Science is the worst nuisance and the greatest calamity of our days. It has made us into robots, into standardized interchangeable parts of an enormous mechanism; it pushes us with a relentless persistence and a terrible acceleration towards new forms of existence; it changes the world around us; it transforms our inner selves with an uncannily thoroughgoing penetration. An ever-increasing speed in communication; accessibility of superficial knowledge and meretricious art; endless opportunities in cheap and mean forms of enjoyment; leisure to do a thousand irrelevant things—these, from the side of human consumption and enjoyment, are the benefits of our modern civilization. Kept down intellectually by journalism; moving and feeling to the rhythm of jazz; united by the world-wide net of broadcasting—modern man has indefinitely to increase his passive receptivity. He has to start with a standardized level of taste and to develop an indefinitely elastic nervous system, all at the cost of originality and spontaneous life. This may be the extreme pessimistic view of ‘progress’, but many of us feel it strongly and see a menace to all real spiritual and artistic values in the aimless drive of modern mechanization.

The Institute has laid down its policy in ethnological matters in the Report of the Executive Council held in Berlin in December, 1928. The Council then came to the conclusion that ‘there was a gap between anthropological science on the one hand and the practical work of education and administration on the other, and that the Institute could render useful service by attempting to bridge this gap’.

The following resolution was passed unanimously:

It was, I presume, due to an accident of omission that religion does not appear in the list of subjects the study of which is to be encouraged. In Africa, above all ethnographic areas, religious dogma and practice lie at the very core of all aspects of culture, and no study of ‘the family, law, economics, ideas of land tenure, systems of education’ could be adequate that did not start off with an account of native belief. In giving an analysis of Ashanti religion I shall show that this is especially true of that culture.

Die Frage, ob die Kultur in Ägypten oder in Asien älter sei und welchen Weg die erste Verbindung zwischen beiden Kulturen genommen hat, ist fast so alt, wie die Beschäftigung mit den Kulturen dieser beiden Völker. Wenn hier von ‘Kultur’ die Rede ist, so ist an Ackerbaukultur zu denken d.h. an die Kultur mit Ackerbau, Viehzucht und Töpferei, jenen drei Elementen, welche noch heute die : Grundlage unserer Kultur bilden. Jene älteren Kulturen, welche als Paläolithikum und Mesolithikum bezeichnet werden, sollen in den folgenden Ausführungen ausser Acht gelassen werden. Von den obengenannten drei Elementen ist bisher vorwiegend oder fast allein das dritte, das der Töpferei, und daneben noch die übrigen Artefakte zur Beantwortung der genannten Frage herangezogen worden. Am wenigsten Beachtung ist den Haustieren hierbei geschenkt worden. Sie sollen nun der Gegenstand der folgenden Untersuchung sein. Wenn auch nicht behauptet werden kann, dass wir zur Zeit mit ihrer Hilfe die Frage restlos lösen können, so können wir doch durch sie vielleicht der Lösung näher geführt werden. Auf welche Weise das geschehen kann, und was uns die Haustierforschung lehrt, soil im Folgenden gezeigt werden.

In spite of the great and manifold differences in the development of the various countries of Africa there is a tendency to consider them all as one whether from an economic, medical, educational, or religious point of view. In all these fields the white man in Africa is an explorer and an adventurer. The establishment of the Institute is witness to this. That it should include in its purview the health habits of the African peoples is a very welcome sign. Whether cleanliness is next to Godliness or not, the demand for a comprehensive curriculum of health education for Africa is second only to the search for the principles of religious education.

So far, hygiene hardly seems to have received the place and attention it deserves in the syllabus of teaching in the native primary schools. Even without sharing the opinion of the Phelps Stokes Commission that health should be given precedence over all other subjects of instruction in African primary schools, it must be admitted that the importance of this subject can hardly be over-estimated. Hygiene covers such a wide field and is related to so many walks of life that its teaching cannot but deeply affect the development of native children.

The Institute has always placed the question of the provision of suitable text-books both in the vernacular and in the language of the European power in the different territories in the forefront of its subjects of study as being one of the most urgent needs in Africa to-day. Numerous discussions and inquiries have shown that adequate instruction in hygiene and the inculcation of simple health rules is one of the most pressing needs, and that work done in one area is often unknown in others. In consequence the Executive Council in 1929 devoted special attention to the question of what action could be taken which would assist in the solution of this problem. The general opinion was that the information at the disposal of the Institute showed the need of a survey of books in actual use. This would, it was hoped, provide material which would be useful in the preparation of model texts in which particular attention would be devoted to the method of presenting the subject to Africans. The Council decided that the survey should be divided into two parts, one of books published in English or in a vernacular used in British territories and another of books published in French or languages used in French-speaking areas, and that the information collected should form the basis of articles to be published in Africa.

At a time when so much has been said of self-determination and of the inalienable right of nations to maintain their own traditions and institutions and to build up distinct types of civilization and culture in response to the impulse of their own national spirit and genius, the importance of national and racial differences in temperament and character needs no demonstration. But the maintenance of national rights is only one aspect of the matter. It is not even its most important aspect. No one race or nation may claim that its own attainments in all branches of philosophy, art and science, can exhaust the possibilities of human accomplishment. On the contrary, it is becoming more generally recognized that each nation and race has its own special contribution to make to the intellectual and spiritual life of humanity. From this point of view, nothing would be gained by the existence of two nations identical in traditions, capacities, and temperament. The contribution of the second would merely duplicate that of the first. For the sake of peace and fellowship there is need of a general similarity in fundamentals, but the intellectual and cultural wealth of nations is derived chiefly from the development of a diversity of special gifts and aptitudes. It is to the special aptitudes and attainments of Palestine, Greece, Rome and Arabia, that the modern world owes more than can be calculated. There is also much to be learned from India and China, and who shall say that Africa has no special contribution to make to the sum of human attainment?

Il ne faut pas juger les gens sur la mine, dit le proverbe. Quand on voit les Basuto sortir de leurs pauvres habitations guère plus grosses que des fourmilières, pour aller cultiver leurs champs de maïs ou de sorgho, lorsqu'on les rencontre drapés dans leurs couvertures de laine, tantôt neuves tantôt en lambeaux, se demandant mutuellement, non pas ce qu'il y a de nouveau sous le soleil, mais dans quel village et dans quelle maison il y a de la bière à boire, il est difficile de s'imaginer que sous ces guenilles il y a souvent l'étoffe d'un vrai poête. Cependant c'est un fait connu que le génie poétique est souvent l'apanage de gens peu favorisés de la fortune. Le poète Lamartine a dit avec raison:

Le souffle inspirateur qui fait de l'âme humaine

Un instrument mélodieux

Dédaigne des palais la pompe souveraine.