The plurality of the human race
CHAPTER IX.
SYSTEM.
All science leads necessarily to a _system_; and system signifies here, not the proceeds of observation or a route followed by analysis or synthesis in order to arrive at the knowledge of the truth. System here means, a mode of classifying beings or observed facts, a mode essentially in connection with the science which treats of these beings or of these facts, and often applicable to itself alone.
A perfect system can only be really established _à posteriori_, after the knowledge has been acquired of all the phenomena which are to be classed. This is absolute. In practice, a system can only be observed _à priori_, by reference to a certain number of facts which it is destined afterwards to embrace; it is only true that the more facts we acquire, the more chance has a system of being exact, without our ever having the right of proclaiming it to be absolutely good; it may be satisfactory, and remain so for a long time, but one fine day a new fact may prove it to be false. “I am of opinion,” said Étienne Geoffroy, “that a perfect system cannot exist; it is a sort of philosopher’s stone, impossible to be discovered.”[327]
A science being given, it does not at all follow that there already exists a proper method for classifying in a natural series the phenomena which manifest themselves to us in this branch of human knowledge. If we have not yet succeeded in discovering a true anthropological system, if Camper, Prichard, and Morton have been foiled, it is because the science of mankind is still too new.
Even in making an abstract of the difficulties always to be found in determining every animal _species_, difficulties which are derived from the way in which we understand its evolution,[328] must we be astonished that the human race is not yet divided into distinct groups, when animals, much more easy to class on account of their lesser degree of intellectual and social activity, are not yet classed in a satisfactory manner,[329] when the Geoffroys, Cuvier, and De Blainville have failed in something or other, since this question seems still worthy of examination by the greatest minds of Europe with which the natural sciences are honoured at the present day? The natural history of man is of to-day, and the difficulties are great, because by virtue of his intellect man possesses resistance and special affinity. Living by nations, he lives a double life; his own, and that of the nation--which is a separate thing--into which a neighbouring race or species can enter wholly, adopting the same customs, the same dress, and the same language. There are difficulties which we meet with in anthropology, and which we only meet with there. A species has been known to disappear, for instance, and has left its name to some group entirely different from it, for if the Ethnic name has served at the origin to name the inhabited country, the geographical name has reacted in its turn, and has imposed itself on all the people who have successively occupied the same area. Other difficulties will arise from regions inhabited by distinct species, if these limits are not marked by some physical barrier almost impossible to be passed.
Thus we are far, even at the present day, from agreeing about the bases of a good anthropological classification. Many methods have been tried, but none have as yet succeeded. Some have adopted geographical division. Others, the colour of the skin. Others, the state of the hair. Others (the most numerous class), have stopped at the shape of the head. The skull has chiefly exercised the sagacity of anatomists and anthropologists, and we can say fairly that there is no combination to which it has not been submitted in order to arrive at the distribution of mankind into natural groups. We must remark that all these cranioscopic classifications rest involuntarily upon this _datum_, that the different kinds of men are unequally endowed with intellect. Starting, then, from this principle, that the volume of the brain is in _ratio_ to intelligence, or that intellect is in _ratio_ to the volume of the brain, people tried to find a simple, rather than an easy, method of taking account of such an irregular solid: and Camper opened the way with his famous angle.
This system was soon followed by others who are less celebrated, having come after him. We may quote, among others, the interior angle of Walther, described by two lines, the one going from the occipital protuberance to the _crista galli_ process, the other from the frontal prominence to the root of the nose. There is also the external angle of Mulders, described by the facial line of Camper, and another line going from the base of the process to the root of the nose. And, lastly, that of Daubenton, described by a line going from the inferior margin of the orbit to the posterior region of the occipital orifice, and by another following the direction of the plane of the same.[330] All these systems are worth as much as Camper’s. All, including Camper’s, are false and worthless, from the mere fact that they pretend to measure a solid by the inclination of two of its boundary-planes one upon the other. After these methods of measurement, and superior to all of them, comes the _norma verticalis_ of Blumenbach; then the measurements of Cuvier, Owen, etc. Here we gain a step; we endeavour to measure a solid by its outline, or by the area of a systematic division or section. Already had Camper, better gifted than his angle would inform us, endeavoured to compare the different diameters of the profile of the skull, as seen in front.[331] As to Cuvier’s division, it is a very happy modification of a former proposed measurement, the incisive-occipital line of Doornick. It is obtained by lowering a vertical line to the plane of the external auditory orifice, and by leading another line from the incisors to the extreme protuberance of the occipital region. The relation of the two determinated divisions in this line by its intersection with the first, will give the statistics of comparison.[332]
Progress has been immense, and yet our systems remain very unsatisfactory; the skull seems to escape every method of measurement. Some time ago a meeting of craniologists took place at Gottingen, and yet the learned assembly was obliged to separate without settling anything.[333] It seems that the old saying of Bernard Palissy about measuring some peculiar skull, will remain true in spite of all our efforts: “I have never known how to obtain a correct measurement.”[334] Another method is that of Morton, to which he has attached his name by the multiplicity of facts which he has drawn, from it, by the justice of the views which he has expressed, after having used it thousands of times; we speak of the direct measurement of the interior capacity of the skull. It is for ever to be regretted that Morton finished his laborious career without having been able to publish the ultimate results of his long researches; but this method (which M. Broca has actively applied), is, however, not quite perfect. If there was merely a difference among the different races in the amount of intellect shown in their works, this measurement would be sufficient to establish a division; but there is more than that; all races have different aptitudes, and here is to be found the fault of Morton’s system, which only takes the whole, which makes no distinction between very different skulls if they have the same volume, like those of the Esquimaux, for instance, and those of Americans. The subject of measurement differs, like intellect, otherwise than merely in dimension, and that which craniology wants is the definition of all these special tendencies of the intellect by as many tangible varieties as possible.[335]
Craniology is not anthropology; it assists it materially, but the partial results which it obtains have not necessarily the same value in the more general point of view of anthropology. Every classification, based on the form of the skull, will be necessarily an artificial classification, because it will only rest upon one sole order of phenomena. Besides, this study presents great difficulties from the individual differences which the various heads show, in which the qualities belonging to the individual have been so far able to hide the general characters of the race, that these often remain unrecognisable. Divisions have also increased in proportion as craniological collections have come richer in specimens. Morton only reckoned eleven human races, but he believed under the truth. We may very well have a poor idea of the value of this classification by studying the materials which were used by the philosopher of Philadelphia. Besides the American race, Morton had only a very few skulls at his disposal. The Philadelphian collection, which has been much increased since his death, contained, only a few years ago, 1035 skulls, 38 of them pathological; there remain therefore but 997. Out of this number the American race figures in 502, or more than one-half. There remains, therefore 495, 154 of which came from the valley of the Nile; so that merely 350 skulls represent the whole of Europe, Asia, the Oceanic countries, and Africa (excepting Egypt). This is not much for the purpose of classing a population likely to be raised to five hundred millions of inhabitants.[336]
It remains for us to study and determine the intrinsic value of each of these heads. The authentic production of a skull is not always easy to be established when it comes from the other side of the world, obtained by travellers who have not made a special study of anthropology; it is even less so when a skull is dug up in a burial ground, where there may be a certain promiscuousness very apt to hinder our inquiries. Errors of this kind steal into science only too often, and we have for a long time in particular objected to the name of _Gallic mummy_, which has been given to a body in a collection at Paris, the history of which does not at all justify this denomination, since we simply believe that _when it was first dug up_ it was only referred back to the _thirteenth_ century![337]
Craniology was anthropology itself, whilst this science was being cultivated merely by learned men in their studies. If a skull does not always bear about it the stamp of the race to which it belongs, we must nevertheless own that it is the best representative of the dead individual. Craniology obtains all its weight and powers from the study of ancient races and extinct peoples. There it ought to intervene with an unequalled importance, for want of better points of reference. By its means anthropology can search in the past, clearing up those questions which history is incapable of explaining. In this manner Morton has been able to prove better than by any historical document that Ancient Egypt was inhabited by very mixed races, and composed of the most different elements, exactly as in our own days. But there remained a problem even more interesting: that of knowing if the different races who then inhabited the banks of the Nile were as much divided into various occupations as at the present day: the Albanians are all soldiers, the Copts all scribes and officials, the Fellahs all labourers, etc. Doubtless it would be possible, if not easy, to arrive at the solution of this new problem by collecting skulls and mummies with more care than has hitherto been done, and, above all, by assisting the researches of the Egyptiologists, who can read upon the coffin that such and such a body is that of a workman, a priest, or a king. We may thus be able to ascertain if the kings of such or such a dynasty were black or yellow; if the dominant population of such or such a _nome_ had the Coptic, Berberine, or Fellah type. Here we have a large field for study, which has been almost entirely neglected by the American school of anthropology, precisely because Morton found himself without information about the production and true age of the immense materials which he had at his disposal.
But we must not be forgetful: the classification of skulls by their shape, of hairs by their colour, or skins by their hue, is not the classification of races of mankind. We only perceive here one order of phenomena. A classification established upon such bases has its point of departure only in the mind of him who conceived it, and not in the nature of things.
We shall only have a natural and rational classification by comparing entire individuals one with the other.[338] To this we must come; we must study at one and the same time the height, the skin with its dependencies, and, above all, the character of the countenance, the attitude, the _facies_, and the _habitus_ of different races, which Caldwell called “the variety discoverable in the complexion and feature, the figure and stature of the human race;[339]” this _something_ is explained in one word, which we call _type_, about which we are never mistaken, and which makes us say, “This is a man from the south, that is a man from the north; this is a Mongolian, that an Indian.”[340] By this means alone we can form natural groups; difficulties will, doubtless, be great at the beginning, but light will come little by little, and time will teach us surely to distinguish certain distinctive characteristics, whose expression will be gradually more and more simple. This is a work for the future.
Anthropology regarding man as a whole, classifiers ought not to neglect his psychological value. Although craniology is only an indirect appreciation of the same, few had ever thought, Linnæus excepted, of using the purely intellectual characteristics of races in order to assist them in classification, when all at once the American school gave an immense importance to these characteristics, and placed psychological varieties above all the material differences which can be observed in the configuration of the bony case of the skull. The American school has gone too far, for it is tangible forms especially which must furnish specific characteristics in the animal kingdom.
However this may be, we may willingly give a secondary value to the intellectual classification of the human race, although _data_ are still wanting in order to establish one which can be considered as complete. We will even add that the characteristics of this order are the more authentic and the more precious since they are not the expression of a given moment, nor that of a certain number of individuals. They belong to a whole race.
We must seek for them in the literary remains of a people. These teach us surely, even after many ages have elapsed, about the mind, belief, and thoughts of their readers. The monuments of plastic art remain, even if they were a complete contradiction against their time, their epoch, the men who ordered them, and the crowd which now regards without understanding them.[341] A book, on the contrary, has no success except as it enters into the mind of a people,--except as the ideas which it expresses are those of all the world. Each book which is published, then (like the Mosaic books among the Jews, the Korán amongst the Mussulmen), is the true expression of the mind of a race at all the periods of its existence, even were it written in a language which is no longer spoken. The best Greek and Roman works, written for men of the same blood as ourselves, have remained classical. We must understand them, even at the present day, and we do understand them, because the thoughts which animated their authors are still our own. If, on the contrary, we wish to penetrate into any foreign literature, it becomes a labour and a fatigue, we only reach it by making an abstraction of our thoughts and our ideas, by endeavouring to enter entirely, by a violent effort, into the life and feelings of another people.
Languages also have been considered capable of serving as a basis for the classification of the human race. Their importance has been largely discussed, and counts numerous warm partisans.[342] At their head we may perhaps mention Latham, who wishes the ancient history of mankind to be studied by languages,[343] and agreeing in Prichard’s ideas about the production of intermediary hybrid races, he only sees this method of reading the history of the past, and he is quite naturally led to language, which seems to him to offer better conditions of resistance[344] than physical characteristics.
It is true that philology, applied to anthropological research, is of immense assistance to it; it can give us powerful inductions on the history of the past, and on the origin of the present human species. But even these, solutions agree very well with the theory of gradual evolution, and with the corollary of this theory, namely, that man has not always possessed the faculty of speech.[345] Philologists tell us, for instance, that two sister tribes may have been able, at some past time, to create on each side of a mountain two different idioms, which may produce in their turn two families of languages absolutely irreducible one from the other. This is what would take place, according to M. Renan, when the sons of the same parents, separating on the sides of the Imäus, became the double branch from whence have sprung the Semites on one side, and the Aryas on the other. This would be the explanation of the fact so embarrassing for anthropologists, that physical characteristics are sensibly identical among the Semites and Europeans, whilst these races are as distinct as possible in the matter of language. Now, we may even go further, and infer from these facts that the common species from whence the Semites, on the one hand, and the Aryas, on the other, are descended, did not yet know how to speak.
Inversely to Latham, some anthropologists have given, in our opinion, too little importance to language: we speak especially of Edwards and M. Omalius d’Halloy.[346] The truth lies, doubtless, between these two extremes. It must be acknowledged that language can very often furnish excellent evidence, but it must not be forgotten that it shows at the same time a more rapid liability to change than moral characteristics and corporal form. Niebuhr seems to us to be right when he insists upon the precautions to be taken in order to apply philology in a useful manner to the determination of races, and he concludes that we must give the greatest attention to physical configuration.[347] This is also the opinion of Humboldt[348] and M. Vivien.[349] A language, like every custom, and every act of individual relation, can transmit itself from one race to another which is very different. The unity of a family of languages is not always sufficient to establish that the people who speak these idioms are of one and the same origin; we can only conclude from it that they have been in relation one with the other, and it is even reasonable to admit that this cause has been able to act with a decisive influence at the epoch when man first commenced to lisp.[350] These two tribes meeting for the first time, physically strangers one to the other, were doubtless able to borrow mutually certain habits, and to mingle in a decided manner their two manners of explaining their thoughts, from which has resulted one sole language, in which we cannot distinguish except by analysis the two different branches which have contributed to its formation. This hypothesis has been even elevated to a general thesis by several philologists, and M. d’Escayrac de Lauture, among others, believes that the centre of Africa, that land of the unknown and of mystery, is reserved to us as a spectacle of this phenomenon.[351] Without going back to origin, it is evident that two neighbouring peoples, in continual relation one with the other, ought to end by borrowing mutually the forms of language, letters, and articulation, especially when they have neither of them any literature capable of retaining the language within its limits, and of preserving it from all separation.
