cv. 23), which soon became one of the earliest, most civilised,

and flourishing kingdoms of antiquity, and was established before Abraham's days (Gen. xii. 14-20), and in the glorious reign of Sesostris ... while Ham's posterity, in the line of Cush, not only founded the first Assyrian empire, under Nimrod, but also the Persian (?), the Grecian (?), and the Roman (?) empires, in direct contradiction to the unguarded assertion of Mede [that 'there hath never yet been a son of Ham that hath shaken a sceptre over the head of Japheth.'] How, then, is the propriety of the curse exclusively to Canaan to be vindicated?--evidently by considering him as the only guilty person ... upon the very ingenious conjecture of Faber, that the 'youngest son' who offended was not Ham, but Canaan--not the son, but the grandson of Noah. For the original, 'his little son,' according to the latitude of the Hebrew idiom, may denote a grandson, by the same analogy that Nimrod.... this (the former) interpretation is supported by ancient Jewish tradition, 'Boresith Rabba,' sec. 37, recorded also by Theodoret ... the tradition, indeed, also adds that Ham joined in the mockery, but for this addition there seems no sufficient grounds."

[70] The italics are mine.

There is, however, the tradition, and, moreover, a distinct tradition that Ham was black. Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, in his "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," i., says--

"The Hebrew word Ham is identical with the Egyptian Khem, being properly written Khm, Kham, or Khem, and is the same which the Egyptians themselves gave to their country in the sculptures of the earliest and latest periods" (261). Egypt was denominated Chemi (Khemi), or the land of Ham, "as we find in the hieroglyphic legends; and the city of Khem, or Panopolis, was called in Egyptian Chemmo, of which evident traces are preserved in that of the modern town E'Khmim" (260). "Besides the hieroglyphic group, composed of the two above alluded to (260), indicating Egypt, was one consisting of _an eye_, and the sign land, _which bore the same_ signification; and since _the pupil_, or _black_ of the eye, was called _Chemi_, we may conclude this to be a phonetic mode of writing the name of Egypt, which Plutarch pretends was called Chemmia, from the _blackness_ of its soil" (263). "_Chame_ is _black_ in _Coptic_, Egypt is _Chemi_, and it is remarkable that _khom_ or _chom_ is used in Hebrew for black or brown, as in Gen. xxx. 32-40."--_Id._

Here then, at any rate, the name of Ham or Cham is curiously associated with blackness, and must have been so associated from the commencement of Egyptian history. I leave it to the Egyptologist to decide whether the presumption is stronger that the name of Egypt, identical with that of Ham, was originally derived from the blackness of its soil, or from the blackness of him whose name was identical with it ("the land of Ham" being both the scriptural and Egyptian appellation), more especially when "the eye" (apparently a personal or historical, not certainly a geographical allusion) was used as an equivalent hieroglyphic symbol for land.[71]

[71] The eye would be the very most apposite symbol for blackness, if we consider that blackness lingers there after the skin has become white, and, in the case of half-breeds, is the test of descent in gradations even beyond, I believe, the octoroon.

Captain King ("Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia," ii. Append.) says, "That although there is the greatest diversity of words among the Australian tribes, the equivalent for 'eye' is common to them all."

Here, as in other instances, if we follow the strict lines of tradition, it seems to me that we shall escape all the difficulties which are usually alleged against it. It will result then that, although according to the text of Scripture, the curse of servitude was limited to the posterity of Chanaan; yet, seeing that the criminality was common to Ham and Chanaan, according to the tradition referred to, and as is, moreover, implied in the marked manner in which Scripture (Gen. xviii. 22) indicates Cham as "the father of Chanaan," it is presumable that, if blackness was the concomitant of the curse, it extended to both Ham and Chanaan, and, by implication, to their posterity, but then _after the curse_. As Chanaan, according to the tradition, was then a boy, all his children would have been affected by the curse; but does it follow that all Ham's descent was involved in the malediction? This would be to suppose a retrospective curse, for which the only analogy would be the hypothesis that if Adam had sinned after the birth of Cain and Abel, they and their posterity would also have incurred the guilt of original sin. Now the sons of Ham were (Gen. x. 6) "Chus and Mesram and Phuth and Chanaan," _i.e._, Chus and Mesram and Phuth were the elder brothers of Chanaan, and therefore not the children of Ham after the pronouncement of the curse. If, then, we find the children of Mesram dark, but without the negro features or the blackness of Canaan; if "Sesostris, his descendant, was a great conqueror;" if Nimrod, the son of Chus, was a powerful chieftain, and the founder of the Assyrian empire; if nothing is known of the posterity of Phuth beyond the conjecture that they were the Lybians--in a word, if the descent from these three sons does not bear out the evidence of the curse, can it be said to militate at all against the hypothesis of the curse of Ham as well as of Canaan?

