Part 3

The persistent admiration of an ideal leads to its constant cultivation by careful preservation and sexual selection. Thus the peoples who have little hair on the face and body, as most Chinese and American Indians, usually do not like any, and carefully extirpate it. The negroes prefer a flat nose, and a child which develops one of a pointed type has it artificially flattened. In Melanesia if a child is born of a lighter hue than is approved by the village, it is assiduously held over the smoke of a fire in order to blacken it. The custom of destroying infants markedly aberrant from the national type is nigh universal in primitive life. Such usages served to fix and perpetuate the racial traits.

A yet more powerful factor was _sexual preference_. This worked in a variety of ways. If is well known to stock breeders that the closer animals are bred in-and-in, that is, the nearer the relationship of father and mother, the more prominently the traits of the parents appear in their children and become fixed in the breed. It is evident that in the earliest epoch of the human family, the closest inter-breeding must have prevailed without restriction, as it does in every species of the lower animals. By its influences the racial traits were rapidly strengthened and indelibly impressed. This, however, was long before the dawn of history, for it is a most remarkable fact that never in historic times has a tribe been known that allowed incestuous relations, unless as in ancient Egypt and Persia, for a sacrificial or ceremonial purpose. The lowest Australians, the degraded Utes, look with horror on the union of brother and sister. The general principle of marriage in savage races is that of “exogamy,” marriage outside the clan or family, the latter being counted in the female line only. This strange but universal abhorrence has been explained by Darwin as primarily the result of sexual indifference arising between members of the same household, and the high zest of novelty in that appetite. Whatever the cause, the consequences will easily be seen. The racial traits once fixed in the period before this abhorrence arose would remain largely stationary afterwards, and by exogamous marriages would be rendered uniform over a wide area.

This form of conscious selection has properly been rated as one of the prime factors in the problem of race differentiation.[21] The apparently miscellaneous and violent union of the sexes in savage tribes is in fact governed by the most stringent traditional laws, and their confused cohabitations are so only to the mind of the European observer, not to the tribal conscience.[22]

_Causes of Variation in Types._--The physical type once fixed by the influences just mentioned remains very stable; yet may fall under the influence of conditions which will greatly modify it.

Changes in climatic surroundings and of the food supply exert a visible effect. These generally come about by migration, though geologic action has occasionally completely altered the climate of a given locality, as at the glacial epoch, which change would have the same effect as migration.

How far migration may alter race-types after many generations is not yet defined. The Spanish-American of pure white blood, whose ancestors have lived for three centuries in tropical America, the citizen of the United States who traces his genealogy to the passengers in the Mayflower or the Welcome, have departed extremely little from the standard of the Andalusian or the Englishman of to-day, though the contrary is often asserted by those who have not personally studied the variants in the countries compared. Conditions of climate and food materially impress the individual, but not the race. The Greeks of Nubia are as dark as Nubians, but let their children return to Greece and the Nubian hue is lost. This is a general truth and holds good of all the slight impressions made upon pure races by unaccustomed environments.

Another cause of variation is the recurrence to remote ancestral traits, or the appearance of what seem merely accidental variations, which may be perpetuated. It is not very unusual in pure African negroes and Chinese to observe instances of reddish hair and gray or brown eyes.

Those peculiar congenital conditions known as _albinism_ and _melanism_ may be frequent and are unquestionably transmissible by descent.[23]

_The Mingling of Races._--But the mightiest cause in the change of types is intermarriage between races, what the French call _métissage_. This has taken place from distantly remote epochs, especially along the lines where two races come into contact. In such regions we always find numerous mixed breeds, leading to a shading of one race into another by imperceptible degrees.

The widespread custom of exogamous marriage fostered the blending of types, and it was greatly increased in early days by the institution of human slavery, the habit of selling captives taken in war, the purchase of wives and concubines, and the rule in early conquest that the men of the conquered were killed or sent off, and the women retained as the spoils of the victors. In all ages man has been migratory, and very remote relics of his arts show that war and commerce led to extensive intermixture of races long before history took up the thread of his wanderings.

It is noticeable, however, that these prolonged interminglings have not produced another race. The nearest approach to it is in the Australians, but these do not refute my statement as we shall see later. Many ethnologists have indeed classed the mixed types as separate races, running the number of the sub-species of the genus _homo_ up to thirty or forty. But this was hasty generalization.

I would impress upon you this fact, that since the intermingling of two races _does not produce a third race_, it is not likely that any of the existing races arose from a fusion of two others. The result of observation shows that after two or three generations the tendency in mixed breeds is to recur to one or the other of the original stocks, not to establish a different variety.