Hence it results that anthropology must take its most precious authorities from the study of languages, in the language of the islands, for instance, and in the idioms spoken at the extremity of the continents: thus surrounded by the sea, in relation by its less extent with the others, these idioms will be preserved even more intact. We shall find here the real expression of the most ancient state of things which we can directly recognise by philology. The _click_ language, so peculiar to one single race,[352] exists only in the most southern part of Africa. They still speak the ancient Pali[353] in the south of Asia and at Ceylon. The most ancient language of Europe, so far as we know, namely the Celtic, still remains in Britanny and in Wales.
From all which has gone before, we may then conclude that in order to establish a rational classification of human species, the first characteristics to be considered will be the _external aspect_, and perhaps the _moral characteristics_; the rest will come in the second rank: at first, language, then deep anatomical varieties which do not strike us at the first glance, then physiological and pathological varieties, etc. Such is, we think, the only certain basis upon which anthropology can rest--the true distinctions between human species. We do not even yet know exactly their number, and naturalists do not at all agree on this subject; the work is to be done over again, by following a new route.
Without troubling ourselves with enquiring into the whole system of the genus _homo_, we must at first examine these well-characterised centres of population which are entirely distinct as regards aspect and physiognomy. We must mark these centres with care, paying attention to all the physical, moral, and philological varieties which we are able to notice. M. Flourens has given some excellent principles for the study of animal species; he wishes simply to apply them to the study of human species; and from this connection, which nobody can contradict as a means of investigation, there arises a farther proof of the rank which we must give to man in the organic series. “We must observe the living animal,” said M. Flourens; “we must observe him for a long time, and also both sexes and all ages. We must study his nature, his instincts, and his intellect. Each of these things has its own characteristic in each animal, and it is by the whole of these characteristics put together that species is defined.” It is impossible to trace in a better manner the anthropologists’ task.
When we have well studied a homogeneous centre of population under all its aspects, when we have rendered an account of its physiological, psychological, and philological characteristics, we may stop; and without prejudging anything concerning the area of this race, may then pass on to another centre, which we shall notice in the same way, without troubling ourselves with intermediary varieties, which will always be in a greater or lesser number wherever we do not happen to meet with a physical barrier, like the sea or a chain of mountains, which may separate the two centres which are to be observed. Then we shall, doubtless, have numberless shades and transitions; but these are merely the phenomena of hybridity, entirely secondary, and which ought not at all to influence our essays on anthropological classification. At a later period, when we know more, we shall be able to review all these intermediary varieties, when we understand their conditions of existence better. In this manner we must take care at the beginning to study certain countries, places of travel, and meeting, to which all the neighbouring races have given some portion of their blood. Such are most European countries, and such always was the Valley of the Nile and the Blue Nile. The streets of Cairo are not only a picturesque spectacle; from thence did Étienne Geoffroy borrow his grand views about the position of the genus _homo_ in nature; the man of science profits here as much in his search after truth as the artist in his search after the beautiful.
Who can forget, even if he has only once seen it, this phantasmagoria of customs and physiognomies which developes itself before our eyes at every moment; here a gigantic Circassian, there a smaller sized Copt, with an arched nose; a Nubian, with his “violet ebony” colour, but with a pleasing figure, nose straight and small, thin lips, well arranged teeth; a Turk, with as white and transparent a skin as a man of the north; a Negro, with crisped hair, flat nose, prominent cheek-bones, thick lips, large and projecting teeth; a Fellah, with olive complexion; a Bedouin, almost as black as a Nubian, but tall, with aquiline nose, thin lips, and kingly bearing.
We must not seek for a pure population in the streets of Paris, London, Marseilles, Trieste, or Constantinople: we only find in these capitals isolated facts, good specimens, perhaps, of different species, but lost in the multitude of hybrids. We can only study in these places _individuals_, not _species_. In those parts alone which we must make centres of observation, can we see the same man indefinitely multiplied among really primitive people, still free from intermixture, or with the least possible taint of the same. Then we must hasten to seize his general characteristics, and take both his physical and moral portrait.
The physical portrait in particular comprises two series of _data_, features and colour. As to feature, photography is an unequalled resource, but it belongs to anthropological study to settle its application in a clear manner: we must always choose some individual presenting the usual type of the population in the midst of which he is found, rather than among the chiefs or nobles of the land. We must select this type in the prime of life, when the animal œconomy has arrived at its perfect development, and has not yet commenced to decay, and still shines in all the splendour of its reproductive force; this would be, for man, from twenty-two to twenty-seven years of age. For photographic portraits to be of real utility to anthropologists, they ought to represent the individual completely full face, or in profile; thus only can they be of use in measurements. For it is important not to confound anthropology with ethnology, as is done every day. They are two things entirely different. _Dressed-up_ portraits are the domain of the latter, the _natural_ history of man demands _always_ absolutely nude representations, and the best will be those which show us the individual with untouched beard and hair.
As to colour, we must refer as much as possible to oil-painting. In fact, the colour of the human skin, as we have formerly said,[354] is, in reality, a complex visual impression; all the coloured rays (we employ the term here in the conventional sense given to it in physics) which emanate from the skin, and which strike the eye of the observer, are not formed by the same plane surface; they arise from the more or less profound parts seen by transparency, through a more or less diaphanous medium, more or less favourable for the emission of these rays. Hence results, as regards the eye, a special sensation, and as regards the mind, a special notion, which we explain in the arts by the word _transparency_ or _diaphaneity_.
Now, this kind of sensation will not be reproduced by the artist unless he employs certain processes recalling to the mind those of nature itself. This is not the case with water-colour painting. The colouring matter, reduced to extremely fine particles, is applied, it is true, in a transparent vehicle--water; but this, destined to evaporate almost immediately, leaves the colour on the surface of the paper, stretched into an extremely fine layer, without appreciable thickness. We perceive from this the radical imperfection of water-colour for portraiture, and the impossibility of rendering by such means, at least with truth, the effect of skin colours. Oil painting offers far better resources, and here is the secret of its incomparable superiority. The colouring matter, diluted by the oil, remains suspended as before in its transparent medium when the painting is dry; so that the luminous rays, in order to arrive at the eye, start from the surface of the paint as well as from its interior substance. We find exactly the same process in nature; an impalpable powder, like the pigmentary granulations, or the globules of blood in the capillaries of the skin, is spread over a diaphanous substance.
We may now understand the advantage of such a process in anthropological iconography. We must, indeed, almost give up all other methods. It is easy to convince oneself of the fact by examining the coloured portraits which illustrate the works of Prichard,[355] Nott, and Gliddon,[356] who are, however, extremely particular about the correctness of the types which they bring before our notice. But all these coloured portraits are unsatisfactory, and when we see some anthropologist invoke the authority of these bad prints, we really ask ourselves which we ought most to admire, either the blind confidence of the _savant_, the imprudence of the author, or the rashness of the artist. Fancy, however, attacking with such platitudes the portraits of dark-coloured men which the masters of painting have left us, from Veronese to Géricault! They alone have been able, by their process, to seize the reality of the complexion and colour of their models.[357]
But the surest method of arriving at conclusive evidence in anthropology is necessarily _travels_. Doubtless the study alone of the materials collected from afar is of the greatest possible use. But we repeat concerning the study of mankind what we said about the study of animals; the anthropologist must leave his library and go into the great continents, in order to study by means of his own eye-sight. “We can only arrive at the distinction of species,” says M. Flourens, “by _direct and complete personal observation_.” That it must be complete, we have endeavoured to show; but the only condition for its being complete is its being direct. Had we even the genius of Buffon,[358] we should see but poorly by means of others; facts reach us distorted and altered, because they have not always been observed by competent men; they are not comparable, resulting as they do from diverse individual impressions. It will be especially necessary to control with care travellers’ tales as regards the study of intellectual tendencies, since they are too often influenced by their own ideas on the subject.
Let us say this before concluding: among the _à priori_ proofs which polygenists can bring forward on their side, there is one which is of some importance; it is this, that while contrary ideas have been sustained and defended by men who never go beyond their own studies, the former have been generally brought forward by travellers and sailors, by those indeed who have been best able to put in practice this _direct observation_, which is generally conclusive and decisive. It is these whom we find the most ready to separate mankind into distinct groups, and to recognise in the inferior species a manifest tendency to approach nearer the nature of the anthropomorphous apes. A valuable source of information, from which anthropologists must not neglect to borrow, are the accounts of those who landed for the first time on certain islands and continents.
If they have even conceived any erroneous ideas, it must usually be acknowledged that they are most likely to be able to give us a tolerably faithful portrait of the nations with whom they have met, even more important in certain points of view than the accounts afterwards given of them, since at that time these people have not been submitted to the various influences which necessarily result from contact with Europeans.
We can study philology and craniology in the library and in solitude, assisted by proper documents and sufficient materials, _but not anthropology_; because anthropology is a science still in its cradle, and observation must have furnished its proper and necessary contingent before we can endeavour to apply any general idea or view. But anthropology ought, more especially, to disengage itself from all trammels of former ideas, as well as from all pretended humanitarian tendencies. It would be nonsense to believe that the advance of the truth will not contribute to social progress. The searcher after it can free himself in all tranquillity of mind from this kind of trouble. Haller has said, in reference to this matter, “The cultivation of truth alone is sufficient for the good man.”[359] That which is true,[360] cannot be evil, because it is in the eternal order of nature.
Thus, free from fetters, and obeying pure reason, resting on all the sciences which can assist it, anatomy, physiology, psychology, and philology, the science of mankind will advance, like every other science, towards the conquest of that truth which is so much to be desired; and sooner or later, by means of archæology and palæontology, retracing its steps in the past beyond history itself, and beyond the remotest geological epochs of which we have any record, science will eventually discover the grand problem of the origin of mankind, if the elements themselves are not for ever engulphed in the depths of the ocean.
FINIS.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
Aborigines, 54
Abou Simbel, 50
Abyssinia, 57
Acclimatisation, 58, 89
Aërolites, 112
Africa, Central, inhabitants of, 14, 68
African equality with European, 8
Age of the world, 122
Aldridge, Ira, 63
America, 6, 67, 74
Anatomy, human, 13
Angles of the skull, 137
Anoplotherium, 42
Anthropological Societies of Paris and London, 7
Anthropomorphous apes, 11, 41
Antilles, 56
Ants, 33
Arabs, 47
Aryan family, 19, 131, 143
Asiatic tribes, 18
Australia, 14, 67
Australian aborigines, 5, 16, 17, 44
Babel, Tower of, 5
Bedouin, 147
Bees, 33
Bigenerate hybrids, 96
Bimana, order of, 38
Blood, 53
Bosjesmans, 55, 79
Bourbon, Isle of, 87
Bowed legs, 47
Brain, 12
Brazil, 69
Brute and man, 19
Buddha, 52, 67, 71
Caffres, 68, 79
Cairo, 146
Çakhya-Mouni, 52
Caledonians, 103
Cartesian theory, 26
Causæ degenerationis, 90
Central America, 81
Chain of gradation, 37
Chinese, 5, 53, 78
Circassia, 147
Classification, 64, 135
Climate, 92
Clitoris, 54
Colour, 148
Consanguinity, 107
Consciousness, 12
Copts, 147
Cordilleras, 66
Craniology, 138
Crétins, 106
