THE HUMAN RACE 1679 



THE HUMAN RACE 



LOUIS FlGUIER 



WHAT is man? A profound thinker, Cardinal 

 de Bonald, has said: "Man is an intelligence 

 assisted by organs." We would fain adopt this defi- 

 nition, which brings into relief the true attribute of 

 man, intelligence, were it not defective in drawing 

 no sufficient distinction between man and the brute. 

 It is a fact that animals are intelligent and that their 

 intelligence is assisted by organs. But their intelli- 

 gence is infinitely inferior to that of man. It does 

 not extend beyond the necessities of attack and de- 

 fence, the power of seeking food, and a small num- 

 ber of affections or passions, whose very limited 

 scope merely extends to material wants. With man, 

 on the other hand, intelligence is of a high order, 

 although its range is limited, and it is often arrested, 

 powerless and mute, before the problems itself pro- 

 poses. In bodily formation man is an animal, he 

 lives in a material envelope, of which the structure 

 is that of the Mammalia; but he far surpasses the 

 animal in the extent of his intellectual faculties. The 

 definition of man must therefore establish this rela- 

 tion which animals bear to ourselves, and indicate, if 

 possible, the degree which separates them. For this 

 reason we shall define man : an organized, intelligent 

 being, endowed with the faculty of abstraction. 



By saying that man appeared for the first time 

 upon the globe at the commencement of the Qua- 



