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Title: The human species
Author: Quatrefages, Armand de
Language: English
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THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.
THE
HUMAN SPECIES.
BY
A. DE QUATREFAGES,
PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, PARIS.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
549 AND 551 BROADWAY.
1879.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
EMPIRES AND KINGDOMS OF NATURE.—THE HUMAN KINGDOM.—ANTHROPOLOGICAL
METHOD 1
CHAPTER II.
GENERAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL DOCTRINES; MONOGENISM AND POLYGENISM 30
CHAPTER III.
SPECIES AND RACE IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 35
CHAPTER IV.
NATURE OF VARIATIONS IN ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE RACES;
APPLICATION TO MAN 41
CHAPTER V.
EXTENT OF VARIATIONS IN ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE RACES;
APPLICATION TO MAN 47
CHAPTER VI.
INTERCROSSING AND FUSION OF CHARACTERS IN ANIMAL RACES;
APPLICATION TO MAN 56
CHAPTER VII.
CROSSING OF RACES AND SPECIES IN THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE
KINGDOMS.—MONGRELS AND HYBRIDS 63
CHAPTER VIII.
CROSSING BETWEEN VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL RACES AND SPECIES;
MONGRELS AND HYBRIDS; REALITY OF SPECIES 70
CHAPTER IX.
CROSSING BETWEEN HUMAN GROUPS.—UNITY OF THE HUMAN
SPECIES 85
BOOK II.
ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER X.
ORIGIN OF SPECIES.—HYPOTHESES OF TRANSMUTATION.—DARWINISM 89
CHAPTER XI.
ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.—DIFFERENT HYPOTHESES 104
BOOK III.
ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER XII.
AGE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.—PRESENT GEOLOGICAL EPOCH 129
CHAPTER XIII.
AGE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.—PAST GEOLOGICAL EPOCHS 142
BOOK IV.
ORIGINAL LOCALISATION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER XIV.
AGASSIZ’S THEORY.—CENTRES OF CREATION 154
CHAPTER XV.
PROGRESSIVE LOCALISATION OF ORGANISED BEINGS.—CENTRES OF
APPEARANCE.—ORIGINAL LOCALISATION OF MAN 168
BOOK V.
PEOPLING OF THE GLOBE.
CHAPTER XVI.
MIGRATIONS BY LAND.—EXODUS OF THE KALMUCKS FROM THE
VOLGA 179
CHAPTER XVII.
MIGRATIONS BY SEA.—POLYNESIAN MIGRATIONS.—MIGRATIONS TO
NEW ZEALAND 185
CHAPTER XVIII.
MIGRATIONS BY SEA.—MIGRATIONS IN AMERICA 199
BOOK VI.
ACCLIMATISATION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER XIX.
INFLUENCE OF CONDITIONS OF LIFE AND RACE 214
CHAPTER XX.
CONDITIONS OF ACCLIMATISATION 224
BOOK VII.
PRIMITIVE MAN.—FORMATION OF THE HUMAN RACES.
CHAPTER XXI.
PRIMITIVE MAN 239
CHAPTER XXII.
FORMATION OF HUMAN RACES UNDER THE SOLE INFLUENCE OF
CONDITIONS OF LIFE AND HEREDITY 244
CHAPTER XXIII.
FORMATION OF MIXED HUMAN RACES 260
CHAPTER XXIV.
INFLUENCE OF CROSSING UPON MIXED HUMAN RACES 276
BOOK VIII.
FOSSIL HUMAN RACES.
CHAPTER XXV.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS 287
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CANSTADT RACE 302
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE CRO-MAGNON RACE 311
CHAPTER XXVIII.
RACES OF FURFOOZ 337
BOOK IX.
PRESENT HUMAN RACES.—PHYSICAL CHARACTERS.
CHAPTER XXIX.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.—EXTERNAL CHARACTERS 349
CHAPTER XXX.
ANATOMICAL CHARACTERS 370
CHAPTER XXXI.
PHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERS 409
CHAPTER XXXII.
PATHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS 422
BOOK X.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS 431
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MORAL CHARACTERS 459
CHAPTER XXXV.
RELIGIOUS CHARACTERS 473
THE HUMAN SPECIES.
BOOK I.
UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER I.
EMPIRES AND KINGDOMS OF NATURE.—THE HUMAN KINGDOM.—ANTHROPOLOGICAL
METHOD.
I. The naturalist who meets with an object for the first time,
instinctively asks the question:—What is this object? This question
leads to another:—With what other objects shall I class it? To what
group, and, in the first place, to what kingdom does it belong? Is it
a mineral, a plant, or an animal?
The answer is not always easy. We know that, in what may be called
the basis of each kingdom, there are ambiguous forms, whose nature
has long been, and still is, the subject of contention among
naturalists. We know that polyps were long regarded as plants, and
that nullipores, at first taken for polyps, are now divided between
the vegetable and mineral kingdoms; and, finally, we know that even
now, botanists and zoologists dispute over certain diatoms and
transfer them from one kingdom to the other.
Similarly the question has been asked:—What is man? and it has been
answered from several points of view. To the naturalist it has but
one meaning, and signifies, in which kingdom must man be placed? or
better: is man an animal?
In spite of all the differences which a comparison of man with the
mammalia presents, should he be classed with them? This question is
similar to that which Peysonnel is said to have asked himself, when,
struck by the special phenomena presented by the coral, he asked
himself whether the object before him was a vegetable.
It is evident that, in order to solve the first problem which arises
from a study of the natural history of man, we must have a clear idea
what are these great groups of beings, which are called kingdoms; we
must give an account of the characters which distinguish and separate
them from each other, and then of their true scientific meaning. It
will be sufficient for the purpose to explain the well-known laws of
Linnæus, supplementing the theory of the immortal Swede by some ideas
borrowed from Pallas and de Candolle, and by one of the fundamental
conceptions which Adamson and A. L. de Jussieu have almost equally
contributed to introduce into science.
II. It is impossible for anyone, whether learned or otherwise, not to
recognise at once the difference between two kinds of objects very
distinct from each other: inanimate bodies and organised beings.
These are the two groups into which Pallas has divided kingdoms under
the name of empires. Their distinction is generally easy, and I shall
confine myself to recalling some of the most essential differences.
Inanimate bodies, when placed under favourable circumstances, last
for an indefinite time, neither taking nor giving anything to the
surrounding world; organised beings, under whatever conditions they
are placed, only last for a fixed period of time, and, during this
existence, undergo every moment losses of substance which they repair
by means of materials taken from without. Inanimate bodies, even
when they assume the fixed and definite form of crystals, are formed
independently of all other bodies resembling them; they have from
their commencement fixed forms, and increase simply by superposition
of new layers. Every organised being is connected either directly or
indirectly with a similar being, in the interior of which it first
appeared in the form of a germ, then grew and acquired its definite
form by intussusception.
In other words, filiation, nutrition, birth and death, are so many
characteristics of the organised being, of which no trace is found
in inanimate bodies. I agree with Pallas in making inanimate bodies
compose the Inorganic Empire, and organised beings the Organic Empire.
I must here make an observation, the importance of which will be
easily understood.
The existence of the two groups which have been recognised by the
good sense of the general public as well as by the science of
Pallas, is a fact absolutely independent of all hypothesis. Whatever
explanation we may propose to account for the differential phenomena
which distinguish them, these phenomena will not the less exist; the
inanimate body will never be an organised being.
To attempt, under any pretext whatever, to reconcile or confound
these two kinds of objects with each other, is to go in direct
opposition to all the progress made for more than a century, and
especially during the last few years, in physics, chemistry and
physiology. It is inexplicable to me that some men, whose merits I
otherwise acknowledge, should have recently again compared crystals
to the simplest living forms, to the sarcodic organisms, as they were
called by Dujardin, who discovered them, and was the first to give a
comprehensive theory of them from minute observations. A change of
name is useless; the things remain the same, and protoplasm has the
same properties as sarcode. The animals, whose entire substance they
seem to form, have not altered their nature; whether monera or amœbæ,
these forms are the antipodes of the crystal from every point of view.
A crystal, as M. Naudin has well remarked, closely resembles one
of those regular piles of shot which may be seen in every arsenal.
It only increases from the exterior, as the pile is increased when
the soldier adds a fresh layer of shot; its molecules are just as
immovable as the balls of iron. It is exactly the contrary with the
organised being, and the simpler its composition the greater the
contrast. The small size of the moneron and the amœba prevents,
it is true, certain observations. I appeal, however, to all those
naturalists who have studied certain marine sponges in a living
state. They must like myself have remarked the strange activity of
the _vital whirlpool_ in the semi-sarcodic substance which surrounds
their siliceous or horny skeleton; they will have seen the sea water
in which they are placed move with a rapidity which it never exhibits
when in contact with any other animal.
The reason is that, in the organised being, the repose of the crystal
is replaced by an incessant movement; that, instead of remaining
immovable and unalterable, the molecules are unceasingly undergoing
transformation, changing their composition, producing fresh
substances, retaining some and rejecting others. Far from resembling
a pile of shot, the organised being may much rather be compared to
the combination of a number of physico-chemical apparatus, constantly
in action to burn or reduce materials borrowed from without, and ever
making use of their own substance for its incessant renewal.
In other words, in the crystal once formed the forces remain in a
state of _stable equilibrium_, which is only interrupted by the
influence of exterior causes. Hence the possibility of its indefinite
continuance without any change either of its forms or of its
properties. In the organised being the equilibrium is _unstable_, or
rather, there is no equilibrium properly so called. Every moment the
organised being expends as much _force_ as _matter_, and owes its
continuance solely to the _balance of the gain and loss_. Hence the
possibility of a modification of its properties and form without its
ceasing to exist.
Such are the bare facts which rest upon no hypothesis whatever; and
how can we, in the presence of these facts, compare the crystal which
grows in a saline solution to the germ which becomes in succession
embryo, fœtus, and finally a complete animal? How can we confuse the
_inanimate body_ with the _organised being_.
The two groups are easily separated by the phenomena they exhibit. It
is the same with the causes of the phenomenon.
Naturalists and physiologists are here divided. Some would have it
that the cause, or the causes, are identical, and that conditions,
which are almost accidental, alone determine the difference in
the results by changing their mode of action. In their opinion
the formation of a crystal or of a moneron is only a question of
resultant.
Others consider living beings as the result of a cause entirely
different from those which act in inanimate bodies, and refer to this
cause alone everything which takes place in these beings.
These two methods appear to me, from the exclusive element in each,
to be equally ill-founded. It cannot be denied that phenomena
identical with those characteristic of inanimate bodies are found in
organised beings, and we have, therefore, no scientific reason to
attribute them to different causes.
But organised beings have also their special phenomena radically
distinct from, or even opposed to, the former. Is it possible to
refer all of them to one, or to several, identical causes? I think
not. For this reason, I admit with a great number of eminent men
of every age and country, and, I believe, with the majority of
those that respect modern science, that organised beings owe their
distinctive characteristics to a _Special Cause_, to a _Special
Force_, to _Life_, which in them is associated with the inorganic
forces. For this reason I consider it legitimate to call them _Living
Beings_.
I shall often, however, return to this class of considerations,
in order to make it quite clear in what sense I take these words,
_Force_, and _Life_.
III. The two Empires of Pallas are themselves sub-divided into
Kingdoms, which are characterised by special facts and phenomena,
becoming more and more complicated as we ascend the scale of nature.
And, in the first place, I distinctly admit with de Candolle the
existence of a _Sidereal Kingdom_. To any one who considers, as
far as we are able, the little that we know of the universe, the
celestial bodies, suns, planets, and comets or satellites only
appear as molecules of the great All which fills indefinite Space.
One general phenomenon which is unchangeable, however varied in its
forms, is, as it were, the attribute of these bodies. All, whether
gaseous or solid, obscure or luminous, hot or cold, move within
curves of the same nature, obeying the laws discovered by Kepler. It
is now well known that _fixed stars_ do not exist.
In order to explain this _phenomenon_ philosophers have admitted the
existence of a _force_ which they have called _Gravitation_, the
effect of which is to precipitate the stars towards one another,
as if they mutually attracted each other, whilst obeying the laws
of Newton. Now it is well known that the great Englishman himself
gave no opinion upon the mode of action of this force, and that
he hesitated between the hypothesis of _Attraction_ and that of
_Impulsion_. The first should prevail as being more in accordance
with the immediate results of observation; but the second also has
had serious partisans, among whom I will only mention M. de Tessan.
Thus Newton, in spite of all his genius, cannot tell us what was the
cause of the movement of the stars; he was not even able to determine
the immediate mode of action of this cause; and yet there is not a
scientific term more universally received than that of _Gravitation_,
there is not a case in which the expression _Force_ is more generally
accepted. The reason of this is, that in the presence of general
facts and groups of phenomena, it is necessary to make use of terms
as simple as possible. We must, however, avoid the delusion of
thinking that _naming_ is equivalent to _explaining_.
In cases analogous to that of which we have been treating, the word
Force merely indicates the presence of an _Unknown Cause_, which
gives rise to a _group of fixed phenomena_. In assigning names to
each of the Forces or Unknown Causes to which we consider ourselves
able to refer certain groups of phenomena, we facilitate the
demonstration and discussion of the facts. The scientific man knows
very well that he cannot go beyond this.
It is in this sense, and in this sense alone, that I have used above
the expressions _Force_ and _Life_. Astronomers consider gravitation
the unknown cause of the movement of the stars; I consider Life
as the unknown cause of the phenomena which are characteristic of
organised beings. It may be that both gravitation and Life, as well
as the other general forces are merely as _x_, of which the equation
has not yet been discovered. I shall presently return to these
considerations.
Be this as it may, whatever our real ignorance, whatever the Cause
of which we are here treating, and though _Impulsion_ should one day
replace _Attraction_ in our Theories, the facts would still remain
the same. The stars would still be distributed through space, and
subject to the laws of Newton and Kepler; they would still constitute
a perfectly distinct whole, in the part assigned to the bodies which
compose it, and in the nature of the relations which unite them. They
would still form the _Sidereal Kingdom_.
This kingdom is then characterised by a _general phenomenon_, the
_Keplerian Movement_, which may be attributed to a single force,
namely that of _gravitation_.
IV. Let us now return to the Earth, the only celestial body which
we can study in detail. Modern discoveries, however, judging from
the relation of the elements and their mutual action, make it almost
certain that the greatest similarity exists between the stars
distributed in space, between all those at least which form part of
our heavens.
Let us first establish the fact that upon our globe we again meet
with the Keplerian Movement in falling bodies. Attraction is here
represented by _Weight_. Gravitation reappears with all its laws,
acting upon grains of dust as it acts upon worlds. The parts of the
whole, of cosmos, as Humboldt would have said, cannot escape from the
force which governs the whole.
But upon the surface of our Earth and in its interior, as far as
we have been able to penetrate either by direct observation or
scientific induction, we notice the appearance of other movements
which are not subject to the laws of Kepler or Newton; phenomena
appear which are entirely new and perfectly distinct from those due
to gravitation. They are the _physico-chemical_ phenomena. From their
number and their difference in character they were long attributed
to the action of distinct forces which were called _Electricity_,
_Heat_, _Magnetism_, etc. Modern science, however, by transforming,
so to speak, one into the other, has demonstrated their original
unity. Physicists refer them all to nothing more than so many
manifestations of the undulations of ether. The vibration of the
latter is then the fundamental phenomenon from which all the others
rise.
But this ether is absolutely hypothetical; its nature is perfectly
unknown; no one knowing whence it acquires this quantity of movement,
which, according to actual theory, should be subject neither to
increase nor diminution. Now, in reality, we have here the _Unknown
cause_ of all physico-chemical phenomena. For this reason, and also
for convenience, we shall give a name to this unknown cause, to this
_force_, and call it _Etherodynamy_ (Ethérodynamie).
But is not Etherodynamy only a particular form, a simple
modification, or an effect of gravitation? Are not these two forces
only different manifestations of a more general force? Many eminent
men are much inclined to admit one or other of these hypotheses.
Still, up to the present time, the facts do not seem to me to shew
much agreement with them. Etherodynamy is displayed even in space and
among the stars by variable, localised and temporary phenomena; the
action of gravitation is one, universal and constant. Man has always
been able to exercise a certain amount of control over the former; he
can produce at will light and heat; modern science cannot act upon
the second. We can neither augment nor diminish, reflect or refract,
or polarise weight; we cannot arrest its action. Even in the fall of
bodies the regularity in the acceleration of the motion proves that
the cause of this movement is subject to no alteration. Here then is
no _transmutation of force_ similar to that in a machine worked by
electricity or heat.
But whatever be the progress of science, and though M. de Tessan’s
theory should be confirmed by experiment, the difference between the
phenomena would not be diminished; the conclusions to be drawn from
the facts in connection with the question we are here discussing
would remain the same.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that the physico-chemical
phenomena produced by etherodynamy can act upon masses or be
exclusively molecular. They are in all cases similar to those which
depend upon gravitation, they are subject to invariable laws and
are always repeated in a similar manner when produced under similar
circumstances.
No antagonism, it is true, exists between gravitation and
etherodynamy. It is no less true that the action of the first is
always disturbed in a peculiar manner by that of the second, and that
in some phenomena it seems as if the latter would neutralise the
former. This fact is most strikingly shown in some of the commonest
experiments in physics. The gold leaves of the electroscope separate,
the pith-balls are attracted towards electrified bodies in spite of
their weight, and are repelled with a rapidity greater than that
which would result merely from their own weight. And yet these bodies
have no more ceased to possess weight than those masses of iron
raised by the powerful magnets of M. Jamin. Etherodynamy in these two
cases merely overcame gravitation and either modified or imitated its
action.
Those terrestrial bodies which present no other phenomena than those
which can be referred to either gravitation or etherodynamy have,
since the time of Linnæus, been termed _Inanimate Bodies_. Together
they constitute the _Mineral Kingdom_. We see that the existence
and the distinction of this group are perfectly independent of any
hypothesis intended to explain the phenomena.
_Two kinds of phenomena_ then are characteristic of the mineral
kingdom: _phenomena of the Keplerian movement_ and _physico-chemical
phenomena_, which may be attributed to the action of two forces:
_gravitation_ and _etherodynamy_.
V. The sidereal and mineral kingdoms form the Inorganic Empire.
Passing from it we enter the domain of organized and living
beings. We have already seen the essential phenomena by which they
are distinguished. These phenomena differ essentially from all
those which we have observed in inanimate bodies. It seems to me,
therefore, necessary to attribute them to a special cause,—to _Life_.
I know that in the present day any one making use of this word is
readily accused by a great number of physicists and chemists, and by
an entire physiological school, of introducing into science a vague
and almost mysterious expression. There is, however, nothing in it
more vague or mysterious than in the word _gravitation_.
It is very true that we do not know _what_ Life _is_; but no more
do we know _what_ the force _is_ that set the stars in motion and
retains them in their orbits. If astronomers have been right in
giving to the _force_, or _unknown cause_, which gives the worlds
their mathematical movements, naturalists have a perfect right to
designate by a special term that _unknown cause_ which produces
filiation, birth and death.
It will be apparent that my idea of Life is not the same as it was
with many ancient vitalists, that it is no more the _arche_ of
van Helmont than the _vital principle_ of Barthez. Its function
appears to me very different to that attributed to it by most
of our predecessors, and which is still attributed to it by some
physiologists.
Far from merely animating the organs, it is closely associated with
the forces of which we have already spoken. Living beings are heavy,
and therefore subject to gravitation; they are the seat of numerous
and various physico-chemical phenomena which are indispensable
to their existence and which must be referred to the action of
etherodynamy. But these phenomena are here manifested under the
influence of _another force_. It is for this reason that the results
of these phenomena are often quite different to those in inanimate
bodies, and that living beings have their special products. Life is
not antagonistic to the inanimate forces, but it governs and rules
their action by its laws. Therefore it makes them produce tissues,
organs and individuals instead of crystals; it organizes germs,
and maintains through space and time, in spite of the most complex
metamorphoses, that _unity of definite living forms_ which we call
_Species_.
If the anti-vitalists would only seriously reflect upon the matter,
they would acknowledge that, considered from this point of view,
there is nothing more mysterious in living beings than in some of the
commonest phenomena presented by inanimate bodies. The intervention
of Life as a modifying agent of actions purely etherodynamic may
be as easily admitted as that of etherodynamy itself modifying and
overcoming the action of weight. It is just as strange to see a
piece of iron attracted and supported by a magnet, as to see carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen combine and dispose themselves so as to
form an animal or vegetable cell instead of any imaginable inorganic
composition.
I have repeatedly, and for many years, maintained the doctrine which
I have summed up here. It seems to me confirmed in the highest degree
by the researches undertaken for the elucidation of the problem of
which we are treating. The experiences of M. Bernard in particular,
relative to the action exercised by anæsthetics upon plants as well
as upon animals, makes it impossible for us to doubt for a moment
the intervention of an agent distinct from physico-chemical forces in
organic beings. In employing the word _Life_ to designate this agent,
I only make use of an established expression, without pretending
to go beyond the information gained from experiment and scientific
observation.
Beings, in which life alone is added to gravitation and etherodynamy
constitute the _Vegetable Kingdom_. Now there is one general fact
displayed by this group, the significance of which has not, it seems
to me, been sufficiently understood. With the exception of certain
phenomena of _unconscious irritability_ which have long been known
in some plants of a superior order, and of facts, probably of the
same class, which have been established chiefly with reference to
some reproductive organs of plants of an inferior order, every
movement which takes place in plants appears to be produced _solely_
by inanimate forces. The transfer of matter in particular, which is
necessary for the development and sustenance of every vegetable,
belongs to actions of this kind. Can we believe that these forces,
as they are known to us from innumerable experiments, could, if left
to themselves, have formed an oak, or even raised a mushroom? Can
we believe that they could have _organised_ the acorn or the spore,
and hidden in those minute bodies the power of reproducing the
parent? And yet without them the vegetable cannot exist. But, in my
opinion, nothing makes their real subordination more apparent than
the importance of their part in the process of execution. They may be
compared to workmen raising an edifice under the eye of the architect
who has made the plan.
Are we then to conclude that life is an intelligent force, conscious
of the part it plays, and enjoying the dominion it exercises over the
subordinate inanimate forces? Not at all. Like these forces, it is
ruled by general and fixed laws. Nevertheless, we do not find in the
application of these laws, and in the results to which they lead, the
mathematical precision of the laws and phenomena of gravitation and
etherodynamy. Their mode of action merely seems to oscillate between
limits which remain impassable. This kind of liberty, and the bounds
imposed upon it, are conspicuous in the constant diversity of the
products of life, a diversity which contrasts in so striking a manner
with the uniformity of the products of etherodynamy. Crystals, when
similar in composition, and when formed under similar circumstances,
resemble each other perfectly; but we never find two leaves exactly
alike upon the same tree.
The vegetable kingdom is, therefore, characterised by _three kinds of
phenomena_: _the Keplerian movement_, _physico-chemical phenomena_,
and _vital phenomena_, which may be ascribed to the action of three
forces: _Gravitation_, _Etherodynamy_, and _Life_.
VI. We find repeated among animals all the phenomena which we have
noticed amongst plants, and, especially in the highest orders, those
movements due to unconscious irritability, of which examples are
presented by plants. Some eminent men, Lamarck among the number,
have even wished to refer all acts performed by inferior animals
to this order of phenomena. But here the author of _La Philosophie
Zoologique_ has fallen into an anatomical error, which has been long
since recognised; and whoever has lived, even for a short time, by
the sea-side, or has followed closely the habits and actions of worms
and zoophytes will certainly protest against this manner of regarding
them.
Passing from the plant to the animal, the latter executes movements
belonging either to the part or to the whole which are perfectly
independent of the laws of gravitation and etherodynamy. The
regulating and determining cause of these movements is evidently
within the animal itself. It is the _Will_. But the Will itself is
intimately connected with _sensibility_ and _consciousness_. To
everyone who judges animals by what he finds takes place within
himself, personal experiment and observation prove that the animal
_feels_, _judges_, and _wills_, that is to say _reasons_, and
consequently is _intelligent_.
This proposition will, I know, be contested by men whose learning
I profoundly respect, and objections will be made on all sides. On
the one hand the Automatism of Descartes will be revived in some
schools, and will now be supported by physiology and the experiments
of vivisection. I am far from denying the great interest which is
attached to the latter, and to the phenomena of reflex actions. But
the conclusions which are drawn from them appear to me singularly
exaggerated; Carpenter has rightly opposed them with personal
experiment. I will add that the study of animals placed far below,
and certainly inferior to, the frog, would doubtless lead to very
different interpretations. Moreover, Huxley himself admits that
animals are probably _sensible_ and _conscious automata_. But if
they were merely machines we should be obliged to allow that they
performed their functions _as if_ they felt, judged, and willed.
On the other hand, in the name of philosophy and psychology, I
shall be accused of confounding certain _intellectual_ attributes
of the human _reason_ with the exclusively _sensitive_ faculties of
animals. I shall presently endeavour to answer this criticism from
the standpoint which should never be quitted by the naturalist, that,
namely, of experiment and observation. I shall here confine myself
to saying that, in my opinion, the animal is _intelligent_, and,
although a _rudimentary_ being, its _intelligence_ is nevertheless
of the _same nature_ as that of man. It is, moreover, very unequally
distributed among the animal species; in this respect there are many
intervening stages between the oyster and the dog.
In addition to the phenomena which spring from the intelligence
and reasoning, we find in animals other impulses which arise from
_Instinct_, a blind impulse, or at least apparently so, which
often is the characteristic of animal species, and with which each
individual is endowed. These two orders of facts are very often
confounded, but the confusion can be explained as follows. In
the first place, instinct has as its object the attainment of a
determined and fixed result, but in the multitude of ways and means
necessary to attain this result a portion which is often very large
is due to the intelligence. The distinction is not always easy. It
will, moreover, be apparent that I cannot here enter into the details
required by the examination of this question, so entirely foreign to
that which is before us.
Besides the acts of intelligence and instinct, phenomena have been
established among animals which are closely connected with what we
call _character_, _sentiment_, or _passion_. The familiarity of the
terms is in itself a proof that upon this point ordinary observation
has outstripped scientific examination.
All these phenomena are perfectly new and have no analogy with those
which we have noticed in the preceding kingdoms. They evidently
justify the formation of an equally important group. The _animal
kingdom_ is thus universally admitted, independently of every theory
which attempts to explain its characters.
Facts radically different cannot be attributed to the same cause. We
must admit, then, that the characteristic phenomena of the animal
depend upon something different to those met with in the vegetable
or mineral kingdoms. They are, moreover, united by such intimate
relations, that it would be impossible not to attribute them to a
single cause. From motives already mentioned we will give a name
to this _Unknown Cause_, and, making use of an expression already
established, though open, I can see, to more than one criticism, we
will call it the _Animal Mind_ (l’âme animale).
Does the animal mind liberate the beings it animates from the
inferior forces? By no means, for we find them repeated with all
their characteristics. In order to raise the least of its organs,
the animal must contend with weight; it cannot perform the smallest
movement without the intervention of physico-chemical phenomena;
it cannot breathe, and, therefore, cannot live, without constantly
consuming some of its constituents. In the animal, moreover, just as
much as in the plant, the inanimate forces, etherodynamy especially,
appear in their double character of constancy and of ubiquity in the
accomplishment of phenomena, and of subordination to life, which
governs their action in the animal as in the plant.
Moreover, a large part is reserved for purely vegetative life in
animals of the highest order. The entire organism is formed without
any intervention of the animal mind. Again, a certain number of
organs always escape more or less from the influence of the latter,
and seem to be subject to life alone. Now these organs are precisely
those upon which _nutrition_, and consequently the constitution and
duration of the whole, depend. Thus life, which reigned supreme in
the vegetable kingdom, now in its turn, appears in a subordinate
character. We might say that it was essentially entrusted with the
organisation and maintenance of the instruments of the animal mind.
As to the latter, even where its intervention is most questioned,
it is only revealed to observation by _voluntary movements_. Now
personal experiment and the faculty of reasoning, are necessary to
enable us to comprehend the nature, and appreciate the signification
of these movements. It is only by regarding himself as normal, that
man can judge of the animal, a subject to which I shall presently
return.
_Phenomena of four kinds_ are then characteristic of the Animal
Kingdom: _phenomena of the Keplerian movement_; _physico-chemical
phenomena_; _vital phenomena_; and _phenomena of voluntary
movement_; attributable to the action of four forces: _gravitation_,
_etherodynamy_, _life_, and the _animal mind_.
VII. Although the preceding statements are so much abridged, I have
thought it well to give the condensed results in the following table:
+-----+-----------+---------------+---------------------+--------------+
| | EMPIRES. | KINGDOMS. | PHENOMENA. | CAUSES. |
+-----+-----------+---------------+---------------------+--------------+
| | | {Sidereal | {Phenomena of the | |
| | | {(de Candolle)| { Keplerian movement| Gravitation. |
| | | { | | |
| |Inorganic | { | {Phenomena of the | |
| { | (Pallas).| {Mineral | { Keplerian movement| Gravitation. |
| A { | | { (Linnæus) | {Physico-chemical | |
| l { | | { | { phenomena | Etherodynamy.|
| l { | | | | |
| { | | { | {Phenomena of the | |
| { | | { | { Keplerian movement| Gravitation. |
| B { | | {Vegetable | {Physico-chemical | |
| o { | | { (Linnæus) | { phenomena | Etherodynamy.|
| d { | | { | {Vital phenomena | Life. |
| i { | | { | | |
| e { | Organic | { | {Phenomena of the | |
| s { | (Pallas).| { | { Keplerian movement| Gravitation. |
| { | | { | {Physico-chemical | |
| | | {Animal | { phenomena | Etherodynamy.|
| | | { (Linnæus) | {Vital phenomena | Life. |
| | | | {Phenomena of | |
| | | | { voluntary movement| The Animal |
| | | | | Mind. |
+-----+-----------+---------------+---------------------+--------------+
From this table, and the expansions which it sums up, rise the
following conclusions.
1. Each kingdom is characterised by a certain number of phenomena,
whose existence is independent of all hypothesis and theory.
2. The phenomena increase in number from the sidereal to the animal
kingdom.
3. In passing from one kingdom to another, and proceeding from the
simple to the composite, a number of phenomena appear, which are
entirely unknown in the inferior kingdoms.
4. The superior kingdom presents, independently of its special
phenomena, the characteristic phenomena of the inferior kingdoms.
5. Each group of phenomena indicated in the table is connected with a
small number of fundamental phenomena, which can, in some cases with
certainty, in others with more or less probability, be referred to a
single cause.
6. All these causes are equally unknown to us as regards their
nature and mode of action. We know them merely by phenomena. We can,
therefore, make no conjecture as to the relations, more or less
close, which may exist between them.
7. We nevertheless give names to these causes for the sake of
convenience, and of facilitating the discussion of the facts.
VIII. We can now return to the problem which gave rise to these
expansions, and ask the question: Whether Man should take his place
in the animal kingdom? a question which evidently leads to another:
Is man distinguished from animals by important and characteristic
phenomena, absolutely unknown in the latter? For more than forty
years I have answered this question in the affirmative, and my
convictions, tested by many controversies, are now stronger than ever.
But it is neither in the material disposition, nor in the action of
his physical organism, that we must look for these phenomena. From
this point of view, man is neither more nor less than an animal.
From an anatomical point of view, there is less difference between
man and the superior order of apes, than between the latter and the
inferior orders. The microscope reveals equally striking resemblances
between the elements of the human organism and those of the animal
organism; and chemical analysis leads to the same result. It was easy
to foresee that the action of elements and organs would be exactly
the same in man and beast, and such was found to be the case.
Passions, sentiments, and characters, establish between animals and
ourselves equally close relations. The animal loves and hates; we
recognise in it irritability and jealousy; unwearying patience, and
immutable confidence. In our domestic species, these differences are
more apparent, or perhaps we only notice them more closely. Who has
not known dogs which have been playful or snappish, affectionate or
savage, cowardly or courageous, friendly with everybody, or exclusive
in their affections.
Again, man has true instincts, were it only that of sociability.
Faculties, however, of this order, which are so fully developed in
certain animals, in man are evidently very much reduced in comparison
with the intelligence.
The relative development of the latter certainly establishes an
enormous difference between man and animal. It is not, however, the
_intensity_ of a phenomenon which gives value to it from our present
point of view, but simply its _nature_. The question is whether human
intelligence and animal intelligence can be considered as of the same
order.
As a rule philosophers, psychologists, and theologians, have replied
in the negative, and naturalists in the affirmative. This opposition
can be easily understood. The former make the human mind, considered
as an indivisible whole, their principal study, and attribute to it
all our faculties. Unable to deny the similarity, external at least,
between certain animal and human acts, and yet being anxious to
clearly distinguish man from the brute, they have given to the acts
different interpretations as they have been performed by one or the
other. Naturalists have regarded the phenomena more closely without
thinking of anything else, and when they have seen the animal behave
in the same manner as they themselves would have done under the given
circumstances, they have concluded that the motives of the action
must be fundamentally the same. I must ask permission to remain a
naturalist, and to recall some facts, and regard them from this point
of view.
The theologians themselves allow that the animal possesses sensation,
formation and association of images, imagination, and passion (R.
P. de Bonniot). They allow that the animal feels the relation of
fitness or of unfitness between sensible objects and his own senses;
that it experiences sensible attractions and repulsions, and acts
perfectly in consequence, and that _in this sense the animal reasons
and judges_ (l’Abbé A. Lecomte). Therefore, they add, we cannot doubt
but that the animal possesses a principle superior to that of mere
matter, and we may even give it the name of mind (R. P. Bonniot).
But in spite of all, theologians and philosophers maintain that the
animal cannot be intelligent, because it has neither _innate sense_,
_consciousness_ nor _reason_.
Let us leave for a moment the last term, with which the idea of
phenomena which we shall presently discuss, is connected in the
mind of our opponents. Is it true that animals are wanting in
innate sense, and are not conscious of their actions? Upon what
facts of observation does this opinion rest? We each one of us feel
that we possess this sense, that we enjoy this faculty. By means
of speech we can convey to another the results of our personal
experience. But this source of information is wanting when we come
to deal with animals. Neither in them nor in ourselves are innate
sense and consciousness revealed to the outer world by any special
characteristic movement. It is, therefore, only by interpreting these
movements, and by judging from ourselves, that we can form an idea of
the motives from which the animal acts.
Proceeding in this manner, it seems to me impossible to refuse to
allow animals a certain amount of consciousness of their actions.
Doubtless, they do not form such an exact estimate of them, as even
an illiterate man can do. But we may be very certain that when a cat
is trying to catch sparrows on level ground, and creeps along the
hollows, availing herself of every tuft of grass however small, she
knows what she is about, just as well as the hunter who glides in a
crouching attitude from one bush to another. We may be equally sure
that kittens and puppies when they fight, growl and bite without
hurting each other, know very well that they are playing and not in
earnest.
I must here beg permission to relate the remembrance of my struggles
with a mastiff of pure breed, and which had attained its full size,
remaining, however, very _young in character_. We were very good
friends, and often played together. As soon as ever I assumed an
attitude of defence before him, he would leap upon me with every
appearance of fury, seizing in his mouth the arm which I had used
as a shield. He might have marked my arm deeply at the first onset,
but he never pressed it in a manner that could inflict the slightest
pain. I often seized him by his lower jaw with my hand, but he never
used his teeth so as to bite me. And yet the next moment the same
teeth would indent a piece of wood, I tried to tear away from them.
This animal evidently knew what it was doing when it feigned the
passion precisely _opposite_ to that which it really felt; when,
even in the excitement of play, it retained sufficient mastery over
its movements to avoid hurting me. In reality it _played a part in a
comedy_, and we cannot act without being conscious of it.
It is useless for me to insist upon many other facts which I
could bring forward, and I refer my reader to the works of those
naturalists who have studied the question, especially those of F.
Cuvier. But the more I reflect upon it, the more is my conviction
confirmed that man and animals think and reason in virtue of a
faculty which is common to both, and which is only far more developed
in the latter than in the former.
What I have just said of the intelligence I do not hesitate to say
also of language, the highest manifestation of the intelligence.
It is true that man alone possesses _speech_, that is to say the
_articulate voice_. But two classes of animals possess _voice_. With
us it is, again, only a high degree of perfection, nothing radically
new. In both cases the sounds, produced by the air which is thrown
into vibration by the voluntary movements accorded to the larynx,
convey impressions and personal thoughts which are understood by
individuals of the same species. The mechanism of the production, the
object and the result are fundamentally the same.
It is true that the language of animals is most rudimentary and, in
this respect, in harmony with the inferiority of their intelligence.
We might say that it was almost entirely composed of interjections.
Such as it is, however, this language is sufficient for the wants of
the mammalia and birds who understand it perfectly, while man himself
can learn it without very much trouble. The hunter can distinguish
the accents of anger, love, pleasure, sorrow, the call and the
signal of alarm and makes use of these indications as an unfailing
guide, and often imitates these accents and cries in such a manner
as to deceive the animal. Of course I exclude from the _language
of brutes_, the song, properly so called, of birds, that of the
nightingale for example. It appears to me void of all meaning, as are
the notes of a singer, and I do not believe in the interpretation of
Dupont de Nemours.
It is not, therefore, in the phenomena connected with the
intelligence that we shall find the basis of a fundamental
distinction between man and animals.
But in man the existence has been proved of fundamental phenomena
of which nothing either in living beings or inanimate bodies has
hitherto been able to give us any conception. 1st. Man has the
_perception of moral good and evil_ independently of all physical
welfare or suffering. 2nd. Man _believes in superior beings_ who can
exercise an influence upon his destiny. 3rd. Man _believes in the
prolongation of his existence after this life_.
The last two phenomena have always been so closely connected that
it is natural to refer them to the same faculty, to that namely of
_Religion_. The first depends on _Morality_.
Psychologists attribute religion and morality to the _reason_, and
make the latter an attribute of man. But with the _reason_ they
connect the highest phenomena of the intelligence. In my opinion, in
so doing they confound and refer to a common origin, facts entirely
different. Thus since they are unable to recognise either morality
or religion in animals, which in reality do not possess these two
faculties, they are forced to refuse them intelligence also, although
the same animals, in my opinion, give decisive proof of their
possession of this faculty every moment.
The generality of the phenomena which we are discussing is, I
believe, indisputable, especially since the investigation to which it
has been subjected by the Society of Anthropology in Paris, where the
question of the human kingdom has been long and seriously discussed.
I cannot here reproduce the discussion, even in an abridged form,
but refer my readers either to the summary in my _Rapport sur les
progrès de l’anthropologie en France_, or to the _Bulletins_ of the
Society. I shall, moreover, go into this subject in some detail in
the chapters devoted to the moral and religious characters of the
human races.
A host of manifestations of human activity are derived, as so many
consequences, from the three facts which I have pointed out. Customs
and institutions of every kind are connected with them; they alone
explain some of the great events which change the destiny of nations
and the face of the earth.
For reasons which I have several times pointed out already, we
must give a name to the _Unknown Cause_ from which are derived the
phenomena of morality and religion. We will call it the _Human mind_
(l’âme humaine).
I must here repeat the formal declaration which I have often made
already. When I employ this term, which is established by custom, it
is with the understanding that I strictly confine myself within the
limits imposed upon anyone who intends to be exclusively faithful to
science, experiment and observation. I consider the human principle
as the _Unknown Cause_ of exclusively human phenomena. To go beyond
that would be to encroach upon the domain of philosophy or theology.
To them belongs the solution of the formidable problems raised by
the existence of the ‘_something_’ which makes a man of an organism
entirely animal, and I give everyone leave to choose from the
proposed solutions the one which agrees most satisfactorily with the
demands of his own feelings and reason.
But whatever this solution may be, it will in no way affect the
phenomena; those which I have just described will neither be
diminished nor modified. Now they exist in man alone, and it is
impossible to deny their importance. Thus they distinguish man from
the animal as much as the phenomena of intelligence distinguish the
animal from the plant, and as the phenomena of life distinguish the
plant from the mineral. They are, therefore, the attributes of a
kingdom, which we will call the _Human Kingdom_.
From this conclusion it will seem that I am at variance with Linnæus,
whose idea I have, however, only developed and stated more precisely.
In fact, the immortal author of the _Systema Naturæ_ has placed his
_Homo sapiens_ amongst the mammalia in the class of primates, and
has made him congenous with the gibbon. This is because Linnæus had
recourse to the _System_ in order to establish his _nomenclature_. To
classify man as well as other beings, he has made an arbitrary choice
of a certain number of characteristics, and only taken those into
consideration which were furnished by the body.
But the language of Linnæus is very different, even in his remarks
relating to the genus _Homo_, and still more so in the kind of
introduction entitled _Imperium Naturæ_. He there almost places man
in opposition with all beings, and particularly with animals, and in
such terms as necessarily to suggest the idea of a _human kingdom_.
The reason of this is that here Linnæus no longer speaks of
_physical_ man, but of man _as a whole_. Now, thanks to the labours
of Adanson, Jussieu and Cuvier, naturalists now know that this is
the right course to pursue in judging of the relations which exist
between beings. The _Natural Method_ no longer allows the choice of
such or such a group of characteristics; it demands, together with
an appreciation of their relative value, a consideration of all. It
is on this account that I have been led to admit the existence of
this human kingdom, which has been already proposed under several
appellations by some eminent men, but to which I believe myself to
have given a more precise and rigorous determination.
The table given above must then be completed in the following manner:—
+--------+--------------------------------------+-------------+
| | PHENOMENA. | CAUSES. |
|--------+--------------------------------------+--------------
| | {Phenomena of the Keplerian movement | Gravitation |
| | {Physico-chemical phenomena | Etherodynamy|
|Human | {Vital phenomena | Life |
|Kingdom | {Phenomena of voluntary movement | Animal mind |
| | {Phenomena of morality and religion | Human mind |
+--------+--------------------------------------+-------------+
Thus in the human kingdom we find by the side of the phenomena which
characterise it all those which we have met with in the inferior
kingdoms. We are consequently forced to admit that all the _forces_
and all the _unknown causes_ to which we have attributed these
effects are acting in man. From this point of view man deserves the
name which has sometimes been given to him of _microcosm_.
We have seen that in the vegetable kingdom the inanimate forces
perform their functions _under the control_, so to speak, of Life,
which afterwards, in the animal, showed incontestable signs of its
subordination to the animal mind. Life now appears under similar
conditions with regard to the human mind. In the most characteristic
human actions, the intelligence almost always plays the most
prominent part from the executive point of view; but it is manifestly
under the direction of the human mind. All legislation affects to
rest upon the one foundation of morality and of justice, which is
only a form of it; the immediate cause of the Crusades, of the spread
of the Arabs, and the conquests of Islam, was religious fervour. The
true legislator and the great leader are indeed necessarily men of
high intelligence, but is it not clear that in the cases mentioned
the intelligence has been placed at the service of morality or of
religion, and consequently of the _Unknown Cause_ to which man owes
these faculties?
But however preponderating the part claimed by this cause in acts
exclusively human may be, it has nothing to do with those phenomena
which have their origin in the intelligence alone. The learned
mathematician who seeks by the aid of the most profound abstractions
the solution of some great problem, is completely without the moral
or religious sphere into which, on the contrary, the ignorant,
simple-minded man enters when he struggles, suffers, or dies for
justice or for his faith.
IX. It was necessary to recall all the facts and theories which
I have just summed up, in order to facilitate the comprehension
and the justification of the method which alone can guide us in
anthropological studies.
The object of anthropology is the study of man _as a species_. It
abandons the _material individual_ to physiology and medicine; the
_intellectual_ and _moral individual_ to philosophy and theology. It
has, therefore, its own special field of study, and on that account
alone its special questions, which often could not be solved by
processes borrowed from cognate sciences.
In fact, in some questions, and in some of the most fundamental ones,
the difficulty lies in the interpretation of phenomena connected
with those which are characteristic of all living beings. For the
very reason that they are to a certain extent obscure in man, we
cannot seek for an explanation of them in man, since he becomes, so
to speak, the unknown quantity of the problem. An endeavour to solve
the problem by the study of man, who is the object of it, would be
equivalent to a mathematician representing the value of _x_ in terms
of _x_ itself.
How does the mathematician proceed? He seeks in the data of the
problem for a certain number of _known quantities_ equivalent to the
_unknown quantity_, and by means of these quantities he determines
the value of _x_.
The anthropologist must act in the same manner. But where must he
seek for the known quantities which will enable him to state the
equation?
The answer to this question will be found in what we have said
above, and in the table of kingdoms. Man, although he has his special
and exclusively human phenomena, is above all an organised and living
being. From this point of view he is the seat of phenomena common to
animals and plants; he is subjected to the same laws. In his physical
organisation he is nothing more than an animal, somewhat superior
in certain respects to the most highly developed species, but
inferior in others. From this point of view he presents organic and
physiological phenomena identical with those of animals in general,
and of mammalia in particular; and the laws which govern these
phenomena are the same in both cases.
Now plants and animals have been studied for a much longer period
than man, and from an exclusively scientific point of view, without
any trace of the prejudice and party feeling which often interferes
with the study of man. Without having penetrated very deeply into
all the secrets of vegetable and animal life, science has acquired a
certain number of fixed and indisputable results which constitute a
foundation of positive knowledge, and a safe starting point. It is
there that the anthropologist must seek the _known quantities_ of
which he may stand in need.
Whenever there is any doubt as to the nature or signification of
a phenomenon observed in man, the corresponding phenomena must be
examined in animals, and even in plants; they must be compared with
what takes place in ourselves, and the results of this comparison
accepted as they are exhibited. What is recognised as being true for
other organised beings cannot but be true for man.
This method is incontestably scientific. It is similar to that of
modern physiologists, who, since they are unable to experiment upon
man, experiment upon animals, and form their conclusions upon the
former from the latter. But the physiologist devotes his attention
to the _individual_ only, and, therefore, examines little more than
those groups which in their organisation approach most nearly to the
being whose history he wishes to explain. The anthropologist on the
contrary studies the _species_. The questions with which he has to
deal are much more general, so he is forced to direct his attention
to plants as well as to animals.
This method is accompanied by its criterion; it allows the control of
the various, answers which are often made to one question. The means
of estimation are simple and easily applied.
In anthropology, every solution to be sound, that is to say, true,
should refer man in everything which is not exclusively human to the
general recognised laws for other organised and living beings.
Every solution which makes or tends to make man an exception, by
representing him as free from those laws which govern other organised
and living beings, is unsound and false.
Again, when we reason and form our conclusions in this manner, we
remain faithful to the mathematical method. To be received as true,
a solution of a given problem must agree with admitted axioms,
with truths previously proved. Every hypothesis which leads to
results at variance with these axioms or these truths, is, on that
account alone, declared false. In anthropology, the axiom or the
truth which serves as a criterion is the fundamental, physical, and
physiological identity of man with other living beings, with animals,
with mammalia. All hypotheses at variance with this truth should be
rejected.
Such are the absolute rules which have always acted as my guide in
anthropological studies. I do not pretend to have invented them. I
have scarcely done more than formulate what has been more or less
explicitly admitted by Linnæus, Buffon, Lamarck, Blumenbach, Cuvier,
the two Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, J. Müller, Humboldt, etc. But, on the
one hand, my illustrious predecessors have seldom treated the subject
with sufficient precision, and have too often omitted to give the
reasons for their decisions. On the other hand these principles have
been, and are daily forgotten by men who, in other respects, enjoy
with justice the title of great authorities. As I shall be compelled
to disagree with them, I thought it necessary to show clearly the
general ideas which serve as a foundation for my own scientific
convictions. The reader will thus be able to appreciate and discern
the causes of this difference of opinion.
CHAPTER II.
GENERAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL DOCTRINES; MONOGENISM AND POLYGENISM.
I. As soon as we have determined the place which should be assigned
to man in the great order of the universe, the first question which
rises is, whether there is one human species, or several.
It is well known that this question has caused a division amongst
anthropologists. The _Polygenists_ regard the differences of height,
features, and colour, which distinguish the inhabitants of different
countries of the globe, as fundamental; the _Monogenists_ consider
these differences merely as the result of accidental conditions,
which have modified, in various degrees, a primitive type. The former
hold that there are _several_ human _species_ perfectly independent
of each other; the latter that there is _but one species_ of man
which is divided into several races, all of which are derived from a
common stock.
However slight may be our familiarity with the language of zoology
and botany or their applications, it is evident that the question
before us is a purely scientific one, and entirely within the
province of the natural sciences. Unfortunately the discussion has by
no means been confined to this ground.
A dogma supported by the authority of the Book which is held in
almost equal respect by Christians, Jews and Mussulmans, has long
referred the origin of all men without opposition to a single
father and mother. Nevertheless, the first blow aimed at this
ancient belief was founded upon the same book. In 1655 La Peyrère,
a Protestant gentleman in Condé’s army, interpreting to the letter
the two narratives of the creation contained in the Bible as well as
various particulars in the history of Adam and of the Jewish nation,
attempted to prove that the latter alone were descended from Adam and
Eve; that they had been preceded by other men who had been created
at the same time as the animals in all parts of the habitable globe;
that the descendants of these _Preadamites_ were identical with the
_Gentiles_, who were always so carefully distinguished from the Jews.
Thus we see that polygenism generally regarded as the result of _Free
Thought_ was biblical and dogmatic in origin.
