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Title: The plurality of the human race

Author: G. Pouchet

Translator: Hugh J. C. Beavan

Release date: February 10, 2023 [eBook #70009]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Longman Green Longman and Roberts, 1864

Credits: deaurider, Krista Zaleski, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE ***






  Publications of the

  Anthropological Society of London.

  THE PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.

  POUCHET.




  THE PLURALITY

  OF

  THE HUMAN RACE:

  BY

  GEORGES POUCHET,

  DOCTOR OF MEDICINE, LICENTIATE OF NATURAL SCIENCE, AIDE-NATURALISTE
  IN THE MUSEUM OF ROUEN, MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PARIS,
  CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, ETC.

  TRANSLATED AND EDITED,

  (From the Second Edition),

  BY

  HUGH J. C. BEAVAN, F.R.G.S., F.A.S.L.,

  OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

  LONDON:

  PUBLISHED FOR THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY, BY

  LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS,
  PATERNOSTER ROW.
  1864.




  DEDICATED

  TO

  THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

  SIR EDWARD G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, BART.,

  M.P., D.C.L., ETC.

  With all the respect

  DUE TO A GREAT WRITER AND LEARNED MAN,

  BY

  HUGH J. C. BEAVAN.




EDITOR’S PREFACE.


A few words by way of preface to a book on the _Plurality of the Human
Race_ are necessary as well as advisable. They are especially so when
the Author and Editor differ considerably in their opinions, as in this
case; and although it is by no means a _sine quâ non_ that they should
always agree, there are certain points on which a few lines may be
required.

The Publishing Committee of the Anthropological Society of London
honoured me by committing the translation and editing of this book to
my care, and I set about the task with some diffidence, as this is
probably the first work of the kind which has ever been given to the
English literary world in a convenient and popular form. Such being the
case, there will sometimes be found expressions which may be thought
foreign; but I have preferred on these occasions giving the more
literal translation, instead of one which possibly might fail to convey
the Author’s real meaning. In books containing such very peculiar ideas
as those of M. Pouchet, it is requisite to be especially careful on
this head.

Of the clever nature and terse expression of the work there can
be little doubt, but I am sorry to find in it opinions with which
I cannot at all agree, and in order to prove which, or rather
endeavour to do so, science is strained in an unnatural manner. The
theory of spontaneous generation is by no means a new one; but M.
Pouchet can throw very little light on the subject, and leaves it as
before--entirely unproved. The extreme sceptical nature of his views is
much to be regretted, and in this especially the Author and Editor are
in entire disagreement. The former is inclined to go out of his way to
bring forward those views, when they were not required, and would have
been better left unsaid.

We have, however, a new and extremely interesting field of
investigation opened to us; but the more pains our author takes to
explain and illustrate the wonders of our physical and psychological
nature, the more he seems to disprove his own theory of spontaneous
generation. Blackmore said--

                              “Survey
  Nature’s extended face, then, sceptics say,
  In this wide field of wonders can you find
  No art?”

But M. Pouchet _does_ find art in nature; he tells us that its ways are
intricate and manifold, but still that it all arises from some germ
spontaneously generated, he cannot say how.

With this exception, which some may think no fault at all, I recommend
this book heartily to the Fellows of the Society and the public
generally. The clearness and even brilliancy of M. Pouchet’s very
peculiar style are soon discoverable, and it is not astonishing that
his book has had a great success in France. That such will be the case
in its English form is my sincere wish. I must thank my friend Mr.
Carter Blake especially for many kind and valuable hints, and I need
scarcely say, in conclusion, that as much care as possible has been
taken with the translation and editing. I now commit this little work
to the kind consideration of the Society and the world. It is for them
to judge how my duties have been performed.

  H. J. C. B.

  _London, August 30th, 1864._




TO

PROFESSOR RICHARD OWEN.


Sir,--I begged to be allowed to dedicate to you the first edition of
this essay, in remembrance of the kind hospitality I formerly received
from you in the cottage at Mortlake, and of our long conversations, in
which you were so ready with good advice.

The debt of hospitality can never be repaid. I am happy to be able once
more to express my gratitude to you, and my admiration of your great
works.

  GEORGES POUCHET.

_Muséum de Rouen, July 1st, 1864._




AUTHOR’S PREFACE.


I now offer to the public the second edition of a book whose success
has far surpassed my expectations. Received with kindness by some, it
has been violently attacked by others. It was denounced to the highest
representatives of the university authority on which I depended, and
I owed my escape from the trouble which might have been drawn on
me,--because I brought forward a scientific opinion in disagreement
with the books attributed to the prophet Moses,--to the justice of one
of the most honoured members of the Institute. I owe a large debt of
gratitude to my illustrious protector. The mind has advanced during six
years, and the same troubles will not be met with again.

A good many alterations will be discovered in this Second Edition; this
is always the case with science. In matters of imagination, when the
artist has finished his work, he can cast it on the world and follow
his fancy in some other way. If science were only composed of truths,
its conditions would almost be the same for its disciples; but the
seeker after truth is not a creator like an artist, he explains and
reflects upon a world of facts, variable at every hour, according as
hypotheses are changed into certainties, or certainties of yesterday
into doubtful cases of to-day. It is, then, an incessant work of
reparation and alteration, in order to maintain even the most modest
work in harmony with the daily progress of science; I have made this
work as perfect as was in my power. I have taken great care with the
list of authorities. I have also indicated by their titles all the
articles from periodicals, reviews, or academic collections, to which
I refer the reader. I am sure that those who know what an ungrateful
task it is to search such badly catalogued libraries as most of ours
are, will give me credit for this part of my work. We can only see the
expression of science at a given moment in _Mémoires_. Books are, after
all, merely a summary: they are behind-hand even on the day they are
published.

  G. P.




CONTENTS.


           PAGE

  EDITOR’S DEDICATION                                                  v

  EDITOR’S PREFACE                                                   vii

  AUTHOR’S DEDICATION                                                 ix

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE                                                    xi

  CONTENTS                                                          xiii

  INTRODUCTION                                                         1


  CHAPTER I.

  THE HUMAN KINGDOM                                                   10


  CHAPTER II.

  COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY                                              24


  CHAPTER III.

  THE ORDER OF BIMANA                                                 38


  CHAPTER IV.

  ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES               43


  CHAPTER V.

  INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES                             62


  CHAPTER VI.

  THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE                                            80


  CHAPTER VII.

  THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY                                          95


  CHAPTER VIII.

  SPECIES                                                            108


  CHAPTER IX.

  SYSTEM                                                             134


  INDEX OF SUBJECTS                                                  153

  INDEX OF AUTHORS                                                   156




THE PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.




INTRODUCTION.


For a long period, in mediæval days, science was to most people what
it was to Servetus, a simple paraphrase or glossary of a revealed
text. In this was the truth, and if observation itself seemed
sometimes contradictory, it was certain that there was some mistake;
it was necessary to re-examine the contested question, and by dint of
inquiring into the facts, they were altered so wisely, that in the end
they always were found to agree.

All over the East, among the Semitic race,[1] that which above all
other possesses respect for authority, science still lives. Without the
law there is no science, and the Korán is what the books of the sons of
Israel and the writings of the apostles were in the middle ages, the
great, the only authority, to which everything was referred.[2]

If science has shone with a bright light in the East, this was due
solely to the introduction of a more human philosophy, born among
another race, and conveyed there by the works of Aristotle and the
neo-Platonists. The East was inspired for an instant with these foreign
doctrines, which it would have been incapable of originating itself. It
revived for a century or two under their influence, but soon everything
reverted to a former state of order; having shone in the barbarism of a
pure theism, whence it would never have come out without the contact of
a world extrinsic and superior to certain considerations, without the
momentary education which it had thus received from it.

All the sciences are not in the same intimate relation with the
texts called revealed; the mathesiological order is that in which
the sciences have had, and could have, the least to suffer from
religious influence; in the first place, mathematics, which, from their
nature, would never have known how to yield; and, lastly, geology and
anthropology, allied by intimate relations to the Divine tradition of
the first chapter of Genesis. But see how geology, which we thought for
so long a time was in agreement with it, grows more distant every day
as new discoveries are multiplied. The pretended epochs see, day by
day, that their artificial limits are disappearing, now that one finds
reptiles in coal-fields and mammalia in Trias.

Anthropology in France seems, at last, to desire to free itself from
the shameful yoke which has for so long paralysed its flight. In its
turn it claims independence. But, we would declare this, that the
principle of authority, defeated on so many points, has concentrated
its highest efforts behind this last rampart, calling to its aid the
pretence of morality and propriety. The question of the unity or the
plurality of the human race, so far as relates to species, is only a
scientific one; but others make of it a question of principle, as in
the time of Galileo, when it was a matter of overturning the ideas of
the old world, supported by a testimony which was not allowed to be
doubted. So the struggle is a sharp one;[3] it is felt that it refers
almost to a dogma, and not merely to an accessory fact. Science clashes
there with religion, as is the case with geology, and as formerly with
astronomy; but in no way is the shock so violent, in no way can its
consequences be as great. Anthropology, more than any other science,
ought to produce immense results.[4] Who does not see that the abyss
becomes every day deeper under the belief of the past, and that
science, at a given moment, will become the foundation of more perfect
morality?

This antagonism is the first difficulty which we find at the threshold
of anthropology. We should have wished to have entered upon our subject
without being obliged, not absolutely to discuss it, but merely to
show the disputed point in the question. Unfortunately, the example
has been given us; we must follow it. Two schools are to be found
in anthropology; one called that of the Polygenists, the other that
of the Monogenists,[5] two words which came from America, and which
we receive because they have the great advantage of being clear and
precise, determining, by the opposing point of their doctrines, two
distinct schools, the one recognising but one family in the human
race, of which some members have alone preserved the primitive
type--altered everywhere else; the other school recognising no direct
relationship among the races of mankind. The Polygenistic school is
comparatively modern; the founders of anthropology--the Blumenbachs and
the Prichards--belonged to the other. Now, if they took their stand on
an entirely philosophic or experimental point of view, we should be
very badly received now-a-days if we were to reconsider the question
upon a burning soil. It has not been so, however. Most Monogenists[6]
have, up to the present time, done the universal wrong of invoking,
in proof of their ideas, an authority which it is not allowable to
discuss. Science is neither a special attribute of privileged castes,
nor given to certain times in preference to others; it has never been
obliged to wait for a revelation; it is universal, and all men, endowed
with the same faculties, have always been able, in all countries and at
all times, to carry it as far, when they have had the same means and
the same occasions of observation; it is thus that psychology, based
upon simple reflection, has not farther progressed in our days than
at Athens or at Alexandria; from Plato to Descartes there is only the
distance between one system and the other.

“Historians of that which is,” has said the illustrious chief of the
philosophical school of France, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, “we
cannot fail, except when we cease to relate the truth.”[7] Now, truth
in science cannot be governed except by two means, reasoning after the
manner of mathematics, and observation, of which experiment is but a
variety. Every idea _à priori_, every hypothesis is only good if we
accept it with a strong determination of abandoning it if the facts
are no longer explicable by its means. Without this, its influence is
disastrous, let the origin of this previous idea be in ourselves or in
others, whether it is our own or has been imposed upon us.[8]

In starting with a preconceived idea one arrives most often, in
science, at false allegations, always at uncertainties. It is upon
reasons of this sort that some have not feared to rest the theory of
the unity of the human race;[9] since this hypothesis being accepted,
they have caused, willingly or otherwise, their observed facts
to correspond with it. Were the generally-admitted principles of
classification irksome to them? They passed on; they shut their eyes
to the most profound, the most positive, the most evident differences.
Ought not, then, unity to triumph? What did it signify, besides,
whether the Negro descended from the white man, or the contrary--for
these two opinions have been defended; for some, a few generations have
been sufficient to transform the fine Greek blood, which gave models
to Phidias and Praxiteles, into an Australian aboriginal. For others,
the Negroes were the true representation of our first parents, that
perfect work which last of all left the hands of God. Lieut.-Colonel
H. Smith[10] would admit that in the beginning were created separately
certain groups of men, if revelation were not positive on this
point. We notice especially in Kaempfer a specimen of what we may
call _orthodox ethnology_, which is curious above all things; having
discovered that the Japanese have nothing in common with the Chinese,
he decides, with a marvellous assurance, that they are directly
descended from the men on the scaffoldings of the Tower of Babel. And
as their language resembles no other tongue, he draws the conclusion
that their ancestors must have travelled very fast, so as not to have
become acquainted with anybody else![11]

And let no one say that it is obsolete matter to treat of science.
Orthodox physics and chemistry are indeed no myths. M. Marcel de
Serres, who has also occupied himself with anthropology, speaking
of the discussions which have been raised between the partisans of
emission and those of luminous undulation, adds, that this latter
theory has more chances of being exact, “because the facts related by
the legislator of the Hebrews seem to him to be more favourable to
truth.”[12] The Congregation of the Index, judging Galileo, reasoned in
the same way.[13] We arrive thus at once at the proscription of certain
inquiries, and we ask ourselves, How two men, so eminent as Humboldt
and Bonpland, could have approved of such lines as the following? “The
general question of the first origin of the inhabitants of a continent
is beyond the limits prescribed to history, _perhaps it may not be
even a philosophical question_.”[14] It is true that the work in which
this singular declaration is to be found is dedicated to his Catholic
Majesty Charles IV.

Thanks to these fatal influences, thanks to the interdicts with which
some would have desired to stifle the natural history of mankind, as
if they were afraid of seeing the spark, which should accomplish the
ruin of the past, disappear with the full light; thanks to all these
obstacles, anthropology was for a long time thrown into the background.

It is in America where we behold it reinstated in its rank, in that
country of every kind of liberty. It is there that our old continent
ought to go in order to find masters who have known how to enter
into scientific pursuits with this free and independent mind which,
in old times, according to Epicurus, freed mankind from the yoke of
superstition, and gave to intelligence the sceptre of the world.

The eighteenth century, with all its scepticism, had not done little in
this way; its fault, indeed, was in this scepticism, in this doubting
_à priori_. It rejected without examination, therefore its work was not
lasting, and the few lines of Voltaire which his good sense had written
with a Polygenistic tendency, had no influence at all.[15]

At present France and England walk entirely in the scientific path
opened by the American school. It is some years since it was vainly
endeavoured to establish in these two countries learned societies for
the study of ethnology; that time has passed. Now Paris and London
maintain two prosperous anthropological societies.[16] We do not
hesitate in attributing the reason of this success to the profound
discredit in which the continued blending of matters of faith with
matters of science, has justly fallen.

Apart from religious influence, there is another which may make itself
felt as regards anthropology. We mean those very honourable sentiments
about equality and confraternity which an honest heart will feel
towards all men, whatever may be their origin, whatever the colour of
their skin, but of which the searcher[17] after truth must disembarrass
himself, cost what it may to him as a _man_. Such feelings honour those
who are animated by them, but when they interfere with science, they
can only injure it. How many years, how many centuries, have anatomy
and medicine been obliged to wait until they could take a lasting and
an upward flight! Respect for the dead is doubtless a human sentiment,
if any; but it used to paralyse these two branches of our knowledge;
they are only possible to be learnt by profaning mortal remains
reverenced by the religions of antiquity. Physiology, rendered so clear
by vivisection, knows no pity; mankind feels it, but the physiologist
shuts up all knowledge of it from himself; it is momentarily destroyed,
since it would injure any inquiry into the laws of life.

It must be owned that the science which engages our attention has not
been able entirely to disembarrass itself among us of that which we
may call _moral propriety_.[18] It has a powerful influence on certain
minds, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes of their free will.[19]

We have ourselves heard eminent professors make a noble appeal to the
fraternity which ought to exist among men,--plead in their chairs the
cause of inferior races, and proclaim the equality of the African
people with ourselves. Such noble theories were received as they ought
to be, with the most ardent applause. There remains only to inquire
if this is truly philosophical progress, and if kindness, pity, or
compassion, have any value in the great balance of facts.

It was time, indeed, that a new method--an independent one--should see
the light in anthropology, as it has already done in astronomy, as it
also has begun to do in geology. It was time to return to the human
mind its wings. Facts, reasonings supported by facts, are the sole
basis of every solid work--of every certainty in scientific matters;
it is the only method which can lead us--by a slow path, perhaps, but
a sure one--to the solution of the most difficult and the most obscure
problems. We do not except that of the origin of man.

We do not pretend to be first in the path which we here point out,
but we wish to express our regret at not having seen it openly enough
followed by all those who are worthy to enter it. As for ourselves,
what we have desired in this essay is, first, to hold ourselves apart
from all extra-scientific data--from all sentimental science; we have
desired to treat some anthropological questions as they would have done
at Athens, Rome, or at Alexandria--a task above our powers, doubtless,
but which we hold ourselves bound in honour to attempt.

We shall carefully, then, avoid entering into any controversy touching
the dogmas of one religion or the other; we shall not contest the
authority of the Scriptures, whatever they may be, Hebrew, Christian,
Arabic, or Buddhist; we have put them on one side, and that is all.[20]
Descartes has truly observed that every scientific question ought to be
examined, even those which are most superstitious and most false, “so
as to recognise their just value, and to guard against being deceived
by them.”[21] One may be free to consider this essay as an attempt of
that kind.

We shall be praised or blamed: we have been so already. We have, for
our comfort, the conscientious feeling of having no other object before
our eyes but an inquiry into truth,--the truth, the common end towards
which the power of every man who believes in progress should tend.
“Where truth reigns,” says M. Chevreul, “no disputes or discussions
are possible.”[22] The reign of truth is the reign of concord amongst
mankind. It is the golden age.




CHAPTER I.

THE HUMAN KINGDOM.


Above inorganic matter, plants, and animals, is placed Man.

Here, without any doubt, man is indeed the first of the organisms,
when one tries to place in linear series all those which move on our
planet. It is, also, not his _relative_ position in the living world
that it is difficult to discover; it is what we may call his _true
place_. What is, in other terms, the value of the differences which
separate man from other mammalia? and at what distance is he from
the animal that immediately follows him in this linear series which
we are supposing? To examine what man is with respect to the highest
orders of mammalia, and in a more general manner, to animals, is the
primordial question which presents itself in anthropology. It seems at
first sight that it would suffice, in order to settle it, to throw a
glance on this complete body, formed of the same anatomical elements,
absolutely submitted to the same exigences of development, nutrition,
and reproduction, as animals. Ought not all this to make us think
that we were not altogether made of so immaterial a substance as the
philosophers have generally been satisfied to believe? This has not
been the case.

Two systems--two theories, are before us. The one pretends that man is
but the first among animals, that he is _similar_ to them in the clear
and precise sense in which this term is taken in geometry, designing
qualities, which may differ _ad infinitum_, but which still may be
comparable.

Another system, supported by the most illustrious names, makes of man
a sort of special entity, differing from other organised beings by
the distinct and clear nature of his intelligence. It is an opinion
adopted and defended to the last by a learned man, to whose memory
we cannot, _en passant_, prevent ourselves from rendering the homage
which is his due, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. We find in the
second volume of his _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, almost a return to
Cartesian ideas. According to him animals do not think, they possess
only that sensibility that plants have not.[23] And the celebrated
naturalist agreed with the adoption of a human kingdom, appearing as
the crowning-point of the organic and inorganic kingdoms,[24] and as
distinct from the second as this is from the third.

Before proceeding further, we may be permitted to make one preliminary
remark. We may thus declare it:--

PROPOSITION.--_Man nearly approaches the Anthropomorphous Apes in his
Physical Organism._ Whether one is a partisan or not of the “Human
Kingdom,” this resemblance is a fact which it will be in no person’s
ideas to contest. And it is not merely in the external forms; we find
it even greater if, going to the foundation of the facts, we give our
attention to the essential parts composing the body,--to the anatomical
elements,--to those delicate particles visible only in the microscope,
and which always show, among animals of the same group, a marvellous
uniformity.

It is here where, if not an impossibility, at least a sort of
contradiction presents itself to the defenders of the “human kingdom;”
for there are two organisms, scarcely different, at the service of
two directing powers, of two intelligences absolutely and radically
dissimilar. Doubtless all the forces of organised matter are not known
to us, but does not this resemblance, though even a superficial one,
surprise us; and does it not seem that every organism constituted
directly by reason of the influences which it is qualified to receive
or to transmit, ought to vary like these influences, and in the same
proportion?

It is very easy to admit that there is more distance between the
intelligence of man and that of the anthropomorphous apes, than between
the intelligence of these last and that of the smooth-brained squirrel,
and that at the same time the immense distance is only marked in the
first case by very superficial variations of the organ of intellectual
manifestations, whilst, in the second case, this lesser distance is
explained by enormous differences.

To admit, with Bossuet,[25] that this superior intelligence, the
appanage of man, is not attached to the organs reserved for the
manifestations of this inferior intelligence common to man and
animals, is to return to Descartes, and this is to fall again into new
difficulties. Will this superior intelligence, thus detached from the
material world, be then inaccessible to physical violence?

Whilst the finger of the physiologist or the surgeon, pressing
the brain, extinguishes for a moment in the animal, the faculty
of thinking, will human intelligence, freed from this servitude,
remain, in the like case, undisturbed in a higher sphere? No, by the
compression of the brain man loses consciousness like the animal. It
is material substance, which, brought into contact with the anatomical
elements of the nervous centres, can excite,[26] trouble,[27] or
depress,[28] the intelligence of animals, and leave no part of the
human intellect untouched.

Let us reconsider these two systems: viz., that man is similar to
animals as much by his intelligence as by his bodily formation; or
that he differs from them entirely. And now we have two clearly stated
theories before us for our consideration. To embrace either one or
the other _à priori_, merely for the sake of propriety or sentiment,
would be an arbitrary proceeding, essentially faulty, and contrary
to all rule; as in natural science, no other assistance is required
except _facts_, in order to explain the origin of anything. However,
without prejudging the solution of this question, let us simply examine
the results to which, by its nature, it may lead us. That man is of
himself a special entity, a kingdom, a world of his own, a sort of
_microcosm_, a whole beyond the pale of universal life, may be perhaps
a flattering unction to our soul;[29] it does little or nothing for
science. Anthropology may have its special means of inquiry; perhaps
these means are still to be found, but she will stand alone--without
profit to the other branches of human knowledge, a dead branch which
will not grow, casting all its leaves. If not--if man enters into the
common course of life--if he is merely a part of one grand organic
whole, necessarily allied to others by a thousand points of contact and
intimate relations, then anthropology, fertilised by the principle of
universality, becomes a science by which we may profit; it gives to her
sisters, the other natural sciences, that assistance which she herself
receives from them; the paths widen; the science of organisation
becomes easier, more certain, and more enlarged; _synthesis_,
displaying its powerful energies, opens to us the path of the unknown;
the mind, overleaping this obstacle, pointed out by Montaigne, “of not
understanding” animals, will study their intelligence, and will search
their inmost thoughts. As for ourselves, we are learning to know them,
like Galen the inspired, who obtained a knowledge of human anatomy by
dissecting a monkey.

Let us endeavour to obtain an exact idea of this barrier, apparently
impossible to be overcome, which separates man from the brute creation.
Whether we compare him to the highest order of primates living on
trees--this genius which is the glory of humanity, which has raised
to such a height both science and art--or only to the last from among
us, members of the great family rejoicing in a white skin, _then_ the
transition is brutish, and it seems that an abyss separates us from the
famous _wild man of the woods_, so celebrated in the travels of the
last century. It is thus that the human kingdom has been established,
comparing the two extremes, without taking account of the intermediate
terms.

