2 INTRODUCTION. 



If science has shone with a bright light in the East, this 

 was due solely to the introduction of a more human philosophy, 

 born among another race, and conveyed there by the works of 

 Aristotle and the neo-Platonists. The East was inspired for 

 an instant with these foreign doctrines, which it would have 

 been incapable of originating itself. It revived for a century 

 or two under their influence, but soon everything reverted to 

 a former state of order ; having shone in the barbarism of a 

 pure theism, whence it would never have come out without the 

 contact of a world extrinsic and superior to certain considera- 

 tions, without the momentary education which it had thus 

 received from it. 



All the sciences are not in the same intimate relation with 

 the texts called revealed ; the mathesiological order is that in 

 which the sciences have had, and could have, the least to suffer 

 from religious influence ; in the first place, mathematics, which, 

 from their nature, would never have known how to yield ; and, 

 lastly, geology and anthropology, allied by intimate relations to 

 the Divine tradition of the first chapter of Genesis. But see how 

 geology, which we thought for so long a time was in agreement 

 with it, grows more distant every day as new discoveries are 

 multiplied. The pretended epochs see, day by day, that their 

 artificial limits are disappearing, now that one finds reptiles in 

 coal-fields and mammalia in Trias. 



Anthropology in France seems, at last, to desire to free 

 itself from the shameful yoke which has for so long paralysed 

 its flight. In its turn it claims independence. But, we 

 would declare this, that the principle of authority, defeated on 

 so many points, has concentrated its highest efforts behind 

 this last rampart, calling to its aid the pretence of morality 

 and propriety. The question of the unity or the plurality of 

 the human race, so far as relates to species, is only a scientific 



who was without the slightest knowledge of this part of scientific informa- 

 tion. He replied by telling me the history of the cow who throws the earth 

 from one horn to the other, saying, that this was written, and therefore, such 

 a belief ought to suffice him. 



[With this opinion may be compared the doctrine of the Muyscas or Chib- 

 chas of New Granada, who consider that the earth is supported by Chibcha- 

 cuni, their deity, on pillars of guiacum-wood, and that earthquakes are pro- 

 duced by his shifting the burden from one shoulder to the other. EDITOR.] 



