360 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



same nature, impede the development of his intel- 

 lectual faculties. 



■' After what I have just stated as to the results 

 in man of a slight exercise of the organ by which he 

 thinks, we shall no longer be astonished to see that 

 in the nations which have come to be the most dis- 

 tinguished, because there is among them a small 

 number of men who have been able, by observation 

 and reflection, to create or advance the higher sci- 

 ences, the multitude in these same nations have not 

 been for all that exempted from the most absurd 

 errors, and have not the less always been the dupe 

 of impostors and victims of their prejudices. 



" Such is, in fact, the fatality attached to the 

 destiny of man that, with the exception of a small 

 number of individuals who live under favorable 

 though special circumstances, the multitude, forced 

 to continually busy itself with providing for its 

 needs, remains permanently deprived of the knowl- 

 edge which it should acquire; in general, exercises 

 to a very slight extent the organ of its intelligence; 

 preserves and propagates a multitude of prejudices 

 which enslave it, and cannot be as happy as those 

 who, guiding it, are themselves guided by reason 

 and justice. 



" As to the animals, besides the fact that they in 

 descending order have the brain less developed, they 

 are otherwise proportionally more limited in the 

 means of exercising and of varying their intellectual 

 processes. They each exercise them only on a single 

 or on some special points, on which they become 

 more or less expert according to their species. And 

 while their degree of organization remains the same 

 and the nature of their needs (besoins) does not vary, 

 they can never extend the scope of their intelli- 

 gence, nor apply it to other objects than to those 

 which are related to their ordinary needs. 



" Some among them, whose structure is a little 



