TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 821 



life? We may despotically force a bald and senseless imitation of our ways on 

 another people, but we shall only destroy their life without implanting any vitality 

 in its place. No change is legitimate or beneficial to the real character of a people 

 except what flows from conviction and the natural growth of the mind. And if 

 the imposition of a foreign system is injurious, how miserable is the forcing of a 

 system such as ours, which is the most complex, unnatural, and artificial that has 

 been known ; a system developed in a cold country, amid one of the hardest, least 

 sympathetic, and most self-denying and calculating of all peoples of the world. 

 Such a system, the product of such extreme conditions, we attempt to force on the 

 least developed races, and expect from them an implicit subservience to our illogical 

 law and our inconsistent morality. The result is death; we make a dead-house 

 and call it civilisation. Scarcely a single race can bear the contact and the burden. 

 And then we talk complacently about the mysterious decay of savages before white 

 men. 



Yet some people believe that a handful of men who have been mutilated into 

 -conformity with civilised ideals are better worth having than a race of sturdy inde- 

 pendent beings. Let us hear what becomes of the unhappy products of our notions. 

 On the Andaman Islands an orphanage, or training school, was started and more 

 than forty children were reclaimed from savagery, or torn from a healthy and 

 vigorous life. These were the results. ' Of all the girls two only have continued 

 in the Settlement, the other survivors having long since resumed, the customs of 

 their jungle homes. . . . Physically speaking, training has a deteriorating eifect, 

 for of all the children who have passed through the orphanage, probably not more 

 "than ten are alive at the present time, while of those that have been married, two 

 or three only have become parents, and of their children not one has been reared,' ^ 

 Such is the result of our attempts on a race of low but perfect civilisation, whom 

 "we eradicate in trying to improve them. 



Let us turn now to our attempts on a higher race, the degenerated and Arabised 

 •descendants of a great people, the Egyptians. Here there is much ability to work 

 on, and also a good standard of comfort and morality, conformable to our notions. 

 Tet the planting of another civilisation is scarcely to be borne by them. The 

 Europeanised Egyptian is in most cases the mere blotting paper of civilisation, 

 iibsorbing what is most superficial and undesirable. The overlaying of a French 

 ■or English layer on a native mind produces only a hybrid intellect, from which 

 Tio natural growth or fertility can be expected. Far the more promising intellects 

 are those trained by intelligent native teachers, where as much as can be safely 

 tissimilated has grown naturally as a development of the native mind. 



Yet some will say why not plant all we can ? what can be the harm of raising 

 the intellect in some cases if we cannot do it in all ? The harm is that you manu- 

 facture idiots. Some of the peasantry are taught to read and write, and the result 

 ■of this burden which their 5'athers bore not is that they become fools. I cannot 

 ■say this too plainly : an Egyptian who has had reading and writing thrust on him 

 is, in every case that I have met with, half-witted, silly, or incapable of taking care 

 •of himself. His intellect and his health have been undermined and crippled by the 

 forcing of education. With the Copt this is quite different : his fathers have been 

 .scribes for thousands of years, and his capacity is far greater, so that he can receive 

 much more without deterioration. Observation of these people leads to the view that 

 the average man cannot receive much more knowledge than his immediate ancestors. 

 .'Perhaps a quarter or a tenth more of ideas can be safely put into each generation 

 -without deterioration of mind or body ; but, at the best, growth of the mind can in 

 the average man be but by fractional increments in each generation, and any large 

 increase will surely be deleterious to the average mind, always remembering that 

 there are exceptions both higher and lower. Such a result is only what is to be 

 ■expected when we consider that the brain is the part of man which develops and 

 •changes as races reach a higher level, while the body remains practically constant 

 through ages. To expect the brain to make sudden changes of ability would be aa 

 reasonable as to expect a cart-horse to breed racers, or a greyhound to tend sheep. 



' E. H. Man, • On the Andaman Islands,' Anthroj). Jour., xiv. 2G5. 