Crocodile, 128
Cross-breeding, 97
Danelag, 104
Degraded nations, 75
Desdemona, 63
Development of animals, 15
Dhargonis, 18
Disease, 58
Dog, 34
Earth, motion of, round the sun, 6
Egyptians, 49, 139
England, 103
Esquimaux, 15, 17, 18, 53, 54, 68, 75
Eurygnathi, 45
Évangile de l’Enfance, 64
Evolution, 122
Family of man, 42
Fellah, 147
Flinder’s Island, 97
Flood, the word, 122
Foot, 49
Forearm in Negro, 48
France, ethnology of, 104
Frugivorous man, 39
Gallic mummy, 139
God, belief in, 71
Good and evil, 23
Goths, 62
Gradation, chain of, 37
Grecian, theories, 81
Hair, colour of, 50, 52
Half-castes, 98
Hamites, 131
Harems, 101
Height, differences of, 47
Hindoostan, 40, 145
Hippopotamus, 128
History, 80
Homoïdes, 98
Host, elevation of the, 66
Hottentots, 68
Human kingdom, 10
Humanitarian considerations, 73
Hybridity, 95
Iconography, 148
Ilotes, 84
Index, the congregation of the, 6
Individual-element, 124
Intelligence of man, 12
Japanese, 5
Jesus, 64
Jews, 70, 89
Korán, 1, 141
Labrador, 101
Language, 30, 33, 142, 145
Leucous, 51
Lima, 105
Linear series, 10
Lions, 128
Man and brute, 18
Marsh fever, 59
Material substance, 12
Mathesiological order of science, 2
Mechanical theory of mind, 26
Mediæval science, 1
Medium, action of, 82
Melanesians, 57
Melanocomous, 51
Monkey-countenance, 56
Monkey-people, 18
Monogenists, 3, 80
Monotheism, 66
Moral sense, 23
Mosaic statement, 114, 141
Namaquas, 68
Natural selection, 119
Negroes, 5, 39, 44, 48, 52, 53, 54, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 86, 147
Neo-Platonists, the, 2
New Guinea, 40
Nicaragua, 106
Niger, 59
Nile, 68
Nile-boats, 39
Noah’s curse, 50
Norma verticalis, 136
Normans, 101, 102
Nubians, 39, 101, 147
Official science, 113
Orang-outang, 19, 20, 22, 24, 41
Orthodox ethnology, 5
Orthognathi, 45
Othello, 63
Palæontology, 131
Pali, 145
Pandora, 133
Pathological varieties, 43, 58
Pelvis, form of, 46
Penis, 54
Peruvians, 55
Phidias, 5
Physiological varieties, 43
Polygenists, 3
Praxiteles, 5
Prepuce, 54
Prognathi, 45
Prometheus, 133
Protozoa, 111
Psychology, comparative, 24, 36
Races, 65
Reason and faith, 23
“Records of Creation,” 37
Religious dogmas, 9, 65, 67, 85
Reproduction by eggs, 111
Réunion, Isle of, 88
Revealed religion, 2
” ” relations with science, 4
Revolution, 122
Riff, 89
Rosin-makers of the Landes, 39
Scandinavian antiquities, 48
Scriptures, the Holy, 1
Selection, natural, 118
Self-consciousness, 28
Semitic race, 1, 53, 65, 75, 89, 143
Sidereal kingdom, 11
Sierra Leone, 41, 93
Silurians, 103
Slaves, 84
Soudan, 45, 61
Soul in animals, 25
South Africa, 78
Spaniards, 47
Species, definition of, 108
Speech, 30
Sperma, 53
Spontaneous generation, 110, 123
Squatting attitude, 57
Stags, 85
Stirrup leather, 39
Struggle for existence, 102
Sumatran animal, 21
Sunburn, 91
Tartars, 47, 54
Thomas, St., 69
Toe, great, 39, 42
Truth, the reign of, 9, 23
Tuân, an orang-outang, 20
Turk, 147
Type, 99
Valmîki, poem of, 40
Vanikoro, 49
Variability of species, 115
Vera Cruz, 61
Vertebrate kingdom, 125
Vital competition, 128
Voice in animals, 34
Vulcan, 133
Wild man of the woods, 14
Woolly hair, 51
Xanthus, 51
Yellow Fever, 94
Zambos, 105
Zoology, 65, 85, 109
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
About, 63
Agassiz, 113
Albin, 44
Albinus, 86
Apollonius, 35
Appleyard, 79
Aristotle, 2, 28, 37, 53
Arnold, 59, 94
Baeck, 44
Bancroft, 60
Barrière, 44
Bartlett, 59
Barton, 94
Bayle, 4, 28
Beavan, 59, 88
Bérard, 20, 45, 46, 50
Bert, 11
Bertillon, 5, 68
Bertrand de Saint-Germain, 120
Biot, 6
Blainville, 37, 38, 41, 109, 135
Blair, 60, 93
Blake, Carter, 57, 65, 85, 110
Blumenbach, 3, 90, 98
Bonaparte, 38, 42
Bonnet, 15, 37
Bonpland, 6
Bonté, 84
Bory de Saint-Vincent, 17, 39, 50, 88
Bossuet, 12
Boudin, 58
Bourdet, 3, 88, 91, 97
Brayley, 7
Brecher, 70
Broca, 3, 35, 48, 110, 137
Brunet, 64
Bryant, 60
Brydone, 122
Büchner, 66
Buffon, 21, 28, 102, 111, 113
Bunsen, 11, 144
Burnouf, 30, 52
Busk, 137
Cabanis, 81, 106
Caldwell, 140
Cameron, 59
Camper, 46, 134, 136
Carus, 50, 63
Charles IV, 6
Charnock, 77
Chavée, 77, 142
Chevreul, 8, 23, 35
Chrysostom, Saint, 25
Cohen, 76
Collingwood, 66, 91
Cook, 56
Coombes, 77
Copernicus, 6
Coréard, 57
Courtet de l’Isle, 14, 100
Crawfurd, 40, 52
Crocius, 26
Crull, 136
Cull, 104
Cuvier, Frederic, 25, 28, 38, 41, 42
Cuvier, G., 38, 41, 42, 82, 83, 109, 112
Dally, 88
Darwin, 110, 115, 118, 126
Davis, 92
Davy, 48
D’Eichthal, 54, 62
Descartes, 4, 12, 26
D’Escayrac de Lauture, 75, 144
De Maillet, 63
Desmoulins, 15
Dickinson, 94
Dickson, 94
Didot, 111
Doornick, 136
D’Orbigny, 74, 77
Durer, 48
Earl, 52
Edwards, 89, 99, 100, 140, 143
Ehrenberg, 19
Epianus, 7
Epp, 59
Fauche, 40
Fée, 110
Fenner, 60
Ferguson, 94
Fleury, 5
Flourens, 20, 27, 28, 30, 37, 44, 98, 107, 115, 142, 145
Galen, 13
Galileo, 3, 6
Garnot, 16, 104
Génébrard, 71
Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, Barthélemy, 71, 97
Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, Étienne, 4, 17, 20, 27, 38, 39, 109, 114, 132, 146
Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, Isidore, 11, 12, 20, 34, 38, 39, 79, 81, 83, 84, 87, 95, 109, 110, 113
Géricault, 56
Geulinx, 27
Gibson, 34
Gliddon, 63
Gobineau, 3, 63, 105
Godron, 110
Grandsagne, 48
Grant, 20, 24
Gratiolet, 30
Gray, 66
Grimm, 30
Gros, 27
Guillain, 42
Hale, 16
Haller, 56
Hanneman, 50
Harris, 49
Hasskarl, 66
Herder, 30
Herrera, 60
Herschop, 149
Heymann, 59
Hippocrates, 81
Hirsch, 59, 60, 93
Holsteinius, 26
Huber, 33
Humboldt, 6, 19, 55, 57, 66, 77, 84, 144
Hunt, 63, 77
Hunter, 59, 90
Huxley, 39
Jackson, 60
Jacquinot, 53, 97
Jobin, 59
Josephus, 70
Joulin, 46
Jouvencel, 5
Julius Cæsar, 103
Kaempfer, 5, 6
Karr, 7
King, 6
Kirchoff, 11
Klemnius, 27
Kluegel, 44
Knox, 43, 54, 81, 100
Lallemand, 94
Lamarck, 112, 115
Lartet, 121
Latham, 66, 78, 101, 104, 142
Laugenhert, 27
Lawrence, 45, 48
Le Cat, 44, 56
Leibnitz, 15, 37, 120
Leighton, 68
Lepsius, 50
Lesseps, 68
Lesson and Garnot, 16, 20, 25
Linnæus, 37, 41, 64, 102, 109
Livingstone, 68
Longfellow, 151
Maire, 26, 28
Malte-Brun, 59
Martius, 74
Maupertuis, 20, 29, 34
Maury, 22, 46, 49
McCabe, 59
Meckel, 44
Meigs, 137
Mercurius Trismegistus, 36
Michelet, 126, 141
Mitchell, 44, 86
Montagne, 13
Morel, 74, 79, 81, 90, 97, 100, 106
Morton, 76, 110, 134, 137, 138
Mulders, 136
Müller, 77
Newton, 76
Niebuhr, 73, 89
Nott, 50, 60, 97, 110
Omalius D’Halloy, 143
O’Rourke, 17
Owen, 20, 36, 38, 42, 135
Palissy, 137
Pallas, 48, 54
Pardies, 32
Parker, 66
Pereira, 26
Périer, 87, 98, 104
Philips, 104
Piddington, 17, 18
Plato, 4, 22, 122
Plutarch, 111
Polybius, 81
Porphyrius, 26
Pouchet, 50, 123
Prichard, 3, 51, 78, 100, 129, 134, 142
Proudhon, 5, 8, 24
Prout, 114
Pruner-Bey, 50, 51
Pucheran, 8
Pyrard, 41
Pythagoras, 26
Quatrefages, 1, 4, 11, 12, 13, 17, 20, 23, 27
Quekett, 137
Quoy and Gaimard, 17, 49
Rechtenbach, 25
Remusat, 65
Renan, 32, 64, 65, 76, 78, 143
Robertson, 35
Robin, 20, 56, 84
Romay, 94
Ross, 17, 18, 53, 54, 69, 75
Roulin, 34
Schlegel, 73
Schmidt, 66
Schnurrer, 58
Schomburgk, 94
Serres, 6, 8, 54, 62
Servetus, 1
Shoutten, 41
Smith, Hamilton, 4, 51, 53
Sömmering, 44, 46, 56
Speke, 62
Squier, 105
Stahl, 27
Steinthal, 31, 32
Strabo, 103
Strope, 139
Sumner, 37
Tacitus, 103
Thomas, Saint, 69
Thomson, 59
Thurnam, 104
Tidyman, 59
Tiedemann, 43
Toussenel, 33
Townsend, 93
Trail, 19
Tschudi, 59, 105
Verneuil, 84
Vitruvius, 81
Vivien, 140, 144
Voltaire, 7
Vrolik, 46
Wagner, 44, 106
Waitz, 9
Warren, 97
Weber, 46
White, 46, 79, 88
Whitebourne, 69
Wied, 88
Wilkes, 17
Wilson, 48
Wise, 92
Yvan, 20, 87
Zimpel, 94
Zobrega, 69.
ERRATA.
Page 122, line 11 from bottom, _for “Atalantis” read “Atlantis_.” [Transcriber's note: Footnote 312 has been corrected.]
” 135, bottom line, _for_ “British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1857,” _read_ “Journal of Linnean Society, 1857.” [Transcriber's note: Footnote 329 has been corrected.]
T. RICHARDS, 37, GREAT QUEEN STREET.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] We must here inform the reader, once for all, that we shall use, until we say anything to the contrary, the word “_race_,” to designate the different natural groups of the human genus (genus Homo). We intend definitely to prove that these groups constitute veritable _species_. M. de Quatrefages has on this matter reproached us with a confusion, which is accounted for partly by the incorrectness of his quotation. He makes us say, “_The plurality of_ original _races_, otherwise _the plurality of the species_, of the genus ‘man’” (_Unité de l’Espèce Humaine_, 1861, p. 309). It stands as follows in our own text: “The original plurality of races, otherwise the plurality of the _species_ composing the genus ‘_man_,’” etc. It is evident that the confusion which is found in these words is entirely voluntary.
[2] One day, I was talking with one of the principal officers of Mehemet-Saïd, at Korosko, in Nubia, about the earthquake which was felt in Lower Egypt on the 12th of October, 1856. He asked me the cause of this phenomenon. I attempted an explanation suited to the understanding of a man who was without the slightest knowledge of this part of scientific information. He replied by telling me the history of the cow who throws the earth from one horn to the other, saying, that this was written, and therefore, such a belief ought to suffice him.
[With this opinion may be compared the doctrine of the Muyscas or Chibchas of New Granada, who consider that the earth is supported by Chibchacum, their deity, on pillars of _guiacum_-wood, and that earthquakes are produced by his shifting the burden from one shoulder to the other.--EDITOR.]
[3] It is only necessary, in order to be sure of this fact, to glance over the _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, the creation of which is due above all to the indefatigable zeal of a partisan of the doctrines which we defend--to M. P. Broca.
[4] Anthropology is not the only branch in modern science which opens new paths to the human mind: see Michelet, _L’Insecte_, p. 106; see also Bourdet, _Traité d’éducation positive_, 1863.
[5] This name has been definitely adopted in France in preference to that of “Unitarians” (_Unitaires_), used by M. de Gobineau.
[6] “All monogenists,” we said in the first edition of this book. M. de Quatrefages has exclaimed loudly against these words (_Unité de l’Espèce Humaine_, 1861, p. 299), and in the same passage has shown himself an open enemy to all mingling of religion in the domain of science. We are too glad of this declaration not to recall it in this place. We should be sorry not to be able always to agree in these pages with the masters of science,--with those, indeed, who have been our own. We have been led to touch on several questions already treated of by them, by following another path,--by looking at facts from another point of view; therefore, there are some differences of opinion. Our excuse lies in the universal right of free inquiry; for the rest, we shall always name the persons with whom we think we do not agree. “Not to do so,” as Bayle said, “is in some measure an excess of ceremony prejudicial to the liberty which we ought to enjoy in the republic of letters; it is to introduce therein works of supererogation. It should be always allowable to name those whom we disprove; this is sufficient to prevent a bitter, injurious, or dishonest spirit.”--_Dictionnaire Philosophique_, art. _Pereira_, note D.
[7] É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has not, however, been able to free himself completely from the unhappy influences which we endeavour to oppose. See _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. iv, p. 78.
[8] “It is too evident,” says a modern philosopher, “that in the eyes of science, which, reasoning about discoveries, makes a rule to admit nothing as a theory which cannot be proved by experience, the agreement of faith with reason is a chimera: to speak more exactly, such a problem does not exist. The conditions of science are the observation of facts,--not of facts exceptionally produced, seen by chance, noted by privileged witnesses, and unable to be reproduced at will; but constant facts, placed under one’s hand for observation, and always able to be verified. We must consider that religion can in no way submit to such exigencies, and that the faith which it proclaims must be, _in this light_, radically inconsistent.”--P. J. Proudhon, _De la Justice_, vol. ii, p. 309. See also on this subject, L. Fleury, _Le Progrès_, 1858, No. 4, p. 92. De Jouvencel, _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, May 2, 1861.
[9] See Bertillon, _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, June 18, 1863.
[10] _The Natural History of the Human Species_, 1848, p. 40.
[11] Kaempfer, _Histoire Naturelle, etc., du Japon_, Lahaye, 1729, vol. i, p. 75.
[12] Marcel de Serres, _De l’Unité de l’Espèce Humaine: Bib. Univ. de Genève_, new series, vol. liv, 1844, p. 145.
[13] “The doctrine attributed to Copernicus,” said the declaration made by the Pope, and published by the Holy Office, “that the earth moves round the sun, and that the sun remains motionless in the centre of the world without moving either to the east or to the west, is contrary to Holy Scripture, and consequently, can neither be professed nor defended.”--Biot, _La vérité sur le Procès de Galilée_, in the _Journal des Savants_, July 1858, p. 401.
[14] _Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne_, vol. ii, p. 79.
[15] _Essai sur les Mœurs_: Introd., § 2.
[16] There is an idea of adding to the Linnean Society a new section of Anthropology.--See “Letter from E. W. Brayley,” _Medical Times and Gazette_, p. 491, May 10, 1862.
[17] Alphonse Karr was the first who proposed to substitute the name of “searcher” (_chercheur_) for that of “learned man” (_savant_).--_Nouvelles Guêpes_, February 1859.
[18] See, for example, Pucheran, _Considérations Anatomiques sur les Formes de la tête osseuse_.--Paris, 1841 (Thesis).
[19] M. de Serres, in his Lectures on Anthropology, at the _Jardin des Plantes_.
[20] P. J. Proudhon has said, in another arrangement of facts depending on social science, “Revolution is not atheistical; it does not deny the absolute, it removes it altogether” (_De la Justice_, vol. ii, p. 301). See, for fuller development of our ideas on this subject, the _Progrès_ of the 20th of May, 1859, article on _Science et Religion_.
[21] _Discours sur le Méthode._
[22] _Lettres à M. Villemain sur la Méthode_, Paris, 1856, p. 3.
[23] See these ideas categorically explained, vol. ii, p. 281.