La Peyrère attacked the Adamic dogma in the name of the respect due
to the text of a sacred Book. The philosophers of the eighteenth
century spoke in the name of Science and Reason. It is to them that
the school of Polygenists in reality owe their origin. But it is
easy to see that the greater number of them were only guided in
their writings by a controversial spirit, their chief aim was the
destruction of a dogma. Unfortunately, the same prepossession appears
in too many works published in our own day. On the other hand certain
monogenists are guilty of seeking in religious doctrines arguments in
favour of their theory, and anathematising their adversaries in the
name of dogma.
Social and political prejudices in addition to dogmatic and
anti-dogmatic prejudices have helped to make still more obscure a
question already very difficult in itself. In the United States in
particular the advocates of slavery and its opponents have often
fought upon this ground. Further still in 1844 Mr. Calhoun, Minister
of Foreign Affairs, when replying to the representations made to him
by France and England on the subject of slavery, did not hesitate
to defend the institutions of his country by urging the radical
differences, which, according to him, separated the Negro from the
White man.
Besides those polygenists who are influenced by prejudices almost
or entirely unscientific, there are sincere and disinterested men of
science who believe in the multiplicity of human origins. Foremost
among the latter are _medical_ men, who are accustomed to the study
of the _individual_ and who only possess a slight familiarity with
the study of the _species_. Then again there are palæontologists,
who from the nature of their work are compelled only to take into
account morphological resemblances and differences, without even
turning their attention to facts of reproduction or of _filiation_.
Finally, there are entomologists, conchologists, etc., who,
exclusively interested in the distinction of innumerable species by
purely external characters, are entirely ignorant of physiological
phenomena, and judge living beings as they would fossils.
On the other hand, monogenism reckons among its partisans nearly all
those naturalists who have turned their attention to the phenomena
of life, and among them some of the most illustrious. In spite of
the difference of their doctrines, Buffon and Linnæus, Cuvier and
Lamarck, Blainville and the two Geoffroys, Müller the physiologist
and Humboldt agree upon this point. Apart from any influence which
the name of these great men might exercise, it is clear that I share
their opinion. I have on different occasions explained the purely
scientific reasons for my convictions. I shall now endeavour to sum
them up in as few words as possible.
II. Let us first establish the importance of the question. It escapes
many minds and I have heard a doubt expressed upon it by men who have
enthusiastically followed anthropological studies. It is, however,
easily proved.
If the human groups have appeared with all their distinctive
characters in the isolated condition, and in the various localities
where geography teaches us to seek them; if we can trace them up
to stocks originally distinct, thus constituting so many _special
species_, then the study of them is one of the most simple,
presenting no more difficulty than that of animal or vegetable
species. There would be nothing singular in the diversity of the
groups. It would be sufficient to examine and describe them one
after the other, merely determining the degree of _affinity_ between
them. At most we should have to fix their limits and to discover the
influence which groups geographically brought in contact had been
able to exercise upon each other.
If, on the contrary, these groups can be traced to one common
primitive stock, if there is _but one single species_ of man, the
differences, sometimes so striking, which separate the groups,
constitute a problem similar to that of our animal and vegetable
races. Further, man is found in all parts of the globe, and we must
account for this dispersion; we must explain how the same species
has been able to accommodate itself to such opposite conditions of
existence as those to which the inhabitants of the pole and the
equator are subject. And lastly, the _simple affinity_ of naturalists
is changed into _consanguinity_; and the problems of _filiation_ are
added to those of _variation_, _migration_, and _acclimatisation_.
It is clear that, independently of every religious, philosophical, or
social consideration, this science will differ entirely in character
as we consider it from a polygenistic point of view, or according to
theories of monogenism.
III. If the former of these doctrines claims such a large number of
adherents, the reason may for the most part be found in the causes
mentioned above. But its seductive simplicity and the facility
which it seems to lend to the interpretation of facts also stand
for a great deal. Unfortunately these advantages are only apparent.
Polygenism conceals or denies difficulties; it does not suppress
them. They are suddenly revealed, like submarine rocks, to anyone who
tries, however little, to go to the root of the matter.
The case is the same with this doctrine as with the _Systems_ of
classification formerly employed in botany and zoology which rested
upon a small number of arbitrary data. They were undoubtedly very
convenient, but possessed the serious fault of being conducive to
most erroneous opinions from a destruction of true relations and an
imposition of false connections.
Monogenism acts in the same manner as the _Natural Method_. The
zoologist and the botanist are by this method brought face to face
with each problem which is put before them under every aspect. It
often displays the insufficiency of actual knowledge, but it is the
only means of destroying illusions, and of preventing a belief in
false explanations.
It is the same with Monogenism. It also brings the anthropologist
face to face with reality, forces him to investigate every question,
shows him the whole extent of each, and often compels him to confess
his inability to solve them. But by this very means it protects
him against error, provoking him to fresh investigation, and from
time to time rewards him with some great progress which remains an
acquisition for ever.
I shall return to these considerations, the truth of which will
be better understood when the principal general questions of
anthropology have been reviewed. Henceforward I shall attempt to
justify as briefly as possible the preceding criticisms and eulogies.
CHAPTER III.
SPECIES AND RACE IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES.
I. The question of the unity or multiplicity of the human species
may be stated in the following terms: are the differences which
distinguish the human groups characteristic of _species_ or of _race_?
It is evident that the question depends entirely upon the two words
species and race. It is then absolutely necessary to determine
as accurately as possible the sense of each, and yet there are
anthropologists, such as Knox, for instance, who declare that any
discussion or investigation in connection with this subject is idle.
There are others, like Dr. Nott, who would suppress the race and
only establish various _categories of species_. In order to support
their doctrines these authors ignore the work which has been carried
on for nearly two centuries by the most illustrious naturalists, and
the innumerable observations and experiments made by a vast number of
eminent men upon plants and animals.
In fact the theory of species and race has not been formed _à
priori_, as it has been too often falsely asserted, but has been
gradually acquired, and in a strictly scientific manner.
II. The word _Species_ is one which exists in all languages which
possess abstract terms. It represents, therefore, a general common
idea. The idea is, in the first place, that of a great outward
_resemblance_; but even in ordinary language that is not all. The
idea of _filiation_ is connected, even in the most uncultivated
minds, with that of resemblance. No peasant would hesitate to regard
the children of the same parents as _belonging to the same species_
whatever real or apparent differences might distinguish them.
Science has in reality done nothing more than define the idea of
which the public had merely a vague consciousness, and it was
not till very lately, and after a very curious oscillation, that
she succeeded in doing so. In 1686, Jean Ray, in his _Historia
Plantarum_, considered that those plants which had a common origin
and could be reproduced by seed belonged to the same species,
whatever their apparent differences might be. He only took filiation
into account. Tournefort, on the contrary, who in 1700 was the first
to make a clear statement of the question, termed the collection
of plants a _species_ which were distinguished by some particular
character. He relied only on resemblance.
Ray and Tournefort have had from time to time a few imitators,
who, in their definition of species, have clung to one of the two
ideas. But the immense majority of zoologists have been aware of the
impossibility of separating them. To convince ourselves of this fact
it is only necessary to read the definitions which they have given.
Each one of them, from Buffon and Cuvier to MM. Chevreul and C. Vogt
has, so to speak, proposed his own. Now, however they may differ in
other respects, they all agree in this. The terms of the definitions
vary, each endeavours to represent in the best manner possible the
complex idea of species; some extend it still further, and connect
with it the ideas of cycle and variation: but in all the fundamental
idea is the same.
In a case of such difficulty as that of finding a good definition
for a combination of ideas, the latest comer always hopes to improve
upon his predecessors. For this reason I have also given my formula:
“Species is a collection of individuals more or less resembling
each other, which may be regarded as having descended from a single
primitive pair by an uninterrupted and natural succession of
families.”
In this definition, as also in that of some of my colleagues, among
others of M. Chevreul, the idea of resemblance is made of less
importance and subordinate to that of filiation. The fact is that
there never is an identity of characters between one individual and
another. Putting aside the variations resulting from age and sex, it
is at once evident that all representatives of the same specific type
differ in some points. Although these differences are very slight,
they constitute _individual traits_, _shades_ as Isidore Geoffroy
said, which enable us to distinguish between two of the same species.
But the differences are not confined within these limits. The
specific types are _variable_, that is to say, every kind of physical
character is modified in their derivatives and, under the influence
of certain conditions, to such an extent as to make it often very
difficult to recognise their unity of origin. This, again, is a fact
upon which all naturalists agree. Blainville even, who, defined
species as “the individual repeated and continued through time and
space,” distinctly recognised this _variability_; for the individual
is perpetually undergoing modification, and does not retain its
similarity during the various stages of life. He admitted, moreover,
the existence of distinct races.
The _variability of species_ has also been the subject of animated
discussion among naturalists. The memorable contention which arose
upon this subject between Cuvier and Geoffroy is not yet forgotten,
a struggle considered by Goethe as more important than the gravest
political events. In the present day a school to which many of the
most illustrious names in England, Germany and elsewhere belong,
has taken up, with certain modifications, the ideas of Lamarck
and Geoffroy; it gives support to them from retaining the term
_variability of species_.
There is a grave confusion of words in this formula. Lamarck,
Geoffroy, Darwin and his school, consider the species not only as
_variable_ but as _transmutable_. The specific types are not merely
_modified_, they are _replaced_ by new types. _Variation_ is in
their estimation only a phase of the very different phenomena of
_transmutation_.
I shall discuss these theories presently. I shall now confine
myself to the remark that _true variability_, admitted even by the
defenders of _dogmatic invariability_, by Blainville, for example,
a variability which I fully accept, has nothing in common with the
_transmutability_ of Lamarck, Geoffroy and Darwin. Let us briefly
determine the limits of this variability.
III. When an individual trait is exaggerated and passes a limit
always very loosely defined, it constitutes an exceptional character
which clearly distinguishes the individual affected by it from all
those most nearly resembling it. This individual constitutes a
_Variety_.
The same term must be applied to all those individuals, which, like
certain plants reproduced by slips, grafts, or shoots, derive their
origin from the first exceptional individual, without having the
power of transmitting their distinctive characters by means of normal
generation. I borrow from M. Chevreul a curious example of these
_multiple varieties_. In 1803 or 1805, M. Descemet discovered in his
garden at Saint Denis, in the midst of a bed of acacias (_Robinia
pseudo-acacia_) an individual without thorns which he describes
under the epithet _spectabilis_. It is to the multiplication of
this individual by the art of the gardener that all the _thornless
acacias_, now distributed over every part of the globe, owe their
origin. Now these individuals produce seeds, but if the seeds are
sown they only yield _thorny acacias_. The _acacia spectabilis_ has
remained a _Variety_.
The latter may then be defined as:—“An individual or a number of
individuals belonging to the same sexual generation, which is
distinguished from the other representatives of the same species by
one or several exceptional characters.”
It will readily be seen how great the number of varieties in one
species may be. There is, in fact, scarcely any either external or
internal part of an animal or plant, which cannot be exaggerated,
diminished or modified in a thousand ways, and each of these
exaggerations, diminutions or modifications will characterise a fresh
variety, with the one condition of its being sufficiently marked.
IV. When the characters peculiar to a variety become _hereditary_,
that is to say, when they are transmitted from generations to the
descendants of the first modified individual, a _race_ is formed.
For example, if a _thornless acacia_ ever reproduced by seed, trees
resembling itself and enjoying the same power, then the Acacia
spectabilis would cease to be a simple variety, and would have become
a race.
The race, then, will consist of:—“A number of individuals resembling
each other, belonging to one species, having received and
transmitting, by means of sexual generation, the characters of a
primitive variety.”
Thus the _Species_ is the point of departure; the _variety_ appears
amongst the _individuals_ of which it is composed, and, when the
characters of this variety become hereditary, a _race_ is formed.
Such are the relations which, according to all naturalists, “from
Cuvier to Lamarck himself,” as Isidore Geoffroy said, exist between
these three terms. We have here a fundamental idea which we should
never lose sight of in the study of the questions with which we are
engaged. From neglect of it men of the highest distinction have
failed to understand most significant facts.
We see that the idea of _resemblance_, which is much curtailed in the
_species_, reassumes in the _race_ an importance equal to that of
_filiation_.
We see also that the number of races which spring directly from one
species may be equal to the number of varieties of the same species,
and consequently very considerable. But this number has a tendency
to increase still further to an indefinite extent. In fact, each
of these _primary races_ is susceptible of fresh modifications,
which may either extend no further than one individual, or become
transmissible by means of generation. Thus _secondary_ and _tertiary
varieties_ or _races_ come into existence. Our plants and domestic
animals furnish innumerable examples of these facts.
V. By reason of races originating in this manner from one another,
and from their multiplication, they may assume differential
characters which become more and more decided. But however numerous
they may be, and whatever differences there may be between them, and
however far they may seem to be removed from the primitive type, they
nevertheless, still form part of the species from which the primitive
races derived their origin.
On the other hand, every species comprises, independently of the
individuals which have preserved their primitive characters, all
those which compose the primary, secondary and tertiary, etc., races,
derived from the fundamental type.
In other words the _species_ is the _unit_ and the _races_ are the
_fractions_ of this unit. Or again, the _species_ is the _trunk of
the tree_, of which the _several series of races_ represent the
_principal_ and _lesser branches_ and the _twigs_. The general unity
and relative independence of the trunk and the branches of the tree
represent in an obvious manner the connections existing between the
species and its races.
CHAPTER IV.
NATURE OF VARIATIONS IN ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE RACES; APPLICATION TO
MAN.
I. The meaning of the question stated above is now intelligible.
We have to discover whether the human groups, which we know to
be distinguished by characters which are often very marked, are
fractions of a single unit, branches of the same tree, or so many
units of different value, so many trees of various nature.
Historical documents are absolutely incapable of solving this
problem. On the other hand, man being the subject of the problem, it
is evident that the solution must be sought elsewhere.
Where then must we turn in order to obtain a definite answer to this
question which concerns us so closely? Clearly to naturalists and
to naturalists alone. The Species and the Race have, for more than
two centuries, been the subject of their studies; they have amassed
observations, multiplied experiments. They have, in their studies,
been guided by a scientific spirit alone, and from being placed
beyond the reach of controversy, have preserved all their freedom of
judgment. The results thus acquired, deserve the greatest confidence,
and supply reliable data for the application of our anthropological
method.
Anyone really desirous of forming an opinion upon the unity or
multiplicity of the human species, should therefore discover what are
the facts and phenomena which characterise race and species in plants
and animals; then turn to man and compare the facts and phenomena
there presented with those which botanists and zoologists have
observed in the other kingdoms. If the facts and phenomena which
distinguish the human groups are those which, in other organised and
living beings differentiate _species_, he will then legitimately
infer the multiplicity of human species; if, however, these phenomena
and facts are characteristic of race in the two inferior kingdoms, he
must conclude in favour of specific unity.
It is the pursuance of this course which has convinced me of
monogenism, and I am certain the result will be the same with anyone
who will follow it.
II. The idea of species rests, as we have seen, upon the two distinct
ideas of _resemblance_ and _filiation_. Let us first turn our
attention to the former as being the greater stumbling-block of the
two. No one would hesitate to consider two individuals resembling
each other very closely as belonging to the same species; if,
however, they present somewhat marked differences, and the necessary
information is wanting, we hesitate to give our decision in the
negative. The mind readily accepts the latter conclusion when man is
the object of discussion. A continual, though unconscious study, has
endowed us with a perception which appreciates, in those around us,
the most delicate gradations in features, the colour of the skin,
and in the appearance of the hair. Now this delicacy of appreciation
has, in the present instance, a serious inconvenience. It inevitably
conduces to the exaggeration of differences existing between
different groups, and by this very means leads us to regard them as
so many species.
For this decision to have a real value, however, it should be shown
beforehand that the variations between one human group and another,
are greater than those which have been established between groups of
animals and plants, which are positively known to be only _races of
one species_.
Now this is not the case. However slight an attempt we may have made
to become acquainted with the nature and the extent of variations, we
shall very soon see that in animal and vegetable races they attain
limits, which are never overstepped, and but rarely attained, by the
differences between human groups.
III. I shall not insist at any length upon the morphological and
anatomical changes of plants. It will be sufficient to call to
mind how numerous and different are those varieties of vegetables,
flowers, fruit-trees, and ornamental shrubs, the number of which
is always on the increase. Amongst the latter, the variety, it is
true, very rarely attains to the condition of a _race_. Grafting,
propagation by layers, etc., make it possible to multiply them
rapidly and with certainty, as in the case of the thornless acacia,
and gardeners have always been in the habit of resorting to this
method. Nevertheless, even among fruit-trees, a few of these
varieties have become fixed, and can be reproduced by seed. The
plum, the peach, and the vine, may be quoted as examples. As to
annuals, garden vegetables especially, they can only be preserved and
multiplied by this method. Here we only find races, and it is well to
know how numerous and varied they are. The cabbage alone (_Brassica
oleracea_) numbers forty-seven principal races, each of which is
sub-divided into a number of secondary and tertiary races. Now it is
quite useless to insist upon the distance which separates the headed
cabbage, of which sauerkraut is made, from the turnip-cabbage, of
which the root is eaten, and from the cauliflower or the brocoli.
It is very evident that this cannot be due to the mere alteration of
primitive forms. The elements of the organism undergo modification,
and are differently associated and combined according to the race.
But these elements themselves often undergo most fundamental
disturbance. Certain acids are diminished or disappear, and are
replaced by sugar, a sweet taste and perfume, which develop and
characterise certain races of vegetables and fruits, and show
that the vital forces of these plants have been subjected to very
substantial modifications faithfully transmitted from generation to
generation.
The objection will perhaps be made that there is too little
resemblance between vegetable and animal organisms for the above
comparison of anatomical facts to be really useful. It is different
in physiological phenomena.
Vital activity in our cultivated plants sometimes presents very
remarkable differences in different races. In our several races of
corn, the rapidity of development varies from simple to triple. In
temperate climates barley requires five months to germinate, grow and
ripen. In Finland and Lapland it only takes two months to accomplish
the same phases of growth. And, finally, it is well known that in our
kitchen and fruit gardens we find races and varieties, some of which
are fast and some slow growers.
The energy of the reproductive organs often varies in a singular
manner in different races. We have, for instance, roses which
bloom two or three times a year, and strawberries which remain in
fruit nearly the whole year. There are oranges crammed with pips,
and others in which they are almost entirely wanting. Lastly, in
some bananas and in the currant-grape the seeds have completely
disappeared. We see at once that these latter products of human
industry only exist as _varieties_.
IV. In animals we meet with facts which correspond exactly with those
which we have just observed in plants. Further, we find that they
experience modifications connected with the manifestations of the
_something_ which we have called the _Animal Mind_.
The diversity of races in our domestic species is too well known to
make it necessary to insist upon this point. I shall only mention
that Darwin reckons 150 distinct races of pigeons, and declares that
he is not yet acquainted with all. These _races_ are, moreover,
sufficiently different to render a redivision into at least four
distinct _genera_ necessary, if they are considered as so many
_species_. Among mammals analogous facts are noticed, in the case of
the dog. At the Dog Show of 1863, the Society of Acclimatisation,
which had been very strict in its rules of admission and only
received perfectly pure types, collected no fewer than seventy races
of dogs. The greater number, however, belonged to Europe, and to
France and England in particular; almost all those of Asia, Africa,
and America, were absent from the collection, so that altogether we
are justified in assuming that there are at least as many races of
dogs as of pigeons. As to morphological differences we need only
mention bull-dogs and grey-hounds, beagles and Danish carriage dogs,
mastiffs and King Charles’s. It is scarcely necessary to remark
that these external differences suggest the idea of corresponding
modifications in the skeleton, in the proportion and form of the
muscles. Anatomical differences are indeed even greater. For example,
the skull of the water-spaniel is proportionately double the size of
that of the bull-dog.
There are among animals, as among plants, some races which develop
slowly, and others which increase in size rapidly. As in plants,
fecundity is diminished in some and increased in others. When they
are too perfect, that is to say, when they are too far removed
from their natural type, animal races, like vegetable races, only
propagate with great difficulty, or even not at all.
Our ordinary races of sheep only give birth once a year to a single
lamb; the “hong-ti” twice a year to two lambs each time. The wild
sow only litters once a year with but six or eight young, but when
domesticated litters twice a year with from ten to fifteen. Her
fecundity is therefore at least tripled. In the Indian pig, derived
from the “Aperea,” it is more than seven times as great.
In dogs, habits imposed by education, transmitted and strengthened
by heredity, finally assume the appearance of so many _natural
instincts_ by which races are as nicely characterised as by
physical peculiarities. This has been established beyond a doubt
by the experiments carried on by Knight during more than thirty
years. The mention of the beagle and the pointer will be sufficient
to recall the contrast which in many cases exists between these
_acquired instincts_. Considered as the relative development of the
intelligence, properly so called, the difference between races is
also very marked in many cases. From this point of view we need only
compare the greyhound and the spaniel.
V. If from _animals_ and _plants_ we pass to man, we shall find
in him, as in the two inferior kingdoms, groups distinguished by
anatomical, physiological and psychological differences. In most
cases the same organs and the same functions present analogous
modifications. What reason can be alleged for the idea that, if
_their nature_ is considered, these differences and modifications
have a greater signification in man, and that they characterise
_species_ and not _race?_ Clearly none; it would be reasoning against
the laws of analogy. An argument based upon the variations presented
by the manifestations of _morality_ and _religion_, would be a
neglect of the fact that these faculties are the attributes of the
human kingdom, that they are wanting in the other kingdoms, and are
not in consequence susceptible of any comparison of this kind. In
that which is exclusively human, man can only be compared with man.
In conclusion, the facts of the variations and differences existing
in man between _different groups_, are _of the same nature_ as
those established between _different races_ of animals and plants.
The nature of these phenomena cannot then be brought forward as
an argument in favour of the theory that these groups are so many
species.
CHAPTER V.
EXTENT OF VARIATIONS IN ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE RACES; APPLICATION TO
MAN.
I. The question to which this chapter is devoted is one of those
which I shall treat most fully in this course. In fact, it has
a special importance. Nearly all the polygenistic arguments are
included in the following:—“The difference between the Negro and the
White is too great for them to belong to the same species.” These
types are the two extremes in the human series. Therefore, if it can
be shown that between the two extremes, the limits of variation are
almost always greater in plants and animals than in man, we shall
have undermined the foundation of the whole polygenistic doctrine.
Now, even if we leave plants out of the question, and there can
be little doubt in respect to them; if we merely compare man and
animals, organ for organ, function for function, we shall have no
great difficulty in arriving at the conclusion, that this is really
the case; so much so that we shall be led to ask the question,
why the variability is less in man than in animals. The complete
demonstration of this general fact would require more extended
treatment than I am able to give. I shall, therefore, confine myself
to citing some examples.
II. The colouring of the skin is one of the most striking
characteristics, and one which is most apparent to the eye. This
has given rise to the expressions White, Yellow, and Black, which
are most improperly used to designate the three fundamental groups
of mankind. We will first prove that these names possess the grave
inconvenience of giving rise to ideas which are entirely erroneous.
Amongst the _Whites_ there are entire populations, whose skin is as
black as that of the darkest Negro. I shall only quote the Bishareen
and other tribes inhabiting the African coasts of the Red Sea, the
black Moors of Senegal, etc. On the other hand, there are yellow
_Negroes_, as the Bosjesmans, who are the colour of light mahogany,
or of café au lait, as Livingstone tells us.
It is no less true that colour is by far the most variable
characteristic in man, and when we place the _coal black Negro_
side by side with the _fair White_ with his pinkish complexion,
the contrast is striking. But this contrast is repeated in several
races of animals, in the dog, for example, whose skin is generally
blackish, but white in the white poodle. It is the same among horses,
a fact which was known even to Herodotus, who pronounces white horses
with a black skin as superior to all others.
The races of our domestic fowls alone present the three extreme
colours observed in man. The French fowl has a white skin; in the
cochin-china it approaches to yellow; it is black in _black fowls_.
Sometimes they present a peculiarity similar to that which I
mentioned in reference to the horse: a dark skin accompanying a white
plumage as in the _silk hen_ of Japan.
These same _black fowls_ possess several interesting peculiarities
from our present point of view. In Europe, melanism appears from time
to time in our poultry-yards, and would infallibly spread if the
fowls attacked by it were not destroyed. It is perhaps from want of
this precaution that black fowls have been developed in various parts
of the globe, among others in the Philippines, in Java, in the Cape
Verd Islands, and upon the plateau of Bogota, all of which have been
derived from European stocks. Melanism appears moreover, in groups of
fowls which differ most strikingly in other respects, in the silk hen
as well as in our ordinary races.
We see that _black fowls_ are in no sense a distinct species, and
that the appearance of the black colour is merely an accidental
character, which may be produced in races very dissimilar in other
respects, and afterwards propagated by heredity. Why then admit that
it has been otherwise in man?
Again, melanism is more highly developed in fowls than in man. It
has long been held as a recognised fact that the skull of the Negro
is more darkly coloured than that of the White. The fact is true.
But M. Gubler has proved that the skull of a very dark-complexioned
White was coloured exactly in the same manner as that of the Negro,
and that this peculiarity was sometimes individual, and sometimes
hereditary in certain families. In fowls also, melanism penetrates
to the interior; but it is not only the meninges which present
peculiarities similar to those presented by the _black man_. With
them all the mucous, fibrous, and aponeurotic membranes, even to
the muscular sheaths, possess the same colouring. The flesh also
assumes a repugnant appearance, and it is for this reason that the
propagation of black fowls is prevented as much as possible.
The difference in colouring is easily explained. We now know beyond a
doubt that the skin of the Negro is exactly the same in composition
as that of the White. We find the same layers in both; the _dermis_,
the _mucous layer_ and the _epidermis_ present exactly the same
structure. The layers are merely thicker in the Negro. In these two
great races, the mucous layer, situated between the other two, is
the seat of colour. It is formed of cells which are of a pale yellow
colour in the _fair White_, of a more or less brownish yellow in the
_dark White_, and of a blackish brown in the Negro. External causes
have, moreover, an influence upon the organ and modify the coloured
secretion. Simon has shown that freckles are nothing more than spots
upon the skin of the _White_ presenting the characteristics of the
skin of the Negro, and we know that an unusual exposure to the sun
in the men and women of our race, and pregnancy in the latter, is
sufficient to determine the formation of these spots.
Why, then, should it be thought strange that a number of
circumstances, a constant heat, a bright light, &c., should influence
the whole body and perpetuate those modifications which in us are
only circumscribed and transitory. In treating of the formation of
the human races we shall have to bring forward facts which will
clearly prove that this is not merely hypothesis.
Finally, the colour of the skin depends upon a simple secretion
which is subject to modification under a number of circumstances, as
is the case with many others. There is, therefore nothing strange
in the fact that some human groups, differing widely in other
respects, should resemble each other in the matter of colour. This
is the reason why the Hindoo (_Aryan_), the Bisharee and the Moor
(_Semitic_), although belonging to the _White race_, assume the same,
and even a darker hue than the _true Negro_. It also explains the
fact that the colour of the Negro approximates in certain cases, to
that of peoples belonging to the white stock who are more or less of
a brown colour, or assumes a hue which exactly recalls that of the
yellow races.
Thus, in man, as in animals, the aphorism is verified which was
formulated by Linnæus in regard to plants:—_nimium ne crede colori_.
III. I shall not dwell at any length upon the modifications of the
hair and villosities. They are much more apparent than real in man.
Whether fair or black, fine and of a woolly appearance, as in the
Negro, or coarse and stiff, as in the yellow and red races; whether
the transverse section is circular as in the Yellow race, oval, as in
the White, or elliptic, as in the Negro, _the hair remains hair_. The
woolly fleece of our sheep, on the contrary, is in part of Africa,
replaced by a short and smooth hair. In America the same is the case
with the sheep of the Madeleine whenever they are left unshorn; and
on the other hand, in the high plains of the Andes, the wild boars
acquire a kind of coarse wool.
The practice of certain natives of shaving off all hair has made
some travellers believe in the existence of human races which are
entirely hairless; the error has however been recognised. All men
possess hair in the normal places. Hairless dogs and horses are,
however, known to exist. In America, where the oxen have a European
origin, the hair commences with becoming very fine and few in number
with the _pelones_, and disappears entirely with the _calongos_; and
if the latter do not increase in number, it is due to their being
systematically destroyed from an idea that they are a degenerate race.
It is evident that in these several respects the variations are more
extensive in animals than in man.
IV. This fact becomes more evident when it is possible to substitute
exact measurements for merely general ideas, and to compare figures.
The variations in size present this advantage, and it is interesting
to compare from this point of view the extremes of some animal races
with the extremes admitted in human groups.
+-----------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+------+
| SPECIES. | RACE. | | DIFFERENCE. |RATIO.|
+-----------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+------+
| | | m. ft. in. m. ft. in. | |
|Dogs | Small Spaniel| 0·305 1 } | |
| (length) | St. Bernard | 1·328 3 4·27 } 1·025 2 4·27 | 0·2 |
|Rabbits | Niçard | 0·20 7·87 } | |
| (length) | Bélier | 0·60 1 11·62 }0·40 1 3·74 | 0·3 |
|Horse | Shetland | 0·76 2 5·92 } | |
| (height) | Dray Horse | 1·80 5 10·85 } 1·04 3 4·94 | 0·4 |
|Sheep | | 0·325 1 0·79 } | |
| (height) | | 1·040 3 4·94 }0·715 2 4·15 | 0·3 |
|Man (mean | Bosjesman | 1·37 4 5·93 } | |
| height) | Patagonian | 1·72 5 8·11 } 0·35 1 2·18 | 0·8 |
+-----------+--------------+-----------------+----------------+------+
We see that the variation between races is in the horse twice as
great as in man, nearly three times in the sheep and rabbit, and
four times as much in the dog. The difference is perhaps even more
striking in the goat and ox, judging from the terms of comparison
used by several travellers.
If, after having studied the various dimensions of the body, we
compare the differences in proportion presented on the one hand
by animals and on the other by human groups, we shall arrive at
similar results. Without, however, entering into details it will be
sufficient to mention the greyhound and the beagle.
V. One of the most singular external characters, and one which has
often been insisted upon as being necessarily a character of species,
is that presented by the Bosjesman women. It is generally known that
at the lower extremity of the loins they develop a fatty mass which
sometimes increases to a considerable protuberance, as may be seen
in the _Hottentot Venus_, the model of which is in the Paris Museum.
This _steatopygia_ reappears however in certain tribes situated much
further north than the Houzouana races, while Livingstone states
that certain women of the Boors, incontestably of Dutch origin, had
begun to be affected by it. From this fact alone, this exaggerated
development of the adipose tissue loses the value which many wished
to attach to it.
If, however, the steatopygia were to exist only among the Houzouanas
we could not, on that account, regard it as a character of species,
for it has been proved in animals where it is only a character of
race. Pallas has proved this fact in certain sheep of Central Asia.
In these animals the tail disappears and is reduced to a simple
coccyx, to the right and left of which are situated two hemispherical
fatty masses weighing from twenty to thirty pounds each. Here, again,
the variation is proportionally greater than in the Bosjesman woman.
We cannot regard these sheep as a different species, for when the
Russians removed the same animals from the country in which they
were born, the steatopygia disappeared in a few generations. It is,
therefore, merely a character of race which can only be preserved in
the place where it was developed, as may be seen in a number of other
cases.
VI. It is evident that the preceding character is just as much
internal as external; it is also evident that neither the size,
nor the proportions of the trunk and limbs, can vary, unless the
skeleton and the accompanying muscles experience corresponding
modifications. The anatomical characters change then with the race in
animals, as well as external characters. There are, however, certain
facts which relate more directly to anatomy. I will quote a few cases.
A dog’s fore-paw possesses normally five well-formed toes, while
the hind-paws have only four with a rudimentary fifth. This latter
disappears in some races, mostly of a diminutive size. In certain
large races, on the contrary, it is developed, and becomes equal to
the other four. There must be then a formation of bone corresponding
to the tarsus and metatarsus.
Something analogous to the appearance we have just remarked may be
observed in the pig, complicated, however, by a fresh phenomenon.
Here the normal foot bears two small rudimentary lateral toes, and
two medial toes, each with its own hoof. Now in certain races,
already known to the ancients, a third medial toe is developed,
and the whole is enveloped in a single hoof. Instead of being
_cloven-footed_, which is the normal type of the _species_, the race
becomes _solidungulate_.
Nothing of this kind is ever seen in man. In every race the feet
maintain their ordinary composition, in the Bosjesman as in the
Patagonian. Some teratological exceptions with a tendency to heredity
are nevertheless occasionally displayed, of which we shall speak in
another chapter.
VII. The vertebral column is, so to speak, the fundamental portion
of the skeleton, and yet it does not vary the less on that account.
I shall not insist upon the differences presented by its caudal
portion, merely remarking that there are races of dogs, sheep, and
goats, in which the tail is so reduced as to be nothing more than a
short coccyx.
The central portions themselves are known to be liable to change.
Philippi tells us that the oxen of Piacentino had thirteen ribs
instead of twelve, and, consequently, an extra dorsal vertebra. In
the pig Eyton has observed the dorsal vertebræ vary from thirteen to
fifteen, the lumbar from four to six, the sacral from four to five,
and the caudal from thirteen to twenty-three, so that the total is
forty-four in the African pig and fifty-four in the English pig.
In man, the presence of one extra vertebra has occasionally been
observed. These have always been isolated cases, except in one Dutch
family, quoted by Vrolich. But it does not approximate to a constant
character in any human group, and if such a group did exist, it is
evident that the variation would here again be less than in animals,
for without even reckoning the tail, it is three times stronger in
the latter.
Of course, I do not take into consideration what has been so often
said of men asserted to have tails. We now know better how much
credit to attach to this statement. But the variations which take
place in the caudal region among animals teaches us that even a
considerable elongation of the coccyx in a human group, and the
multiplication of the vertebræ which compose it, must not be
considered _à priori_ as a specific character.
VIII. It might have been expected that the head would have
escaped modifications, on account of the importance of the organs
which belong to it. But such is not the case, and here again the
modifications are much greater in animals than in man. Blumenbach
remarked long ago that there was more difference between the head of
a domestic pig and the wild boar than between that of the White and
the Negro. There are no domestic species to which the same remark
cannot be applied. But I shall only remind the reader of the heads of
the bull-dog, greyhound and spaniel.
The extent to which the modifications of the head can be carried is
nowhere more plainly shown than in the _niata_ cattle of Buenos Ayres
and La Plata. This ox exhibits the modifications of the specific
characters similar to those which the bull-dog presents among dogs.
All the forms are shortened and thickened, the head in particular
seeming to have experienced a general movement of concentration. The
inferior maxillary bone, although itself shortened, so far exceeds
the superior in length that the animal is unable to browse the
trees. The cranium is as much deformed as the face; not only are the
forms of the bones modified, but also their relations, not one of
which, according to Professor Owen, has been strictly preserved. This
race, though perfectly established, is not therefore necessarily of
less recent origin; for, as I remarked above, all the American oxen
are descended from European stocks. It is already represented in the
New World by two sub-races, one of which, that of Buenos Ayres, has
preserved the horns, while that of Mexico has lost them.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that no human group presents
anything at all analogous to this.
IX. The several facts which I have here enumerated seem to me
sufficient to justify the proposition which I asserted at the
commencement of the chapter, namely:—that the limits of variation are
almost always more extensive between certain races of animals than
between the most distant human groups.
Consequently, however great the differences existing between
these human groups may be, or may appear to be, to consider them
as _specific characters_ is a perfectly arbitrary estimation of
their value. It is, to say the least, quite as rational, quite as
scientific, to consider these differences only as _characters of
race_, and even on that account to refer all the human groups to a
single species.
The legitimacy of this conclusion is incontestable. Now, I repeat,
that this conclusion is sufficient to destroy the very foundation
of the polygenistic theory. In reality this theory rests entirely
upon _morphological_ considerations. Its partisans, struck only by
the material differences presented by the human groups, have thought
it impossible to account for them, except by the admission of the
existence of several species. By showing that facts of this nature
can be equally well interpreted under the hypothesis of the Unity of
the Species, monogenism and polygenism are, so to speak, placed on an
equal footing.
CHAPTER VI.
INTERCROSSING AND FUSION OF CHARACTERS IN ANIMAL RACES; APPLICATION
TO MAN.
Without even quitting the ground of morphology, it will be easy to
prove which theory is most probably the correct one.
We know that naturalists consider that all individuals which pass
from one to another by invisible shades belong to the same species,
however different the extremes may be. All great museums contain
examples of this fact.
The grounds for this conclusion are much stronger when there exists
an _intercrossing of characters_. This intercrossing exists when
a very decided and apparently exclusive character reappears in
one or several individuals differing widely in other respects,
and undoubtedly belonging to distinct groups. It is a case of
intercrossing again, when the same character varies in such a manner
as to lead, if considered apart, to the division of a natural group,
and to the separation of the fractions into very different groups.
Now there is no animal species which presents these essentially
morphological characters in a higher degree than man. When the human
groups are studied in some detail, the difficulty does not consist
in finding resemblances, but in clearly defining the differences.
The more carefully they are considered, the more they disappear and
become obliterated. We then understand the accounts given by most
trustworthy travellers, such as d’Abbadie, of countries where the
Negro and the White live side by side. In their extremes these two
types are certainly very distinct. But in Abyssinia, for example,
where they have long lived in contact, and intermingled, the Negro
is no longer characterised by either colour, features, or hair, but
simply by the exaggerated protuberance of the heel. This character in
its turn, however, loses its value on the Eastern coast of Africa,
where whole Negro tribes have the heel formed like ours.
This is an example of _intercrossing_, and they could easily be
multiplied. I have already observed how closely the Aryan or
Dravidian Hindoos, African or Melanesian Negroes and manifestly
Semitic populations may resemble each other in colour. The following
is a still more striking example. Desmoulins regarded the perforation
of the olecranon process as one of the most decided characters of his
_Austro-African species of man_. Now this perforation reappears in
Egyptian and Guanche mummies, in a large number of European skeletons
of the neolithic period, the crania of which moreover, exhibit no
other relations with those of the Bosjesmans, and even in some
Europeans of the present epoch.
The intercrossing of characters between human groups becomes still
more evident from the comparison of numerical data taken from a
number of different groups. I shall confine myself for the moment to
giving the results arrived at by the study of the stature when the
representative numbers are placed in order. We shall presently meet
with other examples.
I here reproduce the table published in the _Voyage of the Novara_,
by Dr. Weisbach. I have added to the figures of the Austrian savant a
few data relating especially to the smallest races. I have also given
the maxima and minima where I have been able to procure them, so as
to make the extent of the variation more appreciable than is possible
from the average alone:
STATURE OF DIFFERENT HUMAN RACES.
m. ft. in.
Bosjesmans (min.) } 1·100 3 3·37
Esquimaux (min.) }
Obongo (young) 1·360 4 5·64
Bosjesmans (av.) } 1·370 4 5·93
Mincopees (min.) }
Lapps (min.) 1·380 4 6·33
Aëtas (min.) 1·396 4 6·96
Semangs (min.) 1·420 4 7·90
Mincopees (av.) 1·436 4 8·53
Bosjesmans (max.) 1·445 4 8·89
Guanches 1·447 4 8·97
Semangs (av.) 1·448 4 9·00
Semangs (max.) 1·473 4 9·99
Mincopees (max.) 1·480 4 10·17
Aëtas (av.) 1·482 4 10·35
Fuegians (min.) 1·488 4 10·58
Papuans 1·489 4 10·62
Chinese (min.) 1·520 4 11·84
Patagonians (min.) 1·530 5 0·24
Lapps (av.) 1·532 5 0·31
Aymaras (min.) 1·537 5 0·51
Sclaves (min.) 1·540 5 0·62
French (min.) 1·543 5 0·75
Javanese (min.) 1·549 5 0·98
Negroes (?) 1·555 5 1·22
Juags } 1·561 5 1·45
Aëtas (max.) }
Aymaras (av.) 1·563 5 1·53
Germans (min.) }
Tartars of Orotschi } 1·570 5 1·81
Kamskadales }
Malays of Malacca }
Dyaks (min.) } 1·574 5 1·97
Australians (min.) }
New Caledonians (min.) }
Cochin Chinese (av.) } 1·575 5 2·00
Transgangians (av.) }
Vanikorians 1·583 5 2·32
Timurians 1·586 5 2·46
Amboynians } 1·595 5 2·79
Peruvians }
Battas } 1·597 5 2·87
Malays (av.) }
Nicobarians 1·599 5 2·95
Australians (av.) }
Quichnas } 1·600 5 2·99
English (min.) }
Pouleyers (av.) 1·610 5 3·38
Lapps (max.) 1·613 5 3·50
Tahitians (av.) 1·614 5 3·54
Australians (av.) 1·617 5 3·66
Toulcous } 1·620 5 3·78
Guaranis }
Papuans of Vaigiou 1·624 5 3·94
Mincopees (max.) }
Fuegians (av.) }
Californians } 1·625 5 3·98
Madurese }
Cingalese }
Ando-Peruvians 1·627 5 4·05
French of the South } 1·630 5 4·17
Chinese (av.) }
Nicobarians 1·631 5 4·21
Belgians (min.) 1·632 5 4·25
Austrian Sclaves (min.) 1·634 5 4·33
Austrian Roumanians } 1·635 5 4·37
Magyars }
Jews 1·637 5 4·45
Dravidas (av.) 1·640 5 4·57
Araucanians 1·641 5 4·61
Bavarians 1·643 5 4·68
Antisians 1·645 5 4·76
Fuegians (max.) }
Crees } 1·650 5 4·96
Dyaks (max.) }
Bugis 1·653 5 5·08
Negroes (?) 1·655 5 5·16
French, working classes (av.) 1·657 5 5·24
Austrian Germans 1·658 5 5·27
Esquimaux of Melville Is. 1·659 5 5·31
Roumanians (min.) 1·660 5 5·35
Fuegians (max.) }
Chiquitos } 1·663 5 5·47
Hottentots }
French of the North } 1·665 5 5·56
Algerian Arabs }
New Caledonians } 1·670 5 5·75
Moxos }
Pampeans (av.) 1·673 5 5·87
Esquimaux of Savage Island }
Hawaïans } 1·676 5 5·98
New Californians }
Malays of Soolo }
Austrian Sclaves (av.) } 1·678 5 6·06
Russians }
Javanese 1·679 5 6·10
Germans }
Negroes } 1·680 5 6·14
Charruas }
French, upper classes (av.) 1·681 5 6·18
Ojibbeways (min.) } 1·682 5 6·22
Natives of Madras }
Fijians 1·684 5 6·31
Negroes of Sokoto 1·685 5 6·34
Belgians (av.) 1·686 5 6·38
English (av.) 1·687 5 6·42
Pampas Indians 1·688 5 6·46
Marquesas Islanders } 1·689 5 6·50
Esquimaux of Boothia sound }
Somalis 1·690 5 6·54
New Zealanders 1·695 5 6·73
Puelches }
Comma Negroes } 1·700 5 6·93
Tahitians (min.) }
Letts }
Rotuma Islanders } 1·701 5 6·96
Courouglis (av.) }
Austrian Roumanians 1·702 5 7·00
Kabyles (av.) 1·703 5 7·04
Caroline Islanders 1·705 5 7·13
Marianne Islanders 1·708 5 7·24
English (max.) }
Esquimaux of Kotzebue Strait } 1·714 5 7·48
Australians (max.) }
Pottowatomis }
Caraïbes } 1·727 5 7·99
Rarakaïans }
Tschuwacks 1·728 5 8·03
Patagonians (av. of D’Orb.) 1·730 5 8·11
Tschercassians 1·731 5 8·15
Patagonians (av. of D’Urv.) 1·732 5 8·19
Sepoys of Bengal 1·733 5 8·23
Chinese (max.) 1·744 5 8·66
Niquallis 1·752 5 8·97
Hawaïans 1·755 5 9·09
New Zealanders 1·757 5 9·17
Patagonians (av. Must.) } 1·770 5 9·69
Germans (max.) }
Polynesians (av.) 1·776 5 9·92
Pitcairn Islanders 1·777 5 9·96
Roumanians (max.) 1·780 5 10·08
Ojibbeways (av.) } 1·781 5 10·12
Agaces of the Pampas }
New Caledonians (max.) 1·785 5 10·28
Tahitians (av.) } 1·786 5 10·32
Marquesas Islanders }
Stewart Islanders }
Kaffirs } 1·789 5 10·44
Dutch }
Belgians (max.) }
Sclaves } 1·800 5 10·86
Aymaras (max.) }
Marquesas Islanders (max.) }
Tahitians (max.) 1·803 5 10·98
New Zealanders 1·815 5 11·46
Mhaya 1·841 6 0·48
Caraïbes 1·868 6 6·54
Ojibbeways (max.) 1·875 6 1·82
Schiffer Islanders 1·895 6 2·61
New Zealanders (max.) 1·904 6 2·96
Patagonians of the North (max. of D’Orb.) 1·915 6 3·39
Patagonians of the South (max. Musters) 1·924 6 3·75
Schiffer Islanders } 1·930 6 3·98
Tongatuban Islanders }
We here see what strange relations and what a singular confusion rise
from a consideration of the stature. Numbers given in the same order,
representing the size of the skull, the cephalic indices, the weight
of the brain, will give the same striking result.
We must also observe that there is a great majority of means in this
table. Now we see that the discrepancies between these means are less
than the discrepancies between the maximum and minimum of a single
race, so much so that races widely distinct from each other intervene
between them.
Now let us mentally compare instead of these groups, the individuals
of which they are composed. Is it not clear that if they were placed
according to height, we should pass from one to the other with
scarcely the difference of a millimetre; but is it not also clear
that the confusion would become much greater than it appears even in
the table?
I ask anyone who possesses even the smallest knowledge of zoology
and zootechny whether it would be in a collection of species that he
would expect to find the most evident affinities destroyed by the
application of this method? Would it not be rather in a collection
of _races_ that similar facts would be met with, as, for example,
in canine races, where the mastiff and its young, the greyhound of
Saintonge and the Italian greyhound, the large and the small carriage
dog would be separated from each other by a number of other races if
stature alone were taken into account.
The intercrossing and fusion of characters, so marked between human
groups, are inexplicable if we consider these groups as species,
unless we admit that the morphological relations between these
_human species_ are of an entirely different nature to the relations
established between _animal species_. But this _hypothesis_ makes an
_exception_ of man; we have, therefore, the right to regard it as
_false_.
If, on the contrary, we look upon these groups as nothing more than
races of a single species, all these facts of intercrossing and
fusion agree with what may be observed in plants and animals and
replace man under the dominion of general laws.
Thus, without quitting _morphological considerations_, which
correspond to the _idea of resemblance_ contained in the definition
of species, we are justified in concluding in favour of monogenism.
To confirm this conclusion, however, we must turn our attention
to other facts which correspond to the _idea of filiation_, and
consider the teachings of _physiology_ concerning the phenomena of
_generation_.
CHAPTER VII.
CROSSING OF RACES AND SPECIES IN THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE
KINGDOMS.—MONGRELS AND HYBRIDS.
I. Sexual unions in plants, as in animals, can take place between
individuals of the _same species_ and the _same race_; further,
between _different races_ of the _same species_, and, finally,
between _different species_. In the two latter cases we have what is
called a cross. This crossing itself is differently named according
to whether it takes place between different races or different
species. In the first case it produces a _mongrel_, in the second
a _hybrid_. When the cross-unions are fertile the product of the
union of mongrels is called a _mongrel_, the product of the union of
hybrids a _hybrid_.
If the difference of the relations existing between the _race_ and
the _species_ has been properly understood, we ought to be inclined
to admit that mongrels and hybrids would not present the same
phenomena; experience and observation confirm this presentiment.
We have, therefore, in this crossing a means of judging whether
the human groups are only _races of a single species_, or rather
_distinct species_. For this purpose it will be sufficient to study
the phenomena which, in other organised and living beings, accompany
the production of mongrels and hybrids, and then to compare with
both the phenomena which characterise the crosses effected between
human groups. If, in the latter case, the phenomena are those
which characterise _hybridism_, we must conclude that the groups
are specifically distinct, and admit the _multiplicity_ of human
species. If, however, crosses between human groups, morphologically
different, are accompanied by phenomena peculiar to the production of
_mongrels_, we shall only be justified in considering these groups as
races of one species; we must take our stand upon the doctrine of the
_Specific Unity_ of all mankind.
The question before us becomes then entirely a physiological one,
and depends simply upon observation and experiment. For its solution
we must again turn our attention to plants as well as to animals.
It is in the phenomena of reproduction that the two kingdoms show
the greatest resemblance. This is not a case of mere _analogy_, but
almost of _identity_, and it is not the superior which lowers itself
but the inferior which is raised. We might say that, ennobled by the
importance of the function, the plant, as far as its reproductive
system is concerned, becomes, for the time, animal.
II. In these kingdoms the unions between _races of the same species_,
that is to say, the _production of mongrels_, may be accomplished
without any intervention on the part of man, or it may take place
under his direction. It is consequently either natural or artificial.
Mongrels among plants could only be recognised after the discovery
of the distinction of the sexes in 1744. The honour of this great
discovery belongs to Linnæus. He at once comprehended the importance
of the subject, and even exaggerated it, as we shall presently see.
