Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 323 of 777 - First - Home
A Government Founded On The Ruins Of The
Liberty Of The Natives Extinguishes The Intellectual Faculties, Or
Stops Their Progress.
To say that the savage, like the child, can be governed only by force,
is merely to establish false analogies.
The Indians of the Orinoco
have something infantine in the expression of their joy, and the quick
succession of their emotions, but they are not great children; they
are as little so as the poor labourers in the east of Europe, whom the
barbarism of our feudal institutions has held in the rudest state. To
consider the employment of force as the first and sole means of the
civilization of the savage, is a principle as far from being true in
the education of nations as in the education of youth. Whatever may be
the state of weakness or degradation in our species, no faculty is
entirely annihilated. The human understanding exhibits only different
degrees of strength and development. The savage, like the child,
compares the present with the past; he directs his actions, not
according to blind instinct, but motives of interest. Reason can
everywhere enlighten reason; and its progress will be retarded in
proportion as the men who are called upon to bring up youth, or govern
nations, substitute constraint and force for that moral influence
which can alone unfold the rising faculties, calm the irritated
passions, and give stability to social order.
We could not set sail before ten on the morning of the 10th. To gain
something in breadth in our new canoe, a sort of lattice-work had been
constructed on the stern with branches of trees, that extended on each
side beyond the gunwale.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 323 of 777
Words from 87407 to 87686
of 211397
