"Farther south, from Paraná to Rio Grande, immigration has resulted in the settlement of a very different population: a small peasant democracy, composed of Poles, Germans and Venetians. Being proprietors, they are firmly rooted to the soil. Just as the influx of Italians to San Paolo was not a spontaneous movement, but the work of the Paulista administration, so the German and Polish colonization of the south was evoked and subsidized by the Government of Brazil and the interested provinces. The newcomers were sent into regions hitherto unpopulated, where commercial communications could not be established and economic vitality was unknown. There they lived abandoned to themselves, without neighbours, without customers. The political and artificial origin of these colonies condemned them to isolation; isolation kept them faithful to their national customs and languages, which they would soon have abandoned under other circumstances."[26] * * * * * It is seen that the Brazilian has a strong leaning towards the exercise of the intellectual gifts of mankind. They are philosophical. The love of scientific and learned titles is strong. The doctorate--of laws, literature, medicine, science--has been a coveted distinction, indeed has been carried out to become a weakness or failing, a passion, as among all Latin American communities. At one time the ambition of every family capable of affording a superior education to its sons was that the boy should be a priest. That passed, and then he was to be a doctor, in one of the professions, and, moreover, to marry the daughter of a neighbour who was also a member of the learned class. Nearly all professions, it is to be recollected, in the Latin communities carry the doctorate with them. Nearly all statesmen are doctors--when they are not military men, and then the sword is apt to oust the diploma! [Illustration: A COLONY, RIO GRANDE. Vol. II. To face p. 132.] Now Brazil--and the same has taken place in Chile--has abolished the doctorate as being "undemocratic," has abolished the universities and all their ceremonies and the cap and gown, regarding them as too aristocratic-seeming, and, in their place, a simple certificate of knowledge is given from the "professional school." This may seem destructive, but perhaps there is a measure of wisdom in it, for apart from a measure of danger in too marked social distinctions, the system tended among the youth of the country towards too great an aspiration for academic honours, and not enough towards the more practical and productive walks of life.