Linnæus admitted that cross-unions, which had been observed for
centuries between animals, might be repeated between plants. And he
thus explained the appearance of variegated tulips in the midst of
borders originally formed of uniformly coloured flowers. Observation
and experiment have confirmed the views of the founder of the natural
sciences again and again. Moreover, it has been observed that the
crossing may become apparent in all parts of the plant by a mixture
of characters similar to that exhibited by the colouring of the
tulips. M. Naudin, among others, who, during one year, watched the
development of more than 1200 gourds, saw the seeds of a single
fruit reproduce all the races contained in the garden in which his
observations were made. _Superfetation_ had taken place. It is a
fact of great importance, as it demonstrates the equality of action
enjoyed by the pollen of all these races, which, morphologically,
differ so widely from each other. No better example could be given of
the faculty of crossing _between races_.
The natural and spontaneous production of mongrels among animals
presents the same characters. Facilitated by locomotion it is
accomplished every day in our houses, our poultry-yards, and our
farms. The difficulty does not consist in the accomplishment of the
cross but in its prevention, and in the preservation of the purity
of the race. The careful observations made by Isidore Geoffroy at
the Paris Museum, have shown that with sheep, dogs, pigs, and fowls,
mongrels between the most different races were invariably fertile.
Here again the phenomena of superfetation was often proved. Bitches
produced, by males of several races successively, young which showed
three or four distinct sources. Here the case was the same as with
the gourds of M. Naudin.
We see that man has found no difficulty in breeding mongrels, and
that, when he has wished to do so for any purpose whatever, he has
been able to regulate it by merely choosing the animal or plant.
This kind of union has, indeed, been long in daily practice for the
amelioration, modification, and diversification of the living beings
upon which human industry is exercised. It is useless to insist
upon facts which are known to all gardeners and breeders, and I
shall confine myself to one remark, the importance of which will be
understood later.
We have already seen that in the endeavour to _perfect_ a vegetable
or animal race, the physiological equilibrium has sometimes been
destroyed at the expense of the reproductive power. In such cases,
crossing with another race which is less modified, generally revives
the extinguished fertility. For example, the English pigs imported
into the middle of France by M. de Ginestous became sterile after
several generations. Upon crossing them with a leaner and less
perfect local race, their fertility returned.
All these facts, and their inevitable consequences, have been
admitted by every naturalist who has studied the question. Even
Darwin has recognised the truth of them in his valuable work upon
the _Variation of Animals and Plants_. At that time he confined
himself to the conclusion that the crosses between some races of
plants are less fertile than between others, a proposition which
no one would think of denying. He has gone further in the latest
editions of his work upon the Origin of Species. Without bringing
forward clear facts, the meaning of which would go further than the
wise conclusions he had previously admitted, he invokes our relative
ignorance of what takes place among wild _varieties_, and concludes
that we must admit that the crosses between varieties must always be
perfectly fertile. This is one of those appeals to the unknown, one
of those arguments where even our ignorance is invoked as a proof,
which we too often meet with in Darwin, who is often carried away by
his convictions. I shall have to return to this point, but I here
make the statement as an established fact, on the authority even of
Darwin, that all _known_ facts attest the _perfect fertility_ of
mongrels.
Finally, the formation of _crosses between races_, or the production
of _mongrels_, is spontaneous, and may be promoted by man without the
least difficulty; the results are as certain as those with the union
of individuals of the same race; in certain cases, indeed, fertility
is increased or revived under the influence of this crossing.
Crosses _between species, or hybrids,_ will exhibit facts of an
entirely contrary nature.
III. The formation of hybrids, as of mongrels, may be either natural
or artificial.
The former is so rare that eminent naturalists have doubted its
reality. There are, however, according to M. Decaisne, a score of
well proved examples among plants. What is this number compared with
the thousands of mongrels produced every day under our eyes. And yet
the material conditions of fertility are identically the same with
races as with species, and our botanical gardens, which group numbers
of species side by side, facilitate crossing still more.
Among wild animals living in liberty hybrids are still more rare.
It is unknown, for example, among mammalia, according to Isidore
Geoffroy, whose experience has here a double value. The order of
birds alone presents some facts of this kind, nearly all of which are
in the order of Gallinæ. According to Valenciennes, they are unknown
among fishes. In domestication and captivity spontaneous crossing
between different species is a little less rare.
The intelligent intervention of man has multiplied unions of this
kind in a remarkable manner, especially among plants, but without
being able to extend their limits. Linnæus thought crossing was
possible between species of _different families_. But in 1761
Koelreuter showed that he was mistaken. From these investigations,
which were carried on for twenty-seven years, and from those of
M. Naudin, his worthy rival, it appears that artificial crossing
between species of _different families never_ succeeds, and _very
rarely_ between species of _different genera_; that it is always very
difficult, and demands the most minute precautions to insure success;
that it often fails between species of the same genus closely allied
in appearance, and finally, that there are whole families among which
hybrids are impossible. Amongst the latter figures the family of the
cucurbitaceæ, so thoroughly studied by M. Naudin, where the most
perfect mongrels were produced spontaneously. We could not imagine,
evidently, a more complete contrast.
This contrast is carried into the minutest details. For example, any
flower which has in the least possible degree undergone the action of
pollen of its own species becomes absolutely insensible to the action
of pollen of a different species. How different to the equality of
action displayed by the several pollens of most distant races!
All experimenters agree further in declaring that even in the unions
between species which have been most successful, the fertility is
constantly diminished, and often in immense proportions. The head of
the Papaver somnifera generally contains 2000 seeds or more. In a
hybrid of this species Gœrtner only found six which had been matured;
all the rest were more or less abortive. Here again, what a contrast
between the crossing productive of such fertility in M. De Ginestous’
English pigs.
Hybridism in animals presents exactly the same phenomena as in
plants. Man has been able, by diverting and deceiving animal
instincts, to multiply crosses between species. But he has not been
able to extend the very narrow limits at which these phenomena cease.
Not one fertile union has taken place between different families;
they are very rare between genera, and even between species they are
far from numerous, a fact the more remarkable as animal hybridation
is an ancient institution. The mule was known to the Hebrews before
the time of David, and to the Greeks in the age of Homer. _Titires_
and _musmons_, products of crossings between the he-goat and the
sheep and the ram with the she-goat, received their distinctive names
from the Romans.
The uncertainty of the result is another point of resemblance between
animal and vegetable hybrids. The same experiments executed with
the same care and by equally clever experimenters have sometimes
succeeded and sometimes failed without any apparent cause. Buffon
and Daubenson often tried to reproduce titires and musmons. They
succeeded twice, while Isidore Geoffroy has invariably failed. The
formation of crosses between the hare and the rabbit, which has
frequently been attempted in various parts of the globe, appears only
to have been successful four or five times at the most. The pretended
cross between the camel and the dromedary, admitted by Buffon and
quoted by Nott, is certainly a fable, after the details which M. De
Khanikoff kindly gave me, and which I have published elsewhere. We
may, therefore, draw this conclusion from known facts, that there
are only two species of mammals, the ass and the horse, the crossing
of which is almost universally and invariably fertile.
Finally, crossing _between species_, or _hybridation_, is extremely
exceptional among plants and animals when left to themselves; man can
only produce them with great difficulty in the two kingdoms, and then
only between a very limited number of species; when he has succeeded,
the fertility is almost constantly diminished, and often to a very
considerable extent.
CHAPTER VIII.
CROSSING BETWEEN VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL RACES AND SPECIES; MONGRELS AND
HYBRIDS; REALITY OF SPECIES.
I. From the very first, in the union of two individuals belonging
to different stocks, the race and the species display very distinct
and characteristic phenomena. We shall now see this opposition as
strongly marked in the product of these unions in _mongrels_ and
_hybrids_.
Several questions are raised by the mixed nature of these beings.
I shall confine myself to those which refer to filiation, and
which have therefore a special interest for us. They may be stated
generally as follows:—are _mongrel races_, that is, those derived
from _two_ distinct _races_, and _hybrid races_, that is those which
are derived from the crossing of _two species_, formed naturally,
or can they be obtained artificially? In other words, do mongrels
and hybrids retain, during an indefinite number of generations, the
faculty of reproducing and transmitting to their descendants the
mixed character they inherited from the first parents which effected
the cross?
II. In regard to mongrels there is not a shadow of doubt. Facts which
frequently occur, often without our intervention, and sometimes in
spite of our precautions, prove again and again that the mongrels
of the first generation are as fertile as the parents, and transmit
equal fertility to their offspring. Our gardeners and breeders always
take advantage of this property of mongrels in order to vary, modify
or ameliorate from their point of view the plants and animals in
which they are interested; the careful experiments of Buffon, of
Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, father and son, and the testimony of Darwin,
on this point very significant, prove beyond a doubt that unions
between different races remain fertile, whatever morphological
differences there may be between them. I shall confine myself to
quoting one example from Darwin. The niata will unite indifferently
in both senses with the ordinary ox, and the offspring is fertile.
If several races of a single species are in habitual contact and left
to themselves, they will intermix in every degree. This results in
bastard offspring, devoid of definite characters, but which, when
methodically studied, would lead through _insensible shades_ to the
different primitive types. In this manner our street dogs and cats
have come into existence, which remain perfectly fertile in spite of
innumerable crossings of every kind.
With human intervention it is possible, when care is taken, to
regulate the crossing between two races, and to obtain a mongrel
race. After a few oscillations between the paternal and maternal
types it becomes consolidated and settled. But whatever constancy
it may have acquired as a whole, it almost always happens that some
individuals reproduce, to a varying extent, the characters of one of
the types originally crossed.
This phenomenon is designated by the name of _Atavism_. It sometimes
occurs in the midst of a race considered to be perfectly pure, and
is the result of a single crossing several generations back. Darwin
quotes the case of a breeder, who having crossed his fowls with the
Malay race, wished afterwards to free them from the strange blood.
After spending forty years in the attempt, he is still unsuccessful,
the Malay blood always reappearing in some of his fowls.
In animals as in plants, universal, free and indefinite fertility,
whether between themselves or between all the races of the same
species, is one of the characters of mongrels. Atavism attests the
physiological bond which unites all mongrels.
III. In hybrids we shall meet with some very different phenomena.
Let us first, with M. Godron, establish the fact that in the
vegetable hybrid the physiological equilibrium is destroyed in favour
of the organs conducive to the life of the individual, and at the
expense of those conducive to the life of the species. The stalk and
leaves are always developed in an exaggerated manner relatively to
the flowers. The most common animal hybrid, the mule, is an entirely
similar case, being invariably stronger, more robust, more hardy than
its parents, but sterile.
This sterility is not absolute, however, among all hybrids of the
first generation. It generally affects the male organs in an entirely
special manner. Koelreuter, to whom we should always refer when
treating of plants, states that the anthers scarcely ever enclose
veritable pollen, but merely irregular granulations. It was not quite
so unusual to find ovules in good condition in the ovary. Guided by
these observations, Koelreuter artificially fertilised hybrid flowers
with pollen from the male species, and thus obtained a _vegetable
quadroon_. By continuing this process he soon brought back again to
the original male type the descendants of the first hybrid, which
regained all their generative faculties, but at the same time lost
all trace of the female type. These experiments have been repeated
and varied, but always with the same result.
In a small number of hybrids of the first generation the elements
which characterise the two sexes remained capable of reproduction.
Nevertheless the fertility is always immensely reduced. From his
hybrids of the datura, M. Naudin only obtained five or six fertile
seeds from each plant. All the others had completely failed, or were
without an embryo. The capsules themselves were only half the normal
size.
If two of these first hybrids are united they produce hybrids of the
second generation. In most cases, however, the latter are either
sterile, or present the phenomenon of a _spontaneous return_ to one
or the other of the parent types, or to both. M. Naudin crossed the
_large-leaved primrose_ with the _primula officinalis_, and obtained
an intermediate hybrid between the two species, having seven fertile
seeds. When these were sown they produced three primroses of the male
species, three of the female, and a single hybrid plant which was
perfectly barren.
In some still rarer cases fertility continues during several
generations. Then, however, a curious phenomenon is exhibited,
called by M. Naudin, who discovered it, _Disordered variation._ With
the _Linaria communis_ and the _Linaria purpurea_ he produced a
hybrid, the descendants of which he was able to follow through seven
generations, in each of which several individuals reverted to the
characters either of the original male or female. The others neither
resembled the primitive types nor the hybrid resulting from their
crossing, nor the plants of which they were the immediate offspring,
nor was there any resemblance between the plants themselves.
Thus the crossing does not produce a race, even in cases where it
allows a certain amount of fertility; it only produces _varieties_
incapable of transmitting their individual characters. In order to
establish a series of generations presenting a certain amount of
uniformity, the hybrid must lose some of its mixed characters, and
resume the normal livery of the species, as M. Naudin says; in other
words, it must return to one of the parent types.
IV. The same facts which we have just noticed among plants, occur
also among animals. We must observe in the first place, that the only
two species, the crossing of which displays anything approaching to
regular fertility, the horse and the ass, merely produce a hybrid
almost entirely devoid of fertility. It is more than 2000 years since
Herodotus regarded the fertility of mules as a prodigy, and almost
1800 years since Pliny expressed the same opinion.
And yet in some works we read that the fertility of the mule is
displayed in the present day; that it often propagates in hot
countries, especially in Algeria. The true value of these singular
assertions will be recognised if we recall the effect which was
produced in 1828 upon the whole Mussulman population of Algeria
by the announcement that a mule had conceived near Biskra. The
astonishment was general; the Arabs gave themselves up to long fasts
to conciliate the wrath of heaven, thinking the end of the world had
come. Fortunately the mule miscarried; but long afterwards the Arabs
still spoke with terror of this event.
If this fact were occasionally repeated in Algeria it would never
have produced such an impression upon a people so curious about
everything connected with the horse. The impression itself proves
that the facts are in our days similar to what they were in the time
of Herodotus.
Examples of fertility in the hybrids of the ass and the horse have
never been observed except in the _female mule_. There is not a
single known example in the _male_. We meet with something analogous
to this in birds, where the sterility of certain hybrids is less
absolute. Thus vertebrata are similarly affected with plants; and
in their case also the inequality between the two sexes can be
explained by anatomical and microscopic examination. The male organs
are generally but slightly developed, even the essential elements
of the fertilising liquid undergo alteration. The female organs and
elements, though modified, are relatively unaffected.
There are some hybrids among animals, as among plants, which are not
subject to the general law. Among birds in particular, a certain
number, always however very limited, of more or less fertile hybrids
have been obtained. But, with the males the faculty of reproduction
is constantly weakened, and habitually disappears before the usual
age; the female lays more rarely, and the eggs are fewer in number,
and very often _clear_. This is an exact repetition of what took
place in M. Naudin’s datura seeds, which he observed to become
abortive or devoid of embryo.
We must, moreover, exclude from the number of fertile hybrids
a certain number of examples quoted by some authors, and which
statements are proved by facts, now either better known or better
appreciated, to have an erroneous foundation. Thus Hellenius thought
he had crossed the Finnish ram with the Sardinian doe, but he had
confounded the then little known moufflon with the roebuck. He thus
obtained a mongrel, which having been crossed for two generations
with the male parent, returned to the type of the latter. We have
here evidently only a companion experiment to those of Koelreuter,
which resulted in a reversion of the hybrid to the male type under a
similar series of crossings.
There are, however, some examples among birds and among mammalia of
hybrids which have propagated _inter se_ for several generations,
four or five at the most. The celebrated experiment of Buffon upon
the crossing of the dog with the wolf in particular, belongs to this
order of facts. It was unfortunately interrupted by the death of the
great naturalist at the fourth generation. It is clear that there is
nothing here which does not perfectly agree with our observations
upon hybrid plants, which, although exceeding this number of
generations, have never produced hybrid races.
Fertility, and the number of succeeding generations is increased,
when a superiority is given to one of the crossed species over the
other. This fact has been recognised in plants, and we meet with
it again in animals. By crossing and recrossing in a fixed manner
the goat and the sheep, hybrids called _chabins_ are obtained which
possess three-eighths of the paternal and five-eighths of the
maternal blood. These animals produce a fleece much valued in South
America, and are the source of real industry. They can be maintained
for several generations, but at length all the crossings to which
they owe their existence must be recommenced, they having returned to
the parental types, ‘like plants,’ as M. Gay said.
This proportion—three-eighths to five-eighths—appears to be very
favourable to the maintenance of hybrid races; it is the proportion
which characterises the famous leporides, the result of the crossing
of the hare and the rabbit. But can these hybrids, of which so
much has been said, maintain themselves without reverting to the
parental types? M. Roux evidently believed it, and it is still
asserted by M. Gayot. But the testimony of those who have established
and impugned their assertions leaves scarcely any room for doubt.
Isidore Geoffroy, who had at first believed in their fixity, and
had spoken of it as a conquest, did not hesitate afterwards to
admit the reversion. The fact has been established in the Jardin
d’Acclimatation, and M. Roux himself, upon the assertion of M.
Faivre, appears to have abandoned his previous assertions. The
observations and experiments made by the Agricultural Society of
Paris clearly show that the _leporides_, sent or presented by the
breeders themselves, had entirely reverted to the rabbit type.
Lastly, M. Sanson, discussing the anatomical side of the question,
has arrived at the same conclusions. Moreover, whoever will credit
the observations made by M. Naudin upon the Linariæ, will easily
recognise the _reversion_ and the _disordered variation_ exhibited
by the leporides of the Abbé Cagliari, who was the first to obtain a
fertile crossing between the hare and the rabbit.
These phenomena appear in an equally well marked manner in the
result of the cross between the silkmoth (_Bombyx cynthia_) and
the castor-oil silkmoth (_Bombyx arrindia_), obtained by M.
Guérin Méneville. The hybrids of the first generation were almost
exactly intermediate between the two species, and resembled each
other. In the second this uniformity disappeared, in the third the
dissimilarity had increased, some of the insects having reassumed
all the characters of the paternal or maternal types. In the seventh
generation this curious experiment was destroyed by ichneumons. But,
as M. Valée, their intelligent breeder, told me, nearly all the moths
had returned to the type of the Bombyx arrindia. The resemblance to
what took place in the case of M. Naudin’s Linariæ is here complete.
V. The phenomenon of the _reversion_ of the descendants of a hybrid
to the paternal or maternal type, or _disordered variation_, has
given rise to some interpretations which it will be well to rectify,
and has also raised important questions.
The attempt has been made to assimilate the latter to the
_oscillations_ presented by mongrels for some generations. But
daily experience should suffice to refute this opinion. Breeders
are crossing _races_ every day for some purpose or other, and they
would never do so if the crossing were to result in the production
of a disorder which would exhibit the smallest resemblance to that
displayed by the Linariæ of M. Naudin, and the silkmoths of Guérin
Méneville. They expect, however, a few irregularities more or less
marked, in the first generations, but they know that the race will
soon _settle_ while the disorder would only increase if the crossing
had taken place between _species_.
Again, an attempt has been made to consider the facts of _atavism_
and _reversion_ as identical. There is, however, a fundamental
difference between them, for the mongrel which by atavism reassumes
the characters of one of its paternal ancestors, for example, still
preserves its mixed nature. This is proved by the possibility of
its offspring of the first or second generation reproducing, on the
contrary, the essential traits of its own maternal ancestors. Darwin
gives many examples of facts of this nature from the agricultural
history of his country. One of the best to quote is that furnished by
the genealogy of a family of dogs observed by Girou de Buzareingues.
These animals were crosses between the setter and spaniel. Now one
male, a setter to all appearances, united with a female of pure
setter breed, produced spaniels, which makes it evident that the
latter blood was by no means annihilated, and that the return to the
setter type was only apparent.
It is different in the cases of _reversion_ displayed by hybrids,
for one of the two bloods is irrevocably expelled. We are justified
in making this assertion in the case of mammalia, by experience
extending as far back as the Roman period, or at least as far as the
seventeenth century. Titires and musmons have never since those times
had _offspring affected by atavism_. A ram and sheep have never been
known to produce a kid, nor a male and female goat to produce a lamb.
It is the same with plants, according to statements with which M.
Naudin has kindly furnished me.
Far from being similar, the phenomena of _atavism_ and _reversion_
are absolutely different and characteristic, the one of crossing
between _races_, the other of crossing between _species_. The first
proclaims the persistency of the physiological connections between
all the representatives, more or less modified, of one species; the
second proves the complete rupture of the same connections between
the descendants of two species accidentally brought into contact by
the promoter of the hybridism.
VI. In none of the preceding cases has hybridism, no matter in what
degree, given rise to a series of individuals descended the one from
the other; and preserving the same characters. An exception is,
however, known to this general fact. It is unique, and is produced in
the vegetable kingdom from the crossing of wheat with _Ægilops ovata_.
The hybrid of the first generation from these two species is
sometimes produced naturally, and was regarded by Requien as a
species. Fabre, who frequently met with it in the fields, considered
it to be the commencement of the transmutation of the Ægilops into
wheat. Afterwards a quadroon hybrid, accidentally obtained and
cultivated during several years, gave him descendants resembling the
_beardless wheat_ of the South. It was the result of _reversion_.
Fabre, however, who did not recognise the hybrid, thought it was a
transmutation, and flattered himself that he had discovered wild
wheat in the Ægilops.
M. Godron, on the contrary, understood the nature of the phenomenon,
and demonstrated it experimentally. He crossed the Ægilops and
the wheat, and obtained the first plant of Requien, the _Ægilops
triticoïdes_ of Fabre. He again crossed this hybrid with the
true wheat, and reproduced the pretended artificial wheat of
the Montpellier botanist. He gave to it the name of _Ægilops
speltæformis_.
It is this latter form, having as we see three-fourths of the true
wheat, and a fourth of the Ægilops, that M. Godron has cultivated at
Nancy since 1857. The clever naturalist who has produced it, believes
that he has not had one case of reversion like those at Montpellier
and those of Fabre. But at the same time he informs us that the most
minute and special precautions alone can preserve this artificial
plant. The ground must be prepared with the greatest care, and each
seed placed by hand in the desired position. If put into the ground
carelessly, or scattered over the bed, the seeds never germinate.
M. Godron considered that the Ægilops speltæformis would entirely
disappear, perhaps in a single year, if left to itself.
VII. Finally, the characters of hybrids are: infertility, as a
general rule, and, in the exceptions, a very limited fertility;
series suddenly cut short either by infertility, by disordered
variation, or by reversion without atavism.
The Ægilops triticoïdes alone seems to stand in opposition to all
other known facts. This exception is undoubtedly remarkable, but
does not in any way impair our general conclusions. A product of
human industry, this hybrid plant only exists by virtue of the same
industry, and cannot, from any point of view, be compared to the
succession of mongrel individuals which are unceasingly propagated
without our aid, and in spite of our precautions, in the midst of our
animal and vegetable races.
“But,” say those writers who deny the reality of a distinction
between species and race, “what man has done nature must be able
to do also, for she governs space and time, and is therefore more
powerful than man.” This form of argument rests upon a confusion of
ideas and a strange neglect of the most ordinary facts.
Most true, nature is more powerful than man in certain cases and
for certain ends, but man also has his domain, in which he is
much superior to nature. Natural forces act in virtue of blind and
necessary laws, the result of which is constant. Now man has acquired
the knowledge of these laws, he has made use of them to constrain
and master the natural forces one after another, he now knows how
to exaggerate some and to weaken others. In this manner he changes
their resultants, and obtains products which nature herself could not
realise. Give to the latter all the time and space that you will,
she would never be able either to produce or preserve potassium or
sodium in a metallic form; in spite of the physico-chemical forces,
or rather by directing them, man has obtained and preserved these two
metals, as he has obtained and preserved the Ægilops triticoïdes,
which is destroyed by the inflexibility of natural forces as soon as
it is exposed to their action.
VIII. The infertility, or, if you will, the restricted and rapidly
limited fertility between species, and the impossibility of natural
forces, when left to themselves, producing series of intermediary
beings between two given specific types, is one of those general
facts which we call a _law_. This fact has an importance in the
organic world equal to that rightly attributed to attraction in the
sidereal world. It is by virtue of the latter that the celestial
bodies preserve their respective distances, and complete their
orbits in the admirable order revealed by astronomy. The _law of the
sterility of species_ produces the same result, and maintains between
species and between different groups in animals and plants all those
relations, which, in the palæontological ages, as well as in our own,
form the marvellous whole of the _Organic Empire_.
Imagine the suppression of the laws which govern attraction in the
heavens, and what chaos would immediately be the result. Suppress
upon earth the law of crossing, and the confusion would be immense.
It is scarcely possible to say where it would stop. After a few
generations the groups which we call genera, families, orders, and
classes would most certainly have disappeared, and the branches also
would rapidly have become affected. It is clear that only a few
centuries would elapse before the animal and vegetable kingdoms
fell into the most complete disorder. Now order has existed in both
kingdoms since the epoch when organised beings first peopled the
solitudes of our globe, and it could only have been established and
preserved by virtue of the impossibility of a fusion of species with
each other through indifferently and indefinitely fertile crossings.
IX. There are some writers, very often entirely unacquainted
with the natural sciences, who, labouring under the most varied
prejudices, especially that of exaggerating the transmutation
doctrines which I shall presently discuss, have denied the _reality
of species_; they affirm that there are no serious barriers between
the groups designated by this term, and have compared it in a more
or less formal manner to the groups always somewhat arbitrarily
called genera, tribes, families, orders, etc. Though only a brief
recapitulation, the preceding facts would be sufficient to answer
them. It is, however, necessary to mention the principal objections
which are brought forward against such ideas, and to shew how they
may be refuted.
1st. It is useless to take any notice o£ the good humoured or
malicious banter, of the raillery and sarcasm too often made use of
by some writers against those who admit the reality of species. It is
evident that those who employ such weapons do not address themselves
to men of science, but appeal directly to the passions. We cannot
sufficiently express our regret at seeing men of undoubted merit
resorting to such means.
2nd. At the present time, perhaps more than ever, those who believe
in species are reproached with being _orthodox_: I could never myself
understand why there should be this mixture of scientific discussions
and dogmatic and anti-dogmatic polemics.
3rd. I shall, moreover, refuse to dispute with those who, rejecting
on their own authority a whole century of work accomplished by the
greatest naturalists, and by a number of men distinguished in botany
and zoology, declare that it is useless to try and discover what
species and race are, and laugh at those who take the trouble to do
so. I say the same to those who regard species and race as more or
less arbitrary groups which may be compared to the genus, family and
order. It will be enough to remark that they themselves incessantly
employ the word _species_ and _race_, and we must not be surprised if
they take one thing for the other.
4th. After what we have said, discussion is useless with those
naturalists who only base the distinction of species upon external
characters. They forget all the experiments made from Buffon to
the two Geoffroys, from Koelreuter to M. Naudin; they forget the
innumerable observations made in our orchards, gardens and stables.
To refuse to abandon morphological considerations, and to neglect the
data of physiology and the lessons of filiation, is clearly going
further back than Ray and Tournefort, and all discussion becomes
impossible.
5th. Some of our opponents allow that things are now what we think
them to be. “But,” say they, “it is possible that at some other
time it was different.” What answer can be given to those who base
their arguments upon _possibilities_? Is modern science composed of
possibilities?
6th. Naturalists have often been reproached with multiplying the
definitions of species. From the variety of terms employed by them in
expressing ideas, it has been inferred that they were not agreed as
to the ideas themselves. We may easily convince ourselves of their
mistake, if we give these definitions a careful reconsideration. We
shall see that their several authors have only endeavoured to express
with greater clearness and precision, the double idea resulting from
the facts of resemblance and filiation. In reality, divergencies only
begin where experiment and observation cease. It is this which caused
Isidore Geoffroy, however interested he might be in discussions of
this nature, to remark—“Such are Species and Races, not only for one
of the schools into which naturalists are divided, but for all.”
7th. It has been asserted that the distinction of species and race
rests upon a syllogistic circle; that naturalists decided _à priori_
upon calling all those groups incapable of intercrossing, _species_,
and all those amongst which crossing was possible, _races_. To appeal
to the difference of the phenomena presented by the hybrids and
mongrels is therefore only solving the question by the question.—This
is an historical error. Naturalists came into contact with species,
races and varieties, before they gave names to them. It was by
experiment and observation that they learnt to distinguish them.
_Knowledge of facts_ preceded _terminology_.
8th. Again, it has been said, that the discussions which are always
arising between naturalists as to whether a species should be
preserved or regarded as a race, as to the genus, family, order, and
sometimes the class in which it should be placed, betray a want of
precision in general ideas.—Those who talk in this manner forget the
immense number of species and races accepted and classified without
discussion. They shut their eyes to all cases except those in which
divergences of opinion occur. If, however, facts of this nature
prove anything against a science and its fundamental data, then even
mathematical theorems must be considered as wanting in precision, for
there are disputes among mathematicians.
9th. I have already replied to the arguments drawn from the fertility
of certain hybrids by showing to what it is reduced. Writers who
insist upon this point invariably forget the lesson taught us by
disordered variation and reversion without atavism. I regret being
obliged to place among them Darwin, who, in his later writings, has
shewn much less reserve than in his earlier publications. In the last
edition of his book, he quotes what I have said of the cross between
the Bombyx cynthia and the Bombyx arrindia; he speaks of the number
of generations obtained, but he forgets to mention that disordered
variation appeared in the second generation, and that reversion to
one of the parental types was almost complete at the termination of
the experiment.
X. Species is then a reality.
Let us take a group of individuals more or less similar, but always
capable of contracting fertile unions, and let us, with M. Chevreul,
trace it in imagination to its origin. We shall see it divided
into _families_, each of which will have risen either mediately or
immediately from one pair of parents. We shall see that the number of
these families decrease at _each generation_, and rising still higher
we shall at length find the initial term of a _single primitive pair_.
Has this really been the case? Has each species indeed arisen from
one single pair, or have several pairs, resembling each other
perfectly both morphologically and physiologically, appeared
simultaneously or successively? These are _questions of fact_ which
science neither can nor ought to approach, for neither experiment nor
observation is able to furnish us with the smallest data requisite
for the solution.
But what science may affirm is that _from all appearances_ each
species has had, as point of departure, a single primitive pair.
CHAPTER IX.
CROSSING BETWEEN HUMAN GROUPS.—UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
I. We now know what are species and race; the phenomena exhibited
by mongrels and hybrids furnish us with an experimental means of
distinguishing them. We can, therefore, now reply to the question
which has necessitated this discussion: Are there one or many human
species? Are the human groups races or species?
Unless we pretend that man alone of all organised beings is free from
the laws which, in every other case, govern and regulate the laws
of reproduction, and consequently, unless we make him a solitary
exception precisely in that order of facts which most closely unites
all other beings, we shall be forced to admit that he also obeys the
laws of crossing.
Thus, if the human groups represent a more or less considerable
number of _species_, we ought to prove in the crossings of their
species the existence of the characteristic phenomena of _hybridism_.
If these groups are only _races of a single species_, we ought, in
crossings between them, to meet with the phenomena exhibited by
mongrels.
II. It is scarcely necessary to recall what nearly four centuries of
experience and observation have taught us. It may be recapitulated in
a very few words.
Since Columbus commenced the era of great geographical discoveries,
the White, the highest division of mankind, has penetrated to almost
every part of the globe. He has everywhere met human groups which
differed considerably from himself in every kind of character; he has
everywhere mixed with them, and mixed races have everywhere sprung
up in his track.
Further still, thanks to an institution, detestable indeed, but the
results of which have been favourable to anthropology, the experiment
is complete. The White has enslaved the Negro and taken him away
with him to all parts of the globe, and where the local races have
consented to intermix with the enslaved race, in every case they
have produced mixed races of this inferior division. In America the
_Zambo_ is born side by side with the _Mulatto_ and the _Mamaluco_.
This crossing commenced less than four centuries ago, and some
time has elapsed since M. d’Omalius estimated that mixed races
constituted at least 1/80 of the entire population of the globe, and
he emphatically declared that he had only taken the half-breeds of
extreme races into consideration.
In South America, where Whites, Blacks and natives have long been in
contact and have intermingled more freely, there are whole States in
which half-breeds are in the majority, and in which it is extremely
difficult to find a native of pure blood.
Have subterfuges or precautions been necessary to form these unions
and to insure the fertility of the offspring? Quite the contrary.
The tyranny of the Whites, the crimes of slavery, afford quite
sufficient proof that in this case fertility was not dependent upon
circumstances, but simply upon the physical connections existing
between all men from the lowest of the Negroes to the first of the
Whites.
Has such facility, such certainty as this been experienced in the
production of chabins and leporides?
If another proof were necessary of the facility with which human
groups intercross, it might be found in one of those testimonies the
value of which is undisputed because they give the result of a daily
experience. In 1861, the Californian legislature declared that any
white person convicted of having cohabited with or married a Negro,
Mulatto, Chinese or Indian, had forfeited all his rights, and became
subject to all the constitutional incapacities imposed upon men of
colour. The local press announced very plainly that the object of
this measure was the prevention of the fusion and amalgamation of the
races.
The Californian legislature acted on this occasion like the
proprietor of a flock of pure breed which he is anxious to keep
free from all mixture. It was even more severe, ejecting from
legal society, not only the offspring of the cross, but also the
transgressing parents of the white race.
Do not our breeders take similar precautions in the case of races
only, and not in the case of species?
Far from being sterile, unions between human groups apparently
the most distinct are sometimes more fertile than those between
individuals taken from the same group. “Hottentot women,” says
Le Vaillant, “with husbands of their own race have three or four
children. With Negroes this number is tripled, and it is still
further increased with Whites.” M. Hombron, during four years which
he spent in Brazil, Chili and Peru, studied this phenomenon in a
large number of families. “I am able to state,” he says, “that unions
of Whites with American women have given the highest average of
births. Next come the Negro and Negress. And thirdly the Negro and
the American woman.” Unions between Americans themselves gave the
lowest average.
Thus, the maximum of fertility is here presented in a case which
would constitute a hybridism in the opinion of polygenists; the
minimum is exhibited between individuals of the same group, and it is
with the woman belonging to the latter, that, owing to the cross, the
maximum is obtained.
These facts are significant. In no case of crossing between species
has fertility been observed to increase; on the contrary it is almost
always diminished, and often, as we have seen above, in an immense
proportion. Crossings between races have alone presented facts
analogous to those mentioned by Hombron and Le Vaillant.
III. Thus, in every case crossings between human groups exhibit the
phenomena characteristic of mongrels and never those of hybrids.
Therefore, these human groups, however different they may be, or
appear to be, are only _races of one and the same species_ and not
_distinct species_.
Therefore, there is but _one human species_, taking this term species
in the acceptation employed when speaking of animals and plants.
IV. Anyone who refuses to accept these conclusions must either deny
all the facts of which it is the necessary consequence, or reject the
method employed in the examination and appreciation of these facts.
But these facts are borrowed entirely either from scientific
experiments, made without any discussion or controversy by men of
the highest authority, or drawn from the innumerable experiments
which are daily practised by agriculturalists, horticulturists, and
breeders. It is therefore very difficult to deny them.
As to the method, it is evident that it rests entirely upon the
identity of the general laws governing all organised and living
beings. Few true men of science will, I am sure, refuse to admit such
a starting point as this.
Now I wish that candid men, who are free from party-spirit or
prejudices, would follow me in this view, and study for themselves
all these facts, a few of which I have only touched upon, and I am
perfectly convinced that they will, with the great men of whom I am
only the disciple,—with Linnæus, Buffon, Lamarck, Cuvier, Geoffroy,
Humboldt and Müller, arrive at the conclusion that _all men belong to
the same species_, and that there is but _one species of man_.
BOOK II.
ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER X.
ORIGIN OF SPECIES.—HYPOTHESES OF TRANSMUTATION.—DARWINISM.
I. The unity of the human race raises some general questions, and
entails consequences which we must now examine.
The first question which is suggested to the mind is evidently that
of _origin_. Without abandoning the strictly scientific aspect of
the subject, that is to say, confining ourselves to the results of
experiment and observation, can we explain the appearance on our
globe of a being which forms a kingdom by itself? I do not hesitate
to reply in the negative.
Let us admit at starting that we cannot consider separately the
question of the human origin. Whatever may be the cause or causes
which preside over the birth or the development of the organic
kingdom, it is to them that the origin of all organised and living
bodies must be traced. The similarity between all the essential
phenomena which they exhibit, the identity of the general laws
which govern them, render it impossible to suppose that it can
be otherwise. The problem then of the origin of mankind becomes
identical with that of all animal and vegetable species.
II. This problem has been approached very frequently and by many
methods. But here we can only take into account the attempts which
have been made in the name of science. Nor can these possess any
interest for us until the time when it was at least possible to make
a clear statement of the question, which was impossible as long
as no clear definition had been given of _organic species_. In an
historic account of the attempts which have been made to solve the
question, it is useless, therefore, to go further back than Ray and
Tournefort. The publication of Maillet in 1748 is the first attempt
which deserves passing attention.
I do not intend to repeat here the account which I have given
elsewhere of the different theories proposed by that talented author,
by Buffon, Lamarck, Et. Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, Bory de St.-Vincent,
and by Naudin, Gaudry, Wallace, Owen, Gubler, Kölliker, Haeckel,
Filippi, Vogt, Huxley, and Mme. Royer. They all have this point in
common; they connect the origin of the more highly developed species
with transmutations undergone by inferior species. But there the
resemblance ceases, and their theories frequently differ entirely
on all other points. In short, their ideas may be arranged in two
principal groups according as their authors favour a _rapid_ or a
_gradual transmutation_. The former admit the sudden appearance of a
new type produced by a being entirely different: according to them
the first bird came from the egg of a reptile. The latter maintain
that the modifications are always gradual, that between one species
and another a number of links have intervened which unite the two
extremes. They consider that types are only multiplied slowly, and by
a progressive differentiation.
In reality the first of these two theories has never been stated
in such a manner as to form a real doctrine; it has never formed a
school. The philosophers who promoted it confined themselves most
frequently to pointing out, in a general manner, the _possibility_
of the phenomenon, while they attributed it to some accident. At
most they invoke in aid of this possibility, some analogies borrowed
from the history of ordinary individual development, from that of
alternate generation, or of hyper-metamorphosis; they produce no
definite fact in justification of their assertions.
With the exception perhaps of the hypothesis of M. Naudin, which we
shall presently discuss, all these theories which favour a rapid
transmutation deserve a still graver reproach, that, namely, of
neglecting the great general facts exhibited by the organic kingdom.
An explanation of the multiplication and the succession of principal
or secondary types by some hypothesis is not sufficient. Special
account must be taken of the relations which connect these types, of
the order which rules the whole and which has been maintained from
remote geological periods through all the revolutions of the globe,
and in spite of changes in fauna and flora.
Accident, without rule or law, when invoked as the immediate cause
of special transmutations, is obviously incapable of explaining this
important fact; it gives no explanation whatever of the generality
of fundamental types, and of the direct or lateral affinities which
exist between their derivatives.
It is different with the theories which favour gradual transmutation.
They deal with all these important questions, and give a more or
less plausible solution of them. They start from a certain number of
principles whose consequences more or less explain the whole question
and many of its details. In a word, they constitute genuine doctrines
and it is but natural that they should have gained a certain number
of adherents.
Unfortunately these theories all have the same radical fault. They
agree with a certain number of important facts, connected essentially
with the morphology of beings; but they are in direct contradiction
with the fundamental phenomena of general physiology, which are
no less general or fixed than the former. This contradiction is
not evident at first sight. This is the reason why these doctrines
have influenced not only the public at large, but even men of the
highest intellect, whose sole error consists in their having allowed
themselves to consider one side of the question only.
All these theories have been consolidated into the doctrine which
rightly bears the name of Darwin. At the hands of this illustrious
naturalist, the hypothesis of gradual transmutation has assumed
a force and appearance of truth which it never possessed before.
Doubtless, long before Darwin, Lamarck had formulated his _law
of heredity_ and his _law of development of organs_, to which
the English naturalist has added nothing; M. Naudin had compared
_natural selection_ to _artificial selection_; Etienne Geoffroy
St.-Hilaire had promulgated the principle of the _balance of organs_;
Serres and Agassiz had recognized in embryogenic phenomena the
representation of the genesis of beings. But by taking as a starting
point the _struggle for existence_; by explaining in this manner
_selection_; by fixing the results of _heredity_; by replacing the
_pre-established laws_ of Lamarck by the laws of _divergence_,
_continuity_, _permanent characters_ and of _finite heredity_; by
giving by these means an explanation of the _adaptation_ of beings
to all the conditions of existence, the _expansive power_ of some,
the _localisation_ of others, the successive _modifications_ of all,
under the dominion of the _laws of compensation_, _economy_ and of
_correlation of increase_; by applying these facts to the past,
present and future of animate creation, Darwin has formed a complete
and systematic theory, the whole, and often the details, of which it
is impossible not to admire.
I understand the fascination exercised by this profound and ingenious
conception, which is supported by immense knowledge, and ennobled
by his loyal honesty. I should doubtless have yielded as so many
others have done, if I had not long understood that all questions of
this kind depend especially upon physiology. Now, my attention once
aroused, I found no difficulty in recognising the point at which the
eminent author quits the ground of reality and enters upon that of
inadmissible hypothesis.
I have thought it right to publish my criticisms upon the theory of
transmutation, and upon Darwinism in particular. I was authorised
to do so by the numerous attacks which have often been made, in no
measured terms, against what I consider to be the truth, and against
every opponent of the new theory. But while refuting theories I have
always respected the authors and done justice to their work. I have
quoted the good as well as the bad, and have always held aloof from
the ardent and lamentable polemics raised by transmutation.
I have had great pleasure, when occasion has offered, in defending
the splendid researches made by Darwin in the natural sciences. For
this very reason, and at the risk of being considered narrow minded,
enslaved to prejudices and unable to leave an old groove, etc., etc.,
I consider myself entitled to attack Darwinism, if I employ none but
the weapons of science.
III. There are some points in Darwinism which are perfectly
unassailable. We may consider as the most important the _struggle
for existence_, and _selection_ which is the result of it. It is not
the first time, certainly, that the former has been established,
and the important part it has to play in the general harmony of the
world has at least been partly comprehended. I will here only recall
to the mind of my readers the fables of La Fontaine. But no one
had insisted, as Darwin has done, upon the enormous disproportion
which exists between the number of births and the number of living
individuals; no one had investigated, as he has, the general causes
of death or of survival which produce the final result. By pointing
out the fact that each species tends to increase in number in
geometrical progression, which is proved by the number of offspring
to which a single mother can give birth during the whole course of
her life, the English naturalist makes it easy to comprehend the
intensity of the struggles, direct or indirect, which are undergone
by animals and plants against one another and the surrounding world.
It is, most certainly, entirely owing to this struggle for existence,
that the whole world, in a few years, is not overrun by some species,
or the rivers and ocean filled in the same manner.
It is no less evident to me that the survivors cannot always owe
their preservation to a combination of happy chances. Among the
immense majority the victory can only be due to certain special
advantages, which are not enjoyed by those who succumb. The result of
this _struggle for existence_ is, then, the destruction of all the
inferior individuals, and the preservation of those individuals only
which possess some kind of superiority. This is what Darwin calls
_Natural Selection_.
I can scarcely understand how these two phenomena can be doubted or
even denied. They do not constitute a theory, but are facts. Far from
being repugnant to the mind, they seem inevitable, the consequences
follow with a sort of necessity and fatality resembling the laws of
the inorganic world.
The term _selection_ gives rise to criticism, and the language of
Darwin, at times too figurative, renders plausible the objection
of those who have reproached him with attributing to _nature_ the
part of an intelligent being. The word _elimination_ would have
been more exact. But much of this should have been prevented by the
explanations given by the author. Besides, it is evident that the
struggle for existence entails the elimination of individuals who are
less able to sustain it, and that the result exactly resembles that
produced by _unconscious human selection_. Then _heredity_ intervenes
among beings which are free as well as among those which we bring up
in captivity. It preserves and accumulates the progress made by each
generation in any direction, and the final result is the production
in the organism of certain appreciable anatomical and physiological
modifications.
The words _superior_ and _inferior_ should here only be taken
as relative to the conditions of existence in which animals and
vegetables are placed. In other words the individual which is best
adapted to those conditions, will be superior and will conquer in
the struggle for existence. For instance, the black rat and the
mouse have both to struggle against the brown rat which entered
France during the last century from the banks of the Volga. The
black rat was almost as large and as strong as his adversary, but
less ferocious and less prolific. It has been exterminated in spite
of refuges which are inaccessible to its enemy. The mouse, which is
much weaker, but at the same time much smaller, can retire into holes
which are too small for the brown rat; it has therefore survived the
black rat.
Is it possible to admit that selection and heredity act equally
upon that indefinable _something_ which is connected with the
rudimentary intelligence and instincts of animals? With Darwin I
unhesitatingly reply in the affirmative. With animals, as with man,
all the individuals of the same species have not an equal amount
of intelligence and do not invariably possess the same aptitudes;
certain instincts, like certain forms, are capable of modification.
Our domestic animals furnish a number of examples of these facts. The
wild ancestors of our dogs were certainly not accustomed to point
at game. When left to themselves and placed under new conditions of
existence, animals sometimes change their manner of life entirely.
Beavers, from being disturbed by hunters, have dispersed; they have
now abandoned the construction of their lodges and dig out long
burrows in the banks of rivers. The struggle for existence must
have been favourable to the first discoverers of this new method
of escaping from their persecutors, and natural selection, while
preserving them and their descendants, has converted a sociable and
constructive animal into a solitary and burrowing one.
Up to this point it is evident that I agree in all that Darwin has
said on the struggle for existence and natural selection. I disagree
with him when he attributes to them the power of modifying organised
beings indefinitely in a given direction, so that the direct
descendants of one _species_ form _another species_ distinct from the
first.
IV. The fundamental cause of the disagreement arises evidently from
the fact that Darwin had formed no clear conception of the sense
which he attributed to the word _species_. I have been unable to
find in any of his works a single precise statement on this point.
The accusation is more severe from being brought with justice against
an author who claims to have discovered the _origin of species_.
More frequently Darwin seems to adhere to a purely morphological
idea, which is also somewhat vague. He often opposes _species_ and
_race_, which he also calls _variety_, but without ever stating
clearly what he understands by one or the other. He endeavours,
moreover, to bring them together as closely as possible, though
occasionally recognising some of the points which separate them. “The
species,” he says in drawing one of his conclusions, “must be treated
as an artificial combination which is necessary for convenience.” His
disciples have followed him faithfully in this direction, and those
who use the most explicit language on this subject, join their master
in declaring that a species is only a kind of conventional group
similar to those which are used in classification. As for races,
they are only species undergoing transmutation. Now from what he has
already learnt, short though the study has been, the reader knows,
I hope, to which view he should adhere, and understands to what
confusions such a vague kind of theory must lead.
In spite of the inevitable uselessness of a discussion of this kind,
let us follow our adversaries into this unstable ground, and see
whether _morphological_ facts furnish their theory with the least
probability.
Darwin himself, on several occasions, states that the result
of selection is essentially to adapt animals and plants to the
conditions of existence in which they have to live. Upon this point
I agree with him entirely. If, however, harmony is once established
between organised beings and the conditions of life, the struggle for
existence and selection could only result in consolidating it and
consequently their action is preservative.
If the conditions of life change they will again come into play in
order to establish a new equilibrium, and modifications more or
less marked will be the result of their action. But will these
modifications be sufficiently great to give rise to a new species?
The following fact will serve as a reply.
At the present time there is a stag in Corsica, which from its form
has been compared to the badger-hound: its antlers differ from those
of European stags. Those who confine themselves to morphological
characters, will assuredly consider this as a distinct species, and
it has often been considered to be so. Now Buffon preserved a fawn
of this pretended species, and placed it in his park; in four years
it became both larger and finer than the French stags which were
older and considered finer grown. Moreover, the formal evidence of
Herodotus, Aristotle, Polybius and Pliny attest that in their time
there were no stags either in Corsica or Africa. Is it not evident
that the stag in question had been transported from the continent to
the island; that under the new conditions the species had undergone
temporary morphological modification, though it had lost none of
its power of resuming its primitive characters, when placed in its
primitive conditions of life?
Are we, then, to conclude that in time nature could have completed
the action, and entirely separated the Corsican stag from its
original stock? We may answer in the negative, if any weight is to be
attached to experience and observation.
Species partially subject to the rule of man furnish a number of
facts which enable us to compare the power of natural forces, when
abandoned to their own action, with that of man in modifying a
specific type. In all artificial races varieties are infinitely
more numerous, more varied and more marked than wild races and
varieties. Now the result of these transmutations of organisms has
only consisted in the formation of _races_, never in the formation of
a _new species_. Darwin himself accepts this conclusion implicitly
in his magnificent work on pigeons; for when speaking of the _races
of pigeons_ he only says that the difference of form is such that if
they had been found in a wild state, we should have been compelled to
make at least three or four genera of them. The wild rock pigeons,
the original stock of all our domestic pigeons, only differ, on the
contrary, in shades of colour.
The result is always the same, whenever we can compare the work of
nature with our own. When he has anything to do with any vegetable
or animal species, _man_ always changes its character, sometimes,
after a lapse of some years, the change being much greater than that
produced by nature since the species first came into existence. The
_effect of the conditions of life_ (_milieu_), of which we will speak
presently, the _struggle for existence_ and _natural selection_
understood as I have just described it, the power which man possesses
of directing natural forces and changing their resultant, easily
explain this superiority of action.
