360 ELAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
same nature, impede the development of his intel- 
lectual faculties. 
** After what I have just stated as to the results 
in man of a slight exercise of the organ by which he 
thinks, we shall no longer be astonished to see that 
in the nations which have come to be the most dis- 
tinguished, because there is among them a small 
number of men who have been able, by observation 
and reflection, to create or advance the higher sci- 
ences, the multitude in these same nations have not 
been for all that exempted from the most absurd 
errors, and have not the less always been the dupe 
of impostors and victims of their prejudices. 
Ouch yis, an tact, tue watality attached. to athe 
destiny of man that, with the exception of a small 
number of individuals who live under favorable 
though special circumstances, the multitude, forced 
to continually busy itself with providing for its 
needs, remains permanently deprived of the knowl- 
edge which it should acquire; in general, exercises 
to avery slight extent the organ of its intelligence; 
preserves and propagates a multitude of prejudices 
which enslave it, and cannot be as happy as those 
who, guiding it, are themselves guided by reason 
and justice. 
‘* As to the animals, besides the fact that they in 
descending order have the brain less developed, they 
are otherwise proportionally more limited in the 
means of exercising and of varying their intellectual 
processes. They each exercise them only on a single 
or on some special points, on which they become 
more or less expert according to their species. And 
while their degree of organization remains the same 
and the nature of their needs (desozus) does not vary, 
they can never extend the scope of their intelli- 
gence, nor apply it to other objects than to those 
which are related to their ordinary needs. 
‘‘Some among them, whose structure is a little 
