44 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
the looseness in the methods of study upon which it is 
based. Whatever be your ultimate opinions on this subject, 
let them rest on facts and not on arguments, however 
plausible. This is not a question to be argued, it is one 
to be investigated. 
" As I have advanced in these talks with you, I have 
become more and more dissatisfied, feeling the difficulty 
of laying out our work without a practical familiarity 
with the objects themselves. But this is the inevitable 
position of one who is seeking the truth : till we have 
found it, we are more or less feeling our way. I am aware 
that in my lectures I have covered a far wider range of 
subjects than we can handle, even if every man do his 
very best ; if we accomplish one tenth of the work I 
have suggested, I shall be more than satisfied with the 
result of the expedition. In closing, I can hardly add 
anything to the impressive admonitions of Bishop Potter 
in his parting words to us last Sunday, for which I thank 
him in your name and my own. But I would remind 
you, that, while America has recovered her political inde- 
pendence, while we all have that confidence in our insti- 
tutions which makes us secure, that so far as we are 
true to them, doing what we do conscientiously and in 
full view of our responsibilities we shall be in the right 
path, we have not yet achieved our intellectual indepen- 
dence. There is a disposition in this country to refer 
all literary and scientific matters to European tribunals ; 
to accept a man because he has obtained the award of 
societies abroad. An American author is often better 
satisfied if he publish his book in England than at home. 
In my opinion, every man who publishes his work on the 
other side of the water deprives his country of so much 