[24] M. de Quatrefages admits a _sidereal kingdom_; and such a thesis seems to us a very difficult one to sustain, after the experiments of Bunsen and Kirchoff on the chemical composition of the stars. M. de Quatrefages admits also a _human kingdom_; but admitting that animals _think_, he makes _morality_ and _religion_ characteristics of this kingdom. _Unité de l’Espèce Humaine_, 1861, p. 30. We shall have occasion to revert again to these two points. See Bert., _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, August 7, 1862.
[25] See Is. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Histoire Naturelle Générale des règnes organiques_, vol. ii, p. 252.
[26] Certain essential oils, like those of coffee, tea, or hemp.
[27] Alcoholic liquors.
[28] Narcotics.
[29] “If I am not mistaken,” says M. de Quatrefages, “there is in this result, independently of the scientific consequences which may proceed from it, a something which responds to our most noble aspirations. Man confers upon himself dominion _of his own will_; he loves to proclaim himself legitimate sovereign of all things on the surface of this globe; and, in fact, no creature will dare to dispute with him an empire which, day by day, extends and increases. Well! is it not satisfactory to behold _anthropological characteristics_ sanction and ennoble this empire by placing by the side of the _right_, which springs from intellectual superiority, the notion of _duty_, which arises from morality and religion?” (_Unité de l’Espèce Humaine_, p. 33.)
[30] Courtet de l’Isle has already made this remark. (_Tableau Ethnographique du Genre Humain_, 1849, p. 8.)
[31] See the _Voyage de l’Isabelle_; also Desmoulins, _Histoire Naturelle des Races Humaines_, 1826, p. 276.
[32] Cirripeds, tortoises, ornithodelphi, and generally speaking, the extreme representatives of the divisions of each natural classification.
[33] _Mémoire sur les Tasmaniens, sur les Alfourous, et sur les Australiens_, in the _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_, 1827, vol. x, p. 155.
[34] Hale, _Natives of Australia_, etc. See _American Journal of Science_, second series, vol. i, p. 302, May 1846; extract from the account of C. Wilkes’ Expedition: _Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition during the years 1838-1842_, vol. vi, “Ethnography and Philology.”
[35] _Voyage de l’Astrolabe: Zoologie_, vol. i, p. 43.
[36] Even after the assertions of M. de Quatrefages in the _Unité des Races Humaines_, p. 162, and following, we have not thought ourselves justified in changing our opinions on the subject of the Australians, which have lately been confirmed at the Anthropological Society; a Mr. O’Rourke, an eyewitness, having answered M. de Quatrefages (_Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, 21 June, 1860).
[37] J. Ross, _Narrative of a Second Voyage_, etc., 1835, p. 448.
[38] J. Ross, _Narrative of a Second Voyage_, p. 490.
[39] See Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Comptes Rendus_, vol. v, p. 42. [We should very much like to know at what period our author imagines this to have been the case, and whether he considers that these apes were the “men of the day.”--EDITOR.]
[40] “Memorandum on an Unknown Forest Race,” etc., _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, 1855, vol. xxiv, p. 207.
[41] M. Ehrenberg, speaking one day of the unknown centre of Africa, said to us, “that it might not be impossible to find there men so different from us that we ought to make of them, willingly or unwillingly, a special group.” I quote these words in no way with the design of presuming that there is such an order of beings; but in order to show that the father of the naturalists of Europe, the friend of Humboldt, believes in something else than the unity of the human species, because he admits that a generic plurality is possible.
[42] R. Owen, _On the Characters of the Class Mammalia_, 1857, p. 20, _note_. The illustrious _savant_ has himself treated on this subject, _ex professo_, in the catalogue of the collection in the College of Surgeons.
[43] “The orang-outang is capable of a kind of laugh when pleasantly excited,” J. Grant, “Account of the Structure of an Orang-Outang” (_Edinburgh Journal of Science_, vol. ix, 1828).
[44] Artificial love itself, with all the complexity of ideas which it is supposed must thence arise, is not, as one may think, the debauchery of civilisation; it belongs to animals akin to man as well as to man himself. See Ch. Robin and Béraud, _Précis de la Physiologie de l’Homme_, vol. ii, p. 384. It is the same with impure connection, or coupling, radically inexplicable by _instinct_. See Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Histoire Naturelle Générale des Règnes Organiques_, vol. iii, p. 142.
[45] Doctor Yvan commanded the _Archimedes_; he has written an account of his voyage: _Voyages et Récits_, Brussels, 1853, 2 vols. in 12mo.
[46] “The Australians only wear woollen clothing in order to protect the chest; ... no idea of shame has ever led them to hide the natural parts.” Lesson et Garnot, _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_, 1827, vol. x.
[47] The orang observed by J. Grant also showed these signs of desperation; “he poured it (a saucer) angrily out on the floor, whined in a peculiar manner, and threw himself passionately on his back on the ground, striking his breast and paunch with his palms, and giving a kind of reiterated _croak_.”--“Account of the Structure of an Orang-Outang,” _Edinburgh Journal of Science_, vol. ix, p. 11. [The same demonstration of feeling was showed by the orangs in the Zoological Gardens, May 1864.--EDITOR.]
[48] [Tagal, a chief town of Java.--EDITOR.]
[49] _Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. ii, p. 582.
[50] _Essai Philosophique sur l’âme des bêtes_, 1728, p. 132.
[51] [_Guenon_, the _Simia nasalis_ of Buffon.--EDITOR.]
[52] Plato, _Leges_, x, 1. See Maury, _Religions_, vol. iii, p. 4, _note_ 2.
[53] After having said that the idea of good and evil (_moralité_) exists among all men, M. de Quatrefages adds, that “the notion of the Divinity and that of another life are also generally diffused” (_Unité de l’Espèce Humaine_, p. 23). We shall demonstrate further on (chap. v) that this statement is incorrect, and how fragile the bases are upon which M. de Quatrefages rests the _fundamental_ characteristics which, according to him, distinguish the human kingdom.
[54] M. Chevreul has already defined the “Beautiful” as “the expression of causes whose influence has most force in moving mankind by appealing to their senses” (_Lettres à M. Villemain sur la Méthode_, 1856, p. 169).
[55] [“Truth lies at the bottom of a well,” is an old saying, but our author does not seem to agree with it. We should be very sorry to think that truth was only to be found in science. This is, doubtless, the opinion of a great many learned men at the present day; but we must candidly own we do not agree with it, and certainly are not able to endorse M. Pouchet’s sentiment. We have ourselves not arrived at the point, and in this we are, doubtless, old-fashioned,--of referring everything to “reason,” as opposed to faith.--EDITOR.]
[56] _Edinburgh Journal of Science_, 1828, vol. ix, p. 10.
[57] _Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. iii, p. 29.
[58] We can compare this passage from the naturalist philosopher with the other quotations we made farther back. “Females are extremely curious about this spectacle (the fondness of a “mother” monkey for her young one), and doubtless their attention is caused by discovering therein a true manifestation of the feelings they have themselves experienced as mothers; they are, above all things, astonished to recognise in these ardent attentions the joy and pride of maternity, of which they believed themselves alone to be susceptible.” (É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Cours d’Histoire Naturelle des Mammifères_, Paris, 1829, vol. i; Lesson, vi, p. 16).
[59] Proudhon has already laid down as a principle the establishment of a psychology among animals (_De la Justice_, vol. ii, p. 279). Frederick Cuvier has done the same.
[60] Hom. iv _in Acta Apostolorum_. See Rechtenbach, _De Sermone Brutorum_, Erfurt, 1706, p. 1.
[61] Sometimes this restraint is openly avowed; and we see M. Maire, who is also engaged upon the same questions, admit that, without these influences, he would embrace the same ideas that we are endeavouring to bring forward. “Let us frankly avow,” he says, “if we had not continually before our minds the doctrines of a religion which we respect,--if we had not a sincere faith, this intuitive belief which tells us we _must_ make a mistake,--we should dare to write thus. The more the organisation of the animal is perfected, the more the spiritual element produced by the action of the various functions is itself perfected.... There would then be only a hierarchical gradation of one and the same principle. The psychical fluid would be always the same in all individuals. The difference in its manifestations would refer to the difference in the organisations which produce them” (_Société Havraise d’Etudes Diverses_, p. 169, 1855-1856).
[62] [We cannot exactly see why it must necessarily have been offensive to Christianity. There is nothing injurious to religion in the theory of intellectual gradation.--EDITOR.]
[63] Jam vero nobis ostendendum est eam (bestia) habere rationem internam et intus conceptam. Videtur sane a nostra differre, non essentia sed gradu. Uti nonnulli existimant Deorum a nostra discrepare rationem, non differentia essentiali, sed quod illorum magis, nostra minus sit accurata. Et quidem quod ad sensum attinet et reliquam, tum instrumentorum sensus, tum carnis universæ, conformationem attinet, eam eodem nobiscum modo se habere in animalibus, ab omnibus fere conceditur.--Porphyrius, transl. by Holsteinius, _De Abstinentiâ_, 1655, p. 108. Is not unity of composition here conjectured, both for the intellect and the body?
[64] _Disquisitio de Animâ Brutorum_, Bremæ, 1676.
[65] _Logicæ Brutorum_, Hamburg, 1697. This little treatise, in spite of the extreme ideas of its author, is not the less precious. J. Stahl was one of those wells of learning which Germany has so often produced. There is, perhaps, not one passage in the old authors who wrote on this point to which he has not referred in his work.
[66] See, among others, S. Gros, _De Animâ Brutorum_, Wittemberg, 1680; Klemnius, _De Animâ Brutorum_, Vittembergiæ, 1704.
[67] Upon this point, M. de Quatrefages agrees with M. Flourens; but the distinction which he endeavours to establish, being based upon _morality_ and _religion_, seems to us much more restricted and much less clear. Not being able to answer everybody, we have been obliged to attend merely to the opinions of that partisan of the human kingdom who gives to animals the largest portion of it.
[68] Proudhon says, in language which is even more concise and affirmative, “In man, the mind knows itself; whilst elsewhere it seems to us that it does not do so” (_Système des Contradictions économiques_, vol. i, 1850, p. 20).
[69] _Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle_, vol. xvi, p. 58.
[70] Maire, _Société Havraise d’Etudes Diverses_, 1855-1856.
[71] _Unité de l’Espèce Humaine_, 1861, p. 24.
[72] Maire, _Société Havraise d’Etudes Diverses_, 1855-1856. We can make the same comparison with a passage almost similar from Maupertuis, _Essai Philosophique sur l’âme des Bêtes_, 1728, p. 134.
[73] _Essai Philosophique sur l’âme des Bêtes_, 1728, p. 95.
[74] See É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Comptes Rendus des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. iv, p. 261.
[75] See Flourens, _Histoire des Travaux de Buffon_, 1844, p. 135. Descartes made use of the absence of speech in animals as a strong argument against them.
[76] See Gratiolet, _Bulletins de la Soc. d’Anthropologie de Paris_, 18 April, 1861.
[77] See J. Grimm, _De l’Origine du Langage_, transl., 1859, p. 53.
[78] _Traité de l’Origine du Langage_, Engl. transl., 1827, p. 6.
[79] _De l’Origine du Langage_, transl., 1859.
[80] _De l’Origine du Langage_, 2nd edit., 1858.
[81] It is by tracing, according to custom, effects to their causes, that the Buddhist philosophy arrives at the principles of joint responsibility, which, according to it, unites reason to language, making them mutually flow one from the other. “Name and form have as a cause, _intellect_, and intellect has for a cause, _name_ and _form_.”--See Burnouf, _Le Lotus de la bonne loi_, p. 550. Mercurius Trismegistus, in the Pimander (Pimander, _De sapientiâ et potestate Dei_), says almost the same thing: “Speech is the sister of intellect; intellect is the sister of language.” See Rechtenbach, _De Sermone Brutorum_, 1706, p. 2.
[82] See _De l’Origine du Langage_, transl., 1859.
[83] _De l’Origine du Langage_, 1858, p. 31.
[84] See Jacob Grimm, _De l’Origine du Langage_, transl., 1859, p. 29.
[85] Father Pardies (S. J.), in a work, otherwise of no great value, _Discours de la Connaissance des Bêtes_, 1672, p. 39.
[86] _Recherches sur les mœurs de fourmis indigènes_, Genève, 1810.
[87] We refer our readers for all these questions to the remarkable works of M. Toussenel.
[88] _Essai Philosophique sur l’âme des Bêtes_, 1728, p. 217.
[89] It may be seen, in analysing these two simple facts, that they lead us to admit the existence of a notion of _duty_ among animals, although, perhaps, an obscure one:--they know that they _ought_ to act as they are doing from fear of a whipping, and this is an operation of the mind which no one, we think, will deny to be complex in its nature, and purely intellectual.
[90] Isid. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, vol. iii, 1860, p. 114. M. Roulin has remarked, that there is something analogous in this as regards the cat, which loses, in the savage state, those troublesome mewings which we hear so often during the night from the European race.--_Mémoires du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle_, vol. xvii.
[91] It is because there is a sort of capability for education in the animal, and indeed in the whole of his race, placed under certain circumstances; it is because, on the other hand, we refuse to certain human races the “initiative in progress,” (see Broca, _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, May 24 and June 21, 1860), that we cannot accept the “_class man_” of M. Chevreul, preceding the “_class mammalia_,” and having, as a characteristic, the _capability of perfection in the individual, and in the association of individuals_.--See _Exposé d’un moyen de Définir et de Nommer les Couleurs_, § 185. (_Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. xxxiii, 1861.)
[92] See Dr. Gibson, Amer. Assoc. (compare _Ami des Sciences_, 29 August, 1858.)
[93] It would be a curious study, for instance, to find out if certain noises,--certain sounds which have no signification to our ears, do not produce, among some animals, clearly determined impressions, having their first origin in these animals themselves, or in their mutual relations, the education we give them going for nothing in this sort of evidence.
[94] [The Rev. F. W. Robertson (who died some years ago), states some opinions in his published sermons which show he was almost before his time in his ideas concerning animals. He says, in comparing them with mankind, “There is the same external form, the same material in the blood-vessels, in the nerves, and in the muscular system. Nay, more than that, our appetites and instincts are alike, our lower pleasures like their lower pleasures, our lower pain like their lower pain; our life is supported by the same means, and our animal functions are almost indistinguishably the same.” _Sermons_, 3rd series, 1857 (preached in 1850), p. 49. “It is the law of being, that in proportion as you rise from lower to higher life, the parts are more distinctly developed, while yet the unity becomes more entire. You find, for example, in the lowest forms of animal life, one organ performs several functions; one organ being, at the same time, heart, and brain, and blood-vessel. But when you come to man, you find all these various functions existing in different organs, and every organ more distinctly developed; and yet the unity of a man is a higher unity than that of a limpet.” (_Sermons_, p. 57.)--EDITOR.]
