106 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MAN 



Indians (Biichner). 'In the Australian aborigines the capa- 

 bility of considering and inferring appears to be very imper- 

 fectly developed. The reasons which the colonists use in 

 order to convince or persuade them are mostly such as are 

 employed with children and half-imbeciles ' (Biichner). 

 Whether, or how far, a love of knowledge ' for its own 

 sake' exists in the lower animals cannot be determined; 

 but their thirst for knowledge, their possession of know- 

 ledge, and their intelligent application of acquired know- 

 ledge are all indubitable. 



9. The faculty of generalisation or abstraction, the power 

 of forming, or the possession of, general or abstract ideas. 

 But there are many abstract ideas that do not exist in 

 primitive man for instance, those concerning good and evil, 

 right and wrong, justice and injustice, or deity. Nor does 

 he appear to possess the faculty of generalising at all, or he 

 possesses it to a most limited extent. According to the 

 high authority of Bishop Colenso, there is little or no idea 

 of the abstract among the Kaffirs. ' The more common of 

 our abstract ideas such as spirit, soul, hope, and fear 

 appear to be absolutely wanting. But experience shows 

 that, in this respect, other negro tongues are not more 

 richly provided by nature.' The language of certain savage 

 races is so rudimentary that it contains no words to 'ex- 

 press general ideas.' ' The lowest among the Oceanians and 

 Africans .... are entirely destitute of general ideas or ab- 

 stract notions.' The language of the Australian blacks con- 

 tains no word to ' express a general idea ' or abstraction ; it 

 has no word, for instance, for the notion tree. The lan- 

 guage of many savage peoples is 'quite destitute of ex- 

 pressions for general notions or properties. . . . They have 

 a special word for each kind of colour, for each kind of 

 tree, but no general designation ' (Biichner) . The Veddas 

 of Ceylon have no word to express colour (Hartshorne) . 

 According to Dr. Ireland, there are human idiots with 

 no general or abstract ideas ; and the same may be said 

 of certain stages of infancy and childhood. It is indeed 

 instructive to compare the faculty of generalisation in 

 the human infant with the similar power, on the one 