Consequently, without leaving the domain of facts, and only judging
from what we know, we can say that morphology itself justifies the
conclusion that one species has never produced another by means of
derivation. To admit the contrary is to call in the _unknown_, and to
substitute a _possibility_ for the results of experience.
Physiology justifies a still stronger assertion. Upon this ground
also man is shown to be as powerful as nature, and for the same
reasons. With our cultivated plants and domestic animals, it is not
only the primitive form which has undergone change, but certain
functions also. If we had only enlarged and deformed the wild carrot
and the wild radish, it would not have become more eatable. To render
it agreeable to our taste, the production of certain substances had
to be reduced, and that of others enlarged, that is to say, nutrition
and secretion had to be modified. If the functions in wild animal
stocks had remained permanent, we should have had none of those races
which are distinguished by a difference in the colour of the hair, in
the production of milk, in aptitude for work, or in the production of
meat. If instinct itself had not obeyed the action of man, we should
not have had in the same kennel, pointers, grey-hounds, truffle dogs
and terriers.
Nature produces nothing like this. To admit that similar results
will one day follow from the action of natural forces is to appeal
to the _unknown_, to _possibility_, and runs counter to all laws of
analogy, and all the results furnished by experience and observation.
Man’s superiority over nature is quite as clearly shown in the group
of phenomena, which relate to the question with which we are now
dealing.
We have seen how rare are the cases of natural hybrids among plants
themselves; we have also seen that no cases are known among mammalia.
Now since man has begun to make experiments in this direction,
he has increased the number of hybrids among plants, and among
animals also. Moreover, he has succeeded in preserving for more than
twenty generations, a hybrid which he has been able to protect from
reversion and disordered variation. But we know the care that was
necessary to insure the continuance of _Ægilops speltæformis_. If
this plant had been left to itself, it would soon have disappeared.
The single exception which is known confirms therefore the _law of
sterility_ among species left to themselves. Now this law is in
direct opposition to all the theories, which like Darwinism, tend to
confuse species and race. This has been clearly understood by Huxley
and has caused him to say, “I adopt the theory of Darwin under the
reserve that proof should be given that physiological species can be
produced by selective crossing.”
This proof has not yet been given, for it is a strange abuse of words
to call by the name of species, the series of hybrids whose history
I have given above, viz.: the leporides and the chabins. But even if
the proof demanded by Huxley were furnished, it does not follow that
the greatest objection to the Darwinian theories would be removed.
In fact, in this theory, as in all those which rest upon _gradual
transmutation_ the new species derives its origin from a _variety_,
possessing a character which is at first rudimentary, but which is
developed _very gradually_, making some progress in each generation.
The result of this is that between successive individuals the only
difference is that of _race_. Now, as we have seen, the fertility
among races of the same species remains constant, and consequently,
in the hypothesis of Darwin, as in that of Lamarck, etc., the
fertile crossings would in every sense of the word constantly
confuse the original and the derived species which was in process
of formation. The same cause having produced the same effects since
the commencement of the world, the organic world would present the
greatest confusion instead of its well-known order.
Darwin, then, himself and his most enthusiastic adherents must admit
that at some given moment these _races_ became suddenly incapable of
crossing with their predecessors. Whence then arises the _sterility_
which separates _species_? When, and at what moment will the
physiological _bond_ be broken, which unites the original species
with its modified descendants, even when this modification is carried
as far as the ordinary ox and the niata? What will be the determining
cause of this great fact which obtains through the whole economy of
the organic kingdom?
In his work upon the _Variation of Animals and Plants_, Darwin
replies: “Since species do not owe their mutual sterility to the
accumulative action of natural selection, and a great number of
considerations show us that they do not owe it to a creative act, we
ought to admit that it has been produced incidentally during their
gradual formation, and is connected with some unknown modification of
their organisation.”
We have seen that, in the last editions of the _Origin of Species_,
he refuses to admit that fertility among mongrels is general, taking
his stand upon our _ignorance_ on the subject of crossings between
wild _varieties_ (_races_).
Thus, in order to admit the physiological transmutation of race into
species, a fact which is contrary to all positive facts, Darwin
and his followers reject the secular results of experience and
observation, and substitute in their place a _possible accident_, and
the _unknown_.
The Darwinian theory relies entirely upon the possibility of
this transmutation. We see upon what data the hypothesis of this
possibility rests. Now, in a _truly liberal spirit_, I ask every
_unprejudiced_ man, however little he may be conversant with science,
the question, is it upon such foundations that a general theory in
physics or chemistry would be founded?
V. Moreover, the argument, of which we have just seen an example, may
be found in every page of Darwinian writings. Whether a fundamental
question, such as we have just been examining, or a minor problem,
as the transmutation of the tomtit into the nuthatch, is under
discussion, _possibility_, _chance_, and _personal conviction_
are invariably adduced as convincing reasons. Is modern science
established upon such foundations?
Darwin and his disciples wish that even our ignorance on the subject
of certain phenomena should be considered as in their favour. The
question has often been argued on the ground of palæontology, and
they have been asked to point out a single instance of those series
which ought, according to them, to unite the parent species with its
derivatives. They admit their inability; but they reply that the
extinct fauna and flora have left very few remains; that we only know
a small part of these ancient archives; that the facts which favour
their doctrine are doubtless buried under the waves with submerged
continents, etc. “This manner of treating the question,” Darwin
concludes, “diminishes the difficulties considerably, if it does not
cause them to disappear entirely.”
But, I again ask the question, in what branch of human knowledge,
except these obscure subjects, should we regard problems as solved,
for the very reason that we possess none of the requisite knowledge
for their solution?
I do not intend to reproduce here the entire examination which I
have made elsewhere of the transmutation theories in general, or of
Darwinism in particular. The above observations will suffice, I hope,
to show why I could not accept even the most seductive of these
theories. In certain points they agree with certain general facts
and give an explanation of a certain number of phenomena. But all
without exception attain this result only by the aid of hypotheses
which are in flagrant contradiction with other general facts, quite
as fundamental as those which they explain. In particular, all these
doctrines are based upon a gradual and progressive derivation, upon
the confusion of race and species. Consequently they ignore an
unquestionable physiological fact; they are entirely in opposition
with another fact, which follows from the first, and is conspicuous
from every point of view, the isolation, namely, of specific groups
from the earliest ages of the world, and the maintenance of organic
order through all the revolutions of the globe.
Such are my reasons for refusing my adherence to Darwin’s theories.
VII. The theory of the English naturalist is certainly the most
vigorous effort which has been made to trace back the origin of
the organic world by processes analogous to those which we have
discovered in the genesis of the inorganic world, that is to say, in
only having recourse to secondary causes. He has failed, as we see,
like Lamarck. These eminent men will be succeeded by others who will
attempt the solution of the same problem. Will they be more fortunate?
No one is less inclined than I am to place any limit upon the
extension of human knowledge. Yet the extension of our scientific
knowledge, in the widest sense of the term, is always subordinate
to certain conditions. The most attentive examination, even of a
human work, will never teach us anything of the _processes_ which
have permitted its realisation. The cleverest watchmaker, if he has
not followed studies perfectly foreign to his vocation, will know
nothing of the origin of iron, of its transformation into steel, of
the rolling and tempering of a main spring. The minutest study of
that metallic ribbon which he knows so well, will tell him nothing of
its origin, nothing of the process of its fabrication. To know more
he must leave his shop and visit the furnaces, the forges, and the
rolling mills.
In the works of nature it is the same. With nature as well as with
ourselves, the phenomena which _produce_ are very different from
those which _preserve_, and from those displayed in the _object
produced_.
The most complete anatomical and physiological study of an animal
or of a full-grown plant will certainly teach us nothing about the
metamorphoses of the microscopic cell from which sprang the dog, the
elephant, and man himself.
Now hitherto we have only directed our attention to species already
formed. We can therefore learn nothing more relative to their mode of
production.
But we know that the _unknown cause_ which has given birth to
extinct and living species has been manifested at different times
and intermittingly upon the surface of the globe. Nothing authorises
us to suppose that it is exhausted. Although it appears to have
generally acted at times which correspond to great geological
movements, it is not impossible that it may be at work on some point
of the earth even at this epoch of relatively profound rest. If this
is the case, perhaps some happy chance will throw a little light
upon the great mystery of organic origins. But until experience and
observation have taught us something, all who wish to remain faithful
to true science, will accept the existence and succession of species
as a primordial fact. He will apply to all what Darwin applies to
his single _prototype_; and, in order to explain what is still
inexplicable, he will not sacrifice to hypotheses, however ingenious
they may be, the exact and positive knowledge which has been won by
nearly two centuries of work.
CHAPTER XI.
ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.—DIFFERENT HYPOTHESES.
I. The preceding chapter might enable me to dispense with a
discussion of the applications which have been made of Darwinism to
the history of man. Nevertheless, apart from the curious points in
the subject itself, some discussion of it will be necessary, for it
will not be devoid of instruction.
Lamarck endeavoured to show how, by means of his _theory of habit_,
it was possible to conceive the direct transmutation of the
chimpanzee into man. The Darwinists also agree in connecting man with
the apes. Nevertheless none of them point out any of the species
at present existing as our immediate ancestor; on this point they
differ from their illustrious predecessor. It might be supposed that
Vogt had determined this point if we take literally some passages
of his _Leçons sur l’homme_. But the Genevese savant has clearly
expressed his theory in his _Mémoire sur les Microcéphales_. He
carries back the point of departure common to the two types to an
_anterior ancestor_. Darwin, Wallace, Filippi, Lubbock, Haeckel,
etc., connect man still more closely with the apes. The latter states
his conclusions in the following terms:—
“The human race is a branch of the catarrhine group; he was developed
in the old world, and sprang from apes of this group, which have long
been extinct.”
II. Vogt disagrees with his scientific colleagues in an important
point. He admits that different simian stocks may have given rise to
different human groups. The populations of the old and the new world
would thus be descendants of the different forms which are peculiar
to the two continents. On this hypothesis, Australia and Polynesia,
where there never have been apes, must necessarily have been peopled
by means of migration.
The eminent professor of Geneva, moreover, always confines himself to
a somewhat vague statement of his ideas relative to the genealogies
which he thinks fit to attribute to the different groups of mankind.
III. Darwin and Haeckel have been bolder. The former has published
an important work upon the _Descent of Man_, and the latter in
his _History of the Creation of Organised Beings_ has treated the
same subject in detail, and given the genealogical table of our
supposed ancestors, starting from the most simple known animals.
The master and the disciple agree almost invariably, and it is to
Haeckel himself that Darwin refers the reader who is curious to know
the human genealogy in detail. Let us glance rapidly at the origin
assigned to us by the German naturalist.
Haeckel considers as the first ancestor of all living beings the
_monera_, which are nothing more than the _amœbæ_ as understood by
Dujardin. From this initial form man has reached the state in which
we now find him, by passing through twenty-one typical transitory
forms. In the present state of things our nearest neighbours are the
anthropomorphous or _tailless catarrhine apes_, such as the orang,
the gorilla, the chimpanzee, etc. All are sprung from the same
stock, from the type of the _tailed catarrhine apes_, the latter are
descended from the _prosimiæ_, a type which is now represented by the
macaucos, the loris, etc. Next come the marsupials, which form the
17th stage of our evolution; further examination is useless.
Although the distance between anthropomorphous apes and man appears
to be but small to Haeckel, he has nevertheless thought it necessary
to admit the existence of an intermediate stage between ourselves
and the most highly developed ape. This purely hypothetical being,
of which not the slightest vestige has been found, is supposed to be
detached from the tailless catarrhine apes, and to constitute the
21st stage of the modification which has led to the human form,
Haeckel calls it the _ape-man_, or the _pithecoid man_. He denies
him the gift of articulate speech as well as the development of the
intelligence and self-consciousness.
Darwin also admits the existence of this link between man and apes.
He says nothing as to his intellectual faculties. On the other hand
he traces out his physical portrait, basing his remarks upon a
certain number of exceptional peculiarities observed in the human
species, which he regards as so many phenomena of _partial atavism_.
“The earliest ancestors of man,” he says, “were without doubt once
covered with hair; both sexes having beards; their ears were pointed
and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail
having the proper muscles. Their limbs and bodies were acted on
by many muscles, which now only occasionally reappear in man, but
which are still normally present in the quadrumana. The great artery
and nerve of the humerus ran through a supracondyloid foramen. At
this, or some earlier period, the intestine gave forth a much larger
diverticulum or cœcum than that now existing. The foot, judging from
the condition of the great toe in the fœtus, was then prehensile, and
our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting
some warm forest-clad land; the males were provided with canine teeth
which served as formidable weapons.”
IV. In attributing a tail to our first direct ancestors Darwin
connects him with the type of tailed catarrhines, and consequently
removes him a stage backward in the scale of evolutions. The English
naturalist is not satisfied to take his stand upon the ground of his
own doctrines, and, like Haeckel, on this point places himself in
direct variance with one of the fundamental laws which constitute the
principal charms of Darwinism, whose force I am far from denying.
In fact, in the theory of Darwin, transmutations do not take place,
either by chance or in every direction. They are ruled by certain
laws which are due to the organisation itself. If an organism is
once modified in a given direction, it can undergo secondary or
tertiary transmutations, but will still preserve the impress of
the original. It is the law of _permanent characterisation_ which
_alone_ permits Darwin to explain the filiation of groups, their
characteristics and their numerous relations. It is by virtue of
this law that _all_ the descendants of the first mollusc have been
molluscs; _all_ the descendants of the first vertebrate have been
vertebrates. It is clear that this constitutes one of the foundations
of the doctrine.
It follows that two beings belonging to two distinct types can be
referred to a _common ancestor_, whose characters were not clearly
developed, but the one cannot be the descendant of the other.
Now man and apes present a very striking contrast _in respect to
type_. Their organs, as I have already remarked, correspond almost
exactly term for term; but these organs are arranged after a very
different plan. In man they are so arranged that he is essentially a
_walker,_ while in apes they necessitate his being a _climber_ just
as strongly.
There is here an anatomical and mechanical distinction which had
already been proved, as regards the inferior apes, by the works of
Vicq d’Azyr, Lawrence, Serres, etc. The investigations of Duvernoy
on the gorilla, of Gratiolet and M. d’Alix upon the chimpanzee, have
established the fact that the anthropomorphous apes possess the
same fundamental character in every point. Moreover, a glance at
the page where Huxley has figured side by side a human skeleton and
the skeletons of the most highly developed apes, is a sufficiently
convincing proof of the fact.
The consequence of these facts, from the point of view of the logical
application of the law of _permanent characterisation_, is that man
cannot be descended from an ancestor who is already characterised
as an ape, any more than a catarrhine tailless ape can be descended
from a tailed catarrhine. A _walking animal cannot_ be descended from
a _climbing_ one. This was clearly understood by Vogt. In placing
man among the _primates_ he declares, without hesitation, that the
lowest class of apes have passed the landmark (the common ancestor)
from which the different types of this family have originated and
diverged.
We must then place the origin of man beyond the last ape if we wish
to adhere to one of the laws most emphatically necessary to the
Darwinian theory. We then come to the _prosimiæ_ of Haeckel, the
loris, indris, etc. But these animals also are climbers; we must
go further, therefore, in search of our first direct ancestor. But
the genealogy traced by Haeckel brings us from the latter to the
_marsupials_.
From man to the kangaroo the distance is certainly great. Now neither
living nor extinct fauna show the intermediate types which ought to
serve as land-marks. This difficulty causes but slight embarrassment
to Darwin. We know that he considers the want of information upon
similar questions as a proof in his favour. Haeckel doubtless is
just as little embarrassed. He admits the existence of an absolutely
theoretical _pithecoid man,_ and it is not the only instance in which
he proceeds in a similar manner in order to complete his genealogical
table. Take as an instance his words upon the _sozoura_ (14th stage),
an amphibious animal which is equally unknown to science. “The proof
of its existence arises from the necessity of an intermediate type
between the 13th and the 14th stage.”
Thus, since it has been proved that, according to Darwinism itself,
the origin of man must be placed beyond the 18th stage, and since
it becomes, in consequence _necessary_ to fill up the gap between
marsupials and man, will Haeckel admit the existence of _four unknown
intermediate groups_, instead of one? Will be complete his genealogy
in this manner? It is not for me to answer.
V. Darwin and Haeckel will most certainly think it very strange that
a representative of the old school, a man who believes in the reality
of species, should have the pretension to be better acquainted with
the application of the laws of Darwinism than themselves, and to
point out serious lapses in the applications they have made. Let us
take our stand then on the ground of _facts_. There we shall at once
find proof that this genealogy is wrong throughout, and is founded on
a material anatomical error.
Both Darwin and Haeckel connect the simian series with a type
which would now be represented by the _lemuridæ_, which the latter
designates by the term _prosimiæ_. The only grounds which Darwin
assigns for this opinion are certain characters taken especially from
dentition. Haeckel goes back to embryogenesis.
We know that with the exception of the marsupials (kangaroos,
sarrigue), and the monotremata (ornithorhynchus, echidna), all
mammals have a _placenta_, an organ essentially composed of a network
of blood-vessels, which unites the mother to the fœtus, and serves
for the nutrition of the latter. With the ruminants, the edentata,
and the cetacea, the placenta is _simple_ and _diffuse_, that is to
say, the tufts of the blood-vessels are developed upon the entire
surface of the fœtal envelope, and are in direct communication with
the inner surface of the uterus. In the rest of the mammals the
placenta is _double_; half being derived from the mother, and half
from the fœtus, or rather its external envelope. A special membrane
called the _Decidua_ covers the interior of the uterus, and unites
the placentæ. Haeckel, correctly attaching great importance to these
anatomical differences, divides mammals into two great groups: the
_indeciduata_, which have no decidua, and the _deciduata_, which
possess it.
Among the latter the placenta can surround the mammalian ovum like a
girdle (_zonoplacentalia_), or form a kind of circular disc more or
less developed (_discoplacentalia_). Man, apes, bats, insectivora,
and rodents, present the latter arrangement, and thus form a natural
group to which no _zonoplacential_, and, of course, no _indeciduate_
mammals can be admitted.
Haeckel, without the least hesitation, adds his _prosimiæ_ to the
groups which I have just enumerated, that is to say, he attributes
to them a decidua and a discoidal placenta. Now the anatomical
investigations of MM. Alphonse Milne Edwards and Grandidier upon the
animals brought by the latter from Madagascar place it beyond all
doubt that the prosimiæ of Haeckel have no decidua and a diffuse
placenta. They are _indeciduata_. Far from any possibility of their
being the ancestors of the apes, according to the principle laid down
by Haeckel himself, they cannot even be regarded as the ancestors of
the zonoplacential mammals, the carnivora for instance, and ought to
be connected with the pachydermata, the edentata and the cetacea.
Darwin and Haeckel will, perhaps reply that when they made their
genealogies, the embryogenesis of the prosimiæ was not known. But
why then represent them as one of the intermediate links to which
they attach so much importance? Their process is always the same,
considering the _unknown_ as a _proof_ in favour of their theory.
VI. The necessity, which I think has been clearly proved, of seeking
elsewhere than among the prosimiæ for the link which is required
between the marsupials and the apes, would not invalidate the
relationship between the latter and man. There are, however, other
facts which are irreconcilable with the theory.
M. Pruner Bey, resuming the descriptive and anatomical works which
have been carried on till within the last few years, has shown that
the comparison of man with the anthropomorphous apes brings to light
a fact which is subject to very few exceptions, the existence,
namely, of an _inverse order_ in the development of the principal
organs. The researches of Welker upon the sphenoïdal angle of Virchow
lead to the same conclusion, for in man the angle diminishes from the
time of birth, whilst in the ape it is always increasing, so much so
that sometimes it is effaced. It is upon the base of the cranium that
the German anatomist has remarked this inverse order, the importance
of which cannot escape notice.
A similar contrast has been remarked by Gratiolet upon the brain
itself. The following are his observations upon this subject. In
the ape the temporal sphenoïdal convolutions, which form the middle
lobe, make their appearance and are completed before the anterior
convolutions which form the frontal lobe. In man, on the contrary,
the frontal convolutions are the first to appear, and those of the
middle lobe are formed later.
It is evident, especially after the most fundamental principles of
Darwinism, that an organised being cannot be a descendant of another
whose development is in an inverse order to its own. Consequently,
in accordance with these principles, man cannot be considered as the
descendant of any simian type whatever.
VII. I have said above that palæontology has never shown anything
which recalls in the slightest degree the hypothetical _pithecoid
man_ of Haeckel. A hope was felt that what could not be found among
extinct forms might be found among living ones. Vogt has compared
the brain of microcephali to that of the anthropomorphous apes, and
Haeckel has represented in his genealogical table of idiots, crétins
and microcephali as actual representatives of his _speechless man_.
These beings, with their small brain and incomplete faculties, are,
according to these two naturalists, cases of _atavism_, and recall
the normal state of our most remote direct ancestors.
Here we have another instance of the curious method of reasoning
familiar to Darwinists. Microcephalism, idiotcy, and crétinism
constitute so many teratological or pathological states. They belong,
consequently, to the very numerous groups of facts which have long
been studied. If some of these facts can be regarded as _phenomena
of atavism_, why should it be otherwise with the rest? Why attribute
to atavism a single character only in crétins and microcephali,
and refer the other to teratology and pathology? This is evidently
an _entirely arbitrary_ kind of treatment, and as much opposed as
possible to the true scientific method.
After the works of teratologists, after the experiments of Geoffroy,
so ably resumed and completed by M. Dareste, the part played by
pathogenic causes, even by external causes, in arrested development
cannot be denied. Now microcephalism is nothing else than _arrested
development_ acting on the cranium and its contents. But this is not
an isolated case. Other organs and functions in microcephali suffer
in the same manner. They have been proved to be always sterile, and
certainly sterility is not a phenomenon which can be referred to
atavism.
Thus among microcephali a teratogenic cause is clearly proved to
have acted on part of the organism, viz., the generative organs.
What reason can be alleged for attributing alterations of the
cranium and brain to an entirely different cause? By virtue of what
principle can two facts be separated, which observation has shown to
be so intimately connected with each other? Why should the first be
appealed to as an argument and nothing said about the second? Is it
not evident that this is an entirely arbitrary kind of procedure, and
actuated solely by the requirements of theory?
The general plan of the brain is fundamentally the same in all
the mammalia and in man. Upon this point, as upon every other,
the resemblance is greatest when the latter is compared with the
anthropomorphous apes. When, for some reason or other, his brain is
altered and reduced, as in the microcephali, is it at all surprising
that fresh resemblances should arise. The contrary would be
unintelligible.
This is a fact upon which Vogt has especially insisted, and he has
described from this point of view several interesting details which
render less general some of the results obtained by M. Gratiolet. But
it is a remarkable fact that these new relations are not established
with the most highly developed apes, but with the tailed apes of the
new world, with the _platyrrhini_, which are excluded by Haeckel and
Darwin from the human ancestral series. Thus, the Darwinian theory
itself protests against the comparison between the microcephali and
our pretended pithecoid ancestors.
The relations which we are discussing do not, moreover, reach a
similarity which would authorise the conclusions of the Genevese
savant. The brains of microcephali, though often less voluminous
and less convoluted than those of the anthropoid apes, according to
Gratiolet, do not become at all similar to them. This proposition is
confirmed by the work of Vogt.
The case is the same with the skeleton as with the brain. I will
here appeal to an authority, which none of my adversaries can
reject, that, namely, of Huxley. After having protested against the
statements of those who declare “that the structural differences
between man and apes are small and insignificant,” the eminent
anatomist adds that “every bone of the gorilla bears a mark by which
it can be distinguished from the corresponding human bone, and that,
in the present state of creation at least, no intermediary being
fills the gap which separates man from the troglodyte.” In the
general conclusion of his book, Huxley moreover recognises the fact
that the fossil human remains hitherto discovered do not indicate any
approach towards the pithecoid form.
VIII. After the formal declarations of a naturalist, whose Darwinian
convictions place him beyond all suspicion of partiality, how is it
that we continually find the expression _simian character_ employed
_à propos_ of the most insignificant modifications of some human
type of which no one gives a precise description? It is, to say the
least, an abuse of words, against which I have often protested. We
have just seen that this expression assumes an anatomical fact which
does not exist, and which, consequently, constitutes an error. It
has, moreover, the inconvenience of being understood literally by the
ignorant, and sometimes of deceiving even educated men, and of giving
rise to a belief in imaginary degradations and comparisons.
In fact, man and the rest of the vertebrata are constructed upon the
same fundamental plan. Between him and the other members of this
group numerous relations exist. Organised beings are not crystals
whose forms are mathematically defined; with the former the whole of
the body and each part of this whole oscillate between limits whose
extent has not yet been fixed, but which is at times considerable.
By these very oscillations the customary relations are continually
modified, not only between man and the apes, but between man and
the rest of the vertebrata. If we compare man to any animal type
whatever, if we apply the same method to this comparison, and the
same terminology, we shall arrive at singular conclusions. I will
quote a single example.
The most important fact in connection with the brain is certainly
not its absolute development. It is the relation of this development
to that of the rest of the body. The agreement upon this point,
when animals are the subject of discussion, is general. It should
be the same when the discussion is on man. Undoubtedly upon this
ground of relative superiority or inferiority, upon which certain
anthropologists so readily take their stand _à propos_ of races or
individuals, the relations of which I speak constitute one of the
most striking and essential characters.
I subjoin some of these relations taken from a table of Duvernoy, and
in which the weight of the brain is taken as unity.
Man { Infant 1 : 22
{ Youth 1 : 25
{ Adult 1 : 30
{ Old 1 : 35
Apes { Saimiri 1 : 22
{ Saï 1 : 25
{ Ouisititi 1 : 28
{ Gibbon 1 : 48
Rodents { Field Mouse 1 : 31
{ Mouse 1 : 43
Carnivora { Mole 1 : 36
{ Dogs 1 : 47 1 : 305
Birds { Blue Tit 1 : 12
{ Canary 1 : 14
{ Cole Tit 1 : 18
{ Sparrow 1 : 25
{ Chaffinch 1 : 27
The man in question is the European White. Now from this table we see
that from infancy to old age the relation of the brain to the rest of
the body keeps diminishing. Are we to conclude then from this that
the youth is _degraded_ relatively to the infant, and that the adult
or the old man has assumed a _simian character_?
We see, moreover, that there ought to be some understanding as to
the word _simian_ itself. If the gibbon, which belongs to the type
of our supposed ancestors, has a brain relatively smaller than ours,
it is otherwise with the three members of the genus cebus given in
the table. The latter are superior to the anthropoid; the two first
show exactly the same relation as the infant and youth; the third
surpasses the adult man. But all three are surpassed by the two tits
and the canary.
Consequently, if we are right in regarding the human race, or the
human individual whose brain is below the mean by several grammes, as
tending towards the anthropoid ape, we ought to consider the race, or
the individual whose brain is above the mean as approximating to the
cebus, or even the passerines or conirostres. If the first comparison
is admissible, the second is equally so.
We can then say with the learned anatomist whose authority I have so
often appealed to: “The microcephali, however reduced their brain
may be, are not brutes; they are merely undeveloped men.” Or again,
we may say with M. Best, whose testimony cannot be suspected in such
a matter, that in their development apes do not resemble man, and,
conversely, that the human type when degraded does not resemble the
ape.
IX. From the pithecoid man of Darwin and Haeckel, from the speechless
man who used his teeth as weapons, to the man of our age, the
distance is still very great. How has it been filled up? How has
this intelligence been developed which is able in many cases to
hold nature herself in subjection? It is Wallace who has especially
answered this question in the name of the theory of which he is
one of the founders. We shall see at the same time that he admits
the imperfection of this theory, when he discusses the peculiar
attributes of the human species.
It is well known that this naturalist shares with Darwin and M.
Naudin, the honour of having sought in natural selection for an
explanation of organic origins. But our fellow countryman has
confined himself to a sketch the fundamental character of which he
has recently entirely modified. Darwin has embraced the problem as
a whole and in its details; he has added to his first work several
publications upon subjects very different in appearance, but all of
which tend to the same end. He may with justice be considered as the
chief of the school.
Wallace, who almost anticipated Darwin in the publication of ideas
which are common to both, recognises him as his master on all
occasions. He has discussed a small number of points in special
memoirs which never cover much ground. From not attempting the
solution of all the questions suggested by the theory, he has neither
met with so many or such serious difficulties as his eminent rival.
This, perhaps, explains the fact that he generally shows himself more
precise and logical. He therefore, always possessed considerable
authority among the partisans of Darwinism, until he published his
special views on man.
According to Wallace, _immediate and personal utility_ is the only
cause which sets _selection_ in action. This is fundamentally the
theory of Darwin; but the latter has allowed himself to be influenced
by comparisons or metaphors, which have raised sharp criticisms,
which have perhaps deceived him, and which he employs more or less to
evade his difficulties. We never meet with the same in Wallace, who
accepts all the consequences to which his absolute principle leads
him.
According to Wallace, _utility alone_ is able to account for the
manner in which inferior animal forms could have produced apes, and
afterwards a being having almost all the physical characters of man
as he is now. This _race_ lived in herds scattered throughout the
hot regions of the ancient continent. It was not, however, wanting
in true sociability; it possessed the perception of sensations,
but was incapable of thought; moral sense and sympathetic feelings
were unknown to it. It was still only a _material outline_ of the
human being, yet superior to the _tailed man_ of Darwin, and to the
pithecoid man of Haeckel.
Towards the earlier part of the tertiary period, adds Wallace,
_an unknown cause_ began to accelerate the development of
the intelligence in this anthropoid being. It soon played a
preponderating part in the existence of man. The perfection of this
faculty became incomparably _more useful_ than any other organic
modification. Henceforward the powerful modifying agent of selection
acted necessarily almost entirely in this direction. The physical
characters already acquired remained almost unaltered, while the
organs of the intelligence and the intelligence itself were perfected
more and more in each generation. Animals unaffected by this
_unknown cause_ which separates us from them, continued to undergo
morphological transmutations, so that since the Miocene epoch there
has been a great change in the terrestrial fauna. With man only did
the form remain the same. We ought not, therefore, to be surprised to
find in the Quaternary epoch skulls like those of Denise and Engis,
resembling those of men of the present age.
The superiority acquired by the intelligence has, moreover, removed
our race for ever from the law of the action of _morphological
transmutations_. His intellectual and moral faculties only are from
this time subject to the power of selection, which will cause the
disappearance of inferior races and their replacement by a new race,
the lowest individual of which would be, in our time, a superior man.
After having read the pages, of which I have just made a summary,
we cannot but be surprised to find Wallace declare that natural
selection by itself is incapable of producing from an _anthropoid
animal_, a man such as we find in the most savage nations known to
us. He thus makes the human species an exception to the laws, which,
according to him, rule all other living beings. There is a double
interest in following Darwin’s rival in this new path.
Wallace begins by reminding us that natural selection rests
_entirely_ upon the principle of _immediate utility_, relative
only to the conditions of the struggle maintained at the time by
the individuals constituting the species. Darwin in all his works
declares, on different occasions, this same principle, upon which
rests, in fact, all his statements upon adaptation, the possibility
of _retrogressive transmutations_, etc.
It results necessarily from this principle, that selection cannot
produce _variations in any way injurious_ to any being whatever.
Darwin has often declared that a single well-attested case of this
kind would destroy his whole theory.
But it is evident, adds Wallace, that selection is as incapable of
producing a _useless variation_; it cannot then develop an organ in
proportions which would go beyond its degree of _present utility_.
Now Wallace shews very clearly that in the savage there are organs
whose development is out of all proportion with their _present
utility_, and even faculties and physical characters which are either
useless or injurious, at least to the individual. “But,” says he,
“if it can be proved that these modifications, though dangerous or
useless at the time of their first appearance, have become much more
useful, and are now indispensable to the complete development of the
intellectual and moral nature of man, we ought to believe in the
existence of an intelligent action, foreseeing and providing for the
future, just as we should do, when we see a breeder set to work to
produce a definite improvement in any direction in any cultivated
plant or domestic animal.”
The relative development of the body and the brain, the organ of
intelligence, is one of the points upon which our author insists most
strongly. The height of the orang, he says, is almost equal to that
of man; the gorilla is much taller and bigger. Nevertheless, if we
represent by ten the average volume of the brain in the anthropoid
apes, this same volume will be represented by twenty-six in savages,
and by thirty-two in civilised men. The English naturalist also makes
the remark, that among savages, the Esquimaux, for instance, we find
individuals the capacity of whose skull almost reaches the maximum
which is given for the most highly developed nations.
Finally, Wallace, relying upon the experiments and calculations of
Galton, admits distinctly that though the brain of savages is to that
of civilised man in the proportion of five to six, the intellectual
manifestations are, at the most, that of one to one thousand. The
material development is, then, out of all proportion to the function.
A brain, a little more voluminous than that of the gorilla, would,
in the eyes of the eminent traveller, be perfectly sufficient for
the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, of Australia, Tasmania, and
Tierra del Fuego.
Wallace explains the development of the ideas of justice and
benevolence by the advantages which would result from them to the
tribe and to each individual. But faculties essentially _individual_,
and without _immediate_ utility to others, are not subject, according
to him, to selection. “How,” says he, “could the struggle for
existence, the victory of the most fitted and natural selection
give any aid to the development of mental faculties,” such as ideal
conceptions of space and time, of eternity and infinity, the artistic
feeling, abstract ideas of number and form, without which arithmetic
and geometry are impossible?
For a much more cogent reason, the development of the moral sense
in the savage cannot be accounted for by considerations taken from
_utility_, whether _individual_ or _collective_. Wallace insists upon
this point at some length; he quotes examples which prove that this
feeling exists, in all which is most delicate and most opposed to
utilitarian notions, among the most savage tribes of Central India.
We could give many examples of this fact; among others, that the
Red-skins have the greatest respect for their word of honour, though
it should entail torture and death.
Our author bases numerous arguments upon the physical examination
of man. “It is perfectly certain,” he says, “that natural selection
could not have produced the present naked body of man from an
ancestor covered with hair, for such a modification, far from
being useful, would be injurious, at least in certain respects;”
in civilised man a number of movements are executed by the hand of
which savages have not the slightest idea, although no anatomical
difference exists in the structure of the superior members; the
larynx of our singers is constructed similarly to that of savages,
and, nevertheless, what a contrast between the sounds produced!
From all these facts Wallace concludes that the brain, hand, and
larynx of savages possess _latent aptitudes_, which being temporarily
_useless_ cannot be attributed to _natural selection_. Man, moreover,
has not the power of acquiring them himself. Foreign intervention
therefore is necessary, for the explanation of their existence.
Wallace attributes this intervention to a _superior intelligence_
which acted on the human species, just as the latter has acted on the
rock-pigeon to produce from it the pouter or the carrier, and which
employed analogous processes.
In short, _natural selection_, regulated by the laws of nature
only, is sufficient to produce wild species; _artificial_ or _human
selection_ can produce improved races of animals and plants; a
kind of _divine selection_ must have produced the present man, and
can alone bring him to the highest pitch of intellectual and moral
development.
In advancing this latter hypothesis, Wallace declares that it no
more impairs the theory of natural selection than the latter is
weakened by the fact of artificial selection. Few, I think, will
accept this proposition. The chief apology for Darwinism in the eyes
of men of science, its great charm to all its partisans, lies in the
pretensions which it puts forward of connecting organic origins,
those of man as well as those of plants, with the single action of
second causes; and to explain the present state of living beings
by physical and physiological laws, just as geology and astronomy
explain the present state of the material world entirely by the
general laws of matter. In making the intervention of an _intelligent
will_ necessary for the realisation of the human being, Wallace has
set himself in opposition to the very essence of the theory. Such is
the opinion of most Darwinists, who have treated him somewhat as a
deserter.
I am not therefore called upon to examine this latter hypothesis of
Wallace. I am, however, at liberty to state that most of the facts,
which have induced one of the founders of Darwinism to separate
from his chief upon so important a point, retain all their value as
objections. The mistake of Wallace consists in failing to see that
his statements upon the subject of man apply equally to animals, and
Claparède has justly reproached him with a want of logic on this
point. He has been less happy in the answers which he has made to his
old ally. Doubtless, he who regards the question exclusively from a
Darwinian point of view, and accepts as true everything which I have
endeavoured to shew to be false, will readily find a solution for
many of the difficulties raised by Wallace. But his statements upon
_latent aptitudes_, upon the superior faculties of the human mind,
and upon the moral sense, are very difficult to refute. Claparède has
only alluded to the former. Darwin has attempted to go further; but
his theories and hypotheses upon these important questions do not
appear to me to have given much satisfaction to the most devoted of
his followers. I cannot here enter into a discussion, which, to have
any value, should be carried to some length, and I refer the reader
to the work upon the _Descent of Man_, and to my articles in the
Journal des Savants.
X. I cannot close this short account of the origins, which have been
attributed to man during late years, without mentioning the new
theory which has lately been put forward by an eminent botanist,
to whose works I have often had to allude. M. Naudin has been one
of the most important of Darwin’s precursors. Six years before the
English naturalist, he compared the action exercised by natural
forces in the production of _species_ to the methods used by man in
obtaining _races_; he admitted the _derivation_ and _filiation_ of
species; he compared the vegetable kingdom to a tree “where roots,
mysteriously hidden in the depths of cosmogenic time, have produced
a limited number of branches successively divided and sub-divided.
The first branches represent the primordial types of the kingdom, the
subsequent ramifications the existing species.” We cannot fail to
recognise in these words an idea very similar to Darwinism.
M. Naudin now proposes an _evolution theory_ which is very different.
He “entirely excludes the hypothesis of natural selection, unless
the sense of the word is changed so as to make it synonymous with
_survival_.” He rejects no less strongly the idea of _gradual
transmutations_, which require millions of years to effect the
transmutation of a single plant. He insists, on the contrary, upon
the _suddenness_ with which most of the variations observed in plants
have been produced, and regards it as a representation of what must
have taken place in the successive genesis of living beings. Let
us remark in passing, that Darwin, in the last edition of his work
recognises the reality of these _sudden leaps_, which have taken
place without transitions between one generation and another, and
confesses that he has not taken sufficient account of them in his
earlier writings.
M. Naudin admits the existence of a _protoplasma_ or _primordial
blastema_, the origin of which he does not pretend to explain nor its
entrance into action. Under the influence of the _organo-plastic_
or _evolutive force_ there were formed _proto-organisms_ of a very
simple structure, asexual, and endowed with the power of producing
by buds and with a great activity _meso-organisms_, similar to the
first, though already more complicated. With each generation forms
are multiplied, and become more pronounced, and nature rapidly
passes on to the _adult state_. The beings in question were not,
however, _species_. They were not complete beings, but merely a kind
of _larvæ_, whose sole duty was to serve as transitions between the
primitive blastema and the definite forms. Dispersed in different
regions of the globe, they have carried everywhere the germs of
future forms which _evolution_ had to produce from them. From the
_creative_ character which distinguished it at first, the evolutive
force exhausted by its very action, acquired a _preservative_
character. Forms are now _integrated_. They preserve, however, a
residue of _plasticity_; they vary under the influence of certain
conditions, and hence results the multitude of forms which the same
species now presents.
The proto- and meso-organisms contained in themselves, each according
to its position in the order of evolution, the rudiments of kingdoms,
branches, classes, orders, families, and genera. Points where they
were fixed, became so many _centres of creation_. Moreover, they have
not engendered simultaneously all the forms which they were capable
of producing. There have been considerable intervals between the
production of living beings, which explains why groups of the same
order have not been contemporaneous.
Organic types, even those least marked, have not passed into each
other. The paths followed by the evolutive force have always been
divergent. “Let us picture to ourselves,” says M. Naudin, “the
meso-organism which has been the source of the mammalia; ever since
its appearance, all the mammalian orders, including the human
order, were fermenting in it. Before their appearance, they were
virtually distinct, in the sense that the evolutive forces were
already distributed, and the method of their effecting, each in
its proper time, the production of these different orders, already
defined. This is a similar phenomenon to that of the evolution of
organs in a growing embryo, where we see springing from a common and
uniform origin, parts at first similar, but which are impelled in a
determinate direction each by its own particular _future_.”
M. Naudin, as we see, in order to support his theory, appeals to
the embryogenic phenomena, to which the Darwinists also look for
testimony in favour of their doctrines. The learned botanist,
however, attaches much more importance to the metamorphoses
which take place subsequently to the egg. He recognises _true
proto-organisms_ in the pro-embryo of mosses, in the larvæ of
insects, and of many other inferior animals. He lays particular
stress upon the phenomena of alternate generation, as representing
what has already taken place, or better, as representing in part “the
ancient and general process of creation.”
According to M. Naudin, man was subject to the common law, and
the Mosaic account is at the same time very true and full of
instruction. In its first phase, mankind was concealed within a
temporary organism, already distinct from all others, and incapable
of contracting an alliance with any of them. This is Adam, who sprang
from a primordial blastema called _clay_ in the Bible. At this epoch,
he was, properly speaking, neither male nor female; the two sexes
were not yet differentiated. “It is from this larval form of mankind,
that the evolutive force effected the completion of the species. For
the accomplishment of this great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through
a phase of immobility and unconsciousness, very analogous to the
nymphal state of animals undergoing metamorphosis.” This is the sleep
mentioned in the Bible, during which the work of differentiation
was accomplished, to use the words of M. Naudin, by a process of
germination, similar to that of medusæ and ascidians. Mankind, thus
constituted physiologically, would retain a sufficient evolutive
force for the rapid production of the various great human races.
Passing over the comparisons established by M. Naudin, I will confine
myself to a single observation upon all these ideas; properly
speaking, they do not form a _scientific theory_.
When we fertilise by artificial means the egg of a frog, we know
that we determine an entire series of phenomena, which results in
the formation of a germ, then in that of an embryo, which will be
established by a succession of metamorphoses, in that of a tadpole,
which will be equally subject to metamorphoses, and in that of a
definite animal which will assume all the characters of the species.
So far as man can _make a being_, we _make a frog_ when we fertilise
an egg.
If the _first cause_, with which M. Naudin immediately connects his
primordial blastema, has made potentially in this blastema all past,
present, and future beings, as well as the power of producing them
at the proper time, with all their distinctive characters, _It_ has,
in reality, _created_ all these beings _en masse_. We do not see
what kind of action is reserved for _second causes_; unless it is,
perhaps, the power of accelerating or retarding, of obstructing or
favouring the appearance of types of different value, when number and
relations have been immutably determined beforehand. But M. Naudin
has not even mentioned their part in this _evolution_ of the organic
world. That science which is only occupied with second causes has,
therefore, nothing to say to the theory of M. Naudin. It can neither
praise nor criticise it.
XI. To explain the origin of the world in which we live, that of
beings surrounding us, and our own, is evidently one of the most
general aspirations of the human mind. The most civilised nations,
as well as the most savage tribes, have satisfied this want in one
way or another. Even Australians, whatever may have been said to the
contrary, have their rudimentary cosmogony, which those who have
taken some interest in the matter, have made them relate.
In all cases, man has at first connected his cosmogonic conceptions
with his religious belief. Then among the most advanced ancient
nations, independent spirits have sought for an explanation of nature
in natural phenomena. But from want of precise knowledge, all their
hypothetical conceptions have no fundamental value.
With us also, the purely religious cosmogony has long been accepted
as an article of faith. What was called science was confounded with
dogma, itself relying upon interpretations of the Bible in harmony
with the knowledge of the time.
Science, properly so called, is entirely the creation of modern
times. The rapidity, the grandeur of its developments, fill one
of the most magnificent pages of human history. Relying entirely
upon experiment and observation, it could not fail to contradict
certain beliefs, which were drawn from a book written in an entirely
different sense to its own, and explained by the aid of data which
were incomplete or false. Between the representatives of the past and
those of the new era, the struggle was inevitable. It needed to be
sharp, and it was so. It is now keener than ever.
Circumstances of every kind have destroyed in many minds the old
faith of our ancestors. Carried away by the general stream, many in
the matter of religious belief, have arrived at absolute denial. The
need of an explanation of the universe is still felt by these uneasy
minds; and since they have no belief in the Bible, they have turned
their attention to science.
The latter has already given them magnificent answers in astronomy
and in geology. Before irrefutable facts, the later upholders of
the ancient biblical interpretations have either been obliged to
withdraw, or to be silent. No one believes in the immobility of the
earth, in creation having taken place in six days of twenty-four
hours each, or in the simultaneous appearance of all animals, or all
plants. Astronomy has made known to us the genesis of worlds; geology
has taught us how continents and seas, valleys and mountains are
formed, thus evolving some of the grandest results due to the action
of second causes in the inorganic empire.
There remains the organic empire, plants, animals, and man himself.
Here curiosity is excited, and the want of explanation becomes more
pressing, but unfortunately observation and experiment are equally at
fault.
Some men, eminent in science and in the richness of their
imaginations, have thought themselves able to do without it.
Reviving the methods of the Greek philosophers, they have thought
it possible to explain living nature and the entire universe, by
connecting certain facts with conceptions, which are almost entirely
intellectual. Once started in this path, they are readily elated
at their own thoughts. When the positive knowledge which has been
accumulated by the long-continued labours of their illustrious
predecessors, has embarrassed their speculations, they have at once,
so to speak, thrown it overboard; they have pushed to the utmost
the more or less logical development of their _à priori_, and have
nothing but irony and disdain for those who hesitate to follow them.
These men could not but excite admiration. They spoke in the name of
science alone; by its means they replied to aspirations perfectly
justifiable on such a topic; they produced theories which charmed by
their fulness and the apparent precision of their explanations. They
were able consequently to influence even those men of science who
had not gone to the bottom of things, and much more so the general
public, who are always satisfied to believe what they are told.
The nature of the resistance which they have met with from time to
time was calculated to increase the splendour of their triumph. Men
as imprudent as ill-judged have attacked them in the name of dogma.
Scientific discovery has degenerated into controversy; both parties
have become excited, and in the two camps it has been considered
necessary to deny all the statements of the enemy; they have vied
with each other in violence, and _savants_, who pretended to speak
in the name of free thought, have not shown themselves the less
intolerant.
I will only remind the one party of the trial of Galileo, and the
other of the theories of Voltaire denying the existence of fossils.
Others have resisted the impulse of the time; they have remained
faithful to method, the mother of modern science; they have carefully
preserved their inheritance of solid and precise knowledge, acquired
from past centuries. They cannot on that account be accused of
acting from routine or be considered as retrograding. As warmly
as the most ardent partisans of the so-called advanced theories,
they have applauded all the progress, and have received with equal
favour new ideas, on the condition of exposing them to experiment
and observation. But when they meet with questions the solution of
which is at present impossible, and will perhaps always be so, they
have not hesitated to answer:—WE DO NOT KNOW;—and when they find
purely metaphysical theories are being imposed upon them, they have
protested in the name of experiment and observation.
I venture to say that I have always remained faithful to the ranks
of this phalanx, to which the future distinctly belongs. For this
reason, to those who question me upon the problem of our origin, I do
not hesitate to answer in the name of science:—I DO NOT KNOW.
I do not on that account anathematise those who consider they ought
to act otherwise, nor do I greatly blame their boldness. The study of
second causes has enabled man to explain scientifically the present
constitution of the inorganic world; and it is quite legitimate to
attempt to account for the present state of the organic world by
causes of the same nature; perhaps success will one day crown our
efforts, and should they for ever remain unrewarded, as they have
hitherto done, they will still possess a certain utility. These
efforts of the imagination provoke new research, make new openings,
and thus render a service to real science in the world of facts,
as well as in that of ideas. If Darwin had not been actuated by
his preconceptions, he would probably never have accomplished his
excellent work upon the 150 races of pigeons, nor developed his
theory of the struggle for existence and natural selection, which
accounts for so many facts.
Unfortunately, from having forgotten the works of their predecessors,
Darwin and his followers have drawn erroneous conclusions from
these premises. They imagine they have given explanations when they
have given none. This is what I have endeavoured to show. I have
been obliged to resume the debate; it is for the impartial and
unprejudiced reader to decide between us.
BOOK III.
ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER XII.
AGE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.—PRESENT GEOLOGICAL EPOCH.
I. Without prejudging the future, we have been obliged to acknowledge
that the problem of the specific origin of man cannot be solved, or
even attempted, with the scientific data which we at present possess.
This is not quite so much the case with certain questions which are
naturally suggested to the mind by the preceding.
We know that our globe has passed through several geological and
palæontological epochs; that living beings have not appeared
simultaneously, and that the present fauna and flora have been
preceded by very different ones. It is natural to ask the question,
when man began to inhabit the earth, and to endeavour to determine
the moment of the appearance of this being, so similar to other
beings in many respects, so exceptional in his most noble faculties,
and superior to everything around him.
This question of time should be stated precisely; we must understand
the sense which may be attributed to it.
Let us observe, in the first place, that here we can have no dates
properly so called. They only exist in history. Now primitive mankind
can have no history in the scientific sense of the word. Most great
religions have endeavoured to fill up this gap. But my readers are
already aware that I have refused all considerations drawn from
such a source, and that I intend to bring forward here none but the
results of experiment and observation. I shall then try how far back
we can go with the aid of these guides alone, quoting in the first
place a few historic dates as terms of comparison.
II. The Greeks and Romans, with whom classical education too often
terminates, do not take us very far. The former had much more ancient
records than the latter, and yet the era of the Olympiads only brings
us to the year 776 before our era; according to Hecateus of Miletus,
it was in the ninth or tenth century before our era that the gods
ceased to intermarry with mortals, and the Trojan war is regarded
approximately as having taken place in the eleventh or twelfth
century. Beyond this period, it is evident that we are led by Greece
into mere mythology, or rather into those legendary times where truth
and fable are confounded.
