

72 INTELLECTUAL AND 



his future state, and his eventual freedom. The Buddhist has 

 no acquaintance whatsoever with a God, and, quite given up 

 to his own heroic sorrows and sympathies, he has never cast 

 his eyes so far or so high." And the author adds the follow- 

 ing lines, which have a direct bearing on anthropology, and 

 which are like the sum of all we have just brought forward : 

 ' ' The human mind has scarcely been observed but in the races 

 to which we ourselves belong. These races deserve, certainly, 

 a high place in our studies ; but if they are the most import- 

 ant, they do not stand alone. Ought not the others to be 

 noticed, although they are said to be so inferior ? If they do not 

 enter into the hastily drawn outline, must they be disfigured 

 by submitting them to over-strict theories ? Is it not a better 

 plan to acknowledge that old systems are faulty, and that they 

 are not comprehensive enough in everything which they under- 

 take to explain ?* 



The question of intellectual differences, like, indeed, all the 

 other points in anthropological study, has largely exercised 

 the inventive genius of monogenists, for it must be owned 

 that all the efforts of imagination proceed from them. It is 

 not more difficult to admit the development of one or twenty 

 human species upon our planet, than the development of a 

 single moss or sea- weed; they are phenomena of the same 

 order, and equally beyond the actual limits of our knowledge; 

 but this first step taken, anthropology opens itself to the poly- 

 genist as simple and easy ; he follows, without any trouble, all 

 phenomena, from cause to effect, everything enters into one 

 general order, everything is marvellously simple, in spite of 

 apparent complication. It is not the same with the mono- 

 genist; ruled continually by his theory, he goes on almost 

 painfully, and at every step some new obstacle is raised to 

 impede his progress. If he thinks he has conquered physical 

 differences, psychological varieties start up; then will arise 

 families of different tongues, quite as radically distinct and as 

 difficult to explain ; and yet it is in vain that the obstacle seems 



* Bartheleiny Saint-Hilaire, Bouddha et sa Religion, chapter upon the 

 Nirvana," 1862. 



