150 SYSTEM. 



resulting as they do from diverse individual impressions. It 

 will be especially necessary to control with care travellers' 

 tales as regards the study of intellectual tendencies, since they 

 are too often influenced by their own ideas on the subject. 



Let us say this before concluding: among the a priori 

 proofs which polygenists can bring forward on their side, 

 there is one which is of some importance ; it is this, that while 

 contraiy ideas have been sustained and defended by men who 

 never go beyond their own studies, the former have been 

 generally brought forward by travellers and sailors, by those 

 indeed who have been best able to put in practice this direct 

 observation, which is generally conclusive and decisive. It is 

 these whom we find the most ready to separate mankind into 

 distinct groups, and to recognise in the inferior species a 

 manifest tendency to approach nearer the nature of the anthro- 

 pomorphous apes. A valuable source of information, from 

 which anthropologists must not neglect to borrow, are tho 

 accounts of those who landed for the first time on certain 

 islands and continents. 



If they have even conceived any erroneous ideas, it must 

 usually be acknowledged that they are most likely to be able 

 to give us a tolerably faithful portrait of the nations with whom 

 they have met, even more important in certain points of view 

 than the accounts afterwards given of them, since at that time 

 these people have not been submitted to the various influences 

 which necessarily result from contact with Europeans. 



We can study philology and craniology in the library and 

 in solitude, assisted by proper documents and sufficient mate- 

 rials, but not anthropology ; because anthropology is a science 

 still in its cradle, and observation must have furnished its 

 proper and necessary contingent before we can endeavour to 

 apply any general idea or view. But anthropology ought, more 

 especially, to disengage itself from all trammels of former 

 ideas, as well as from all pretended humanitarian tendencies. 

 It would be nonsense to believe that the advance of the truth 

 will not contribute to social progress. The searcher after it 

 can free himself in all tranquillity of mind from this kind of 

 trouble. Haller has said, in reference to this matter, "The 