The Aryan traditions go further. M. Vivien de Saint Martin, summing
up the works of which he is so good a judge, refers the arrival
of the Hindoos on the river of Cabul to about the sixteenth or
eighteenth century before our era. These tribes were only an offshoot
of the great emigration which the Zend-Avesta takes back almost
as far as the Bolor. We can, therefore, refer the latter to the
twentieth or twenty-eighth century before our era.
Jewish history, starting with Abraham, goes back almost to the same
period (2296 years); the deluge of Noah, according to the estimation
generally received, to the year 3308. Say about thirty centuries.
In China, the Chou-King places the reign of Hoang-ti in the year
2698, and that of Jao in the year 2357 before our era. This would
correspond almost to a century, with the date of the migration of
Abraham.
Egypt had no Chou-King, but her monuments are the most magnificent
of books. Champollion has taught us how to read them, and we can
decipher them page by page. Now Lepsius and Bunsen place the fifth
dynasty about the fortieth century, and according to Mariette
Bey, the lists of Manetho, upon the subject of which the eminent
Egyptologist makes formal reserves, go back to the year 5004 before
our era. We should, then, be separated from the earliest historical
times of Egypt by an interval of about seventy centuries. If,
instead of counting by years, we count by the human life, which we
will estimate at about twenty-five years, we find that we are only
separated from these times, which constitute the extreme limit of
past history, by 280 generations.
These numbers are undoubtedly interesting. They tend to modify some
of the impressions which we have received in our childhood; but they
tell us nothing of the antiquity of the human race. At most, in
showing us that at this period there existed people in the valley of
the Nile sufficiently civilised to possess the art of writing, and
to raise monuments worthy of our admiration, they refer the first
appearance of man far beyond the limits which they reach themselves.
III. The Egyptians themselves have, then, a past anterior to all
history. With much greater reason is this the case with the Chinese,
Hindoos, Greeks, and still more so with nations less well endowed,
or accidentally retarded in their evolution. To plunge into this
obscurity with the hope of finding in it any certain land-marks, and
to discover facts of which even legends say nothing, would thirty
years ago have appeared a senseless enterprise. It is, nevertheless,
the work accomplished by one of the most recent of sciences,
_Prehistoric Archæology_. We should therefore regard the year
1847 as a memorable date, when three Danish savants, a geologist,
a zoologist, and an archæologist, were charged by the Society of
Northern Antiquaries to carry out the studies which have served as
its foundation. By a study of the Kitchenmiddens and peat-mosses of
their country, Forchammer, Steenstrup and Worsaar have done for the
history of man what De Buch, Elie de Beaumont, and Cuvier have done
for the history of the globe.
The _Kitchenmiddens_ are essentially formed by the accumulation of
shells strewn on the sea-shore, which sometimes attain considerable
proportions. With the shells are found the remains of fish, and bones
of birds and mammalia. Man alone could have formed this accumulation,
and his presence, moreover, is revealed by the implements, tools, and
weapons, which he once mislaid, and which are now found among the
remains of his meals. They consist of stone, almost always rudely
shaped. In some of these artificial hills, among the traces of a very
rudimentary industry, we meet with other stone objects which betray
workmanship of the most remarkable perfection.
The Kitchenmiddens, then, reveal the existence of a population
now forgotten, which at first lived in an entirely savage state,
but afterwards acquired a certain amount of civilisation. From a
chronological point of view, however, this information is still very
imperfect. The mixture of implements, sometimes almost without form,
and sometimes again showing wonderful workmanship, permits of various
interpretations, which have in fact been given.
It is different with the objects found in the peat-mosses, and
especially in those which the Danes call _skovmoses_, that is,
_forest mosses_. These formations are found in hollows of irregular
form which have been excavated in Quaternary clays, reaching at times
a depth of thirty feet or more. The detailed study which Steenstrup
especially has made of them led him to distinguish among them the
_central region_ or _peat-moss_, and the _exterior region_ or _forest
region_.
The first is formed by the cavity itself. It is the peat-moss
properly so called, formed by the layers of peat which fill the
cavity, and have been deposited subsequently to its formation. A
meagre vegetation grew upon the surface, which divides this mass
of vegetable _débris_ into distinct zones. They are, proceeding
downwards:—1st, certain trees, such as the birch, alder, and hazel,
etc., mixed with heaths; 2nd, small stunted, but sturdy pines (_Pinus
sylvestris_), which had grown upon peat in which mosses of a high
organisation, such as the hypnum, were found; 3rd, compact, amorphous
peat, the elements of which for a long time it was considered
impossible to discover, but in which MM. Steenstrup and Nathorst
discovered in 1872 undoubted remains of five species of plants
now confined to the Arctic circle, such as, _Salix herbacea_, _S.
polaris_, _S. reticulata_, _Betula nana_, _Dryas octopetala_; 4th,
a bed of clay evidently resulting from material washed down by rain
from the sides of the hollow, when the latter were still bare.
The forest region occupies the sides themselves. The trees were
there protected from the wind, and extending their roots into a
fertile clay they attained a magnificent development. Now we at once
meet with a very remarkable fact, the beech tree is not found in
the skovmoses. At the present day it is the essential constituent
of the Danish forests; it is the national tree, and the most
ancient traditions give no suspicion that it has ever been wanting
in Denmark. In its place the peat-mosses contain at first nothing
but oaks (_Quercus robur sessilifolia_) which disappeared from the
country in prehistoric times, and is only found in a few places in
Jutland. Then, as we descend deeper into the peat, the oaks give way
to pines. In their turn the latter gain the ascendant, and occupy the
lowest parts of the peat exclusively.
Oaks and pines, when they fell from old age, accident, or human
agency, generally fell towards the interior of the bog. Their
interlaced branches supported and consolidated the peat, which was
then in the best condition for preserving, as they fell, any solid
substances which may have been dropped or thrown into the bog.
Man used to frequent the skovmoses, and it is well known that he
cannot live in any place without losing a number of objects, even
those upon which he sets most value. He lost in the bogs weapons,
tools, and instruments of all kinds, and they all remain where they
fell. The skovmoses have thus become a kind of chronologically
stratified museum, where each generation has left its trace in the
contemporaneous peat. We have only to explore it layer by layer to
obtain many definite ideas about the predecessors of the present
Danes, and to find in this prehistoric past _relative dates_ or
_epochs_. In this manner the Scandinavian savants have arrived at
the idea of the _Ages of Iron_, _Bronze_, and _Stone_, which are
now universally adopted. I shall not here follow the development
which these fundamental ideas have received, nor the manner in which
they have been applied to the _Lake dwellings_ of Switzerland and
elsewhere. I shall not insist further upon the different degrees of
civilization betrayed by the use of two metals and of polished or
ground stone. I shall confine myself to the remark that in Denmark
the Iron age entirely corresponds with that of the beech tree, while
the Bronze age corresponds with the entire period of the oak, and the
close of that to the pine. Lastly, the pine is the tree of the Stone
age.
The presence of objects formed by human industry proves the presence
of man. Thanks to their irrefutable testimony, there is no difficulty
in tracing him through the zones of the oak and the pine. The immense
number of objects, which have been left by him in the peat period,
points to the existence of a somewhat dense population. These
objects, on the contrary, become very rare, and at the same time
ruder, in the layer of amorphous peat. They were, for some time, even
thought to be wanting altogether, till they were finally discovered
by Steenstrup associated with the remains of the reindeer.
Man, then, was living in Denmark when Arctic plants, such as _Betula
nana_ and _Salise polaris_ grew at the bottom of the skovmoses; he
was accompanied by the reindeer, which completes the resemblance
between the past state of that country and the present state of
Lapland. Now we know that such a state of things could only have
existed in Denmark in the latter part of the Quaternary epoch, when
the ice, retreating from the south northwards, would still be far
removed from its present limits. We can then affirm that man existed
and lived in Europe at the very dawn of the present geological epoch.
This fact is again proved by the discovery of a human station,
made by M. Fraas, at Schussenried in Wurtemberg. Here man, whose
presence is attested by worked flints of various forms, by weapons
and instruments of bone, by phalanges of reindeer made into whistles,
lived with the reindeer, the glutton, and the polar fox, and gathered
mosses which are now confined to Northern Europe, such as _Hypnum
sarmentosum_, _fluitans_, and _aduncum_. As in Denmark, he seems to
have followed the glaciers step by step, as the melting of the latter
opened out new lands to his activity.
IV. Without claiming such accuracy for the historic dates, or even
such an approximation as that derived from the Aryan traditions on
the most ancient monuments of Egypt, is it possible to estimate the
number of years which have elapsed since the times we have just been
discussing?
This question has often attracted the attention of geologists and
anthropologists, and several attempts have been made to solve it. But
the results are still far from being satisfactory. They are none the
less interesting, and calculated, to a certain extent, to encourage
fresh research. The method is good; it has only been hitherto wanting
in sufficiently precise dates, and we may hope that they will be
sooner or later forthcoming.
This method is easily comprehended. For example, let us admit
that the peat has a regular growth in the skovmoses, and suppose,
in addition, that a coin, recognised as belonging to the twelfth
century, has been found at a depth of 1·50 metres (4·9 feet); we
shall conclude that the layer of peat has only required about 600
years for its formation. The age of a bronze hatchet found at greater
depth, 8 metres (26·24 feet), will be given by the proportion l^m·50
: 6 :: 8^m : x. The hatchet would then be 3,200 years old, and would
date from the fourteenth century before our era.
Many natural phenomena are available for calculations of this kind.
Such are the alluvium of a river, the silting up of a lake, the
erosion of a hill or plateau, etc. Put in order that the results of
these calculations may have a real value, the phenomenon which serves
as the basis, and the calculations resulting from the data must
satisfy three conditions which have been very clearly stated by M.
Forel.
1. The phenomenon should be perfectly constant and regular, which
is never the case. At least, it ought to be possible to regard its
action as giving an annual mean or constant centennial result, by
means of compensations which are produced naturally.
2. When super-imposed strata are used as a means of estimation,
the age of the strata serving as a term of comparison, ought to be
rigorously determined; the nature of the objects compared should
leave no doubt.
3. We ought to be certain that the objects found in any stratum
really belong to it, that they have not been displaced by any
reformation or by their mere weight. (_Peat._)
Should even one only of these conditions be unfulfilled, the
calculation is necessarily erroneous. Now, hitherto, we cannot
be absolutely certain that the conditions laid down by M. Forel
are satisfied. Nevertheless, I repeat, it is interesting to know
what results have been obtained by these attempts at prehistoric
chronology.
It would seem, at first sight, that the skovmoses must be useful for
researches of this kind. It is not so. Steenstrup, an excellent judge
of these matters, after having estimated at forty centuries the time
necessary for the formation of the peat accumulated in these bogs,
declares that it might be twice, or even four times as much.
In reality, the uncertainty as to the results obtained from the
growth of peat, is very much greater than the Danish savant admits.
In adding to the data collected by Brandt, those kindly presented to
me by my colleague, M. Bésal, I find that for a period of 443 years
the mean annual growth of peat is 0·032 metre (1·26 inch). But this
mean is the result of numbers whose extremes are 0·065 metre (2·56
inch) and 0·0065 metre (0·26 inch). That is to say, that the means
found by different observers for the annual growth of peat, vary from
one to ten.
The calculations of MM. Gillieron and Troyon, resting upon the
deposition of silt, which has caused the retreat of the Lakes of
Bienne and Neuchâtel, have but little connection with the present
subject. Both have sought to determine the age of the Lake dwellings,
which belong, probably, to a much later period than the one which
we are now endeavouring to determine. We may, however, notice the
numbers, 6,000 years and 3,300 years, found by these observers.
The chronological results derived from the littoral accumulation
of silt, of which I have just spoken, exhibit chances for error
which Vogt has rightly pointed out. For some time the results
have been thought more worthy of confidence which were based upon
the researches made by M. Morlot upon the conical accumulation of
silt deposited by the Tinière. This cone, which was cut through by
the railway for a distance of 133^m (436 feet), and to a depth of
7·7^m (25 feet), exhibited in the midst of the mass of gravel three
undisturbed soils, the highest of which contained Roman instruments
and coins; the second, pottery of the Bronze age; and the third,
split bones, charcoal, and different objects referable to the close
of the Stone age. Fixing the commencement of the Roman period in
Switzerland at the first century of our era, and the end of it at
the year 563, and making some corrections which cannot be detailed
here, M. Morlot has considered himself able to propose the following
numbers as approximate dates:—
Age of layer of Roman period 10 to 15 centuries.
Age of layer of Bronze period 29 to 42 centuries.
Age of layer of Stone period 47 to 70 centuries.
Age of whole cone 74 to 100 centuries.
These numbers are not high. The number given by M. Morlot as the age
of the Stone period in Switzerland, leads us back to an antiquity
which does not exceed that given by the Egyptian monuments; and it is
impossible to avoid being struck with the differences of civilization
exhibited by the two countries. Nevertheless, this fact cannot
constitute a reason for doubting the results of the Swiss savant.
It is well known that man during the same time has not everywhere
equally advanced in civilization, and that the Esquimaux are still in
the Neolithic period.
But other criticisms have been brought forward against M. Morlot,
the result of which is that the numbers furnished by the cone of the
Tinière cannot be accepted as giving a real approximation to the date
which we are seeking for.
V. M. Forel, who has taken an active part in this discussion, has
tried to solve the problem in an indirect way. Instead of seeking
directly for the age of a prehistoric fact, he has proposed to
have recourse to the rule of false position, which allows the
determination either of a maximum which the numbers cannot possibly
exceed, or a minimum below which they cannot fall. He has applied
this plan, which is as correct as it is ingenious, to the Lake of
Geneva.
It is well known that the waters of the Rhone, especially during
the floods caused by the melting of the snow, enter the lake in a
very turbid condition, and flow on remarkably clear. The mud thus
deposited evidently tends to fill up the lake, and has already silted
up a part of the great depression which was filled by the ice of the
Quaternary epoch. M. Forel has first determined the annual volume of
the deposit. He has then calculated the volume of the present lake,
basing his calculations on the soundings made by La Bèche. He has
thus been enabled to calculate the time necessary for the sediment
of the Rhone to fill up the entire lake. Then, admitting that the
part of the original lake already filled up had a mean depth equal
to that of the present lake, he has compared the surface of the
alluvial deposits already formed with the surface of the lake itself.
The proportion is almost one to three. These deposits have then
been formed in a third of the time necessary to fill up the present
lake. Now their formation commenced immediately after the retreat of
the glaciers. The date thus obtained is, then, that of the modern
geological epoch.
Such is the method by which M. Forel arrives at the number of 100,000
years. This is a maximum which is probably much exaggerated. M.
Forel shows this himself very clearly. He has always taken the
lowest numbers for the estimation of the increase of alluvium; he
has considered on the whole year ninety days only as contributing to
this increase; he has only included the Rhone in this estimation,
and taken no account of other rivers, streams, etc.; he has not
taken into consideration inundations, extraordinary falls of rain,
landslips, etc.; he has assumed the floods of the Rhone have always
resembled the present floods, while they must originally have been
much more considerable, and have carried away much more material from
mountain slopes but recently relieved from their covering of ice; he
has said nothing of the gravel and sand which must necessarily be
carried along the bed of a rapid stream like the Rhone, etc.
M. Forel’s result must therefore undergo serious reduction before it
approximates to the truth. Without attempting a precise statement, we
can (at least) admit with almost absolute certainty that the present
geological epoch commenced less than 100,000 years ago.
On the other hand, M. Arcelin has sought for a solution of the same
problem in the deposits of the Saône. The present river flows in
a channel hollowed out in the alluvium of the Saône of Quaternary
times, the banks of which have been raised by the sediment deposited
during floods. The two deposits are very easily distinguished. The
homogeneity of the modern alluvium indicates, moreover, a remarkably
regular phenomenon. The banks of the Saône at different points form
more or less abrupt hills which constitute so many natural geological
sections. The erosions of the river have laid bare objects easily
recognised as belonging to the Roman period, the Bronze age, and the
Neolithic age. These objects are found at a constant height, showing
that they are in situ. The hills of the Saône, then, constitute one
of those means of estimating prehistoric chronology, which are so
valuable to us. MM. Arcelin and De Ferry have attempted first to
determine the age of the different layers. The numbers so obtained
show a certain amount of discordance, undoubtedly due to the fact
that M. de Ferry has based his calculations upon a single section,
while those of M. Arcelin represent the mean taken from 33 points.
The latter has, however, afterwards had recourse to the method of M.
Forel, and to the rule of false position. But instead of seeking a
maximum, he has endeavoured to determine a minimum. This calculation
gives the following results:—
Age of Roman layer 1,500 years
Age of Bronze layer 2,250 years
Age of Neolithic layer 3,000 years
Age of Quaternary clay 6,750 years
This represents a very moderate antiquity, and corresponds almost
entirely with the dates of Manetho. But the minimum of M. Arcelin
appears to me to be too low, and the error greater than in the case
of the maximum of M. Forel. I shall only point out the most important
of the causes which have led to this result. The calculations of the
author are based upon the hypothesis of the equality of the floods,
and of the alluvial deposit in the period between the present and the
Roman period, and in times previous to that. He thus confounds the
epochs when the basin of the Saône was left to Nature alone, with
other epochs when the same basin was stripped of its forests, cleared
and cultivated as it is at present. Now everyone knows how much more
powerful the action of atmospheric agents, of rain in particular,
are upon cultivated land than upon uncultivated. The upper layers,
which served as the basis for the calculations of M. Arcelin, have
necessarily diminished to a considerable extent the final result,
since they must have been formed much more rapidly than a great part
of the lower layers.
I shall say, then, of the minimum of M. Arcelin what I have said of
the maximum of M. Forel. It leaves us the certainty that the present
geological period goes back much further than 7-8000 years.
VI. What corrections ought the extreme numbers which I have just
quoted to undergo in order to approximate to the truth? It is still
impossible to say. But the path which should be followed in order to
diminish the space which separates them is henceforth clear. The
alluvium of the Saône has always appeared to me to present conditions
of uncertainty which it would be difficult to overcome, and the best
means of determining the age of the present period by prehistoric
chronology, appears to me to be the Lake of Geneva.
In order to correct the first results obtained by M. Forel, it would
be necessary to take into account all the circumstances pointed out
above, and several others also. It would be especially necessary,
at different seasons of the year, in dry and wet weather, to gauge
the smallest rivulets and ravines all round the lake, to measure the
amount of mud their waters contain, and the amount of gravel and sand
they carry down with it. This task is beyond the power of a single
man; it would require the formation of an _Association_ for this end.
The problem would be worth the trouble, and the Swiss savants, so
justly proud of their beautiful lake, might easily make arrangements
to obtain its solution.
Such as they are, the works of MM. Arcelin and Forel lead to some
important conclusions. The total age of our globe, used till lately
to be restricted to a little more than 6,000 years; the alluvial
deposits of the Saône show that the present geological epoch alone
surpasses this by several centuries. On the other hand, under the
influence of Darwinian prejudices, men have begun to handle time with
a strange laxity, and it has been affirmed that millions of years
separate us from glacial times. The deposits of silt in the Lake
of Geneva show that these times terminated less than 100,000 years
ago. As M. Forel well says, “This does not yet constitute historic
chronology; it is, nevertheless, a little more than simple geological
chronology;” and we see once more experience and observation doing
justice to theoretical conceptions.
CHAPTER XIII.
AGE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.—PAST GEOLOGICAL EPOCHS.
I. The skovmoses and the remains at Schussenried have shown that
man existed in Europe at the close of the Glacial Epoch. But did he
live through this epoch? Did he precede it? Has he, therefore, been
contemporary with vegetable and animal species, which have long been
considered as fossils? We know that we can with certainty reply in
the affirmative to these questions. We know also that the proof of
this great fact, one of the grandest scientific conquests of modern
times, dates, so to speak, from yesterday.
This demonstration rests on proofs which are now so well known that
the enumeration of them will be sufficient. It is evident that
human bones, buried beneath an undisturbed layer of soil, prove the
existence of man at the time when the layer was formed. It is no
less clear that flints worked by human hands and made into hatchets,
knives, etc., bones of animals made into harpoons and arrow-heads,
are so many irrefutable testimonies of the existence of the workers.
Lastly, when human bones are found associated with bones of animals
in the same undisturbed layers, it is again evident that man and
these animal species have been contemporaneous.
Many facts included in these three categories were proved in the
earlier years, and during the course of the last century. Since 1700,
excavations made by the order of Duke Eberhard Louis de Wurtemberg,
at Canstadt, near Stuttgard, brought to light a great number of bones
of animals, among which was found a human cranium. The nature of this
precious relic was, however, only recognised by Jaeger in 1835.
About the same time an Englishman, Kemp, found in London itself, side
by side with the teeth of elephants, a stone hatchet similar to those
of Saint Acheul. Some time after Esper in Germany, and John Frere in
England, discovered more or less analogous facts. But none of them
were able to recognise their significance, for geology was quite in
its infancy, and palæontology not yet in existence.
II. It was not till 1823 that Amy Boué gave Cuvier some human bones
which he had found in the _loess_ of the Rhine, near Lahr, in the
Duchy of Baden. Boué regarded these bones as fossils. Cuvier refused
to admit this conclusion. He has often been reproached with this, but
the reproach is unjust. Cuvier had too often seen pretended _fossil
men_ change either into mastodons or salamanders, or even into
simple contorted blocks of sandstone, not to be on his guard, and,
in presence of a fact hitherto unique, he thought it wiser to admit
a disturbance which would have carried into the loess bones of much
later date than that of the formation of this layer.
But Cuvier, whatever may have been said of him, never denied the
possibility of the discovery of _fossil men_. He has, on the
contrary, formally admitted the existence of our species as anterior
to the latest revolutions of the globe. “Man,” he says, “may have
inhabited some country of small extent from which he repeopled the
earth after these terrible events.” We see that the praises and
reproaches which have been addressed to our great naturalist on
account of an opinion which he never held, are equally undeserved.
The reserve, perhaps exaggerated, which Cuvier imposed upon himself,
and the confidence which was placed in him, weighed heavily upon
science by impeding the comprehension of the value of observations
made by Tournal (1828-1829) in L’Aude, by Christol (1829) in Le Gard;
by Schmerling (1833) in Belgium; by Joly (1835) in Lozère; by Marcel
de Serres (1839), in L’Aude, and by Lund (1844) in Brazil. In 1845
almost all the savants, properly so called, shared the opinion so
well stated by Desnoyers. Without regarding the existence of fossil
man as impossible, they did not think that the discovery had as yet
been made.
It is to the persevering efforts of a distinguished archæologist,
Boucher de Perthes, that we owe the proof of a fact so long denied,
and now universally admitted. Under the influence of certain
philosophical ideas, little calculated to procure him followers, he
had admitted _à priori_ the existence of human beings anterior to the
present man, from whom they must have differed considerably. He hoped
to find either their remains themselves, or the products of their
industry, in the upper alluvial deposits. Watching either himself or
through his agents the excavation of the gravel-pits near Abbeville,
he collected there a number of flints, more or less rudely worked,
but bearing the unmistakable impress of the hand of man. Some of his
publications (1847) brought him visitors, who in their turn carried
on the search. Soon after, M. Regollot (1855) and M. Gaudry (1856)
obtained from the gravel of Saint Acheul hatchets similar to those of
Abbeville, and declared themselves convinced. The English savants,
Falconer, Prestwich, and Lyell, after having visited the collection
of Boucher de Perthes, did the same, and had many imitators.
III. In spite of the discoveries which were multiplied in caverns and
gravel-pits, even in the neighbourhood of Paris, the same objections
were brought against the believers in fossil man which Cuvier had
opposed to Amy Boué. The juxtaposition of the remains of extinct
animals and human bones, or articles of human workmanship, were
attributed to a _reformation_ effected by water. The high authority
of M. de Bramont lent new force to this argument. He compared the
alluvium of the neighbourhood of Abbeville to his _terrains des
pentes_, formed, he said, by storms of an exceptional violence, which
only happened once in a thousand years, and which heap up together
materials derived from different beds. As for the objects discovered
in caverns they inspired still less confidence than the others, on
account of the ease with which the bed might be undermined by eddies,
which would tend to deposit in the heart of a subjacent layer objects
derived from the upper layers, without destroying either the one or
the other.
Many men of high intellect still hesitated, until M. Lartet published
his remarkable work upon the grotto of Aurignac (1861). Here doubt
was impossible. This grotto, or rather rock-shelter, was closed at
the time of its discovery by a slab of stone brought from a distance;
M. Lartet discovered, either in the interior or at the entrance,
the bones of eight or nine species of animals which are essentially
characteristic of quaternary deposits. In his memoir he gives details
of all the remains. Some of these animals had evidently been eaten
upon the spot, their bones, partly carbonized, still bore the trace
of fire, the charcoal and ashes of which were discovered; those of a
young tichorhine rhinoceros showed marks made by flint implements,
and their spongy extremities had been gnawed by carnivora; the
species of the latter was shown by his excrement, which was
recognized as that of the _hyena spelæa_.
The grotto or rock-shelter of Aurignac is excavated in a small
mountainous group, a spur of the plateau of Lanémézan, which the
Pyrenean drift has never reached. It is, therefore, free from the
objections drawn from the intervention of aqueous currents. Thus the
facts made known by M. Lartet were generally accepted at once in
their fullest signification. These facts show that man lived in the
midst of a quaternary fauna, which he used as food, including the
rhinoceros, and was followed by the hyena of this epoch, who finished
the remains of his meals. The coexistence of man with these fossil
species was proved.
A few ill-judged attacks were still made by savants, who did not
accept the testimony of these facts, among others that of the
discovery of a human jaw made by Boucher de Perthes. But the
discoveries became so numerous that the last among them was soon
reduced to silence, and had to submit to the mention of _fossil man_
without raising the slightest protest.
IV. It would be too tedious and, indeed, useless to enumerate
here all these discoveries. I will only mention some of the most
striking ones associated with the names of Lartet and Christy,
his enthusiastic colleague. At Les Eyzies, these indefatigable
investigators discovered a stalagmitic layer formed of a veritable
breccia, which contained worked flints, ashes, charcoal, and bones of
different quaternary animals. Large slabs of this breccia now figure
in many collections. In this same grotto they found a vertebra of
a young reindeer pierced by a flint which had broken in the bone,
thus causing the death of the animal. Finally, in 1864, M. Lartet
had the pleasure of being present at the discovery of a plate of
mammoth ivory, upon which a representation of the animal itself had
been carved with a sharp flint by an artist of La Madeleine. In this
drawing are found the characteristic traits of the mammoth, as they
are known to us from the remains of the animal which are at times
found preserved, _with its thick fur and long hair_, in the ice of
Siberia.
For man to be able to draw the portrait of any animal species,
he must have been contemporaneous with it. Now proofs of this
nature have rapidly become more numerous and striking. In l’Ariége
M. Garrigou found a representation of the cave bear traced on a
pebble. M. de Vibraye extracted from the grotto of Laugerie-Basse
a sketch of a fight between reindeer remarkably well drawn upon a
piece of schist. The same animal has been discovered represented in
sculpture in the same rock-shelter, and again in the rock-shelter
of Montastruc, where M. Peccadeau de l’Isle found his wonderful
dagger-handles.
I need not speak here of the weapons, tools, and instruments of every
kind, from the simple knife to barbed arrow-heads, and harpoons, to
laurel-leaf shaped lance-heads, and daggers toothed and grooved,
which equal the finest specimens found in Denmark. I will only remark
that all these objects prove the existence of man, and that we now
count by the thousand articles made by him during the geological
period preceding our own.
Without being nearly so abundant, the remains of man himself have
been discovered in every part of the quaternary formation. Although
several European states have contributed towards this mass of
discoveries, by far the greater number occurred in France and Belgium.
I cannot here enter into details, some of which will be more
advantageously discussed in another part of the book. I will only
mention the cave of Cro-Magnon, which was discovered by the railway
engineers in 1860, not far from the station of Les Eyzies, and
which has given us the type of one of the best characterized fossil
races. Nor can I pass over in silence the successful and laborious
researches made by M. Martin from 1867 to 1873 in the quarries near
Paris, the results of which enabled M. Hamy to fix the succession of
types in our immediate neighbourhood. Lastly, I would allude to the
investigations of M. Dupont in the valley of the Lesse. Commenced in
1864, and continued during seven years with an unequalled activity,
they have presented to the Museum at Brussels about 80,000 worked
flints, 40,000 bones of animals, now all named, the crania of
Furfooz, and twenty-one jaws, including the now celebrated _jaw of
Naulette_.
It is not only in Europe that the existence of fossil man has been
proved. Even in 1844 Lund had announced that he had found in certain
caverns in Brazil human bones associated with remains of extinct
animals. He afterwards withdrew his statement, doubtless owing to the
distrust with which every announcement of this kind was received.
But his observations, which, unfortunately, were never published in
detail, were probably correct. In 1867 M. W. Blake announced to the
Congress of Paris that in the auriferous deposits of California, and
especially near the village of Sonora, weapons, instruments, and even
stone ornaments were frequently found associated with the bones of
the mammoth and the mastodon. Dr. Snell, who lives in this locality,
possesses a large and rich collection of them. Dr. Wilson published
some facts of the same nature in 1865.
V. It became necessary, in order to prevent our being lost amidst
these riches of every description, to distribute them in a
methodical manner, and arrange them in order of time. The universal
preponderance of weapons, tools, sculpture, drawings, etc., has
led archæologists to propose different classifications essentially
founded upon the difference of the types presented by these articles,
and upon the material from which they were made. The classification
which M. de Mortillet has applied to the Museum of St. Germain is of
this kind. But such classifications, though very convenient for the
arrangement of a public collection, have the inconvenience of being
rather artificial. The naturalist and the anthropologist ought to
give the preference to palæontological or geological data.
Lartet preferred the former. He connected the division of quaternary
times with the predominance and extinction of the great mammalia. The
cave-bear, which was the first to disappear, he employed to mark the
most ancient period; the mammoth and the tichorhine rhinoceros, which
survived it, characterised the second; the reindeer and the aurochs
have served to mark the third and fourth.
This classification has the inconvenience of being purely local,
since the disappearance of quaternary species did not take place
everywhere at the same time, and was not general. In reality the age
of the reindeer still continues in Lapland, and that of the aurochs
is prolonged, a little artificially it is true, in the forests of
Lithuania. But Lartet’s method connects human groups with animal
types; it characterises the epochs by an event palæontologically
important; it preserves the relation between the succession of
periods and biological events; it offers, therefore, serious
advantages if taken for what it is. This was very clearly understood
by the eminent author of the theory; he has only applied it to France.
Since M. Lartet made his splendid investigations, fresh facts have
come to light, and, as it often happens, distinctions, which at
first were apparently most pronounced, have now been partly effaced.
Therefore M. Dupont has proposed to reduce to two the four ages of
Lartet, which is perhaps excessive even for Belgium. M. Hamy, again,
has admitted three ages as corresponding to the mean and new river
levels of M. Belgrand. This division of quaternary times has the
advantage of being connected with geological phenomena; it at least
partly loses the too exclusively local character, and it ought for
this reason to be preferred.
Let us, nevertheless, consider the subject for a moment from Lartet’s
point of view, which permits of an interesting comparison. We have
seen in Denmark the succession of three vegetable species; the
beech, the oak, and the pine bring us to the commencement of the
present modern epoch. In France the successive disappearance of
four animal species, the cave-bear, mammoth, reindeer, and aurochs,
which at first were contemporaneous on our soil, characterises so
many epochs which embrace the whole quaternary period. Man has been
contemporaneous with them all; he made use of their flesh for food,
and has left representations of them in sculpture and drawings.
VI. Can we go further and find traces of man even in tertiary times?
Falconer, the celebrated English palæontologist, prematurely lost
to science, did not hesitate to reply in the affirmative. But he
only expected to find tertiary man in India, and M. Desnoyers has
discovered him in France.
It was in 1863, in the gravel-pit of Saint-Prest, near Chartres, that
M. Desnoyers himself found a tibia of rhinoceros bearing marks of
incision and grooves similar to those which had been so often noticed
in the bones of bears and reindeer eaten by quaternary man. A careful
comparison and numerous facts of the same nature, shown in different
collections, authorised him to announce that man might be traced
beyond the glacial epoch, and had lived in pliocene times.
But M. Desnoyers only brought forward proofs of a single kind, and
such as are not appreciated at their full value until we are used to
them. Thus his work was at first received with a certain amount of
distrust. He was asked to produce, if not pliocene man himself, at
least some objects of his industry, and, in particular, the weapons
which would enable him to attack, and the knives with which he could
cut up the elephant and rhinoceros, or the great deer, whose bones
all bear the marks of more or less deep incision which he attributes
to man. M. l’Abbé Bourgeois soon replied to these demands, and in
the presence of the worked flints which he placed before competent
judges, all doubt disappeared.
Unfortunately, the gravel of Saint-Prest is considered by a
sufficient number of geologists to belong rather to quaternary
deposits, which are more recent than undoubted tertiary formations.
It ought probably to be placed in the period of transition which
separates two distinct epochs. Perhaps it is contemporaneous with
the deposit of the Victoria cave in Yorkshire, from which Tiddeman
extracted a human fibula, and which this naturalist regarded as
having been formed a little before the great glacial cold. In short,
the discoveries of MM. Desnoyers and Tiddeman take back the existence
of man to the confines of the tertiary period.
The discoveries in Italy take us still further. On different
occasions, and since 1863, some Italian savants thought that they had
discovered in undoubted pliocene deposits traces of human industry,
and even human bones. These results were, however, for different
reasons successively doubted and rejected by the most competent
judges.
But M. Capellini has just discovered, in 1876, clearer proofs of
man’s existence in pliocene times in the clay deposits of Monte
Aperto, near Sienne, and in two other places. The eminent professor
of Bologna has found in these localities, the age of which is not
contested, bones of the balœnotus bearing numerous deep incisions,
which it seems to me could only have been produced by the action of
a cutting instrument. In some cases the bone has been broken off
upon one of the faces of incision, whilst the other is smooth and
sharply defined. Judging from woodcuts and casts, it is impossible
to avoid admitting that the cuts have been made upon fresh bones.
These incisions differ entirely from those found upon the bones of
halitherium found in the miocene falunian strata of Pouancé. I have
always thought it impossible to attribute the latter to man, as
decidedly as I think those which we are now discussing ought to be
attributed to his agency. The existence of pliocene man in Tuscany
is, then, in my opinion, an acquired scientific fact. Nevertheless,
I should admit that this conclusion is not yet unanimously accepted,
and that it is disputed by M. Magitot, among others, who relies upon
his own experience.
VII. The researches of M. l’Abbé Bourgeois take us still further
back. This practised and persevering observer has discovered in
the department of Loir-et-Cher, in the Commune of Thénay, flints,
the shape of which he thinks can only be attributed to man. Now
geologists are unanimous in considering these deposits as miocene,
belonging to the mean tertiary age.
But the flints of Thénay, generally of small size, are almost all
very roughly shaped, and many palæontologists and archæologists have
considered the fractures to be due to nothing more than accidental
blows. In 1872, at the Congress of Brussels, the question was
submitted to a commission of the most competent men of Germany,
England, France, Belgium, and Italy, and the judges disagreed.
Some accepted and some rejected all the flints exhibited by M.
l’Abbé Bourgeois. Some considered that a small number only could be
attributed to human industry. Others, again, thought it right to
reserve their judgment and to wait for fresh facts.
I joined the ranks of the latter. But since then fresh specimens
discovered by M. l’Abbé Bourgeois have removed my last doubts.
A small knife or scraper, among others, which shows a fine
regular finish, can, in my opinion, only have been shaped by man.
Nevertheless, I do not blame those of my colleagues who deny or
still doubt. In such a matter there is no very great urgency, and
doubtless the existence of miocene man will be proved, as that of
glacial and pliocene man has been—by facts.
VIII. Thus, man was most certainly in existence during the quaternary
epoch and during the transition age to which the gravels of
Saint-Prest and the deposits of the Victoria cave belong. He has,
in all probability, seen miocene times, and consequently the entire
pliocene epoch. Are there any reasons for believing that his traces
will be found further back still? Is the date of his appearance
necessarily connected with any epoch? For an answer to these
questions I only see a single order of facts to which we can apply.
We know that, as far as his body is concerned, man is a mammal, and
nothing more. The conditions of existence which are sufficient for
these animals ought to have been sufficient for him also; where they
lived, he could live. He may then have been contemporaneous with the
earliest mammalia, and go back as far as the secondary period.
Palæontologists of high merit shrink from this proposition. They do
not admit even the possibility of the existence of man in miocene
times. All the mammalian fauna of this period have, they say,
disappeared; how should man alone have resisted against causes which
were sufficiently powerful to cause a complete renewal of all the
beings with which he was most nearly connected?
I recognise the force of the objection; but I also take into account
human intelligence, which they seem to forget. It is evidently owing
to this intelligence that the man of Saint-Prest, of the Victoria
cave, and of Monte Aperto has been able to survive two great
geological epochs. He protected himself against cold by fire, and
so survived till the return of a more genial temperature. Is it not
possible, therefore, to imagine that man of an earlier period should
have found in his industry the necessary resources for struggling
against the conditions which the transition from the later secondary
times to the earlier tertiary must have imposed upon him.
In fact, the most careful judges acknowledge that man has seen
the accomplishments of one of the great changes on the surface of
the globe. He has lived in one of the geological epochs to which
he was but lately thought to be a complete stranger; he has been
contemporary with species of mammalia which have not even seen the
commencement of the present epoch. There is then nothing impossible
in the idea that he should have survived other species of the same
class, or have witnessed other geological revolutions, or have
appeared upon the globe with the first representatives of the type to
which he belongs by his organisation.
But this is a question to be proved by facts. Before we can even
suppose it to be so, we must wait for information from observation.
BOOK IV.
ORIGINAL LOCALISATION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER XIV.
AGASSIZ’S THEORY.—CENTRES OF CREATION.
I. With the exception of Australasia, with which we are but very
imperfectly acquainted, and of some islands and deserts which we
need not take into account, all the regions visited by man since
the commencement of the era of modern discoveries have proved to be
more or less inhabited. In wandering over the globe of which he took
possession, the European has met with man everywhere, and quaternary
palæontology reveals him to us upon the most distant shores of the
two continents.
Are all these different populations indigenous? Is man a native
of the countries where he is represented by history, and where
travellers have met with him? or has he rather invaded by degrees
the surface of the globe, starting from a certain number of
points, or from a single one? In other words, has man, who is now
_cosmopolitan_, originally been more or less _localised_?
These questions have been answered alternately in the different
senses which they admit of. Unfortunately these solutions have too
often been influenced by considerations entirely foreign to science.
It has been thought necessary to adopt either the one or the other
in the name of dogma or philosophy, and this question has been
confounded with that of monogenism and polygenism, without seeing
that upon this particular point the two doctrines must lead anyone
who remains faithful to the data of science to the same result.
Science has already been shown to be our only possible guide; let us
examine her teaching on this subject.
II. The doctrine which admits the multiplicity of the geographical
origins of man, has been more frequently asserted, than sustained by
more or less serious arguments. Agassiz is the only naturalist who
has developed and defined it, by supporting it with general data.
We must, therefore, first examine these data. A very short account
will explain the reasons why I must, with regret, oppose one of the
men whose learning and character I have always held in the highest
estimation.
There are singular points of resemblance, and no less striking
contrasts between Agassiz and the most extravagant disciples of
Darwin. The illustrious author of the _Essay on Classification_ is
as exclusive a morphologist as the latter; neither in his opinion
nor in theirs, does the idea of _filiation_ form any connection with
that of _species_; he declares, as they do, that the questions of
crossing, of constant or limited fertility, have no real interest.
We are justified in attributing these opinions, so strange in such
an eminent zoologist as Agassiz, to the nature of his early works.
It is well known that he commenced his career with his celebrated
researches upon fossil fishes. We have already remarked upon the
influence which is almost inevitably exercised by fossils, where form
alone has to be considered, where nothing calls attention to the
genealogical connection of beings, and where we meet with neither
parents nor offspring.
But while Darwinists admit the perpetual _instability_ of specific
forms and their _transmutation_, the illustrious professor of
Cambridge believes in their _absolute immutability_. Upon this
fundamental point he is in exact opposition to Darwin. In 1840,
whilst proclaiming the unity of the human species, he admits
that the diversity which it presents is the result of _original
physical differences_. This is really nothing more than a mitigated
polygenism; and, like every polygenistic doctrine, compels its author
to place man in contradiction to general laws. In 1845, Agassiz
himself accepted this consequence in a memoir upon the geographical
distribution of animals and man. He attributed the diversities of
both to the same causes. “But,” he adds, “whilst in every zoological
province animals are of _different species_, man, in spite of the
diversity of his _races_, always forms one and the same species.” The
following year he declared his belief in “an indefinite number of
primordial races of men created separately.”
Agassiz has collected and developed all his theories in a memoir
inserted at the beginning of the great polygenistic work entitled
_Types of Mankind_. It is clear that Nott and Gliddon, the authors
of this work, were perfectly aware of the real meaning of a doctrine
which proclaims the specific unity of man, while at the same time
admitting that the human races have been created separately with all
their distinctive characters. We, also, must not be deceived, but
recognise Agassiz as a true polygenist.
I shall, therefore, be obliged to make all those objections to the
theory of the eminent naturalist which have already been stated.
Moreover, the singular association which he has endeavoured
to establish between the _unity of species_ and the _original
characterisation of races_, has led him into contradictions and
consequences which are peculiar to him, and which it would scarcely
be possible to pass by in silence.
Agassiz, like the greater number of polygenists, gives no intimation
of what he means by the word _race_. Yet he makes use of it
incessantly and declares, for example, that he is ready to show that
“the differences existing between human races are of the same nature
as those which separate families, genera, and species of apes or
other animals....” “The chimpanzee and the gorilla,” he adds, “do
not differ from each other more than Mandingoes from the Negroes of
Guinea; there is less difference between either of them and the
orang, than there is between the Malay or the White and the Negro.”
Must not the logical consequence of such positive language be, that
man forms a zoological family comprising several genera and many
species, precisely similar to the family of anthropoid apes? But
no; Agassiz devotes a new paragraph to declaring that this opinion,
which he has expressed so clearly, agrees entirely with the theory of
unity, and in no way brings human fraternity into question. In one
of his first memoirs upon questions of this nature, he declared that
_man is an exceptional being_, and we shall see how far he pushes
this unavoidable consequence of his theories.
In a letter addressed to the same authors, and printed in the
_Indigenous Races of the Earth_, Agassiz returns to the same subject.
He here insists upon considerations which, in his first work, he had
merely alluded to, and which we are truly astonished to receive from
his pen. In order to show that the same local causes have acted upon
man and animals, he draws attention to the resemblance of colour,
which, according to him, exists between the complexion of the Malay
and the colour of the hair of the Orang; from the same point of view
he compares the Negrittoes and Telingas with the gibbons.
If it were possible to consider seriously this comparison between
the skin of a human group, and the colour of the hair of an animal,
we should have no lack of arguments to bring against the author. I
shall only remind my readers that black gibbons are found in Sumatra,
which is one of those islands where men are considered by Agassiz to
resemble the orang in colour.
Carried away by the heat of controversy with those naturalists who
admit the unity of the geographical origin of man, Agassiz goes much
further than this. He considers the various languages as being of
primitive origin as well as all other characters. Men, he asserts,
were created by nations, each of which appeared upon the globe with
its own language. He draws a comparison between these languages and
the voices of animals; he laughs at philologists for their belief in
the discovery of any connection between one language and another.
In his opinion, there is just as much relation between one human
language and another, as between the growling of different species
of bears, the mewing of the cats of the two continents, the quacking
of ducks, or the song of thrushes, who all pour forth their gay and
harmonious notes, each in its dialect, which is neither inherited nor
derived from another.
Philologists will most certainly reject the law as laid down by
Agassiz. But I must also protest against the comparison admitted by
this illustrious naturalist. If I attribute a _language_ to animals,
I do not forget how rudimentary it is. I recollect that no animal has
ever learnt the language of another. I know too well the distance
there is between _animal interjections_ and _articulate speech_, and
I am as well aware as anyone that to use such an instrument, so as
to produce from it _true languages_, can only be accomplished by the
superior intelligence of man.
Agassiz, when he had arrived at this point, must have felt that he
had lost himself, and that, in trying to harmonise the idea of a
single human species with that of several races of distinct origin,
he was entering an endless labyrinth. His last work betrays the
signs of this embarrassment only too clearly. It is probably in the
hope of escaping from it that the author has finally even denied the
existence of species. After having again rejected the criterion drawn
from crossing and degrees of fertility, he adds: “With it disappears
in its turn the pretended reality of species as opposed to the mode
of existence of genera, families, orders, classes and branches.
Reality of existence is, in fact, possessed by individuals alone.”
Thus, from adhering solely to morphology, from a disregard of the
physical side of the question, from having allowed themselves to be
guided by a logic which is only founded upon incomplete data, Agassiz
and Darwin have arrived at a similar result. Both have disregarded
this great fact, intelligible to common sense, demonstrated by
science, and which governs everything in zoology, as it does in
botany, the division, namely, of organised beings into elementary and
fundamental groups which propagate in space and time. But Darwin,
starting from the _phenomena_ of _variations_ which are presented by
these beings, considers _species_ as only _races_. Agassiz, entirely
preoccupied with the _phenomena_ of _fixity_, finally considers
_individuals_ only as existing in living nature. Both forget that
the great Buffon passed successively to both these extremes only to
return again to the doctrine which includes and explains all facts,
and which may be summed up in these words: distinction of _race_ and
_species_.
III. In spite of these dogmatic assertions, when it comes to
application of any kind whatever, Agassiz, like Lamarck in former
times, and Darwin in our own day, is obliged to use the word
_species_ in the sense in which it is employed by so many others. In
the memoir, from which I have already quoted, animal and vegetable
_species_ are constantly being discussed. Their geographical
distribution serves as a foundation to the theory of human origins.
The author admits that they could not have arisen upon one and the
same point of the globe; that the centres of creation were numerous,
and that the species diverging from these centres give to the actual
flora and fauna all their characteristic features.
Up to this point Agassiz has only accepted the doctrine of centres
of creation, a doctrine entirely French in origin, having been
formulated by Desmoulins and developed by M. Edwards.
What is due to Agassiz is the reproduction, in the name of science,
of a theory at first proposed by La Peyrère in the name of theology:
giving to man the whole world as his original home: the admission
that the human races originated in the same places as the groups of
animal and vegetable species, and the connection of one of these
races with each centre of creation; the multiplication of the
number of human creations to such a degree as to profess that “man
was created by nations,” endowed from the first with all their
distinctive characters, and each speaking its own special language.
There is, at first sight, no absurdity in the idea itself, nothing
at all contradictory to anything which we have as yet met with. We
have seen above that physiology leads to the conclusion that “human
groups are _to all appearance_ descended from one primitive pair.” It
goes no further than that. Anyone who confines himself to inferences
drawn from this order of facts might, therefore, accept the theory of
Agassiz as, it is true, a very gratuitous hypothesis, but convenient
in order to account for the distribution and actual diversity of
human types.
This is no longer the case when we turn to another branch of the
natural sciences, _zoological_ and _botanical geography_. We then
can easily prove that the theories of Agassiz tend to make an
exception of man, to place him at variance with the general laws of
the geographical distribution of all other organised beings, and,
consequently, that they are false.
IV. I fully agree with the views of Agassiz, as far as _centres of
creation_, or rather _centres of appearance_ are concerned.
All who confine themselves to the data of observation and experiment
will see at once that all animal and vegetable species could not
have originated upon any one spot of the globe. The former shows us,
in various regions, different types and species, living naturally
in countries which present almost precisely the same conditions of
existence. The latter teaches us that we can transport the greater
number of species from one region to another, and that they will
prosper there, if the conditions of existence are the same; that, on
the contrary, arctic and tropical species cannot, even temporarily,
be submitted to the action of the same conditions; that neither can
withstand the action of a temperate climate. It is impossible with
all these facts to avoid the conclusion that plants and animals had
several points of appearance.
But if I accept this doctrine as the only one reconcilable with
facts, it is upon the condition of adopting it entirely, and as
developed by studies upon the geographical distribution of all living
beings. Now, works of this kind are numerous at the present time.
For all phanerogamous plants we have the work of M. Ad. de Candolle,
which has been a standard work ever since its appearance.
Animals have not yet had their de Candolle. The great work of M.
Alphonse Edwards will partly fill up this gap for the more southern
regions of the globe. In the meantime, important investigations have
been made in some of the principal classes. Buffon, by his admirable
researches upon the geography of mammals, opened the way, in which
he has been followed by the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires, Fr. Cuvier,
and Andrew Murray; Dumeril and Bibron have studied reptiles from the
same point of view; Fabricius, Latreille, Macley, Spence, Kirby,
and Lacordaire have done the same for insects; M. Milne Edwards has
worked out the distribution of the crustacea; I have endeavoured to
do as much for the annelids. Finally, a great number of works bearing
upon the lower groups have long been known to science, and Agassiz
himself has largely contributed to increase our knowledge in this
direction.
A certain number of general facts stand out from this mass of
research, which we call _laws_. If the theory of Agassiz is true, it
ought to agree with these laws. Now the disagreement is apparent from
the outset.
