6 INTRODUCTION. 



ancestors must have travelled very fast, so as not to have 

 become acquainted with anybody else ! * 



And let no one say that it is obsolete matter to treat of 

 science. Orthodox physics and chemistry are indeed no myths. 

 M. Marcel de Serres, who has also occupied himself with 

 anthropology, speaking of the discussions which have been 

 raised between the partisans of emission and those of luminous 

 undulation, adds, that this latter theory has more chances of 

 being exact, " because the facts related by the legislator of the 

 Hebrews seem to him to be more favourable to truth." f 

 The Congregation of the Index, judging Galileo, reasoned in 

 the same way.J We arrive thus at once at the proscription of 

 certain inquiries, and we ask ourselves, How two men, so 

 eminent as Humboldt and Bonpland, could have approved 

 of such lines as the following ? " The general question of the 

 first origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond tho 

 limits prescribed to history, perhaps it may not be even a 

 philosophical question." It is true that the work in which 

 this singular declaration is to be found is dedicated to his 

 Catholic Majesty Charles IV. 



Thanks to these fatal influences, thanks to the interdicts 

 with which some would have desired to stifle the natural 

 history of mankind, as if they were afraid of seeing the spark, 

 which should accomplish the ruin of the past, disappear with 

 the full light; thanks to all these obstacles, anthropology was 

 for a long time thrown into the background. 



It is in America where we behold it reinstated in its rank, 

 in that country of every kind of liberty. It is there that our 

 old continent ought to go in order to find masters who have 

 known how to enter into scientific pursuits with this free and 



* Kaempfer, Histoire Naturelle, etc., du Japon, Lahaye, 1729, vol. i, p. 75. 



f Marcel de Serres, De I' Unite de VEspece Humaine : Bib. Univ. de Geneve, 

 new series, vol. liv, 1844, p. 145. 



J " The doctrine attributed to Copernicus," said the declaration made by 

 the Pope, and published by the Holy Office, " that the earth moves round the 

 sun, and that the sun remains motionless in the centre of the world without 

 moving either to the east or to the west, is contrary to Holy Scripture, and 

 consequently, can neither be professed nor defended/' Biot, La verite sur le 

 Proces de Galilee, in the Journal des Savants, July 1858, p. 401. 



Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, vol. ii, p. 79. 



