We might quote whole pages from this naturalist philosopher in which the elevation of his style strives with the grandeur of his ideas. “I never used my self-love,” he says, “in bringing forward other opinions against those of the visitors to the orang-outang ... I never drove back the torrent of information which I had the happiness of receiving from each separate mind.... I have faith in the soundness of popular opinions, the masses rejoicing in an instinctive good sense which makes them clear-headed, and renders them peculiarly able to seize the salient point of any question.” This was an excellent method, and showed the power of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
It is curious to compare with him another writer who, from within his study, invoked upon these questions, at least, that which we may call universal acquiescence,—it is Maupertuis. Speaking of the characteristics which make man different from animals, he says, “Simple good sense seizes these differences; they have always been felt, and there we behold one of those convictions which the universality and uniformity of all men characterise as the truth.”[50]
Maupertuis did not certainly know that the orang-outang,—a word which means wild-man,—is no metaphor for the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago, and that in the country inhabited by the “long-nosed” Guenon,[51] the popular belief is that, being sharper than the others, he only keeps silent in order to preserve his liberty. Nothing can be more fallacious than these pretended truths, sustained merely by universal acquiescence. At first it was invoked as a proof, at a time when scarcely one-tenth of the inhabited world was known:[52] but let us proceed. In our own day, we know a little better what to make of this kind of proof, which science has abandoned to theologians. Experience has proved, day by day, what will become of this pretended universality among mankind, of certain thoughts, certain sentiments, and certain aspirations.[53]
We shall see, farther on, that the community of some of those intellectual manifestations, which many have wished to regard as general, is often restricted to one race alone amongst mankind, and limited in space by the boundaries of the continent occupied by this race. And now we see how anthropology in her turn, can, in all these points, assist even philosophy itself. For example, do we not feel that, from henceforward, the words beautiful and right can mean nothing absolute; since whatever is beautiful and right upon a hemisphere, for any given intelligence, cannot be so in an opposite hemisphere,—cannot possibly be so in a mind otherwise formed and belonging to another race. To these two words we must, by means of anthropology, restore an exclusively relative value.[54] The True alone is absolute, unchangeable in both time and space. That alone reigns universally, and let us not forget this, it flourishes in science alone,—it is only to be found there.[55]
CHAPTER II.
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY.
On one occasion, two monkeys were brought into the presence of the orang described by Grant, about which we spoke in the last chapter. They were led by a chain up to the animal, and were threatened with a stick. “During the whole interview,” says our informant, “the grave commanding attitude and bearing of the orang, compared to the levity and apparent sense of inferiority of the monkeys, was very striking, and it was impossible not to feel that he was a creature of a much more elevated order and capacity.”[56]
“The animal from Sumatra is neither a man nor an ape,” said the crowd before the orang at the Museum. The communications which were then made to the Institute by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire may be, one of these days, a new triumph for him, the forerunner of a science which is not yet in existence,—the study of intellect in animals, based upon observation and experience; as for instance, in the passage where he proposes to submit the orang to a methodical education, in order to study the modifications which would be caused by such an alteration of method.[57] He who has discovered organic unity, will have placed us in the way of a discovery not less important, that of psychological unity.[58] A new science, which would only date from the time of the reaction against Cartesian ideas,—a science still without a name, merely touched upon even by great minds which have the inestimable privilege of understanding everything; it has never been studied,—never thoroughly investigated,—never submitted to all our means of information.[59] We should call it Comparative Psychology.
We should, then, re-enter into one great Unity. The intellect of vertebrate animals would be identical, as their organism is identical; thus gradually descending, passing through the orang, from man himself to all the mammalia. It may be said that these propositions are not yet proved,—at least it will be allowed, seeing what has passed during a very few years, that the last word has not yet been said concerning the intellect of animals.