22 THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 



nor an ape : neither one nor the other, that was what the mind 

 of each person at once acknowledged." 



We might quote whole pages from this naturalist philosopher 

 in which the elevation of his style strives with the grandeur of 

 his ideas. " I never used my self-love," he says, " in bringing 

 forward other opinions against those of the visitors to the 

 orang-outang ... I never drove back the torrent of information 

 which I had the happiness of receiving from each separate 

 mind. ... I have faith in the soundness of popular opinions, 

 the masses rejoicing in an instinctive good sense which makes 

 them clear-headed, and renders them peculiarly able to seize 

 the salient point of any question." This was an excellent 

 method, and showed the power of Etienne Geoffroy Saint- 

 Hilaire. 



It is curious to compare with him another writer who, from 

 within his study, invoked upon these questions, at least, that 

 which we may call universal acquiescence, it is Maupertuis. 

 Speaking of the characteristics which make man different from 

 animals, he says, " Simple good sense seizes these differences ; 

 they have always been felt, and there we behold one of those 

 convictions which the universality and uniformity of all men 

 characterise as the truth."* 



Maupertuis did not certainly know that the orang-outang, 

 a word which means wild-man, -r-\$ no metaphor for the inhabit- 

 ants of the Indian Archipelago, and that in the country inhabited 

 by the " long-nosed" Guenon,f the popular belief is that, being 

 sharper than the others, he only keeps silent in order to pre- 

 serve his liberty. Nothing can be more fallacious than these 

 pretended truths, sustained merely by universal acquiescence. 

 At first it was invoked as a proof, at a time when scarcely one- 

 tenth of the inhabited world was known : J but let us proceed. 

 In our own day, we know a little better what to make of this 

 kind of proof, which science has abandoned to theologians. Ex- 

 perience has proved, day by day, what will become of this pre- 



* Essai Philosophique sur I'dme des betes, 1728, p. 132. 



f [Guenon, the Simia nasalis of Buffon. EDITOR.] 



j Plato, Leges, x, 1. See Maury, Religions, vol. iii, p. 4, note 2. 