[95] _A Treatise on the Records of the Creation_, by J. Bird Sumner, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, 6th edit., 8vo, London, 1850.
[96] Nullum characterem hactenus eruere potui, unde homo a simia internoscatur.--Linnæus, _Fauna Suecica_: præfatio.
[97] Owen, _On the Characters of the Class Mammalia_, p. 20, _note_ (_Journal of Proceedings of Linnean Society_, 1857.)
[98] _Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. ii, p. 581.
[99] See the magnificent work, _Sketches of Central Africa_, and the portrait of the chief, Kanéma, in _Barth’s Travels_, vol. iii.
[100] Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Hist. Naturelle Générale_, vol. ii, pp. 200-515.
[101] [See Huxley’s _Man’s Place in Nature_, 8vo, London, 1863; and the article thereon in the _Edinburgh Review_, April, 1863.--EDITOR.]
[102] Crawfurd, _On the Negro Race_, etc. (_British Association for the Advancement of Science_, 1852, p. 86.)
[103] See the translation of this veritable _Iliad_, by M. H. Fauche. _Râmâyana_, 1857.
[104] [We are told in the _Voyages de François Pyrard_, vol. ii, p. 331, Paris, 1615, “that in the province of Sierra Leone there is a species (of orang-outang) so strong limbed and so industrious that, when properly trained and fed, they work like servants; that they generally walk on the two hind feet; that they pound any substances in a mortar; that they go and bring water from the river in small pitchers, which they carry, full, on their heads. But when they arrive at the door, if the pitchers are not soon taken off, they allow them to fall; and when they perceive the pitchers overturned and broken they weep and lament.” In the _Voyages de Guat. Shoutten aux Indes Orientales_, we find nearly the same account of the orang: “they are taken with snares, taught to walk on their hind feet, and to use their fore-feet as hands in performing different operations, as rinsing glasses, carrying drink round to the company, turning a spit,” etc.--EDITOR.]
[105] _Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. ii. See, also, for the separation of the great toe, the photographs in the _Voyage à la Côte Orientale d’Afrique_, by Captain Guillain.
[106] _Odontography_, London, 1840, p. 452. _Catalogue of the Hunterian Collection_, “Osteology,” vol. ii, p. 800.
[107] [A character which, as the Cuviers and Owen have pointed out, man shares with the fossil _Anoplotherium_ and its allies, from the Paris gypsum.--EDITOR.]
[108] Tiedemann, of Heidelberg, wrote to Knox with reference to the nervous system, that he had great reason to believe that the natives of Australia differed in this matter from Europeans in an extraordinary degree.--Knox, _The Races of Men_, London, 1850, p. 2.
[109] “The physical characteristics which distinguish human races, one from the other, are, perhaps, the _one fact in natural history_ which has always most struck the imagination of mankind.... Historians relate, that when Columbus first returned, Europeans could not take their eyes off the plants and unknown animals which he had brought with him; and above all, the Indians, so different from all the races of men they had ever seen.”--Flourens, _Considérations sur l’enseignement de l’Histoire Naturelle de l’Homme_. (_Annales des Sciences Naturelles_, vol. x, p. 357.) This wonder is renewed every day; and I once knew an intelligent negro who had a very unpleasant remembrance of the French provinces, where he had been the object of a very general and indiscreet curiosity.
[110] The works which followed one another on this subject are due to Reinhold Wagner (1699), B. S. Albin (1737), Barrière (1742), Mitchell (1744), Baeck (1748), Meckel (1753-1757), Le Cat (1756-1765), etc. See G. Pouchet, _Des Colorations de l’Epiderme_, 4to, Paris, 1864.
[111] The analysis of the anatomical differences in the skeleton has been, perhaps, best made by Bérard, in France, and Lawrence in England; I may refer for the details to these two authors. Bérard, _Cours de Physiologie_, 1848, vol. i; Lawrence, _Lectures on Comparative Anatomy_, 9th edition, 1848.
[112] Is. Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, “Sur la Classification Anthropologique,” _Mém. de la Société d’Anthropologie_, 1861, vol. i, p. 125.
[113] [Compare Joulin, _Anatomie et Physiologie comparé du bassin des Mammifères_, 8vo, Paris, 1864; and _Mémoire sur le bassin considéré dans les Races Humaines_, 8vo, Paris, 1864.--EDITOR.]
[114] The proportion given by Camper is this: the great diameter is to the little,
In the European :: 41 : 27. In the Negro :: 39 : 27·5.
[115] _Account of the Regular Gradation of Man_, 4to, London, 1799, p. 118.
[116] _Cours de Physiologie_, Paris, 1848, vol. i, p. 394. See, also, on the same question, A. Maury, in the _Athénéum Français_, 1853, No. 47.
[117] [We cannot entirely agree with the author regarding the low stature of the Spaniards. From our own observation we may unreservedly say that, at all events, the inhabitants of the _south_ and _south western_ parts of Spain are a fine race, not at all liable to the charge of being different in height from the Anglo-Saxons.--EDITOR.]
[118] [Although our author rather despises the idea of the legs being bowed by riding, it is tolerably well known in this country that too much riding on horseback, _when young_, and especially on large animals, is very apt to alter the shape of delicate and weakly limbs.--EDITOR.]
[119] “Tribus Mongoles,” translated by S. A. de Grandsagne, in the _Mémoires du Muséum_, vol. xvii.
[120] See Broca, _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, 3rd April, 1862.
[121] See Lawrence, _Lectures on Comparative Anatomy_, London, 1848, p. 410.
[122] Davy, _An Account of the Interior of Ceylon_, 1821, p. 109.
[123] See Daniel Wilson, in the _British Review_, 1851; and in Stephens, the description of the Temple of Uxmal.
[124] See _Bulletins de la Société de Géographie_, 4th series, vol. x, p. 45. It must not be forgotten that these weapons with a small handle may have been used by those valiant heroines, whose praises have so often been sung in the songs of the north.
[125] Presented by A. C. Harris, Esq., 1840.
[126] [Compare the memoir of Professor C. G. Carus, _Ueber die Typisch geurdenen abbildungen menschlichen kopfformen namentlich auf münzen in verschiedenen zeiten und volkern_, published in the _Novorum Actorum Academiæ Cæsareæ Leopoldini-Carolinæ Germanicæ naturæ curiosum_ for 1863, in which the author gives characteristic examples of the ancient types, as deduced from the examination of coins, etc. Compare, also, Nott and Gliddon, _Types of Mankind_.--EDITOR.]
[127] See especially Lepsius, _Denkmaeler von Egypten und Œthiopen_, vol. ii, pl. 133; vol. iii, pl. 116, 117, 118, 136.
[128] Bérard, _Cours de Physiologie_, Paris, 1848, vol. i, p. 394.
[129] See J. H. Hanneman, _Curiosum Scrutinium Nigredinus Posterorum Cham_, in 4to, Kiloni, 1677, § 14.
[130] See Pruner-Bey, _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, 5th March, 1863.
[131] See, upon this point, G. Pouchet, _Des Colorations de l’Epiderme_, 4to, Paris, 1864.
[132] Bory de Saint-Vincent divided mankind into _Leucotriques_ and _Ulotriques_ (see Bérard, _Cours de Physiologie_, 1848, vol. i, p. 394). Prichard refers all these races to the three following types:--1. _Melanocomous_; 2. _Leucous_; 3. _Xanthous_ (see _English Cyclopædia_, art. “Man”).
[133] _Tableau Synoptique des Races Humaines_ (_Mém. de la Société d’Anthropologie_, vol. i, p. 143).
[134] See Pruner-Bey, _De la Chevelure_ (_Mém. de la Soc. d’Anthrop._, vol. ii, p. 1).
[135] See Smith, _The Natural History of the Human Species_, p. 189.
[136] See Earl, quoted by Crawfurd, _On the Negro Race_, etc. (_British Association_, 1852, p. 86.)
[137] Compare Burnouf, _Le Lotus de la bonne loi_, p. 562.
[138] Compare, _idem_, _ibidem_, p. 569.
[139] _Narrative of a Second Voyage_, etc., 1835, p. 427.
[140] [The name given to Persia by its inhabitants.--EDITOR.]
[141] Compare _The Natural History of the Human Species_.
[142] M. de Serres, in his _Lectures on Anthropology_, at the Museum of Natural History.
[143] Ross, _Narrative of a Second Voyage_, etc., p. 446.
[144] This fact is related by Pallas, _Mémoires du Muséum_, vol. xvii, p. 238. A Kalmuc saw a body of men thirty versts off [nearly twenty miles English], while the Russian general could see nothing even with a telescope.
[145] It would be interesting to discover if the fact related by Knox (_The Races of Men_, 1850, p. 271) is true; namely, that the sharpness of sight, which the Bosjesmans possess in a very high degree, is lost immediately on crossing the breed with the whites.
[146] Le Cat, _Traité des Sens_, 1744; Haller, _Elementa Physiologiæ_, vol. v, p. 179; Humboldt, _Relation Personnelle_, vol. iii, p. 229.
[147] See Robin, _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_, 1845; _Zoologie_, vol. iv, p. 380.
[148] _Histoire des Travaux de Buffon_, p. 92.
[149] [“Face to face with the present position of metaphysical thought in England, that anthropology, which can find no higher employment for the human mind than the ascertainment of man’s relations with the baboons, will find no place at all.... We have no real fear that the consequences which may result from the practical application of this law (transmutation) will be prejudicial to religion, morality, or society.... But until the day comes when such a law shall be fully, entirely, and satisfactorily established, we must strenuously protest against the diffusion, even amongst the ‘wider circle of the intelligent public,’ of essays, the object of which is to render ‘Man’s Place in Nature’ closer to that of the brute creation.” C. Carter Blake, _Man and Beast_ (_Anthropological Review_, vol. i, pp. 154, 161).--EDITOR.]
[150] See Sömmering, 1785, p. 42.
[151] _Sketches of Central Africa._
[152] There is a copy of it at the British Museum.
[153] We only know of one painting in which Egyptians themselves are represented in a like position; it is in the British Museum, and is on a tomb. It is a group of persons squatted behind a flock of geese. It is right to remark, however, that the artist may have been rather puzzled about its composition, more complicated than usual, and that the inartistic profiles of his figures, which almost cover one another, greatly diminish the value of the picture with reference to our subject.
[154] _Geographische Nosologie oder die Lehre von den Veränderungen der Krankheiten in den Verschiedenen Gegenden der Erde, in Verbindung mit Physicher Géographie und Naturgeschichte des Menschen_, 8vo, Stuttgart, 1813.
[155] _Traité de Géographie Médicale_, 1857: Introduction, p. 29.
[156] [“The great question of acclimatisation has hitherto been treated lightly enough. ‘A firm resolution not to be conquered by a malady,’ says Malte-Brun, ‘is, in the opinion of most doctors, one of the most efficacious preventives of disease. Our body depends on our intelligence. In every climate the nerves, the muscles, the blood-vessels, in relaxing or in stretching, in dilating or in contracting, soon take the particular state which suits the degree of heat or cold which is borne by the body.’ Thus, according to this celebrated geographer, man has only to exercise his _will_ in order to accommodate his organism to all the difficulties of a new temperature and a new climate.” H. J. C. Beavan, _The Acclimatisation of Man_ (_Social Science Review_, February 21, 1863.)--EDITOR.]
[157] Hirsch, _Handbuch der Historisch-Geographischen Pathologie_, § 10. With the author of this immense compilation we refer our readers (with reference to this relative immunity of Negroes from marsh-fever) to the works of Jobin, Tschudi, M’Cabe, Hunter, Arnold, Cameron, Heymann, Epp, Bartlett, Thomson, Tidyman (_Philad. Journ. of Med. Science_, vol. iii, No. 6), etc.
[158] _Epidemiological Society_, 3rd June, 1861; _Medical Times and Gazette_, 29th June, 1861, No. 574.
[159] [“In spite of ‘previous acclimatisation,’ a Negro regiment was almost entirely destroyed by chest disease at Gibraltar, in 1817, within the short space of fifteen months.” _Acclimatisation of Man_ (_Social Science Review_, February 21, 1863).--EDITOR.]
[160] “Si no acontecía ahorcar al Negro, nunca moría.” Compare Herrera, _Hist. Gener. de los Hechos de los Castellanos_, dec. 2, Book III, chap. xiv.
[161] Bancroft (Essay 273); Blair, _Some Account of the last Yellow Fever Epidemic of British Guiana_, London, 1850; Jackson; Hirsch, _Handbuch der Historisch-Geographischen Pathologie_, § 36.
[162] “It is a well-established fact, that there is something in the Negro constitution which affords him protection against the worst effects of yellow fever, but what it is I am unable to say.”--Fenner. Compare Hirsch, _Handbuch_, § 36.
[163] “The smallest admixture of Negro blood, even though the subject be brought from a more northerly state, seems to be a potent antidote against the morbid poison.”--Nott, _Southern Journal of Medicine_, February, 1847. “The coloured people resisted the epidemic influence better than the whites; and, I believe I may hazard the observation, that their degree in resistance was in proportion to the admixture of white blood.”--Bryant, _American Journal_, April, 1856, p. 301. Compare Hirsch, _Handbuch_, § 36.
[164] See _Mémoires de Médecine et de Chirurgie Militaire_, November and December 1863; _Société d’Anthropologie_, meeting of 19th March, 1864.
[165] M. d’Eichthal, _Lettres sur la Race noire_, 1839, p. 15.
[166] [“The Arabs say that Mohammed, whilst on the road from Medina to Mecca, one day happened to see a widow woman sitting before her house, and asked how she and her three sons were; upon which the troubled woman (for she had concealed one of her sons on seeing Mohammed’s approach, lest he, as is customary when there are three males of a family present, should seize one and make him do porterage), said, ‘Very well; but I’ve only two sons!’ Mohammed, hearing this, said to the woman, reprovingly, ‘Woman, thou liest! thou hast three sons; and for trying to conceal this matter from me, henceforth remember that this is my decree,--that the two boys whom thou hast not concealed shall multiply and prosper, have fair faces, become wealthy, and reign lords over all the earth; but the progeny of your third son shall, in consequence of your having concealed him, produce _seedis_ as black as darkness, who will be sold in the market like cattle, and remain in perpetual servitude to the descendants of the other two.’” This is the Arab theory of the Negro’s origin, mentioned in _What led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile_, by J. H. Speke, p. 341, London, 1864.--EDITOR.]