Let us put on one side, for an instant, the question of origin. A race,
or a family, endowed with a characteristic and united activity, by the
form of mind peculiar to itself, with a prepossession for reuniting in
a cluster the work of every individual intelligence, forms out of it
a sort of thought common to all, and transmits this inheritance from
generation to generation. One can understand that, as time goes on,
this family, or this race, will arrive at a degree of civilisation
very different to that which it showed at the time of its origin. The
concurrence of so many intelligent modes of action will gently, but
naturally, lead it to purely metaphysical ideas--to the intricate idea
of a divinity, etc. But, in such an arrangement, each one is, after
all, but the representative of a secular intellectual work, accustomed
since the cradle, without any self-knowledge of the fact, to natural
habits and language. We ask if it is right to compare a being thus
raised and exalted by his own means with an animal which has no more
remote past than its own birth?[30] Let us take, then, for the sake
of comparing them with animals, those people in whom life is in some
sort individual, among whom no person adds anything to transmitted
inheritance,--among whom even this inheritance has originally come from
outside, and who, we know not why, having arrived at the lowest ebb of
civilisation, have not been able to improve or perfect it.

Some may say that they simply copy everything. Some may say that the
huge weapons used by the inhabitants of Central Africa and Australia
have only become known by importation; that the savage is civilised
at a given moment by contact with some foreign nation--by imitation, a
faculty which is possessed, within well marked limits, by the highest
order of apes; and then, that progress has been stopped when these
people return to their own homes. How can we explain otherwise, for
example, that the Northern Esquimaux, living on the ice by the borders
of creeks and bays, can make dresses and arms, and have never been able
to construct a machine capable of bearing them upon the waters?[31]

If we break up one continuous series, and compare together the two
first terms with two of the fragments of the series, they will in
reality appear entirely distinct; in fact, almost impossible to be
connected with one common type. But, if we compare the last term of
one of these partial series with the first term of the following, then
the differences are blended, because the transformations do not happen
to hide the parts so much that one cannot recognise their fundamental
unity. We discover, for example, that in the animal series, such a
crustacean is almost a mollusk, such a reptile, such a mammal, almost a
bird.[32] Differences are extinguished; those beings which were said to
be most distant have become almost allied one to the other. We can only
perceive one continuous series; so much so, indeed, that even where
there are any unfilled spaces, or missing links, we consider ourselves
almost justified in declaring the past existence (or the future one?)
of some intermediate animal.

As for ourselves, the series of beings given by Bonnet and Leibnitz, so
far as regards any ulterior phenomenon, resulting from the observation
of beings who have not been of necessity created in this order, is true
not only of the physical, but also of the intellectual world. Shall we
desire to know what man has in common with the ape--what distance there
is between the one and the other,--let us no longer put _ourselves_ on
the stage, we who are privileged so to do; let us descend boldly the
steps of the human ladder, and let us see what we shall find as we do
so.

Examples are not wanting of races placed so low, that they have quite
naturally appeared to resemble the ape tribe. These people, much
nearer than ourselves to a state of nature, deserve on that account
every attention on the part of the anthropologist and the linguist,
who may both discover, by their means, problems otherwise difficult
or impossible to be solved. It is because we have not studied the
psychological characters of these races, that we have fallen into
such strange mistakes. What will become of all those superb theories
concerning this superior intelligence of man, so entirely independent
and disengaged from the world, on which so much praise is conferred?
What will become of the unity of the human species, if we can prove
that certain races are not a whit more intelligent than certain
animals, and have no more idea of a moral world or of religion than
they themselves have?

The most commonly quoted example is that of the aborigines of
Australia. “They have always shown complete ignorance,” say both Lesson
and Garnot,[33] “a sort of _moral brutality_.... A kind of highly
developed instinct for discovering the food which is always difficult
for them to obtain _seems, among them, to have taken the place of most
of the moral faculties of mankind_.” If the English police did not
watch very strictly, they would set at defiance every day, at least in
the towns of their colonies, all the laws of public decency without any
more thought than the monkeys in a menagerie.

In the account given of the American Expedition in 1838, Mr. Hale
writes that they almost possess the stupidity of the brute, that they
can only count up to _four_, and some tribes only so far as _three_.
“The power of reasoning,” he says, “seems but imperfectly developed
among them. The arguments used by the colonists to convince or persuade
them are often such as they would use towards children or persons who
are almost idiotic.”[34] MM. Quoy and Gaimard, whom no one will accuse
of polygenist tendencies, give the following account of their interview
with these miserable people. “Our presence seemed to cause them a sort
of pleasure; and they endeavoured to explain their sensations on the
subject with a loquacity to which we could not respond, seeing we did
not understand their language. After this meeting they used to come
to us, gesticulating and talking rapidly; they gave shrill screams,
and if we answered in the same way, their delight was immense. Soon
there was a change, and they did not hesitate to ask for something to
eat, by the simple mode of _hitting themselves on the belly_.”[35] The
spectacle these travellers had before them is so sad and touching that
they afterwards add, as if to satisfy their own consciences, “however,
they are not stupid.” Doubtless, they are not; but they do not seem to
deserve the epithet which the world gives to these beings, who appear
so completely inferior to others. “Malicious as a monkey.” _They are
not stupid_, and that is all.[36] The Australians are not exceptional
in this; Bory de Saint Vincent has drawn for us a picture of the
inhabitants of South Africa, a beautiful and fertile land, which is
almost as sad. At the other end of the world, upon that ice-continent
which surrounds the north pole, we find the same abjection.

Sir John Ross, lost among the ice, found himself among a race of
people who had never seen an European; this English sailor, a strictly
religious man, was peculiarly adapted to behold with indulgence the
only beings who were near him, but although he was an attentive and
scrupulous observer, and above all, a truly sincere man, he seemed to
despair of finding in their minds the living spark for which he was
searching. “The Esquimaux,” he says, “is an animal of prey, with no
other enjoyment than eating: and, guided by no principle and no reason,
he devours as long as he can, and all that he can procure, like the
vulture and the tiger.”[37] And, farther on, “The Esquimaux eats but
to sleep, and sleeps but to eat again as soon as he can.”[38] We shall
descend still lower, in order to find out men who are so degraded, that
those who have seen them have stated, that if they were in thick bushes
or the shadows of the forest, they would hardly have known whether
they were apes or men. And, let attention be paid to this,--these
wretched beings, almost deprived of human form, do not inhabit a poor
or secluded country, but the continent of Asia, to the south of the
Himalaya chain, in the centre of Hindoostan, in those regions which
have been the cradle of several huge species of apes, at that epoch,
doubtless, when the islands of the Indian Archipelago were joined to
Asia, and formed one immense continent,--the land of the Malay race.[39]

In 1824, an English colonist, Mr. Piddington, a settler in the centre
of Hindoostan (towards Palmow, Subhulpore, and the upper basin of
the Nerbudda), relates[40] that he saw amongst a party of Dhangour
workmen,--who came every year to work on his plantation,--a man and a
woman who were extremely strange and uncouth, and whom the Dhangours
themselves called _monkey-people_. They had a language of their own.
From so much as could be understood by signs, it was discovered that
they lived far beyond the country of the Dhangours, in the forests and
in the mountains, and possessed few villages. It would seem that the
man had fled with the woman in consequence of some misfortune, perhaps
a murder. But at all events, they were found by the Dhangours lost in
the woods, exhausted, and almost dead from hunger. They disappeared
suddenly one night, just as Mr. Piddington had made arrangements to
send them to Calcutta. It would seem from other information that a
Mr. Trail, for many years Commissioner at Kuman, had also seen these
extraordinary beings, and had even been so fortunate as to procure
one of them, whose appearance fully justified the traditional name
given to them by the natives. In fact, other evidence--some of it
historical--may be added to this in order to prove the existence of
such an inferior race in different parts of the Indian peninsula.
Mr. Piddington thus describes him:--“He was short, flat-nosed, had
pouch-like wrinkles in semicircles round the corners of the mouth and
cheeks; his arms were disproportionately long, and there was a portion
of reddish hair to be seen on the rusty-black skin. Altogether, if
crouched in a dark corner or on a tree, he might have been mistaken
for a large orang-utan.” It must be noticed that Mr. Piddington had
travelled a great deal, and that he had acquired, even without his
own knowledge, some experience in anthropology. He takes care to tell
us that he had seen in their turn the Bosjesmen, the Hottentots, the
Papous, the Alfourous, the aborigines of Australia, New Zealand, and
the Sandwich Islands, which, indeed, gives great authority to the
facts which he relates.[41] What, we may indeed exclaim, are these
really men? After journeying over the beaten track, see how far we
are from that Aryan family, the mistress of arts and science; how
much we approach the brute, even if we have not already reached that
point? We have descended; let us now raise the other mammalia to man,
and in the highest degree to which we can attain, let us endeavour to
measure the distance to the point we have just left. Let it be well
understood, we shall only consider in this place the highest mammalia;
for the question becomes more complicated on every side as soon as
the difference in the organisms becomes more apparent. In regard to
this, facts have often spoken for a long time, and the _savant_, whose
testimony in such a case possesses most value, Professor R. Owen,
has not feared to say, that the distinction between man and certain
primates is the great difficulty felt by all anatomists.[42] Let us
pass on to intellect.

All animals feel, understand, and think (M. Flourens and M. de
Quatrefages), they dream, are capable of feeling distrust, fear,
joy,[43] sorrow, jealousy, etc.; in fact, the entire list of human
passions.[44] All this is amply proved by a thousand examples; who does
not remember the accounts of seals, elephants, dogs, which have become
celebrated, and which men who have lived a short time with animals
may see repeated every day? Only read the admirable account given by
Buffon of the intelligence of the dog; again, the detailed and valuable
history which F. Cuvier has left us concerning the orang-outang in the
Museum, without forgetting that this history could be neither complete
nor perfect on account of the various circumstances in which the animal
was placed, far from his own country, and under an ungenial sky.

Dr. Yvan, attached to the expedition which the French government sent
to China in 1843,[45] has given us an account of an orang-outang at
Borneo, which is, perhaps, the best plea in favour of the connexion
between primates and mankind. Tuân, as this animal was called, began
to dress himself directly a bit of any stuff, or cloth, got in his
way.[46] On one occasion, when his master had taken a mangrove from
him, “he uttered plaintive cries like a child when it is sulky. This
conduct not having been so successful as he expected, he threw himself
on his face upon the ground, struck the earth with his fist, screamed,
cried, and howled, for more than half-an-hour.” When the mangrove was
given back to him, he threw it at the head of his master.[47] It is
a curious fact, but the particular friend of Tuân was a negro from
Manilla. At Manilla, he accustomed himself to Tagal[48] manners, and
played with the children. “One day, when Tuân was rolling on some
matting with a little girl, about four or five years old, he stopped
all of a sudden, and examined the child in a most minute and anatomical
manner. The results of his investigations seemed to astonish him
profoundly; he retired on one side, and repeated upon himself the same
examination which he had made on his little playmate.” We may all
remember the eloquent pages in Buffon, where, admitting the Adamic
legend, he recounts the impressions of our first parents. Has not
nature been here, we ask, a better historian than our naturalist, even
with all his genius?

Over and above these facts, as their crowning-point, we must invoke as
a witness the man who has carried farthest the spirit of philosophy
in the natural sciences in France, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. A
cautious and profound observer, he mingled with the crowd which the
orang drew to the Museum in 1836. Mistrusting his own judgment, he
gathered the opinions of all those who surrounded him,--of all the
visitors who, as he said, “came to observe as unprejudiced spectators,
without any preconceived ideas, and without being hindered by those
deplorable trammels which we call our rules of classification.”[49]
The result surprised even Etienne Geoffroy himself. These visitors,
so different one from the other, all united in this idea, “that the
animal from Sumatra was neither a man nor an ape: _neither one nor the
other_, that was what the mind of each person at once acknowledged.”

We might quote whole pages from this naturalist philosopher in which
the elevation of his style strives with the grandeur of his ideas. “I
never used my self-love,” he says, “in bringing forward other opinions
against those of the visitors to the orang-outang ... I never drove
back the torrent of information which I had the happiness of receiving
from each separate mind.... I have faith in the soundness of popular
opinions, the masses rejoicing in an instinctive good sense which
makes them clear-headed, and renders them peculiarly able to seize
the salient point of any question.” This was an excellent method, and
showed the power of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

It is curious to compare with him another writer who, from within
his study, invoked upon these questions, at least, that which we may
call _universal acquiescence_,--it is Maupertuis. Speaking of the
characteristics which make man different from animals, he says, “Simple
good sense seizes these differences; they have always been felt, and
there we behold one of those convictions which the _universality and
uniformity of all men_ characterise as the truth.”[50]

Maupertuis did not certainly know that the orang-outang,--a word which
means _wild-man_,--is no metaphor for the inhabitants of the Indian
Archipelago, and that in the country inhabited by the “long-nosed”
Guenon,[51] the popular belief is that, being sharper than the others,
he only keeps silent in order to preserve his liberty. Nothing can
be more fallacious than these pretended truths, sustained merely by
_universal acquiescence_. At first it was invoked as a proof, at a
time when scarcely one-tenth of the inhabited world was known:[52] but
let us proceed. In our own day, we know a little better what to make
of this kind of proof, which science has abandoned to theologians.
Experience has proved, day by day, what will become of this pretended
universality among mankind, of certain thoughts, certain sentiments,
and certain aspirations.[53]

We shall see, farther on, that the _community_ of some of those
intellectual manifestations, which many have wished to regard as
general, is often restricted to one race alone amongst mankind, and
limited in space by the boundaries of the continent occupied by this
race. And now we see how anthropology in her turn, can, in all these
points, assist even philosophy itself. For example, do we not feel
that, from henceforward, the words _beautiful_ and _right_ can mean
nothing absolute; since whatever is _beautiful_ and _right_ upon a
hemisphere, for any given intelligence, cannot be so in an opposite
hemisphere,--_cannot possibly be so_ in a mind otherwise formed and
belonging to another race. To these two words we must, by means of
anthropology, restore an exclusively relative value.[54] The _True_
alone is absolute, unchangeable in both time and space. That alone
reigns universally, and let us not forget this, it flourishes in
science alone,--it is only to be found there.[55]




CHAPTER II.

COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY.


On one occasion, two monkeys were brought into the presence of the
orang described by Grant, about which we spoke in the last chapter.
They were led by a chain up to the animal, and were threatened with a
stick. “During the whole interview,” says our informant, “the grave
commanding attitude and bearing of the orang, compared to the levity
and apparent sense of inferiority of the monkeys, was very striking,
and it was impossible not to feel that he was a creature of a much more
elevated order and capacity.”[56]

“The animal from Sumatra is neither a man nor an ape,” said the crowd
before the orang at the Museum. The communications which were then
made to the Institute by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire may be, one
of these days, a new triumph for him, the forerunner of a science
which is not yet in existence,--the study of intellect in animals,
based upon observation and experience; as for instance, in the passage
where he proposes to submit the orang to a methodical education, in
order to study the modifications which would be caused by such an
alteration of method.[57] He who has discovered organic unity, will
have placed us in the way of a discovery not less important, that of
psychological unity.[58] A new science, which would only date from
the time of the reaction against Cartesian ideas,--a science still
without a name, merely touched upon even by great minds which have the
inestimable privilege of understanding everything; it has never been
_studied_,--never thoroughly investigated,--never submitted to all our
means of information.[59] We should call it _Comparative Psychology_.

We should, then, re-enter into one great _Unity_. The intellect of
vertebrate animals would be identical, as their organism is identical;
thus gradually descending, passing through the orang, from man himself
to all the mammalia. It may be said that these propositions are not yet
proved,--at least it will be allowed, seeing what has passed during a
very few years, that the last word has not yet been said concerning the
intellect of animals.

Has this question, then, made so much progress, either to the profit of
animals or the detriment of mankind, that we should wish to stop it,
when it has started already on so straight a path? Saint Chrysostom
reproached the Gentile philosopher, it is said, with having always been
inclined to assimilate that which they called the soul of animals with
that of man himself.[60] The opinion of these Gentiles, nevertheless,
is worth the trouble of being noticed. They were as well able to
observe animals as ourselves. Since then, the means of study, as
applied to intellect, have made little or no progress; observation and
reflection are still the same; we have found no new process, no new
method, by which we can more profoundly examine into this subject; we
have, then, no reason to think that the solutions given by ourselves
upon this point are at all preferable to those of the ancients. It
may be rather the contrary. For their opinion has this much in its
favour, that it was born free, in minds which did not restrain, even
unwittingly, any new influence or theory which might be brought
forward.[61] The idea of the intellectual gradation from man to animals
must have been necessarily offensive to Christianity, which promised a
future existence; it was not so for these Gentiles, who were much more
occupied with matters of the world.[62]

The principles which we are endeavouring to revive are not, however,
completely those of Aristotle. In his treatise on the soul he admits
this gradation, but as presenting in each degree a new manifestation
beyond the manifestations existing in the inferior degrees. The
principle of the soul is unity; but as we reascend the series, from
plants to man, it invests itself with a greatly increased number of
faculties. Porphyrius, resuming the ideas of the Stagyrite, seems to
go even further, and to approach nearer the truth; it is not faculties
joined one to another that he recognises in man and animals, but the
same in all, only more or less developed.[63]

At the present day, if we have not returned to the ideas of Pythagoras
and the Stoics, at least we are very far from Pereira and Descartes,
with their _animal machines, hydraulic-pneumatic machines_, as one of
the partisans of the Bréton philosopher (J. H. Crocius) calls them.[64]

We are really astonished at the infatuation for the opinions of
Descartes which took possession of Germany during the latter
half of the seventeenth century. They were pushed to the extreme
point,--soul, reason, and intellect were denied to all animals. A
person named Stahl,[65] who had at least the merit of being consistent
to the last, brings forward a principle, that animals do not feel,
_bruta non sentire_. This announcement is the conclusion of a very
learned syllogism, and which one Gaspard Laugenhert had added to the
_Compendium Physicæ_ of Arnold Geulinx.

It is with much trouble that some strong minds have dared to raise
their voices in this Cartesian concert, having taken good care to
strengthen themselves by plenty of quotations gathered from the Old and
New Testaments.[66] These were then proofs positive, and at times it
was prudent to use them. The side of the animals has been successively
strengthened by Buffon, and indeed by everybody. At the present day,
M. Flourens refuses them _thought_ alone, “this supreme faculty which
the mind of man possesses, so that it may rely upon itself, and study
its own mind.[67] There is here,” says the physiologist of whom we are
speaking, “a strong line of demarcation; this thought which can reason
about itself,--this intellect which beholds and studies itself,--this
knowledge which is acquainted with itself,--evidently forms an order
of determined phenomena of a clearly defined nature, and to which no
animal would know how to attain. _There_ is a purely intellectual
world, if we may say so, and this world belongs only to man. In one
word, animals feel, understand, think; but man is the only one among
all created beings to whom the power has been given of _feeling_ that
he feels, of _knowing_ that he understands, and of _thinking_ that he
has the _power_ of thinking.”[68]

Such is the only difference. The question is now reduced to a more
limited field than it has ever been before, and infinitely less
vast. The thing which would be wanting in animals is a kind of
internal knowledge; not the knowledge of oneself (they know this
since they _feel_) but the _scientific knowledge of oneself_, which
can bring reflecting and reasoning study to bear on all the interior
phenomena which may occur to each. We desire fully that this may be
a distinction, but solely a secondary one, and able at most to make
certain races of men differ one from the other. In fact, if we form an
absolute and fundamental character of humanity out of this faculty,
this power of investigation into an interior world, we ought to find
it in a powerful manner among all men. It will resist every other
influence, it will be permanent, since, this being destroyed, man would
be no longer a man, and would be lowered by this fact to the rank
whence he is said to have come.

And do we consider that it may possibly be so? Does this reflected
knowledge of oneself exist among inferior races, if it does not exist
among animals? Certainly we shall never maintain that these last enjoy
such a faculty, the source of all our legislation, and that which has
made us what we are. But we ask if it is well proved whether all human
races possess it. If we do not allow innate ideas to the orang, as F.
Cuvier[69] would do, be it so, but let it be remembered that certain
philosophers have refused them to man himself. We ourselves agree that
an animal has no abstract notion of right or duty, or any idea of a
divinity,[70] but it must also be remembered that certain people have
not even a word for the purpose of expressing these things, and it is
M. de Quatrefages himself who avows it.[71]

We refer these persons to the following account of animal economy,
and we think that they will not deny their application to various
African and Oceanic tribes. “Ideas, abstract ideas, arise from their
own domain; the past, that which preceded their birth; the future, that
which will follow their death, does not occupy their attention; the
present is their only business in life. They do not demand ‘Whence do I
come? What am I? Where am I going?’ And they have no idea whatsoever of
a Divinity.”[72] Bayle, Maupertuis,[73] and M. Flourens have, one after
another, declared how difficult it is to fix a limit, to say where the
intellect of animals ceases, and where that of man commences. That
limit escapes even ourselves; whilst separating two terms specifically
distinct we only see one continued line from the other vertebrate
animals to mankind, without any clearly defined demarcation,--the
organism only of one mammifer as separated by an unbroken limit from
the organism of another. It is a chain of which the links, if we wish,
may go on increasing from one extremity to the other, following a
given progression, but without ceasing to be _like_, and consequently
comparable amongst themselves. A certain number of links may be
wanting, but the mind re-establishes them, and the continuity, although
an abstraction, is not the less real. It is even, if we may say so, the
track of a hyperbolic curve, interrupted here and there, of which only
the arcs remain, quite different, and all, however, reducible by the
mind to one and the same system.

Unity of composition is the condition of all harmony, the necessary
rule of nature. As to ourselves, we only see everywhere the same
faculties, extended and developed among the superior vertebrate
animals; having even acquired among mankind the singular property
of aggrandising itself almost _ad infinitum_, confined among other
vertebrata, enclosed in a small circle, where they can even escape our
own means of knowledge.

But there is everywhere the same nature, everywhere things are alike.
Life is unity; we do not share it one with another; both the life
of the body and the life of intellect, both matter and the mind, and
the organism and the faculties,[74] belong to each one separately.
Terms correlative one to the other, never independent. There is an
immense space between the intellect of animals and that of a civilised
European; we willingly recognise this, but encumbered by mean terms
and numerous transitions; that these latter exist, or that they have
finished their time upon our planet, we also allow. The question of
language, so confused, and so full of obscurity, still remains.

“Whatever resemblance there may be between the Hottentot and the
monkey,” says Buffon, “the distance which separates them is immense,
since internally it is filled by thought and outwardly by speech.”[75]
We know how to consider the first of these appreciations. As to the
second, let us see if we shall not there perceive a sort of gradation
which would insensibly lead us from our own complicated languages
to others of a much greater simplicity, so much so that they can
scarcely be called by that name. Speech and language are two words
often confounded, but in science we must give to each of them its own
value. _Speech_ is a language articulated by the respiratory channels.
_Language_ may be defined as “everything spoken by well known and
understood means between two intellects.” It may be seen that we give
the fullest acceptation possible to this word. It is a _language_ that
the Abbé de l’Epée invented for the deaf and dumb. The writing of this
language is another. A phonetic telegram is, as regards a stranger,
merely a succession of sounds, like the song of a nightingale; a naval
telegram is only an assemblage and a combination of colours like an
arabesque, united the moment when the necessary arrangement forms these
sounds or these colours into language.[76]

Speech alone being the habitual and natural language of mankind,
endowed otherwise with special organic specifications in order to
produce it, we have been generally led to confound these two distinct
things in speaking of mankind, viz., _speech_ and _language_. This
being allowed, the first question which we have to examine is this,
“Has man always possessed the faculty of speech?”. A difficult
question, but one which we have no right to proclaim as impossible to
be solved, which is, perhaps, not the case, and of which the difficulty
belongs principally to the very imperfect knowledge which we possess
concerning the distant epoch which saw mankind in his cradle.[77] Let
us first of all remember that man has, in common with animals, voice,
cries, natural inflections (M. Flourens), that which we otherwise call
_natural language_. “Like a simple animal,” says Herder,[78] “man
possesses the faculty of speech. All the most violent and painful
sensations of his body, as well as the strong passions of his mind,
are manifested immediately by cries or inflections of the voice, by
natural and inarticulate sounds. The animal which suffers--as well as
the hero Philoctetes--when it feels sorrow will moan and sigh, even
when abandoned in a desert island, far from the sight of any friendly
creature, without any hope of succour.” This language is intelligible
between all animals, between animals and ourselves, and between
ourselves and animals. We may affirm that man possesses it always, from
the first hour of his birth. As to articulated language, as _artificial
language_ has been called in opposition to the preceding, the question
is much more confused and much less clearly defined.