Let us prove, in the first place, that this theory includes two very
distinct ideas: that of the original cosmopolitanism of the human
species; and, secondly, that of a geographical connection between the
human race and the animal or vegetable groups observed in a common
centre. Let us examine the truth and error contained in this last
statement.
Agassiz holds that the influence of the centre of appearance is
general and absolute. It extends to all the products of the soil as
well as to those of fresh and salt waters. A country is just as much
characterised by its plants and animals as by its human beings. In
his opinion, an essentially local force seems to have produced all
beings, or at least to have imprinted upon them a common mark.
This generalisation was inevitable. Any one who wishes to attach a
human race to each centre of appearance is compelled to localise in
each one of them the original cause of all the animal and vegetable
forms which are indigenous in it. For all living beings geographical
coincidence must be absolute.
Now there is generally no such coincidence. From the waters of a
river to the banks which enclose it, the contrast may be striking.
This is exactly what was shown by the discoveries of Agassiz himself
in the ichthyology of the Amazon. To anyone who accepts the results
published by the illustrious traveller, it is evident that this
fauna may be divided into groups much more narrowly confined than
those of terrestrial fauna. The same fact may be observed upon the
shores of two seas separated by even a very narrow strip of land. The
terrestrial fauna and flora are the same throughout the whole extent
of the isthmus of Suez, whilst M. Edwards has not found a single
species of crustacea common to both the Mediterranean and the Red
Sea, and the study of annelids has led me to the same result.
Moreover, the same region may be the centre of appearance for one
class of animals, but by no means for another. Australia, for
example, is one of the most characteristic centres for mammals, and
stands alone from this point of view among the surrounding countries.
With respect to insects Australia agrees, on the contrary, with
New Zealand, New Caledonia and the neighbouring islands. I have
borrowed this last fact from Lacordaire. It has the more value since
this entomologist has multiplied the centres of appearance to a
much greater extent than Agassiz, and has, therefore, made their
characterisation easier.
Thus the coincidence admitted by Agassiz, far from extending to all
the organised beings of a region, does not even exist in certain
cases between the different classes of animals alone.
V. Agassiz divides the entire surface of the globe into nine great
regions or _kingdoms_. I cannot here give in detail the numerous
criticisms to which the fixed limits and characterisation of these
centres are open. I shall confine myself to a few short remarks upon
each.
1. _Polynesian Kingdom._ We shall see presently that it is impossible
to regard Polynesia as a centre of human appearance. This region
has been entirely peopled by migration from the Indian Archipelago,
the history of which has been partly preserved. The first kingdom
of Agassiz must be struck out as far as we are concerned; it is an
exclusively animal and vegetable centre. Agassiz, moreover, though he
supports it in the text and upon the map, does not assign it a place
in the illustrated table, in which he sums up his ideas.
2. _Australian Kingdom._ Agassiz includes New Guinea in this kingdom.
He thus destroys the homogeneity of the mammalogical fauna. At the
same time he unites the several human races of Australia with the
Negrittoes and Papuans. This alone destroys all unity of type.
3. _Malay or Indian Kingdom._ This kingdom comprises India, the Malay
Archipelago, and the Andaman Islands. Now, anterior to the Aryan
conquest, Yellows and Blacks lived in India. The latter are still
found in a pure state in the peninsula of Malacca, and in the Andaman
Islands; Malaysia presents a perfect mixture of most different races,
from the White to the Negro. The Malays, properly so-called, are much
rather a population levelled by the action of Islamism, than a race
in the true sense of the word; they present in a high degree the
characters of intercrossing. All these facts protest against the idea
of making these regions a centre of human appearance.
4. _Hottentot Fauna._ Agassiz abandons the expression kingdom in
speaking of the south of Africa, without giving any reason for
the change. Whatever the cause may be, this is one of the least
unfavourable regions for the application of his theory. From a
geological or botanical point of view, South Africa constitutes
a veritable centre. The Bosjesman and the Hottentot might be
considered as the characteristic human type. But the Negroes
of Delagoa and the Kaffirs still protest against this partial
coincidence.
5. _African Kingdom._ This region is considered by Agassiz to
comprise the rest of Africa, with the exception of the shores of
the Mediterranean. He adds Madagascar and the southern half of the
Arabian peninsula. Now, from a mammalogical point of view, Madagascar
forms a little centre of itself, whilst the human population is
very mixed. The Hovas are very slightly modified Malays, and the
languages of the Sacalaves themselves indicate relations with the
Malayo-Polynesians. As to the continental portion of the kingdom, it
is enough to remark that it includes Negroes, Abyssinians, Arabs,
etc. History, as well as the present state of things, protests
against the connection made in this case by the author.
6. _European Kingdom._ This division Agassiz considers as
comprising the entire circumference of the Mediterranean, Persia
and Beloochistan. Consequently it embraces very different fauna and
flora; it mixes up Aryan, Semitic and Chamitic populations, and takes
no account of history. Agassiz himself recognises this fact, and
declares that he has only taken into consideration prehistoric times.
Since the Quaternary epoch, however, France alone has supported
tribes which were tall and dolichocephalic, and others which were
short and brachycephalic. Finally, although Agassiz includes the
Persians with the Europeans, he leaves out the Hindoos who are
ethnologically connected with them, and places them in an entirely
different kingdom.
7. _Mongolian or Asiatic Kingdom._ This kingdom encloses all the
central portion of Asia, beginning at the Bolor and the Himalayas,
and extending as far as Japan. The Mongol is taken as the human type
of this vast extent of country. But Agassiz forgets the Aryans of
the Bolor, the white Jutchis, the Japanese of the same type, the
Aïnos, etc. He unites, therefore, people which belong to at least two
extreme types of mankind.
8. _American Kingdom._ Agassiz makes but one kingdom of the whole
of America, whilst all zoologists and botanists are agreed in
dividing it into at least two great and distinctly characterised
centres. He adopts the opinion of Morton, who only admits one human
race in America, with the exception of the Esquimaux. Now, since
the publication of d’Orbigny’s _Homme Américain_, it is no longer
possible to believe in this uniformity. The numerous investigations
which have been undertaken upon this question have, moreover, proved
still more strongly the multiplicity of races admitted by this
traveller. Again, if the human races of America are compared with
those of the old world, we shall find, with a few exceptions, a very
close connection with Asia, especially in certain populations of
Central America: if we compare the fauna and flora, the connection
is, on the contrary, closer in North America. These facts are in
direct opposition with the theory of Agassiz.
9. _Arctic Kingdom._ This latter kingdom deserves a little more
attention than the others. It comprises all the northern regions of
the two continents. The southern limit is somewhat arbitrarily fixed
by Agassiz at the zone of forests. In no region of the world does
man meet with such identical conditions of existence, for all are
governed by cold. It would seem, therefore, to be better able than
any other to justify the author’s theory, and yet facts agree but
very slightly with it.
Agassiz characterises this kingdom by the existence of one plant and
six species of animals, five mammals and one bird. The plant is the
Iceland lichen (cenomyce rangiferina). Now, this lichen is so little
characteristic of polar regions that it is found in many parts of
France, and even in the neighbourhood of Paris at Fontainebleau. M.
Decaisne believes that our hares and rabbits live upon it in winter,
as the reindeer do in Lapland. Further, the observations recently
made in Greenland by the German Polar Expedition, show that in this
country, which, of all countries in the Arctic Kingdom, should most
readily adapt itself to the conceptions of Agassiz, and which is
inhabited by pure-blooded Esquimaux, possesses scarcely one vegetable
species which can be said to be peculiar to it, and that a great
number of them are found in the Alps, and upon the summits of the
Vosges. It is a result of the return of heat after the glacial epoch,
the species which resisted it having emigrated in altitude as well as
in latitude.
In animal species, the white bear and the walrus are really polar.
The same may be said of the Greenland seal considered as a species.
But as a type we meet with it everywhere; as a genus it inhabits all
the seas of Europe. The reindeer inhabited France in the Quaternary
epoch; it was living in Germany in Cæsar’s time; it descended yearly
to the Caspian Sea during the lifetime of Pallas. The true whale
used to visit our coast before it was driven away by man. Finally,
at this day, the eider duck builds yearly in Denmark, ten to fifteen
degrees south of the Polar circle. Thus, in the six species mentioned
by Agassiz as peculiar to his Arctic Kingdom, three at least belong
equally to his European Kingdom.
Agassiz was certainly more capable than anyone else of nicely
characterising the region in question, if it had been possible to
do so. He failed, because there is in reality no such thing as
a true Arctic fauna. The cause of this lies in the extension of
more southern fauna, which become impoverished as they advanced
northwards, but change their character very slightly. In reality,
this kingdom is broken up into independent provinces, or rather, is
connected with regions situated more to the south, and consequently
better divided. The Polar region, says Lacordaire, in speaking of
insects, is characterised less by the speciality of its products than
by their scarcity. All these facts, again, are the consequence of the
peopling of the Arctic regions after the glacial epoch.
It would seem that man at least might present at the pole the
homogeneity supposed by the theory. It is not so, however, whatever
may be the assertions of Agassiz upon this subject. “A peculiar
race of man,” he says, “live there, known in America by the name of
Esquimaux, elsewhere by that of Lapps, Samoyedes or Tchouktchis....
The uniformity of their characters throughout the whole extent of
the Arctic seas unites them in a striking manner with the fauna with
which they are so closely connected.”
There are, in these words of Agassiz, grave ethnological and
anthropological errors. The uniformity of characters of which
he speaks does not exist at all. It will suffice to remind my
readers that the Lapps are one of the most brachycephalic, and the
Esquimaux one of the most dolichocephalic races with which we are
acquainted. In fact, these two races are so entirely distinct that no
anthropologist has ever dreamt of establishing a connection between
them.
As to the Samoyedes and Tchouktchis, they have not always inhabited
the icy lands where we now meet with them. The former have still a
recollection of having come from the south, and M. de Tchiatchef has
discovered the original stock upon the confines of China. The latter
settled at Behring’s Straits but a short time ago to free themselves
from Russian conquest, against which they had bravely struggled.
They subjugated and absorbed the Yukagires, their predecessors. They
differ, moreover, equally from Esquimaux and Lapps.
Thus, in the Arctic Kingdom, where all the most favourable conditions
for the display of any truth which the ideas of Agassiz may possess
are brought together, everything protests against these ideas.
In spite of his vast knowledge, he could not characterise it
zoologically in a precise manner; the special fauna which he admits
does not exist; the identity of populations which he proclaimed
disappears under the slightest examination.
Finally, the theory which attaches a human race to every centre of
appearance as a local product of that centre, ought to be rejected by
anyone who sets the least value upon the results of observation.
CHAPTER XV.
PROGRESSIVE LOCALISATION OF ORGANISED BEINGS.—CENTRES OF
APPEARANCE.—ORIGINAL LOCALISATION OF MAN.
I. An eminent man may draw incorrect conclusions from the existence
of centres of appearance without their existence being any the less
real. Unconnected with animal or vegetable centres, the human races
might have their own; man might have come into existence wherever we
meet with him. But, before we accept this original cosmopolitanism,
we must assure ourselves that it subjects man to general laws. Now we
shall see that this hypothesis is, on the contrary, at variance with
all general facts presented by plants as well as animals.
II. Let us first prove that no animal or vegetable species inhabits,
as man does, almost the entire globe.
The assertion of Ad. de Candolle could not be more precise as far
as plants are concerned. “No phanerogamous plant,” he says, “is
distributed over the entire surface of the earth. There are only
eighteen whose area extends to half the globe. No tree or shrub
figures among these plants, which are so widely distributed.” This
latter remark belongs to an order of considerations which we shall
meet with again.
Being unable to enter into an examination of all the facts which
are offered by the various classes of the Animal Kingdom from this
point of view, I shall confine myself to a few details upon birds and
mammals.
We should expect to find the former presenting very extensive areas
of habitation by reason of their mode of locomotion. It is, in fact,
among them that we find some of the species which most deserve the
epithet of cosmopolitan. They do not, however, equal man in this
respect.
The stock-dove, the parent stock of our domestic pigeon, extends
from the south of Norway to Madeira and Abyssinia, from the Shetland
Islands to Borneo and Japan; but it does not reach as far as either
the equator or the polar circle; and it is wanting both in America
and Polynesia.
The fulvous vulture is found in all the temperate regions of the old
world, crosses the equator in Africa and descends as far as the Cape.
But we do not meet with it either in our polar regions, in America or
in Polynesia.
The peregrine falcon has perhaps of all animals the widest area. It
is found in America, as also in all the warm or temperate regions of
the old world. It is supposed to exist in Australia, but we do not
meet with it either in Polynesia or in the polar regions.
Among mammals, whales, on account of their immense powers of
locomotion and the continuity of seas, would seem to be adapted to
true cosmopolitanism. This, however, is not the case. They are almost
all confined within relatively very limited areas, and rarely pass
beyond their customary boundaries. Commodore Maury regarded the
equatorial sea as forming an invincible obstacle to their passage
from one hemisphere to the other. Two exceptions have, however,
been observed to this rule. A rorqual (_Megaptera longimana_) and
a _Sibaldius laticeps_ are said to have crossed this barrier, and
to have passed from our seas to those of the Cape and of Java.
These exceptions might easily be explained by various accidental
circumstances. Supposing however we were to accept them as testifying
an exceptional relative cosmopolitanism, we still have the fact that
they have never been met with in the Pacific Ocean.
With the exception of whales, we shall find nothing at all resembling
cosmopolitanism. Setting aside the whole of Oceania, we only find,
as common to both the Old and the New World, two or three ruminants,
perhaps a bear, a fox and a wolf. All these species are, moreover,
more or less polar, and are wanting in the central regions of the
two worlds. Finally, there is not one species of cheiroptera or
quadrumana which is indigenous both in America and the Old World.
Beyond those species which man has disseminated by making them follow
his migrations, animals and plants evidently occupy their natural
area, wherein lies the centre from which they have spread. We see
that even after this dispersion none of them have acquired an area of
habitation which can be compared to that of man.
The admission that the human species appeared in every place in which
it is found, attributing to it an original cosmopolitanism, would
make it a solitary exception in contradiction to the facts presented
by all other species. An hypothesis which leads to such a conclusion
should be rejected as irreconcilable with the results of observation.
If man is now to be found everywhere, it is owing to his intelligence
and industry.
III. This conclusion is forced even upon polygenists themselves;
unless, indeed, they would reject, as inapplicable to man, the laws
of zoological and botanical geography.
In fact, to whatever extent they may have multiplied their human
species, they have been obliged, upon even the slightest study of
natural history, to unite them into a single genus. Now, all that has
just been said of _species_ applies equally to _genera_. The area
of habitation is doubtless increased, and, for example, some genera
of cetaceans, as dolphins and rorquals, are found in all seas; and
amongst terrestrial mammals, some genera of ruminants and carnivora
inhabit, in a greater or less degree, both the Old and the New World.
But they are all absent in the greater part of Oceania.
Moreover, the higher the types, the fewer is the number of these
genera of widely extended areas. Cheiroptera, which are not provided
with a nasal membrane, have some genera common to both the Old and
the New World. This is no longer the case in cheiroptera, in which
the nose is provided with a membrane. There is not a single genus
among them, any more than among quadrumana, which inhabits both
America and the Old World.
Consequently, polygenists must admit that the species of which their
_human genus_ is composed could not have come into existence in every
place where man is now found, unless they wish to make a striking
exception of this _human genus_.
IV. Should we wish to regard the human races as forming a _family_
composed of several _genera_, or even as an _order_ comprising
several _families_, the same difficulties would present themselves.
Setting aside the marsupials and edentata, to which we shall return,
it is true that the great normal orders of terrestrial mammals,
the ruminants, rodents, insectivora, and carnivora are almost
as cosmopolitan as man. But this is no longer the case with the
cheiroptera, not one of which passes the polar circle. As to the
quadrumana, it is well-known that they are wanting in Europe, with
the exception of the Rock of Gibraltar, in North America and in the
greater part of Asia and Oceania. Thus it appears that, even in the
extreme hypothesis which I have here indicated, it would not be in
the animal types which present the greatest resemblance to man, but
among the carnivora or ruminants that we should be forced to seek for
geographical analogies in favour of the pretended cosmopolitanism of
the _human order_.
V. This limitation of the areas of habitation of animals, which
is evidently related to their degree of elevation in the scale of
beings, is a general fact which we also meet with in plants. On this
point Ad. de Candolle speaks as follows:—“The mean area of species
is smaller according as the class to which they belong has a more
complete, a more highly developed, or, in other words, a more perfect
organisation.”
The _progressive localisation_ of organised beings, increasing
in degree as they become more perfect, is, then, a general law.
Physiology will readily account for this fact.
The perfection of organisms is the result of division of labour,
which demands the multiplication of functional apparatus. As the
anatomical instruments become more numerous and special, the
functions do the same. From this cause alone the conditions of
harmony between the living being and the conditions of life which
surround it become more and more definite. Consequently, the animal
or the plant only finds its really favourable conditions in a
constantly diminishing area. Beyond these limits the conditions of
life change, the struggle for existence becomes more hazardous, and
the spread of the species, genus, family, or even order is arrested.
Man alone, armed against the conditions of life by his _intelligence_
and _industry_, is capable of overcoming conditions of existence
which would be an impassable barrier _to his material organisation_.
The law of progressive localisation is in direct opposition to the
doctrine of the original cosmopolitanism of the human species.
In putting it aside, polygenists, properly so called, might draw
attention to the diffusion of the genera of dolphins and rorquals;
polygenistic monogenists of the school of Agassiz might argue from
the facts mentioned above in connection with the genera of megaptera
and sibaldius; they might both say: The general law of localisation
offers two exceptions; why should not man form a third?
The analogy, it is clear, is fundamentally wrong. Dolphins, rorquals
and sibaldius belong to the lowest order of mammals; man, even if his
body alone is considered, belongs incontestably to the highest order.
Unless we make him a solitary exception, it is to the laws of the
superior groups that he should be subject, and not to those of the
inferior.
Thus, we are so far justified in affirming that man could not have
been originally cosmopolitan. But we can go further.
VI. Without having come into existence in every place where we now
meet with him, man may have had several centres of appearance. Let us
examine this latter question. The laws of progressive localisation
and the characterisation of centres enable us both to put the
question and to solve it.
Let us re-examine from this point of view the animal groups,
setting aside all inferior groups and confining our attention to
anthropoid apes. In this family, which most closely resembles man
in its organisation, there are degrees also. The law of progressive
localisation applies to this limited group equally with the entire
kingdom.
We meet with the entire family in Asia, in the peninsula of Malacca,
in Assam to 26° N. Lat., in Sumatra, Java, Borneo and in the
Philippine Islands; in Eastern Africa from 10° S. to 15° N. Lat.
The gibbon genus, however, which is the lowest, is the only one
which occupies the whole of Asia. The orang is confined to Borneo
and Sumatra. In Africa the chimpanzee extends almost from the Zaïre
to Senegal; the gorilla has only been found on the Gaboon, and
perhaps in Ashantee. Were he to occupy all the space which is still
left blank upon that part of our maps by travellers, his area of
habitation would even then be very limited. Thus, the higher the
anthropoid type, the more limited the area of habitation.
If we consider the material organism alone, the human type is
incontestably superior to that of the orang or gorilla. He must
then have been originally localised just as much as these animal
types. It will perhaps be objected that the great apes are gradually
disappearing, and that the few survivors do no more than show that
they once existed in greater numbers. This would be an entirely
gratuitous hypothesis having no foundation in facts, and we shall
at least be permitted to reply, that the gorilla and the orang
might very well have continued to exist in those places where the
chimpanzee and gibbon are still living. Now, what are the areas
occupied by the latter compared with the human area?
VII. I have, as yet, neglected exceptional types, such as the
marsupials, the edentata, the makis, etc.; I did not wish to argue
from aberrant forms; I confined myself to demonstrating the _laws_
in action in species of a so-called normal organisation. Aberrant
types have, however, a very high value, and furnish us with further
instruction.
These types almost always characterise either the great centres of
appearance, or the secondary centres or geographical regions. Not
to mention mammals, I must remind my readers that Australia has its
marsupials; South Australia, the ornithorynchus; polar America, the
musk-ox; central America, the edentata; Africa, the giraffe; Asia,
the yak; the Cape, the gnu; Madagascar, the makis and aye-aye; the
Gaboon, the gorilla, etc.
Man, also, is evidently an exceptional or aberrant type among
mammals. He, alone, is constructed for a vertical position; he,
alone, has true hands and feet; he, alone, exhibits the highest
degree of cerebral development, and possesses that superiority of
intelligence which makes him master of all around him.
To allow that the human type, though the most perfect of all types,
the exceptional genus in the midst of all others, has come into
existence in several centres of appearance without characterising
any, would be to make him a solitary exception.
However strong may be our polygenistic tendencies, and however many
species we may admit, we cannot help acknowledging that the original
localisation of the human genus in a single centre of appearance
and the characterisation of this centre by him are the logical
consequence of all the facts attested by zoological geography.
With still greater reason the monogenists will consider the
privileged species which predominates over all others as one of those
special types which characterise the centre, or the region in which
they have appeared, as the ornithorynchus, the aye-aye, and the gnu
characterise South Australia, Madagascar and the Cape.
Finally, the laws of zoological geography lead us to consider the
human species as unmistakably characteristic of a single centre of
appearance. Moreover, they justify us in concluding that this centre
cannot have been of greater extent than that of the gorilla and the
orang.
VIII. Is it possible to go still farther and to endeavour to
determine the geographical position of the human centre of
appearance? I cannot here enter into the details of this problem. I
shall confine myself to determining its meaning, and to indicating
the probable solutions of it from the data of science of the present
time.
I must observe, in the first place, that in considering an animal or
vegetable species, even those whose area is most circumscribed, no
one thinks of trying to discover the precise spot upon which it may
have first appeared. There is always something very vague in such a
determination and it is necessarily approximative. It is still more
difficult when the species in question is of universal distribution.
Within these limits we are justified in at least forming conjectures
which, as such, have a certain amount of probability.
The question presents very different aspects according as we confine
ourselves to the present or take into consideration the geological
antiquity of man. Nevertheless, the facts are of the same order and
seem to indicate two extremes. The truth lies, perhaps, between the
two.
We know that in Asia there is a vast region bounded on the south and
south-west by the Himalayas, on the west by the Bolor mountains,
on the north-west by the Ala-Tau, on the north by the Altai range
and its offshoots, on the east by the Kingkhan, on the south and
south-east by the Felina and Kuen-Loun. Judging from the present
state of things, this great central region might be regarded as
having contained the cradle of the human species.
In fact, the three fundamental types of all the human races are
represented in the populations grouped round this region. The black
races are the furthest removed from it, but have, nevertheless,
marine stations, where we find them either pure or as mixed races,
from the Kioussiou to the Andaman Islands. Upon the continent they
have intermixed with almost every inferior caste and class of the
two peninsulas of the Ganges; they are still found pure in both,
ascend as high as Nepaul, and extend west as far as the Persian Gulf
and Lake Zareh, according to Elphinstone.
The yellow race, either pure or in places mixed with white elements,
seems to be the only one which occupies the space in question; it
peoples all the north, east, south-east, and west. In the south it
is more mixed, but forms, nevertheless, an important element in the
population.
The white race, from its allophylian representatives, seems to have
disputed the central area itself with the yellow race. In early
times, we find the Yu-tchi and the Ou-soun to the north of the
Hoang-ho; and in the present day cases of white populations have
been observed in Little Thibet and in Eastern Thibet. The Miao-Tsé
occupy the mountain region of China; the Siaputh are proof against
all attack in the gorges of the Bolor. Upon the confines of the area
we meet with the Aïnos and the Japanese of high caste, the Tinguianes
of the Phillippine Islands; in the south with the Hindoos. In the
south-west and west the white element, either pure or mixed, reigns
supreme.
No other region of the globe presents a similar union of extreme
human types distributed round a common centre. This fact, alone
is sufficient to suggest to the mind of the naturalist the
conjecture which I have expressed above; but we may appeal to other
considerations.
One of the most important is drawn from philology. The three
fundamental forms of human language are found in the same countries
and under similar relations. In the centre, and south-east of our
area, the monosyllabic languages are represented by those of China,
Cochinchina, Siam and Thibet. As agglutinative languages, we find in
the north-east and north-west the group of Ougro-Japanese, in the
south that of the Dravidian and Malay, and in the west the Turkish
languages. Lastly, Sanscrit with its derivatives, and the Iranian
languages represent in the south and south-west the inflectional
languages.
It is to the linguistic types gathered round the central region
of Asia that all human languages must be referred; whether from
their vocabulary or their grammar, some of these Asiatic languages
bear a close resemblance to languages spoken in regions often very
distant, or separated from the area in question by entirely different
languages. We know that several philologists, M. Maury among others,
establish an intimate connection between the Dravidian languages and
Australian idioms, and that M. Picot has discovered numbers of Aryan
words in our oldest European languages.
Finally, it is from Asia again that our earliest domesticated animals
are derived. Isidore Geoffroy is entirely agreed with Dureau de la
Malle upon this point.
Thus, the present epoch alone considered, everything points to this
great central plateau, or rather to this great enclosure. There, we
are inclined to say, the first human beings appeared and multiplied
till the populations overflowed as from a bowl and spread themselves
in human waves in every direction.
IX. Palæontological studies have, however, very recently led to
results which are capable of modifying these primary conclusions.
MM. Heer and de Saporta have informed us that in the Tertiary
period Siberia and Spitzbergen were covered with plants, indicating
a temperate climate. MM. Murchison, Keyserlink, de Verneuil, and
d’Archiac tell us that, during the same period, the _barren-lands_ of
our day supported large herbivorous animals, such as the reindeer,
the mammoth, and the tichorhine rhinoceros. All these animals made
their appearance at the commencement of the Quaternary period. It
seems to me that they did not come alone.
I have said above that the discoveries of M. l’Abbé Bourgeois
testify, in my opinion, to the existence of a _tertiary man_. But
everything seems to show that as yet his representatives were but
few in number. The Quaternary populations, on the contrary, were, at
least in distribution, quite as numerous as the life of the hunter
permitted. Are we justified in imagining that during the Tertiary
period man lived in polar Asia side by side with those species which
I have just mentioned, and that he supported himself by hunting them
as he afterwards did in France? The fall of temperature compelled
the animals to migrate southwards; man must have followed them to
find a milder climate, and to be within reach of his customary game.
Their simultaneous arrival in our climates and the apparently sudden
multiplication of man would thus be easily explained.
The centre of human appearance might then be carried considerably
to the north of the region I have just been discussing. Perhaps
prehistoric archæology or palæontology will some day confirm or
confute this conjecture.
However this may be, no facts have as yet been discovered which
authorise us to place the cradle of the human race elsewhere than
in Asia. There are none which lead us to seek the origin of man
in hot regions either of existing continents, or of one which has
disappeared. This view, which has been frequently expressed, rests
entirely upon the belief that the climate of the globe was the same
at the time of the appearance of man as it is now. Modern science
has taught us that this is an error. From that time there is nothing
against our first ancestors having found favourable conditions of
existence in northern Asia, which is indicated by so many facts
borrowed from the history of man, and from that of animals and
plants.
BOOK V.
PEOPLING OF THE GLOBE.
CHAPTER XVI.
MIGRATIONS BY LAND.—EXODUS OF THE KALMUCKS FROM THE VOLGA.
I. At the point which we have now reached, the connection of facts
and of their consequences proposes a fresh problem. Physiology has
proved that there exists but _one species_ of man, of which the
human groups are races. Zoological geography has taught us that this
species was originally localised in a relatively very limited space.
It is now met with everywhere, because it has spread by irradiation
in every direction from this centre. The _peopling of the globe by
migrations_, is the necessary consequence of the preceding facts.
Polygenists, and the partisans of the autochthony of nations have
declared that these migrations are _impossible_ in a certain number
of cases, and have brought forward this pretended impossibility as
an objection to the doctrine which I uphold. Here, again, I turn to
facts for my answer.
II. I confess that I never understood how any value could be attached
to this argument. Migrations are almost universal in history, and in
the traditions and legends of the new as well as of the old world.
We find them among the uncivilised nations of our time, and among
tribes which are still lingering in the lowest stage of savage
life. With every increase and extension of knowledge, we learn to
appreciate better the wandering instincts of man. Human palæontology
and prehistoric archæology are daily adding their testimony to that
of the historic sciences.
To judge from this kind of information alone, it seems more than
probable that the entire globe was peopled by means of migrations and
colonisations. The primordial and uninterrupted immobility of any
human race would be a fact at variance with all analogy. It would,
once constituted, doubtless establish, except under exceptional
circumstances, a more or less considerable number, generally the
great majority of its representatives; but in the course of ages it
could not fail to have cast off swarms.
III. The supporters of autochthony lay especial stress upon two
orders of considerations, the one drawn from the social condition of
nations when still in their infancy and unprovided with the means of
action which we now possess, the other from the obstacles which a
hitherto invincible nature would oppose to their movements.
The first objection evidently rests upon an imperfect appreciation of
the aptitudes and tendencies developed in man through his different
modes of life. The very imperfection of the social condition, far
from arresting the diffusion of the human species, must rather have
been favourable to it. Agricultural nations are of necessity settled;
to pastoral nations, less bound to the soil, special conditions are
indispensable. Hunters, on the contrary, by reason of their mode of
life, of the necessities which it imposes, and the instincts which it
develops, cannot but spread in every sense. A vast space is necessary
to their existence; as soon as the numbers increase, even in a slight
degree, they are forced to separate or to destroy each other, as is
shown so clearly in the history of the Red-Skins. Nations of hunters
and shepherds are then alone fitted for great and distant migrations.
Agricultural nations are rather colonists.
Ancient history itself entirely confirms these theoretical
inductions. We know what the invaders of the Roman world were, the
destroyers of the Eastern Empire, the Arab conquerors. The case was
the same in Mexico. The Chichimequi here represent the Goths and
Vandals of the Old World. If Asia has so often overrun Europe, if
North America has so often sent devastating hordes into more southern
regions, it is because in these two countries man was still in a
barbarous or savage state.
IV. Were natural obstacles indeed insurmountable to nations destitute
of our perfected means of locomotion? This question must be
considered from two points of view, as the migrations in question are
by land or sea.
The former demands but little attention. The weakness of man, and the
strength of the barriers which the accidents of land, vegetation, or
fauna might oppose to him, have unquestionably been much exaggerated.
Man has always been able to vanquish ferocious animals, the
rhinoceros having formed part of his food as early as the Quaternary
period. His course has never been arrested by mountains, even when
encumbered by everything which could make the passage most difficult.
Hannibal crossed the Alps with his elephants, and Bonaparte with
artillery. The progress of the Asiatic hordes was no more stopped by
the Palus Meotides than that of Fernand de Soto by the marshes of
Florida. Deserts are daily traversed by caravans; and as to rivers,
there is not a savage who does not know how to cross them upon some
raft or other.
The truth, as is too well proved by the history of travel, is, that
man alone stops man. Where the latter did not exist, there was
nothing to oppose the progress of tribes or nations advancing slowly
and at their own leisure, outstripping or passing each other in turn,
establishing secondary centres, from which, after a time, fresh
migrations would take place. Even in an inhabited country, a superior
invading race would not act otherwise. It was thus that the Aryans
conquered India, that the Paouians advanced, who, starting from a
centre still unknown, arrived at the Gaboon with a line of front of
about 250 miles.
V. I might dwell upon these general considerations, but it will be
better to recall briefly a fact which, though of recent date, is too
generally forgotten, and which shows how an entire population can
effect a great migration although they meet with obstacles of every
kind over a great tract of country.
About the year 1616 a horde of Kalmucks, impelled by motives with
which we are unacquainted, abandoned the confines of China, and
crossed Asia in order to establish themselves in the Khanate of
Kazan, upon either shore of the Volga. They placed themselves under
the dominion of Russia, who readily received the new colonists and
respected their patriarchal government. In return, the Kalmucks
proved themselves faithful subjects, and on several occasions,
furnished the Russian army with numerous and valuable detachments
of cavalry. This good feeling lasted till the time of the Empress
Catherine, when she, having to choose between two aspirants named
Oubacha and Zebeck-Dorchi, nominated the former to the government
of the horde. The infuriated Zebeck determined, in revenge, to lead
his fellow-countrymen back to China. Seconded by the chief Lama, he
even persuaded Oubacha himself to join, and the conspiracy, though it
included the entire nation, was conducted with such secrecy that it
escaped the interested vigilance of Russia.
On Jan. 5th, 1771, the Kalmucks might have been seen assembling
on the left bank of the Volga. Every half hour groups of women,
children, and aged numbering from 15,000 to 20,000, set out in
waggons or upon camels, escorted by a body of cavalry 10,000 strong.
A rear-guard of 80,000 picked men covered the retreat of the
emigrants. A Russian officer, who was detained a prisoner for part of
the journey, and has preserved these details for us, estimated the
whole assemblage at more than 600,000 souls.
The Kalmucks felt the necessity for haste, in order to escape the
attempts which would assuredly be made by Russia to detain them. In
seven days they had accomplished more than 100 leagues, with the
weather dry but cold. Many of the cattle had succumbed, and the want
of milk was beginning to be felt, even for the children. On arriving
at the banks of the Djem, they met with their first serious disaster;
an entire clan, numbering 9000 horsemen, was massacred by Cossacks.
At the first intelligence of this flight, however, Catherine had
despatched an army with instructions to bring back the fugitives. The
latter had to pass, at a distance of eighty leagues from the Djem,
a defile which must be taken at any price. They advanced by forced
marches. Unfortunately snow set in, and they were obliged to stop
for ten days. On arriving at the defile, they found it occupied by
Cossacks, who were however routed, defeated, and massacred by Zebeck.
The defile was passed, but they were forced to redouble their speed,
for the Russian army was upon them. They killed and salted all the
remaining cattle, and left behind every incapable woman or child, and
all their aged or sick. The winter increased in severity, and though
they burnt all their saddles and waggons, every encampment was marked
by hundreds of frozen corpses. At length the spring came to alleviate
their sufferings, and in the beginning of June, they crossed the
Torgai, which flows into Lake Aksakal, to the N.N.E. of Lake Aral.
In five months the emigrants had accomplished 700 leagues; they had
lost more than 250,000 souls, whilst the camels alone remained of all
their animals. The Russian officer, Weseloff, who was shortly after
set at liberty, was able to regain the Volga with no other guide than
that of the trail of corpses left upon the route.
The unfortunate fugitives had hoped to enjoy a rest after having
crossed the Torgai. But the Russian army still followed, and was
even reinforced by terrible auxiliaries, the Bashkirs and Kirghises,
hereditary enemies of the Kalmucks. This light cavalry was now in
advance, and it would be necessary to fight with them while still
flying from the Russians. They were also obliged to skirt the desert,
where they would have perished from hunger, and to cut their way
through countries where the inhabitants rose in arms to protect their
territories against the famished invaders. Winter had given place to
Summer; the emigrants suffered as much from the heat as they had done
from the cold, so that the rate of mortality was unaltered.
At length, in the mouth of September, the horde reached the frontiers
of China. For many days they had had no water. At the sight of a
small lake they all rushed forward to quench their thirst; the
confusion was general, when the Bashkirs and Kirghises, who had never
for a moment ceased to harass the fugitives, threw themselves upon
the infatuated crowd, and would, in all probability, have annihilated
them. Fortunately, the Emperor Kien-long was hunting in the
neighbourhood, accompanied, as usual, by a small army. Informed of
the arrival of the Kalmucks, he had recognised them in the distance.
The sound of his artillery restored the courage of those who were
allowing themselves to be massacred, and their persecutors suffered a
bloody defeat. It should be added that Kien-long distributed amongst
those whom he had saved, the lands which are occupied by their
descendants at the present time.
The exodus of the Kalmucks is a sufficient answer to every argument
that can be advanced on the subject of primitive migration by land.
In eight months, in spite of the intense extremes of cold and heat,
of incessant attacks from implacable enemies, and in spite of
hunger and thirst, this nation had accomplished a distance equal in
a straight line to one-eighth of the circumference of the earth.
If we take into consideration all the enforced detours, we ought
probably to double the amount. With such facts as these, how can
we doubt the possibility of still longer expeditions for a tribe
advancing peacefully by stages, and having only to contend against
the difficulties presented by the soil or wild beasts?
CHAPTER XVII.
MIGRATIONS BY SEA.—POLYNESIAN MIGRATIONS.—MIGRATIONS TO NEW ZEALAND.
I. The greater number of the defenders of autochthony allow that
there is no fundamental impossibility in migration by land, but
maintain that it is different in migrations by sea. The peopling
of America, and especially that of Polynesia, by emigrants from
our great continent, is, in their opinion, far more than could
possibly be undertaken or accomplished by nations unacquainted with
the science of astronomy, and the improved method of navigation.
According to them, geographical conditions, winds and currents, must
oppose an insurmountable obstacle to any enterprise of this nature.
Starting from Polynesia, let us see how much truth there is in these
assertions. This will be taking, so to speak, the bull by the horns,
for no other part of the globe seems to justify to such an extent,
the opinions of autochthonists.
II. Polynesia is not quite so isolated as we are accustomed to
think. A study of the map alone should be sufficient to justify us
in holding that a maritime people, accustomed to the navigation of
the Malay Archipelago, might, on some occasion, have pushed as far as
New Guinea. This fact is now established above all dispute. Beyond
New Guinea, the Archipelago of New Britain and the Solomon Islands
would put, so to speak, any fairly adventurous navigators on their
way to the Fiji Islands; once arrived at this archipelago, however
little they may have been impelled by the spirit of discovery, they
must easily have reached Polynesia properly so called. New Zealand to
the south, and the Sandwich Islands to the north, remain, however,
beyond the limits of this route, as it is pointed out by geography.
For bold mariners to be stopped in their advance, winds and currents
must have been invariably contrary and irresistible. The stronger
the belief in the universality and absolute constancy of the _trade
winds_ in these regions, the more was this action attributed to them.
But the investigations which have been carried on in the interests
of science, the writings of Commander Maury, and the charts of
Captain Kerhallet, have taught us that the variable winds due to
the _cloud-ring_ extend over almost twenty degrees in the maritime
area in question. We know, moreover, that every year the _monsoon_
drives back the trade winds and blows beyond the Sandwich and Tahiti
Islands, so that instead of the winds being contrary, they are, for
many months, very favourable for ships sailing eastward.
Considerations drawn from currents lead almost to the same
conclusions. In the Pacific, the equatorial current running from east
to west forms in reality two great distinct oceanic streams separated
by a large counter current flowing in the reverse direction. The
latter skirts almost the whole northern portion of the Polynesian
area; it thus, as it were, forms the outlet from the Indian
Archipelago. There is every indication of its having played some part
in the history of the dispersion of races in all parts of Oceania and
to the east of the Malay peninsula.
Finally, we know that there is no absolute regularity in the
atmospheric phenomena in the regions of the Pacific, any more than
elsewhere. This ocean has in common with others its typhoons and
its tempests, which suddenly change the direction of the winds and
carry ships before them in spite of currents. Islands, both large
and small, with which it is beset, must often have been visited by
sailors who had thus lost their way, of which we shall presently
quote examples.
Far from being _impossible_, the peopling of Polynesia by navigators
starting from the Indian Archipelago is relatively _easy_ at certain
times of the year, provided only that the navigators are courageous
and not afraid of losing sight of land. Now we know the character of
the Malay populations in this respect.
Again, those who have taken all these circumstances into
consideration, Malte-Brun, Homme, Lesson, Rienzi, Beechey, Wilkes and
others, have not hesitated to regard Polynesia as having been peopled
by migrations advancing from west to east.
III. Writers, on the contrary, who have only consulted the imperfect
knowledge which we till lately possessed of these seas, and the
ordinary direction of the winds, have either believed in autochthony
or have invented various theories to explain the presence of man in
this multitude of islands and remote islets.
Ellis held that the Polynesians had been conveyed from America
to Oceania by winds and currents, but this hypothesis has had
scarcely any adherents. It is in too direct contradiction with all
the physical, philological, and social characters, which refer the
Polynesians to the Malay races as strongly as they separate them from
the Americans.
Dumont d’Urville has proposed a theory which, at first sight,
is more satisfactory, and still has a few supporters. In his
opinion, Polynesia is the remains of a great continent which was
originally connected with Asia. This land sank after some geological
revolutions; the sea covered the plains and hills, the highest
summits only being now visible and forming the present archipelago.
The Polynesians are the descendants of those who survived the
catastrophe.
This hypothesis has the advantage of preserving those relations which
were broken by that of Ellis. And, curious to relate, it agrees with
the tradition of the deluge as preserved by the Tahitians. They say
that the great inundation happened without either rain or tempest. It
was the sea which rose and covered the whole earth with the exception
of a flat rock where one man and a woman took refuge. We might say
that there was nothing in this account but a mistake which is easily
understood. The sea never rises, but the land may sink, and other
people besides the Tahitians have been deceived.
Nevertheless, we cannot accept the theory of Dumont d’Urville. It is
in contradiction to the zoological facts so thoroughly investigated
by Darwin and Dana. If some of the atolls of Oceania shew signs of
subsidence, a great number of islands offer incontestable proofs of
upheaval, and Tahiti itself is one of the latter.
But the most serious argument which can be brought against d’Urville
is derived from the inhabitants themselves. If travellers agree upon
one point, it is that from the Sandwich Islands to New Zealand, from
the Tonga Islands to Easter Island, all the Polynesians belong to
the same race, and speak the same language with mere variations of
dialect.
Now the Polynesian area, the limits of which I have just pointed out,
is of greater extent than the whole of Asia. What would an _Asiatic
Polynesia_ be like, if that continent were to sink beneath the waters
and leave only the summits of its mountains visible, where some
representatives of the present inhabitants might take refuge? Is it
not at once evident that each archipelago, and often each island,
would have its own race and language?
The considerations drawn from the identity of populations and
languages in Polynesia are of themselves sufficient to justify
the assertion that all the Islanders have a common origin; and
consequently, that, starting from some unknown point, they have, in
their advance from archipelago to archipelago, peopled by degrees the
maritime world in which we find them.
Horatio Hale, the eminent anthropologist of the scientific expedition
of the United States, was the first to approach the problem from
a general point of view; he solved it as far as he was able with
the data collected by himself, and sketched the first chart of
Polynesian migrations. Fresh facts have been obtained since that
time. Sir George Grey has published the historical songs of the
Maories; Thomson, Shortland, and Hochstetter have brought to light
fresh traditions; M. Remy published a history of Hawaii arranged by
a native. M. Gaussin has carried off the prize in philology by his
admirable work upon the Polynesian language; the Dépôt of the French
Marine has received special documents from Tahiti to which General
Ribourt, Admiral Lavaud, and Admiral Bruat have added the results
of their own researches. These unpublished materials have been
liberally placed at my disposal, and I have added to them some facts
which have been forgotten. I have thus been able to confirm, from
a general point of view, the conclusions of Hale, making, however,
some important modifications, and to complete, again with some
modifications, his chart of migrations. My readers will understand
that I cannot here enter into a detailed discussion, and I must beg
to refer them to my work upon _The Polynesians and their Migrations_.
I shall confine myself to a short summary of the results which, I
believe, it demonstrates.
IV. Both physical and philological characters show that the
Polynesians are a branch of those Malay races which are divided into
numerous groups by shades of difference, sometimes strongly marked.
It is to one of these groups which are least distant from the white
type that the nations in question must be referred.
The starting point of these migrations, which were to extend so far
into the east, was Boeroe Island, which is represented in all maps
between Celebes and Ceram. This conclusion, already proposed with
some diffidence by Hale, seems to me to be placed beyond a doubt by
all the traditions collected at Tonga by Mariner, with whose work the
learned American seems to have been unacquainted.
On quitting the Malay seas, the emigrants must have followed as
nearly as possible the course given above. Repulsed doubtless by
the black races which then, as now, occupied New Guinea, they
passed Melanesia. Some canoes, however, probably separated from
the others, reached the eastern extremity of this great island, and
there founded a colony recently discovered by Commander Moresby. It
is this colony which has doubtless furnished the several archipelagos
of Melanesia with at least a part of the Polynesian elements which
have been observed by several travellers. We know, however, thanks
to the researches of M. de Rochas, that the Polynesian elements of
the little archipelago of the Loyalty Islands is due to an emigration
passing in 1770 from the Willis Islands to New Caledonia.
The great stream of emigration must have left all Melanesia to the
south, and have separated into three branches. One would arrive at
the Samoa Islands, another at the Tonga Islands, and a third at the
Fiji Islands. The two first archipelagos were evidently uninhabited,
the latter already possessed by a black population. An alliance was
at first made, however, between the aborigines and the emigrants, but
before long the _war of races_ broke out, the Malays were expelled,
probably leaving behind them some of their women. In this manner the
mixed character of the Fijian population was produced, with which
all travellers have been struck. The ejected Malays gained the Tonga
Islands. Finding them occupied by fellow-countrymen they attacked and
defeated them. Instead of massacring or enslaving them they invented
_serfdom_, an institution which has only been met with in this
archipelago.
Whilst the Malay colonies founded in the Fiji and Tonga Islands were
dispersed and desolated by a fratricidal war, those in the Samoan
archipelago prospered. The population became denser: the spirit
of adventure was not as yet extinguished, fresh emigrations took
to the sea, advancing in the direction which had led to the first
discoveries. At this period the island of Savaï played an important
part, according to the universal testimony of Polynesian traditions.
Its name appears in almost all the archipelagos, scarcely modified
by local dialects, in the Sandwich Islands and in New Zealand, in
the Marquesas Islands as well as in Tahiti, and as far as the
Manaïa Islands. Finally, Tupaïa, in drawing the curious map, which
has been preserved by Forster, designates Savaï as the mother of all
the others, and represents it as much larger than Tahiti. This is an
error, but this very error proves beyond a doubt the importance of
this locality from our present point of view.
With the exception of a single emigration, which passed directly from
Tonga to the Marquesas Islands, it is from the Samoan archipelago,
and from Savaï in particular, that all the great expeditions appear
to have started, which formed secondary centres elsewhere. Tahiti
and the Manaïa Islands are the two principal. The former peopled the
north of the Pomotous and part of the Marquesas, which, in turn,
sent out colonists to the Sandwich Islands, where, however, they had
been preceded by the Tahitians. The latter, in which there were both
Tahitians and Samoans, pushed their colonies as far as Rapa, to the
Gambier Islands, to the south-east extremity of Polynesia and to New
Zealand in the south-west.
V. We have only isolated and very incomplete accounts of the greater
number of these migrations. Though sufficient to remove all doubt
as to the fact, they tell us nothing of the circumstances which
accompanied or followed them. It is quite otherwise when we come to
consider New Zealand. Thanks to the songs collected by Sir George
Grey, we possess the detailed history of this colonisation. This
exception is doubly fortunate as giving us information upon a number
of important points, and precisely in reference to those islands
which, from being situated at a great distance from Polynesia,
properly so called, favour autochthonic hypotheses more than all the
rest of the area. It seems to me, therefore, to be advisable to enter
into a few details upon the subject.
It is the inhabitants of Rarotonga, one of the principal islands of
Manaïa, who had the honour of discovering and colonising New Zealand.
An emigration from Tonga may, however, at some unknown period have
possibly joined them.
The Christopher Columbus of this little world was a certain Ngahué,
who was compelled to fly from his country to escape the persecutions
of a queen, who wished to rob him of a jasper stone. It was doubtless
chance which led him to New Zealand. He here discovered several
pieces of jasper, which probably restored him to the favour of the
_female chief_, for we do not hear that he was molested on his return
to Rarotonga.
During the absence of Ngahué a general war had broken out in his
island. The vanquished party followed the advice of the traveller,
who persuaded them to go and occupy the recently discovered land
with him. Several chiefs joined together and constructed six canoes,
the names of which are still preserved. The song translated by Sir
George Grey informs us that one of them, the _Arawa_, was made of a
tree which had been felled in Rarotonga, situated on the other side
of Hawaïki. This was one of those _secondary Savaïs_ which I have
mentioned above, and the place from which the emigrants started.
“Once,” says one of those songs already quoted, “our ancestors
separated; some were left at Hawaïki, and others came here in canoes.”
The same song describes the accidents of the voyage, the storms which
the navigators met with, the care bestowed upon the first culture of
the soil, the exploring expeditions undertaken in the new country,
and the disagreements which occurred between the different crews.
They show that the connection with the mother country continued
to exist for some time, so much so indeed that a young woman
accomplished the voyage with only a few companions, and warlike
expeditions started sometimes from Hawaïki and sometimes from the
colony to avenge some of those outrages which were considered by
these races as demanding the life of the offender.
There is nothing astonishing in these passages. The Polynesians knew
perfectly well how to direct their course at sea by the stars, and
the route from one point to another once observed was inscribed, if
we may use the expression, in a song which would never be forgotten.
They had a very correct general idea of the whole of their maritime
world. The map drawn by Tupaïa, which I have reproduced in my book,
is equal to those of our savants of the Middle Ages, while it
embraces a considerable area. Tupaïa had seen for himself several of
the islands which he represents. According to the calculations of
Cook, he must have gone westward to a distance of 1,600 miles. But
it was from the _sacred songs_ of his country that he acquired his
knowledge of the rest of Polynesia, and was able to sketch it with
tolerable accuracy.
