L'education et la transformation d'une race inférieure par un peuple civilisé doivent-elles se faire par ‘assimilation’ ou par ‘adaptation’ ? Le probleme n'est pas nouveau, mais il devient d'autant plus complexe, plus délicat, et même plus irritant qu'il se fait plus universel. II ne se pose pas de la même facon dans toutes les parties du monde. En Asie, par exemple, les civilisations indigènes, mises en face des civilisations étrangères, prétendent bien ne pas leur être inférieures, et là même où l'on accepte de l'Europe ou de l'Amérique, avec le plus d'avidité, les perfectionnements matériels, l'on réagit aussi le plus violemment contre tout ce qui amoindrirait ou compromettrait l'idéal traditionnel.

I am starting from the question: is there any specific task for the Institute so that it shall not duplicate the work of scientific societies or political and educational organizations already existing? The Institute stands in the first place for the practical application of scientific knowledge. It can reach on the one hand various Colonial interests in their practical activities, while at the same time it has at its disposal the knowledge of theoretically trained specialists.

The comparative philology of former times mainly occupied itself with the collection of such words in different languages as showed some similarity in sound, and even this phenomenon was not thought worthy of too much attention. It was not before the beginning of the nineteenth century that the scientific importance of the problems here involved were recognized, and it was seen that they called for thorough and exact investigation. First of all, the differences in structure that exist between the various European languages were examined more closely than had been done before, and those languages that were seen to possess a number of characteristics in common were then brought together into one group, which was called the Indo-European family of languages. Next, another group was found, namely that of the Semitic languages, the relationship to each other of which had been recognized long before on account of the greater uniformity in grammar and vocabulary. Indo-European and Semitic were then both classed together by virtue of their being ‘inflecting’ languages, that is to say, they change words not by means of endings only, but also through vowel change within the stem, and have grammatical gender.

Tucked away in a salient on the eastern borders of Iboland lies a small portion of land, the home of those who, for many centuries, were the acknowledged leaders of the tribe, to whose oracle litigants resorted as to a final Court of Appeal, and who, by their organizing genius and trading ability, obtained charge of all the important trade routes, and of the greater portion of the middleman's profits accruing from the barter of European goods, and, one must add, from slave traffic. Not thirty years have yet passed since the British expedition of 1901–2, by its destruction of the Aro Long Juju, dealt the blow which has led to a great loss of Arochukuan prestige.