5 02 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The study of all civilizations proves, in fact, that all progress 

 has been accomplished by a small number of the higher minds. 

 The mass has done nothing more than profit by the advance ; it 

 does not even like to see it extended, and the greatest thinkers or 

 inventors have often been martyrs. Yet all the generations, the 

 whole past of a race, bloom out in these fine geniuses. They do 

 not appear by chance or miracle, but represent a long synthesis. 

 To favor their birth and growth is to favor the birth of a prog- 

 ress by which all mankind will be benefited. If we should allow 

 ourselves to be blinded by our dreams of universal equality, we 

 should ourselves be the first victims of it. Equality can only 

 exist in inferiority. To bring about a reign of equality in the 

 world, it would be necessary gradually to pull all that gives value 

 to a race down to the level of what in it is lowest. It would re- 

 quire ages to raise the intellectual level of the lowest peasants 

 up to that of the genius of a Lavoisier, while a second and the 

 stroke of the guillotine is sufficient to destroy such a brain. But 

 while the part of superior men in the development of a civiliza- 

 tion is considerable, it is not quite what it is generally believed to 

 be. Their action, I repeat, consists in synthetizing all the efforts 

 of a race ; their discoveries are always the result of a long series 

 of prior discoveries; they build an edifice with stones which 

 others have previously hewn. Historians fancy they must couple 

 the name of a man with every invention ; yet, among the great 

 inventions which have transformed the world, like those of print- 

 ing, gunpowder, and electric telegraphy, there is not one of which 

 it can be said that it was created by a single man. 



Of similar character is the part which great statesmen have 

 played. They could without doubt destroy a society or disturb its 

 evolution, but it is not given to them to change its course. The 

 genius of a Cromwell or a Napoleon could not perform such a 

 task. Great conquerors might destroy cities, men, and empires 

 by sword and fire, as a child could burn a museum filled with 

 treasures of art, but this destructive power should not subject us 

 to illusions respecting the grandeur of their achievements. The 

 work of great political men is durable only when, like Csesar or 

 Richelieu, they direct their efforts according to the demands of 



result of my own researches. The reader who may be interested in the subject will find 

 them developed in the following works, or memoirs, which have been published at different 

 times : " Recherches anatomiques et mathematiques sur les Lois des Variations du Volume 

 du Crane" (couronne by the Institute and by the Anthropological Society of Paris); 

 " Etude de 42 Cranes d'Hommes celebres de la Collection du Museum de Paris " (Bulletin 

 of the Anthropological Society of Paris) ; " L'Homme et les Societes, leurs Origines et leur 

 Histoire," vol. ii ; " De Moscou aux Monts Tatras, liltude sur la Formation d'une Pace " 

 (Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Paris); " L' Anthropologic actuel et PlStude des 

 Races" ("Revue Scientifique ") ; "La Psychologie comme Element de Classification des 

 Individus et des Races" ("Revue Philosophique "). 



