The influence of the late W.H.R. Rivers (President elect of Section J) on the development of psychology in Great Britain : address / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
[1922?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence of the late W.H.R. Rivers (President elect of Section J) on the development of psychology in Great Britain : address / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/16
    SECTION J.—PSYCHOLOGY. THE INFLUENCE OF THE LATE W. H. R. RIVERS (PRESIDENT ELECT OF SECTION J) ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN. ADDRESS BY CHAELES S. MYEES, C.B.E., M.A., M.D., Sc.D., F.B.S., PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. A mournful gloom has been cast over the proceedings of our newly born Section. Since its inauguration twelve months ago this Section, as, indeed, Psychology in general, has suffered an irreparable loss through the sudden death, on June 4 last, of him who was to have presided here to-day. When, only a few weeks ago, it fell to me, as one of his first pupils, to occupy Eivers’s place, I could think of little else than of him to whom I have owed so much for nearly thirty years of intimate friendship and invaluable advice; and I felt that it would be impossible for me then to prepare a Presidential Address to this Section on any other subject than on his life’s work in psychology. William Halse Eivers Eivers was born on March 12, 1864, at Luton, near Chatham, the eldest son of the Eev. H. F. Eivers, M.A., formerly of Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards vicar of St. Faith’s, Maidstone, and of Elizabeth, his wife, nee Hunt. Many of his father’s family had been officers in the Navy—a fact responsible, doubtless, for Eivers’s love of sea voyages. The father of his paternal grandfather, Lieutenant W. T. Eivers, E.N., was that brave Lieutenant William Eivers, E.N., who as a midshipman in the Victory at Trafalgar, was severely wounded in the mouth and had his left leg shot away at the very beginning of the action, in defence ol Nelson or in trying to avenge the latter’s mortal wound. So> at least runs the family tradi¬ tion; also according to which Nelson’s last words to his surgeon were: ‘Take care of young Eivers.’ A maternal uncle of Eivers was Dr. James Hunt, who in 1863 founded and was the first President of the Anthropological Society, a precursor of the Eoyal Anthropological Institute, and from 1863 to 1866 at the meetings of this Association strove to obtain that recognition for anthropology as a distinct Sub¬ section or Section which was successfully won for Psychology by his nephew, who presided over us at the Bournemouth meeting in 1919, when we were merely a Sub-section of Physiology. Our ‘ young Eivers 5 gave his first lecture at the age of twelve, at a debating society of his father’s pupils. Its subject .was^l^nkeys^ He was educated first at a preparatory school at Brighton and from British association : Hull, 1922.] CHARLES MYERS LIBRARY NATIONAL INSTITUTE ?. INDUSTRIAL PSVCHQlQSr 14, VVELBECK STREET, LONDON, W.1,