As to the _canoes_ in question, they were the same as the pirogues,
which are mentioned by all travellers with admiration, and are
declared by Cook to be very suitable for long voyages. This is a fact
which is often established by the very precise details contained in
some of the songs translated by Sir George Grey. We see, for example,
one of the emigrant chiefs, Ngatoro-i-Rangi, “mount upon the roof of
the hut constructed upon the platform which joined the two canoes.”
We have only to add that the _Arawa_ and other similar vessels
generally carried 140 warriors, and it will at once appear how devoid
of foundation are the assertions of those writers who declare these
voyages to have been impossible for want of sufficient means of
transport.
VI. The various documents which we now possess have not only been of
service in proving beyond a doubt the general fact of migrations,
and in acquainting us with the circumstances by which some of them
were accompanied; they even enable us to indicate with very tolerable
exactness the date of some of the most important.
This result is generally obtained by the genealogies of the principal
families. Each forms a kind of litany, which is sung in fixed rhythm,
and of which each verse contains the name of a chief and those of his
wife and son. Anyone, therefore, capable of remembering a song of one
hundred verses may easily learn the longest of these genealogies.
Confided to memory by the _Arepos_ or _Keepers of the Archives_, they
were preserved with jealous care. Thomson informs us that in New
Zealand a serious inquiry was made into these verbal documents, and
their authenticity was so well established, that they have an equal
value in matters of justice with our deeds.
Now, in the Marquesas, Gattanewa, the friend of Porter, who was
descended from the first colonists of the Tongan portion of the
archipelago, had only eighty-eight predecessors. At Hawaï, the
genealogy of the Tamehameha, according to M. Remy, is contained in
seventy-five verses. In 1840, according to Williams, Rarotonga was
governed by the twenty-ninth descendant of Karika, the founder of
the colony. In the Gambier Islands M. Maigret saw the twenty-seventh
reigning chief since the arrival of the first colonists from
Rarotonga.
Hale has shown very clearly that the Hawaïan genealogy contains at
the outset, like many others in Europe, some fabulous personages. He
considered it necessary to remove the first twenty-two verses. Some
such correction should very probably be made in that of the Marquesas
Islanders. As to those of Rarotonga and the Gambier Islands they are
too recent to have been already contaminated by fable.
Hale, guided by considerations which I cannot here discuss,
attributes to each verse of these genealogies the value of a
_generation_, from twenty-five to thirty years. Thomson and M. Remy,
however, having had time to gather more precise information, regard
them as indicating merely _reigns_. Calculating the mean duration of
these reigns from that given by the list of French kings from Clovis
to Louis XVII., we obtain as a result 21·13 years.
According to these data, the arrival of the Tongans in the Marquesas
Islands must have taken place in the year 417 of our era; that of the
Tahitians in about 701; Karika must have colonized Rarotonga in 1207,
and the Gambier Islands have been peopled in 1270.
For New Zealand we have a double source of information, and the
results thus obtained agree so well that we cannot doubt their
accuracy. The genealogies of the greater number of the Maori chiefs
go back as far as those bold pioneers whose history I have related.
Thomson, who has examined several, considers that the number of
chiefs who have succeeded each other in every family since the
colonization, may be estimated at about twenty. Taking the kings of
England as a term of comparison, he attributes to the _reign of each
chief_ a duration of 22-1/35 years. These data took him back to the
year 1419. The list of French kings would only give the year 1457.
On the other hand, in one of the songs preserved by Sir George Grey,
there is an account of the history of the son of Hotunui, one of the
colonizing chiefs of New Zealand, and of his immediate descendants.
At the fourth generation a daughter was born, “from whom,” the legend
adds, “are descended in eleven generations all the principal chiefs
now living of the tribe of Ngalipaoa.” Taking thirty years for each
generation, we find that the migration of Hotunui took place 450
years before the time when Sir George Grey received the document
(about 1850), which carries us back to the year 1400.
Thus, these Maories, whom autochthonists regard as children of the
soil, cannot have landed in New Zealand earlier than the beginning of
the fifteenth century.
VII. I have hitherto only spoken of more or less voluntary
migrations, such as might be induced by a spirit of adventure, civil
troubles, or the authority of a priest despatching an excess of
population in search of new countries. But in treating of Polynesia,
we must, as I have already remarked, take accidents by sea into
consideration. Several examples are known. It was in this manner that
Toubouaï was peopled, which at the close of the last century, within
an interval of a few years, received three canoes from different
islands, one of which was Tahiti. All three had been carried away by
a storm and driven ashore upon this island, which, till then, had
been uninhabited.
Such, again, is the history of the chief Touwari and his companions,
men, women, and children, discovered by Captain Beechey upon
Byam-Martin Island, which they had begun to colonize. They had
started from Anaa, an island situated two hundred and forty-five
miles to the east of Tahiti, to go and pay homage to Pomare, but
were surprised at Maïatea by _the monsoon, which had come sooner
than usual_. Driven to the south-east into the midst of the Pomatou
Islands, they landed at first on Barrow Island. Finding, however, no
means of subsistence, they took to the sea again, and fell in with
the island where they were found by the English navigator.
This example is perfect, since it realises all the circumstances
indicated by the theory. It establishes the existence of regular
relations between islands situated at great distances from each
other; it proves one of those occurrences which must more than once
have caused these bold navigators to wander from the usual route;
it shows how a remote island was able to receive all the elements
of a colony; it leaves no doubt as to the possibility of dispersion
going on in an exactly opposite direction to that of the trade
winds. We need only add that the passage from Maïatea to Barrow and
Byam-Martin Islands is more than five hundred and sixty miles, and we
shall understand without any difficulty how Polynesia was peopled by
voluntary or accidental colonization.
VIII. There is one more circumstance which it is important to
observe, and which is completely at variance with all autochthonist
hypotheses, that, namely, on approaching the islands where they have
been discovered by us, the Polynesian found them uninhabited.
The songs, for which we are indebted to Sir George Grey, show that
in New Zealand the greater number of the first emigrants met with no
traces of a previous population. One only, named Manaïa, found upon a
promontory aborigines of the country. This exception, from the very
reason that it is unique, proves that this population could not have
been very numerous. It has slightly altered the type of the lowest
grades of the Maories, to which it has been confined. The portrait
published by Hamilton Smith, and one of the skulls in the possession
of the Museum, inform us that these supposed aborigines were Papuans.
It is evident that they had reached New Zealand in consequence of
some mischance similar to those I have just mentioned, and had not
even had time to multiply sufficiently to occupy the entire shores of
the North Island.
The traditions of the Sandwich Islands furnish us with a fact of
the same nature. They tell us that the first colonists coming from
Tahiti found in these islands _gods_ and _spirits_, who inhabited the
caves and with whom they entered into alliance. It is evident that we
have here a troglodyte people, whose importance the legend has been
pleased to exaggerate, and whose origin it is not difficult to find.
If Kadou, whose history has been preserved by Kotzebue, instead of
leaving the Caroline Islands for the Radak Islands, had started from
the latter, and if he had made almost the same passage in the same
direction, he would have landed in the Sandwich Islands.
The mixture of Polynesian and Micronesian races at once explains
the darkness of colour and want of purity in the features of the
Hawaïans. Perhaps the same cause may account for the difference in
features, manners, and industry which is presented by some tribes of
the Low Archipelago.
Apart from these few and, as we see, very feeble exceptions, all
the islands of Polynesia appear to have been uninhabited when the
navigators from Boeroe or their descendants landed. This fact is
distinctly proved by traditions in Kingsmill, Rarotonga, Mangarewa,
the Toubouaï Islands, etc. Purity of race testifies that this was
also the case with the Tonga, Samoa, and Marquesas Islands.
IX. Finally, the facts to which I have been obliged to confine
myself are entirely opposed to the theories of autochthonists, and
lead to the following conclusions: Polynesia, a region which, from
its geographical conditions, seems at first sight to be isolated
from the rest of the world, has been peopled by means of voluntary
migrations and accidental dispersion, passing from west to east,
at least as a general rule. The Polynesians, coming from Malaya,
and the Isle of Boeroe in particular, first established and settled
themselves in the Archipelagos of Samoa and Tonga. Thence they
invaded by degrees the maritime world open before them; they found,
almost without an exception, that all the countries where they landed
were uninhabited, and only on two or three occasions met with very
small tribes of a more or less black type.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MIGRATIONS BY SEA.—MIGRATIONS IN AMERICA.
I. The peopling of Polynesia and America is a problem which presents,
if I may use the expression, inverse conditions. There is, in
reality, no geographical difficulty in the latter. The proximity of
the two continents at Behring Straits, the existence in this channel
of the Saint Laurence islands, the largest of which is situated
exactly half-way between the two opposite continents, the connection
formed between Kamschatka and the peninsula of Alaska by the Aleutian
Islands; the maritime habits of all these peoples; the presence of
the Tchukchees on the two opposite shores; the voyages which they
undertake from one continent to the other on simple matters of
commerce, leave no doubt as to the facility with which the Asiatic
races could pass into North America through the Polar Regions.
More to the south, the current of Tessan, the _kouro-sivo_, or _black
stream_ of the Japanese, opens a great route for navigators. This
current has frequently cast floating bodies and abandoned junks upon
the shores of California. Instances of this fact have been observed
in our own time. It is impossible that they should not also have
happened before the period of European discoveries. Asiatic maritime
nations must at all times have been carried to America from all those
places which are washed by the Black Stream.
The Equatorial current of the Atlantic opens a similar route leading
from Africa to America, and there are some evidences, rare it is
true, showing that wrecks have been carried in this direction. It is
possible, therefore, that the same may also have happened to man.
II. We shall not, therefore, be surprised at finding in the New World
representatives of races which seem to belong originally to the Old
World; we shall easily understand the multiplicity of American races,
which is perhaps still contested by some of Morton’s followers, but
firmly established in the opinion of every unprejudiced person by
the testimony of Humboldt and d’Orbigny’s classical work on _L’Homme
Américain_.
Black populations have been found in America in very small numbers
only, and as isolated tribes in the midst of very different nations.
Such are the Charruas of Brazil, the black Carabees of Saint-Vincent
in the Gulf of Mexico, the Jamassi of Florida, the dark-complexioned
Californians, who are, perhaps, the dark men mentioned in Quiché
traditions, and by some old Spanish adventurers.
Such, again, is the tribe of which Balbao saw some representatives
in his passage of the Isthmus of Darien in 1513. Yet it would seem,
from the expressions made use of by Gomara, that these were true
Negroes. This type was well known to the Spaniards, and if they had
encountered black men with glossy hair, like the Charruas, they would
undoubtedly have been much impressed by it, and would have mentioned
the fact.
The white type is more widely represented in America than the black.
Along the whole of the north-west coast, Meares, Marchand, La
Pérouse, Dixon and Maurelle have observed populations, which, judging
from some of their descriptions, would seem to be of pure white race.
Upon the Upper Missouri, the Kiawas, Kaskaïas and the Lee Panis
possess, we are assured, the attributes of the purest white races,
including their fair hair. The Mandans have, from our present point
of view, always attracted attention. Captain Graa, again, found in
Greenland men speaking Esquimau, but tall, thin, and fair. In South
America, Ferdinand Columbus, in his relation of his father’s voyages,
compares the inhabitants of Guanaani to the Canary Islanders, and
describes the inhabitants of San Domingo as still more beautiful and
fair. In Peru, the Charazanis, studied by M. Angrand, also resemble
the Canary Islanders, and differ from all the surrounding tribes.
L’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg imagined himself surrounded by Arabs
when all his Indians of Rabinal were around him, for they had, he
says, their complexion, features, and beard. Finally, Gomara and
Pierre Martyr offer a similar testimony, and the latter speaks of the
Indians of the Parian Gulf as having fair hair (_capillis flavis_).
It is useless to insist upon the anthropological relations between
America and Asia. Most travellers have insisted upon this point. I
have heard M. de Castelnau say, “When I was surrounded by my Siamese
servants, I imagined myself in America;” and M. Vavasseur, assisting
at the visit of the Siamese ambassadors, remarked, “But those are
my Botocudos.” I should, however, observe that the skull in the
Collection in the Paris Museum indicates less resemblance than the
external characters.
America has, moreover, its distinct races with which the foreign
elements have more or less blended. She has also had her _quaternary
man_. This is a fact which must not be overlooked, and by which
the problem is singularly complicated. We shall presently see that
geological revolutions do not involve the disappearance of existing
human races. There can be no doubt that in America there are
descendants of men who were contemporary with the mastodon, just as,
in Europe, we find the descendants of those who were contemporaries
of the mammoth. Unfortunately our knowledge of the physical
characters of the American fossil man is as yet very slight.
III. It does not, however, seem to me the less probable that the
most pronounced ethnological elements, such as White, Yellow, and
Black, which we encounter at the present time, have overspread this
continent by means of migration. This fact is proved by history in a
certain number of cases; and some very simple considerations seem to
me to render others no less probable.
For example, we only find black men in America in those places which
are washed by either the Kouro-Sivo, or the Equatorial Current of the
Atlantic or its divisions. A glance at the maps of Captain Kerhallet
will at once show us the rarity and the distribution of these tribes.
It is evident that the more or less pure black elements have been
brought from the Asiatic Archipelagos and from Africa through some
accident at sea; they have there mixed with the local races, and have
formed those small isolated groups which are distinguished by their
colour from the surrounding tribes.
The presence of Semitic types in America, certain traditions
of Guiana, and the use in this country of a weapon entirely
characteristic of the ancient Canary Islanders, can be easily
explained in the same manner, and the explanation rests upon positive
facts. Twice during the last century, in 1731 and 1764, small ships
passing from one point of the Canary Islands to another have been
driven by storms into the region of the trade winds and equatorial
current, and have drifted as far as America. What has happened in our
time must often have happened before. We cannot then be surprised at
finding upon the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, tribes which are more
or less related to the African Whites by their physical characters.
IV. The geographical position of the continents at once explains
why the yellow type has so many representatives in America.
Supposing, which seems to be contradicted by some evidences, that the
coast-lines have not altered since the latest geological era, the
facilities presented by the passage are quite sufficient, and the
Asiatic races have profited by them to a considerable extent. America
was known to them long before Europeans possessed anything beyond
legends on this subject, the meaning of which is still hotly disputed.
It is to De Guignes that we owe the discovery of this fact, the
importance of which is evident. He revealed to Europe what he had
learnt in Chinese books. These books speak of a country called
Fou-Sang, situated at a distance, to the east of China far beyond
the limits of Asia. De Guignes did not hesitate to identify it
with America. To the proofs drawn from the Chinese books, he added
some isolated and hitherto forgotten facts which were borrowed from
Europeans, from George Horne, Gomara, etc.
The work of the French Orientalist was received with a very singular,
yet accountable repugnance. Apart from the mistrust excited by every
unexpected discovery, many people were annoyed to find that Europeans
had been preceded by Asiatics in the New World; it seemed to them
to be dethroning Christopher Columbus. A Prussian, who had become a
naturalized Frenchman, gave the support of his great learning to all
who required no more than the contradiction of the fact, and it was
almost unanimously agreed that De Guignes had deceived himself. More
justice is now done to him, and anyone who will study the question in
an unprejudiced spirit, cannot but acknowledge that he is right.
Klaproth held that Fou-Sang was nothing else than Japan. He forgot
that the country of which the Chinese writers spoke contained
copper, gold and silver, but no iron. This characteristic, which is
inapplicable to Japan, agrees, on the contrary, in every respect with
America. To support his assertion, he maintained that the Chinese
could neither recognize their direction nor measure distances in
their voyages with precision. He forgot that they were acquainted
with the compass 2000 years before our era, and that they possessed
maps far superior to the vague conjectures of the Middle Ages.
As to the supposed error in distance of which Klaproth speaks, there
was no such thing. Paravey informs us that Fou-Sang was placed at
a distance of 20,000 _Li_ from China. Now a Li, according to M.
Pothier, is equal to 444·5 metres (486 yards). In following the
course of the Kouro-Sivo, these numbers would exactly bring us to
California, where the abandoned junks were stranded; they prove what
was indicated by the theory, that this current had been the route for
voyages to and from America.
Paravey has published a facsimile of a Chinese drawing representing
a lama. This at once answers one of the objections of Klaproth, and
carries us considerably to the south of California. Amongst the
productions of Fou-Sang the Chinese authors mention the _horse_,
which, as we know, did not exist in America. It is clear that they
called by this name the animal which in Peru was used as a beast
of burden. This habit of calling by a common name species which
are known and new species which resemble them in certain respects,
certainly existed elsewhere than in China. This habit led the
Conquestadores to call the puma a _lion_, and the bison a _cow_.
But did the Chinese then extend their voyages as far as Peru? This
can hardly be doubted after the preceding testimony, and after that
which is contained in the _Geografia del Peru_ by Paz Soldan. The
following is the translation of a passage for which I am indebted to
M. Pinart: “The inhabitants of the village of Eten in the province
of Lambayéque, and the department of Libertad, seem to belong to a
different race from those of the surrounding countries. They live,
and intermarry, only amongst themselves, and speak a language which
is perfectly understood by the Chinese, who have been brought to Peru
during the last few years.”
The Chinese books studied by De Guignes and Paravey speak of
religious missions, which, towards the close of the fifth century,
left the country of _Ki-Pin_ to carry to Fou-Sang the doctrines of
Buddha. The researches of M. G. d’Eichthal have fully confirmed these
accounts. The strongest resemblances have been pointed out between
the monuments and the Buddhist figures of Asia and the same products
of American art. The comparison of legends has led the author to the
same result.
Finally, according to an encyclopædia, from which M. de Risny has
translated a passage, the Japanese were acquainted with Fou-Sang,
which they called Fou-So, and with the missions which had left the
land Ki-Pin for that country. Although its real position must still
be doubtful, they show that Fou-So and Japan are two different
countries.
To this formal testimony derived from the Chinese, we must add that
of Europeans. The first is Gomara, who witnessed the conquest of
Mexico, and was a contemporary of the expedition which followed. He
tells us that companions of Francesco-Vasquez de Coronado, in sailing
up the Western Sea as far as 40° N. lat., met with ships laden with
merchandise, which, as they were led to understand by the sailors,
had been at sea for more than a month. The Spaniards concluded that
they had come from _Cathay_ or _Sina_.
The primary object of the ships in question was evidently that of
commerce. Such pacific relations did not, however, always exist
between the native Americans and the strangers from the west. This is
proved by the testimony of an Indian traveller, preserved by Le Page
du Prat. Moncacht-Apé (_the pain-killer_) was certainly a remarkable
man. Impelled by the desire which drove Cosma from Körös to Thibet,
the wish to discover the original home of his tribe, he went at
first in a north-easterly direction as far as the mouth of the St.
Lawrence, returned to Louisiana and started again for the north-west.
Having ascended the Missouri to its source, he crossed the Rocky
Mountains and reached the Pacific Ocean by descending a river, which
he called the _beautiful river_, and which can be no other than the
Oregon.
There he heard of white, bearded men, provided with arms hurling
thunder, who came every year in a great boat to look for wood which
they used for dyeing, and carried off the natives to reduce them to
a state of slavery. Moncacht-Apé, who was acquainted with the nature
of firearms, advised his friends to prepare an ambuscade. The plans
which he suggested were a complete success. Several of the aggressors
were slain. The Americans at once saw that they were not Europeans.
Their clothes were quite different, and their arms more clumsy, while
their powder was coarser, and did not carry so far. Everything tended
to show they were Japanese, accustomed to make descents upon this
coast of America exactly similar to those undertaken by some crews
in search of sandal-wood in Melanesia, who seize the blacks whenever
they have an opportunity, and give them up to cotton planters under
the name of coolies.
The narrative of Moncacht-Apé was given in the year 1725, three or
four years before the discovery of the Behring Straits, and more
than thirty years before European voyages had acquainted us with the
north-west of America. The exact details which he gives as to the
general direction of the coast, and of its bend at the peninsula
of Alaska, are a sure proof of the correctness and truth of this
narrative. Thus, however much it may wound European pride, we must
acknowledge that Chinese and Japanese Asiatics knew and, in different
ways, explored America long before Europeans.
V. Nevertheless, these civilized nations, whose ships visited
America, do not seem to have founded large settlements, which could
become the starting point of a new colony. Had it been so, they
would have left more traces of their passage in the language. Now,
with the exception of the small Chinese colony of which I have
spoken above, there is scarcely one fact of this nature which can be
considered as established. Some Californian colonies are mentioned
as speaking a Japanese dialect. M. Guillemin Taraire has reproduced
this information in reference to a tribe of Santa Barbara; he adds
that the language of some others includes Japanese and Chinese words.
Unfortunately the researches of M. Pinart, far from confirming these
results, only tend to contradict them; we can, therefore, only speak
with great reserve upon this point.
It seems to me to have been principally in the north that the great
migrations took place, and that they were undertaken by savage
nations. The traditions borrowed by l’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg
from the sacred books of the Quichés, and those of the Delawares
which have been preserved by Heckewelder, appear to me to offer much
information on this point. By comparing the missionary’s narrative
with some facts of Mexican history anterior to the conquest, I have
been enabled to determine approximately the date of the arrival of
the Red-Skins in the basin of the Missouri. It seems to me that we
cannot refer it to an earlier date than the ninth, or at most the
eighth, century.
These traditions bring to light another and no less important fact:
namely, that the Algonquins and Iroquois, after having crossed the
valley of the Mississippi, from which they drove the people, whose
singular monuments are now the object of study, had no more fighting
to do, and found the country uninhabited as far as the coast, and far
away to the south. The traditions of some tribes of South America
point, though not so plainly, to the same conclusion. Thus, probably
in the two halves of the New World, and certainly in the northern
portion, those uninhabited lands existed which we have already
noticed in Polynesia, and the pretended _American autochthon_ of
Agassiz, Morton, Nott, and Gliddon was, on the contrary, one of the
latest arrivals upon this continent.
These facts of thin populations, and of their low social condition,
which was everywhere the case except in those centres where
legislators had appeared who were perhaps entirely foreign to the
soil, involuntarily lead us to the conclusion that the general
peopling of America by the existing races, though it may be traced to
an earlier period than that of Polynesia, is, nevertheless, much more
recent than that of the Old World.
VI. It is not from Asia alone that America has received its
population. They came from Europe also long before the era of great
discoveries; I am not now alluding either to the story of Atlantis,
of which many interpretations are still possible, or to Phœnician
and Carthaginian traditions, nor again, to the pretentions of the
Basques and Dieppois, although they appear to be supported by
facts, which are, to say the least, curious; nor to Irish and Welsh
traditions, though Humboldt considers them well worthy of attention.
I shall only speak of the voyages accomplished by the Scandinavians
as related by Rafn from Irish sagas, and which have been lately
republished in detail by M. Gravier.
We are not now dealing with isolated facts belonging to the darkness
of those ages which they only occasionally illuminate. It is a
detailed history embracing several generations, and sometimes giving
circumstantial details which explain, and are confirmed by certain
modern discoveries.
In 877, according to M. Gravier, perhaps as early as 770, according
to M. Lacroix, Gunnbjorn discovered Greenland. In 886 Erick the
Red doubled Cape Farewell, and built at the head of a fjord his
house Brattahilda, the lately discovered ruins of which have been
compared to those of a town. In 986 Bjarn Meriulfson, when on his
way to Greenland, was carried by a storm as far as the shores of
New England. In 1000, Leif, the son of Erick the Red, started for
the country discovered by Bjarn. Accompanied by 35 men, he ran
down as far as Rhode Island, where he found the vine, and gave the
name of _Vinland_ to the country of which he took possession; he
built _Leifsbudir_, passed the winter there, and noticed that the
shortest day began at half-past seven and ended at half-past four.
This observation, which agrees with all the other details, places
Leifsbudir near the present town of Providence, 41° 24′ 10″ N. lat.
Thorwald succeeded his brother Leif. Followed by 30 warriors, he
reached Vinland and passed the winter at Leifsbudir. In the spring of
1003 he ran down as far as Long Island, explored the neighbourhood,
and returned in the autumn to his starting point. The following
summer he turned his steps northwards. Near Cape Alderton, his
companions surprised three boats made of osier, and covered with
leather, and slew eight of the men by whom they were manned. The
ninth escaped; he soon returned, however, accompanied by a great
number of his fellow-countrymen, who showered upon the Scandinavians
a cloud of arrows and then fled. But Thorwald, mortally wounded, was
interred in this land which he had expressed a desire to inhabit. It
may possibly have been his tomb which was discovered at the end of
the last century in Rainsford Island, near to Hull and Cape Alderton;
a tomb of solid masonry, containing a skeleton, and a sword with an
_iron_ hilt, indicating a period anterior to the fifteenth century.
In 1007 Thorfinn, accompanied by his wife Gudrida, started with three
ships carrying 160 men, some women, and cattle. This time the object
was to found a colony. They settled not far from Leifsbudir at Mount
Hope Bay. The strangers were soon visited by some of the natives, who
are easily identified with the Esquimaux from the description given
in the Saga. The relations maintained with these _Skrellings_ were
at first pacific. But the following year an act of brutality on the
part of a Scandinavian led to war, and Thorfinn, although victorious,
did not feel his position to be secure, and resolved to return to his
country with his companions, his wife, and his son Snorre, the first
Scandinavian born in Vinland.
Before quitting his settlement, the chief was anxious to leave some
trace of his presence. Such, at least, is the opinion adopted by
Scandinavian savants, and by M. Gravier, on the subject of the famous
_Dighton Writing Rock_. This block of gneiss, situated upon the right
bank of Tauton River, and alternately covered and left bare by the
tide, bears a certain number of characters engraved upon it to the
depth of eight millimetres (one-third inch). This _inscription_,
which has given rise to many discussions, has, probably, a double
origin. Schoolcraft tells us that an old Indian, who was familiar
with American pictography, recognized the hand of his countryman in
a certain number of signs which he was able to explain, though at
the same time he confessed that others were quite new to him. On the
other hand, Magnusen and his followers have also only been able to
interpret some of these same signs. They were, in their opinion, a
mixture of runic and cryptographic signs, and of figures referring
to the adventures of Thorfinn. They thought they could recognize
Gudrida with her son Snorre, and the phonetic portion might, it
seemed, be translated in the following manner:—131 MEN OF THE NORTH
HAVE OCCUPIED THIS COUNTRY—WITH THORFINN. I should add, however, that
Mr. Wittlesey does not admit the existence of a single alphabetical
inscription in the United States. Yet we must not suppose that the
opinion of the American antiquarian at all affects the authenticity
of the Sagas which relate the history of Thorfinn.
I cannot here repeat all the adventures of Thorvard and Freydisa, of
Ari Marson, Bjorn Asbrandson, Gudleif and Hervador ..., but I must
remark, in reference to the latter, that, through the indications
contained in the Skalholt Saga, the American savants have been able
to find upon the shores of the Potomac the tomb of a woman who fell
by the arrows of the Skrellings in 1051.
VII. The colonies founded in Greenland by Erick and his successors
multiplied rapidly; both the east and west coasts were peopled. These
two centres bore the names of _Osterbygd_ and _Vesterbygd_. From the
documents consulted by M. F. Lacroix, it appears that the former
possessed a cathedral, eleven churches, three or four monasteries,
two towns called Garda and Alba, and 190 _Gaards_ or Norwegian
villages; in the second, there were four churches and 90 or 110
gaards. These figures clearly indicate a considerable population.
This is still more strongly proved by the fact, that as early as
1121, an Irishman, Erick-Upsi, was created Bishop of Greenland, and
had eighteen successors. Vinland was in the jurisdiction of this
diocese. The tithes of this country figured among the revenues of the
Church in the fourteenth century, and were paid in kind.
This prosperity, and the regular relations between Europe,
Greenland, and Vinland seem to have lasted till towards the middle
of the fourteenth century. About this time the Skrellings attacked
Vesterbygd; the succour sent by the other settlements arrived too
late, and the western colony was destroyed. Osterbygd had a much
longer existence. In 1418 it still paid to the Holy See as tithes
and Peter’s Pence 3600 pounds of walrus’ tusks. At a period
anterior to this epoch, however, Queen Margaret, sovereign of
the Scandinavian dominions, impelled by motives which have been
differently interpreted, had interdicted all commerce with the
Greenland colonies. Shortly afterwards fleets of pirates, springing
from some unknown quarter, came down upon and pillaged them; the
temperature of both land and sea gradually fell; voyages became more
and more difficult, and, at last, ceased altogether. Thus, when in
1721, the Norwegian Pastor, Hans Eggede, led to those frozen lands
the first modern colony, he found nothing but ruins, and not a single
descendant of Erick and Thorfinn. What had become of them?
A letter addressed to Pope Nicholas V., quoted by M. Lacroix, throws
some light upon their fate. It is dated 1448, and informs us that,
thirty years previously, some strangers _coming from the American
coasts_ had pillaged the colony, and massacred or carried into
slavery the greater number of the inhabitants of both sexes. A great
number had, however, returned to their homes, and asked for help.
It is hardly possible to avoid referring to the latter, the white
population, tall, and with fair hair, which Captain Graa met with
on the east coast of Greenland, during his expedition in search of
Osterbygd. Notwithstanding their adoption of the Esquimaux language,
they certainly did not belong to their race.
But were all the descendants of the bold navigators who had
discovered America content to live, like the Skrellings, by the side
of ruins which recalled the relative grandeur of their fathers?
This hypothesis appears to me inadmissible. It seems evident to me,
that the greater number of the survivors must have emigrated and
sought refuge in Vinland, of the existence of which they were aware.
Perhaps they were repulsed by the mixed population of Scandinavians
and Esquimaux, who seem very early to have come into existence, and
who were, perhaps, the invaders mentioned in the letter quoted by
M. Lacroix; perhaps, again, they may have encountered warlike and
inhospitable tribes, like those mentioned in the Saga of Gudleif. But
the Norwegians would then only have pushed on further, till they met
with some hospitable shore where they could settle.
VIII. However this may be, the history of Scandinavian voyages is
sufficient to explain the appearance of the white type, even of the
fair type, in the midst of American populations. I do not hesitate
to refer to this Aryan stock, the white Esquimaux of Charlevoix, the
fair-haired men of Pierre Martyr, the fair men spoken of in some
Mexican traditions, the White Savage Chief whom the Spaniards met
with in their Cibola expedition ... etc.
Besides, the discovery and the repeated invasions of the American
coasts by the Scandinavians show the estimation in which we ought to
hold the pretended impossibility of the peopling of America. Here, we
have no longer the double _pirogues_ of the Polynesians, carrying 150
warriors; it was in _boats_ manned by thirty or forty men that Leif
and Thorwald faced the Greenland seas, reached, and returned from
Vinland. In the presence of such facts, can we regard our improved
method of navigation as _indispensable_ to long sea voyages?
Modern civilization has placed in our hands an immense power of
action unknown to our ancestors. It enables us to accomplish
works which they would have thought could only be expected from
supernatural powers. Science has placed in our hands the magic ring,
and we have become so used to employing it for the satisfaction of
our smallest wants, that it seems to us impossible to do without it.
We too often forget the resources which man possesses in himself,
and which form part of his original nature. Thus, we regard less
advanced, _less learned_ races as incapable of accomplishing that
which we should not dare to undertake without the aid which we have
been able to create for ourselves.
We have just seen how fully the history of the Polynesians and
Scandinavians contradicts these false ideas, and how they justify
the words of Lyell:—“Supposing the human genus were to disappear
entirely, with the exception of a single family, placed either upon
the Ocean of the New Continent, in Australia, or upon some coral
island of the Pacific Ocean, we may be sure that its descendants
would, in the course of ages, succeed in invading the whole earth,
although they might not have attained a higher degree of civilization
than the Esquimaux or the South Sea Islanders.”
BOOK VI.
ACCLIMATISATION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER XIX.
INFLUENCE OF CONDITIONS OF LIFE AND RACE.
I. The human species, springing originally from a single centre of
appearance, is now universally distributed. In their innumerable
travels, its representatives have encountered the widest difference
of climate and the most opposite conditions of life, and now inhabit
both the polar and equatorial regions. It must, therefore, have
possessed the necessary aptitudes for accommodating itself to all the
natural conditions of existence; in other words, it must have had the
power of becoming _acclimatised_ and _naturalised_ in every place
where we meet with it.
The possibility of man living and prospering in other regions than
those in which his fathers lived, has been denied in a more or less
emphatic manner by the greater number of polygenists. Without going
as far as this, certain monogenists have held that a human race,
when constituted for given conditions of life, was, so to speak, a
prisoner to them, and could not effect a change without losing his
life. Other writers have maintained precisely opposite opinions, and
have held that any human group could at once become acclimatised in
any given spot.
There are exaggerations and errors in all these extreme doctrines.
II. In spite of the assertions of Knox, Frenchmen can live perfectly
well in Corsica, provided only, that they avoid the marshes of the
eastern coast, which the islanders themselves cannot inhabit. After
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the fugitives from Provence
and Languedoc founded villages in the valley of the Danube, thus
contradicting beforehand one of the assertions of the English doctor.
English and French emigrants to the United States, and to Canada,
have not degenerated, in spite of the assertions of the same author.
Though modified, often in a very striking manner, as we shall
presently see, the Yankee _squatters_ and the Canadian _backwoodsmen_
are certainly not inferior to the first colonists who planted the
European standard in the midst of the Red-Skins.
Knox, and the anthropologists who agree either entirely or partially
with him, attribute to emigration alone the maintenance and growth
of the white population in America and elsewhere. In their opinion
the European emigrant loses, after several generations, the power of
reproduction. If the human current, which sets from Europe towards
the Colonies were to be stopped, they maintain that the population
would rapidly diminish, and the local races regain the ascendancy,
that the United States would return to the Red-Skins, and Mexico to
the descendants of Montezuma.
This assertion will easily be answered by a few statistics. They
are taken from the history of French races, which, since the treaty
of Paris in 1763, have, although in a slight degree, directly
contributed to the peopling of Canada. There were in this country:
In 1814 275,000 inhabitants of French origin.
In 1851 695,945 ” ”
In 1861 1,037,770 ” ”
In Ottawa State there were:
In 1851 Total population 15,000
” French ” 5,000
In 1863 Total population 25,000
” French ” 15,000
The history of the Acadians furnishes statistics which are quite as
convincing. From the information obtained by M. Rameau, it appears
that the entire population was descended from forty-seven families,
numbering 400 souls in 1671. In 1755 there were 18,000. Dispersed and
driven out by the English they were reduced to only 8,000. In 1861,
the number rose to 95,000 persons.
If we calculate from the preceding figures the annual increase of
French populations in America, we shall find the ratio equal or
superior to that furnished by the most favoured European populations.
This proves that the French race shows no sign of disappearance, even
in the country chosen as an example by Knox.
Without entering into too many details, let us remember that the
French have lived and increased in number at Constantia, not far from
the Cape, since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; that this
same region has been colonized by the Dutch, whose descendants, the
Boers, have migrated, and now form the Transvaal Republic; that they
have been succeeded at the Cape by the English, who, by degrees, have
overrun the whole country. We must also remember the rapid growth
of the Anglo-Australian colonies, etc.; and, finally, let us not
forget those nine families of missionaries visited by M. de Delapelin
in Polynesia, which, in all, numbered sixty-nine children, that is
to say, a mean of more than seven and a half each, and we shall be
forced to acknowledge that the most highly characterised European
white can live and increase in number in both hemispheres, at the
antipodes, and in the native countries of the most different races.
Further, the great race to which he himself belongs was not
originally European. It probably sprang from the mountain district
of the Bolor and the Hindoo-koh, where the Mamogis still represent
the original stock. In any case, the Zend-Avesta informs us that
it issued from a region where the summer lasted but two months, a
climate which almost corresponds to that of Finland. Step by step
it advanced, on the one hand as far as the Gangetic peninsula and
Ceylon, on the other to Iceland and Greenland. Afterwards, when the
era of great discoveries had commenced, it distributed its colonies
over the whole world, peopling continents, and replacing indigenous
races.
The consideration of these general facts alone, and the result of
this perpetual activity, make it impossible to deny to the Aryan race
the faculty of acclimatisation, under the most diverse conditions of
existence. All the assertions of Knox, and of his more or less avowed
disciples, fall before these facts.
What is true for the Aryan race is equally true for the Negro. The
White has transported the Black to almost every part of the globe,
and in the most distant places the Black lives side by side with his
master. Our experience as to the Yellow Races is still slight, but
we can already foresee that the result will be the same. Chinese and
Coolies have passed over into America from Asia; we shall perhaps
soon see them in Africa and in Europe.
Certain branches detached from the great ethnical stocks have already
offered similar evidences. The Gipsies, Aryans mixed, perhaps,
with Dravidians, have overrun the whole of Europe, and are now
met with everywhere. As to the Jews, we know that they are really
cosmopolitan, and that almost everywhere, in Prussia as in Algeria,
their fecundity surpasses that of the local races.
III. I do not mean by this that I consider the Aryan, or any races,
capable of always becoming at once acclimatised in any given
locality. On the contrary, there are regions which are fatal to man,
to whatever group he may belong, and however well prepared he may
seem to be to brave their influence. Such is the great estuary of the
Gaboon, where the Negro himself cannot live. The general constitution
of the inhabitants grows sensibly weaker; the reproductive organs
appear to be particularly affected, and the number of women greatly
surpasses that of the men. We know how dangerous the climate of
this country is to the European, and it will be interesting to see
whether the Paouins will in their turn yield to the deleterious
influence of these coasts, which they are gradually approaching.
We need not, moreover, go so far for examples. Who does not know the
reputation of the Maremma, and the marshes of Corsica? At one time
the swamps of the Dombe, and the mouth of the Charente, in France,
were scarcely less dangerous.
Even where the conditions are much less severe, acclimatisation
almost always demands numerous and melancholy sacrifices, which some
anthropologists have done wrong to overlook. The fact is but too
natural. A race, which has settled under the influence of certain
conditions of existence, cannot effect a change without undergoing
modification, and hence suffering. This fact will be noticed in some
detail in the chapter dedicated to the formation of these derived
groups from the species. I can here only point out the general law.
IV. Thus, every colonization of a distant country must be regarded in
the first place as a conquest attempted by the immigrating race. Now,
whether the battle has to be fought with man or with the conditions
of life, the victory is only gained at the cost of human life. We
must not, however, exaggerate the extent of inevitable losses, and
deny the possibility of acclimatisation. We must put the problem
clearly, and seek for experimental data, whence the solution may be
naturally deduced.
Every question of acclimatisation comprises two terms, which are, so
to speak, the _components_ of the _resultant_ which we are seeking
for or studying. These terms are _race_ and _conditions of life_.
We already know the exact significance of the former of these two
words, and we shall presently consider in some detail what we are
to understand by the latter. At present we will take it as simply
representing all the conditions of existence presented by a given
place, and proceed to point out its influence in acclimatisation.
We have seen that certain conditions of life appear to be fatal
to all races. In cases of this kind, we should distinguish how
much of this insalubrity is due to the regions, and how much is
the result of accidental circumstances, sometimes provoked by man
himself. The plain of the Dombe in France was once as salubrious as
the surrounding country. The exaggerated industry of the marshes
transformed it into a pestilential region, where it was quite as
fatal for foreign populations to live as it would have been in the
swamps of the Senegal. Sanitary measures are now tending to restore
it to its former condition. It is evident that we cannot reproach the
Dombe with the deleterious influence which human intelligence seems
to have undertaken to develop.
Even when the latter does not step in to vitiate the conditions
of life, we cannot charge a country with opposing unfavourable
conditions to an indigenous or foreign race, when these conditions
may be attributed to the negligence of the inhabitants, or to some
special cause, which human intelligence might modify. Deprived of
the care which rendered it healthy and luxuriant, the Campagna of
Rome has become a branch of the Pontine Marshes. On the other hand,
the environs of Rochefort have become healthy; Bouffarik, once one
of the most dangerous spots in Algeria, has become the centre of a
flourishing population. It was not, therefore, the general natural
conditions which rendered these localities dangerous, especially to
strangers, but simply _accident_. As soon as the cause is removed,
acclimatisation becomes not only possible, but easy.
Considered from this point of view, many countries, which now appear
to repel all attempts at immigration, will, perhaps, at some future
period, be particularly favourable to the development of colonizing
races. It is clear that in all cases of this kind we must distinguish
between _normal_ and _accidentally vitiated conditions of life_.
I cannot enter into all the details which this distinction would
allow, and shall confine myself to quoting a few facts.
The very progress of civilization sometimes results in the vitiation
of certain conditions of life. Such is the almost inevitable result
of the crowding together of human beings in a relatively limited
space. This is one of the points most clearly demonstrated in the
statistical researches of M. Boudin upon the comparative mortality of
the country and of barracks, for example. A comparison of our large
towns and rural districts leads to the same result, and points to a
special action upon the organs of reproduction. M. Boudin could not
find a pure-blooded Parisian whose genealogy could be traced for more
than three generations. At Besançon, town families become extinct in
less than a century, and are replaced by others from the country.
London, I have been assured, presents a similar phenomenon.
Do not ships, in which men live crowded together for months under
very unsatisfactory sanitary conditions, develop deleterious
principles, to which the crews become accustomed by degrees, but
which are, nevertheless, capable of producing the most serious
affections in the midst of surrounding populations, which, till
then, had been in a flourishing condition. Have we here one of
those phenomena to which, according to Darwin, we must attribute
the terrible mortality and increasing sterility of the Polynesian
races? Among the diseases introduced by European sailors, ought we
not to reckon phthisis, which is said to have become epidemic, as
well as hereditary, in those islands? The probabilities seem to me
to be in favour of an answer in the affirmative. Neither land nor
sky have changed in these archipelagoes since the time of their
discovery, and yet the Polynesian Islanders disappear with a terrible
rapidity, whilst their mixed races and even pure-blooded Europeans
show a redoubled fertility—a double contradiction given by facts to
autochthonic doctrines.
It is not always easy to determine, in judging of the more or less
deleterious action of given conditions of life, what should be
attributed to normal conditions, and what is the result of accidental
vitiating elements. The soil, cold, heat, dryness, or humidity of a
country are not all. The difference presented from the point of view
of acclimatisation by the two hemispheres is a striking example.
The hot regions of the southern hemisphere are, as a rule, more
accessible to white races than those in similar latitudes in the
northern hemisphere. From 30 to 35 degrees of N. lat. we find
Algeria, and especially the southern part of the United States, which
present serious difficulties against our acclimatisation. In the same
latitude of the southern hemisphere, lie the southern portion of the
Cape and New South Wales, where all European races prosper almost
immediately. M. Boudin’s calculations give the differences exactly.
He has found that the mean mortality of French and English armies was
about eleven times greater in our hemisphere than in the southern
hemisphere.
Struck by this contrast, M. Boudin endeavoured to discover its cause,
and found that it lay in the greater or less frequency and gravity
of marsh fevers. North of the equator these fevers may be traced
in Europe as far as the 59th deg. of latitude. In the south they
rarely pass the tropics, and often cease at an even smaller distance.
Tahiti, which is only 18 deg. from the geographical equator, and
almost beneath the thermal equator, is free from them. In the
southern hemisphere, the mean annual number of cases of fever in the
united English and French colonies was 1·6 in 1000; in the northern
hemisphere it was 224·9 in 1000.
Thus, marsh fevers are almost 200 times more frequent to the north
than to the south of the equator, although in South America and
Australia, for example, vast tracts are covered with standing water
under a burning sun. They are, moreover, of a far less serious nature
in the southern hemisphere. The immense lagoons of Corrientes only
occasion slight fevers. We know how dangerous, on the contrary, are
those of the Pontine Marshes, which are situated at a much greater
distance from the equator. It would be much more difficult for a
European to live in Italy upon the banks of the Carigliano, than in
America upon those of the Parana.
In spite of some experiments and ingenious theories, these
differences between localities, apparently presenting almost
identical general physical conditions, have not yet been explained.
The researches of M. Boudin, however, justify us in regarding these
marsh miasmata as very probably the greatest and often the only
obstacle to the acclimatisation of Europeans in the greater number of
those places to which the spirit of enterprise has led them. There
is something very encouraging and instructive in this fact. We know
by what combination of circumstances these pestilential miasmata
are engendered; we know how it is possible to resist them. Man can,
then, wherever he may go, fight against nature, and at least somewhat
ameliorate the conditions of acclimatisation. It has, until now, been
impossible to make a whole country healthy in a short space of time.
This was a work which time alone seemed to be able to accomplish,
very often at a heavy cost of human life. It seems as if the
introduction of the eucalyptus would, in a great measure at least,
tend to diminish these sacrifices.
Should, however, the tree brought from Australia by M. Ramel justify
all our hopes, we shall find that some care must still be taken in
the choice of _station_. I shall presently show how, in countries
which are apparently most dangerous, there are circumscribed
spots where acclimatisation takes place almost immediately. It is
clear that new comers ought to look carefully for these favoured
localities, and pitch their tents there. The contrary has almost
always been, and still is, the case. They allow themselves to be
seduced by the beauty and fertility of the alluvial lands situated at
the mouth of some river, or upon the shores of some bay calculated to
facilitate commerce, without considering their unhealthiness. They
settle down and build there, without being disturbed by the losses
which overwhelm fresh arrivals; and thus it is that pestilential
flats, like that of Batavia, have become inhabited.
V. I cannot here consider in any detail the action of conditions of
life upon human races, without anticipating considerations which
will be more appropriate in another chapter. I shall only point out
a very general fact, and one of great interest in the problem of
acclimatisation.
We know that the animal and vegetable races of one species, although
in reality subject to the same influences, have, nevertheless, their
special aptitudes; and, more especially, some affection which is very
general in one will be very rare in another. The case is precisely
similar with human races.
Marsh fevers act in the same manner upon all men. The Negro suffers
and dies from fever on the banks of the Niger, but in a much less
degree than the White. Moreover, the two races, when transposed
to India, preserve, in this respect, almost the same relations.
Compared with local races, the Negro still retains the ascendancy;
he is everywhere the last attacked by malarious emanations. Born in
a country where he is obliged almost incessantly and universally to
breathe them, descended from ancestors, who from prehistoric times
have lived in this poisoned air, he has become acclimatised to it
more than any other race; on this account alone, he is able to
prosper in places where the White would suffer for a long time.
On the other hand, the Negro has a delicate chest, and no race is so
subject to consumption, whilst this malady is much more rarely fatal
to the White or to the Malay.
From the extreme differences presented by the White and the Negro it
follows that the general conditions of acclimatisation are reversed
in the two races. A moderately warm air which is impregnated with
malarious emanations is dangerous to the European. A moderate degree
even of damp cold will be fatal to the Negro.
These few facts are sufficient to show that the conditions of
acclimatisation vary with the race; that the same climate cannot
exercise the same kind of action upon different races, and that
complete acclimatisation, that is to say, _naturalisation_, can only
follow upon the harmony of these two terms—race and conditions of
life.
CHAPTER XX.
CONDITIONS OF ACCLIMATISATION.
I. The possibility of establishing the harmony, of which I have
spoken in the preceding chapter, has been denied. It has been
argued that it must exist beforehand, and that instead of becoming
acclimatised, people merely become _accustomed_ to a given place. It
will be easy to show from what takes place in animals and plants,
that there is, in their case, something more than this, and that the
organisation is sometimes modified in its most intimate relations so
as to conform to the exigencies of conditions of life, which are by
nature inflexible.
The chrysanthemum (_Pyretrum sinense_), which adorns our gardens,
came, as we know, originally from China. Introduced into France in
1790, it flourished there and produced fruit which it was unable to
ripen, so that commerce alone supplied our flower gardens with the
necessary seed for more than sixty years. The attempt to rear it in
hot-houses and frames met with very small success. In 1852 a few
plants were observed to flower and to fruit sooner than the others;
the seeds ripened, and France now produces all the seed which she
requires. A small number of accidentally precocious plants have,
therefore, acclimatised this beautiful flower.
The history of the Egyptian goose (_Anser egyptiacus_) is still more
striking. Brought to France in 1801, by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, this
species at first laid in December, as in its native country. It
reared its brood in the depth of winter, and consequently under very
unfavourable circumstances. Several generations were, nevertheless,
reared at the Museum. Now in 1844 the birds laid in February, the
following year in March, and in 1846 in April, the time at which
our common goose lays. Is it not clear that the organisation of the
Egyptian goose had accommodated itself to the conditions imposed by
our climate?
This marvellous faculty of living beings is sometimes even
inconvenient. French vines when removed to the island of Bourbon
yield grapes continually, so that the mixture of clusters in every
stage of development and maturity has been a serious obstacle in the
manufacture of the wine. Silkworms have acted in a similar manner;
they have laid their eggs and spun their cocoons with perfect
indifference as to the season of the year, and in such an irregular
manner as to force breeders to give up rearing them.
Acclimatisation, that is to say, _physiological adaptation_ to new
conditions of life, is an incontestable fact. All our domestic races
which have been imported into America are prospering there. When the
conditions of existence have been almost the same as those of their
native country, they have changed but little. When the new conditions
have differed too widely from the old ones, local races have been
formed; and thus, though perhaps assisted by human industry, _pigs
with fleece_ are to be found on the cold plateaux of the Cordilleras,
_sheep with hair_ in the warm valleys of the Madeleine, and _hairless
cattle_ in the burning plains of Mariquita. Is it not clear that
these pigs, sheep, and oxen, these descendants of our races in
temperate climates, have established a harmony between themselves and
the conditions of life?