We think with Steinthal, with Jacob Grimm,[79] and with M. Renan,[80]
that language is not innate in man, that is to say, it is not, as the
Buddhist philosophy has already declared, a _necessary_ consequence
of active intelligence.[81] Further, it has not been revealed--this
theory does not even deserve the honour of having been opposed by Jacob
Grimm.[82] But we may admit that language is, if not a necessity, a
least a direct consequence of an intellect such as existed amongst
mankind at the time, whether long or short we know not, which preceded
the appearance of language. “The moment,” says M. Renan, stating
the theories of Steinthal,[83] “that language arises from the human
soul and appears in the light of day and constitutes an epoch in the
development of the life of the mind, is the moment when intuition is
changed into idea. Things appear first to the mind in the complexity
of the real, abstraction is unknown to the primitive man.” Here, then,
are two well-characterised modes, two ways of being, entirely different
from the intellect of man. The one, where this intellect only possesses
intuition, the other where analysis sees the light, where the mind is
abstracted, and where, by a mechanism more or less complicated, but at
the same time by a real work,[84] it ends by calling every abstraction
of mind by a name; then he speaks. But before the time when this
revolution is accomplished, the state of man is completely comparable
to that in which animals are placed. They have caught at certain
relations by means of their intelligence, without usually feeling any
necessity for explaining them, a relation of a much more elevated order
of beings, for it has been truly remarked,[85] and it must not be
forgotten, that the capital act of language is to “wish to speak.”

We have seen that certain abstract ideas, by reason of their nature,
were so entirely foreign to certain races of men, that their intellects
had never _wished_ for a word in order to express them. Well, if other
ideas, expressing much more simple relations, have escaped animals,
there is only, in fact, a gradation corresponding to what we have just
said concerning intellectual phenomena among the human race. As for
the specific difference which some have tried to establish under this
head between man and animals, if it were correct it must be shown that
language is completely unattainable by any mammalia, even within the
most restricted limits.

And is it so? Will it be mooted that certain animals have not even
a rudiment of language, whether articulated or not it does not much
signify, in their state of nature? Will it be mooted that they never
make any sort of sign in order to communicate anything to one another,
to call them, or give an alarm, or express some peculiar sensation?[86]

Experience would entirely deny any such assertion. And this not only
with reference to the superior animals, for this faculty appears to be
extended even to the invertebrata. The well-known experiments of P.
Huber seem to have proved in the most decisive manner that ants,[87]
like bees, are able to transmit certain signs or indications from one
to the other; even if the mere act of living in a republic, of joining
together in one common work, did not offer the strongest presumption
of a language peculiar to these creatures. If anyone dares to deny to
animals the spontaneous exercise of a restricted language, limited in
whatever way that may be desired, at least it cannot be denied that
many of the vertebrate animals are not capable of receiving from it
an equal education, of understanding the signification of certain
sounds, of certain signs, and of producing in their turn such as may be
understood by us, of communicating to us any of their thoughts, or any
of their appreciations.

We are not speaking here of animals who can reproduce certain sounds
belonging to the vocal organs of man; that is a fact of an entirely
material character, and which has no reference to the question of
language. It is evident that the animal which articulates any word
whatsoever does not understand it a whit more than the man who imitates
the cry of an animal, and, in a general way, neither comprehends its
sense nor its signification.

Maupertuis alleges[88] that if animals were capable of understanding
we could teach them to make themselves understood by other signs in
default of a voice. A strange aberration of intellect for such a
studious and learned man. This is the man who makes an impossibility
out of an everyday occurrence; for, first of all, most animals _have_
some sort of voice, and if they had it not, there are few persons who
are ignorant of the way in which certain mute dogs make themselves
understood when they particularly desire it. What would really be
absurd would be the hope of imparting ideas to animals, matters
relating, indeed, to a higher order, since we see that even all _men_
are not capable of grasping them. Man has been able to train animals,
and to train implies precisely the idea of communicating a thought
from man to an animal, and from the animal to man. “Jump,” says the
shepherd to his dog, and the dog knows that this vocal articulation
orders him to make a given muscular effort. The man has _spoken_ to the
dog. During the night some one opens the gate of the farm-yard, and the
watch-dog barks; he thus _tells_ his master that something unusual is
happening.[89]

That which proves besides that the barking of the dog is merely a
conventional sign, an _artificial language_, so to say, is the fact,
that in certain countries the dogs do not bark; jackals and wolves
learn how to bark when in company with the dogs who can talk in this
manner, and that the same dogs lose the power, or rather the habit of
barking, if they return to a savage state.[90]

We have already spoken of those inferior races which seem to
have borrowed from their better endowed neighbours a rudiment of
civilisation, which, for a long time they did not know how to develope
in any way. Does it not seem that there is here some comparison with
what has just been stated? that under a civilising influence, in
contact with a superior being, the dog has learnt a language; but that
not understanding its general application (a more complex, and more
highly elevated idea), he has not known how to transmit the use of
it to his own race, or has himself forgotten it, from not having any
occasion to exercise this power?[91]

The language of animals is still a question full of obscurity, but
which may eventually, we believe, become fruitful in new facts.[92]

If Apollonius of Tyana and the ancient philosophers did not understand
the language of animals so well as has sometimes been believed, at
least they did not do wrong in directing their inquiries towards this
matter. We have no doubt but that in carefully studying animals, we
shall arrive at a scientific explanation of this well-known truth,
recognised by all those who live with them; which is that they can
understand us, that they make themselves understood by us, and that
they understood one another within certain limits.[93]

For a long time it was believed that intellect and thought belong
to man alone, and that he had only organic instinct in common with
animals.[94] This opinion tends each day towards a change; we hope
that we have proved so much. Something of the same sort will take
place, we think, for the best studied language. There, as with
intellect, as with organism, we shall doubtless be able to prove a
unity which may be regarded by analogy as necessary, offering alone
degrees of gradation in reference to organism and intellect. Every
living being (we are only speaking here of vertebrate animals)
will appear to be composed of the same constituent parts, but
unequally developed, and of which some have only been taken by us
for dissimilarities or new parts, on account of our own want of
sufficiently deep study. As they formerly tried to discover new
bones in the heads of fishes, until the time when their relations,
connexions, and development were better studied; so unity of
composition has been there recognised and proved where it was least
suspected.

We cannot do better, in order to sum up our ideas on this subject,
than quote a passage from the works of a learned man, who in our days
has gone most deeply into the study of organic homology, Professor
Richard Owen; it is the last step which has been taken, and indeed the
most decisive one, in the momentous question concerning man’s place in
nature.

“Not being able to appreciate or conceive of the distinction between
the _psychical_ phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a Bosjesman, or of an
Aztec with arrested brain-growth, as being of a nature so essential
as to preclude a comparison between them, or _as being other than
a difference of degree_, I cannot shut my eyes to the significance
of that all-pervading similitude of structure--every tooth, every
bone, strictly homologous--which makes the determination of the
difference between _Homo_ and _Pithecus_ the anatomist’s difficulty.
And therefore, with every respect for the author of the _Records of
Creation_,[95] I follow Linnæus[96] and Cuvier in regarding mankind as
a legitimate subject of zoological comparison and classification.[97]”
Is not the admission of gradation the means of binding more firmly
together the great chain of human beings, a thing quite impossible,
which could not exist, or rather, which would only be a caprice,--an
artificial method or system,--if the classified beings were only thus
classified by creatures of their own description? Does it not confirm,
even more strongly, the continuous series in which Aristotle, Leibnitz,
Bonnet, Linnæus, and de Blainville have believed? We shall proclaim,
then, the law, shaped by M. Flourens, who, however, does not receive
it, as we do, without reservation:--

LAW.--_From animals to man everything is but a chain of uninterrupted
gradation_; therefore, there is no human kingdom. Then comes this other
conclusion,--one and the same method is applicable both to mankind and
animals.




CHAPTER III.

THE ORDER OF BIMANA.


The naturalist who has in our time most interested himself in the
classification of vertebrata, Prince Charles Bonaparte, gives his
own opinion as follows:--“Man may be considered, in one point of
view, as constituting one single family; in another, as constituting
an entire kingdom.” But he also adds that in this second case,
“the characteristics are no longer in harmony with the rest of the
system.” In fact, we can hardly at the same time admit both the
general principles of classification, as followed at the present day,
and also the human kingdom. One out of these two things must fall
to the ground. The system of classifying mammalia,--adopted in all
its uniformity by the two Geoffroys, the Cuviers, De Blainville, and
Owen,--cannot be maintained without involving mankind. If man were a
kingdom by himself, this classification would be a false one; for ought
we not then, at least, to create a cetaceous kingdom, a bird kingdom,
etc.? As for ourselves, the problem has been already solved, and we
hesitated to come into collision with this new inconsistency. Harmony
is the necessary condition of every really natural system. We cannot
arbitrarily give a different value to the same characteristics; and,
reciprocally, the divisions of the same order ought necessarily to
agree with characteristics of the same value.

It has been thought necessary, at least, to create for mankind one of
those great divisions into which the mammalia are divided. An Order of
_Bimana_ has been created. We do not hesitate to say that this was a
purely theoretical creation; and we will go even farther, we declare it
could only be produced in a country where coverings for the feet are
in daily and universal wear. We must not go into the midst of our great
cities if we wish to study the _zoological_ characteristics of man.

Is there any reason for the Order of _Bimana_ when we consider man in
his state of nature? is it “the immediate and necessary results of
natural analogies, respectively valued according to their degree?”
“No!” was the answer of Étienne Geoffroy, in his eloquent pages, “this
Order must be abolished.”[98]

É. Geoffroy saw workmen in the bazaars at Cairo employ their great toe
for numberless prehensile uses. A Nubian, or a negro on horseback,
generally takes the stirrup-leather between his great toe and the
others; all the Abyssinian cavalry ride in this manner.[99] If the fact
reported by Bory de Saint-Vincent about the rosin-makers of the Landes
is not confirmed,[100] we have at least seen the Barabras Nubians
ascend the great yard of the Nile _dahabiehs_ by seizing with the great
toe the rope underneath them[101] which supports the sail.

When the action of the foot is not paralysed by the size of the shoe,
which is elsewhere the exception, it is pre-eminently adapted for
laying hold of anything. And if certain kinds of men seem to us very
fit for the kind of existence led by the Quadrumana,--if they seem to
us constituted in order to live in trees, there is nothing there which
ought to surprise us, nothing but what is quite natural and quite
consistent.

It has been truly said, that man is _frugivorous_. All the details of
his intestinal canal, and above all, his dentition, prove it in the
most decided manner. He ought, therefore, from his origin, to have all
his organism modified in harmony with this alimentation. Like the apes,
he ought to possess such means of locomotion as would enable him to
procure the food specially adapted to his wants. And therefore, what
is there astonishing in the fact that among certain races, which are
scarcely removed from a state of nature, we find the remains of a mode
of life which was general at their origin.

Modera, quoted by Mr. Crawfurd, relates that one day, three
naturalists, travelling on the northern coast of New Guinea for
scientific purposes, found the trees full of natives, of both sexes,
who leaped from branch to branch like monkeys, with their weapons
fastened on their backs, gesticulating, shouting, and laughing.[102]
This singular race, of which we have before spoken, and which has been
noticed in Hindoostan by many eye-witnesses, seems to live half its
time in trees. We have the right to ask, if the confused remembrance of
such a race and such habits was not the origin of the tradition which
served as a foundation for the poem of Valmîki. Rama goes to the rescue
of his wife, Sita, who had been carried off by the evil genius, Râvana;
he is assisted in this enterprise by a valiant army of monkeys, and
at every moment expressions are used in the account which recall the
monkey-like and quadrumanous nature of the combatants[103]. In casting
our eyes over the first groups composing the mammalian series, we find
some apes who walk upon the sole of the feet and upon the palm of the
hand; others, who walk upon the sole of the foot and the joints of the
folded hands,--a very peculiar method of progression,--of a strange and
unexpected nature, and which alone would serve to characterise a group;
these are the anthropomorphous apes: lastly, another mammal who walks
only on the soles of the feet, the form of the body and legs rendering
the anterior members quite unfit to be used in walking; this is man.

The first apes of which we are going to speak, walking upon the sole
of the feet and the palms of their hands are, then, unreservedly
_quadrupeds_. In this particularity they resemble other mammalia,
among whom the pectoral, as well as the abdominal, members are chiefly
organs of locomotion; only these apes also use their four extremities
for another purpose, which appears to be entirely secondary and
derived,--that of _prehension_. And it is precisely because the
organisation of their members is purposely modified by reason of a new,
special, and uncommon function, that they have been able to furnish us
with a sufficiently defined characteristic, so that we may specify an
order,--that of the _quadrumana_.

Among the anthropomorphous apes, the folded or bent hand seems an organ
especially adapted for prehension,[104] serving, in a secondary manner,
for locomotion; whilst the foot, the especial organ of locomotion,
preserves the faculty of seizing anything by means of an opposing thumb.

In man, the superior member is not at all fit for walking; and the
inferior, used for locomotion, as in the two preceding groups, also
preserves its faculty of prehension: observation proves this as well as
anatomy.

We see that there again; as everywhere else in an organic point of
view, the anthropomorphous quadrumana are a veritable transition from
man to the other families of apes. It has been proposed to extend the
signification of the word hand, and to apply it to every terminal
extremity of a member capable of seizing anything, including the paw of
the lemur and the claws of the parrot. We are inclined to restrict the
name, like Linnæus, De Blainville, and Cuvier, to an extremity formed
of fingers, and with an _opposing thumb_. But even in confining the
definition to such a narrow compass, we think we have shown that man,
in reality, is _quadrumanous_, this definition applying equally to the
foot, where the great toe serves--among half the people, at least, on
the earth--for the purpose of prehension, and remains, as É. Geoffroy
has remarked, quite separate from the other toes, when the foot is not
deformed by boots or shoes:[105] therefore, nothing more can be said in
favour of an Order of _Bimana_, or a human kingdom.

We must return to the subdivision proposed by Charles Bonaparte,--a
_family_. Man constitutes a simple family in the Order of _Quadrumana_,
distinguished by characteristics precisely equal in importance to those
which make a difference between other similar groups in the class of
mammalia, that which even comes to the assistance of the adversaries
of the human kingdom, and the partisans of the zoological system.
For want of positive characteristics taken from the extremities,
which could never,--in the eyes of true naturalists, as we have just
said,--favour a serious distinction between man and other quadrumana,
a characteristic in dentition has been discovered, remarkable for
its constancy even in the most degraded and animal-like races, and
which, first and foremost, distinguishes man from the group which
immediately follows him in the zoological series. This characteristic,
upon which Professor Owen has, in many places, insisted,--like the two
Cuviers,--but with an entirely new vigour,[106] is the contiguity of
the teeth and the _continuity_ of their crowns, not one of which ever
extends beyond the level of the others.[107]

Thus it is for man, like the rest of the mammalia; it is the dental
system which gives us the best characteristic. A new proof that the
study of mankind and that of animals ought to be conducted in one
and the same manner; a proof, indeed, that these two studies are two
parallel branches, intimately united, of one and the same science.




CHAPTER IV.

ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES.


We have endeavoured to prove in the preceding pages the specific unity
of the biological phenomena in each Order, which are to be found among
the superior animals and man. This unity has led us necessarily to
another, that of _method_; and we have just seen that man forms simply
a family, that is to say, a very secondary division in the zoological
series.

But we have only taken the first step of the path in which we
have to travel. The genus _homo_ shows many varieties, and many
dissimilarities. We must try to estimate their value, and to find out
what the divisions to be established between what we commonly call
_races_ of men may be worth. Now, the only rule to be followed here
is naturally that which is applied by all zoologists to the other
individuals composing the animal series. The only way to arrive at such
a goal will be, first of all, the study of the physical differences,
the necessary basis of a rational classification. Thus we shall, at
least, have important, and what is more, comparable results.

The anatomy of races has been largely written about, and yet we may
even now offer this subject to the serious study of anthropologists;
perhaps, also, in carrying their attention farther than the skin, the
encephalic mass and the skeleton, which have been nearly the sole
objects of study up to the present time, they will find in all systems
dissimilarities of the same order, and as clearly defined.[108] These
differences and varieties are such that they are obvious, and at once
appreciated even by ignorant persons,[109]--they are such that the most
eminent monogenists agree in regarding them as everywhere sufficient to
make a difference in species, or even in genus itself.

They refer to every point of organisation, and we shall see farther on
that they are found to be as decided and as palpable both in the mind
and in the natural constitution. We do not pretend to speak of all of
them in this place, not even to enumerate them; we shall merely quote
the principal points, or those which appear to deserve some special
remark. The number of those which exist, or which are believed to
exist,--for this is a necessary restriction,--is immense; in fact,
if we are the first to admit that there is an infinite variety of
differences, considerable in themselves, between the various kinds
of men, we also wish to avoid falling into the errors which are so
often committed, and which happen from the small number of facts which
have been observed, the investigators having often given the value of
general facts to individual observation.

We find more than one example of these hasty opinions in the history of
anthropological studies. Towards the end of the last century, when the
colour of the Negro had already been for a hundred years the dominant
study of the scientific world of Europe,[110] a certain Kluegel
affirmed (in the _Encyclopédie de Berlin_, 1782) that the lips of the
Ethiopian were of a fine red colour. A great commotion arose; Sömmering
himself was roused; he wrote everywhere, sought for information, and
demanded fresh intelligence, which, quite naturally, was found to be
contrary to the opinion expressed by Kluegel. In fact, we know that in
the Negro the colouring matter extends to most of the mucous membranes
whose structure resembles that of the skin.

The lips are generally black, and we usually find upon the gums, and
even upon the palate, a non-continuous coloured membrane, which forms
spots of a deep violet colour. Kluegel had concluded too hastily from
some particular fact; he had in his mind, very probably, some Negro
with lips, gums, and tongue of a fine rose colour, contrasting as much
as possible with the black of his skin. We have had occasion ourselves
to observe a similar case as regards a native of Soudan, who was also
affected with a sort of partial albinoism of the buccal mucous membrane.

In anthropology, as in all science requiring observation, it is the
averages which ought to be admitted as evidence; they alone have an
absolute value, and can alone lead to positive results. Every isolated
phenomenon has its individual value as regards its simple truth, but we
are exposed to the greatest errors when we begin to generalise from it.

The osseous system has been most studied.[111] In the osseous system,
the head, and particularly the skull. We shall be obliged, later on, to
refer to the value of cranioscopic proceedings, and the classifications
resting on this base.

The face, as well as the skull, has been the object of attentive
inquiry; the smallest differences have been noticed, and almost all
have been formed by some one or other into distinct characteristics.
We may quote here Bérard’s classification, as resumed and developed by
Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. He divided the genus _homo_ into four
groups:--

1. The _orthognathi_, or men with a flat face and oval countenance.

2. The _eurygnathi_, or men with a large face and projecting cheek
bones.

3. The _prognathi_, or men with a protuberant countenance.

4. Lastly, these races, which are both _eurygnathi_ and _prognathi_,
like the Hottentots, the development of whose face offers an example of
a manifest step towards the exaggeration of this same development in
the anthropomorphous ape in infancy.[112]

It has been endeavoured to establish, by means of averages, an
appreciable difference between the pelvis of various races. Weber has
considered that the form of the superior division is not the same with
all of them. According to him it would be--

  1. _Oval_, among Europeans.
  2. _Round_, among Americans.
  3. _Square_, among the Mongols.
  4. _Cuneiform_ or _oblong_, among the Africans.

The same ideas have been resumed and defended by French
anthropologists;[113] it is right, however, to remark, that Weber
himself adds that varieties of every description of pelvis may be met
with among the same race. That which appears certain is the fact, that
in the Negro race the pelvis is, in general, sensibly smaller. This is,
at least, the opinion of Camper,[114] Vrolik, Sömmering, White,[115]
and Bérard,[116] who have measured a great number of them.

The facility in parturition, so remarkable among the inferior
races, has therefore, as a cause, a relative smallness in the head
of the fœtus, even more remarkable. For we must admit that, among
these people, everything happens naturally, as among animals; it is
the laborious childbirth among ourselves which is exceptional and
anomalous, and which requires to be explained. This difficult and
painful parturition, which we so continually see, is, doubtless, the
consequence of civilisation; only it is difficult to decide what may
be its immediate cause, and if this cause resides in the mother or
in the fœtus. Is it the pelvis which has been made narrower in the
European by some custom in our manners--by some habit of education?
or must we admit--and it is a serious question--that the development
of such an organ as the brain _in the fœtus_, is subordinate to the
exercise of the functions of the same organ in the progenitors?

With the osseous system we may connect the differences of height which
are so apparent. Who does not recognise that in Europe, for instance,
the Anglo-Saxons, the Germans, the Norwegians, and the Albanians, are
of great stature; whilst the inhabitants of the south of France, the
Irish, the Spaniards,[117] and the Maltese, represent a shorter variety
of the human race. The members show the most marked differences among
the various races of mankind, by reason of the law which causes the
modifications of organism to become more and more decided, and more
and more clear from the centre to the periphery. Naturalists seek
for characteristics of families and individuals in the fingers and
in the teeth: it is in the extremes of an individual, in the colour
of the hair or the skin, that we generally find the characteristics
of species. We shall only quote in this place facts which may be the
object of some particular remark.

It has been said continually that the Tartars have bowed legs, and
monogenists have not failed to discover from this fact a new proof of
the influences of their mode of life, so necessary in order to maintain
their thesis. They discovered at first sight, in this _general_
infirmity, a consequence of the habit of riding on horseback, without
considering that the Arabs rode on horseback quite as often, and that,
nevertheless, their noble bearing and straightness of limb did not
suffer from it in the slightest. In tracing the source of this error,
we perceive that it is a singular exaggeration of the facts stated by
Pallas, who lived for so long a time amongst the Tartars. He simply
says, “The sole fault in conformation which is _rather frequent_
among them, is a bend in the arms and legs, resulting from a kind of
spoon, or saddle, upon which they are always placed in their cradle,
as if they were on horseback, and therefore, as soon as they learn
to walk, they are obliged at every movement to accustom themselves
to the position of riding.”[118] This is what Pallas says; but it is
very clear that he is here speaking merely of exceptional cases, for
he says higher up, “I do not remember to have ever seen a child who
was a cripple. Their education, which is entirely left to nature, can
only form bodies which are healthy and _without a blemish_.”[119] If
occasionally the accounts of travellers have been exaggerated, it
is not less the rule, that certain races show a conformation of the
extremities very different to what it is among ourselves. Albrecht
Durer has already made this remark. In the Negro, for instance, the
length of the forearm is much greater than in the European. It is
proportional to the height in these two races :: 107 : 100.[120]

The thumb of the Negro’s hand is also generally much less opposed to
the other fingers. In certain races of mankind, the hand itself is of
an extraordinary small size. This is the case among the Bosjesmans, the
Chinese, the Esquimaux,[121] and the Cingalese.[122] It was the same
among the races who built the grand American temples, where we find
upon the stones the imprint in red of their hands.[123] The same thing
has been said about the ancient population of northern Europe, who were
ignorant of the use of iron, and only used weapons made of bronze.[124]
But the study of the magnificent collection of Scandinavian
antiquities in the Berlin Museum, has not proved to ourselves that the
hilts of _all_ these arms were as small as has been pretended.

