The Aborigines of Brazil. 313 



In truth, nothing is more calculated to place in a favorable 

 point of view our enlightened investigations of nature, than 

 this deficiency of judgment, this darkening of the under- 

 standing. We too practise magic, we also in handling the 

 numberless natural powers which surround us, are magicians 

 and sorcerers. The philosopher who from a solution of sul- 

 phate of copper deposits a new copper plate on the silvered 

 model, or makes a daguerrotype picture in a second, is a 

 magician in the sense which I have just described. He 

 isolates and confines within the narrow magical circle of 

 his acquired knowledge, physical powers, whose nature is 

 unknown to him. 



But if we compare this condition of modern science with 

 that intricate combination of cunning and superstition, which 

 the medical procedures of the Indian Paje present, we are 

 struck by the strange fact, that in the history of the intellec- 

 tual progress of the civilized world, each step in advance has 

 been the consequence of a preceding one, and that we know 

 exactly how we have attained our present eminence — while it 

 is quite inexplicable, and is likely to remain so, why the 

 American population which is as old as we are, has not been 

 able to reach any degree of certainty or of clearness. 



To develop from psychological, historical and natural-histo- 

 rical grounds, how the present state of intellectual darkness 

 has been produced, and has spread over so large a portion 

 of the world, would be a most interesting, at the same 

 time a most difficult attempt. But the only lantern to guide 

 us in the inquiry, must be the conviction that the present state 

 of American gloom is a darkening of what was brighter, 

 a secondary condition. As a contribution towards the solving 

 of this interesting problem, I shall now give an account of 

 some of the more general ideas and of the imperfectly ob- 

 served facts which we find prevailing in the natural, histori- 

 cal and medical knowledge of the Indian. 



