CHAPTER V.

_CHRONOLOGY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SCIENCE._

Although the testimony of history is definite and decisive as to the chronology of the world, within the limits of a few hundred years, there is a general assumption, in all branches of scientific inquiry, that man must have existed many thousand years beyond the period thus assigned to him. Lyell speaks of "the vastness of time"[59] required for his development, and Bunsen, as we have seen, requires twenty thousand years, at least, between the Deluge and the nativity of our Lord: and wherefore this discrepancy? Because of a fundamental assumption--not merely hypothetical for the convenience of inquiry--but confident and absolute; an assumption which, so far as the argument is concerned, is the very matter in dispute--that man must have progressed and developed to the point at which we see him.

[59] "Principles of Geology," tenth edition, 1868, ii. p. 471.

At the same time, the actual chronology cannot be altogether ignored, and some cognisance must be taken of the facts which history presents to us; and it is this unfortunate exigency, interrupting the placid course of development, which not unfrequently lands scientific inquirers of the first eminence in difficulties from which it will take an indefinite lapse of time to extricate them; _ex. gra._, Bunsen, in his "Egypt," iii. 379, says--

"It has been more than once remarked, in the course of this work, that the _connection between the Chinese and the Egyptians_ belongs, in several of its phases, to the _general history_ of the world. The Chinese language is the furthest point beyond that of the formation of the Egyptian language, which represents, as compared with it, the middle ages of mankind,--viz., the Turanian and Chamitic stages of development."

The conclusion of philology (_vide_ also Brace's "Ethnology," p. 114) is, therefore, that the Turanian or Chamitic grew out of the more inorganic and elementary Chinese.

Now, let us compare Lyell's conclusions with Bunsen's. Lyell equally believes ("Principles of Geology," ii. 471) "that three or four thousand years is but a _minute fraction_ of the time required to bring about such wide divergence from a common parent stock, 'as between' the Negroes and Greeks and Jews, Mongols and Hindoos, represented on the Egyptian monuments."

At the same time, he endorses Sir John Lubbock's view, and pronounces, upon what appears to me very light and insufficient grounds (ii. 479), that "the theory, therefore, that the savage races have been degraded from a previous state of civilisation _may be rejected_:" and by implication that the civilised races have progressed from the savage state may be affirmed.[60]

[60] The ground upon which Lyell pronounces this judgment is (ii. 479) "that no fragment of pottery has been found among the nations of Australia, New Zealand, and the Polynesian islands any more than ancient architectural remains, in all which respects, these rude men now living, resemble the men of the Palæolithic age; when pottery is known to all, it is always abundant, and, though easy to break, is difficult to destroy. It is improbable that so useful an art should ever have been lost by any race of man." The argument is strongly put, but many things are left out of consideration. Supposing the primitive knowledge, is not pottery one of the arts which would be most likely to be lost in a migration across the seas? Again, that they had no pottery, and that the Palæolithic age had no pottery, shows that in the interval there had been no progress. When will there be? As to the circumstance that it is the same among the Australians and Polynesians, the fact cuts both ways. You assume that there is a uniformity in progress, but may not there be the same uniformity in the processes of degradation? and, assuming the fact, may it not simply prove that these savages have reached the same depth as the other savages?--_Vide_ appendix to ch. xii.

I have, then, only to assume one point that Sir C. Lyell will concede, the order of progress or development to have been from black to white, and that he will pay us the compliment of being the more favoured race.

But of all the races that are akin to the Mongol or Turanian, the Chinese are the whitest, and most nearly approach the European in colour.

How many years, then, may we suppose that it took the Chinese to progress from the black state of the Egyptian? as many, let us conjecture, as it took the Egyptian to progress linguistically from the state of the Chinese or Mongol!

This is one instance of the entanglement in which the theory of progress, pure and simple, from a parent stock will involve us. The obvious mode of escape would be to deny the unity of the human race, a conclusion which would at once land us in the darkness of a still lower abyss, and convert our processes from being scientific in form and hopeful of result, into empirical and aimless conjectures. For either the theory is started that the various races of mankind were created separately, in which case we fly into the face of the only account we have of creation, and also of the multiform testimonies which history and science bring to attest this truth, and we, moreover, debar ourselves from falling back upon any uniform theory applicable to the whole human race; or if, without advertence to creation, we suppose mankind to have been variously developed, here again we shall equally find ourselves cut off from the application of any uniform historical theory, equally unable to account for or to exclude the testimony of history, and in the end reduced to the evidences, whatever they may be worth, of certain real or fancied analogies.[61] At this point, the historical inquiry will be virtually abandoned, and the records of the past merged in the phenomena of life, will be considered only in the light of some pantheistic or materialistic theory, or, so far as it is distinguishable, of some theory of evolution.

