The State in its essential nature is power. Its character is determined by the force with which it asserts its distinction from neighbouring states, by its dealing with the organic bonds in which the life of the people finds expression, and by its success in absorbing into and developing within its own structure the underlying spirit of those bonds. The origin of the State's consciousness of power lies at the point in the interlacing roots of tribal organization where the tension between associations based on kinship and those based on age brings about a change of balance, and leadership begins to pass to the latter, the age-class becoming a warrior class which outgrows the clan and subjects kinship-groupings to its own leaders. Once this change in leadership has taken place, that is to say, when no longer the spirit of the clan but the spirit of the age-class becomes dominant, then, by reason of the resulting tightening-up of the forces of war and of expansion, it is only a question of time before the age-class associations pass into a system of vassalage, with leaders who emerge from the age-grade system and acquire an authority more or less political in character. With the individualization of the leadership goes the differentiation of function in the State, which is first required in the organization of the army. Henceforward the tasks in the service of the State are no longer dependent on a man's place in the tribal organization, but upon accomplishments which can be learned. To acquire these forms of skill, to become proficient in their use and to obtain the advantages secured by them becomes an absorbing task which is pursued in common and given stability by associations for the purpose. This is the birth of organization. Without such organizations the State cannot take form, for they alone ensure to it the concentration of the primitive forces of the tribe for the accomplishment of the aims of the State. Thus these organized associations become agencies to develop and foster the consciousness of statehood. The tribal community consciousness which still persists in the organic tribal relationships and in their leadership systems is gradually, under the absorptive power of the new state-consciousness, forced back into the realm of mere emotion and habit and finally deprived entirely of its spiritual leadership. So that what is in reality the starting-point of man's spiritual existence, namely, his membership of an organic and tribal order of society, comes to be regarded as something purely natural and as the sphere of the instinctive preservation of the species.

Any anthropologist working in Africa at the moment is really experimenting with a new technique. Anthropological theory was evolved very largely in Oceania, where the relative isolation of small island communities provided something like ‘typical’ primitive social groups. Most of Rivers's hypotheses were based on Melanesian material, and Malinowski's functional method, the inspiration of most modern field work in all parts of the world, originated on an island off New Guinea with only 8,000 inhabitants. The anthropologist who embarks for Africa has obviously to modify and adapt the guiding principles of field work from the start. He has probably to work in a much larger and more scattered tribal area, and with a people that are increasing in numbers rather than diminishing. He has to exchange his remote island for a territory where the natives are in constant contact with other tribes and races. More important still, he has arrived at a moment of dramatic and unprecedented change in tribal history. Melanesian societies, it is true, are having to adapt themselves slowly to contact with white civilization, but most of the tribes in Africa are facing a social situation which is, in effect, a revolution. In fact, the whole picture of African society has altered more rapidly than the anthropologist's technique.

Although for reasons of a misguided economy a Native Census was not undertaken in 1931 and consequently complete statistics for the Native population of South Africa are entirely lacking, the available evidence points to a marked increase in the Native urban population. The 1921 census revealed the fact that Native women also were settling in town in much larger numbers than had previously been the case, and all indications point to a much greater increase in this section of the urban population since then. This growing inclination of the Native to settle his wife and children in the urban centre where he earns his livelihood indicates a tendency on his part to divorce himself from his rural bonds and to regard the town as his permanent home and not as the place of his solely temporary employment. The children of these families will, in all likelihood, eventually form a permanent and stable urban population, entirely dissociated from a rural background. Many of them—the potential citizens of a town—have been reared in a slum yard. Such yards represent for many Natives their first, and perhaps only, experience of a home.

Dans l'état présent de nos informations ethnographiques, deux migrations sont à considérer au Mayombe: celle des Basundi, à laquelle aurait succédé à une époque déjà plus rapprochée celle des Bakongo.

Les premiers seraient originaires de la région des Manianga. Leurs légendes non seulement parlent d'un roi Makoko qui aurait regné à Muembe-Tsundi, elles rappellent aussi que Matsundi Nzila, après avoir erré au nord de la Tshiloango, aurait conduit les émigrants Tsundi dans la partie septentrionale du Mayombe belge actuel, où il se serait établi à Nganda-Tsundi. De là certaines fractions du groupe auraient gagné la basse Lubuzi, d'autres plus nombreuses se seraient dirigées vers le sud-est de la région.