The foot varies not less. The Negro races of the Oceanic Islands, and
of Africa, appear to show an exaggerated development of the heel-bone.
MM. Quoy and Gaimard have especially remarked it among the inhabitants
of Vanikoro. In fact, there is hardly anybody who will forget, when
once he has seen it, the special aspect of the instep in the Negro,
ridged with numerous folds commencing from beneath the ankle. This is,
besides, a particular mark, which is far from showing itself, as may
be well believed, among _all_ people who walk without foot-covering.
The foot of the Nubians, and especially that of the females, shows
quite different characteristics. The five metatarsi seem to rest their
whole length upon the ground, without being shaped by the instep;
their anterior extremities are slightly diverted, the toes having the
same spaces between them, so that the foot is flat, but otherwise
than by the faulty conformation to which we give this name among
ourselves. This structure is, besides, perfectly represented in all
Egyptian statues without exception, and more sensibly, indeed, if we
compare with those which are in the galleries of the British Museum, a
fragment of a colossal foot,[125] found also in Egypt, at Alexandria,
but evidently of Greek or Roman origin; the toes are close together,
the great toe alone being separated, the upper part of the foot being
arched, as among Europeans.

This resemblance between all the Egyptian statues and the foot of
the inhabitants of Upper Egypt, or Nubia, cannot be an accidental
circumstance. It is, besides, a veritable problem in anthropology, to
determine its value in accordance with the monumental iconography of
the ancient Egyptians. M. A. Maury has determined with precision the
authority of the portraits--almost all alike--which cover the walls
of the temples. We ourselves, when visiting the famous cavern of
Abou-Simbel, were far from finding all that the writings of certain
anthropologists and partisans of Egyptian art, such as Gliddon, Nott,
etc., had promised us. Doubtless, one can perfectly distinguish
certain types,[126] that is indisputable;[127] but to desire to find
a _people_ in each portrait,--Scythians, Arabs, Philistines, Lydians,
Kurds, Hindoos, Jews, Chinese, Tyrians, Pelasgians, Ionians, etc.,--is
it not to give too great an influence to the Egyptian artists, who
were copyists without skill, and but clumsy inventors? Egyptian art,
whatever may have been said of it, has always been very much farther
from being a copy of nature than Grecian art; the one tended to the
ideal, the other tended to transform it. Certain trees which we see
thrown down in the bas-relief of the great temple of Karnak, are
assuredly pure imagination. It may have been the same with many other
subjects to which a scientific value has been given.

Let us return to anatomical differences, and to that which has,
since antiquity, most vividly struck the masses, as well as serious
investigators. We are going to speak about those colours in the skin
of man which run through almost the whole of the chromatic scale, from
dead white to the deepest brown.[128] There is no system which has not
been thought of in order to explain these differences, even up to the
influence of Noah’s curse.[129]

Unfortunately, we are wanting in those histological and chemical
researches which are necessary in order to form the bases of a complete
history of the colours of the skin in the human race.[130] We can
merely say, that the recent works upon certain morbid states, such
as Addison’s disease, and others which may approach it, by making
us acquainted with the pathological circumstances under which the
European with a white skin becomes almost as black as a Negro, and by
identical anatomical modifications, have nearly proved that atmospheric
phenomena have not the influence which monogenists give to them, and
that the first origin of the colour of the epidermis in the human race
resides rather in the depths of the organism, inaccessible to celestial
radiation.[131]

The varieties which the pilous system presents is the chief point,
and equal at least in importance to those of the cutaneous system.
If we think that a classification of races, based simply upon the
characteristics of the hair, as has been proposed,[132] would leave
much to be desired, and would be far too artificial, we do not doubt,
however, but that the pilous system can furnish indications of great
value when they have been combined in a wise manner with other
characteristics, as Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has done.[133]
Doubtless, the colours of the hair, from flaxen to black, and from
brown to red, are innumerable in France, and as generally so in
countries where the mixture of races has been carried as far as
possible; but it must be remembered that among a purer population,
less mixed with foreign blood, the constancy of characteristics taken
from the hair is remarkably great.[134] Besides, the differences which
present themselves do not relate merely to colour; the hair of a race
of men may be either smooth, or woolly, or crisped, for in general
these two latter terms are wrongly and indifferently used, when they
ought really to point out two particular and distinct states. It is
thus that the inhabitants of Lower Nubia, for instance, who have a very
deep shade of colour, possess curled hair, truly _woolly_, and quite
different to that of the Negro, whose hair is really _crisped_.[135]
Other characteristics may be demanded from the length of the
hair, from its transverse section,--the figure of which may vary
considerably,--from its flexibility or its quantity; in fact, even from
its manner of being placed in the head, the arrangement of which upon
the scalp has never been properly studied, and which may, perhaps, vary
with the different races of mankind. In fact, human hairs, like that
of many mammalia, are not placed at equal distances the one from the
other; they approach each other in little groups. This is especially
seen in the nape of the neck, and among the Negro race much more so
than among the Europeans.

This fact, joined to the irregularly prismatic form of the hair in the
Negro, is doubtless the origin of the following peculiarity: when the
head of a Negro has been shaved, and the hair begins to grow afresh,
one is especially struck with its strange appearance. It is arranged
in little tufts about the size of a pea, so that the head, it has been
remarked,[136] resembles nothing more closely than an old worn-out
brush.

This peculiarity is special to the Negro, and is not found in the
north-east of Africa, where the neighbouring population have _woolly_
hair. Among the enumeration of the numberless perfections which a
dogmatic Hindú requires from Buddha, and which Çakhya-Mouni possessed,
it is said, “The hair of Buddha shoots forth in little ringlets.”[137]
It is impossible to describe better what happens with the Negro.
All this Hindoo tradition is, besides, a veritable enigma for the
anthropologist. Why is Buddha depicted with the palms of the hands
descending to the knees?[138] Why is the mendicant son of a king,
born on the banks of the Ganges, always represented with the features
or characteristics of a Negro, with black skin, and crisped hair?
Nevertheless, Çakhya-Mouni did not belong to these inferior varieties
of the human race, of whose existence in the Indian Peninsula we have
already spoken; in that case, he would have been unfit to formulate any
doctrine, either moral or philosophic.

The rest of the pilous system, not less than that of the hair, merits
the attention of the anthropologist. Thus, a very especial fact,
and to which, in our opinion, sufficient importance has never been
attached, is, on the one hand, the relative abundance of the beard
among the various races of mankind; and on the other, the time of its
development. The Chinese, for example, is for a long time beardless,
and it is only about his fortieth year that a few stiff hairs begin to
appear upon his face.

Among the Negroes, the Americans, and the Polar race, the hair is, in
the same way, very slightly developed on the face. “The length of our
beards (of thirty days growth), which had not been shaved since we left
the _Victory_,” said Sir John Ross,[139] “was, among other things, a
source of great amusement, while one of them, a stranger, whose beard
was of unusual length among this tribe, claimed consanguinity with us
on that ground.” The thick and close beard seems, in regarding the
matter closely, the exclusive appanage of that race which, sprung
from the Imaüs, spread over the whole of Europe, and whose finest
representatives still inhabit the table-lands of Iran.[140] Our
neighbours, the Semites, are far from being so well provided; and
Lieut.-Colonel H. Smith has[141] not, perhaps, done wrong in proposing
to make an abundant pilous system the characteristic of one race, just
as the crisped state of the hair would become the characteristic of
another.

The systems of animal life, doubtless, show as many varieties among
different races of men as the systems of the life of relationship; only
these varieties are much less known. It will be sufficient for us to
remember in this place the darker colour of the blood and the _sperma_
among the Negro race, as already remarked by Aristotle and verified by
Jacquinot, and the equally dark tint of the nervous centres; so that
the whole œconomy of the Negro is, even in the most hidden parts (and
those most distant from solar or atmospheric influence), impregnated
with colouring matter.

Let us notice, also, the development of the small _labia_ among
the Hottentot women, that of the _prepuce_ and the _clitoris_
among the Semitic race, and even the size of the _penis_ among the
Ethiopians--such a size that it would almost impede the union of a
black man with a white woman, whilst the union of a white man with
a Negress would occur without any impediment. This remark, quite in
agreement with the theories of M. d’Eichthal, has been made by a
monogenist;[142] we have merely the right to wonder at it. How can
we reconcile this impossibility, were it even a shade of a real one,
with the notion of indefinite and universal reproduction, which all
monogenists--wrongly, as we shall see--make one of their strongest
arguments in favour of the specific unity of man?

II. What we call physiological differences are certain functional
forms of the same organ, particular to certain races. This is, as may
be seen, an entirely artificial distinction, since these differences
must necessarily and forcibly refer to material, that is, to anatomical
differences.

These alone, either from their small value, or from some other
cause, have been hitherto unknown; whilst their effects, being more
sensible, have not failed to escape our observation. If an Esquimaux,
for instance, eats in one day the food of six English sailors,[143]
it is evident that the intestines, the stomach, and the glands which
border on them, present special modifications with reference to this
kind of nourishment, so different from the frugivorous diet for which
man’s organism is adapted. When a Tartar sees further than a European
who is using a telescope,[144] it is certain that such a functional
superiority depends only on the material quality of the organ,--from
a more perfect arrangement of the visual apparatus,--from the more
perfect nature of the medium refractive powers of the eye.

It has often been desired to refer these kind of modifications to the
education of the race or the individual. The education of the race by
itself, independently of the ordinary course, seems to us difficult
to admit, since education, in this case, would suppose a triumphant
struggle against the ordinary course of things. Every animal comes
into the world as its parents came, or, at least, apparently so. If he
brings with him, by inheritance, certain particular characteristics,
they must necessarily in time become obliterated either by their
own means, or by destroying all those who possess them (the case of
hereditary degeneracy). In fact, if perfection in a race were possible
by means of an individual, the consequence would be that very soon our
descendants would be no longer in relationship with the circumambient
medium, which would be an absurdity.[145]

As to individual education, it has an undeniable influence; but this
does not suffice to explain such important differences. We never find
that Europeans, who happen to be thrown among savages, attain to these
peculiarly fine and delicate perceptions so special to many aborigines.
And, moreover, the American residing in boundless forests, where the
view is always restricted, has as piercing a glance as the Kalmuc upon
his plain. The question of the education of an organ or a system by
the individual himself will be cleared up, doubtless, one of these
days, by attentive anatomy. And since we are upon the subject, let us
remember that an important study still remains, hitherto merely glanced
at,--that of the influence which, for instance, the milk of an animal
or a female of another race may have upon the development or the health
of a white child.

The differences which we call physiological are very numerous; we
shall, however, only quote two or three from among the most striking.
The principal point, perhaps, is the peculiar smell of the Negro.
This is so strong, that it even impregnates for some time a place
where a Negro may only have remained for a few hours, and it is so
characteristic, that it alone constitutes a grave presumption in
matters of slave-trading; for Humboldt has stated concerning the
Peruvians what Le Cat and Haller said about the savages of the
Antilles, that they could perfectly trace a Negro by scent, thanks to
this odour; and it is, at the same time, a new proof of the sensitive
perfection of the American race. This odour is quite independent
of age, and sometimes is almost insupportable in young children;
it is also independent of sweat, and, in fact, of all the means of
cleanliness of which a Negro can make use.[146] It is due, according to
all appearance, to a secretion from the same glands which, in the white
man, give such a peculiar odour to the arm-pits; but this latter is
absolutely different from that of the Negro.[147] With regard to this,
we must not lose the occasion of noticing one of those contradictions
into which monogenists have so often fallen, and, indeed, it could
not be otherwise. “The dog does not come from the jackal,” says M.
Flourens,[148] “for the jackal has such a peculiar smell, that it does
not seem possible that, in this case, the dog should not have preserved
some traces of it at least.” Shall we reason in the same manner in
order to make a special race of the Negro, and would this monogenist
accept it?

Another very remarkable physiological peculiarity, and one quite
as worthy of being noticed, since it has a certain effect upon
physiognomy, upon the _facies_ of a race, is a special mode of
standing, consisting in holding oneself in a squatting position, the
sole of the foot on the ground, and the thighs bent up against the
hams, without the _ischia_ touching the ground. This effect is what
Cook called “a monkey countenance.”[149]

We find nowhere that the Greeks,--the inhabitants of the ancient
continent generally,--the Arabs, or even the ancient Egyptians
themselves, have ever been accustomed to this position, which
necessarily implies some anatomical modification, whether it be in the
separation of the pelvis, the direction of the neck of the thigh-bone,
or the torsion of the bones, etc.[150] This position seems, on the
contrary, to have been always the peculiarity of the Melanesian races;
it is the ordinary mode of _standing_ among the inhabitants in the
upper course of the Nile, and the Negroes of Africa and the Oceanic
Islands. They place themselves thus in order to look at anything,
to chat together, or to deliberate. The magnificent drawings which
illustrate the account of the travels of the English Embassy to the
Emperor of Abyssinia,[151] represent this monarch as reviewing an
entire army of infantry drawn up in order of battle, and all squatting
in this manner.

The ancient Egyptians generally kept themselves either on their knees
or seated on the ground, the legs brought together, and the knees
touching in front of the chest, as thousands of statues, figures, and
pictures show us. But their artists have just revealed to us that the
people of Central Africa have always been as they are at the present
day. The great painting of Beït-Oually, in Nubia,[152] represents
Rameses the Great as charging a troop of Negroes from Soudan; on
one side, farther off, we see a Negro near a saucepan, preparing,
doubtless, some food; he is squatting in the manner of which we
have just spoken. In this place, as is often the case, the Egyptian
artist has been clever in seizing a profile by its most significant
characteristic.[153]

Géricault wished at one time to make a drawing of an episode in the
“Shipwreck of the Medusa,” Coréard making signs to an African chief
who was seated on the sand; he placed in his composition a Negro
squatting, but he drew him with one foot resting entirely on the
ground, and the other bearing only on the extremity of the metatarsi.
At that time Géricault had only a white man as a model; a Negro would
have placed himself differently, with both his feet flat on the ground.

We might pursue the history of these physiological varieties _ad
infinitum_,--it is a large field for the enquirer; and to mention one
fact alone, the compared history of development among the different
races of mankind has still to be accomplished, especially the history
of the intra-uterine development of the Negro, and even partly the
history of the first months of his aërial life.

III. If organism, operating normally among different races, presents
such varieties, why can we not suppose that it would hence show
correlative differences in its morbid changes? should there not
be, also, an ethnic pathology? This contains a large question, and
yet it was scarcely thought of a few years ago. It seems to have
been first proposed and studied by F. Schnurrer in his treatise on
_Geographical Pathology_,[154] in 1813, in which the author seems to
have perceived imperfectly, in all its vastness, the matter which now
occupies our attention. The book is divided into three parts; the
first is entirely geographical, the second entirely anthropological,
and the third is given up to a description of maladies, commencing
with two introductory chapters; the first describing the diseases
of each zone, and the second, containing eleven pages, is a “Glance
at the general Characteristics of Disease in each Race.” “In fact,”
says Dr. Boudin,[155] in pointing out the novelty of these enquiries,
“there are some races who show themselves completely rebellious to
certain pathological forms, for which others, on the contrary, show a
remarkable pre-disposition.”

Two particular maladies have been pointed out in this point of
view,--_marsh-poisoning_ in all its forms, and _yellow fever_.
Africans are evidently, at least in parts, exempt from these two
diseases, which only attack them with a very minor force. It has
been said that the question of marsh-poisoning is still very
doubtful; it was allowed that the Negroes were less exposed to its
attacks than other men, but it was desired to enter the question of
acclimatisation[156] into the calculation of facts. All the countries
we know that are inhabited by blacks, being nearly all subject to the
noxious influence of marshes, it was pretended that even stranger
Negroes had acquired from infancy, in their own country, an immunity by
which they benefited later in life, and even had the power of handing
it down to their descendants.[157] It is thus that some have explained,
for instance, the unhappy results of the English expedition to the
Niger in 1841. Out of 145 whites belonging to the crews, the three
vessels, after a navigation of about forty-nine days on the river, had
lost 40 men (130 were attacked). Out of the twenty-five coloured men
embarked in England, and who were mostly born in America, eleven were
seized with illness, but not one of them died.[158] This individual
acclimatisation can only be either a fiction, or a proof in support
of the ideas which we defend. In the presence of a morbid influence
which shows itself and continues, two things alone can happen,--either
destruction, or permanent (that is to say, _specific_) modifications
of œconomy, in harmony with the ordinary manner in which this animal
population continues to exist.

The yellow fever, exercising its ravages upon shores equally distant
from whites and negroes, has brought very decisive arguments into
the question. We know, in fact, that the whites suffer in America
from the black vomit in all its violence; whilst the Negroes are not
attacked by it, or if they are, its effects are insignificant.[159] A
ferocious maxim, one worthy of the conquerors, has explained--since
the sixteenth century--this prerogative, which the Spaniards had so
much reason to envy, “If we did not hang a Negro, he would never
die.”[160] If some authors have timidly advanced the theory of a former
acclimatisation[161] with regard to marsh-poisoning, the greater number
of observers, Fenner, Nott, and Bryant, ought to admit that there was,
even in the constitution of the black man, an obstacle--otherwise
absolutely unknown in his nature--to the manifestation of the
yellow fever;[162] and that the black blood appeared to carry on
this resisting force to the mixed breed, even if they were born far
away.[163]

An extremely interesting experiment relating to this immunity of the
Negro from the yellow fever, was tried largely during the disastrous
Mexican expedition, and the conditions of this experience ought to
give it a capital value. At first, our soldiers paid a terrible
tribute to this scourge, and then the French Government took up the
excellent idea of profiting by the resistance of the Negro race
to the black vomit. It asked for a battalion of blacks from the
viceroy of Egypt, consisting of men recruited from the limits of
Soudan, from Berber to Khartoum. It was not without anxiety that the
issue of this physiological experiment was watched, since it did not
happen, as in our laboratories, _in anima vili_. Some had confidence
in the functional uniformity of the Negro race, as being beyond all
local action; others believing wrongly, as we said, in a former
acclimatisation of the only inhabitants of the western coast of Africa,
expected to find that all these Negroes from the other side of the
continent would perish. However, in spite of what they had at first
said, they could very soon verify the almost complete immunity of the
Negro battalion at Vera-Cruz.[164] It was the first time, if we are not
mistaken, that anthropology has been directly applied in the Old World
to social science. Some time ago anthropologists were consulted by the
government of the Northern States of America upon certain questions
of slavery, at the time when terrible dissensions were budding in the
shadows of the distance.




CHAPTER V.

INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES.


From time immemorial, common sense has enlightened mankind upon the
intellectual differences which make one nation differ from another,
and one race from another. Almost all nations, in admitting that they
are superior to their neighbours, acknowledge thereby a characteristic
difference between themselves and those whom they thus place below
their own level. An overweening sense of vanity may possibly cause
deception in this case; but this belief is, at least, based on a
veritable fact,--intellectual inequality. There are, indeed, sensible
and manifest differences, which no one will deny, especially those who
seek in the literary monuments of a race for the history of its ideas
and its tendencies, and those who have mingled with other nations, and
who have examined their manners, their customs and their religion. “It
is sufficient to have seen the blacks,” says their most enthusiastic
defender,[165] “to have lived some time with them, to feel that there
is in them a humanity quite different to that of the white man.”[166]
Some persons have wished to deceive themselves; they have wished to
raise the Negro race to our own level, in the name of some sort of
sentimental feeling, which, moreover, has always turned out to be a
mistake. Many persons have been engaged upon them. Not being able to
give them plastic equality, they had recourse to intelligence,--they
wished to deceive themselves, like Desdemona, when she said,--

  “I saw Othello’s visage in his mind.”[167]

The Negro was declared to be our equal by the moral law, only with
certain shades of distinction depending on some particular and
transient circumstances which would soon disappear. It was announced
that, _in their turn_, they would advance ideas, and would work at what
is called _progress_, that is to say, “the increase of good on the
earth.”[168] “In proportion as work makes vital energy to predominate
in the head,” said M. Marcel de Serres in 1844, “these deeply coloured
men,[169] with crisped, woolly, or short hair, will tend in a manifest
manner towards the white race,--will march with them in the path
of progress.”[170] And farther on, “This experiment has scarcely
commenced, but it already shows sensible effects.” Unfortunately, the
twenty years which have passed since these words were written, have
not shown that they are true; and the challenge offered by an American
has never yet been accepted, “Let anyone quote to me one single line
written by a Negro which is worthy of being remembered.”[171] They are
not more advanced now than at the time when Mohammed refused them the
gift of prophecy.[172] And, as Dr. Hunt remarks, there is certainly no
means of civilising those who have been uncivilised for three thousand
years, during which time they have been connected with the Egyptians,
the Carthaginians, the Arabs, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the
English.[173] If it be objected that they have always been slaves, we
may say our Gallic and German ancestors were so also; but we ask, _Why
do they continue to be slaves?_

The merit of first endeavouring to distinguish races of men by
characteristics taken from without the physical world, by the quality
of the manifestations of their intelligence, is, perhaps, due to
Linnæus. With this spirit of laconism, which led him to group in one
simple and easy formula the characteristic facts which he desired to
impress on the mind of the reader as being important, he endeavoured to
determine, in a few words, the various tendencies of different races,
and it must be acknowledged that he has at times been happy in this
kind of synoptic classification.[174]

In proportion as modern knowledge has made us penetrate more deeply
into the minds of races,--since we are no longer contented with
studying them superficially in the ordinary manifestations of life,
which we may call “common-place,” and which belong to nearly all
countries,--we perceive that insuperable limits separate one set of
men from another with regard to intellectual affinity, so that here,
as in the case of physical characteristics, each race is almost to
be distinguished from its neighbours. “Profound and unchangeable
differences,” said M. Paul de Remusat,[175] in 1854, “which would,
perhaps, suffice of themselves to found definite and thoroughly limited
classifications.”

It was in order to point out a new branch of anthropology, a new and
fruitful branch,--that a work appeared which was destined to throw
a bright light on the subject. It was necessary to explain these
distinctions, and not merely to enunciate them. The merit in this
matter belongs to M. Renan, who, in his treatise on the languages
of the great Semitic family, has painted, from the most favourable
characteristics, this humanity which is, morally, so different from
our own, however like it may be in external form. The intellectual
disparity of races is henceforward an undeniable fact.

The religious or moral system of a people being the highest
manifestations of its intellectual tendencies, we see that the study
of religions enters quite naturally into anthropology; it is a part
of this comparable study of the human mind, unfortunately too much
neglected, but which begins to take a place worthy of its importance
in the world of science.[176] We do not wish to discuss theological
or religious questions, the anthropologist ought to leave them to
others. His duty is to endeavour to put himself outside the narrow
circle in which nature has placed him; to forget, as much as possible,
his inclinations and personal sentiments; to look around him; to put
the world in one view, and to endeavour to be the sole spectator of the
same. Then a curious phenomenon will strike his gaze,--the chains of
mountains and the rivers which separate the various races of mankind,
will also separate different religions. Like the sea which breaks on
the shore, every belief has seen its disciples, armed with the sword,
or with the pacific weapons of persuasion, stop at certain limits, over
which they are not permitted to pass. Of course, we only speak here of
true proselytism, of real progress in religion in its form and spirit.
Humboldt and Bonpland saw, one day, in the Cordilleras, a savage
crowd dancing and brandishing the war-hatchet round an altar where
a Franciscan was elevating the Host. Such neophytes are only called
Christians in the _Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_,--they are not
converts in the opinion of the anthropologist.