[61] The following passage from M. A. Bastian's article in _The Academy_, June 15, 1871, "On the People of India," seems to me to afford an illustration in point--"The natural system becomes an indispensable necessity in every science, so soon as it is clearly seen that the question is not of classification, but of observation of, and insight into, law. Classification was long held to be the sole end, instead of being merely or mainly the means of study. As, in this respect, systematic botany gave place to vegetable physiology, so, in like manner, ethnology will have to look upon its classification of race--with which the school books hitherto have been almost exclusively occupied--as merely a preliminary step towards a physiology of mankind, and to _a science of the laws_ which _govern its spiritual growth_." Now, if no physiology of mankind, in the sense here intended, can be traced, and if "the science of the laws which govern its spiritual growth" (_vide infra_, an exposition of Mr Baring Gould's theory) has come to no definite conclusion, then the only result, as far as science is concerned, will have been the revolutionising of its classifications, and the classifications of the different races of men (and, in so far as they have been accurately ascertained, their confusion will be matter of regret) is the legitimate and ultimate end of ethnology under normal conditions.

I am no longer concerned with any of these theories the moment they discard the historical element; and I shall, accordingly, return to the theory of Sir John Lubbock, which is honestly based upon it.

When all is said, I cannot make out that Sir John adduces any argument in favour of the antiquity of the human race which does not resolve itself into the contrast between our civilisation and the degradation of savages; and that the time which must have elapsed to bring about this transformation is measured by the fact that the negro, of the "true Nigritian stamp," appears upon the Egyptian monuments, at least as far back as B.C. 2400. "Historians, philologists, and physiologists have alike admitted that the short period allowed in Archbishop Usher's chronology could hardly be reconciled with the history of some Eastern nations, and that it did not leave room _for the development either of_ the different languages or of the numerous physical peculiarities by which various races of men are distinguished."[62] As no facts in the history of Eastern nations are adduced, I shall consider that this part of the argument has been sufficiently disposed of in the preceding chapters, and if they had been adduced, I venture to think that they would have been interpreted by the latter part of the sentence, and would have been incompatible with the chronology, only because they did not allow sufficient time "for the development," &c. Of this sort of fact, I admit, nothing stronger can be adduced than the case of the negro on the Egyptian monuments, only I wish to direct attention to the different aspect these facts will bear when the theory of progress is not assumed as an infallible proposition. Moreover, as Mr Poole, whom Sir J. Lubbock very candidly quotes, points out, in the interval between this and 2400 B.C. we do not find "the least change in the negro or the Arab; and even the type which seems to be intermediate between them, is virtually as unaltered. Those who consider that length of time can change a type of man, will do well to consider the fact that three thousand years give no ratio on which a calculation could be founded." So that if Arch. Usher had expanded his chronology so as to take in the twenty thousand years Bunsen requires, it really would not appreciably have affected the argument. Sir J. Lubbock, indeed, says (p. 477)--"I am, however, not aware that it is supposed by any school of ethnologists that 'time' alone, without a change of external conditions, will produce an alteration of type." "Let us," he continues, "turn now to the instances relied on by Mr Crawford. The millions, he says, of African negroes that have, during three centuries, been transported to the New World and its islands, are the same in colour as the present inhabitants of the parent country of their forefathers. The Creole Spaniards ... are as fair as the people of Arragon and Andalusia. The pure Dutch Creole colonists of the Cape of Good Hope, after dwelling two centuries among black Caffres and yellow Hottentots, do not differ in colour from the people of Holland." [The strongest case is, perhaps, that of the American Indians, who do not vary from a uniform copper colour in north or south--in Canada or on the line.][63] In these instances, Sir J. Lubbock says:--"We have great change of circumstances, but a very insufficient lapse of time, and, in fact, there is no well authenticated case [he does not, however, advert to the case of the Indians, which seems to satisfy both conditions] in which these two requisites are united," ... and adds, "there is already a marked difference between the English of Europe and the English of America;" but is full allowance made here for admixture of race? and, also, is his instance to the point? Is not the difficulty rather that, whereas climate, food, change of circumstances have (for, I think, the balance of the argument is on that side), in many ways, modified other races (though whether to the extent of destroying the characteristic type, may be open to question), the negro has resisted these influences, and has remained the same negro that we find him 2400 B.C.? Consider that it is only a question of degree, and that it is merely true that the negro has resisted these influences more persistently than other races.[64] Still the contrast is not the less startling when we find the negro in the same relative position, and with the same stamp of inferiority, that we find indelibly impressed upon him four thousand years ago? It is a case which neither the theory of progress, nor the theory of degeneracy, seems to touch.

