Most frequently "savages" [says von Luschan] are accused of being weak in abstract thinking, like children. To show how such opinions originate, I beg to relate a single case lately reported to me by one of my friends. A young colonial officer buys a basket and asks the name of it in the native language. The first native says, "That is of straw"; another native says that they also make them of rushes. One of the two seemed to have lied, so each of them received twenty-five lashes. A third native is called. He says, "This basked is plaited," and gets twenty-five also. The next native affirms that the basket is nearly new, and gets twenty-five. The next that he does not know whose basket it is, etc. The final result of this scientific investigation is two hundred lashes; and the white man writes in his notebook: "These natives here are brutes, not men." The black man says to his friends, "This fellow belong white is not proper in his save box," and thinks it safer to keep at a good distance from him; and a certain scientist at home gets a splendid illustration of his theory of the poor intellect of savage man and of his weakness in abstract thinking.¹

¹Luschan, F.von, n/an/an/an/a"Anthropological View of Race," in Spiller, G., 14–15 (London: P. S. King and Son; Boston: Ginn and Company. By permission).