The idea of founding the Institute crystallized at a meeting of missionaries, and others, which was held at High Leigh in September 1924. Dissatisfaction with the prevailing order of things occupied the minds of all who were faced with the burning problems in Africa at that time. They were not content to allow a negative policy of drift to continue. They realized that they were confronted with one of the major problems of our age. They saw the need for an application of scientific method to a solution of the questions arising generally from the contact of Western civilization with African culture and particularly from the attempt to educate Africans on modern lines. The rapid opening of Africa to all the influences of Europeanism, they were convinced, called for an advance in the education of the peoples of Africa through the medium of their own forms of thought. The linguistic question was seen to lie at the root of the problem. The more systematic study of African languages, of their relative importance and uses, of their orthography, was deemed to be urgently necessary if the progress of education was not to be retarded, or rendered impossible, through the prevailing confusion and lack of co-operation between governments, missionary societies, and scientific experts. Such were the ideas in the minds of those who took part in that meeting nine years ago and embodied in a memorandum which they drew up. These problems had already been raised in New York after the return of Dr. Jesse Jones and Dr. Aggrey from West Africa before the departure of the Phelps Stokes Education Commission to East Africa. It seemed to us at High Leigh that the time was ripe for the setting up of an organization to carry out these ideas. We thought then modestly of ‘A Bureau of African Languages and Literature’. Probably not one of us had a prevision of whereunto the thing would grow.

It is only of late years that the Sudan Government has laid particular stress on the language side of Southern administration. Hitherto all official intercourse with the natives had been through the medium of Arabic, the official language of the North. It became apparent after a while that the form of Arabic spoken in the Southern provinces was so debased as to be hardly practical. Unlike the Northerners, whose religion and culture is Islamic and who speak Arabic in the home side by side with the local dialects, the Southern tribes are pagan, and for the most part strongly opposed to outside culture, whether Islamic or otherwise, while only those who come into contact with governing officials or Northern traders can speak the jargon which passes for Arabic in the South.

The phrase ‘the mentality of the native’ is much on the lips of those whose work brings them into contact with Africans. The need for the study of African mentality is widely recognized; and an immense body of knowledge has accrued from the labours of administrators, missionaries, anthropologists, and others. Yet those whose knowledge is deepest are the first to admit that we still know only in part and darkly. Now it may be that, to achieve a fuller and clearer knowledge of the African mind, not only more study but additional methods of study are required. The main method up till now has necessarily been observation—observation of the behaviour of Africans in natural, everyday situations; and the result of this method has been the description of such behaviour. To this method we owe almost all of our present knowledge of the mentality of the African; and it seems likely that this must for long remain the chief source of our knowledge. It is not, however, the ideal scientific method. Our knowledge could probably be extended and made in some ways more precise by the method of studying the behaviour of Africans not in natural, everyday situations but in situations experimentally arranged and controlled. This method would result not merely in description but in measurement. Results obtained in controlled situations and expressed in quantitative terms would be results precise and verifiable. This method of study is not to be adopted prematurely, before the conditions of its technique can be fulfilled. But the advance of scientific understanding will sooner or later demand some such scientific method. One such method which is already being experimented with does involve the observation of the behaviour of Africans in controlled situations and does yield quantitative results. This is the method of mental testing.

The educational work of missionary societies is a wide subject, and I propose to limit what I say to three topics: first, the quality of missionary education; secondly, missions and native society; thirdly, missions and governments.

When I was in Africa a few years ago I remarked on one occasion to a prominent official, ‘All the mistakes in native education in East Africa have been made by the missionaries.’ He looked at me in surprise at so frank an admission from a representative of missions. I added, ‘The reason is that they were the only people who could make them, since they have been the only people engaged in education.’ Throughout the greater part of Africa we are still only on the threshold of educational development. Ten years ago there were no education departments in Uganda or Nyasaland or Northern Rhodesia or the Belgian Congo or in Portuguese colonies, and those in other territories, British and non-British, were doing very little.

Under this title Mr. A. W. Cardinall has prepared a review of conditions in the Gold Coast in 1931 as compared with those of 1921, using figures and facts collected by him as Chief Census Officer, and adding an historical, ethnographical, and sociological survey of the people of that country. Accompanying the review is a volume of appendices containing comparative returns and general statistics of the 1931 census. Both books are printed by the Government Printer, Accra, and are obtainable through the Crown Agents for the Colonies.

Im folgenden gebe ich in grossen Züigen das Bild wieder, welches sich mir nach meinen Beobachtungen in den Jahten 1926–1928 und nach der Durcharbeitung der Ergebnisse von den Buschmännern Südwestafrikas bietet.

Die Besuchten Stämme: Besondere Aufmerksamkeit habe ich den Ost-!Kung ausserhalb der Polizeizone im Norden und Osten des Bezirkes Grootfontein gewidmet. Weiterhin habe ich die auf den Farmen dieses Bezirkes und des Bezirkes Outjo lebenden Hei||om und die Hei||om der Etoshapfanne studiert. Im Ambolande besuchte ich die sogenannten !Kung im westlichen Otjimpolofelde, die Daman-Buschmänner des Palmbusches östlich von Ondonga, die bantuisierten Buschleute von Eunda, Ongandjera, Uukualuthi und Ukuambi. Besondere Exkursionen führten mich zu den Nogau am mittleren Omuramba Epukiro und in die Naukluft.

Les Faŋ étaient autrefois une peuplade guerrière et cannibale, émigrant sans cesse par étapes, de l'arrière-pays de l'est du Caméroun vers le fleuve Ogooué. Seule la mer de l'estuaire du Gabon, et les contrées marécageuses du bas-fleuve les ont arrêtés. Ils sont arrivés sur le fleuve en même temps que, de la mer, montaient après 1870 les conquérants, les commerçants et les missionnaires. Les arts purement indigènes, au contact de la civilisation, ont été insensiblement anémiés, et sont, pour la plupart, en voie de disparition, pour le grand malheur des ethnographes et des amateurs d'art autochtone.

It is possible to live years m Africa before making the discovery that direct and simple phrases, apparently referable to everyday, material objects with the ordinary surface meanings of the individual words employed, may have totally unexpected values. Indeed, one may live many years in Africa and never make this discovery. Witness the view accepted by so many as to the ‘poverty’ of the African's vocabulary and its ‘incapacity to express abstract thought’. We are too much at the mercy of uninformed opinion crystallized into conventional small talk; uninformed opinion that has accepted and then transmitted through books, or through lectures, or simply through conversation, views that are false, until a body of conventional belief has formed across the surface of the true situation so smotheringly as almost to defeat every effort of the facts to get to the surface. It is like the situation produced by oil on the surface of a pool that so deprives the life within the pool of air that it dwindles and dies beneath the oily curtain. In the home and roadside talk of Africa there lies an unguessed world of meaning, just beneath the surface, waiting to be released.