[62] Sir J. Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," p. 313.

[63] It has almost passed into a proverb, says Morton--who is among those who know the Americans best--that he who has seen one Indian tribe has seen them all, so closely do the individuals of this race resemble each other, whatever may be the variety or the extent of the countries they inhabit." Reusch's "La Bible et la Nature," _vide_ also Card. Wiseman's "Lect. on Science and Rev. Rel." lect. iv., _vide_, however, Reusch, p. 498, where "a remarkable difference in the cranium" is noticed, "sometimes approaching the Malay, sometimes the Mongol shape."

[64] That the negro has undergone modifications, seems established by the fact that we nowhere find all the characteristics of the negro united in any one case--unless, perhaps, in the case of the negroes of Guinea, to which I have alluded. Yet, in the people who border them, there has been noticed "un retour vers des formes superieures." The Yoloss, "out le front élevé, des machoires peu saillantes, leurs dents sont droites, et ils sont en général bein constitués, _mais ils sont tout à fait noirs_. Leurs voisins, les Mandingues, tiennent beaucoup plus du type négre ... mais leur teint est beaucoup moins noir."--De Bur. ap. Reusch, p. 505. But under no influences of climate has the negro ever become white like the European, or the European black like the inhabitant of Guinea; if they become darker, "c'est simplement la teint particulier à leur race qui gagne en intensité."--Burminster, ap. Reusch, p. 509.

But it is a case which De Maistre's view exactly solves. Now, however much we may rebel against De Maistre's theory, that the early races of mankind were endowed with higher and more intuitive moral faculties than ours, and, whether or not, we accept his _dictum_ that great punishments pre-suppose great knowledge, and reversely, that higher knowledge implies the liability to great punishments, I do not see how we can refuse to consider the matter, so far as to see whether the view solves all the difficulties of the question. It is not the first time that the blackness of the African race has been connected in theory with a curse; but De Maistre's theory throws a new light on the malediction--whether it be the curse of Cham or of Chanaan, or whether both were smitten, according to different degrees of culpability: and I maintain, further, that it is adequate to the explanation of the phenomena, that it does not clash with history, and that it is sustained by tradition.

Nevertheless, I apprehend that this view will be as much combated from the point of view of scriptural exegesis, as of scientific speculation.

Yet the curse of Cham, or of Chanaan, affecting all their posterity, ought not in reason to be more revolting even to those who have never realised what sin is, than the narrative of the fall of Adam and Eve with its direful consequences. The theory seems perfectly conformable to Scripture, and to what we know of the secrets of the Divine judgments. The picture of Cham, or Chanaan, stricken with blackness, does not present a more sudden or more terrible retribution to the mind than the Fall of the Angels. How many thousand years did it take to transform Lucifer into Satan? or the primitive Adam into the Adam feeling shame, and conscious of decay, want, and the doom of death?

On the other hand, blackness, from the commencement, has been associated with evil. To this it may be replied that this is the sentiment merely of the white races--a natural prejudice of colour, an _ex parte_ deduction; and to this argument, if such is the view really taken by the black races, and if no consciousness can be detected of their degradation amongst themselves, I see no other reply than this, That since, _ex hypothesi_, they are black because they are cursed, the tradition of this curse would be more naturally preserved by the white races than by the black. But is there no consciousness of this inferiority in the true negro? Without looking at the matter from the same point of view, I may appeal to Captain Burton's statements on this point as to a fully competent, if not the highest, authority that can be quoted on points of African travel. In the first place, he notices "the confusion of the mixed and the mulatto with the full-blooded negro. By the latter word I understand the various tribes of intertropical Africa, unmixed with European or Asiatic blood" ("Dahome," ii. 187); and p. 193, "I have elsewhere given reasons for suspecting, in the great Kafir family, a considerable mixture of Arab, Persian, and other Asiatic blood:" and as to the particular point in question, he says (p. 200), "The negro will obey a white man more readily than a mulatto, and a mulatto rather than one of his own colour. He never thinks of claiming equality with the Aryan race except when taught. At Whydat, the French missionaries remark that their scholars always translate 'white and black by master and slave.'" P. 189, "One of Mr Prichard's few good generalisations is, that as a rule the darker and dingier the African tribe, the more degraded is its organisation."[65] I find a very similar testimony in Crawford's "Hist. of the Indian Archipelago," i. 18. He says, "The brown and negro races of the Archipelago may be considered to present, in their physical and moral characters, a complete parallel with the white and negro races in the western world. The first has always displayed as great a relative superiority over the second, as the race of white men have done over the negroes of the west." Yet at p. 20 he says, "The Javanese, who live most comfortably, are among the darkest people in the Archipelago, the wretched Dyaks, or cannibals of Borneo, among the fairest." It must be noted, however, that the Javanese have also preserved something of primitive tradition--_e.g._ their marriage ceremony. And, moreover, it is not at all essential to the argument to prove that the negroes are the _most degraded_ race. Let it be said that they have had their curse, and that the sign of the curse is in their blackness--this is merely equivalent to saying that they are cursed _pro tanto_; but it by no means follows that other races have not fallen to lower depths, and incurred a deeper reprobation.[66]

