The most commonly quoted example is that of the aborigines of Australia. “They have always shown complete ignorance,” say both Lesson and Garnot,[33] “a sort of _moral brutality_.... A kind of highly developed instinct for discovering the food which is always difficult for them to obtain _seems, among them, to have taken the place of most of the moral faculties of mankind_.” If the English police did not watch very strictly, they would set at defiance every day, at least in the towns of their colonies, all the laws of public decency without any more thought than the monkeys in a menagerie. In the account given of the American Expedition in 1838, Mr. Hale writes that they almost possess the stupidity of the brute, that they can only count up to _four_, and some tribes only so far as _three_. “The power of reasoning,” he says, “seems but imperfectly developed among them. The arguments used by the colonists to convince or persuade them are often such as they would use towards children or persons who are almost idiotic.”[34] MM. Quoy and Gaimard, whom no one will accuse of polygenist tendencies, give the following account of their interview with these miserable people. “Our presence seemed to cause them a sort of pleasure; and they endeavoured to explain their sensations on the subject with a loquacity to which we could not respond, seeing we did not understand their language. After this meeting they used to come to us, gesticulating and talking rapidly; they gave shrill screams, and if we answered in the same way, their delight was immense. Soon there was a change, and they did not hesitate to ask for something to eat, by the simple mode of _hitting themselves on the belly_.”[35] The spectacle these travellers had before them is so sad and touching that they afterwards add, as if to satisfy their own consciences, “however, they are not stupid.” Doubtless, they are not; but they do not seem to deserve the epithet which the world gives to these beings, who appear so completely inferior to others. “Malicious as a monkey.” _They are not stupid_, and that is all.[36] The Australians are not exceptional in this; Bory de Saint Vincent has drawn for us a picture of the inhabitants of South Africa, a beautiful and fertile land, which is almost as sad. At the other end of the world, upon that ice-continent which surrounds the north pole, we find the same abjection.