248 Address of John L. LeConte. 
entirely different kind of information from that which we gain 
from the physical sciences; everything there depends on accu- 
rate ag een with strict logical consequences derived there- 
from. Here the basis of our knowledge depends equally on 
accurate and trained observation, but the logic is not formal 
but perceptiv 
This has Mids already thoroughly recognized by Huxley* 
and Helmholtz,t and others, but we may properly extend the 
inquiry into the nature and powers of this sesthetic perception 
somewhat further. For it is to this fundamental difference 
between ena it physical sciences that I will especially 
ons Pel attenti 
John Lubbock, quoting from Oldfield,§ mentions that 
ears Australians ‘“ were quite unable to realize the most 
vivid artistic representations. On being shown a picture of 
one of themselves, one said it was a ship, another a kangaroo, 
not one ina im identifying the portrait as having any con- 
nection with elf. 
These fee ee being: therefore, with brains very similar to 
our own, and, as is he some persons, potentially capable 
of similar cultivation with ourselves, were unable to recognize 
the outlines of even such familiar sr objets as the features of 
their own race. Was there any fault in the drawing of the 
artist? Probably not. Or in the eye of the savage? Cer- 
tainly not, for that is an uptical instrument of tolerably simple 
structure, ‘which cannot fail to form on the retina an accurate 
image of ‘the object to which it is directed. Where then is the 
— It is the want of Capacity: of the brain of the indi- 
* Sates cancion is the smallest group to which tive and invariable char- 
be assigned.”—Principles and Methods a o Plpobliny Smithsonian 
Report 13 1869, 378. 
5 aes I do not mean to deny that in many branches es of these sciences, an intuitive 
perception of analogies and a certain artistic tact play a conspicu 
natural history * * * it is left entirely to this tact, without a seers, pacsoarned 
rule, to determine what characteristics of species are important or unimportan' 
for purposes of classification, and Brie divisions of the animal or rectal 
kingdom are more natural than others.”—-Relation of the Physical Sciences 
Totenoe ta Ch Casta: Smiths. Report, 1871, 277, 
ee Pitermgentrsnl Aa 
On the Aborigines of Australia, Trans. Ethnological Soc., New series, vol. iii. 
3 