Pure monotheism seems always to have been the religion of the Semitic
race. Most European nations, on the contrary, have professed from
antiquity, a polytheism or a pantheism, more or less disguised, more
or less acknowledged. In fact, by the side of those nations of Asia
and Europe, where civilisation and religious ideas appear to have
simultaneously been developed, although in different directions, we
find other people who have neither religious ideas, nor gods, nor any
kind of worship.[177]

Three vast regions of the earth, inhabited by people still in a savage
state, appear to have remained, up to the present day, free from
religious beliefs; these are Central Africa, Australia, and the country
around the North Pole,--that is to say, the three parts of the world
which are most difficult to explore,--the only parts which have even
not yet been thoroughly examined. And this is one consequence of this
want of exploration; it supposes a sort of sequestration from the rest
of the world, which has not even succumbed to civilisation by this
contact and imitation of which we have already spoken. Let us admit
that relations were established by these people with their neighbours;
they would soon have imported from the foreigner conceptions which
would even then have never taken a form, on account of the small
portion of intellect which nature had given to them.

Referring to the inhabitants of Australia, Latham acknowledges that
the general opinion is, in fact, that they have not yet commenced to
shape the rudest elements of a _religion_,[178] “an opinion,” he says,
“which causes the idea that their intellects are too sluggish even
for the maintenance of superstition.” It is certainly true that, in
the American expedition under Captain Gray, it was thought that some
religious ideas could be perceived among them; but it appears from
the same account that the song which constituted all this apparent
religion, had been brought from far by strangers, and adopted by
the natives,--doubtless, by other Australians, who had already been
influenced by the Christian ideas of the white men, or the Buddhist
principles of the Malays.

To relate the history of the introduction of an idea among a people
is, in reality, to declare and prove that this idea did not exist
there before, which is sufficient for us if we can be assured of the
fact. The testimony of missionaries[179] is, besides, consonant with
that which we have just said; and we may remark on the importance of
assertions coming from men whose whole study is to discover, in the
people whom they desire to convert, ideas analogous to those which
they endeavour to propagate. “They have no idea of a Divine Being,”
says one of these men; “they appear to have no comprehension of the
things they commit to memory,--I mean especially as regards religious
subjects.” “What can we do,” says another, “with a nation whose
language possesses no terms corresponding to _justice_ or _sin_, and to
whose mind the ideas expressed by these words are completely strange
and inexplicable?”

As to Central Africa, we confine ourselves to relating a few facts
relative to this want of religious belief, gathered from different
points in the periphery of the vast triangle, almost unexplored
and unknown, which is described by lines joining together Senegal,
Zanzibar, and the Cape.

An American missionary,[180] who lived four years amongst the Mpongwes,
one of the most important nations of Central Africa, the Mandingos,
and the Grebos, and who knew their language perfectly, declares that
they had neither religion, nor priests, nor idolatry, nor any religious
assemblies whatsoever. Dr. Livingstone says the same thing concerning
the Bechuanas.[181] The Austrian missionaries, established upon the
distant banks of the White Nile, have met with the same want of
religion, the same void[182] in the mind. In fact, among the Caffres,
the name which they give to the Divine Being, as among the Hottentots,
is undeniable evidence that they formerly had no idea of anything
similar. This name is _Tixo_, and its history is too curious not to
be related; it is composed of two words which, together, signify the
“wounded knee.” It was, they say, the name of a doctor or sorcerer,
well known among the Hottentots and Namaquas, on account of some
wound which he had received on his knee. Having been held in great
estimation for his extraordinary power during his life, the Wounded
Knee continued to be invoked even after his death, as being able to
comfort and protect; and consequently his name became the term which
best represented, to the minds of his countrymen, their confused idea
of the missionaries’ God!

As to the Esquimaux, since 1612, Whitebourne wrote that they had no
knowledge of God, and lived without any form of civil government.
And we can add to this distant testimony the following lines from
the journal of Sir John Ross, who lived for a long time in the midst
of them. “Did they comprehend anything of all that I attempted to
explain, explaining the simplest things in the simplest manner that I
could devise? I could not conjecture. Should I have gained more had I
better understood their language? I have _much reason_ to doubt. That
they have a moral law of some extent ‘written in the heart,’ I could
not doubt, as numerous traits of their conduct show, but beyond this,
I could satisfy myself of nothing; nor did these efforts, and many
more, enable me to conjecture aught worth recording. Respecting their
opinions on the essential points from which I might have presumed on a
religion, I was obliged at present to abandon the attempt, and I was
inclined to despair.”[183]

This extract is so much the more important for our thesis, since we
perceive in every word the chagrin of a man who did not find in the
hearts of others a fraternal echo to his dearest sentiments. It is, in
truth, a difficulty peculiar to the study of questions of this nature.
We must, therefore, be very careful in discussing the value of any
testimony which may be brought forward, and to distrust those minds
which begin by declaring _à priori_ the universality of beliefs, hopes,
and fears among mankind, as a natural consequence of the primitive
unity of the human species. We must always examine most minutely the
accounts of travellers to which we are obliged to refer. Thus, for
example, it is evident that the older the evidence, the better it is;
but at the same time, the farther it goes back, the less chance there
is that it emanates from an independent and impartial mind, free from
all prejudice.

Happily, the exaggeration of these ideas must often suffice to put us
on our guard against them, like the candid Jesuit, whose zealous but
hazy faith thought it had discovered traces of St. Thomas’s preaching
in Brazil.[184] In an otherwise good notice of the Esquimaux,[185]
Dr. King says, “that these people have preserved, like many other
uncivilised races, a vague remembrance of the creation and of the
deluge, and that they believe in future rewards and punishments.”
In his religious zeal, Dr. King forgets that if the Esquimaux had
been able to bring a confused tradition of even the deluge and the
creation from the valley of the Euphrates, it was impossible it could
have been the same with a belief in future rewards and punishments,
seeing that the Jews themselves never possessed this belief before
their contact with Assyrian civilisation. We may read in Dr. Brecher’s
excellent work[186] the whole history of the development of this
belief in the immortality of the soul. If the German doctor wishes
piously to prove that the Jews ought, morally, to have always believed
in this immortality, at all events, his zeal has been able to invent
real proofs, which in fact, are wanting. The famous _scheol_, which
is mentioned so often in old Hebrew books, appears to be merely
the kingdom of the _dead_, and not that of _souls_, like hell,
Tartarus, the Elysian fields, and Paradise; the _scheol_ is but an
ideal representation of the tomb. Even at the time when the Jews had
generally adopted the ideas of their neighbours, during the Talmudic
period, the belief in the immortality of the soul, if it existed, was
neither completely clear nor well reasoned, since they refused all
participation in a future life to those who denied the resurrection and
the last judgment, “which was equivalent to entire annihilation.”[187]
To believe this, is certainly not to believe in the immortality of the
soul, since they regarded eternal life not as a necessary consequence,
but as a recompense for _good principles_, and having faith in them.
Such an inconsistency is the clearest possible proof that, even at this
period, these ideas had not undergone the change which brought them
to the actual point of clearness. They were also not yet completely
freed from the ancient belief which the Sadducees, besides, had not
abandoned; they were the faithful preservers of the ancient faith, and
the pure tradition of the sons of Israel. “They have the theory that
the soul dies with the body,” wrote Josephus,[188] “and consider that
they ought to keep nothing but the law.”

We must be pardoned for insisting so much upon this point; but it is
of importance as regards our thesis to show that the belief in the
immortality of the soul, and in a divinity, is not universal on the
globe, that one general characteristic of humanity could not be formed
from it, and that we ought even less to rely upon the existence of
such ideas in order to establish a human kingdom. We have only spoken
of people who are either entirely savage, or of Jewish opinions, which
have long been lost in the past. Even in our own time, there are two
hundred million Buddhists on the earth, who have reached a marvellous
point of civilisation, who ignore, in the most absolute manner,
the notion of another life and that of a divinity. Eugène Burnouf,
whose ability no one will deny, has already said it; M. Barthélemy
Saint-Hilaire, after much hesitation, which will remain as the seal
of a firmly established conviction, has decided in the same way, in
the last edition of _Bouddha et sa Religion_.[189] We quote his own
words:--“There is not the slightest trace of a belief in God in all
Buddhism; and to suppose that it admits the absorption of the human
soul into a divine or infinite soul, is a gratuitous supposition which
cannot even enter into the ideas of the Buddhist. In order to believe
that man can lose himself in the God to which he is reunited, this God
must first be _believed in_ as a necessary commencement. But we can
scarcely say that the Buddhist does not believe in Him. He ignores God
in such a complete manner, that he does not even care about denying
His existence; he does not care about trying to abolish Him; he
neither mentions such a being in order to explain the origin or the
anterior existence of man, his present life, nor for the purpose of
conjecturing his future state, and his eventual freedom. The Buddhist
has no acquaintance whatsoever with a God, and, quite given up to his
own heroic sorrows and sympathies, he has never cast his eyes so far or
so high.” And the author adds the following lines, which have a direct
bearing on anthropology, and which are like the sum of all we have just
brought forward:--“The human mind has scarcely been observed but in the
races to which we ourselves belong. These races deserve, certainly, a
high place in our studies; but if they are the most important, they do
not stand alone. Ought not the others to be noticed, although they are
said to be so inferior? If they do not enter into the hastily drawn
outline, must they be disfigured by submitting them to over-strict
theories? Is it not a better plan to acknowledge that old systems are
faulty, and that they are not comprehensive enough in _everything_
which they undertake to explain?”[190]

The question of intellectual differences, like, indeed, all the other
points in anthropological study, has largely exercised the inventive
genius of monogenists, for it must be owned that all the efforts of
imagination proceed from them. It is not more difficult to admit the
development of one or twenty human species upon our planet, than the
development of a single moss or sea-weed; they are phenomena of the
same order, and equally beyond the actual limits of our knowledge; but
this first step taken, anthropology opens itself to the polygenist as
simple and easy; he follows, without any trouble, all phenomena, from
cause to effect,--everything enters into one general order,--everything
is marvellously simple, in spite of apparent complication. It is
not the same with the monogenist; ruled continually by his theory,
he goes on almost painfully, and at every step some new obstacle is
raised to impede his progress. If he thinks he has conquered physical
differences, psychological varieties start up; then will arise families
of different tongues, quite as radically distinct and as difficult to
explain; and yet it is in vain that the obstacle seems so great and
insurmountable, it _must_ be overcome, it _must_ be passed in the name
of an admitted principle, cost what it may so to do. Thus it is that
monogenists have sometimes arrived at the most curious, but at the same
time most unfortunate, results.

And if we wished to form sentiment from science, we should ask,
which is the most reasonable, the most worthy, and the most
consoling,--whether to believe that we alone are perfect, and that
nine-tenths of our brethren who cover the globe are disinherited;
or to consider all these varied existences which we see around
us as forming equal, if not similar, species, pursuing, each in
its own way, a destiny, different, indeed, but not degraded,--not
degenerated,--in certain points even better arranged than our own.
“God,” said Niebuhr, “has marked on each race of men their destination
with the characteristic which best suits them” and the philosopher had
already learnt by history that when civilisation has been suddenly
introduced from without among a savage nation,[191] the consequence
is an immediate physical degeneracy, that is to say, the destruction
of the people which has wandered from its usual mode of life. The
historian thus proclaimed a physiological law, which most monogenists
are glad to forget,--that all degeneracy ends necessarily in death;
it kills itself, and always at the tenth generation, if not at the
first. No group of human beings, after two or three generations of
unmixed existence, can be considered as degraded or degenerated, not
more than we should admit that a young girl, attacked with cretinism in
its greatest degree, had the characteristics of the Esquimaux or the
Mongolian race.[192]

We can see, even in a humanitarian point of view,--the point of view
in which we refuse to place ourselves,--that the polygenists have the
advantage. The mind is not offended, and cannot be so, to see certain
creatures possess some particular faculty to the exclusion of others.
Does not harmony obtain an absolute value from a necessary inequality
of parts, whilst she herself restores to each part an equal value, in
making them all co-operate towards the same end, the same _action_,
in which are distributed great and minor parts,--some brilliant, some
humble, some concealed?[193]

That fine North American race, which is so much admired by all who have
lived among them, will be no longer, according to Dr. Martius,[194]
the worthy descendant of the first murderer, a collection of maniacs
and insane folks, brought to that state by misery and the reprobation
of God. We only see in them men endowed like ourselves, but more in
harmony with the nature which animates them, having, of course, their
imperfections like ourselves, but giving us also an example of great
qualities, firmness, courage, patience, and an intense love of liberty.
Whites and blacks may be slaves, but the American has never served a
master.[195] The Negro himself has his advantages; and we could not,
perhaps, struggle with him about affective or hateful faculties. M. de
Gobineau seems to us to be strangely mistaken in the portrait which he
has attempted to draw of the black man; he has made his race hideous;
it is only inferior _in relation to ourselves_; it is equal to some,
and superior to others, not partaking, indeed, of all the advantages of
the Iranian or Semitic races, but able to display other qualities which
belong particularly to itself.

In the place of this spectacle, which is thus presented to our view,
of degraded beings covering half the earth, we simply see, for our
part, intelligence developing itself in each race, following certain
directions and tendencies at the expense of others. These special
tendencies are sometimes very remarkable. In his intercourse with
the Esquimaux, Sir John Ross, whose observing mind we have several
times had occasion to notice, found that they were nearly all good
geographers. He put into their hands a pencil and paper (of the use
of which they were certainly ignorant), and they drew with great
correctness the bays, rivers, islands, and lakes of their country,
as well as the exact spots where they had encamped at some former
emigration. This is a curious contrast with most of the African and
Arab peoples, who seem to have but a very vague idea of distance
or time; indeed, the difficulty of finding out routes among the
inhabitants of Soudan, which we have ourselves experienced, has
become almost proverbial.[196] Without going so far as all that, our
neighbours, the Semites, differ from ourselves in the manner and
quality of their mind to an extraordinary degree; on the one side is
the Aryan, an analyst, a pantheist, given to the plastic or perspective
reproduction of everything which surrounds him; on the other, the
Semite, a sensualist, a monotheist, an iconoclast. If it is radically
impossible for the Semite to follow us in the depths of metaphysics,
his language even being opposed to all philosophic demonstration;
in our turn, perhaps, we are less religious,--that is to say, less
solemnly struck by the universe. The thought of demonstrating God,
and proving this thought, will never come to the Semite as it did to
Bossuet, Fénélon, and Newton.[197] The Semite feels God, if we may
so express it; and, as if absorbed and astounded by this personified
creative force, whose shadow presses on him, he does not understand the
arts of reproduction, although among all the people who excel in it.

In fact, history itself will teach us that these tendencies are so much
accused and so general, that they are found everywhere; in one place
rising even above conquest, in another, modifying itself to imported
religions. When a religion, in accordance with the genius of the men to
whom it has been addressed from the cradle, passes from this race to
another, it is necessarily modified. Pure monotheism, born in the east,
has only conquered the west and the Iranian race by transforming itself
to their pleasure. The Persians accepted Islam; but they have not been
able to renounce this necessity for plastic reproduction, which is one
of the characteristics of the Iranian family: a schism became formed,
which authorised all the arts, and left in entire freedom that natural
tendency which could not be smothered. Far more than the monsters in
Isaiah’s dream, the lions of the Alhambra were a terrible prophesy.
Those who see them may read in their huge figures the vitality of a
conquered nation, whose love of the living form invaded even the palace
of the conquerors, and which were soon to make them fly. The race which
flourished at Athens and at Rome only accepted Christianity, which
also came from the east, by despoiling it of its original character;
and this religion would, at the present day, be incapable of making
proselytes in that east where it first took its rise. The preaching
of Mohammed was, as M. Renan has remarked, but a reaction of pure
monotheism against degenerated Christianity, concealing but badly its
polytheistic tendencies.

In truth, the psychological study of the human race is a new science,
which has been examined into on some points, but not in all. To desire
to sketch it would be to fall into the alternative either of doing what
others have done perfectly, or to fall into error for want of necessary
materials. We can only quote, as having been well studied,--first,
the Iranian race, by all our moralists and philosophers; secondly, the
Semitic race, by M. Renan; and thirdly, the American race, by Humboldt
and Bonpland,[198] by d’Orbigny,[199] Morton,[200] and Coombe.[201]

II. The study of languages is connected, on the one hand, to the
physiology of the human race, but more immediately still to the study
of the varieties of the human mind, of which they are in some measure
the organ. They can by this means assist also in classifying mankind
into natural groups. But where the study of languages affects more
especially the anthropologist,[202] is when it touches on the origin
of the varieties of language, and of the primitive state (either
intellectual or social) of the speaking man: when it endeavours
to fathom the past each day farther back,--each day nearer to the
_origin_. Thus bound together, the two sciences ought to have the same
destiny; philology has had its monogenists and its polygenists. The
first have been obliged to give way, overpowered by the number and
the superiority of their opponents. They are done for; and the field
remains free to the latter, who affirm, through their studies, the
multiplied origin of human language, leaving the consequences to be
deduced, or deducing them themselves.[203]

One sole declaration will suffice us, that of the history of Semitic
idioms. “If the planets, whose physical nature seems to be analogous
to that of the earth,” says M. Renan,[204] “are peopled with beings
organised like ourselves, we may presume that the history and the
language of those planets does not differ more from our own than
does the history and language of the Chinese.” It is impossible to
establish by a clearer and more striking image the individuality of the
different families of language, not one of which owes its origin to
its neighbours, and which have, probably, never been in one another’s
presence, except when they had already been formed, bringing with them
their own characteristics, their fundamental and profound type, as
unalterable by contact as is the physical type of the men who spoke
them. These, in presence of others, may have been able to alter their
traditions, their remembrances, their words, but these were never more
than simple _loans_; we may be certain that these men were strangers
one to the other on the day when they uttered their first words in
their cradles.

We must limit ourselves merely to recording the result, which is, that
each system of language is absolutely irreducible to others, both by
its basis and its form; all born in human thought, it is true, but this
thought following at each point a particular path, so that each of
these systems, as M. Renan has said, only abuts on the others by the
community of the aim it is intended to reach.

Certain families of languages do not differ solely by their
constitution, they show special phonetic or physiological
qualities;[205] that is to say, we can observe, in two different
languages, varieties of the same order which is explained among
animals, by the words barking, braying, cooing, etc. This is
particularly the case with the strange language spoken by the
clear-complexioned race of South Africa, probably much more widely
diffused in former times than at present. It resembles no other known
language, and consists in a _clucking_ which has, they say, nothing
analogous to it among any other nation on the earth. The English have
characterised it by the names of _sighing_, or _clucking_, and also
especially _click language_.[206] Here is a new difference,--a radical
difference in relation to so many others, which decidedly forms, from
these Bosjesmans, a people whom it is impossible to ally, it does not
signify how, or under what aspect, to any other of the divisions of the
great human family.




CHAPTER VI.

THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE.


Monogenists--starting from unity of origin as a fact, if not proved, at
least accepted and unquestionable,--were necessarily led to discover a
physiological explanation of the profound differences which we find at
the present day among mankind, and which would have led them, according
to monogenists, from one extreme state to the other, or from a medium
state to the two extremes.

Now, it is necessary to remember that every question concerning
influence implies a previous historic notion. We cannot establish that
a modification is not produced in a body (here is humanity), except
by comparing it with itself at two distinct moments of duration, more
or less distant. When a monogenist admits as an origin one uniform
human race, he places a term of comparison in the past, he gives an
historical date more or less definite to this uniform human species.
And it is because religious cosmogonies alone dare, at the present day,
to arrogate to themselves the power of making history dart back to the
commencement of humanity, that we shall always be much troubled by
not seeing a theological influence as the basis of monogenist ideas;
now, they say, however, that they have discovered the trace of this
human uniformity upon which they rely, in order to prove this great
historical fact.

In our own opinion, history is very far from commencing with mankind;
it only goes back two or three ages before the invention of figurative
language,--a more important and difficult language for man than
articulated language, which was discovered long before, and at many
different points. It is _writing_ which makes the Asiatics and the
lost people of Central America better than savages; and if we were
asked for a specific distinction with regard to intelligence between
mankind and animals, we should only be able to find it there. It will
be seen later that we are far from denying the influence of a middle
course; but we maintain that every term of comparison is wanting at the
present day to show that man, since the most distant historic periods,
has ever shown less dissimilarities than now. Most monogenists,
disagreeing about the whole system of modifying causes, agree generally
in acknowledging that climates and hybridity have a decisive creative
influence as regards races of men. These two kinds of influence alone
deserve our consideration. We shall commence by climate, putting on one
side, for the present, the study of the specious question of hybridity,
whose part is so badly understood by those who believe that it creates
varieties, when it can only weaken differences.

An important part in the means of alteration from one race to another
has been given, by Hippocrates, to external influences. He seems
to have been the first to point this out, in his _Treatise on Air,
Water, and Places_.[207] “The form, colour, and manners of nations,”
says Polybius, “depend solely on the diversity of climates.”[208] In
general, the ancients believed in the immediate and sudden influence of
climate, so much so that a stranger, at the end of a few years, would
be completely changed and altered to the type of the inhabitants of the
same place.

In our days, Cabanis alone has dared to go so far as this.[209]

Some monogenists have simply enlarged Grecian theories, and explained
everything by the prolonged duration of the same influences. Others
have supposed that local changes in the atmospheric conditions of the
world, anterior to the actual epoch, were the cause. This is a sort of
progress beyond the preceding hypothesis, in the sense that at least we
must recognise the insufficiency of actually existing causes, in order
to explain the great differences observed at the present day between
men. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has agreed with his father upon the
great question of the influence of the surrounding medium; but death
seized him before he could apply these theories to mankind. However,
the high position that his _Histoire Naturelle Générale_ has taken in
science obliges us to pause a moment on the subject of his opinions,
which have, besides, easily triumphed over the ruins of Cuvier’s
school. And if we do not agree with all the doctrines propounded by the
second Geoffroy, we are all the more satisfied, since, differing from
the son, we incline more to the theories of the father.

Isidore Geoffroy believed in a decisive influence of the medium, but
only under certain conditions. He believed that these influences are
limited, as he himself calls it, every time that it relates to anything
beyond the action of man, that is to say, on savage or free animals.
In this case, the action of the _medium_, according to him, would be
confined exclusively to the producing of varieties in form and in the
colour of the skin,[210]--a form we never see varied in the same class
of men; the colour of the skin,--which is sensibly the same among men,
among whom the fair type is itself exceptional, and spread over a very
small portion of the ancient north-west continent.

In every case, Isidore Geoffroy acknowledged that these variations
are sometimes very inconsiderable;[211] and although they have in no
way approached those which separate human races, we may be allowed to
believe that the differences observed among savage species were, in
his eyes, much less important. He has endeavoured, on the contrary, to
compare insignificant differences among free animals with varieties
much more marked, and much clearer than those shown by domestic
animals, and therefore, doubtless, he wished to make a step towards
the fundamental question of anthropology, which was evidently at the
bottom of his thoughts, and which he had for a long time resolved in a
monogenist sense.

