506 INTELLECTUAL DEFICIENCIES. 



object is to expel the "evil spirit" which the savage supposes to be 

 the cause of all his maladies. 



The logical faculties are invariably those which in man are 

 developed the most slowly and with the greatest difficulty. But they 

 are also those which constitute the intellectual power of great nations. 

 Without Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, what had been ancient Hellas ? 

 Without Bacon, Locke, Newton, and Stuart Mill, what were modern 

 England ? Or Italy, without Galileo ? And France, without Pascal, 

 Descartes, Diderot, and Montesquieu ? And Germany, without Fichte, 

 Hegel, Kant, and Schlegel ? The savage, however, possesses these 

 faculties in a purely rudimentary condition. Analysis, synthesis, 

 abstraction, generalization, are mental achievements which they 

 cannot accomplish. They show themselves incapable, in fact, of the 

 simplest calculations, of resolving easy arithmetical problems which 

 are no mystery to the infants in our European infant-schools. Their 

 numeration never goes beyond the safe and certain limit of their ten 

 fingers ; often they cannot compute above five, three, and even two. 

 The Guarinis employ the expression "one hand" and "two hands" to 

 designate jive and ten ; other American tribes say " two men " instead 

 of forty, because each man tias twenty toes and fingers. Among most 

 of the African negroes, numeration is quinary ; it is ternary, or even 

 binary, among the Australian aborigines. The savage knows nothing 

 of art, nor of that feeling for beauty which is the essence of art. 

 If he cultivates music, it is of so discordant a character, and so incon- 

 gruous a medley of sounds, that no European can listen to it with 

 patience. The gods which they fashion out of wood or clay, and to 

 which they frequently offer human sacrifices, are of the utmost 

 hideousness ; and it is with difficulty the spectator can recognize in 

 their rude outlines any likeness, however imperfect, to the models in 

 man or beast which the sculptor has pretended to imitate. The want, 

 or rather the depravation of taste, is shown in the choice of the 

 ornaments with which they decorate their persons ; in the tatooings 

 with which they bespatter their bodies ; in the unbecoming ornaments 

 of every kind which they suspend to the nose, the lips, the ears, 