[167] _Othello_, Act I, Scene 3. [Othello was, however, a _Moor_, not a Negro, and capable of a far higher delicacy of mental perceptions than the veritable “unbleached African.” Perhaps one of the most absurd theatrical errors was committed when the part of Othello was acted by a genuine Negro, Ira Aldridge.--EDITOR.]
[168] Edmond About, _Le Progrès_, 1864, p. 15.
[169] These are Negroes of whom he is speaking.
[170] “_De l’Unité de l’Espèce Humaine_,” _Biblioth. Univ. de Genève_, nouv. ser., vol. liv, p. 145, 1844.
[171] Gliddon, _Types of Mankind_, p. 59. Carus has observed, that among the remarkable Negroes mentioned by Blumenbach, not one of them was distinguished either in politics, literature, or in any high conception of art. Compare Gobineau, _De l’Inégalité des Races Humaines_, vol. i, p. 122, 1853.
[172] See De Maillet, _Telliamed_, 8vo, vol. ii, p. 187, Amsterdam, 1748. For want of those passages of the Korán to which he refers, we give the whole of Maillet’s remark on the subject:--“Mohammed was so struck with the difference between white and black men, that he did not hesitate to say, that God had made the first with _white earth_, and the latter with _black_. He did not imagine that men so different, not only in colour but in figure and inclination, could possibly be of one and the same origin. He observes, in another place, that although there have been prophets of all other nations, there was never one among the blacks; which shows that they have so little mind, that the gift of foresight,--the effect of natural wisdom, which has sometimes been honoured with the name of prophecy,--has never fallen to the lot of any of them.” This passage is, besides, remarkable; because this custom of prophecy seems to be a special attribute of the Semitic race (compare Renan, _Histoire Générale des Langues Sémitiques_, 8vo, p. 8, Paris, 1855), and Mohammed, in making this distinction, declared almost a specific characteristic. In the translation of the “Évangile de l’Enfance,” by G. Brunet (_Evangiles Apocryphes_, 12mo, Paris, 1849), there is this curious document (Jesus had just changed some children into rams in the sight of some women, who asked for their pardon), “The Lord Jesus having answered, that _the children of Israel were, among other nations, like the Ethiopians_; the women said,” etc. This is merely a proof of the contempt which overwhelmed this unhappy race in the east.
[173] _On the Negro’s Place in Nature_ (Dr. Hunt, _Anthropological Society of London_, November 17, 1863).
[174] See the table taken from the _Systema Naturæ_. We know that Linnæus had adopted the geographical classification of human races.
Homo Americanus. { _Pertinæ_, contentus, liber. { Regitur consuetudine. ” Europæus. { Levis, argutus, _inventor_. { Regitur ritibus. ” Asiaticus. { _Severus_, fastuosus, avarus, { _Regitur opinionibus._ ” Afer. { Vafer, segnis, negligens, { _Regitur arbitrio._
[175] _Des Races Humaines_, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.
[176] [It is, indeed, worthy of a place in science, though not apparently in the sense which is meant by our author. C. Carter Blake says, and says truly, “In zoology, as in all other methods of human thought, the sincere searcher after truth will reap some solid benefit for his labours if carried on in a fair and honest spirit. What science reveals to us,--and we know of no source of knowledge whence the revelation of the truth, as it is manifested in living nature, can be impugned,--what science teaches us, a simple-minded student will accept, that which the unbiassed evidences of his senses and the manifestations of his own consciousness tell him to be true.” (C. Carter Blake, _On the Doctrine of Final Causes, as illustrated by Zoology_, Hastings Philosophical Society, meeting of January 13, 1864.)--EDITOR.]
[177] [“The natives of Australia,” observes Hasskarl, “are deficient in the idea of a Creator or moral Governor of the world, and all attempts to instruct them terminate in a sudden break up of the conversation. The Bechuanas, one of the most intelligent tribes of the interior of South Africa, have no idea of a Supreme Being; and there is no word to be found in their language for the conception of a Creator.” (_Force and Matter_, by Dr. Louis Büchner, transl. and edited by J. F. Collingwood, F.R.S.L., F.G.S., F.A.S.L.).--EDITOR.]
[178] I translate in this way the word _mythology_, used by Latham; it is the real translation. Every religion is necessarily based on a _fable_, for whoever does not practise it, “Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur.” [This is an assertion which our author has no right to make, and which certainly does not redound to his credit. We must earnestly protest against it. A moment’s consideration, however, will satisfy most men that the translator’s license has here been carried to a most unwarrantable extent.--EDITOR.]
[179] The Reverend Messrs. Schmidt, Parker, etc.
[180] John Leighton.
[181] See Bertillon, _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, March 15, 1860. [See above, p. 66, _note_.--EDITOR.]
[182] I had this fact from the mouth of M. de Lesseps, on his return from a journey to Khartûm.
[183] J. Ross, _Narrative of a Second Voyage_, p. 548, 1835.
[184] Emanuel Zobrega wrote to the Company from Brazil, in 1552:--“The inhabitants acknowledge Saint Thomas, whom they call Zomé (changing the _Th_ into _Z_, according to their dialect); and they have a tradition that he once journeyed through this country.” His letter is fully given by Nieremberg, _Historia Naturæ_, fol., Antuerpiæ, 1635.
[185] “On the Intellectual Character of the Esquimaux” (_Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal_, vol. xxxviii, p. 306, October 1844 to April 1845.)
[186] _L’Immortalité de l’âme chez les Juifs_, transl. by I. Cohen, 12mo, Paris, 1857.
[187] See Brecher, _L’Immortalité de l’âme chez les Juifs_, p. 81.
[188] Josephus, _Antiquities_, xviii, ch. 2, transl. by D. G. Génébrard, Paris, 1639.
[189] Chapter upon the “Nirvâna.”
[190] Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, _Bouddha et sa Religion_, chapter upon the “Nirvâna,” 1862.
[191] Niebuhr quoted, in support of this, the Nalhkis and the Guaranis in the New Californian and Cape Missions. Schlegel (_Essais_, p. 341, Paris, 1841) declares, that most savage nations ought always to remain so by the will of nature.
[192] See _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences_, meeting of July 20, 1857.
[193] “I maintain,” says Courtet de l’Isle (_Tableau Ethnographique du genre humain_, p. 89, 8vo, Paris, 1849), “that human races are unequal in intellectual power, that they are, consequently, not susceptible of the same degree of development, and that each of them is called upon to fill, in unequal conditions, a mission marked out by Providence.”
[194] Doctor Martius is a curious example of the extravagances to which monogenist ideas may lead. In order to explain the moral character of the Americans, he is obliged to suppose a frightful cataclysm [great inundation] which happened, he cannot say when, and adds, “Is it the profound terror felt by those unhappy people who escaped from this awful calamity which, being transmitted without a diminished intensity to following generations, has troubled their reason, obscured their intelligence, and hardened their heart?” Compare Morel, _Traité des Dégénérescences de l’espèce humaine_, 1857, and _Discours Inaugural à l’Académie de Rouen_, 1857.
[195] D’Orbigny saw the Charruas continue a war against the Spaniards (who decimated them) rather than renounce their much-valued independence. (_Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale_, vol. iv, Introduction p. 4.) [Our author ought not to compare the northern Americans with the southern aborigines, giving to _both_ of them, apparently, the same characteristics. The northerners are whites, and (supposing the Canadians and the north-western settlers are spoken of) worthy of his praise. We put the present _Northern States_ on one side altogether, as the character given by our author cannot possibly apply to them. The Charruas, who are mentioned in the above note, are Indians, inhabiting the banks of the Uruguay in South America, and therefore, whatever may be their courage and love of liberty _as aborigines_, they cannot properly be classed with white inhabitants, who are merely _settlers_.--EDITOR.]
[196] Compare D’Escayrac de Lauture, _Le Désert et le Soudan_; _Mémoire sur le Soudan_, etc. [These people are not so very peculiar in this respect. Even in our own land, there is sometimes a good deal of difficulty in obtaining information about routes; and agricultural labourers especially are much given to scratching their heads and chewing the cud of meditation, ending with an indecision quite delightful to the tired traveller.--EDITOR.]
[197] See _Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica_, pp. 482, 483, 4to, Amstelodami, 1723.
[198] See _Essai Politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne_, Paris, 1811.
[199] _Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale._
[200] _Crania Americana_, Introduction.
[201] _Mémoire_ on the preceding work.
[202] [Dr. Hunt, however, does not think that language is such an unfailing test as our author appears to imagine. He considers that language must be utterly discarded as the first principle of anthropological classification, and gives a far higher value to religion and to art, considering language merely as the third element. It is possible to change the language of a race; but apparently impossible to change either their religion or their innate ideas of art. See Hunt on _Anthropological Classification_ (_Brit. Assoc._, 1863), _Anthrop. Rev._, vol. i, p. 383. “On ethnology, Professor Müller says, ‘The science of language and the science of ethnology have both suffered most seriously from being mixed up together. The classification of races and languages should be quite independent of each other. Races may change their languages; and history supplies us with several instances where one race adopted the language of another. Different languages, therefore, may be spoken by one race, or the same language may be spoken by different races; so that any attempt at squaring the classification of races and tongues must necessarily fail.’”(_On the Science of Language_, R. S. Charnock; _Anthrop. Rev._, vol. i, p. 200.)--EDITOR.]
[203] See Chavée, _Les Langues et les Races_, 1862.
[204] _Histoire des Langues Sémitiques_, p. 467, Paris, 1855.
[205] See Prichard, _The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations_, edited by Latham, 1857.
[206] “The sound of their voice resembles sighing.” “Their language resembles the clucking of a turkey.” Compare White, _Account of the regular gradation of Man_, p. 67, London, 1799. Appleyard, _The Kafir Language_, p. 3, 8vo, King William’s Town, 1850. Morel, _Traité des Dégénérescences de l’espèce humaine_, p. 42, Paris, 1857. “The Kafirs have adopted some of the inflexions in use among their neighbours, but as a simple ornament to their speech, without attributing any special signification to these ‘cluckings.’”--Is. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (_Correspondence_).
[207] Compare Cabanis, _Rapports du Physique et du Moral_, 13th year, vol. ii, p. 201: Knox, _The Races of Men_, p. 82, London, 1850: Morel, _Dégénérescences de l’Espèce Humaine_, Paris, 1857.
[208] See Beddom in _English Cyclopædia_: see, also, Vitruvius, book vi, ch. i.
[209] _Rapports du Physique et du Moral_, 13th year, vol. ii, p. 294.
[210] _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, vol. iii, p. 319, 1860. We do not here quote the facts relative to the Barbary and Corsican stag (_ibidem_, p. 407), since they rest only on the negative assertion of an old author.
[211] “Partout de petits changements, nulle part de grands.” _Hist. Naturelle Générale_, vol. iii, p. 388.
[212] _Recherches sur les Ossements Fossiles_, 4to, vol. i, p. 59, 1831.
[213] _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, vol. iii, p. 389.
[214] “What would be thought of a breeder who took Norman colts or Flemish calves to the high lands of the Alps and the Pyrenees, and then expected to see them reproduce (their training having been finished) all the pure characteristics of the original races?”--Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, vol. iii, p. 307.
[215] See Verneuil, _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, February 2, 1860.--Bonté, _ibidem_, August 6, 1863.
[216] [“A priest who has drunk wine shall migrate into a moth or a fly, feeding on ordure. He who steals the gold of a priest, shall pass a thousand times into the bodies of spiders. If a man shall steal honey, he shall be born a great stinging gnat; if oil, an oil-drinking beetle; if salt, a cicada; if a household utensil, an ichneumon fly” (_Institutes of Menu_, § 353). Thus, apparently with regard to _comparison_, the Hindú considers insects to be the lowest form of animal life, into which _moral_ criminals are to pass after death, according to their doctrine of metempsychosis.--EDITOR.]
[217] [Why will some scientific men persist in separating, so strongly, religion and science, as if _both_ could not be practised? This is what the “master of science” appears to think. Each _student_ of science may well apply the following lines: “It is your duty to go on steadfastly, unwaveringly, _ohne Hast, ohne Rast_, conscious that you interpret, to the best of your finite ability, your conceptions of the truths of science, equally conscious that whatever may be the immediate result of your labours, they must eventually fulfil the aspiration which tends _ad majorem Dei gloriam_.”--C. Carter Blake _On the Doctrine of Final Causes_ (_Hastings Philosophical Society_, meeting of January 13, 1864).--EDITOR.]
[218] Robin, _Mémoire sur la Production du Blastoderme_ (_Journal de Physiologie_, p. 358, 1862).
[219] It is thus that we do not see realised in man that general law which decrees that animal species are large in proportion to the continent which they inhabit; the mean size of the mammalia, in particular, is regularly proportional to the extent of Australia, America, the ancient continent, and the bottom of the ocean.
[220] Compare Mitchell, _An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours_, etc. (_Philosophical Transactions_, 1745.)
[221] “Sole colorari homines non dubium, eosque autem ut nigrescant non constat.” Albinus, _De Sede et Causa Coloris Æthiopum_, p. 12. He also says, still speaking of Negroes, that they are coloured, “quod suum parentes colorem in liberos propagant ...; æthiops fœmina si cum mare æthiope rem habuerit, æthiopem, ni quid forte natura ludat, gignit; alba si cum albo, album.”--_Ibidem_, p. 10. It is in some manner the permanence of a declared type.
[222] _Dissertation Physique sur les Différences des Traits du Visage_, p. 17.
[223] See above, p. 85.
[224] Yvan, _De France en Chine_, p. 175, Paris, 1853. [“M. Périer has mentioned, according to Yvan, the beauty of the inhabitants of the island of Réunion, who descend from a few couples only, and yet have known how to preserve their purity of blood” (_An Inquiry into Consanguineous Marriages and Pure Races_, Dr. E. Dally; transl. by H. J. C. Beavan, _Anthrop. Review_, p. 97, 1864).--EDITOR.]
[225] White, _Account of the regular Gradation of Man_, p. 112. Morton, _Crania Americana_, Introduction. Prince de Wied, _Voyage au Brésil_, vol. ii, p. 310. Bory de St. Vincent, _Essai Zoologique sur le genre humain_, vol. ii, p. 20.