Moreover, if there are differences among the black races which may present difficulties, would not the knowledge that there may have been a posterity of Ham, born after the curse,[72] go far to remove them? Hales, indeed, assumes that "Ham himself had his full share of earthly blessings; his son Misr colonised Egypt," &c. (as _sup._); but this prosperity, as he indicates it, is only seen in the prosperity of his three sons, whom I assume to have been exempt from the curse. It must be remembered, however, that the occult science of the Cainites was said to have been preserved by the family of Ham, and, as we have seen, the taint was in the race.[73]

[72] Lenormant, "Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne," i. 23, makes a similar suggestion as to this point--"La texte de la Bible n'a rien qui s'oppose formellement à l'hypothèse que Noè aurait eu, postérieurement au deluge, d'autres enfants que Sem, Cham, et Japhet, d'où seraient sorties les races qui ne figurent pas dans la généalogie de ces trois personnages." But two objections seem to me to be fatal to this view. The races about whom this difficulty would be raised would be the red and black races: why should it be surmised that the supposed posterity of Noah, after the Deluge, _should_ have this mark of inferiority? In the second place, it does seem to be formally opposed to Gen. x. 32--"These are the _families_ of _Noe_, according to their peoples and nations. _By these_ were the nations divided on the earth after the flood."

The red races might perhaps be accounted for by Gen. xxv. 23-25.

[73] There appears to me, however, a text to which attention might be directed. We know that the Ethiopians were black, but in Amos ix. 7, where God is expressing His anger against His people, He says, "Are you not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel, saith the Lord."

I am very far from claiming for these theories any special ecclesiastical countenance and authority. I have already intimated my opinion that, on the whole, they would be as much opposed from the point of view of scriptural exegesis as from that of unbelief. It will be said, for instance, that there is evidence in Scripture of the curse of Canaan, but no proof that blackness was the concomitant effect of the curse; and certainly it is not Scripture which affirms this, but only tradition.

To those who admit the curse, but deny the consequences which tradition attributes to it, I would oppose an almost identical argument with that which accounts for all differences in the human race by geographical location. I do not know where this argument is more forcibly put than in Latham's "Ethnology." There it is seemingly demonstrated that certain conditions, not merely of colour, but moral and intellectual, are the inseparable accompaniments of geographical location. Grant it, _pro argumento_, but I am arguing now upon the scriptural evidence, and with one with whom I assume I have a common belief in its inspiration.

It is true, then, that the curse of blackness is not recorded, but the distribution of the races is at least implied: Deut. xxxii. 8, "_When the Most High divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam_, he appointed the bounds of people according to the number of the children of Israel;" and Acts xvii. 26, "And hath made of one all mankind, to dwell upon the _whole face_ of the earth, _determining appointed times_, and _the limits_ of _their habitation_." (The Prot. version translates, "Having appointed the _predetermined seasons_ and _boundaries of_ their dwellings." _Vide_ Hales's Chron., i. 351, who adds that this was conformable to their own allegory "that Chronos, the god of time, or Saturn, divided the universe among his three sons.")[74]

[74] _Vide_ also ch. x., p. 239. The tradition that Phoroneus, "the father of mankind," distributed the nations over the earth, _idem nationes distribuit_.

If, then, the different races of mankind, according to their merits or demerits, were apportioned to, or miraculously directed or impelled to, respective portions of the earth, which necessarily superinduced certain effects, is not the curse as apparent in its indirect operation as it would have been in its suddenness and directness?

This consideration must, I think, bring those who raise scriptural difficulties against the theory to the admission that blackness was a sign of inferiority, and that certain races were either smitten with, or were predestined to, in consequence of culpability, this degradation.

This, I admit, is no reply to those who argue from the evidence of the Egyptian monuments. But the evidence from the monuments, so far from embarrassing my conclusion, seems absolutely to enforce it. If, indeed, the evidence from the monuments did not stare one in the face, we might fall back upon the line of argument which I have just indicated, and whilst recognising in their blackness the operation of a curse, trace it in the lapse of centuries and the influences of the torrid zone. But they are recorded as being black on the earliest monuments known to us, and within a few centuries of the Deluge. The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable, that they were so from the commencement, which exactly hits in with the tradition of the curse of Canaan.

Such, from his own point of view, is the conclusion of Sir J. Lubbock ("Prehistoric Times," p. 478)--

"If there is any truth in this view of the subject (p. 478), it will necessarily follow that the principal varieties of man are of great antiquity, and, in fact, go back almost to the very origin of the human race. We may then cease to wonder that the earliest paintings on Egyptian tombs represent so accurately several various varieties still existing in those regions, and that the Engis skull, probably the most ancient yet found in Europe, so closely resembles many that may be seen even at the present day."

The following conclusion of Mr Wallace also exactly coincides with De Maistre's view.

Lyell, in his "Principles of Geology" (ii. 471) says--

"Wallace suggests that at some former period man's corporeal frame must have been _more pliant and variable_ than _it is now_; for, according to the observed rate of fluctuation in modern times, scarcely any conceivable lapse of ages would suffice to give rise to such an amount of differentiation. He therefore concludes, that when first the _mental_ and _moral_ qualities of man acquired predominance, his bodily frame _ceased to vary_."

But, although science in its own way may arrive at approximations to the truth, yet, if the traditional solution be true, assuredly it is not a solution which will be reached by any merely scientific process; and therefore, if it should be the truth, the ethnological difficulty will remain an enigma and embarrassment to the learned in all time to come.