Were it not for such constant crossings, we have reason to believe that the race types would resist all environment and retain their traits under all known conditions. It is only where the element of _métissage_ prominently enters that we are unable to assign individuals to one or another race.

Such being the case, it is a fair comparison to set one race over against another and deduce the

_Physical Criteria of Racial Superiority._--We are accustomed familiarly to speak of “higher” and “lower” races, and we are justified in this even from merely physical considerations. These indeed bear intimate relations to mental capacity, and where the body presents many points of arrested or retarded development, we may be sure that the mind will also.

There are two explanations of the presence of the inferior physical traits in certain races of men; the one, that of the evolutionists, that they are reversions or perpetuations of the ape-like (simian, pithecoid) features of the lower animal which was man’s immediate ancestor; the other, that of the special creationists, that they are instances of surviving fetal peculiarities, or else deficiency or excess of development from unknown causes.

The following are the principal traits of the kind:

Simplicity and early union of cranial sutures.

Presence of the frontal process of the temporal bone.

Wide nasal aperture, with synostosis of the nasal bones.

Prominence of the jaws.

Recession of the chin.

Early appearance, size and permanence of the “wisdom” teeth.

Unusual length of the humerus.

Perforation of the humerus.

Continuation of the “heart” line across the hand.

Obliquity (narrowness) of the pelvis.

Deficiency of the calf of the leg.

Flattening of the tibia.

Elongation of the heel (os calcis).

When all or many of these traits are present, the individual approaches physically the type of the anthropoid apes, and a race presenting many of them is properly called a “lower” race. On the other hand, where they are not present, the race is “higher,” as it maintains in their integrity the special traits of the genus Man, and is true to the type of the species.

The adult who retains the more numerous fetal, infantile or simian traits, is unquestionably inferior to him whose development has progressed beyond them, nearer to the ideal form of the species, as revealed by a study of the symmetry of the parts of the body, and their relation to the erect stature.

Measured by these criteria, the European or white race stands at the head of the list, the African or negro at its foot.

The investigations of anthropologists extend much beyond the outlines I have now presented you. All parts of the body have been minutely scanned, measured and weighed, in order to erect a science of the comparative anatomy of the races. Much of value has been discovered; but nothing absolutely characteristic, nothing which enables us to divide more sharply one race from another than the facts I have given you. It is a question, indeed, whether not too much, but too exclusive attention has not been devoted by many anthropologists to the purely physical aspects of their science. They have multiplied useless anatomical refinements and a pedantic nomenclature. The more valuable general distinctions and their technical terms I present to you in the following table:--

_Scheme of Principal Physical Elements._

{Dolichocephalic, long skulls. Skull {Mesocephalic, medium skulls. {Brachycephalic, broad skulls.

{Leptorhine, narrow noses. Nose {Mesorhine, medium noses. {Platyrhine, flat or broad noses.

{Megaseme, round eyes. Eyes {Mesoseme, medium eyes. {Microseme, narrow eyes.

{Orthognathic, straight or vertical jaws. Jaws {Mesognathic, medium jaws. {Prognathic, projecting jaws.

{Chamæprosopic, low or broad face. Face {Mesoprosopic, medium face. {Leptoprosopic, narrow or high face.

{Platypellic, broad pelvis. Pelvis {Mesopellic, medium pelvis. {Leptopellic, narrow pelvis. {Leucochroic, white skin. {Xanthochroic, yellow skin. Color {Erythrochroic, reddish skin. {Melanochroic, black or dark skin.

{Euthycomic, straight hair. {Euplocomic, wavy hair. Hair {Eriocomic, wooly hair. {Lophocomic, bushy hair.

LECTURE II.

THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENTS OF ETHNOGRAPHY.

CONTENTS.--The mental differences of races. Ethnic psychology. Cause of psychical development.

I. THE ASSOCIATIVE ELEMENTS. 1. The Social Instincts; sexual impulse; primitive marriage; conception of love; parental affection; filial and fraternal affection; friendship; ancestral worship; the gens or clan; the tribe; personal loyalty; the social organization; systems of consanguinity; position of woman in the state; ethical standards; modesty. 2. Language; universality of; primeval speech; rise of linguistic stocks; their number; grammatical structure; classes of languages; morphologic scheme; relation of language to thought; significance of language in ethnography. 3. Religion: universality of; early forms; family and tribal religions; universal or world religions; ethnic study of religions; comparison of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism; material and ideal religions; associative influences of religions. 4. The Arts of Life: architecture; agriculture; domestication of animals; inventions.

