STUPIDITY. 129 



often practically protests against, and shows its disgust at, 

 the awkwardness of its rider. 



We cannot properly omit at least a reference here to the 

 comparative stupidity of many and its relation to mental 

 imbecility, a subject that is discussed in the chapter that 

 treats of the mental and moral status of savages, and of 

 the idiotic, insane, deaf and dumb, and criminal classes of 

 civilised communities. Monteiro gives illustrations of the 

 ' almost hopeless stupidity of the negro ' of Western Tropical 

 Africa in regard, for instance, to the use of picks, shovels, 

 and wheelbarrows in mining for malachite. He refers this 

 incorrigible stupidity to ' retardation or arrest of development 

 of his intellect ' in other words, to mental defect ; and he 

 points out that this mental obtuseness is associated with 

 * the greatest physical insensibility.' There * is an inferior 

 physical organisation, accompanied by a corresponding 

 inferiority of mental constitution.' The negro character is 

 distinguished by c the absence of good qualities, and of feel- 

 ings and emotions that we can hardly understand or realise 

 to be wanting in human nature.' Of the Africans of British 

 Guiana Dr. Donald writes, 'Natural stupidity borders so 

 closely on imbecility, dementia, and amentia, that it is diffi- 

 cult to say where a normal state ends and an abnormal one 

 begins.' 



VOL. II. 



