reason, revelation, all human tradition make up a demonstration which the mouth only can contradict. Not only, then, did mankind commence with science, but with a science different from ours, and superior to ours.... No one knows to what epoch remounts, I do not say the early commencements of society, but the great institutions, the profound knowledge, and the most magnificent monuments of human industry and human power.... Asia, having been the theatre of the greatest marvels, it is not astonishing that its people should have preserved a leaning to the marvellous stronger than what is natural to man in general, and than each one recognises in himself individually. Hence it comes that they have always shown so little taste and talent for our science of _conclusions_. One would say rather that they recalled something of primitive science and of the era of intuition. Would the enchained eagle ask for a balloon to raise himself into the air? No, he would demand only that his fetters should be broken. And who knows if these people are not destined yet to contemplate sights which will be refused to the cavilling genius of Europe? However this may be, observe, I pray you, that it is impossible to think of modern art without seeing it constantly environed with all the contrivances of the intellect and all the methods of art.... On the contrary. So far as it is possible to discover the science of primitive times at such an enormous distance, we see it always free and isolated, flying rather than marching, and presenting in all its characteristics something of the ærial and supernatural.[235]... But then comes the corollary.... If all men descend from the three couples who repeopled the universe, and if the human race commenced with knowledge, the savage cannot be more, as I have said to you, than a branch detached from the social tree.... Now, what matter does it make at what epoch such and such a branch was separated from the tree? It suffices that it is detached: no doubt as to its degradation; and I venture to say no doubt as to the cause of degradation, which can only have been some crime. A chief of a nation having altered the principle of morality in his household by one of those prevarications which, so far as we can judge, are no longer possible in the actual state of things, because happily our knowledge is no longer such as to allow us to become culpable in this degree; this chief of a nation, I say, transmits the curse to his posterity; and every constant force being accelerating in its nature, this degradation, weighing incessantly upon his descendants, has ended in making them what we call _savages_. Two causes extremely different have thrown a deceptive cloud over the lamentable state of savages: the one of ancient date, the other belonging to our century.... One cannot for an instant regard