But domestic animals have quite special conditions, which do not
allow the assimilation of these varieties with those which have been
simply produced by natural forces. Cuvier[212] had already pointed out
this difference, and rejected all assimilation between them and free
animals. Without taking too much account of the reasons which impelled
him towards such opinions, we believe that upon this point, at least,
he was entirely in the right; as to the rest, Isidore Geoffroy himself
furnishes us with weapons against his own theories. “Since nature,
left to herself,” he says, “does not give us witnesses of the great
changes in the conditions of existence, it is clear that there only
remains one means of seeing such changes, and of deducing therefrom
the effects upon organisation,--it is _to force nature to do what she
would not do voluntarily_.”[213] All the condemnation of this system of
Isidore Geoffroy is contained, in our opinion, in these last words. As
for ourselves, we reject, in the most absolute and formal manner, the
connexion which some have desired to make between man and the domestic
animals. Man is a sociable animal, like many others; but he only
becomes exceptionally a domestic animal when he falls into slavery. The
domestic animal is a being drawn from the normal state, and constrained
by man. He is constrained by nature to obey the influence of his
master alone,--an influence infinitely variable. It resembles itself
no longer; the habit of obedience does not even leave it its will; it
ceases to be a personality, and becomes a mere machine, producing for
the benefit of another person.

Domesticity has certain characteristics of degeneracy; the animal loses
its activity, it becomes less eager, and assimilates itself more; it
becomes almost incapable of subsisting alone; it vegetates; together
with its personality it has lost this resistance to the ambient medium,
which is the necessary characteristic of the species, the condition of
the _nisus formativus_; it modifies itself to everybody’s will. Its
organism may be considered as being in a state of unstable equilibrium,
so that the least influence causes this organism to vary, and with
the least possible delay, to a considerable degree.[214] But when man
ceases for an instant to be attentive in directing these modifications,
when he forgets himself for a moment, nature--always vigilant and ready
to seize upon her rights--destroys all this human edifice, and recalls
the animal to a type which may be called normal, but which is not the
type of the stock, since nature, acting on an organism endowed, as we
have just said, with the wonderful malleability and ductility acquired
by domesticity, immediately and naturally modifies the animal, which is
restored to liberty, by the power of the new medium into which it is
cast.

Nothing of the same sort takes place with mankind. This does not mean,
however, that he cannot also be reduced to a state of domesticity.[215]
Slaves, indeed, are nothing else; and all that is wanting in order to
place them in comparison with animal domesticity, would be the history
of a race of Ilotes, which has always been free from any mixture, and
has continued so during a time equal to that which separates us from
the first conquest of the dog, the sheep, and the ox, upon the high
table-lands of Asia.

Let us, then, leave all comparison[216] between man, free to come, to
go, and to choose his own food,--and domestic animals. Let us return
to those who live free, and say, once for all, that if we stop our
progress with so many details concerning these comparisons, it is
from a kind of respect for the character of certain learned men who
have thus treated anthropological science. We believe very little in
biology, or in demonstrations by _similarities_. Every animal, every
organ, every anatomical element, has its own life, its own laws of
birth, development, nutrition, and reproduction. At the commencement
of science, everything is clear and easy, like the cellular theory,
for instance, in the elements of anatomy; but every day the laws of
life (we might say, the laws of nature) are multiplied and complicated;
every morning the searcher after truth must expect to discover some
phenomenon which will disturb the scientific belief of the night
before. “Every evening,” said one of the masters of science, “our best
prayer is to form afresh a synthesis of the sciences.”[217] Well, if
modern anatomy has taught us that the initial phase of the development
of the egg differs according to the animal,[218] even as nothing
resembles less the development of certain bones of the face than that
of their neighbours, how shall we dare to compare any animal with
man?[219] Having said this, let us return to the influence of climate
upon wild or free animals.

Isidore Geoffroy quotes, with complacency, the instance of the Corsican
and African stag taken from Europe to these two countries scarcely
twenty centuries ago, which form at the present day two clearly
distinct varieties. From that the author of the _Histoire Naturelle
Générale_ argues rapid and sensible modifications, caused by the action
of the medium. But, first of all, the evidence of this fact is simply
negative; the old authors, who denied the existence of the stag in
Corsica and Africa, were perhaps simply ignorant of it. Then, this
introduction, if it did take place, was perhaps performed by means
of animals which had been kept in domesticity or captivity for many
generations, and consequently, were easily able to change their mode of
life directly they recovered their liberty, as we have already said.
However this may be, it is simply man himself whom it is necessary to
examine, without comparing him to any animal, and without misleading
ourselves with the connexion of climates, generally compared too
hastily, and with regard to mere equality of temperature.

It is sufficient to run over, in Humboldt’s _Cosmos_, the lengthy
enumeration of circumstances which make up a climate, in order to
understand that all the comparisons which our minds may make between
any two regions of the world are, at least, rash. The analogy of two
climates is rather a sort of experimental notion, which can only be
reasonably deduced by the similarity of the biological as well as
the meteorological phenomena of every kind in the two regions to be
compared. And when climates shall have been able to change a white
man into a black (a fact we energetically deny), must we also lay to
the charge of meteorological influence the clear moral aptitude and
profound differences of the various species of mankind? Shall we admit
that a little more cold or heat will alter the intellect? and why not
language?

But _we_ are not the first to doubt all these marvels. Bacon[220]
and Albin[221] fairly doubted the effect of the sun on the colour of
the skin. Camper, who admitted that all varieties come from external
influences, acknowledged, and with good faith, that the influences
which we can appreciate are not sufficient to explain fully either the
prominent jaw-bone in the Negro, the cheek-bone in the Kalmuc, or the
obliquity of the eyes in the Chinese and the Malay, etc. We can declare
the same about all the other peculiarities of the same order,--the
flattening of the nose, the crisped state of the hair, the colouring
matter which we find even in the arch of the palate in the Negro, etc.

We owe a very good observation to Camper: “The black colour which
is noticed in the natural parts of both sexes, and even in white
individuals, clearly proves that our reticular membrane has its colour
only from the blood.”[222] This fact alone should have long ago given
a more rational impulse to researches on this subject. If--putting all
these hypotheses on one side, for all that we can bring forward has no
other value--if we wish to study in a _positive_ manner the influence
of the sky upon man, we have only in reality one resource,--it is to
shut ourselves up in the limits of history, to study the effect of the
migrations of which it tells us, and to see whether man, transported
far away, _does_ become modified, and how this modification takes
place. Then we shall find two answers to these questions, which form
together a kind of anthropological law.

LAW.--_In historical times, either man_ (we mean a society of men) _who
is taken far from his medium does not alter his type, or he entirely
disappears_.

What nation has been transformed? We cannot answer, even with history
in our hand; we know not of any. And yet, the short period of time
embraced by the records of mankind would be quite sufficient if it were
true, as Isidore Geoffroy thought, that we could conclude from animals
to men, and that two thousand years would have been sufficient to alter
fundamentally the _genus_ stag.[223] It is a well-known fact, that the
inhabitants of the Island of Bourbon, who were colonists established
in the high lands for two centuries, have preserved intact the purity
of their blood.[224] The Spanish and Portuguese families established
in Brazil, and who have carefully avoided foreign marriages, have
lost nothing, it is said, of their original characteristics.[225] The
Icelanders have not become Laplanders in their own island, and they
have now been established there eight hundred years; they are as fair
and _German-looking_ as at first.[226] The Dutch have prospered at
the Cape under the name of Boers. They say that at Cochin and Malabar
there exists a Jewish tribe, which has been established there for a
long time, and which traces back its origin to the captivity; it has
remained pure,[227] and as similar to the inhabitants of the Jewish
quarter at Cairo, as to the Jews in Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper,
and in the pictures of the Flemish school.

Indeed, among ourselves in Europe, have not the Irish preserved, under
their foggy and cold sky, that southern nature which is revealed in
their taste for certain arts, their small height, their black hair,
the vivacity of the women, and the indolence of the men? Now, here is
another order of facts,--man is not altered by emigration. Perhaps
these facts are not very conclusive to all people, either on account of
the difficulty of observation, or the short period which they embrace.
They must be taken just as science offers them to us, and we must give
our attention solely to reckoning the conclusion from the value of the
premises.

We now arrive at the second term of the law which we have laid
down,--that man, transported to another country, eventually disappears.
The theory which we thus form is of considerable importance. It has
even received a particular name, it has been called the _Theory of
the non-Cosmopolitanism of Man_. It is at the present day defended in
France by Dr. Boudin, with as much energy as talent. In this matter,
facts are abundant enough, and they at once take a considerable
significance; and this is determined by figures, so that we must
acknowledge that in most cases each race is by its nature attached to
the ground which supports it, and that it is not with impunity that it
oversteps its limits.

It is because a foreign climate has in general a really destructive
influence, producing degeneracy among emigrants, that is to say, a
parallel morbid alteration of both the intellect and the body, that
we always see the same races moving about in the same areas, and
disappear when they pass them.[228] If the Semite, who has left Yemen,
has come to pasture his camels near the shores of the ocean, opposite
the Fortunate Islands, it is because he and his animals find in the
Riff the same conditions of life that they did by the Nile and the
Isthmus of Suez. Whatever has been said about the Jews and some other
races, not one of them seems to be really cosmopolitan. To admit that a
Jewish tribe, thrown into the midst of a black population, has become
black by the sole action of the climate, is to admit that there were
no conversions, no adoptions, and no sexual unions contrary to the
law of Moses; and in this way the philosophic editors of the Code
Napoléon, as well as daily medical practice, teach us what to think.
For our part, we only see in these transformations of Jewish families,
established far away, the result of the absorption of the type of a
small group of emigrants by a population which outnumbers them. The Jew
has disappeared; the language has been transmitted like the belief, and
also the name.

The acclimatisation of man, as well as of the wild animal, takes place
only when he finds the conditions of existence sensibly identical with
those in which he has been created. Beyond that, nature punishes him
for having overstepped the limits which she had assigned to him, and
within which he ought to continue to move his organism in relation to
this defined medium. The domestic animal, on the contrary, by reason
of this malleability of which we have before spoken, accommodates
itself in general very conveniently. And the varieties which it shows
on recovering its liberty, are of themselves a proof that it has been
under a different sky to that of its original country.

Such is, in our opinion, the sole manner of explaining at the present
day, in a serious and general point of view, all climateric influences.
We must render justice to some monogenists, that they have perfectly
understood the real part taken by these influences. Blumenbach calls
them _causæ degenerationis_; and here the German anatomist, in
defending, like Prichard, the specific unity of the human race, raises
himself above the English anthropologist, without, however, reaching
what we believe to be the truth. Prichard, inclining to the belief that
humanity is entirely descended from the Negroes,[229] acknowledged,
consequently, a kind of _causæ perfectionis_, that is to say, an
ascending march of phenomena, where his predecessor had only seen an
inverse march. Now, this ascending march of phenomena is difficult to
reconcile with the notion of the specific unity of man. Every species,
in fact, is necessarily constituted by reason of the defined space in
which it ought to move. It is unreasonable to suppose that elsewhere
the same organism and the same species can meet with more favourable
conditions of existence.

In Blumenbach’s opinion, all races are unhealthy deviations from a
primitive type, of which we are the representatives;[230] so that
nine-tenths of the human kind are, according to him, composed of
degenerate individuals. Blumenbach did not know that one of the
essential characters of degeneracy is the limited development of its
produce, that is to say, the disappearance of the race at a more or
less distant period.[231] We ask ourselves only how monogenists, who
all partake more or less of Blumenbach’s opinions, and who nearly all
pride themselves on moral and humanitarian sentiments, can consent
to lower in this manner the number of human beings who are worthy of
this name? Is not the best part, if there could be one in the case of
science, played by the polygenists, who consider that other races are
special entities, pursuing an end, which is their own and not ours,
and dividing with us the planet, inaccessible in all its extent to the
Iranian; just as certain kinds of animals, likewise, cover the globe
with different species? Climate, we have said, has a decisive influence
upon a man taken to another country; it must only be understood in
the sense of this influence, and we have seen that it is generally a
pernicious one.[232] It makes itself felt in the physical and moral
nature of man, both deeply and superficially.

We may point out among the most simple and the most profound climateric
influences, the _sun-burn_, the study of which is so interesting in
anthropological study. We know, at the present day, that the sun is
far from being always the cause of it; that a bivouac _at night_ has
as powerful an action in the same manner, and that the north-pole
explorers found that their hands and faces were browned under a
northern sky.[233]

Are these not facts which will diminish the decisive part which has so
long been given to solar heat in the production of colouring matter in
the Negro?[234] The colour of sun-burn does not even seem to remain
in the layers of the epidermis, in which the normal colour is found.
Indeed, we must remember, that it is always easy to distinguish a
sun-burnt nation, since individuals who, for some reason or other,
are but seldom exposed to external influences, like the women, are
infinitely whiter; children are quite white when born, but as soon as
they go much into the air, they become brown.

Unfortunately, the action of climate upon a man taken from his own
country is not merely a case of sun-burn. And medical statistics have
shown, in treating on the different races of mankind, the dangers of
changing one’s position on the surface of the globe, even if it takes
place in the sense of isothermal lines. We find from the results
of careful inquiries made in the English colonies at the Antilles
for about forty years, that the black population is continually
diminishing, the number of deaths being to that of births :: 28 : 24.
Under the tropics, northern organisations are much disquieted, life
changes its aspect, and its course is much more rapid. The glandular
system governs;[235] man becomes “more sensible to pleasure, and less
disposed to activity,”[236] his mind loses its vivacity. Those noble
faculties, which have made the white man the monarch of creation,
become weakened, and that especially in some colonies where government
is obliged to entrust everything to Europeans.[237] Dr. Barnard Davis
lately announced to the Paris Anthropological Society,[238] that one of
his friends, Dr. J. A. Wise, after thirty years residence in India, had
never been able, after numerous inquiries, to find any descendants of a
European in the third generation.

Our temperate regions are to the Negro what the tropical zone is to
the European. Even at Gibraltar,[239] the Negro contingent that was
employed in the English army paid a heavy tribute to death.[240] On
the contrary, official documents for 1861 tell us that, at Sierra
Leone,[241] the respective mortality of English and Negro soldiers was
as follows:--

                         Deaths per 1000.
                     English.        Negroes.
  Marsh fevers        410·2            2·4
  Dysentery            41·3            5·3
  Liver disease         6·0            1·1

It is an indubitable fact that, in general, the mortality of an
emigrated population is in an inverse ratio to the distance they are
taken.[242] During many years the island of Ceylon was occupied by
Hindú troops (from Madras and Bengal), Malays, Negroes and English. The
mortality of these races respectively was, 12, 24, 50, and 69.

This is so clearly a biological law, that we again meet with its
application even in certain particular cases. Concerning the yellow
fever, for instance, Townsend has thus laid down a rule,--“The
mortality to the new-comer from the cooler latitudes may be said to
be in an exact ratio to the distance from the equator of his place of
nativity.”[243] Daniel Blair[244] has given the following statistics,
according to his observations of the same disease, made in British
Guiana, from 1827 to 1835:--

  Natives (West Indian Islanders)    6·9
  French and Italians               17·1
  English, Scotch, and Irish        19·3
  Germans and Dutch                 20·2
  Scandinavians and Russians        27·7

The epidemic of 1853, at New Orleans, allowed Barton to make a scale of
mortality on the same principle, and absolutely comparable, and which
would take away all doubt in this respect, if any existed.[245]




CHAPTER VII.

THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY.


We must regard hybridity in a double point of view, as being able or
unable to give an indication of the real value of different human
races, as compared with the acknowledged natural groups in the greater
number of zoological classifications; and on the other hand, we must
study hybridity, belonging, as has been asserted, to the creation of
new races.

It has been said, we repeat, that all men being able to reproduce one
with another, the genus _homo_ only constitutes one single family.
That this argument should hold good, it was necessary to be proved
that among animals (for thence it was that it was borrowed) two well
acknowledged species, more different even than two human races, should
never be prolific one with the other. Now, this is far from being the
case. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who has treated this subject in a
masterly manner in his _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, acknowledges that
animals belonging to two different genera can, by a union, produce a
mixed breed, which, consequently he calls _bigenerate hybrids_.

So we will not give ourselves the trouble of contesting, as some
polygenists have done, the universality of reproduction between all
races of mankind; we will not ask if every degree of combination has
been observed,--the union, for instance, of an Esquimaux with a Negro,
an American with an Australian, a Tartar with a Bosjesman. Let us
admit, what is, perhaps, hardly the truth, that all races produce one
with another,--we will admit all this; and yet it will prove nothing
in favour of the monogenists who have brought forward this fact, since
we henceforth know that there is no basis in this universality of
reproduction for a serious argument,--since we know that two distinct
species, two genera, in fact, can produce cross-breeds. This faculty
of reproduction has had too much importance given to it,--it is only
a function, that is to say, a physiological character quite improper
for classification; the existence of _bigenerate hybrids_ shows
this sufficiently. It is a bad characteristic, because it is not a
constant one; because either the man or the animal does not bear it
in him, and that a given uniformity of circumstances is necessary in
order to reveal this characteristic to an observer. It is the same
with animal forms, which do not countenance in any manner such an
observation; it is sufficient to recall the alternating generations
of the invertebrata. Where shall we place all these agamous animals?
how shall we class these _proscolex_ and _scolex_, which have no sex,
and which will never have one? Instead of the idea of fecundity,
which is insufficient to characterise a species, we must substitute
another, that of the development of the produce. If everything shows
us that zoosperms, proceeding from very different animals, can equally
fecundate any given ovum,--if we even admit that we have no good reason
for rejecting the theory that each ovum can be impregnated by different
kinds of zoosperms, it is very easy, on the contrary, to account for
the fact that offspring will have no chance of life, except so far as
the two parents show a sufficient identity, but which we cannot regard
as fit to characterise species.

As the produce of two organisms, a descendant ought always to be
considered as the result of two united halves fitted together, and
combined one with the other. If the two halves are identical, the
animal is like its progenitors in everything. If the two beings,
who have endeavoured to unite themselves, are too dissimilar, the
two forces cannot combine, and there is either no produce, or it is
arrested in its development from the first moment of its embryo life.
If the two forces, or the sum of the two forces, have a certain amount
of common direction, they can produce a new being, but an imperfect
one, and which will not have all the conditions of existence like its
parents; it will not have genital power, and consequently will not
be fitted to become the founder of a series of individuals similar
to itself, succeeding it through time, “naturally, regularly, and
indefinitely.”[246]

Putting on one side the power of reproduction, we must attend solely to
the union of different human races with regard to vitality of produce,
and let us see what observation will teach us on this subject.

Jacquinot states, that “one can scarcely quote any cross between
Australians and Europeans.” When the ancient inhabitants of Van
Diemen’s Land, reduced to the number of two hundred and ten, were taken
from Flinder’s Island, not only had the union of the women with the
unscrupulous convicts been unable to form a distinct race, but only two
adults were found who were the produce of these unions.[247]

“The Mulattoes,” says Nott, “are the shortest-lived of any of the
branch races; when they unite amongst themselves, they are less
prolific than if united to one or other of the branches.[248]” This
assertion is especially true concerning the cross-breeds born of
Negroes and inhabitants of the north of Europe. At Java, crosses
between Malays and Dutch appear not to be able to reproduce beyond the
third generation.[249] “The _half-caste_ of India,” says Warren, “comes
to a premature end, generally without reproduction; and if there are
any offspring, they are always wretched and miserable.”[250]

We must say another word about Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s
opinion on the important question of cross-breeding in mankind. After
having reproached Cuvier, and with reason, with having often, in the
interest of particular views, admitted, as regards mankind, a flagrant
contravention of the biological laws which his genius proclaimed for
other animals, Isidore Geoffroy seems to us to have, in his turn,
fallen into a contradiction of the same kind. He especially calls
_hybrids_ the crosses which occur from the cross of two different
species, and he remarks, besides, that hybrids have generally tolerably
decided characteristics, which are partly those of the father and
partly those of the mother; so that the offspring, he adds, can
resemble one more than the other, but not _exclusively_ either of them:
the cross is always to be found in it. On the contrary, it is not
_always_ so with the cross between two varieties of the same species;
the produce has often the characteristics of both its parents, but very
frequently, also, it resembles one of them exclusively.

For these beings who are the offspring of two varieties of the same
species, and _who very frequently reproduce entire the type of one
of their parents_ to the exclusion of the other, Isidore Geoffroy
reserved the name of _homoïdes_. Well, we ask him this,--in taking,
as an example, the offspring of a union between a white and a black,
shall we find in it the characteristics of a homoïd cross? Will it
never resemble exclusively one of the two founders? Are not the
characteristics of the Mulatto perfectly represented, perfectly
defined, and always medium? Are not exceptions, if any can be quoted,
of extreme rarity?[251] In the name of this consistency, ought not
Isidore Geoffroy to have seen in a Mulatto something besides a homoïd
mongrel, and to doubt even more that the different races of mankind
constituted only varieties of the same species?

However, let us examine into hybridity so far as it may serve to
produce new, or modify existing races, as Blumenbach and Flourens have
admitted.[252] Let us only remark that these two authors, like most
monogenists, in placing hybridity, as the modifying cause, in the same
rank as climate or medium, commit a great error. Hybridity, even in
giving it the creative power which some have desired, goes entirely
into the second rank, for it supposes a pre-existing plurality. It can
only act, in the end, by weakening differences, by creating a middle
term to two extremes. It cannot of itself produce variety of origin, it
is the consequence of it, and we shall see that the part it takes on
this matter is extremely restricted.

White[253] supposes a colony composed of an equal number of blacks
and whites; then he tries to find out what will happen in the course
of time, by supposing that a thirtieth part of them die and are born
each year. He arrives, by his calculations, at the following results:
in sixty-five years the number of blacks, whites, and mulattos will be
equal; in ninety-one years the whites will only form one-tenth of the
total population, and the blacks one-tenth; in three centuries, there
would not remain one hundredth part of them, either black or white.

This proposition is true, theoretically speaking; it is practically
false: it rests upon what we may call an unstable equilibrium. In
the physical world we may, by care, happen to put an ellipsoid in a
state of equilibrium on the extremity of its greater axis, or a cone
on its apex; these are also unstable equilibria, but the least cause
intervening, the smallest movement, and the balance is instantly
destroyed. If we admit into White’s theory a birth which does not
take place, or an unproductive union, the conclusions are overturned
at once; a part of the new generation will preserve the primitive
type,[254] and this portion will be much more considerable than White
imagined. When the facts of arrest of development, quoted above, are
not sufficient to prove that a mongrel breed cannot subsist by itself,
can we anywhere find one? Do we find a people preserving for centuries
a medium type between two other types which gave it birth? We see them
nowhere,--just as little as we see a race of mules. The fact is that
such a hybrid race, intermediate to two defined types, can only have a
subjective and ephemeral existence.

The definition of the word _type_, both in natural history and in the
particular case in which we are engaged, is rather a difficult matter,
and which we can _feel_ much better than we can express it in writing.
When we have seen a certain number of men belonging to one race, the
mind, without any particular study, takes from each a number of
general characteristics, and forms from them a sort of ideal being, to
which it refers the real beings which it may henceforth see, and with
which it identifies those who have a sufficient amount of similarity
with this being.[255]

We have seen in the preceding chapter that, as regards historic times
at least, a type invariably reproduces itself through time and space,
when it does not succumb to the new climate in which it is about to
live. If we admit, however, that two types may have met with a harmony
of influences, a medium in which they can both live, we say that--even
with all the care that may be taken to mix them--we shall always find,
whatever White may say, black people and white people, if these races
were black and white originally; and this by reason of laws which we
think we can shape, and whose demonstration will be as positive as that
of the domain of history.

