Apart from religious influence, there is another which may make itself felt as regards anthropology. We mean those very honourable sentiments about equality and confraternity which an honest heart will feel towards all men, whatever may be their origin, whatever the colour of their skin, but of which the searcher[17] after truth must disembarrass himself, cost what it may to him as a _man_. Such feelings honour those who are animated by them, but when they interfere with science, they can only injure it. How many years, how many centuries, have anatomy and medicine been obliged to wait until they could take a lasting and an upward flight! Respect for the dead is doubtless a human sentiment, if any; but it used to paralyse these two branches of our knowledge; they are only possible to be learnt by profaning mortal remains reverenced by the religions of antiquity. Physiology, rendered so clear by vivisection, knows no pity; mankind feels it, but the physiologist shuts up all knowledge of it from himself; it is momentarily destroyed, since it would injure any inquiry into the laws of life. It must be owned that the science which engages our attention has not been able entirely to disembarrass itself among us of that which we may call _moral propriety_.[18] It has a powerful influence on certain minds, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes of their free will.[19] We have ourselves heard eminent professors make a noble appeal to the fraternity which ought to exist among men,--plead in their chairs the cause of inferior races, and proclaim the equality of the African people with ourselves. Such noble theories were received as they ought to be, with the most ardent applause. There remains only to inquire if this is truly philosophical progress, and if kindness, pity, or compassion, have any value in the great balance of facts. It was time, indeed, that a new method--an independent one--should see the light in anthropology, as it has already done in astronomy, as it also has begun to do in geology. It was time to return to the human mind its wings. Facts, reasonings supported by facts, are the sole basis of every solid work--of every certainty in scientific matters; it is the only method which can lead us--by a slow path, perhaps, but a sure one--to the solution of the most difficult and the most obscure problems. We do not except that of the origin of man. We do not pretend to be first in the path which we here point out, but we wish to express our regret at not having seen it openly enough followed by all those who are worthy to enter it. As for ourselves, what we have desired in this essay is, first, to hold ourselves apart from all extra-scientific data--from all sentimental science; we have desired to treat some anthropological questions as they would have done at Athens, Rome, or at Alexandria--a task above our powers, doubtless, but which we hold ourselves bound in honour to attempt.