II. THE DISPERSIVE ELEMENTS: adaptability of man to surroundings. 1. The Migratory Instincts; love of roaming; early commerce; lines of traffic and migration. 2. The Combative Instincts: primitive condition of war; love of combat; its advantages; heroes; development through conflict.

The mental differences of races and nations are real and profound. Some of them are just as valuable for ethnic classification as any of the physical elements I referred to in the last lecture, although purely physical anthropologists are loath to admit this. No one can deny, however, that it is the psychical endowment of a tribe or a people which decides fatally its luck in the fight of the world. Those, therefore, who would master the highest significance of ethnography in its function as the key to history, will devote to this branch of it their most earnest attention.

The study of the general mental peculiarities of a people is called “ethnic psychology.” As a science, it may be treated by various methods, applicable to the different aims of research. For our present purpose, which is to study the growth, migrations and comminglings of races and peoples, the most suggestive method will be to classify their mental distinctions under the two main headings of Associative and Dispersive Elements. The predominance of one or the other of these is ever eminently formative in the character and history of a people, and both must be constantly considered with reference to their bearings on the progress of a nation toward civilization.

The psychical development of men and nations finds its chief explanation, less in the natural surroundings, the climate, soil, and water-currents, as is taught by some philosophers, than in their relations and connections with each other, their friendships, federations and enmities, their intercourse in commerce, love and war. Around these must center the chief studies of ethnographic science, for they contain and present the means for reaching its highest, almost its only aim--the comprehension of the social and intellectual progress of the species.

I. THE ASSOCIATIVE ELEMENTS.

The sense of fellowship, the gregarious instinct, was inherited by our first fathers from their anthropoid ancestors. The “river drift” men, who dwelt on the banks of the Thames and the Somme before the glacial epoch, were gathered into small communities, as their remains testify. The most savage tribes, Fuegians and Australians, roam about in detached bands. They are not under the control of a chief, but are led to such union by much the same motives as prompt buffaloes to gather in a herd.

These fundamental mental elements which impel to association are:

_1. The Social Instincts._

Strongest of them all is _the sexual impulse_. The foundation of every community is the bond of the man and woman, and the nature of this bond is the surest test of a community’s position in the scale of culture. It is not likely that miscellaneous cohabitation, or that slightly modified form of it called “communal marriage,” ever existed. No instance of it has been known to history.[24] In the most brutal tribes the man asserts his right of ownership in the woman. The rare custom of “polyandry,” where a woman has several husbands at once, gives her no general license.

It is equally true that the tender sentiments of love appear to be less known to the lowest savages than they are to beasts and birds. The process of mating is by brute force, marriage is by robbery, and the women are in a wretched slavery. Mutual affection has no existence. Such is the state of affairs among the Australians, the western Eskimos, the Athapascas, the Mosquitos, and many other tribes.[25]

But it is gratifying to find that we have to mount but a step higher in the scale to find the germs of a nobler understanding of the sex relation. In many tribes of but moderate culture, their languages supply us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among them, and this is corroborated by the incidents we learn of their domestic life. This I have shown in considerable detail by an analysis of the words for love and affection in the languages of the Algonkins, Nahuas, Mayas, Qquichuas, Tupis and Guaranis, all prominent tribes of the American Indians.[26]

Some of the songs and stories of this race seem to reveal even a capability for romantic love, such as would do credit to a modern novel. This is the more astonishing, as in the African and Mongolian races this ethereal sentiment is practically absent, the idealism of passion being something foreign to those varieties of man.

The sequel of the sexual impulse is the formation of the family through the development of _parental affection_. This instinct is as strong in many of the lower animals as in human beings. In primitive conditions it is largely confined to the female parent, the father paying but slight attention to the welfare of his offspring. To this, rather than to a doubt of paternity, should we attribute the very common habit in such communities, of reckoning ancestry in the female line only.

Akin to this is _filial_ and _fraternal_ affection, leading to a preservation of the family bond through generations, and in spite of local separation. It is surprising how strong is this sentiment even in conditions of low culture. The Polynesians preserved their genealogies through twenty generations; the Haidah Indians of Vancouver’s Island boast of fifteen or eighteen.

