method which satisfied the fastidious eye of the best artists of the Italian Rennaissance."[53] Such, then, is an abbreviated account of the arts and crafts which have been discovered in a restricted part of West Africa during the last generation. Whether the results be considered large or small, it should be remembered that they represent the outcome of but a small amount of scientific investigation, only one expedition of scientific qualifications having so far operated in these parts. What the future holds or may bring forth yet remains to be seen. There has been, and still is, considerable difference of opinion regarding the origin and antiquity of the culture which these objects represent. Some hold it to be of great age and of a more or less indigenous origin, while others are of the opinion that it is comparatively modern and that it was introduced, some say, by the Arabs and Mohammedans, while others believe it was brought by the Portuguese, at varying dates down to and including the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Dealing with the latter view first, one hardly considers it unfair to say that there has never been any serious evidence for such opinion. The main reason for ascribing this culture to the Arab or Portuguese origin was due, on the one hand, to a failure to study seriously the culture itself, and, on the other hand, a kind of _a priori_ conception of the very limited potentialities of Negro peoples. Basing their opinion upon the popular conception that the Negro represented the lowest form of human development, it was thought by early critics of the culture that the Negro could not have produced objects of art capable of holding their own among the highest forms of human creations; and so in the exigencies of the situation the theories of Arab or Portuguese origin were brought to the fore. The advance of ethnological science during the last generation, the serious study of the Benin objects in an objective sense, and finally the results of Frobenius's Expedition, all combined, have not only weakened the theories of a modern Arab and Portuguese origin, but have practically destroyed them altogether. Let us take a summary view of some of this evidence against these theories. In the first place, there might be mentioned the changing opinion regarding the supposed mental difference between so-called cultured and primitive peoples. As a result of many scientific studies, and some scientific expeditions both in Africa and Oceania, it is now practically the belief in scientific circles that there is no potential difference in quality of mind of the various races or of widely differentiated cultural groups. This removes at the outset the belief heretofore held as to the inherent limited capacity of the Negro peoples. According to this modern point of view, then, the objects above described _could_ have been created by native blacks of Central Africa.