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 

 witli 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 