[65] Captain Burton (ii. 165) also quotes a Catholic and a Protestant missionary as to this point. M. Wallon says, "Avec leur tendance à nous considérer comme réellement supérieurs à eux, et leur croyance que cette supériorité nous est acquise par celle de notre Dieu, ils renonceraient bientôt aux leurs idoles pour adorer celui qui nous leur prions de connaître." Mr Dawson says, "Fetish has been strengthened by the white man, whom the ignorant blacks would not scruple to call a god if he could avoid death."

Assuming the identity of Bacchus and Noah, it is a striking circumstance, from this point of view, that the name of _Bacchus_, among the Phoenicians, was a synonymous term for mourning.--_Vide Hesychius in Bryant's "Mythology,"_ ii. 335; _vide also the verses of Theocritus_. Comp. p. 247, _note_ (Boulanger).

[66] Perhaps Captain Burton's phrase (ii. 178), "the _arrested_ physical development of the negro," may, if extended to his mental development, exactly hit the truth, the standard being fixed by the age at which we conceive the boy Chanaan's development to have been _arrested_.--Comp. _Wallace, infra_, p. 91; comp. 217.

Among the Sioux Indians, and in the isle of Tonga (Oceanica), I find trace of the tradition of blackness as a curse, and I should think it likely that other instances might be discovered. The former (the Sioux), in their reminiscences of the Deluge, relate, "The water remained on the earth only two days (for the two months during which the Scripture says it was at its height), at the expiration of which the Master of Life, seeing that they had need of fire, sent it them by a white crow, which, stopping to devour carrion, allowed the fire to be extinguished. He returned to heaven to seek it. The Great Spirit drove it away, and punished it by _striking it black_."--"_Annales de la Prop. de la Foi_," l. iv. 537; Gainet, i. 211.

In Tonga, the tradition is connected with this history of Cain:--

"The god Tangaloa,[67] who first inhabited this earth, is this Adam. He had two sons, who went to live at Boloton.... The younger was very clever. Tonbo (the eldest) was very different; he did nothing but walk about, sleep, and covet the works of his brother. One day he met his brother out walking, and knocked him down. Then their father arrived at Boloton, and in great anger said, 'Why has thou killed thy brother. Fly, wretched man; fly. _Your race shall be black_, and your soul depraved; you shall labour without success. Begone; you shall not go to the land of your brother, but your brother shall come sometimes to trade with you.' And he said to the family of the victim, 'Go towards the great land; your skin shall be white; you shall excel in all good things.'"--_Gainet_, i. 93.[68]

[67] "Annales de Philos. Chret.," t. xiii. p. 235.

[68] The expressions in the latter part of this narration recall the blessing of Jacob, and suggests the possibility of the tradition having come through descendants of Esau.

Cardinal Wiseman (in his "Science and Revealed Religion," lect. iii.), says, with reference to Aristotle's distribution of mankind into races by colour:--

"There is a passage in Julius Firmicus, overlooked by the commentators of Aristotle, which gives us the same ternary division, with the colours of each race. 'In the first place,' he writes, 'speaking of the characters and colours of men, they agree in saying,--if by the mixed influence of the stars, the characters and complexions of men are distributed; and if the course of the heavenly bodies, by a certain kind of artful painting, form the lineaments of mortal bodies; that is, if the moon makes men white, Mars red, _and Saturn black_, how comes it that in Ethiopia all are born black, in Germany white, and in Thrace red?'"--_Astronomicon_, lib. i., c. i., ed. Basil. 1551, p. 3.

Now this passage seems to me to have a still further significance in the words I have italicised, with reference to the argument I have in hand. It transpires, therefore, that the ancients had the notion that Saturn made men black, which provoked the natural query, why then are only the Ethiopians black? That it should ever have been supposed that the distant Saturn, astronomically regarded, should have had such an influence is preposterous, but if the mythological personage, Saturn, ch. x., has been sufficiently identified with Noah, and the deification of the hero in the planet (comp. pp. 159, 161) probable, the notion that _he made men black_, must be the tradition of the event we are considering.