The sentiment of _friendship_ has been supposed by some to be an acquisition of higher culture. Nothing is more erroneous. Dr. Carl Lumholtz tells me he has seen touching examples of it among Australian cannibals, and the records of travelers are full of instances of devoted affection in members of savage tribes, both toward each other and toward persons of other races. There are established rites in early social conditions, by which a stranger is received into the bond of fellowship and the sanctity of friendship.[27] This is often by a transfer of the blood of the one to the body of the other, or a symbolic ceremony to that effect, the meaning being that the stranger is thus admitted to the rights of kinship in the gens or clan. Springing from this clannish affection is the custom of _ancestral worship_, which adds a link to the bond of the family. It is so widely spread that Herbert Spencer has endeavored to derive from it all other forms of religion. But this is a hasty generalization. The religious sentiment had many other primitive forms of expression.

Through these various personal affections we reach the development of the family into the _gens_, the clan or _totem_, all of whose members, whether by consanguinity or adoption, are held to represent one interest.

The union of several gentes under one control constitutes the _tribe_, which is the first step toward what is properly a _state_. The tribe passes beyond the ties of affinity by embracing in certain common interests persons who are not recognized as allied in blood. Yet it is curious to note that the tribal sentiments are among the very strongest mankind ever exhibits, surpassing those of family affection. Brutus felt no hesitation in sacrificing his son for the common weal. Classical antiquity is full of admonitions and examples to the same effect. So powerful is the devotion of the Polynesians that they have been known when a canoe was capsized where sharks abounded, to form a ring around their chief, and sacrifice themselves one by one to the ravenous fish, that he might escape.

This sentiment of _personal loyalty_ has been in history the main strength of many a government, and has in it something chivalric and noble, which challenges our admiration; yet it is quite opposed to the principles of republicanism and the equal rights of individuals, and we must condemn it as belonging to a lower stage of evolution than that to which we have arrived.

The result of these gregarious instincts is the formation of the _social organization_, the bond under which first the primitive horde and later the members of the developed commonwealth consented to live. From first to last, wherever found, communities of men are bound together by ties of consanguinity and affection rather than mere self-interest. Those writers who pretend that society once existed without the idea of kinship, with promiscuity in the sexual relation, and without some recognized controlling power, have failed to produce such an example from actual life.

These ties led to the systems of “consanguinity and affinity” which recur with singular sameness at a certain stage of culture the world over. They give rise to what is called the totemic or gentile phase of society, in which its members are organized into “gentes” or clans, “phratries” or associations of clans, and the tribe, which embraces several such phratries. This theory affected the disposition of property, which belonged to the clan and not to the individual, and the form of government, which was usually by a council appointed from the various clans. The recognition of the wide prevalence of these ideas in the ancient world has led to profound modifications of our views respecting its institutions, and a better understanding of many of the events of history.[28]

In social organizations one of the criteria of excellence is the _position of woman_. Upon this depends the life of the family and the development of morality. Those nations which have gained the most enduring conquests in power and culture have conceded to woman a prominent place in social life. In ancient Egypt, in Etruria, in republican Rome, women owned property, and enjoyed equal rights under the law. Where woman is enslaved, as among the Australian tribes, progress is scarcely possible; where she is imprisoned, as in Mohammedan countries, progress may be rapid for a time, but is not permanent. Unusual mental ability in a man is generally inherited from his mother, and a nation which studies to prevent women from acquiring an education and from taking an active part in affairs, is preparing the way to engender citizens of inferior minds.

Among other ethnic traits, the appreciation of the _ethical_ standard differs notably. Long ago the observant Montaigne commented on the conflicting views of morals in nations, and remarked rather cynically that what was good on one side of a river was deemed wicked on the other. This is especially noticeable in the sense of justice, the rights of property, and the regard for truth. No Asiatic nation respects truth telling, or can be made to see that it is abstractly desirable when it conflicts with their immediate interests. The rights of property are generally construed entirely differently to ourselves among nations in the lower grades of culture, because the idea of independent personal ownership does not exist among them. What they have belongs to the clan or the horde, and they merely have the use of it.

The basis of ethics in all undeveloped conditions is not general but special; it relates to the tribe and the family, and is in direct conflict with the philosopher Kant’s famous “categorical imperative,” which makes the basis the welfare of the whole species. Hence, in primitive culture and survivals there is a dual system of morals, the one of kindness, love, help and peace, applicable to the members of our own clan, tribe or community; the other of robbery, hatred, enmity and murder, to be practiced against all the rest of the world; and the latter is regarded as quite as much a sacred duty as the former.[29] Ethics, therefore, while a powerfully associative element in the one direction, becomes dispersive or segregating in others, unless the sense of duty is taught as a universal and not as a class or national conception.