On the Aborigines of Brazil. 19 



nature, is wanting in him, because he never has occa- 

 sion for its use. His senses in the struggle with nature only 

 help him far enough to enable him to call out " Who's there V* 

 when he is in danger or in difficulty. They are accustom- 

 ed to work only in one direction with the instinct of an 

 animal. They are the senses of the rude man of nature 

 with few wants, who has not accustomed himself to connect 

 together even the lowest mental operations, and to educate 

 them by the power of a combining intellect. Thus his 

 senses are not instruments for higher observations. That 

 development of the senses, in which they act in unconscious 

 harmony with the mind, has not been reached by him. I 

 have often made Indians look through a microscope, to try 

 their power of vision, and how they would take up objects ; 

 but I never found that they had actually seen anything ; on 

 the contrary, they always turned away impatient and dissa- 

 tisfied.* A European does not need to be long among the 

 Indians, before he learns to value the intellectual refinement 

 of his own senses, and to know that those servants and 

 messengers of his organism, are only of high value to him, 

 when they are employed in supplying his intellectual wants, 

 in dependence on, and in mutual union with his higher 

 powers. Even the degree of development of the senses which 

 Africans and Malays have attained, is far ahead of that of 

 the red man, in spite of the cleverness and sharpness which 

 he displays in things which are necessary to him, and within 

 his own immediate sphere. 



Narrowness of Intellect, Apathy. 

 The one-sidedness, I may say the simplicity, of the ner- 

 vous system of the Brazilian aborigines, prepares us for the 

 monotony of action to which their minds are subject. The 



* Would not V. Martius find it the same, if he made the experiment with an 

 ordinary peasant ? This and the few following sections, from being translated liter- 

 ally wear a very German look.— TV. 