LAW I.--_A medium type cannot exist by itself, except on the condition
of being supported by the two creating types._

LAW II.--_When two types become united, two phenomena may arise: 1.
Either one of them will absorb the other; or, 2. They may subsist
simultaneously in the midst of a greater or less number of hybrids._

These two laws are only, in fact, the formula of the principles which
Prichard[256] himself laid down long ago, and which are held also by
the editor of the _Ethnological Journal_,[257] by Knox,[258] and by
William Edwards.[259]

By reason of these laws, we find that nowhere can a medium race either
establish itself on the ruins of two creating races, or replace them,
and live by itself with an independent existence, formed entirely of
hybrids which propagate among themselves. In fact we have laid down
a rule that conditions of development are very much restricted among
hybrids, and that they can only go on decreasing in their descendants,
if they are capable of producing any. The crossed race will only exist
in the condition of being supported by the two creating types remaining
in the midst of it. If the value of this law is only deduced from a
negative fact,--that is to say, from the absence on the surface of the
globe of any real hybrid race existing by itself on a certain extent
of territory,--we shall find, as regards the second, a great number of
_positive_ facts.

When two types unite, we said, a double phenomenon may be observed;
either of these two types will absorb the other, or they may subsist
simultaneously, one near the other. The first case ought to be the most
frequent; but it is the least appreciable, because it does not leave
sensible traces. We must endeavour to discover in history the remains
of a people who formerly existed, and who have since disappeared.
Thus, the colony of Nubians, taken to the banks of the Phasis by
Rámases, have left no trace of their sojourn among the inhabitants of
the land. It is the same with the Greek colonies of the Mediterranean
coasts.[260] The Normans have only left, on the coasts of Labrador,
their engraved _stelæ_;[261] their race has not remained. The primitive
Turkish and Asiatic type has likewise disappeared from Europe. This
has been attributed to the introduction of Georgian women into the
seraglios, and it is, perhaps, a reason only too readily accepted. It
is, indeed, very natural that the repeated introduction of Georgian
and Circassian women into the hárems should deprive the descendants of
the conquerors of their original characteristics; but if this were the
case, the Turks of our days would, from continued unions with the same
race, have become real Georgians and Circassians themselves. It has not
been so, however, because the harems are recruited in Europe as well as
in Asia, and even then the fact would only be applicable to families of
high position. The truth seems to be that the real Turkish blood has
nearly disappeared, and has been encroached upon and replaced by the
old blood of the country, either Macedonian or Thracian.

We are ignorant of the laws which govern the disappearance of one race
in the sight of another. Sometimes it happens very rapidly; sometimes
it does not show itself. The complex conditions which rule it enter
into the great order of facts which Darwin has so ingeniously classed
under the name of the _struggle for existence_. They have always
seemed to us to present a complete analogy with the disappearance of
certain animal species before others, the steps of which disappearance
history sometimes allows us to measure; so that there seems to be a
curious similarity between the great fluctuations of nations and of
animals upon continents. We are almost tempted to say that the invasion
of the West by the Barbarians, the black rat, and the field mouse,
is the triple expression of one and the same biological law. The
American population retrogrades, like certain animals;[262] that of the
Australian coasts has disappeared; and we believe that the Negroes of
Africa themselves will be called, at some distant period, to give up
their place in their turn.

We do not know any more about the conditions which allow two types
to subsist indefinitely one near the other: must we attribute this
resistance to the country, or the races which are always before them?
Why, if the Normans have disappeared in America, Italy, and Asia,
should they still remain in Normandy, few in number, it is true, but
always the same, and perfectly described by Linnæus, when he said
of the Goths in the Scandinavian peninsula, “They have smooth, fair
hair, and the iris of the eye is of a bluish colour.”[263] Even when
cross-breedings take place between more than two races,--even when
these various influences are mixed together, struggled with, and
assisted in a thousand ways, so that the question has become almost
inextricable to the anthropologist, in the midst of the varied produce
resulting from all these combinations, we are astonished to see here
and there individuals who have the absolute and complete character
of one of the original stock. Whilst there remains among a people a
considerable amount of mixed blood, we may always expect to see some
one appear who will have the pure characteristics of the race which was
believed to be extinguished, and mingled for ever with the blood of
others.[264]

The most remarkable instance which can be quoted about these crosses,
and at the same time the easiest to notice, is that presented by
England, where two races live side by side, mixed together, without one
having absorbed the other since the time of Strabo, Tacitus, and Julius
Cæsar. England, isolated from Europe, ought necessarily to be a fertile
field for the anthropologist, and it will be there where the history of
historic and pre-historic races will soonest be made. Eminent men work
at it with ardour; and the certainty of remounting, through archæology
and palæontology, to the first races which invaded England, at a time
when the use of metals was unknown in the west, makes this study one of
the most interesting of the present day.

Two distinct races divide Great Britain, or, at least, representatives
of two races are found there; and in the midst of an immense number of
intermediate individualities, the least accustomed eye will not fail to
distinguish these two fundamental types, as different as two men with
white skins can be. One of these races is composed of tall, strong,
powerful men, with transparent skin, and blue eyes;[265] the other,
with a more tawny complexion, has black, curling hair.[266] The first
were formerly called Caledonians, the second Silurians, very like the
Iberians of the Spanish peninsula: the first, of Germanic, or northern
origin; the second, of Celtic, or southern origin. Nobody denies,
at the present day, that these two races are well characterised,
and every day one can meet perfect specimens of them in England. We
may quote certain districts where the Silurian, Iberian, or Celtic
race, as tradition wills it, are dominant;[267] for example, in the
north-west of Glamorganshire, in the outskirts of Merthyr, and in the
Vale of Neath.[268] Mr. John Philips finds them equally abundant in the
Danelag[269] district, between Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby, with
the same characteristics, “black eyes and hair, uniform, or rather,
dark complexion.”[270] Among these two races there are of necessity a
considerable number of cross-breeds who, allying themselves among one
another, or to the pure types, produce varied results, and in this
manner unite the two groups by a multitude of inappreciable shades of
difference.

Such is also the case in France. Edwards[271] has divined it almost
by inspiration; and M. Périer[272] has powerfully added to his
presumptions, by examining more attentively all ancient documents which
treat on the inhabitants of Gaul. M. Broca, in the _Mémoire_ which
inaugurated the proceedings of the Paris Anthropological Society,[273]
has proved in the clearest possible manner, that if we draw a line
passing by Cherbourg and Nice,[274] we shall divide France into two
distinct zones as regards the appearance and height of the inhabitants.
In the south-west, the ancient Celtic population is of small height,
as is proved by the great number of military exemptions.[275] In the
north-west, in the region which was always encroached upon by the fair
and powerful races of the north, the result is quite the contrary.
Here, then, are two distinct races: the one, formerly mistress of the
west, and then pushed to the extremity of the continent; the other,
leaving its forests and encroaching on the rest,--both differing as
much as possible by physical aspect and by moral aptitudes, but now
filling up their numbers, so to speak, by each other’s help, and
working together for the glory and prosperity of their common land.

We must not, however, give a general meaning to these last words, and
thus extend their meaning to all cases of ethnic cross-breeding. The
two united terms must not be too dissimilar, so that the two branches
may reunite as regards progress. This is essential; and if we have
endeavoured to prove that the hybrids of distant races do not possess
all the necessary conditions of animal life and of propagation, it
would be easy to find numerous proofs in order to show that, generally,
the intellectual conditions of hybrids are not much more satisfactory
than their physical condition, since the two intelligent organisms
which are there combined do not show a decided similarity.

Doctor Tschudi[276] says, in speaking of the Zambos (hybrids from
aborigines and Negroes at Lima), “As men, they are greatly inferior
to the pure races; and as members of society, they are the worst
class of citizens:” they alone furnish four-fifths of the criminals
in the prisons of Lima. Mr. E. G. Squier[277] has made almost the
same observation about the Zambos of Nicaragua. In his part of the
country, the union of Spaniards with these same Americans, seems to
have only produced degenerate men, who show no capability whatsoever
for perfection or improvement. In fact, it is on account of these
same principles that M. de Gobineau[278] has set himself to prove
at length that the mixture of races necessarily conducts mankind to
degradation and universal debasement. Cabanis had the same ideas on the
subject.[279]

The supposition which Cabanis and M. de Gobineau have taken up will,
doubtless, never be realised. To admit that all human races can reach
a complete hybridity, would be to admit that each race is cosmopolite,
which it is not. But at least it remains true, that when two _very
different_ races are united, we must not hope for anything good or
durable from their union. The same phenomenon happens, with the simple
difference of _intensity_, when two different _species_ of animals are
united. So the monogenists are astonished at such a result in man, “a
result quite contrary,” says one of them,[280] “to what one generally
expects in crossing a race.”[281] The astonishment of the learned man,
of whom we speak, is explained easily enough by the ideas which he
holds of human races, where he only sees degenerated varieties of the
original type, preserved by the European in its primitive purity.

It is evident that in this monogenic hypothesis, which we shall not
touch on again, the union of one of these degenerated races with the
pure stock would be a sort of _hygid_[282] consanguinity, and therefore
favourable to the offspring. Here there would happen something
analogous to the practice of the peasants in the _crétin_ districts,
who try to struggle against the scourge by seeking for marriages in
the plains, in order to give purer blood to each generation. In a more
general manner it is evident that if we suppose two sets of people born
of the same stock, and that one of them, after various fortunes, after
having undergone fatal influences, should unite itself with the other,
which had remained unaltered, it is evident that the produce of such a
union ought to tend to reproduce in its purity the primitive type.[283]
If it is not so with the union of different races of men, the reason is
simply that they do not directly descend the one from the other; and
from this debasement of produce there results a new proof in favour of
the ideas which we are defending.

It remains for us to speak of hybridity, as applied to the propagation
of a deformity or a monstrosity. We know that when we experimentally
unite one of this class to the other, two individuals whose organism
has equally deviated from the usual type, “nothing is more difficult
than to prevent these mischances from being done away with.”[284] A
stronger reason, then, for the same when one of these individuals alone
is deformed, which happens always in a state of nature. The races which
we can thus produce are a kind of experiment which exist, but which it
would be illogical to deduce can exist naturally. Because we make in a
laboratory oxygenated water, or mixtures of hydrogen and chlorine, must
we admit that these bodies are to be found united in nature? Quite the
contrary; we deduce from their instability that they do not, and cannot
thus exist in a natural state.




CHAPTER VIII.

SPECIES.


We have now arrived at the limits of the task which we proposed to
attempt, and we hope, after what has gone before, that we shall be able
to arrive at some scientific conclusion.

After having endeavoured to establish in the introduction the route
we had to follow in anthropological studies, we gave an account of
the system of purely philosophic researches, putting every foreign
or prejudicial idea on one side, and, resting on facts and on
mathematical reasoning, we have endeavoured to apply these principles.
We endeavoured at first to prove that man was not a being as foreign
and superior to the rest of animal nature, as certain naturalists have
thought, taking themselves, the first from among men, as the point of
comparison. We have considered the inferior races, and we have shown
that between these and the first animals the distance was neither
absolute nor well-defined; that man came into the zoological series,
and that he only forms definitively a separate _family_. Changing our
direction, we abandoned this acquired knowledge, and we passed on to
the study of varieties among men; we found them profound, indeed, and
of every description.

Then came the study of the influences to which man may be subjected.
We saw that hybridity did not play any serious part in this, since it
could only weaken pre-existing differences. On the other hand, we have
acknowledged that _in the limits of time accessible to our knowledge_,
nothing justified the hypothesis, that climate had such an extensive
influence in changing man so as to make the differences which we may
observe between ancestors and descendants such as would suffice, in
any other zoological group, to characterise distinct species.

In regarding man as a separate kingdom, we are, by this fact, exempted
from applying the same rules as in zoology; but, by proving that he
comes into the zoological series, we have implicitly proved that he
must be submitted to the same laws. Science cannot have two different
modes of proceeding: it must follow the same paths in the same subjects
in order to arrive at comparable results. It is the only truly
philosophic road: nature is _one_, and the work of the modern sciences
is precisely to tend towards unity. The most diverse phenomena in the
hands of analysts compare and assimilate themselves to the rays of
a spirit of synthesis; magnetism, electricity, light, heat, motion,
everything is mingled and linked together so well, that we know not how
to make a distinction any more.

The pure and simple adoption of the law of organic unity brings us to
the following proposition:--

PROPOSITION.--_Either we must admit different species in the genus
Homo, or we must entirely reform zoological classification._

This last hypothesis will mean, then, that the works of Linnæus,
Cuvier, De Blainville, and the two Geoffroys, will be of no value, and
that we must commence anew the great work of classification upon the
same basis which we wish to adopt in anthropology. Of the two terms of
the preceding proposition, the second merits particular consideration.
Zoological classification has been created and established by the
greatest thinkers of which humanity can boast; even more, independent
by its nature from all religious influence, it has been freely done,
and without prejudice, as every scientific question ought to be, by
means of facts and reasoning. It has not always been so with the works
of those who desire that man should be an exception to universal
nature, and beyond the limits of the animal kingdom. Zoological
classification need not be reformed,--it is that of the genus _Homo_.

We touch now on the much discussed and controverted question of
species, and at the same time on the question of the origin of man. We
do not believe, as many eminent men have done, that this origin must
eternally be concealed, that man will never be permitted to tear the
veil from this statue of Isis. Let it suffice us to say that we are
about to enter on slippery ground, where we shall only find as few
resting places as the stones of a ford half destroyed by a torrent.
And since we shall only find here and there the fragile aid of one
hypothesis against so many others, in order to assist the consequents
of our reasonings, is it a reason for drawing back? We do not think so.

Every period of a science has its own tendency; at given moments the
efforts of all tend involuntarily towards one sole end,--one question
absorbs all, and all partial solutions tend to the same general
solution. At the present day, the great question in natural history
is that of species; inquiries are ardently pursued, and materials
are produced from every side,--opinions are mooted, and objections
raised. We have only to call attention on this point to the works of
Isidore Geoffroy, Morton, Nott, Godron, Broca,[285] Darwin, Fée, etc.
The question of spontaneous generation is but a phase of the same
discussion, an episode in the work of the birth of time.

Some people have made a sort of bugbear out of this word _spontaneous
generation_, or rather, _spontaneous genesis_.[286] And yet, here
is one of these truths to which, we think, we shall be led by the
observation of facts and by reasoning. The great harm of examining
into the question is to be strangely mistaken as to its bearing, and
inclined to restrict its limits. It has, in fact, been said, that
every day genital organs are discovered in beings whom it was thought
were reproduced spontaneously. This is a specious argument to which
Plutarch has long ago done justice. A person, whom he brings forward in
one of his books, asks, “Which had the first existence, the egg or the
hen?” and concludes that “it was evidently the hen.” Even in treating
lightly on this subject,--in making it a familiar conversation, the
Greek physician was, however, not mistaken about the importance of
the matter. “So that,” answers one of the guests, “with this little
question of the egg and the hen, we raise, as with a lever, the great
and dark question of the generation of the world.”[287]

That the animals which we know all reproduce by eggs, is possible,
although it has not been proved, but this is not an important point;
we want to know if all the animals which we are able to observe do not
remount necessarily, in a more or less direct manner, and at a more or
less distant period, to a spontaneous beginning.[288] The difficulty is
everywhere the same,--everywhere we arrive at that immense obscurity
which envelopes the origin of life on the surface of our planet; but it
is essential in every case not to give to the phenomenon of spontaneous
beginning any other signification than it ought to have. We must not
believe, for instance, that matter is formed by the agglomeration of
parts which do not yet live in a perfect being, having already all its
organs distributed and proportionate, uniting in one living whole. This
would be to cast ourselves on the field of an absolutely improbable
hypothesis. Histology teaches us that each animal, its instincts and
intellect included, is at a given moment merely a mass of amorphous
matter, which, at a later period, will form itself, or in the midst of
which will be _spontaneously_ developed an anatomical element, that
is to say, an organised body. To admit spontaneous genesis, then, is
simply to admit the formation of organic amorphous primitive matter
apart from an already living body, at the cost of and in the heart
of which can be born the initial anatomical element of one of these
animals, very properly called _protozoa_. We can even ask, whether
this latent primary life, this atomic life, has not always been the
ruling life on our planet.[289] And since, when account is taken of
everything, we are almost entirely ignorant of the conditions necessary
to the fecundity of any primitive embryo, excepting certain physical
conditions of temperature, liquidity, etc.; and as, on the other hand,
nothing authorises us to believe that the laws existing at the origin
of life on our planet have since been abrogated, we see that, if we
must necessarily conclude a spontaneous primitive genesis, there is
nothing irrational in admitting, until we know farther on the subject,
the persistence of the phenomenon.

Let us return to the subject of species, which, however, we did not
quite leave in speaking on the subject of spontaneous generation.
Isidore Geoffroy wishes to advance slowly in this matter, and only when
facts become patent to all. But he himself has more than once shown, by
a noble example, the benefits which science obtains by casting itself
beyond the limits of fact, provided that care is taken at first not to
give more than a simple hypothetical value to that which we may desire
to bring forward. In the question which occupies our attention, we must
embrace at one glance the whole animal kingdom since its commencement,
in order to deduce the truth of facts which have been observed; only
then these relations, for which science so ardently seeks, would appear
in their proper light. On account of this impossibility, we must
hope for some more enlightenment, chiefly from geology, and perhaps
from experiments. “How many facts would be necessary,” said Buffon,
“in order to pronounce authoritatively, or even to conjecture? How
many experiments are to be tried in order to discover these facts,
to acknowledge them, or even to anticipate them by well-founded
conjectures?”

Two opinions on the origin of species deserve to be noticed,--those
of Cuvier and Lamarck. This last held Buffon’s opinions at the end of
his career, and it ought to find in Étienne Geoffroy a defender even
more powerful in our eyes than Isidore Geoffroy himself; and especially
Darwin, to whom belongs the merit, however, of having propagated, in
his popular work, the ideas of Lamarck.

Cuvier’s theory seems to be still the dominant one; it is surrounded by
that scholastic _prestige_ which is explained by the word _classical_;
it is only fit for universities. Cuvier proclaimed the _immutability of
species_, and wished that at every revolution of the globe (the word
alone then made his fortune), a new _fauna_ might come ready made from
the hands of God, to animate the burning or icy lands of the old world.
But Cuvier, in proclaiming organic immutability, excepted mankind. We
must be allowed to doubt whether it was done with good faith. “Cuvier,
full of good taste regarding political propriety,” said a son of the
republic, his former master, now his adversary,--“Cuvier, filling his
mind with wise mental reservations concerning the future of society,
declared that it was not fitting that new discoveries, just dug from
the heart of the earth, should attack and oppose with hostile malignity
the venerated and ancient revelations of our holy books.”[290] This
remark, in which Étienne Geoffroy has concealed his anger and contempt
under a guise of perfect urbanity, will remain to the end, we are
convinced, as the judgment of posterity upon the naturalist statesman,
and upon that which they call in France at the present day _official
science_. Species was, then, a definite entity in Cuvier’s opinion,
and if he had been consistent, he would doubtless have become the
promoter of the idea which has been taken up by Agassiz,--that there
were several centres of creation on the surface of our planet after the
_last_ flood; in each of these centres would appear a special fauna,
and also one of the species constituting the genus _homo_.

These different species of men and these different fauna would since
have continued to occupy the same geographical areas with merely some
alteration. An absolute value is given to species in Cuvier’s theory,
as well as in that of Agassiz; it is unchangeable; it may disappear,
but cannot be modified, so that “each of them,” as Buffon said at the
commencement of his career, when he held the same views, “remains
always separated from the others by an interval which nature cannot
overstep.”[291]

Such has been, for a long time, the theory of the origin of species
which we have held, and which we maintained in the first edition
of this book. In fact, the solution which we now offer differs
considerably from that which we then gave. But there is evolution
rather than contradiction in going from one to the other. The
differences which separate mankind are not lessened, and have not
diminished in value in our eyes: we merely explain these differences in
another way. It cannot be called contradiction, or even inconsistency,
to change one’s manner of viewing things with the times; to regard
things otherwise which, as we said before, have no absolute basis; or
to change in five years one’s opinion concerning the origin of the
living beings on the surface of the globe.

In Buffon’s last opinion[292] species was not that definite entity in
which Cuvier believed, commencing at a given geological moment, in
order to terminate at another. Buffon says, in his latest works, that
the idea of species can only be seized upon by man at “this or that
instant of his age,”[293] and that it is merely the expression of the
ambient medium. Let this remain as before, it will not change; but when
the conditions of the medium become modified, _species_ will change. We
thus arrive at this definition:--

DEFINITION.--“_Species is a collection or group of individuals
characterised by a similarity of distinctive points; the transmission
of which is accomplished naturally, regularly, and indefinitely, in a
given order of things._”[294]

It is, in more scientific terms, the definition by Lamarck, “a
collection of similar individuals which generation perpetuates in
the same state, so that the circumstances of their situation do not
sufficiently alter so as to make their habits, their character, or
their form vary.”[295] Lamarck, to whom Isidore Geoffroy has rendered
greater justice than any one else before or after him,[296] admitted
the _unlimited variableness of species_. He admitted that we all
descend, just as we are, from an anatomical element, developed in a
determinate sense, and that we may have been worms, insects,[297]
birds, and mammals before becoming men, running through all the phases
through which animal organisation has passed during our uterine life.
We see that Lamarck approached frankly and resolutely the problem of
the origin of humanity.

In taking but superficially certain exaggerations into which Lamarck
fell, at a time less rich in facts than our own, it is not difficult
to give a certain grotesque turn to his ideas, and to laugh at them as
being unnatural; but we must not thus judge the work of a man’s whole
life, and we must appreciate Lamarck by the basis of his doctrine more
than by the examples he has given us: “a profound philosopher,” said
Étienne Geoffroy,[298] “able in laying down principles, less able in
the choice of his proofs.”

We must judge Lamarck as Isidore Geoffroy has done in his _Histoire
Naturelle Générale_, where we find a complete and impartial
chronological statement concerning the grave question of species.[299]
“Circumstances have an influence upon form and organisation,” such is
the fundamental principle of Lamarck’s doctrine;[300] he says the same
elsewhere:[301] “Circumstances determine positively what each body
may be;” and he concludes, “among living bodies, nature only shows
individuals who succeed one another. Species, amongst themselves, are
only _relative_, and are only temporarily so.”[302]

If from these general considerations we enter in detail into Lamarck’s
theory, we find room for the objections with which the opponents
of the system of variety are engrossed, with which they have made
those weapons of ridicule which act so well on minds which are not
forewarned, and who are ignorant of this master’s _whole system_ of
ideas. The grandeur of Lamarck’s views, the majestic simplicity of
his theory, ought to be sufficient to shield him from such attacks.
He saw at the beginning organic matter grouping itself under simple
forms. These first outlines, altered by time and circumstances, have
successively given birth to radiated creatures, to the inferior
molluscs, the articulate animals, then the lowest fishes, then man.

Here is a mistake, in our opinion; if there exists (until we know more)
an immense and impassable difference somewhere in the animal kingdom,
it is between the vertebrate and the invertebrate animals. Whilst the
first show an admirable unity of organic composition, the second do
not seem to have any at all, so that they do not admit of serial or
linear classification. Each of the groups which they form is united
by some particularity to all the other groups, and naturalists have
even been able to differ about what must be considered as the highest
round in the animal ladder. The organism of the invertebrata possesses
a flexibility and immense variety, which is almost a characteristic
special to these beings in which the nervous system ceases to present
the profound unity which we see in the vertebrata; whilst the entire
group has only a negative characteristic, _the want of vertebræ_, which
is sufficient alone to show how unnatural it is. As for the rest, the
vertebrate animal, even at the first moment of his embryo life, is
absolutely irreducible to any invertebrate type whatsoever, contrary
to Lamarck’s opinion. A vertebrate is to an invertebrate as two first
numbers are to one another; all the vertebrata, on the contrary, are
one to another as a simple number raised to different powers; they can
all be brought back to their origin, and both the most complicated and
the most elevated of the series are only the most simple ones arrived
at a state of considerable perfection.

