so, the true explanation of the difference between human and brute mental development is to be found, not in any difference in capability of development, but in the fact of the operation of the mental powers being enlarged in man by the addition of a spiritual principle which the lower animals have not. The origin of all mental action is to be traced to certain intuitions which reside in, and may be said to be the life of, the soul. It is their working which is seen in instinct, and to dependence on them the operation of the simple reason of the lower animals owes all its perfection. Those intuitions are all-powerful in brute action; indeed, so much so, that, while they are the great living principles of action, the animal may be said to be merely the instrument by which they work. In man those intuitions are equally influential, and he is, up to a certain period of his life, equally their instrument. As man gains experience, however, he loses his dependence on the intuitions of instinct for the guidance of his conduct, and with the exercise of reflection he gradually arrives at the knowledge of certain principles of truth, on which are founded all the superstructures of his philosophy. But those principles of truth are in reality nothing but the very intuitions which had in infancy guided his hand, now made his own, and become the instruments by which he works for the extension of his knowledge.

We sce, then, in man two spiritual principles; one in which the principles or intuitions of truth reside, and the other that which searches out those principles and makes them its own. The first, that which the lower animals possess equally with man, and which is the seat of the will, is the soul. The second, that which man alone possesses, is the spirit-the seat of that reflection, or higher reason, to the operation of which on the sensations conveyed through the several sensuous organs man's physical science is owing. There are two objections to this theory of a dual spiritual nature, which I must shortly consider. The first, the philological one, is plausible, but, in reality, of no force. It is that the two words, "soul" and "spirit" (the only two names which can be used to denote the two spiritual principles I have named) are both of the same meaning, literally denoting "air" or "breath". It has been said that "soul is coincident with halitus, breath, derived from halare, to breathe, a root familiar in the words exhale, inhale, and itself only an enlarged form of the earlier word aëō or áō, a beautiful onomatopoeia, expressive in its long, open, vowels of the very act which it designates"; and that "spirit takes us to the very origin of words, resting on the beautiful lisp or whisper with which the breezes quiver the leaves." That may

be quite true; but it is a remarkable fact that in most languages, and probably in all the older ones, there are two such words, having the same ultimate meaning, and yet used as though intended to express different ideas.

As little conclusive is the objection that we cannot imagine more than one kind of spiritual essence, and that, therefore, the idea of a dual spiritual nature in man cannot be true. Such belief is the result, not of reasoning, but of mere prejudice, which, if contrary to fact, must be got rid of as quickly as possible. We know nothing of spirit in its essence, nor what may be the modes of its development. If, therefore, we find certain facts, which cannot be explained without the supposition of there being more than one of such modes, or even spiritual essences, we are bound to receive that supposition as a fact, throwing on one side all our prejudices, whether they are connected with religious belief, or arise from defective scientific education.

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL

SOCIETY

OF

PARIS.*

THE two last livraisons of the Bulletins of the Anthropological Society of Paris are now before us, and are fully equal in scientific interest to any of the previous publications which have emanated from the same source. The lucid and comprehensive exposition of the past labours of the Paris Society, with which M. Broca favoured us, and which was published in the last number of the Anthropological Review, has placed our readers entirely au courant with the past labours of the French Society; and it will be the future task of the editors of the Anthropological Review to give periodical abstracts of the summarized conclusions which are arrived at in the Quarterly Bulletins of the Paris Society.

Enjoying the high privileges of the presidency in 1863 of M. de Quatrefages, with M. Gratiolet as vice-president, M. Broca as general secretary, and MM. Trélat and Dally as annual secretaries, the Society is as efficiently represented as it was during the years when the

*Bulletins de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris. Vol. iv. First and Second Fasciculas-January to May, 1863.

presidential chair was filled by MM. Martin Magron, Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Béclard, and Boudin; and the fact that more than two hundred members are at present enrolled in its books, renders the future prosperity of the Society, so long as it shall continue to be superintended under efficient management, a question of certain success. The interest which the French nation has long taken in sound anthropology, would augur well for the success of the science in that country; and we regret that England has been so tardy in the establishment of an Anthropological Society.

The remarkable work by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, on the Quiché Language of Central America, forms the subject of an able report by M. Pruner Bey. The analysis which he makes of this work is of the most lucid character; and those who have had the patience, or the sorrow, to wade through the tedious and turgid platitudes with which the abbé has filled his work, will feel a pleasure in reading the nine terse pages in which M. Pruner Bey has compressed the few known facts respecting the Quichés. M. Pruner Bey concluded his abstract of the abbé's generalizations by stating that he had examined in the galleries of the Museum twelve skulls of Quiché Indians of Vera Cruz, and that he discovered in them characters slightly different from those ordinarily assigned to the American cranium; thus, while the Mexican skull is brachycephalic, the skulls of the Guatemalan aborigines exhibited a type intermediate between dolicho- and brachycephaly. In a philological sense, while the languages of Mexico and of the North American nations are polysynthetic, the Quiché, Maya, and the language of Yucatan are analytic; in the Quiché an idea can only be expressed by a periphrasis, which in the Aztec is conveyed in one word. The Quiché drama which M. Brasseur publishes, was gathered from the tradition of the natives, and written in European characters shortly after the period of the Conquistadores.

