after.” I must say he did not look at all abashed, and why should he? He had only been following immemorial custom! Like the Torres Straits islanders and the coast Papuans, Gewe expressed wonder and admiration by a broad grin, glistening eyes, and by making various sucking and clicking noises with his lips. ”

“ It is one of the most important functions of stay-at-home synthetic students laboriously to cull data from the vast literature of anthropology, travel, and ancient and modern history, and to weld them into coherent hypotheses. The student at home in this way suggests fresh inquiries to the field ethnologist, and a richer harvest is the result. The most valuable generalisations are made, however, when the observer is at the same time a generaliser; but “doubtless,” as Maharbal said to Hannibal after the battle of Cannae, “the gods have not bestowed everything on the same man. ”

“ I suppose it is one of the best established teachings of history that the evolution of a nation has not been consciously directed by the individuals which compose it. A few men may have sought to guide the course of politics or to adjust its foreign policy; but their efforts are futile unless supported by the people themselves, and the luxuriousness of living of the majority, the laxity of their morals, or some other irresponsible factor, may entirely wreck individual effort. ”

“ Fishing is mainly practised to gain money to purchase the white man’s goods and the white man’s food. The dull and respectable uniformity of modern civilisation has gripped these poor people; but, to their credit be it spoken, they are still proud of the apotheosised Kwoiam.
Behind low-lying land were wooded hills that sent a spur forming the northern limit of the bay, and beyond this again were several low rocky islands. The pale green water fringed the bay with white surf, and beyond the limit of the fringing reef the deeper water assumed a fine blue hue. ”

“ CULTURAL CLASSIFICATION AND THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT We have seen that in its beginning the science of man was little more than a branch of zoology, and that his structural characters were the first to attract attention and to form the material of study; hence all the earlier classifications were based on physical features. Gallatin was one of the first to classify mankind rather by what they do than by what they are. ”

“ There is some reason in every ornament why it recommended itself to some particular people. We do not know what the reason was, but the difference itself is of the deepest moment.” He points out that the spirit or feeling of art may be made the measure of culture when the workman is at liberty to impose what form and lines he will upon his material. Quite recently Professor Flinders Petrie said, [213] “Art is one of the most important records of a race. Each group of mankind has its own style and favourite manner, more particularly in the decorative arts. ”

“ Behind him in the bow stands a man whose business it is to look after the rope and see that it does not get caught anywhere. Perched a short way up the foremast is the look-out man, who makes the signals; and behind are the rest of us, following with glistening eyes the movements of the dugong, and making at most a subdued whistle or the clacking sound so characteristic of these islanders.
All of a sudden the chief springs into the water, harpoon in hand, using the latter after the manner of a leaping pole, and plunging the dart into the animal. ”

“ Concerning the present use of the term “Anthropology,” few will take exception to the definition given by Topinard in his l’Anthropologie (1876) : “Anthropology is the branch of natural history which treats of man and the races of man.” It may be yet more succinctly described as “the science of man,” which comprises two main divisions—the one which deals with the natural man (ανθρωπος, or homo) ; the other which is concerned with man in relation to his fellows, or, in other words, with social man (εθνορ, or socius) . ”

“ The pleasure which people take in beauty prompts them to ornament almost everything which admits of decoration, and it is the old patterns and designs which are most frequently copied. So it comes about that these are scattered [117] with an impartial hand, and often without any regard to appropriateness. By inappropriateness I do not wish to imply that the ornament may not be suitable, but merely that it has no meaning so far as the decorated object is concerned. As a rule the decorative art of the less advanced peoples is far more appropriate [48] than that of civilised. ”

“ The fall of the power of Brunei is probably owing to causes that have hastened the fall of other empires and cities. The State was founded by a civilised and even a polished people, expert in the arts of life; but success and power became undermined by wealth, luxury, and sensuality, which destroyed the energy that created those conditions in which alone they could thrive. Strength of character sunk into aimless cruelty. ”

“ Any stage of the life-history of a biomorph, whether it is the expression of decorative or religious art, is liable to be infected by heteromorphism. The only section of graphic art which must from the nature of the case be free from it is pictorial art. Where heteromorphs are introduced into pictures they form one of the subjects of those pictures, the picture itself is not subject to this modifying influence; for example, the introduction of the representation of a sphinx or a gryphon into a picture does not constitute the latter a heteromorph. ”

“ During the numerous and prolonged dances of former days, the young women watched the active movements of the capering youths, admired their glossy skin, their frizzly hair, their numerous gay ornaments, and took delight in their wonderful activity; and well they might, for a shapely, bronze-skinned savage is a vastly superior animal to a civilised male dancing at a ball. Pre-eminence had its reward, for, as the former chief of Mabuiag put it—“In England, if a man has plenty of money, women want to marry him; so here, if a man dances well, they want him too.” ”