219 



2. Mental Capacity. 



The mental capacity of these aborigines is not in any way 

 equal to their physical development. Indolence and laziness are 

 their greatest faults, and the cause of many others. This is due 

 partly to the poverty of their country, which, by causing tillage 

 of the soil to be an impossibility, forces the natives to depend 

 upon the wild and precarious life of the chase. Rightly a German 

 proverb says, "Fishing and bird-catching spoil many a fine 

 youth." Such hunting and rambling about in the bush kills all 

 mental activity, and lowers man to the level of the beasts. These 

 aborigines have mental capacities, but they are lying dormant. 

 It is only necessary to develop these, and to show them the use 

 and advantage of so doing, but, unfortunately, there is nothing on 

 which they can exercise their talents. What advantage can it be 

 for a youth to learn if he has no prospect of obtaining a position 

 corresponding to his attainments ? No, he must remain as he was ! 

 Must not this produce indifference 1 One finds, therefore, their 

 talents weakly developed because unused throughout their life. 

 To reflection they are quite unaccustomed. To train them to 

 reflect, or to habituate them to think, requires a great deal of 

 trouble. This we have especially experienced in our linguistic 

 labors and in the literary work now in hand. The concrete is 

 comparatively easy to them, but as soon as the abstract is 

 touched upon it is impossible to keep their attention even with 

 the greatest patience and effort, for they deviate in all directions. 

 Asked for the reasons of their social and religious customs, their 

 final reply is " Wara'^ — i.e., "Our habit; nothing else." To such 

 habit their whole rites have been degraded, so that they them- 

 selves do not know rightly why they do it, and are incapable of 

 explaining. This is also the reason of the difficulty of discovering 

 their motives, and caused the investigation of their social regula- 

 tion in respect of their Eight-class system to be so troublesome. 

 Information can only be obtained by accumulating many examples 

 from their actual life, and then directing their attention to them. 

 For sucli mental work tliey have no inclination, and would much 

 rather do some hard bodily work. They take the greatest pleasure 

 in riding horses. It is rather difficult for them to comprehend 

 arithmetic, yet we have advanced several scholars so far that they 

 can do the four rules of arithmetic without error, an indication 

 that they are capable of some mental culture. 



In their own language they can count to four only, viz.. One, 

 ninta ; two, tera ; three, tera ma ninta ; four, tera ma tera. 

 After these they have urhutja, some ; njara and hnira, many ; 

 and finally, kniraiijara or hyarakrdra, very many. The number 

 of their own fingers they cannot count accurately, and they have 

 quite a different idea of numbers and things to ourselves. If 