M. Pruner Bey also contributes a valuable report on the climate of Egypt, on which Dr. Schnepf has recently published a work. Both these learned authorities agree that the influence of cold and wet on foreigners in hot climates is much more visible than in our latitudes. Dr. Schnepf describes, on the banks of Lake Menzaleh, the existence of a variety of men entirely distinct from the Arabs; and he controverts the opinion of M. Mariette, who considers them descendants of the Hyksos. Dr. Schnepf states that the Hyksos were strangers in Egypt; and the most minute researches do not enable us to find in this country a single foreign family who have prospered and have propagated for many generations. He concludes that the Hyksos,

whether they were Shemites or not, do not appear to have escaped this law, any more than the modern Greeks and Turks. As regards the Jews, Dr. Schnepf denies the cosmopolitism; and alleging that, amongst the Egyptian Jews of the present day, not one can trace back their descent to the fifth generation, he condemns the Jews to the same destiny as the other immigrants into Egypt-that of extinction. M. Pruner Bey denies these propositions; and to his able report on the subject we must refer for the arguments which he brings forward. Chile, although its zoological and botanical forms of life have been long studied with success, has many points of interest yet unascertained in its anthropology. A commission, consisting of MM. Béclard and Rameau, with M. Pruner Bey as reporter, has drawn up a series of interrogatories. Taking the Chileno population in 1854 as 1,340,000 souls, of which 20,000 are foreigners, the population being comprised under Europeans born in the country, and Mestizos. There are some mulattos, but no negroes; whilst only 10,000 pure Indians still survive. The committee put a series of the most searching questions respecting the physical characters of the Araucaños, and contrast the frequently divergent statements of D'Orbigny, Dumoutier and Blanchard, Domeyko, Molina, Smith, and Parish. No author states whether the Araucaños are prognathous or orthognathous; and the committee state that no artificial deformation of the skull appears to have existed amongst the Chilenos. As regards the religious ideas of the Araucaños, no general proposition appears to be laid down; while it is admitted that they believe in a future life, that their Paradise is placed in the west, and that they believe in a good and an evil principle. As regards the Mestizos, their females appear less fertile than the Spaniards, and their greatest vice is drunkenness. All the classes of society include Mestizos, and the race has produced generals and other dignitaries. The committee do not correlate this fact with the form of government adopted in Chile. The reading of this series of instructions produced an animated debate on the questions relative to the colour of the skin, which were alluded to in the report. MM. Pruner Bey, Quatrefages, Dally, Trélat, Sanson, Bertillon, D'Omalius D'Halloy, and others joined in the discussion, which ultimately centered in the question of the "fundamental antithesis" of anthropology -monogeny or polygeny. We shall intentionally pass over the discussion in the present stage of the question, while we express our admiration for the manner in which the contending parties marshalled their arguments.

M. Pruner Bey contributes an entirely original and highly valuable

memoir on the hair as a characteristic of human race, examined by microscopical researches. The paper is of great length; it will eventually appear in the Memoirs of the Society. He has compared together transverse sections of the hair of twenty-four great races of mankind; and he also describes the hair of various regions of the body, and on the head of the anthropoid and other apes. He arranges them in a scale, one pole of which is represented by the Papuas, the Boschismen, and the Negroes, with flattened felted hair; the other pole being represented by the Polynesians, Malays, Siamese, Japanese, Túranians, and the Americans, not excepting the Esquimaux; all these types having rounded, smooth, straight hair. The Aryan races are intermediate between these two extremes. The Basques differ from the Aryan stock as much in their hair as by their language. One single hair, when it presents the average form characteristic of the race, can be assigned to its proper ethnic signification. Mixed breeds are recognizable by the fusion and juxtaposition of the characters inherent in the hair of their parents. We have no doubt that this memoir, when all the facts are laid before the scientific public, will prove of the most lasting service to anthropologists, as enabling them to bring to bear microscopical analysis on the question of ethnic distinction.

M. de Mantegazza sends an amusing memoir on the comparative physiognomy of the human races, from which many curious extracts may be made. The Negroes have the neck shorter than any race; the Jews shorter than the Russians. The knee is very low in the Russians. The Esthonians have the largest feet; Negroes have longest, Jews shortest arms. Russians have smallest, Lettons largest hands. Russians have greatest, Tshuvashes smallest feet. M. Mantegazza describes the tibia of the Gaucho, which is curved by long riding, and his great toe, which is separated from the others by reason of the small stirrups they use. The inhabitants of St. Kilda, M. Mantegazza asserts, have the same conformation, which they have acquired by the free use of the great toe, which they employ in climbing the cliffs to obtain the seafowl on which they feed. M. Jouvencel hinted that it would be very interesting to know whether there was any trace of heredity in these deformations. M. Gratiolet remarked that M. Mantegazza's labour was rather an amusing history of the customs, fashions, and caprices of the people which he observed, and had no direct connection with human physiognomy; to which the learned Italian author had given a signification different from that which was generally accepted.