[226] Desmoulins, _Histoire Naturelle des races humaines_, p. 162. _Indigenous Races of the Earth_, p. 585.
[227] White, _Account of the regular Gradation of Man_, p. 104.
[228] W. Edwards, _Des Caractères Physiologiques des races humaines_, p. 14. Niebuhr (transl.), _Lectures on Ethnography_, vol. i, p. 374.
[229] John Hunter also thought that man was originally black; he had remarked that domestic animals become white by age. Compare White, _Account of the regular Gradation of Man_, p. 100. Hunter thus confounded men with domestic animals. We have already said what must be thought of this connexion.
[230] Compare Morel, _Dégénérescence de l’espèce humaine_, p. 5, Paris, 1857.
[231] See above, p. 73.
[232] Climateric influences act probably upon wild animals in the same manner; it must be remarked, however, that a captive animal and a man, taken to another country, are not exposed in the same degree to the action of the new medium; conditions are not similarly altered as regards both of them. Sometimes the man, sometimes the animal, will have most chances of resistance; the one being always obliged by his master to submit to an intellectual government, approaching as much as possible his former state; the other, abandoned to himself, and drawn fatally into the new habits which he sees around him.
[233] See, on this point, Boudin, _Géographie Médicale_, vol. ii, p. 15, Paris, 1857. _Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes_, p. 230, 1833. G. Pouchet, _Des Colorations de l’épiderme_, 4to, Paris, 1864.
[234] [Dr. Waitz, in his _Introduction to Anthropology_ (translated and edited by J. F. Collingwood), gives an explanation concerning the colouring matter in the Negro, which is very curious, but with which, however, he does not agree; viz., “that in hot climates the amount of oxygen inspired is insufficient to change the carbon into carbonic acid, and that the unconsumed carbon is deposited in the pigment-cells of the skin.... It is, however, difficult to admit that the browning of the skin in our climate in summer is produced by the same causes as the black colour of the Negro, and that it would only require a greater intensity and a longer duration to become so entirely.” Part. I, sect. i, p. 35.--EDITOR.]
[235] The precociousness of the genital functions is in direct relation with this general fact.
[236] W. Edwards, _Caractères Physiologiques_, etc., p. 14. “The tropics alone produce the combination of infantine grace with the full development of female maturity.” Smith, _Natural History_, etc., p. 190. See, also, Cabanis, _Rapports du Physique et du Moral_, vol. ii; and Davy, _Account of Ceylon_. These two authors in particular have quite appreciated these changes.
[237] Boudin, _Géographie Médicale_, vol. ii, p. 150, 1857.
[238] Meeting of November 7, 1861.
[239] [See above, p. 59, _note_.--EDITOR.]
[240] It would appear from the documents collected by Nott (_Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races_, Mobile, 1844, compare Boudin, _Géogr. Méd._, vol. ii, p. 144), that as we advance towards the upper part of the Northern States, madness becomes very frequent among the Negroes. It reaches the proportion of one case of insanity among twenty-eight sane persons in Massachusetts and Maine. We hesitate in acknowledging climateric influence, because the number of cases seems to increase relatively to the degree of instruction among the people; not that madness depends on education, but because it finds out a great number of cases of which we should otherwise have been ignorant, as often happens in the east among a less enlightened people.
[241] Compare Boudin, _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, August 1, 1861.
[242] Compare Boudin, _Traité de Géographie Médicale_, 1857, Introduction.
[243] _New York Medical Journal_, p. 399, February 1831 (see Hirsch, _Handbuch der Historisch-geographischen Pathologie_, § 35, p. 1).
[244] _Some Account of the Last Yellow Fever Epidemic of British Guiana_, p. 59, 8vo, London, 1850.
[245] Barton, _Report of the Sanitary Commission of New Orleans for 1853_, p. 248, New Orleans, 1854 (see Hirsch, _Handbuch_, etc., § 35). He brings forward several pieces of evidence in the same question. They seem to us too decisive, in a polygenist point of view, for us not to give the entire list of his quotations: Romay, _Diss. sobre la Fiebre Amarilla_, etc., Habana, 1797: Arnold, _Treatise on the Bilious Remittent Fever_, etc., p. 26, London, 1840: Zimpel, _Jenaische Annalen für Med._, i, p. 68: Dickinson, _Observations on the Inflammatory Endemic incident to Strangers in the West Indies_, etc., p. 13, London, 1819: Ferguson, _Notes and Reflections_, p. 150, London, 1846: Dickson, _Philadelphia Med. and Phys. Journal_, iii, p. 250: Lallemand, _Das Gelbfieber_, etc., p. 121. [Schomburgk, _A Description of British Guiana_, etc., p. 22, London, 1840.--EDITOR.]
[246] Words borrowed from the definition of species by Isidore Geoffroy, _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, vol. ii, p. 437. “The act which appears most natural to living beings who are perfect, and who are not abortive, nor produced by spontaneous generation, is the production of a being like themselves, the animal producing an animal, the plant a plant, so as to participate in the eternal and divine nature as much as they can.”--_De l’âme_, book ii, chap. iv, § 2, transl. by Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire.
[247] Nott and Gliddon, _Indigenous Races of the Earth_, p. 443.
[248] Nott and Gliddon, _Types of Mankind_, p. 373, 1854.
[249] See Boudin, _Géographie Médicale_, Introduction, p. 39.
[250] See Morel, _Traité des Dégénérescences_.
[251] Périer, _Société d’Anthropologie_, meeting of April 21, 1864.
[252] _Des Races Humaines_, 1845.
[253] _Account of the Regular Gradation of Man_, p. 146.
[254] Compare W. Edwards, _Des Caractères Physiologiques_, etc., p. 29.
[255] Individual distinctions can only, then, be based on the alterations of type, in characteristics which are not those of the supposed ideal. It hence results that, if we have lived with a stranger who has all the characteristics of his race well marked, we think that we see him while travelling among his fellow countrymen.
[256] “It is one of the clearest facts in the animal, as well as in the vegetable world; all races generally reproduce and perpetuate themselves without mingling and confounding one with the other.”--Prichard, _Histoire Naturelle de l’Homme_, vol. i., p. 17. Compare Morel, _Dégénérescences de l’espèce humaine_, p. 2.
[257] Third number. Most of the articles in this remarkable production are unsigned.
[258] “No race will amalgamate with another; they die out, or seem slowly to be becoming extinct.” Compare the _Ethnological Journal_, p. 98.
[259] “We arrive at the fundamental conclusion that it is useless for people belonging to varieties of different races, but neighbours, to ally themselves together; part of the new generation will always preserve the primitive type.”--See Courtet de l’Isle, _Tableau Ethnographique_, p. 77.
[260] Latham thinks, however, that he has discovered some vestiges of the Phœnician race in Africa and Cornwall. Compare Knox, _The Races of Men_, 1850.
[261] [Small columns, having neither base nor capital.--EDITOR.]
[262] It is the case with the hippopotamus and the lion.
[263] Thus, at least, Buffon translates “Gothi corpore proceriore, capillis albidis rectis, oculorum indibus cinere--cærulescentibus.”--Linnæus, _Fauna succica_, p. 1.
[264] By virtue of the law which makes us find a family likeness in an individual after it has been absent, or rather hidden, for one or more generations.
[265] “Rutilæ comæ, magni artus.”--Tacitus, _Agricola_, ii, § 11.
[266] “Colorati vultus et torti plerumque crines.”--Idem, _ibidem_.
[267] Idem, _ibidem_.
[268] See Latham, _Celtic Language_, p. 371. J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_, p. 53. Garnet, in the _Transactions of the Philological Society_. R. Cull and Latham, in the _Edinburgh New Physical Journal_, 1854. Périer, _Fragments Ethnologiques_, Paris, 1857.
[269] J. Philips, see _British Association_, 1849.
[270] The name itself of this district shows, however, the habitation of these parts by the Scandinavians.
[271] Compare W. Edwards, _Des Caractères Physiologiques des Races Humaines_. Paris, 1829.
[272] See Périer, _Fragments Ethnologiques_, Paris, 1857.
[273] _Recherches sur l’Ethnologie de la France_ (_Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie_, vol. i, p. 1). See, also, the discussion which followed the reading of this paper (_Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, meetings of July 21 and August 4, 1859).
[274] We may remark this line is precisely perpendicular to the climateric parallels which divide France.
[275] [The standard in France is, we believe, five feet.--EDITOR.]
[276] _Peru_, 1846.
[277] _Nicaragua: its People_, vol. ii, p. 153, New York, 1852.
[278] _Essai sur l’Inégalité des Races Humaines_, Paris, 1852.
[279] _Rapports du Physique et du Moral_, vol. i, p. 484.
[280] M. Morel, _Traité des Dégénérescences_.
[281] [“All races of mankind intermix, they are fertile, producing cross-breeds, mulattoes, mestizoes, etc., which again are productive. All human races constitute, therefore, on physiological principles, but one species, which is here identical with _genus humanum_.” So thinks Professor Rudolph Wagner, but his arguments are not very satisfactory. He refers varieties of race in a great measure to climatic influence. See _Creation of Man and Substance of the Mind_ (_Anthrop. Rev._, vol. i, p. 229).--EDITOR.]
[282] Compare _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, vol. iii, p. 175.
[283] In applying these principles to family consanguinity, we may say in a general manner, that it will be favourable or not to the offspring according to the state of the parents. If the parents are perfectly healthy, and exempt from all commencing degeneracy, they can only give birth to children at least as healthy as themselves. If one of the two parents is tainted with a commencement of degeneracy, the descendant, in his quality of offspring, will perhaps bear the trace of this degeneracy, but sensibly weakened. If the two parents are separately tainted with a different commencement of degeneracy, one or the other ought to continue it in the child, only in a lesser degree. But if the same degeneracy has already tainted both the parents, the offspring will show it in a greater degree, and will tend towards entire disappearance.
[284] Flourens, _Histoire des Travaux de Buffon_, p. 180.
[285] [_On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo_, edited by C. Carter Blake, F.G.S., F.A.S.L.--EDITOR.]
[286] Compare G. Pouchet, _Précis d’Histologie Humaine_, § 5.
[287] “Ac Sylla quidem sodalis noster, fatus nos parva quæstione tanquam instrumento ingentem et gravem de origine mundi quæstionem subruere.” _Quæstionem Convivalium_, book ii, quest. 3; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841.
[288] Buffon said that (_Suppléments_, vol. iv, p. 335) this method of generation is not only the most frequent and the most general, but the most ancient, that is, the first and most universal one. Plutarch (_Quæst. Conviv._, book ii, quest. 3; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841) makes the same remark: “Proinde probabile est primum ortum ex terra gignentis perfectione ac robore absolutum fuisse, nihilque indigentem hujusmodi instrumentis, receptaculis et vasis, qualia nunc ob imbecillitatem natura parit atque machinatur parientibus.”
[289] It must not be forgotten, that organic substances are supposed to have been found even in the formation of certain aërolites.
[290] É. Geoffroy, _Comptes Rendus des séances de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. v, p. 193.
[291] See Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, vol. iii, p. 210.
[292] [We are almost tempted, in all kindness, to refer our author to the following remarks in the _Reliques of Father Prout_, p. 264. “I have been at some pains to acquire a comprehensive notion of the Count de Buffon’s system, and, aided by an old Jesuit, I have succeeded in condensing the voluminous dissertation into a few lines, for the use of those who are dissatisfied with the Mosaic statement:--
1. In the beginning was the sun, from which a splinter was shot off by chance, and that fragment was our globe.
2. And the globe had for its nucleus melted glass, with an envelope of hot water.
3. And it began to twirl round, and became somewhat flattened at the poles.
4. Now, when the water grew cool, insects began to appear, and shell-fish.
5. And from the accumulation of shells, particularly oysters (see vol. i, p. 14, 4to, 2nd ed.), the earth was gradually formed, with ridges of mountains, on the principle of the Monte Testacio at the gate of Rome.
6. But the melted glass kept warm for a long time, and the arctic climate was as hot in those days as the tropics now are,--witness a frozen rhinoceros found in Siberia.” Let the leaven work, although a mere joke to M. Pouchet’s reality.--EDITOR.]
[293] _Histoire Naturelle_, vol. ix, p. 127, 1761. Étienne Geoffroy (_Comptes Rendus_, vol. iii, p. 29) says the same thing “as regards the actual constitution of the globe; each race is a species _sui generis_,--a form or combination of its own in nature.”
[294] The terms of this definition are almost entirely borrowed from Isidore Geoffroy. By ending it with these words, “in the present order of things,” Isidore Geoffroy only defined the existing species, and took away, without any reason, the palæontologic species.
[295] Lamarck, _Discours de l’An XI_, p. 45.
[296] See Flourens, _Examen du livre de M. Darwin sur l’Origine des Espèces_, 18mo, Paris, 1864. We are at least astonished to find the name of the Geoffroys mentioned but once in such a work (p. 45). M. Flourens charges Darwin with only quoting the partisans of his own opinions (p. 40).
[297] [See above, p. 84, _note_.--EDITOR.]
[298] _Sur l’Influence du monde ambiant_, 1831 (_Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences_), vol. xii, p. 81.
[299] Vol. ii, second part, 1859.
[300] _Philosophie Zoologique_, vol. i, p. 221.
[301] _Système des Connaissances Positives_, p. 143, 1820.
[302] _Discours de l’An XI_, p. 45. He says, also, in another place (_Philosophie Zoologique_, vol. i, p. 66), “What we call species, has only a relative constancy in that state, and cannot be as ancient as nature itself.”
[303] Lamarck, _Organisation des Corps Vivants_, p. 53.
[304] For nature “time has no limit, and consequently has it always at its disposal.” Lamarck, _Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_, p. 13, 1801.
[305] Darwin _On the Origin of Species_, p. 518, London, 1861. “I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or less number. Analogy would lead me one step farther, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype.”
[306] Compare Darwin _On the Origin of Species_, p. 96, 1861.
[307] _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, vol. ii, p. 421, 1859.
[308] “The observation of species in a state of nature, by revealing to us a multitude of modifications more or less important, cannot show us any serious deviation from the types formed or preserved by the influence of the existing state of things.” Isidore Geoffroy, _Vie d’Étienne Geoffroy_, p. 349.