A still weaker side of Lamarck’s theory is certainly the decided
influence which he attributes to the _actions_ and _habits_ of
organised beings, so as to modify them by their own means. The pedantic
caprice of his enemies has always hit on this point. “The habit of
exercising an organ,” he says, “makes it acquire developments and
dimensions which insensibly change it, so that in time it becomes very
different. On the contrary, the faulty continual exercise of an organ
impoverishes it gradually, and ends by destroying it.”[303] But it must
not be thought that Lamarck gave an _appreciable_ alteration to the
organ,--an alteration sufficiently rapid to be noticed by ourselves.
If some passages of his works make the reader think so, it is plain
that they are only the wanderings of a great mind, always weak on the
side of the ideas which he has created, and which he cherishes. Lamarck
knew very well that an _infinite time_ is the condition of unlimited
variability.[304]

Darwin is the direct successor of Lamarck, and, in our opinion, the
success of his book both in England and France is an index of the
progress which scientific ideas have made, since the days of Cuvier,
in the path of liberty and independence. Darwin, like Lamarck, admits
unlimited variety; he thinks that all animals must descend from four
or five primitive types, and plants from about an equal number; he
is almost disposed to admit but one primordial type for all organic
nature.[305]

Darwin, however, seems to us to have fallen into a grievous
exaggeration, or error of interpretation, formerly laid to Lamarck’s
charge, while he is at the same time defending an excellent cause.
Without speaking here of the relationship (forced, in our opinion)
which Darwin makes out between wild and domestic animals (of which we
have before spoken), the learned Englishman seems to have accorded too
much to individual action in the production of specific modification.
He sees a powerful activity, which he calls _natural selection_, where
we can only see absolute passiveness. We will explain what we mean:
in the midst of this vital concurrence, which he has in part so well
described,--in the midst of this immense struggle, where all which
has life on our planet is engaged in combat one against the other, or
against all, on this eternal field of battle, where the victors become
the victims, Darwin supposes that an animal brings into the world with
him, _by chance_, some psychological modification, or some anatomical
disposition, which is individually advantageous to him in the great
struggle for life; after this he will have a chance of being among the
victors, of uniting himself to another animal as happily endowed by
birth by having also conquered; they will together leave a numerous
posterity, and there is every chance that some of the descendants of
such a couple may inherit either the same instinctive disposition or
the same conformation; definitively, and by the repeated action of
this natural proceeding, a new variety can be formed, and may either
supplant the parent species or coexist with it.[306]

Such is, in a few words, the theory of natural selection. In our ideas,
there is here a false interpretation of facts; we do not believe in
this _chance_ of a native disposition, which thus transmits itself in
order to become in time a specific characteristic. We have shown,
while speaking of hybridity, that a native _individual_ disposition
ought always to disappear by the mere fact of its being individual;
it quickly disappears through cross-breeding at the tenth generation,
if not at the first, in the midst of a population which does not
possess it. We fully admit, like Lamarck, that species are formed from
one another by the appearance of organic modifications, more or less
decided; but we do not leave anything to chance in this phenomenon, as
Darwin does, and we can only see there the application of general laws.

It is not one or two animals, born with some special psychological or
anatomical disposition, who are destined to generalise themselves by
generation: it will be _all_ the individuals of the same species in a
certain radius, who will be born with a scarcely appreciable organic
modification, resulting, as far as we can tell, in an action of the
medium also nearly inappreciable by ourselves, but which long ago
will have made itself felt by the parents. The new variety will be
propagated quite naturally, since it is general, and can but increase
with each generation as long as the modifying cause continues to act.

Étienne Geoffroy had been the worthy successor of Lamarck, with
a larger and more philosophical mind. He never fell into his
exaggerations, nor into the restrictive applications of the system,
like Darwin. Let us see how Isidore Geoffroy[307] continues his
father’s theory: “Species is variable under the influence of the
ambient medium; differences, more or less considerable according to the
power of the modifying causes, may in time be produced, and the present
beings may be the descendants of the former being.” This doctrine is
our own also.

As to the idea of limited variety, propounded by Isidore Geoffroy,
we can only see in it an unfortunate restriction of his father’s
theory,--one of those errors into which even the most judicious minds
are liable to fall. Limited! Does he mean that there is a point where
these variations stop, and consequently a point where they have
commenced? Does he mean that some neighbouring animal species are
derived from a given prototype, similar to themselves, and without
any antecedents in the organic world? This is to return to Cuvier!
Limited! Does he mean that the modifications will not be considerable
in the present state of things, on account of this present state being
more or less modified? It comes to nothing directly we admit variety
as a consequence of the medium. Étienne Geoffroy was led by this kind
of idea, when, limiting his view to the short period of historical
time, and thinking he had discovered that our present climates do not
sensibly alter existing species,[308] he asked, “if there had not been
on the earth revolutions and disturbances of so vast a character that
their influence may not have been enormous; whilst in our days, changes
may have been according to the power of their effects, that is to say,
almost nothing.” And he explained everything by this convenient theory
of geological floods.

Before going farther, let us consider what we ought to think about
the disturbances of the terrestrial globe thus invoked by Étienne
Geoffroy. Now, to our mind, we have no authentic proof that the past of
our planet has really been marked by such frightful revolutions, and
geology does not make the tradition as clear as some have desired. We
think, although this is not the place to prove it, that if the changes
which have happened to the surface of the globe have been considerable,
they ought to be proportionally _weak_, resulting less from sudden and
powerful efforts than from those small and continuous actions[309] in
which nature puts forth its most formidable energies, but the progress
of which is not to be measured by the memory of man. In general, our
mind seizes but badly the notion of duration beyond certain limits. It
is not the same with the notion of force. Hence, the belief in floods.
In the presence of gigantic effects, the mind, in the appreciation of
the movers of this effect, has done what we have done every day in
mechanics. “It has changed mind into force.” It is certain that weak
but continuous forces (everywhere, however, the most powerful) have
been able to play a grander part in the history of our globe, than
these disturbances which we are in the habit of seeing everywhere.

We consider that there ought to be an entire revolution in the system
of geological research; it ought to commence at ancient times, and
come down to the present day, not _vice versâ_; we ought, in fact, to
substitute synthetic for analytical geology. After having carefully
noticed contemporaneous phenomena, we should doubtless be in time able
to read simply the trace of a feeble revolution in the geological
past, accomplished under the government of the same forces which are
daily preparing new lands, new elevations, new depressions, and a new
organic world on the surface of the globe, for the future. If it is
probable that the atmosphere has changed within certain limits, if
the nature of the waters has also been altered,--at least all these
geological phenomena, these abysses, chains of mountains, and submerged
continents, can only be the result of the forces now at work under our
own eyes,--the comparison of animals which formerly existed with those
which exist at the present day, shows, as we shall see farther on, that
the conditions of life have not sensibly changed on the surface of the
globe since the formation of the rocks subjacent to the metamorphous
rocks.

We deny that the earth is actually passing through a period of repose,
and we do not believe that it has ever formerly been more disturbed.
Since the age of the first vestiges of the organic life, which we find
in the most ancient rocks, we think that our planet has not ceased to
move in a calm and continuous march of existence; we think, in fact,
that geological phenomena of all sorts, which we hear of now-a-days,
are the exact history of the past, during which some volcanic phenomena
have also taken place, but in an entirely sporadic manner. “The day
is, perhaps, not very distant,” said M. Lartet, at the Institute,[310]
in 1858, “when it will be proposed to strike out the word ‘flood’
from the vocabulary of positive geology.” This day approaches still
nearer.[311]

Before mooting, in our turn, a theory about the vertebrate animal
kingdom (the only one which ought to occupy our attention) on the
surface of the globe, we simply ask, what is meant by Étienne Geoffroy
by the words _some considerable time_? This is a difficulty, we own,
and we have just said so. We wish that the thirty thousand years,[312]
the maximum time which we give to the farthest origin of man, should be
considered as being the age which separates us from the first organic
matter cast into the bosom of the waters, in the same proportion as the
radius of the earth is to the distance which separates our sun from the
most distant star of the most distant nebulous system which the best
telescope can observe. The extent alone of the heavens can give us an
idea of the extent of the past.

This being granted, let us see how we can represent the history of
organic development upon the earth in a few words, without hiding from
ourselves the immense obscurity which covers all origins. We are here
expressing merely a hypothesis. It will suffice us to see if this
hypothesis will agree in a satisfactory manner with the facts noticed
at the present day, on the surface and in the interior of the globe.

At the origin of the vertebrate world, since we are only examining
this, it seems rational to admit a primordial commencement, which
nothing prevents us from considering as a new and special combination
of organic matter, derived from the invertebrate world, which we may
believe to have formerly existed. In the heart of this _embryo_ will
have appeared, by spontaneous generation, the first organism connected
with the vertebrate type. This was, doubtless, a simple anatomical
element, like that which histologists see every day formed in certain
granular liquids.

We do not imagine that the origin of life can be otherwise represented;
for to admit, as Isidore Geoffroy has done in certain passages of his
works, that the will of a God peopled the earth suddenly with perfect
beings, fit for producing other beings like themselves, would be to
admit a miracle, and science teaches us at the present day what to
think of all divine interventions, either past or present.[313]

We defy anyone to get out of this alternative,--either that there
was an instantaneous and miraculous creation of a certain number of
perfect animals;[314] or that there was a successive evolution, which
is Lamarck’s idea, modified by the sense of the new knowledge which we
have at the present day, arising, on the one hand, from geology, and on
the other, from philosophical anatomy.

Let us return to this primordial anatomical element which we may
call _individual-element_. It virtually represents a vertebrate
animal just as the ovum detached from the ovary of the female
represents a man, who is only waiting for favourable circumstances
in order to develope himself. This individual-element, according
to our hypothesis, is at first simply reproduced; then, after some
considerable time, its descendants, will, little by little, in their
own sphere of activity, give birth to other elements in juxtaposition
to themselves, in this manner perfecting it and identifying it more and
more with the vertebrate type which it offers for our consideration.
After some considerable time vertebrates of as simple an organism
as mixinæ and lampreys will have thus appeared. Then, again, after
another considerable lapse of time--millions of centuries, rather
than thousands--these animals with elementary vertebra will have
successively produced, by transformation, all the vertebrata which
stock the globe at the present day.

We must here make an important remark. We have inferred by all which
precedes this, that the vertebrata of the present day and the fossil
vertebrata all descend from the same individual-element prototype,
whose existence we have admitted. In one word, we think that all
the vertebrata, both present and past, have the same genealogy, and
are all relations. That may doubtless be the case; but nothing will
make us admit that there once existed on our planet conditions fit
for the birth of this individual-element prototype, and that these
circumstances have never since been represented; so that the most
simple vertebrata of our time may very well descend from a less ancient
spontaneous genesis than the mammalia and man himself. Nothing hinders
such a supposition. It does not cost us any more to admit that one day
or other a simple organic element is formed, endowed with a life of
its own, and, even more, with a latent life, which it can, by means of
time and circumstances, diffuse around it; it does not cost us more to
admit this than to admit that similar elements have arisen at different
periods of time. This last supposition may even be regarded as so much
more probable, that we must renounce entirely, in order to explain
specific transformations, the influence of the geological revolutions
of which Étienne Geoffroy took so much account. We have seen higher up
that these were far from being proved; we can add, in support of our
assertion, a fact which we think has not been sufficiently remarked. If
these revolutions ever existed, we have a strong proof that they have
only very slightly altered the conditions of life on the surface of
the globe, at least since the ancient periods during which the first
alluvium was deposited; if we dredge some yards deep in the ocean,
the drag brings up terebratulæ and encrini; that is to say, animals
identical with those which we find in the most ancient alluvia. Is
it not remarkable that the lowest placed fossil in the stratigraphic
ladder of the beds of the terrestrial surface, the most ancient fossil
which we know, is precisely this same terebratula, which still lives
in our seas? What must we hence conclude? That there once existed on
the globe, at least to a certain extent, conditions of aquatic life
sensibly identical with those which exist at the present day.

Whether all the species of vertebrata descend from one original
spontaneous beginning, or from many successive ones, signifies very
little, since, in the second case, the primordial individual-elements
which have thus appeared at various times, would always show a great
analogy to one another.

Now, after all that we have said, this is how we may, in our opinion,
represent by a graphic figure the whole of the vertebrate kingdom,[315]
in the present and in the past. Let us image a conical figure: the
individual-element of which we have spoken will occupy its summit.
From this point a number of straight lines, few at first, will start,
branching off and always multiplying themselves with more or less
regularity, but so as to form an immense cone.[316]

Each of these straight lines would represent a _specific modification_,
accomplished after a certain number of generations under the combined
influence of the ambient medium and of some considerable time: in other
terms, each ramification would represent a species having once existed
or now existing on our planet. The length of each line would measure
the time which the species in question has existed. These lines would
never converge, because we do not believe in the creation of permanent
species by means of hybridity.

Now the mind must admit here all possible combinations; certain species
have disappeared without producing any others after them:--others exist
actually without our having any idea of one of the intermediary species
which have been allied to primitive species;--others have subsisted
slightly or not at all altered from the remotest antiquity up to our
own days, thus becoming through contemporaneous time the transformed
descendants of fossil species, of which they were also formerly the
contemporaries; it is even not impossible but that certain species
succeeding one another may have presented a retrograde evolution,
so that we must not always conclude that because one animal is only
inferior to another, it has therefore preceded it:--without going so
far as all this, the evolution of certain species may have presented
a long time of cessation whilst all others were progressing around
them, so that they appear to have retrograded. This is what has made
M. Michelet[317] say, “Nature has not progressed with a continuous
flow, but with retrograde movements, and stoppages, which allow her to
harmonise everything.” These times of repose in a specific evolution,
as well as the hypothesis of successive geneses which are already
admitted, explain how the stratified beds of the earth’s surface, in
showing from low to high what we may call more perfect organic means,
unveil at the same time to our eyes here and there a certain number of
species, inferior in organisation to those in the most ancient rocks.

As to explaining how a part of the ancient species has been able to
modify itself whilst another has remained stationary, we must admit
that all these influences of _medium_ have always been exclusively
local, so that all the coexisting vertebrata have never been able
to submit at once to its influence. We must understand by medium,
_the whole of the circumstances, past or present, which are able to
influence organism mediately or immediately in any manner whatsoever_.
The ancestors of an animal, as well as the sun which warms it, and the
parasites which devour it, make up a part of this medium.

But if it is easy to explain variety by the medium, it is a difficulty
against which the mind struggles. How can we explain ascending and
progressive variety? must we believe in some finality, an end settled
beforehand? We do not think so. Finality is a sort of divine prevision,
and the world as regards this hypothesis is still in tutelage; we
would rather believe in a creating intelligence. A simple example will
make our meaning understood. In the vegetable world this strikes us
forcibly:--the most simply formed plants are precisely those which
approach most nearly to animals by reason of their physiological
manifestations.[318] The plants which they call superior, by placing
them in an organographic point of view, are in reality inferior,
so that these plants are simple in reference to the dicotyledons
which have necessarily succeeded them, and there has been in reality
a retrograde march of life, instead of the ascending march of the
animal kingdom. Must we seek for the reason of this difference in the
presence of a nervous system? We think so. We then would admit that
organism would tend to modify itself by an inconscient act of the will,
analogous to those which rule most physiological actions; this would be
something like the possible increase or growth of the head by reason
of the influence of civilisation of which we have before spoken.[319]
And whilst all the specific varieties would result among plants from
the influence of the physical medium, we must add to the notion of this
medium, as regards animals, the nervous activity of the ancestors.

By the side of this creating influence we must recognise in the medium
a parallel destructive influence. Now, we can appreciate this every
day. The present tells us about the past; we cannot doubt but that
species formerly disappeared exactly as we see them still disappear
under our eyes by the manifestation of some new condition of the
medium; these may be sudden; volcanic phenomena, floods, extreme
variations of temperature, diseases, famines, enemies--all these
hypotheses are possible, and all equally reasonable: the _dodo_ has
disappeared some years ago, having been destroyed by the hand of
man; they say that the _apterix_ will soon disappear in the same
way, devoured by cats. But actions only moderately destructive were
doubtless otherwise very important, and we find here all the phenomena
which have been so well described, and so well explained by Darwin[320]
under the name of _vital competition_. By this we see, even since
the most ancient historic periods, that certain savage animals, like
the lion,[321] crocodile,[322] and hippopotamus,[323] retire before
mankind; that the black rat is disappearing in Europe to give place
to the field mouse, and that a race of savages disappears when their
country begins to be inhabited by a more civilised race, even when the
victors in this organic, as well as political, struggle, are not able
to reproach themselves with any cruelty.

Now, let us apply to man the theory of the origin of species which we
wish to be dominant, for there is no reason to think that man forms
any exception to the common rule. Before all things, we must remember
that human races cannot lend themselves to any classification in
natural series. It is also as impossible for the naturalist to point
out a race at the present day from which all the others are derived,
either parallelly or successively, as for the historian to discover
in the past any trace of a homogeneous humanity. If even such an
uniformity had ever existed, how would the remembrance of it have been
kept, for it is evident that this primitive form, constituting at the
beginning all the human genus, would be the same _inferior_ form, such
as the Negro or the Bosjesman, for instance, nature rising in general
from inferiority to perfection. This was for a long time Prichard’s
idea, and certain monogenists think the same at the present day. This
hypothesis, entering at its basis into the doctrine of evolution, has
nothing in itself which is startling; we can only say one thing against
it, and that is in its admitting as proved that filiation which would
connect one with the other all the groups composing in our times the
genus _homo_. For our part, we wish simply to extend the same manner
of viewing the matter, to generalise it, and to place it in relation
with this immense unknown which is behind us, and of which monogenists
do not take enough notice. We maintain that there has existed in the
night of time a certain species, less perfect than the most imperfect
man, remounting by a certain number of intermediary species, of whose
nature it is impossible for us at present to form any idea,--to
this primordial vertebrate animal which we admit. This species, a
rough outline of what man now is, gave birth, after a considerable
time, to many other species, whose parallel and unequal evolution,
following what we have said concerning animals, has at the present
day as contemporaneous (but not the last) illustration, the different
_species_ of men designated by the name of races. So that all humanity
would be in relationship, if the expression be allowed us, not in the
_serial sense_, as monogenists take it, but in the _collateral sense_,
and at a degree which we cannot determine; the prognathous races
probably less deviated from the former type, the others more separated
from this type, and more perfect.

It may be seen, and we are bound to make the remark, that we no more
pretend to make man a descendant of the ape, than a white man a
descendant of a Negro; but it is not impossible, in our opinion, that
species of men, as well as the great apes whose relationship hurts our
vanity so much, may remount infinitely far in the past to an unknown
single species, whose descendants, submitted to multiplied influences,
might be modified in different ways by reason of these different
influences.

We admit, then, that species is an instant of a constant evolution;
that it does not exist by itself; and that it is only an appreciation
of our senses, localised by time. In our opinion, if species is fixed,
it is fixed after the manner of the sun. That is to say, that we cannot
perceive any movement in it beyond the merest trifle.

It requires thousands of years to discover either solar displacement or
specific alteration. This is what makes the determination of species so
difficult; some of which may be considered as in progress of formation
in reference to others. The difficulty is the same with mankind as it
is with animals. We would not dare to contradict, for instance, the
opinions of those who see in the Hindú, German, and Celtic population
three species in course of formation, all three being probably derived
from a species anterior to that which history endeavours at the present
day to name; that Aryan race of which such a noble picture is made,
and which we believe to be primitive because it is in the horizon of
history, just as the ancients saw in the ocean the limits of the world.
In a short time, perhaps, some discovery in a poor Asiatic field will
take away from the Aryas the characteristic nobility and intelligence
which we give to them with so much satisfaction. It belongs to human
palæontology alone to enlighten us upon the origin of the _present_
human types; it alone can lead us in a sure path towards the great
problem of their origin.

But both geology, and palæontology which depends on it, have the
singular destiny of showing at one and the same time both great
certainties and insoluble doubts. The stratification of rocks, for
example, gives us very clearly the notion of the succession of
these rocks with regard to one another. But it leaves us in absolute
ignorance of all which has passed between the deposit of one stratum
and the deposit of that which we meet with above it; in this unknown
time all may take place, ten series of rocks may have been placed upon
it, and then have been so well mingled together that we cannot discover
their individual trace. Who will tell us about the continents engulphed
by the sea; has it not already ground up under its waves those
memorials of ancient days, which would be so useful to us as a means of
reconstructing the history of man? Geology is a gigantic inscription
lacerated for ever: each age will decipher some fragment, but we shall
never be able to read it in its perfect state.

Besides its great advantages, palæontological inquiry has its great
inconveniences. Its advantages are the studying of animal forms
which are fixed for ever, and not seeing the field of such studies
continually increasing on our view. The limit of its inquiries is the
origin of the alluvium; all the facts which we are thereby called
upon to study are within this boundary. Palæontology alone, among the
sciences of the present day, knows the extent of its domain.

But palæontology, proceeding step by step, by blows of the pickaxe in
an otherwise inaccessible mass, is composed of two orders of facts,
which must be distinguished one from the other, resting either on
affirmative evidence (the existence of organic remains in a rock) or
on negative evidence (the absence of organic remains in a rock). Human
palæontology itself has its own inconveniences. A bone or a skull of
a man are things which are well known; they have not that strange
appearance in the eyes of the crowd which makes them take ammonites
for petrified serpents, hamites[324] for leeches, radiated animals for
stars; when we dig up some singular bone, some carapace of a lizard, a
fish, or of some unknown animal, we pick it up, and take great care of
it. But if it is a man’s head, it is generally replaced religiously in
the earth, and these remains are for ever lost to the scientific world.

There result from all this two sorts of ideas in palæontology, the one
positive, the other negative: it is true, however, that the latter
diminish continually the profit we obtain from the former, and it is
important to remember that this negative evidence is the only basis
upon which rests the hypothesis that man is so new to our globe as some
imagine. Every moment we may expect to see the interior of the earth
prove the contrary. Instead of discoveries following one another, and
being linked together as in other sciences, forming a whole which hangs
together by itself, palæontology goes on from hand to mouth, as it
were, at the caprice of whatever may happen, without knowing the wonder
which is about to be revealed, perhaps at a few steps from a path which
millions of men have passed by.

It is very true that the human bones which have hitherto been found
in the ground in caverns seem to proceed from a form but slightly
different from our own; but all this is very recent, relatively to this
_considerable time_ of which we have before spoken. Who can say but
that we may find very soon a skull which must be classed, whether one
will or not, between the anthropomorphous apes and man?

Étienne Geoffroy, led by the logical nature of his ideas, naturally
admitted this intermediary form, anterior to our own; but seeing the
mammalia of the last geological ages generally larger than those
which are contemporary with ourselves, he concluded besides that our
immediate ancestors were giants, and that we have degenerated, like the
descendants of the bears and hyenas found in caverns.[325] Nothing has
appeared in order to justify this hypothesis, and everything seems to
show that since that epoch the height of the genus _homo_ has not much
altered, whilst the size of the different genera of ferines, ruminants,
and pachyderms has positively varied.

_Recapitulation._ Since we have found that man is comparable in all
points to animals, we ought to seek for him and for them a common
origin, and the difficulty of admitting an initial miracle has led us
to the idea of _evolution_. If in the science of observation it is
permitted to refer to general ideas, assuredly it is so in this case;
philosophy commences where science ends, and it belongs to it to give
us an explanation of the matter; but we must wait for the future for a
true positive solution of the problem, perhaps from advanced geology,
perhaps from experiments. The genius of man has no bounds, who can say
to what it may reach? who knows whether, like a new Prometheus,[326]
a creator in his turn, he may not one day breathe life into some new
species, which will suddenly appear from his laboratories?




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.




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