I have elsewhere traced the fulfilment of the text which says that Canaan shall be the "servant of servants to his brethren;" but as the following extract from Klaproth, in evidence of the same, has also its significance with reference to the point I am now considering--viz. the curse of blackness--I prefer to give it a place here:--"Sakhalian oudehounga est expliqué en Chinois par 'Khian chéon,' et par 'li chu,' ce qui signifie les '_têtes noires_' et le '_peuple noir_,' expression par laquelle on designe la 'bas peuple' ou les 'paysans.' Cette une expression _usitée dans plusieures pays Asiatiques ainsi qu'en Russie."--Klaproth, "Mem. Relatif a l'Asie;" vide strictures on Pere Amyot's "Mandchou Dict_."

In the oldest books of the Zendavasta, virtue and vice are personified as white and black. "The contrast between good and evil is strongly and sharply marked in the Gâthâs.... They go a step further and personify the two parties to the struggle. One is a 'white,' or holy spirit (_spentô mainyus_), and the other, a 'dark' spirit (_angrô mainyus_). But this personification is merely poetical or metaphysical, not real."--_Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies_," iii. p. 106. The contrast, however, between good and evil, as white and black was the genuine expression of their idea or tradition. (Hung. ap. Bunsen, iii. p. 476, admits, at least in one instance in the Gâthâs, "an angra ('black') is put in opposition to the white, or more holy spirit.")

Mr Hunter ("Rural Bengal," p. 114) says of the primitive Aryans in India--"The ancient singer praises the _god_ who 'destroyed the Dasyans and protected the _Aryan colour_" (Rig. Veda., iii. pp. 34-39), and "the thunderer, who bestowed on his white friends the fields," &c. Whatever obscurity may attach to the latter passage, there can be no doubt of the abhorrence with which the singers speak, _again_ and _again_, of "_the black skin_," ... _e.g._ "the sacrificer poured out thanks to his god for 'scattering the _slave_ bands of _black descent_.'"

Although I believe the idea was traditional and had reference to the curse, I will concede that it might have arisen primarily in the contrast of night and day, light and darkness. But does this settle the question? On the contrary, fortified with this explanation, I return to my argument with those, who say that blackness is a mere prejudice of race, and that it is not demonstrable that it is the sign of a curse, or the mark of inferiority. Does not Nature herself proclaim it, in her contrast of light and darkness? Day and night, I imagine, would be recognised as apt symbols of error and evil as opposed to truth and goodness, even among the black races, irrespective of any consciousness or reminiscence of their degradation. Accordingly, the deeds of evil in Scripture are spoken of as the "works of darkness." It may be, therefore, that the idea of blackness as a curse is derived primitively from its association with the darkness of night; but the fact remains that blackness is connected in our minds with a curse,[69] and there is the further fact that a black race exists, and has existed during four thousand years, with this mark of inferiority upon it (compare _sup._ ch. iii. ix.)

[69] This is so much in tradition as to be a matter of common parlance--for instance, when the late Emperor of the French is depicted, this is the language which, upon a certain construction, appears most natural--"On the other side stands a phalanx of satirists, represented by Victor Hugo. The only colour on the palette of those artists is _lamp black_. Morally they paint the ex-Emperor as _dark as a negro_, array him _in the livery of the devil_, and _then_ invoke the _execration_ of history."--_Spectator_, Sept. 17th, 1870.

But a point of some difficulty remains to be determined--viz. what precisely was the race which came under this ban. Was it the whole descent of Ham, or only the posterity of Chanaan ?

Hales, in his learned work on chronology (i. p. 344), discusses this question. He says that, whereas--

"Even the most learned expositors (Bochart and Mede) have implicitly adopted the appropriation of the curse of servitude to Ham and his posterity." Yet "the integrity of the received text of prophecy, limiting the curse to 'Canaan' singly, is fully supported by the concurrence of the Massorite and Samaritan Hebrew texts, with _all the other_ ancient versions except the Arabian; and is acknowledged, we see, by Josephus and Abulfaragi (_sup._), who evidently confine the curse to Canaan--though they inconsistently consider Ham as the offender, and are not a little embarrassed to exempt him and _the rest of his children_[70] from the operation of the curse--an exemption, indeed, attested by sacred and profane history; for Ham himself had his full share of earthly blessings, his son Misr colonised Egypt, thence styled the land of Ham (Ps.