Mit dem Terminus hamitisch im sprachwissenschaftlichen Sinne bezeichnet man seit Richard Lepsius eine Reihe afrikanischer Sprachgruppen, die charakteristische Erscheinungen mit dem Semitischen teilen. Bei Lepsius fungiert das grammatische Geschlecht als Hauptkriterium, ob eine afrikanische Sprache hamitisch sei oder nicht, und diese Unterscheidung trifft in der Tat überall dort zu, wo es alle Nomina umfasst und der Begriff ‘Männlich-Weiblich’ über ‘Gross-Klein’ dominiert. Als nichthamitisch erweist sich in diesem Sinne das Masai, wo en-duηani, das Femininum von ol-tuηani, ‘Mann’, nicht das ‘Weib’, sondern den ‘kleinen Mann’ bezeichnet. Dem-gegenüber ist Leo Reinisch, dessen hohe Verdienste in einer anderen Richtung liegen, nie zu einer Erkenntnis des inneren Gegensatzes zwischen dem Hamitischen, dem Nuba und den Nilotensprachen gekommen. Die Basis der modernen Hamitenforschung bildet Carl Meinhofs Werk über Die Sprachen der Hamiten, das erstmalig eine Scheidung der Sprachenwelt des nigritischen Afrikas von den Sprachen der hellen, lockenhaarigen Afrikaner bietet; diesem Prinzip zuliebe wurde allerdings auch das Ful (von Meinhof selbst dem Urbantu nahestehend gedacht) und wegen des grammatischen Geschlechtes auch das Masai in den Kreis der Betrachtung miteinbezogen, wodurch der Rahmen als zu weit gefasst erscheint. Dieser Umstand, noch mehr aber hemmungsloses Etymologisieren von semitistisch-ägyptologischer Seite haben denn auch Carl Brockelmann veranlasst, die Existenz eines hamitischen Sprachstammes überhaupt in Frage zu stellen. Nachdem aber Ernst Zyhlarz in seiner Arbeit über ‘Ursprung und Sprachcharakter des Altägyptischen’ die Schlüsselstellung des Ägyptischen in den Vordergrund gerückt hat, sei es im folgenden versucht, eine gedrängte Darstellung der Hamitenfrage nach dem gegenwärtigen Stande zu geben.

A six-months' tour in Southern Nigeria has afforded a valuable opportunity for review of certain questions about the chief languages of this part of West Africa and for a re-statement of the problems connected with them. The main questions are:

1. With what success can one dialect be used as a literary medium?

2. Is the new orthography suggested by the Institute suitable for the purposes for which it was designed?

3. Are educated Africans interested in their own language and its development?

4. Can Europeans learn to speak these languages with any degree of accuracy ?

5. What are the present needs, and what lines should future work take?

I can here express on these points only my own views, based on the experience of my tour and my work previous and subsequent to it. The two districts with which this article is mainly concerned are the Efik and Ibo speaking areas in Southern Nigeria.

Sous l'impulsion personnelle du Gouverneur Général M. J. Brévié et avec l'aide éclairée de M. l'Inspecteur Général de l'Enseignement Charton, la Fédération Française de l'Ouest-Africain prend résolument une orientation nouvelle qui mérite d'être signalée. Un programme remontant déjà à quelques mois en fixe les grandes lignes, définissant ainsi les trois aspects du problème à résoudre.

‘Au point de vue social et administratif, il s'agit de préparer et de former, par une sélection attentive, les cadres indigènes nécessaires à la vie économique du pays, d'accroître, par une éducation appropriée, la valeur des futurs chefs indigènes et de consolider leur autorité traditionnelle.

‘Au point de vue économique, il s'agit de former des cadres économiques et la main d'œuvre qualifiée, indispensable à la bonne marche de l'économie africaine.

‘Il s'agit enfin par une action sur la masse et une orientation franchement pratique donnée à l'enseignement, de préparer les conditions sociales et psychologiques de la mise en valeur rationnelle du pays par l'indigène lui-même, de créer un enseignement populaire éducatif et pratique, qui dirige dans son cadre traditionnel le progrès de la société indigène.’