NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN. 531 



these inferior representatives of the human family. Tlianks to the 

 intelligence of these patient, clear-headed men, we now know that 

 these Australians, that were said to liave no idea of God, have in re- 

 ality a rudimentary mythology, which sometimes recalls our own 

 European superstitions. We now know that the Bushmen deify their 

 great men, and address prayers to them. As to the Bushmen, they 

 have a remarkable idea of the Divinity. They regard him as a great 

 chief, who resides in heaven. They say of him ; " We see him not with 

 the eyes ; we feel him in the heart." 



This last phrase, which I quote literally, was obtained by travelers 

 who lived in the midst of these people. They show that sometimes 

 the people justly placed in the lowest rank of the human races may 

 have, along with the strangest superstitions, religious notions remark- 

 ably elevated. This fact is often presented when we examine the 

 religion of different peoples. We find, it is true, much that is bizarre, 

 many strange and shocking things, but we find also behind these ab- 

 surdities ideas and beliefs which astonish us by their seriousness, by 

 their elevation, by the resemblance they offer to that which is believed 

 by more advanced people. 



The negroes of Guinea may serve to illustrate this subject. All 

 travelers have spoken of their absurd beliefs, all have spoken of their 

 fetishes. They tell us how these people prostrate themselves before 

 serpents, trees, bits of wood, bone, etc., carefully wrapped up, and on 

 which their priests have performed certain ceremonies. There are few 

 who would seek that which might be found at the bottom of all this. 

 Those who have made the search have found religious ideas, very 

 superior to these appearances ; the belief in divinities of different or- 

 ders, living in the skies, and presided over by a sovereign creator who 

 made every thing. When we look still further, as M. d'Avezac has 

 done, we find prayers conceived in terms such as a European, a Chris- 

 tian, might repeat without blushing. In the case of these negroes, as 

 in our own, we must distinguish between religion and superstition, 

 two extremely different things, which are too often confounded. I will 

 add but a few words. 



Gentlemen, I close to-day the first part of the lectures that I have 

 undertaken to give you. Let me formulate the last conclusions. 



We have asked only general questions, those which bear on the 

 entire human race, and which may consequently conduct us to the 

 foundation of the nature of man. We have asked them exclusively 

 from the point of view of natural science; we have studied man as we 

 study an animal or a plant. The result of this examination is to show 

 in man a resume of the entire creation. 



In him we find phenomena exactly parallel to those encountered in 

 minerals, in plants ; consequently, all the forces acting in minerals and 

 plants we find in man. 



By his body, from an anatomical and physical point of view, man 