[309] See Leibnitz, _Protogée_, transl. by Bertrand de Saint-Germain, Introduction, p. 61.
[310] _Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie_, February 22, 1858.
[311] We shall be thanked for publishing here the following extract from a letter addressed to us by Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the 3rd of June, 1860, and which relates to all these questions. “I said, two or three years ago, as I have learnt from M. Lartet (who remembered the expression which I had myself forgotten), that the present movement of science tends to substitute in geology the idea of the _evolution_ of the globe for that of _revolutions_. M. Lartet has taken up this view, and adheres to it. It is of great importance to me, as regards my works on species, in which we must in this case substitute the notion of _evolution_ for that of _revolution_; _revolutions_ are here pretended creations, abruptly successive. It is time to have done with these views, which, instead of taking creation as having been once concluded, make at every instant the _Deus ex machinâ_ intervene.”
[312] [“In the neighbourhood of Mount Ætna, or on the sides of that extensive mountain, there are beds of lava covered over with a considerable thickness of earth; and at least another, again, which though known from ancient monuments and historical records to have issued from the volcano at least two thousand years ago, is still almost entirely destitute of soil and vegetation; in one place a pit has been cut through seven different strata of lava; and these have been found separated from each other by almost as many thick beds of rich earth. Now, from the fact that a stratum of lava, two thousand years old, is yet scantily covered with earth, it has been inferred by the ingenious Canon Recupero, who has laboured thirty years on the natural history of Mount Ætna, that the lowest of these strata which have been found divided by so many beds of earth, must have been emitted from the volcanic crater at least _fourteen thousand_ years ago, and consequently, that the age of the earth, whatever it may exceed this term of years, cannot possibly be less.”--Brydone’s _Tour through Sicily and Malta_ (1770). Plato, in his _Critias_, mentions the island Atlantis as having been buried in the ocean nine thousand years before his own time. In the _Universal History_, vol. i, (preface,) we are told that the astronomical records of the ancient Chaldeans carry back the origin of society to the remote period of _four hundred and seventy-three thousand_ years. Among comparatively well-known authorities, there is a good deal of difference in the time of the supposed formation of the world. The Hebrew bible makes the creation 3,944 years before the Christian era. The Samaritan bible, 4,305 years; the Septuagint, 5,270 years; Usher, 4,004 years; Josephus, 4,658 years; M. Pezron, 5,872 years. In all these differences, however, there is nothing so striking as in the theories we mention above, of Recupero, the Chaldeans, etc.--EDITOR.]
[313] [Our author is quite right. Science _does_ teach us what to think of divine power in its outward manifestations. The more we understand nature, the more ready will earnest-minded men be to praise and give glory to the God who made it, who created man and beast with such marvellous and exquisite regularity, and who continues to govern the world and all that is upon it. Perhaps M. Pouchet thinks he himself could have made a better one. It is a pity that a clever mind is so warped by that science which ought to make him more satisfied than ever that God is the creator of the world; and that spontaneous generation, and the never-clearly explained origin of the _first_ matter, about which even M. Pouchet cannot tell us, with all his scepticism, ought to go to pave the “pathway of good intentions.”--EDITOR.]
[314] [Why not?--EDITOR.]
[315] Some may be astonished at our applying the word _kingdom_ to the vertebrata. We do so because, in truth, the distance which separates them from other animals seems to us almost as great, and even more decided, than that which separates the invertebrata from plants.
[316] The diagram which Darwin has placed in his book _On the Origin of Species_, is only a fraction and piece of detail of the general figure which we are endeavouring to place before the mind of the reader.
[317] _L’Insecte_, p. 128, 1858.
[318] Predominance of the immediate azotic principles, respiration comparable to that of animals, voluntary movements, indivisibility of organism, etc.
[319] [See above, pp. 46, 47.--EDITOR.]
[320] See _On the Origin of Species_, chap. iii.
[321] Lions hindered the army of Xerxes in Macedonia. They abounded in the province of Africa in the time of the Roman Emperors. At the present time, however, Gérard was obliged to watch for three hundred nights in order to kill only thirty or forty.
[322] The crocodile, which used to swarm on the Delta, is now only found in Upper Egypt.
[323] The hippopotamus, since the Roman occupation, has successively retired from the mouth of the Nile to the fourth cataract. Some years ago, there existed one, and one only, at the Island of Argo, on this side of New Dongolah. Some hunters killed it, and since then, they have only been found at the Berber level.
[324] [_Hamites_, a genus of extinct Cephalopods, found in the greensand formation in England.--EDITOR.]
[325] _Comptes Rendus_, vol. iv, p. 58. Perhaps the only logical deduction which we can really draw from the greater size of these animals, is the greater extent of the continents which they inhabited. The belief in the gigantic dimensions of the fossil _fauna_ and _flora_, is also a remains of the marvels which the first inquirers into science involuntarily reported. In examining matters nearer and more impartially, we see that certain zoological groups have been, in fact, formerly represented by larger species than at the present day; but until we arrive at some new discovery, we have the right to think that the other groups of animals, on the contrary, have a class of larger representatives _than in former times_; like the quadrumana, the cetacea, insects, cephalopods, acephalous mollusks, etc. But this pretended decay is especially false as regards plants; if we find in the ground some large ferns, or enormous grasses, we must subtract a good deal from those so-called _antediluvian_ forests, which many have not hesitated to bring forward in support of their ideas. All the fossil plants that we know are, without exception, extremely wretched in comparison with the gigantic conifers and dicotyledons in the forests of the old and new world.
[326] [If this new handiwork of man, so charmingly arranged by our author, is not more successful than Pandora, as made by Vulcan, we fear the world will not gain much by it. In the olden times, the man who propounded such curious ideas would probably have had a punishment awarded him, something similar to that suffered by Prometheus. Does M. Pouchet, in quoting this personage, entirely forget the rest of the tale, and the _consequences_ of his rashness? We are really sorry, however, to see science perverted to a _pet idea_, if we may use the expression, and twisted by means of “bad anatomy and worse theology,” as a friend of ours calls it, for the sake of proving facts quite impossible to be solved. M. Pouchet gives us, in spontaneous generation, a first germ with which to start a _primordial anatomical element_, as he calls it. He starts with this, and argues--in what manner we leave it to our readers to determine--that, from this germ there have, in time, sprung all the animals on the surface of the globe. But he does not tell us how this _first germ_ itself arose. That is put entirely on one side, and taken for granted. We cannot take it for granted however; and until we have it satisfactorily proved that he is right in any part of his idea, we shall go on thinking and believing as we have done before.--EDITOR.]
[327] See Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, _Vie d’E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire_, p. 287.
[328] See above, chap. viii.
[329] Compare Owen, _On the Characters, Principles of Division, and Primary Groups of the Class Mammalia_ (_Journal of Linnean Society_, 1857.)
[330] See, for the explanation and discussion of these different systems, Crull, _Dissertatio de Cranio_, 1810.
[331] Compare Crull, _Dissertatio de Cranio_, p. 28, 1810.
[332] Compare Crull, _Dissertatio de Cranio_, p. 52.
[333] Busk and Quekett (_Medical Times and Gazette_).
[334] One always endeavours to find some former indication or presentiment, although even confused and full of obscurity, beyond the origin of positive science; it is curious to find in the works of the _potter physician_ a sort of germ which, when developed, may have given birth to cranioscopy,--a sort of foresight of the importance which the measurement of the skull would one day acquire. It is in the _Recepte Véritable_: one of two speakers relates a dream in which he saw the different instruments used in geometry dispute about precedence: he answers them, that man is above them all; they exclaim, that man cannot even use one of them in order to measure any part of his body. [We think it best to give the original here.--EDITOR.] “Quoy voyant, il me print envie de mesurer la teste d’un homme, pour scauoir directement ses mesures, et me sembla que la sauterelle, la reigle, et le compas me seroient fort propres pour ceste affaire, mais quoy qu’il en soit, ie n’y sceu iamais trouver une mesure asseurée.” Bernard Palissy, _Œuvres_, p. 93, 12mo, Paris, 1844. Blumenbach says somewhere, “The habit and constant use of my collection of skulls makes me understand every day the impossibility of subjecting a variety of skulls to the rule of any possible angle, the head being susceptible of so many forms, and the parts which compose it being of so many different proportions and directions.” See Morel, _Traité des Dégénérescences dans l’espèce humaine_, p. 68. M. Aitken Meigs, at the present day, shows no less than twenty-nine different measurements of the skull which must be obtained if we wish to have anything like a satisfactory idea of the same.
[335] See above, chap. iv.
[336] See _Indigenous Races of the Earth_, p. 320.
[337] See Strope, _Description d’une Momie très-ancienne_ (_Recueil Périod. d’Observ. de Médecine_, vol. iv, p. 290, Jan. 1756). One may see in reading the account of a very able and judicious narrator how much ancient scientific observations alter with the times, when no care is taken to refer to the original sources.
[338] See Vivien, in the _Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique_, vol. ii, p. 59.
[339] _Portfolio_, Philadelphia, 1814.
[340] W. Edwards, _Des Caractères Physiologiques des races humaines_, p. 45, has especially noticed the great importance of external characteristics; he has only done wrong in excluding the hair, and attending solely to the form of the skull, which never concerns us when we endeavour to picture or recall to our mind the features of a man.
[341] See Michelet, with regard to the paintings in the Sixtine Chapel, _Histoire de France, Renaissance_.
[342] “Philology is at once the most elevated and the most positive branch of the natural history of the human race.” Chavée, _Moïse et les Langues_ (_La Revue_). M. Flourens seems to give philological a superior rank to physical characteristics. [See above, p. 77, _note_.--EDITOR.]
[343] He believes that by their means we can go back to the most distant geological periods. See _Apophthegms_ (_Edinburgh New Philosophical Journ._, vol. li.)
[344] Latham thus explains it: “This is because whilst A and B, in the way of stock-blood or pedigree, will give C a true _tertium quid_, or a near approach to it, and A and B, in the way of language, will only give themselves, _i. e._, they will give no true _tertium quid_, nor any very close approach to it.” _Celtic Nations_, p. 33. We have endeavoured to prove that this true _tertium quid_--this _real mean term_, is never produced as far as species.
[345] [“Either language must have been originally revealed from heaven, or it must be the fruits of human industry. The greater part of Jews and Christians, and even some of the wisest Pagans, have embraced the former opinion, which seems to be supported by the authority of Moses, who represents the Supreme Being as teaching our first parents the _names_ of animals. The latter opinion is held by Diodorus Siculus, Lucretius, Horace, and many other Greek and Roman writers, who consider language as one of the arts invented by man. The first men, say they, lived for some time in woods and caves, after the manner of beasts, uttering only confused and indistinct noises, till, associating for mutual assistance, they came by degrees to use articulate sounds mutually agreed upon, for the arbitrary signs or marks of those ideas in the mind of the speaker which he wanted to communicate to the hearer. This opinion sprung from the atomic cosmogony which was framed by Mochus, the Phœnician, and afterwards improved by Democritus and Epicurus; and though it is part of a system in which the first men are represented as having grown out of the earth, like trees and other vegetables, it has been adopted by several modern writers of high rank in the republic of letters, and is certainly in itself worthy of examination.”--_Encyclop. Brit._, vol. ix, p. 530, 1797.--EDITOR.]
[346] I do not here mention the opinions of the Swede (see Latham, _Celtic Nations_, p. 2), who thinks that important changes can be introduced into a language by certain customs of a people, who change, for instance, the lips for the nostrils, and thus substitute nasal for labial consonants. These facts are, perhaps, true in the detail, but they ought not to have much importance, as they do not alter the specific and personal character of the language, which is far from consisting in the relative number of one or two kinds of letters.
[347] Bunsen (Eng. transl.), Niebuhr’s _Life and Letters_, vol. i, p. 39.
[348] “Languages,” he says, “give but feeble probabilities in Anthropology.” _Voyage aux regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent_, vol. iii, p. 352.
[349] See, in the _Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique_ (July 1843), a letter in which M. Vivien denies a first rank to language as a distinctive characteristic, and gives it to physical type.
[350] See above, p. 32.
[351] “I am led to believe that familiar languages (if this philological barbarism is permitted me) do not resemble one another _because_ they come from the same parent, but because they have been brought up together; Africa especially seems to me to furnish a proof of it, for we must study the history of families of languages, especially in the place where they began to be formed, and I believe that language was formed in Africa. My hypothesis is not applicable to all cases, but to several; thus, the French, Italian, Spanish, etc., come from the Latin, and were born at its death; but many other languages appear to me to take their features one from the other by simple frequentation, by the natives being often in company together, and, as time goes on, these mutual loans make two or several languages, like the branches of the same tree, only, in my idea, the tree does not exist.”--_Correspondence_, 1857.
[352] See above, p. 78.
[353] [Pali, the ordinary language of daily life in Hindoostan at the time when Sanscrit was used in elevated literature alone.--EDITOR.]
[354] _Des Colorations de l’épiderme_, 4to, Paris, 1864.
[355] See _The Natural History of Man_, 1844.
[356] See _Ethnographic Tableau_ (_Indigenous Races of the Earth_, London, 1857).
[357] We may quote, as types of genus, two paintings, incomparable in an anthropological point of view, _Portrait d’un Nègre_; _Portrait d’un Oriental_, by Herschop (Berlin Museum, Nos. 825 and 827).
[358] M. Flourens, in saying that Buffon collected the accounts of different travellers in order to write his _Histoire des Races_, adds, “Whatever they have only seen with the eyes of their body, he sees with the eyes of his mind, and by that means alone he sees better than they can; each of them has seen merely some scattered characteristics,--Buffon sees everything; he links together whatever they may have separated, and separates whatever they have confounded.”--_Histoire des Idées de Buffon_, p. 167.
[359] “Boni viri nullam oportet esse causam præter veritatem.”
[360] [Yes, but the difficulty is to determine if it _is_ true. We cannot receive _anything_ as true merely because a _savant_ says it is so. We must go on enquiring in a proper spirit; but we must not put inquiry after truth in the same category with scepticism,--“that cheerlessness of soul to which certainty respecting anything and everything here on earth seems unattainable.” This is the age for seeking after truth; but in how many different ways do men endeavour to attain to it! We must search the past carefully in all its scientific and natural facts, and as Longfellow beautifully says,--
“Nor deem the irrevocable past, As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain.”
This is the true aim of all inquiry.--EDITOR.]
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.
The “Errata” have been corrected in line.