II. But, as I said before, this harmony is scarcely ever obtained
without struggles and sacrifices. In this respect again man resembles
plants and animals. Let us see, in the first place, what may be
learnt on this subject from these beings of inferior organisation.
It is well known that two kinds of wheat are recognised by
agriculturalists, one of which is sown in spring and the other in
autumn, both being reaped at about the same time. It is evident that
the conditions of development are very different in the two cases.
To sow a spring wheat in autumn, was, so to speak, changing the
condition of existence, and, consequently, attempting an experiment
in acclimatisation. This was done by the celebrated Abbé Tessier.
A hundred seeds of autumn wheat were sown in spring; they all came
up and produced young plants, which passed through the usual stages
of vegetation. Only ten plants, however, formed seeds, which only
ripened upon four plants. A hundred seeds of this first crop produced
fifty fertile plants. In the third generation the hundred seeds
produced corn. The inverse experiment gave similar results.
The acclimatisation of wheat at Sierra Leone offers still more
instructive peculiarities. The first year almost all the seed ran
to leaf; the ears were very few, and poorly filled. The seeds of
this first crop were sown; a great number did not come, up at all.
Those which survived were a little more fertile. Much patience was,
however, required, and many generations passed before normal crops
were obtained. We see that in Tessier’s experiment all the seeds of
wheat and their germs lived, but the grain was wanting, or was more
or less abortive. There was, then, a _loss of generations_. The same
thing occurred at Sierra Leone. Moreover, the second time the seed
was sown, some of it never came up at all. Here, therefore, the loss
of individuals was added to that of generations.
The history of our poultry which has been imported into America,
presents equally significant facts. At Cuzco the broods are just as
large as in Europe. Garcilasso de la Véga tells us, however, that in
his time the eggs were few, and the chickens difficult to rear. The
species has, since then, become acclimatised.
When M. Roulin made his observations upon the geese imported into
Bogota, it was more than twenty years since they had been first
brought to that high plateau, and, even then, they had not attained
their normal fecundity. They were not, however, far from it, while
at first the eggs were very rare. A quarter, at the most, of the
eggs were hatched, and half the goslings died before the end of
the first month. Thus, on the one hand, the Bogota breeder did not
obtain nearly as many eggs as he would have done in Europe, while,
on the other hand, at the end of a period scarcely equal to the
two-hundredth part of the life of the goose, he obtained from these
eggs scarcely one-eighth of what they would have produced in Europe.
The history of these Bogota geese is most instructive. At the outset
we meet with all those circumstances which would seem to justify
us in the prediction of a failure. The infertility of the females,
as attested by the rarity of the eggs, and that of the males, as
shown in the strong proportion of addle eggs, point to a serious
physiological injury to the organs whose action alone insures the
permanence of the species. The enormous mortality among the young
birds betrayed a no less serious alteration in the components of
individual life. Nevertheless, at the time of M. Roulin’s journey,
acclimatisation had been almost realised, and must without doubt now
be completed.
More than twenty years were, however, necessary for the organisation
of this European bird to establish a harmony between itself and the
conditions of existence on the high plateaus of America. The breeders
were consequently forced to submit to many losses, affecting both
generations and individuals.
We see what took place in the case of the fowls and geese as well
as in that of the wheat. Shortly after their emigration the climate
killed all those who were unable to conform to the new exigencies. A
certain number offered sufficient resistance to live almost as long
as they would have done under their natural conditions of existence;
but their weakened organisation was unfitted for generation, or
could only produce beings which at once succumbed. Through all
these disasters, however, a few privileged organisations conformed,
from the first, more or less to the new exigencies. With slight
modifications they transmitted their own acquirements combined with
the suitable aptitudes to their progeny, who in turn made further
advances in the direction opened by their parents; and from year
to year the adaptation was more complete, the acclimatisation more
nearly realised.
But it is evident that years here represent generations. It is only
from parent to offspring, through heredity and accumulation, that
the living being becomes modified, and by degrees harmonises with
the conditions of life. When, however, we are no longer studying
an animal, plant, or a bird, which has the faculty of yearly
reproduction, but species or races of a more tardy reproduction, we
must remember that it is necessary to reckon by generations, and not
by years.
III. Such are the data by which we are enabled to judge of the
attempts at acclimatisation made by man himself. I cannot too
often repeat the fact that, in common with organised and living
beings, we are subject to all the general laws which govern life
and organisation in animals and plants. Our intelligence is
unquestionably of assistance to us in our struggles with nature, but,
unfortunately, the power which we derive from her is limited, and in
no case are we placed at greater disadvantage than in the increasing
struggle demanded by a considerable change in conditions of life. The
most ingenious efforts are then unable to free man from vicissitudes
more or less analogous to those suffered by the wheat of Sierra
Leone, the fowls at Cuzco, and the geese at Bogota.
We must, then, almost always be prepared for sacrifices, the extent
and gravity of which will be proportionate to the differences, as
regards conditions of existence, between the two countries, and we
must almost always expect to lose a certain number of individuals
and generations. Everything depends upon judging facts fairly, not
exaggerating their importance, and seeing how far they justify a hope
of success in spite of appearances. If the losses are merely equal to
those I have just mentioned, or, better still, if they are fewer in
number, we may prophesy a favourable result; and, if the victory is
worth the price, we must leave the rest to perseverance and time.
IV. Events in Algeria confirm these observations. After the conquest
it was everywhere, as also in France, a question whether it would
be possible to colonise the country taken from the Turks and Arabs.
Dr. Knox declared most emphatically that such a colonisation was
impossible, and that the French would never be able to increase or
even live in Africa. It must be confessed that this opinion found
many and strong supporters. After the first few years of occupation
the generals, as well as the doctors, were almost all of the same
opinion. M. Boudin supported, with distressing statistics, the
views of his colleagues, Marshal Bugeaud and Generals Duvivier and
Cavaignac.
Relying upon what I know to have taken place with regard to birds, I
did not hesitate to attack these discouraging prophecies. Military
and civil mortality was in 1845 doubtless much more considerable in
Algeria than in France, and the number of deaths must again have
exceeded that of births. But emigration was at that time abundant
and continual. Now, if the influx of new arrivals filled the voids
caused by the change in conditions of existence, it at the same time
augmented the mortality by continually bringing forward recruits
to this war against conditions of life. The rate of deaths amongst
children was almost double that reported by French statistics; but
the proportion of deaths was still much less than that among the
first geese at Bogota. Finally, far from having been weakened, the
fertility of the women had increased; the sources of life were
therefore much less affected in this case than upon the high plateaus
of America.
From all these considerations, I felt justified in concluding
that the acclimatisation of the French in Algeria was certain of
success, and would not require twenty generations. My opinion has
been corroborated by events much sooner than I expected. The census
of 1870 showed in the European population of Algeria an increase of
25,000, due almost entirely to the superiority of the number of
births over that of deaths. The action of the first generation born
in the country began to make itself felt, and from that time the
result has been still more striking. In two or three more generations
the French Creole will live in Algeria quite as well as his ancestors
have lived in France.
There are, however, distinctions which must be drawn with regard to
the facility of acclimatisation in Algeria, between the different
European races, and even between the inhabitants of the north and
south of France. The statistics offered by MM. Boudin, Martin, and
Foley show clearly that the Spaniards and Maltese stand the Algerian
climate infinitely better than the English, Belgians, or Germans.
Now, the inhabitants of the north of France strongly resemble the
latter nations in race and habits. In both these respects the
inhabitants of southern France are connected, on the contrary, with
the inhabitants of Malta and Spain. We might, therefore, without much
fear of error, prophesy that the latter had, either for themselves or
their descendants, a much greater chance of surviving than the French
of Alsatian and Flemish origin. Experience has again fully confirmed
these deductions of theory.
V. The information which we derive from these facts taking place,
so to speak, at our very doors, and among races with which we are
very closely connected, may, with perfect justice, be applied to
conditions of life more widely different in character, to races
which are much more distinct from each other than the French and
the Belgians. Nevertheless, the conclusion so obtained would
have the same value as that drawn from a general formula, the
signification of which changes with the data. When the question is
one of acclimatisation, these data always rise from the two elements
mentioned above: conditions of race and life. If either vary, even
though it be but slightly and within narrow limits, the result is
necessarily altered, and often in a very unexpected manner. Every
question of acclimatisation, in reality then, forms a separate
problem, which often, again, is sub-divided into a number of
particular cases, each of which demands a special solution. Without
leaving the French colonies, we can quote on this subject another
most striking example.
Anthropologists, as well as doctors, have often questioned the
possibility of the acclimatisation of Europeans in the archipelagoes
of the great Mexican Gulf, which, through yellow fever and the
influences by which it is developed, is particularly fatal to him.
At first sight, it is true, a number of general facts seem to leave
no doubt that the answer should be in the affirmative. Since the
discovery of America Europeans have always occupied these islands,
and the White race, bringing with it the Negro, have everywhere
replaced the Caribbean race. In answer to this statement, it has been
argued that these islands are one of the most favourite parts of
the globe for emigration, and that by this means alone a population
is maintained, which, if left to itself, would soon disappear.
Calculations are opposed to calculations, statistics to statistics,
and were we to approach the subject without analysing facts, the
question would appear most obscure.
To solve it in those cases only in which France is interested, we
will speak only of Guadeloupe and Martinique. We know that these
islands were colonised by the French only 235 years ago. Even
allowing the very liberal ratio of four generations to the century,
we find that, at the most, ten generations have elapsed in these
islands, the climate of which is of all others the most fatal to
Europeans. Now, more than twenty generations were necessary to
acclimatise the geese at Bogota. The experiment, therefore, is not
complete. Nevertheless, in presence of the facts of longevity and
fecundity attested by M. Simonot, we do not hesitate to share his
opinions. Although the French race may not yet be acclimatised in
Martinique and Guadeloupe, we may be certain that it soon will be.
It is no less true that statistics attest an excess of deaths over
births. The information which they furnish has, however, been
presented without distinction. Old and new creoles have been mixed
together, as well as the latest emigrants, in a common estimate.
Elements, which are fundamentally very different have thus been
confounded. For a work of this kind to have any real value, it is
absolutely necessary to divide the population into classes determined
by the time of emigration, and to estimate the length of time
itself by the number of generations. By proceeding in this manner,
we shall undoubtedly establish in the mortality of groups striking
differences, more or less analogous to those displayed by the
generations of plants and animals transported into Africa or America.
The statistics in question are still further vitiated by a fault,
which is completely exposed by M. Walther in his work upon
Guadeloupe. He, also, has drawn up tables of mortality; only, instead
of taking the population _en masse_, he studied each district
separately. Very significant differences then made their appearance.
Considered as a whole the population of Guadeloupe offers an annual
excess of 0·46 deaths over births, that is to say, nearly one-half
per cent. In presence of these facts, the statisticians whose views I
am attacking, would certainly have concluded that the European is not
acclimatised in Guadeloupe, and have declared, that, after a certain
time, which might easily be calculated, this colonial population
would become extinct, if the voids were not incessantly filled by
fresh immigrants.
When, however, we examine the table of mortality taken by districts,
we arrive at very different conclusions. These districts number
thirty-one. Now, in fifteen the number of births is greater than that
of deaths. In the little island of Marie-Galante this is the case in
two districts out of three. Thus, the terrible calculations of the
mean mortality are due entirely to the exaggeration of mortality in
certain districts, while the European has become acclimatised in the
others.
The tables of mortality drawn up in Algeria by M. Boudin present
analogous facts. Out of sixty-nine localities, fifty-five have shown,
since 1857, an excess of births over deaths.
The general result obtained by M. Walther may be thus explained. The
French race is acclimatised in Guadeloupe in fifteen localities, but
not in the remaining sixteen. Of these two statements, the first
should be considered as definitely proved; the second requires
confirmation, for a closer examination of the populations of the
most unhealthy districts, and a study of them in classes, is still
required.
However this may be, every unprejudiced person will acknowledge that
we can no longer question the fact of acclimatisation in _Guadeloupe_
as a whole. It should now only be a question of acclimatisation at
_Basse terra_, at _Pointe-à-Pitre_, at _Pointe-Noire_, etc.
VI. The French Antilles, as also the greater number of the sister
islands, are the scene of valuable experiments upon the aptitude of
different human races to stand this exceptional climate, which is one
of the most difficult to overcome. The Negro was carried there by
force very shortly after the occupation of the islands by the Whites,
and has lived there in a state of slavery till within the last few
years. As the condition of the parents was inherited by the children,
there is little room for doubt, but that after a given time the local
multiplication of the Blacks would have sufficed for all the wants of
agriculture and industry, if the race had become acclimatised. The
incessant activity of the slave trade, seems to show that the number
of deaths must have greatly exceeded that of births. There appears to
be no doubt as to the truth of the fact for the island of Cuba or for
Jamaica. General Tulloch, struck by the mortality of the Negroes in
the English Antilles, has not hesitated to declare that if the trade
were once suppressed, the whole race would disappear in these islands
before the close of a century. The researches of M. Boudin justify us
in regarding this assertion as an exaggeration, at least as regards
the French possessions.
Neither the English nor the French author has, however, taken into
consideration a circumstance, the importance of which cannot be
denied. I allude to the conditions imposed upon the Negro by slavery.
It is clear that the character and conduct of the master played an
important part in the probability of the life or death of the slave.
Without feeling himself to be, and without being inhuman, the master
might demand more labour from him than his nature could support,
or violate those instincts, the free play of which is necessary to
health. This was certainly the case in Cuba, where it was the general
practice to get as much out of the slaves as possible, thus creating
the necessity for more frequent renewal. We have here, doubtless, one
of those causes by which the mortality of a race, better fitted than
ours for intertropical climates, is so immoderately increased. Facts
seem to justify these conjectures. “Since the abolition of slavery,”
says M. Elisée Reclus, “the Negro population has been on the increase
in the English islands.”
However singular this fact may appear to some anthropologists, it
is only a repetition of what took place in Brazil. There again, it
was said, that the slave trade alone maintained a black population,
which was destined to diminish and disappear as soon as this enforced
immigration should cease. Authentic documents show that the opposite
has taken place. The slave trade was abolished long before slavery in
this great Empire. For many years the proprietors, being unable to
purchase fresh slaves, took care of those in their possession, and
from that time the Negroes have multiplied. Thus it was that during
the period in which the missionaries of the Jesuits flourished, that
portion of the black race in which they were interested was observed
to increase in an extraordinary manner, whilst in the rich haciendas,
where it was uncared for and overworked, it dwindled away.
By the side of the Negro Creole, there are now in the French Antilles
labourers engaged more or less voluntarily from the same coasts of
Africa, representatives of the Semitic white race from Madeira,
Chinese of yellow race, and Indian coolies, who are almost all
dravidian, and consequently a cross between the black and the yellow.
It will be interesting at some future time, to show what resistance
each of these nations has offered to the terrible climate they are
confronting. The experiment is, at present, only begun. Nevertheless
M. Walther has already obtained some interesting data at Guadeloupe.
The mean annual mortality of the Creoles is 3·28 per 100; that of
immigrants, 9·66 for the Chinese; 7·68 for Negroes; 7·12 for Hindoos;
and 5·80 for the natives of Madeira. Unfortunately, the statistics
are doubtful, and differ from those which M. Du Hailly has given for
Martinique. They must, however, both be recorded as the starting
point for new study. There is, moreover, no cause for despair. It is
clear, for example, that the natives of Madeira will very quickly
become acclimatised in Guadeloupe, as is already the case in Cuba,
and the much more serious mortality of the Negro, Chinese, and Hindoo
races does not prove the impossibility of their ever inhabiting these
islands.
VII. The conditions of life and the nature of the race are not
all in the numerous problems raised by acclimatisation. Man, even
individually, brings his special elements to bear upon it. The savage
and the modern European are placed, by the mere fact of the social
differences which separate them, in conditions often opposite, and
not always in favour of the latter.
Even the marvels of modern industry, whilst facilitating immigration
into distant lands, make it more dangerous. Railways and steamers
have reduced the longest journeys to a mere nothing. Lands, which
it took our ancestors centuries to people, distances which our own
fathers could only travel over in several months, are accomplished by
us in a few days. We have here, then, yet another to be added to the
many difficulties of acclimatisation. It is a common thing in Paris
to hear men complain of the effects of a mere journey from Algiers.
The rapidity of the transit gives a shock to the organisation,
although tending to replace it under its natural conditions of life.
The shock is necessarily greater when the journey is made in the
other direction, and we go against our physical habits, instead of
returning to them. And, when after a few days’ voyage, instead of
Algiers, we land at Rio de Janeiro or the Antilles, the shock must be
great indeed.
Modern civilisation is also answerable to a great extent for the
losses involved by every settlement in a climate differing too widely
from our own. By reason of the security with which she surrounds the
poor as well as the rich, of the at least relative ease which is
enjoyed by all classes of society, we are little prepared for the
struggle for existence. Without going so far back as primitive man or
the Aryans, let us simply call to mind Balbao, Pizarro, Cortez, Soto,
Monbars, and their rough companions; can the present generation offer
such a resistance as theirs?
It is not, however, by its luxuries only that civilisation renders
us unfit to confront the chances of acclimatisation. It is also, and
principally, by the vices which too often accompany it. M. Bolot, who
was in charge of a number of men employed for the construction of a
pier at Grand Bassam, said to Captain Vallon: “A Sunday will put more
of my men in the hospital, than three days of work in the full heat
of the sun.” This was because Sunday was given up to debauchery.
Here, again, is a fact forming, so to speak, an experiment such as
might have been imagined by a physiologist. The Isle of Bourbon
passes for one of those disastrous climates to which the European
cannot become acclimatised. The tables of mortality which relate to
the whole population do, in fact, show that the deaths exceed the
births to a formidable extent. This is, however, another of those
sweeping results, into which we must inquire if we wish to understand
its true meaning.
The Whites of Bourbon form, in reality, two classes, or rather two
races, distinct in their manners and customs. The former includes the
population of towns and large settlements, who lead the ordinary life
of colonists, and especially avoid agricultural labour, considered by
Creoles as degrading as well as fatal. The latter includes the _Mean
Whites_, descendants of the original colonists, who, too poor to buy
slaves, were forced to cultivate the land with their own hands.
Now, of these two classes of colonists, it is the former alone which
supply the mortality to which attention is so often drawn. The Mean
Whites live as their fathers lived; they inhabit and cultivate the
less fertile districts of the island. Far from having deteriorated,
their race has improved, and the women, in particular, are remarkable
for beauty of form and feature. The race maintains itself perfectly,
and seems to be on the increase. Crossing, moreover, has no influence
in the matter, for the Mean White, proud of the purity of blood which
constitutes his nobility, will not, at any price, ally himself with
the Negro or Coolie.
Thus at Bourbon, indolence, and the habits which it involves, destroy
the rich, and those who try to imitate them, while the poor become
acclimatised through sobriety, purity of manners, and a moderate
amount of work. From the latter, anthropologists and all the world
may learn a lesson of grave importance, at once scientific and moral.
VIII. Finally, acclimatisation and naturalisation are as universal in
history as migration, of which they are the consequence. We see them
daily accomplished under our very eyes, and with the most different
races, though almost invariably at the price of human life. In many
places, they are purchased very cheaply, so much so, that study
alone teaches us that new conditions of life in no case entirely
lose their rights. In others, specially in countries characterised
by an extreme climate, they involve considerable losses. But there
is nothing to authorise us to deny the existence of acclimatisation
and naturalisation. Everything, on the contrary, proves that if they
are willing to submit to the necessary sacrifices, all human races
may live and prosper in almost every climate which is not vitiated by
accidental causes.
IX. In this case, as in many others, the present explains the past,
which also contributes its share of information. Relying upon our
own daily experience, and upon facts borrowed from history, we can
form a general idea of the manner in which the world has been peopled.
The history of the Aryan race alone, gives us, so to speak, that of
the whole species. We see it starting from the Bolor, and Hindoo Koh,
from the Eeriéné Veedjo, where the summer only lasted two months,
descending into Bokhara, and overrunning Persia and Cabul before
reaching the basin of the Indus. Eleven stations mark this route
followed by the Aryans before reaching the Ganges. We there find
them again slowly advancing, though all the time sending forth as a
vanguard, those _pious heroes_, who slew the Rakchassas, and prepared
the way for conquests. The race is now in the tropics in India, in
the Polar circle in Greenland, where the Norwegians and Danes have
replaced the Sea-Kings; it spreads over an immense region of more or
less temperate climate, and possesses colonies in every part of the
world.
The human species must have made a beginning like the Aryans. Upon
leaving their centre of creation, it was by slow stages, that the
primitive colonists, ancestors of all existing races, marched forth
to the conquest of the uninhabited world. They thus accustomed
themselves to the different conditions of existence imposed upon them
by the north, the south, the east, or the west, cold or heat, plain
or mountain. Diverging in every direction, and meeting with different
conditions of life, they gradually established a harmony between
themselves and each one of them. Thus acclimatisation, advancing at
the same rate as geographical conquest, was less fatal. The struggle,
however, though mitigated indeed by the slowness of the advance,
still existed, and many pioneers must have fallen upon the route. But
the survivors had only nature to face, and, therefore, succeeded, and
peopled the world.
BOOK VII.
PRIMITIVE MAN.—FORMATION OF THE HUMAN RACES.
CHAPTER XXI.
PRIMITIVE MAN.
I. The primitive type of the human species must necessarily have
been effaced, and have disappeared. The enforced migrations, and the
actions of climate, must of themselves have produced this result.
Man has passed through two geological epochs; perhaps his centre of
appearance is no longer in existence; at any rate, the conditions are
very different to those prevailing when humanity began its existence.
When everything was changing round him, man could not avoid being
changed also. Crossing, also, has certainly played its part in this
transformation. I shall shortly return to these different points
which I only allude to here.
But, on the other hand, we shall see that the skull of the most
ancient Quaternary race is repeated not only in some Australian
tribes, but in Europe, and in men who have played an important part
among their fellow-countrymen. The other races of the same epoch,
judging from the skull, have many representatives amongst us.
They have, nevertheless, passed through one of the two geological
revolutions, which separates us from our original stock. It is then
not impossible that the latter may have transmitted to a certain
number of men, perhaps scattered in time and space, at least a part
of its characters.
Unfortunately, we do not know where to seek for reproductions,
bearing more or less resemblance to the primitive type; and, for
want of information it would be impossible to recognise them as
such, if we were to meet with them. Here, therefore, observation
alone can furnish no data. But, when it is aided by physiology, some
conjectures are possible.
II. We know that among animals atavism often causes the reappearance
of ancestral characters, even when a careful selection has acted upon
hundreds of generations. The silkworms of the Cévennes which yield
white cocoons, and the black sheep of Spain furnish examples. In man,
where selection does not exist, such facts would be much more likely
to be produced. Some characters of our first ancestors ought to
appear in isolated cases or collectively in all human races; perhaps,
there are some which have been preserved in one or more groups.
Consequently, by searching for them, and classifying those which
appear in a more or less erratic manner among races which are most
dissimilar in all other respects, we shall probably be able to form a
partial reproduction of the primitive human type.
In this respect, it is difficult to avoid attaching a real importance
to the prognathism of the upper jaw. This anatomical feature is very
pronounced in almost all Negro races: it is also strongly marked in
certain Yellow races. It is considerably diminished among Whites:
but, nevertheless, it appears at times almost as strongly marked as
in the two other groups: it existed in Quaternary man. Everything
seems to indicate that it must have been as strongly developed in our
first ancestors.
Phenomena of atavism acting on the colouring are of frequent
occurrence among animals.
They are equally prevalent in the human species. This consideration
causes me to attach real importance to the opinion of M. de Salles,
who attributes red hair to the earliest men. In fact, among all
human races, individuals have been noticed whose hair more or less
approaches to this tint.
The experiments of Darwin upon the effects of crossing between very
different races of pigeons led to the same conclusion. He found that
the crossings resulted in the reappearance of certain peculiarities
of colour in the mongrels, which were peculiar to the original
_species_, and which had disappeared in the two parent _races_. Now
in our colonies the offspring of a Mulatto and a White frequently
has red hair. In Europe also, M. Hamy has remarked that children are
born with red hair, when one of the parents is decidedly dark and the
other decidedly fair. In all cases of this nature, we should say that
the primitive character reasserts itself, being accidentally acquired
by the reciprocal neutralisation of opposed ethnical characters.
When examined under the microscope, the cutaneous pigment which gives
the human body its characteristic colour, doubtless shows different
tints, but yellow is always present as a colouring element. If we
apply to man the laws which Isidore Geoffroy has deduced from his
observations upon animals, we are led to conclude that this colour
originally predominated. When the White is crossed with the Negro,
the yellow colouring element at once asserts itself and generally
appears to predominate. In the colonies the general term of _yellows_
is sometimes given to mulattos. This result is again explained by
the experiments of Darwin; and the conclusion is admissible that the
original colour of man more or less approximated to this tint.
Certain facts which have been observed among Negroes seem also to
confirm this conclusion. Among the most strongly characterised
peoples belonging to this type, the appearance has been noticed of
individuals of a lighter colour, sometimes almost resembling the
Whites in this respect, sometimes tending more or less to yellow,
without presenting any of the phenomena of teratological albinism.
These individual peculiarities of colour may be attributed to
atavism. Now among no white or yellow race have facts been noticed
which can be regarded as reciprocal to the preceding.
Nothing therefore authorises us to regard the Negro race as having
preceded the other two; and, on the contrary, the contrast which I
have just pointed out leads to the conclusion that the ancestors of
the negro were a race of a much lighter colour.
On the other hand, we know that the Aryan race is the latest. The
question of priority thus lies between the Semitic, the Allophylian,
and the group of yellow races. What I have said above of the
fundamental colour being present as an element in the colour of all
races, and the phenomena of crossing, point with some probability in
favour of the latter.
Philology seems to confirm this view. Monosyllabic languages, which
imply the first attempts at human speech, only exist among the
yellow races. All the Negro races and the Allophylian Whites speak
agglutinative languages, which answer to the second form which man
gave to the expression of his thoughts. Aryans and Semites both have
inflectional languages.
Philology then seems to lead to the same conclusion as physiology,
and even to give an appearance of greater probability to these
conjectures, which I only give for what they are worth.
III. We know nothing of primitive man; we acknowledge that, from want
of information, it would be impossible to recognise him. All that the
present state of our knowledge allows us to say is that, according
to all appearance he ought to be characterised by a certain amount
of prognathism, and have neither a black skin nor woolly hair. It
is also fairly probable that his colour would resemble that of the
yellow races, and his hair be more or less red. Finally everything
tends to the conclusion that the language of our earliest ancestors
was a more or less pronounced monosyllabic one.
These are only conjectures, and they amount to but little, but this
little is founded upon experiment and observation.
IV. We can also only form very vague conjectures upon the degree of
intellectual development which man exhibited at his birth and during
his first generations. At any rate it is possible to believe that he
did not enter upon the scene of the world with innate knowledge, and
the instinctive industries which belong to animals. Still less did he
appear in a fully civilised state “mature in body and mind” as thinks
the Comte Eusèbe de Salles. All traditions point to a period when
human knowledge was very small, when man was ignorant of industries,
to our eyes very elementary, and which we see appear in succession.
Upon this point the Bible agrees with classical mythology. The
Hebrews have their Tubal Cain, and the Greeks their Triptolemos.
Prehistoric studies confirm this progressive development in Western
Europe upon every point. Tertiary industries precede quaternary.
The whole history of races seems to me to give, at least in part,
a representation of that of the Species; and our thoughts go back
almost irresistibly to the time when man found himself face to face
with creation, armed solely with the aptitudes which were destined to
undergo such a marvellous development.
Thanks to these aptitudes, at a very early period he satisfied at
least the first wants of existence. The miocene man of La Beauce
already knew the use of fire and worked flint. However rough and
rudimentary his instruments may have been, he had even then an
industry, and according to all appearance fed partly upon cooked
food. The man of Saint-Prest, with his small lozenge-shaped
arrow-heads, worked only on one side, with his rough hatchets, could
undoubtedly attack and kill the great contemporary mammalia. He
possessed _scrapers_ which he used to prepare their skins with, and
_awls_, which perhaps served as needles. From this distant period,
upon which science has thrown as yet but little light, man reveals
his existence by two great facts, and shows his superiority to the
whole animal creation.
CHAPTER XXII.
FORMATION OF HUMAN RACES UNDER THE SOLE INFLUENCE OF CONDITIONS OF
LIFE AND HEREDITY.
I. The first men who peopled the centre of human appearance must at
first have differed from each other only in individual features. At
their beginning and during an indefinite lapse of time, mankind could
only have been homogeneous, as is every animal and vegetable species
which is restricted to an area of small extent.
At the present time, we find mankind composed of numerous groups,
which have peculiar characters, and constitute so many distinct
races. How have these races originated? and how have they grown and
multiplied?
To give a definite reply to these questions, by going back from
recent effects to first causes, is still impossible, and perhaps will
always be so. Nevertheless, science may even now approach the general
aspects of the problem. We are well acquainted with the circumstances
under which varieties originate and races are formed among plants
and animals: we have established in man the occurrence of a number
of phenomena, which are in this respect identical, or very similar
to those exhibited by the two inferior kingdoms. We are therefore
clearly authorised to apply inferences drawn from them to ourselves,
connecting particular with general facts. This study is instructive
in many respects. Unfortunately, we cannot fully enter upon it here;
we can only select some facts in the history of animals to justify
our conclusions.
II. The problem of the formation of human races presents two very
distinct cases. Man at first was subject to the sole action of
_natural modifying agents_. Under this influence _pure races_ were
formed. When these races came in contact, they were _crossed_;
this resulted in the formation of _mixed races_. Without being
antagonistic to the natural forces, _crossing_ modifies them by its
peculiar phenomena, and sometimes masks their manifestations. The two
cases, therefore, require separate examination. We will begin with
the first.
III. Every organic species considered as a whole appears to be
subjected to the action of two forces, one of which tends to maintain
and the other to modify its characters. To what cause can this double
action be referred? This is a question put by the greatest thinkers
and the most eminent physiologists, from Aristotle and Hippocrates to
Burdach and J. Müller.
It is not the _resemblances_ existing between the members of the
same species, or between the members of one family, which perplex
philosophers: all agree in referring them to _heredity_. The problem
lies rather in the _differences_. Not only in the considerable
differences which are established between races; but more especially
in the _shades_ constituting the _individual traits_ which
distinguish father from son, or brother from brother. This is in
reality the fundamental difficulty, and many hypotheses have been
proposed for its solution. Prosper Lucas, after having discussed them
separately, regarded them all as insufficient, and believed that,
side by side with _heredity_, which maintains types, we ought to
admit a special force, _innateness_ (_l’innéité_) which diversifies
them.
We can, however, account for the double tendency exhibited by living
beings, without having recourse to a new force. For this purpose it
is sufficient to push the analysis of phenomena a little further than
is customary, and to obtain a clear idea of the part played by the
_conditions of life_ (_milieu_) and _heredity_. As a general rule an
action is attributed to the first, which everywhere and at all times
is a modifying one, and to the second a purely conservative action.
Now it may be easily shown that this is not the case; and that each
of these causes acts in an inverse manner according to circumstances.
IV. By virtue of the laws of heredity, the father and mother tend
equally to transmit to their offspring their own character. However
similar they may be supposed to be, there are always some differences
between them; and the nature of the new being is necessarily a
compromise between two different tendencies. The son cannot,
therefore, always resemble his father exactly. In him the characters
_common_ to both parents will easily be exaggerated; the _opposite_
characters will be neutralised; and the _different_ characters will
produce a _resultant_, as distinct from the two components as green
is from yellow and blue. Thus even by virtue of its own tendencies,
and in consequence of the enforced co-operation of the sexes, _direct
and immediate heredity_ becomes, in some respects, a cause of
variation.
_Mediate and indirect heredity_, justly compared by Burdach to
geneagenetic phenomena, as well as _atavism_, which suddenly
reproduces with great exactness the characters of an ancestor,
sometimes after hundreds of generations, have certainly considerable
influence in the variation of individual traits, and in the
differences which distinguish parents from their children.
Their action, added to that of direct heredity, is sufficient to
explain the appearance of certain varieties, without appealing to
_innateness_.
V. But the hereditary force, although it is manifested from one
generation to another, or through several generations, is always
influenced by the _conditions of life_ (_milieu_), and this has
evidently greater force.
This term ought to be taken in a much more general sense than is
usually the case. Buffon himself only took into account climate,
varying quantities of food, and the hardships of servitude, when he
was treating of domestic animals. I understand by the _conditions of
life_ something much more complex. They comprehend the sum of all the
conditions under whose sway a plant, an animal, or man, is formed
and grows as germ, embryo, youth, and adult. To make a selection from
these conditions, to admit some and take them into consideration,
to reject and exclude the rest, is evidently an entirely arbitrary
procedure. The consideration of only a certain period of life, the
neglect of the whole intra-ovarian or intra-uterine period, deserves
the same reproach. From this point of view, the existence of a being
cannot be severed, any more than the _conditions of life_ under whose
rule this existence is accomplished.
A number of cases do away with all doubt as to the action of the
_conditions of life_ upon the germ, or upon the embryo, however
much it may appear to be protected by the envelopes of the ovum, or
by the tissues of the mother. The two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire have
clearly proved that monstrosity dates from the earliest stages of the
formation of the being, and indicates in certain cases the external
causes which have produced it. The experiments of M. Dareste have
confirmed and enlarged in a singular manner these first conclusions,
while giving them greater precision. By mixing madder with the food
of a female mammal, Flourens produced a red colour in the bones of
the fœtus. By placing the eggs of a salmon-trout in waters which only
nourished white-trout, Coste noticed the eggs become gradually paler,
and produce trout which had lost the characteristic colour of their
race. In order to increase the height of our excellent small horses
of the “camargue” race, it is sufficient to give the mare during the
period of gestation a more plentiful diet than that to which she is
accustomed in her half-wild state.
Thus it is established in the clearest manner and by exact
experiments that the conditions of life, when acting upon the embryo
during the intra-uterine or intra-ovarian part of its existence, are
capable of producing either the gravest teratological disorders, or
simple and slight deviations. We are, therefore, clearly justified
in attributing to the same cause modifications which are placed
between these extremes according to their importance. To invoke
_innateness_, in order to explain their appearance, is obviously
superfluous. We shall connect, therefore, with actions of this kind
the appearance of the first spineless Acacia of which we have spoken
before, of the first Ancon sheep in Massachusetts in 1791, that of
the first Mauchamp sheep in France in 1828, etc.
The Ancon and Mauchamp races are only propagated by human industry.
But these sudden deviations from a given type can also extend and
multiply their numbers by themselves. It is well-known that South
American oxen are descended from a horned Spanish race. Now, in 1770,
a hornless ox was produced in Paraguay. In several years, according
to d’Azara, this exceptional form had, as it were, invaded several
provinces. Nevertheless, the race is far from being in favour,
because the absence of horns renders it less liable to be caught by
the lasso, so that its destruction was attempted. It was, therefore,
evidently propagated spontaneously.
Whoever has the smallest acquaintance with embryogenesis will have no
difficulty in understanding that conditions of life act especially
upon organisms in respect to their formation and evolution. However,
their influence upon an animal, even when full-grown, is sometimes
quite as marked. Our sheep, when transferred to America, generally
become acclimatised without undergoing great changes. Their fleece,
particularly, is retained. But in the plains of the Meta it is only
retained on condition of the sheep being regularly shorn. If they are
left to themselves, the wool becomes of a felty nature, is detached
in flakes, and is replaced by a short, stiff, and shining hair. Under
the influence of this burning climate, the same individual becomes in
turn a woolly and a hairy animal. Now, innateness, as Prosper Lucas
conceives it, cannot be appealed to in the case of changes undergone
by a full-grown animal, whilst the action of conditions of life is
here incontestable.
VI. We have just pointed out how heredity and conditions of life can
give rise to a _variety_. Now, the individual which has commenced
to deviate from its original type becomes in its turn a _parent_;
it tends to transmit to its offspring the exceptional characters
which distinguish it. The same facts are repeated in its offspring;
and, at each generation, the actions of the conditions of life are
added to each other. Thus every time heredity transmits the sum of
these actions to the following generation. The faintest modification
increased from father to son sometimes leads to most marked changes.
Our European oxen, in the hot plains of Mariquita and Neyba gradually
lost their hair, at first became _pelones_, and would soon have
formed an entirely naked race, if the _calongos_ had not been
regularly killed. Again, pigs which have become wild in the Paramos
have acquired a kind of wool under the action of a continuous, but
not excessive cold. The Guinea dog and the Esquimaux dog present an
analogous contrast between races of the same species.
In the preceding examples, and in many others which must be omitted,
the actions in question modify organisms in order to place them in
harmony with the conditions of life. Now it is intelligible that when
the maximum of possible effect has once been attained, they can only
fix the result obtained more fully, but can never determine a change
in the opposite direction. The heat, which has by degrees deprived
calongo cattle of their hair, will never restore it again; and the
cold which has made our pigs woolly, will never deprive them of
wool. Here, then, we find _conditions of life_ acting as an agent of
preservation and stability.
VII. In the preceding passage allusion has been made to natural
forces left to themselves. It is to them that the formation is due
of the wild races of all the species whose geographical area is very
extended, such as the fox, jackal, lion, etc.
These races are sometimes so different that they were regarded
as distinct species, as long as the intervening geographical and
zoological terms were unknown. Frederick Cuvier himself made this
mistake in the case of the jackals of India and those of the
Senegal. Wild races have, however, never been so numerous or so
distinct from each other as domesticated races.
Are we to infer from this that man exercises around himself and of
himself a kind of magnetic action, as some authors seem to admit?
Certainly not. In reality, he only acts upon an animal by setting
in action, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, the
two agents which, hitherto, we have met with everywhere, conditions
of life and heredity. By the single fact of domestication, by the
confinement which is almost always the result of it, he changes
entirely the natural conditions of existence. By leading in his
train the animals which he has enslaved, he diversifies still more
the influences which act upon them. Prompt to seize every means of
rendering them most useful, he profits by the smallest modifications
which show the least advantage, pushes them to their utmost limits
and produces the _extreme races_, of which our exhibitions of animal
races give such curious examples.
The chief means which man uses for the attainment of these results,
which at times seem to border on the marvellous, is _selection_. Ever
since he has possessed domestic animals he has marked out among them
individuals which are better adapted than the rest to his intentions.
By some kind of instinct, or _unconsciously_, as Darwin says, he has
chosen them to breed from. By rejecting the types which he considers
inferior, and only employing the higher types wherewith to propagate
the species, he has directed the action of heredity in a definite
direction, and has readily created races. Now, man has acted in this
manner since the times spoken of in Genesis and by Chou-King, that
is, for thousands of years. Is it then surprising that he should
have multiplied around him hereditary forms which are more or less
distinct from the primitive types?
_Progressive selection_ would doubtless lead to numerous and varied
results. Would it allow of the creation of races whose characters
almost reach hemitery? The answer to this question is at least
doubtful. But we have not to ask it. When by one of the actions of
the conditions of life, whose origin remains obscure, an almost
teratological animal form is produced, it soon disappears by the
mixture of blood from different sources, if unions are left to
chance. This is the reason why analogous facts are not observed in
feral races. But if this form appears in a domestic animal, if it
answers to any want or caprice, selection intervenes, preserves it,
and multiplies it. This explains the origin of the Ancon sheep, which
were all descended from a single ram of which we have spoken above;
also the means by which M. Graux de Mauchamp has raised his race of
sheep with silky fleeces from a single ram. These two examples show
how all those peculiar races have been obtained, which in some of
their characters seem to clash with the very type from which they
were derived. In the canine species the beagle corresponds to the
Ancon sheep; the _niata_ cattle, which have appeared in South America
since its conquest, correspond to the bull-dog, etc.
VIII. Races, when once formed under man’s influence, are fixed by the
same causes which produced them. Their characters, which at first
were entirely artificial, become more and more fixed, so much so,
that even a very considerable change in the conditions of existence,
never effaces them entirely. The _acquired nature_ is, so to speak,
welded to the original nature of the being.
This is a fact not generally recognised by naturalists and
anthropologists who have touched upon these questions. For instance,
it has been admitted as proved that domestic races, when they have
returned to the feral state, reassume all the original characters of
the species. This is a mistake. The fact is, that both with animals
and plants, _escaped races_ lose a certain number of characters, and
frequently the most apparent ones, which they owe to domestication;
they reassume others which they had lost during their period of
servitude, but the former are more frequently only diminished and
masked by the latter. If fruit-trees escaped from our orchards,
if our horses, dogs, cattle, and pigs, when they have become wild,
had really reassumed the original type of the species, they ought
to present in every area which they inhabit the marked uniformity
characteristic of animals who were never subject to man. This is not
the case. They ought in particular to preserve no trace of their
acquired characters. Now, the latter are partly persistent. Vans Mons
has found apple-trees and pear-trees of Belgium, in a wild state, in
the forest of the Ardennes. The prickles had reappeared, the fruit
had become small and bitter again, but the principal cultivated
varieties were still to be recognised. I have established an
analogous fact with regard to cling-stone and free-stone peach-trees
in a valley of the Cévennes. Similarly Martin de Moussy has
recognised in the troops of dogs which have become wild in America,
all the chief races from which they had been derived, although they
reassumed the general characters of the tan-coloured type.
IX. From the number of observations which have been collected among
plants and animals, and of which I can only notice a small number,
it is easy to understand the appearance and multiplication of human
races, and to account for certain general facts, some of which
are closely connected with our history. Let us state at starting
that with man, as with animals, _varieties_ have appeared at times
which may be classed among hemitery. Individuals, exhibiting from
their birth exceptional characters, are none the less healthy, and
sometimes have very remarkable power of transmission. Edward Lambert,
born in 1717 of perfectly healthy parents, had all his life a kind
of carapace more than an inch thick, and irregularly fissured, which
gave him the name of _the porcupine man_. All his children, to the
number of six, and his two grandchildren, inherited this strange
modification of the skin, although his wife and his daughter-in-law
did not show the least trace of it. In the Colburn family, four
generations were marked with polydactylism which was derived from the
grandmother of the great calculator. At the fourth generation, four
children out of eight still had supernumerary fingers, though at
each generation normal blood was mixed with the teratological blood.
Evidently, if the descendants of Lambert and Colburn had been treated
like those of the first Ancon or Mauchamp sheep, two human races
would have been obtained, one characterised by a cutaneous carapace,
and the other by the possession of six fingers. But here selection
was wanting, and the exceptional blood, from being diluted at each
fresh marriage, did not fail to be rapidly exhausted.
X. Man does not subject himself to the selection, which he applies
with so much success to animals and plants. In his species,
therefore, the extreme variations which are obtained elsewhere are
not produced. It is thus easily explained why the limits of variation
are not so extensive with man as with domesticated or cultivated
races. But if, for some motive or other, he were to apply the
process of selection to himself, we should not have to wait long for
the result. By marrying the tallest women to the giants of their
guard, Frederick William and Frederick II. had created at Potsdam a
real race distinguished for its tall stature. In Alsace a Duke de
Deux-Ponts, who imitated the Prussian sovereigns, obtained the same
result.
There is another cause which contributes powerfully to restrict the
limits of variation in man, namely, the power which his intelligence
gives him of partly escaping from the effects of the conditions of
life. He is always struggling, as much as he is able, against the
external influences capable of disturbing the equilibrium which
constitutes his well-being. In the tropics, he uses contrivances
for avoiding the heat; in the polar circle, he perfects his means
of heating; if he emigrates, he carries with him, as far as he can,
his manners and customs, and struggles with redoubled care against
the new conditions of life. There is nothing strange in finding
him successful in neutralising to a certain extent the modifying
influences of the external world.
XI. Nevertheless, the conditions of life do not surrender their
rights; although diminished, their action is none the less real.
This is a fact which can be affirmed by what occurs in our great
western colonies. Each great European race is there represented by
derived _sub-races_ which vary according to the locality. The islands
in the Gulf of Mexico, North and South America, and Australia itself,
which has been so recently colonised, have at this time their own
peculiar races, some of which are remarkably characterised.
Since I am unable to treat in detail all these facts of
transmutation, I will only notice some of the facts which have been
established in the United States. We know that the English race was
only definitely settled there at the time of the Puritan emigration,
about 1620, and from the arrival of Penn in 1681. Two centuries
and a half, twelve generations at the most, separate us from this
epoch, and nevertheless, the Anglo-American, the _Yankee_, no longer
resembles his ancestors. The fact is so striking that the eminent
zoologist, Andrew Murray, when endeavouring to account for the
formation of animal races, finds he cannot do better than appeal to
the condition of mankind in the United States.
The subject, moreover, is not wanting in precise details, which are
vouched for by a number of travellers, by naturalists, and doctors.
At the second generation the English Creole in North America,
presents, in his features, an alteration which approximates him to
the native races. Subsequently the skin dries and loses its rosy
colour, the glandular system is reduced to a minimum, the hair
darkens and becomes glossy, the neck becomes slender, and the size of
the head diminishes. In the face, the temporal fossæ are pronounced,
the cheek bones become prominent, the orbital cavities become
hollow, and the lower jaw massive. The bones of the extremities are
elongated, while their cavity is diminished, so much so, that in
France and England gloves are specially made for the United States
with exceptionally long fingers. Lastly, in the woman, the pelvis, in
its proportions, approaches to that of the man.
Are these changes signs of a degeneration already accomplished, and
of an approaching extinction, as Knox asserts? I think a reply to
this assertion is hardly necessary. We are sufficiently acquainted
with American men and women to know that, although modified, the
physical type is not on that account lowered in the scale of races;
and the social grandeur of the United States, the marvels they have
accomplished, the energy with which they pass through the rudest
crises, prove that from every point of view, the Yankee race has
retained its rank. It is simply a new race, formed by the American
conditions of life, but which remains worthy of its elder sisters in
Europe, and will perhaps some day surpass them.
The Negro transported into the same countries has also undergone
remarkable changes. His colour has paled, his features have improved,
and his physiognomy is altered. “In the space of 150 years,” says M.
Elisée Reclus, “they have passed a good fourth of the distance which
separates them from the whites, as far as external appearance goes.”
Lyell’s opinion is almost the same. Moreover, when visiting two Negro
churches, at Savannah, he remarked that the odour so characteristic
of the race was scarcely appreciable. A long medical experience at
New Orleans has shown Dr. Visinié that the blood of the Negro Creole
has lost the excess of plasticity which it possessed in Africa. With
MM. Reiset, de Lisboa, etc., with even Nott and Gliddon, let us
add that, while the physical type has undergone modification, the
intelligence has improved, and we shall have to recognise that in the
United States a _sub-Negro race_ has been formed, derived from the
imported race.
XII. Thus the European White and the African Negro, when under
the influence of new conditions of life, have both undergone
modification. Moreover both, according to M. Reclus, whose statements
are confirmed by those of M. l’Abbé Brasseur de Bonbourg, approximate
to the indigenous races. Both of these authors seem to admit that
at the end of a given time, whatever be their origin, all the
descendants of Whites or of Negroes who have immigrated to America
will become Red-skins.
When two such intelligent observers arrive at an identical and
certainly quite unexpected conclusion on such a question, the facts
must be very patent. Yet they have forced their meaning, from not
having taken sufficient account of the nature of the problem. That
the Negro and the White should replace some of their features and
characters by some of the features and characters belonging to the
indigenous races, is quite natural. When subject to the action of the
conditions of life which have formed the local races, they could not
help being influenced by it to a certain extent. But they will never
on that account be confused with the local races nor with each other,
any more than the White transported to Africa would ever become a
true Negro, or the European descendants of a Negro would ever become
true Whites.
This impossibility of one race being transformed into another is
often brought forward as an objection against Monogenism. It is
nevertheless the natural consequence of the phenomena, of which I
have endeavoured to give a short account, and is easily explained.
Every race is a _resultant_ whose _components_ are, partly the
species itself, partly the sum of the modifying agents which have
produced the deviation from the type. We cannot separate those two
elements, and races which have run wild show us to what extent
the fusion can go. Every race which is fixed, when brought under
the conditions of life which have formed another, will doubtless
approximate to the latter; but it will partly retain its former
impress, as the fruit-trees of Van Mons and the wild dogs of Martin
de Moussy have done.
Such is what would take place even among primary races directly
detached from the primitive type, and which have only been subject
to the action of one fixed condition of life. But with the Negro and
the White, the question is much more complex. These two extreme types
represent the last product of two series of long-continued actions,
whose diversity and multiplicity are indicated by the geographical
stations themselves. Europe and tropical Africa have given them, if
the expression may be used, the _last touches_; but their outline
was _sketched out_ long before they reached their present habitat.
By their transposition, we only submit each of them to a part of the
influences which have formed the other, and consequently a complete
exchange of characters could never take place.
XIII. Without denying absolutely the influence of the conditions
of life upon man, most polygenists refuse to admit that they have
the power of producing new races. To support their statements, they
appeal to the persistence of certain types for a considerable lapse
of time, and insist most strongly upon certain facts derived from
Egypt. On this latter point I readily agree with them. It is quite
true that pictures and Egyptian sculptures point to the existence
in the valley of the Nile of a type, or rather types, which are
remarkably uniform; and whoever has visited these countries has
certainly been struck, as I was, with the great resemblance of the
peoples of the present to those of the past.
But what reasons are there why the inhabitants of the valley of the
Nile should change? What cause, except intercrossing, could determine
any modification in their physical characters? In this region,
which is exceptional in so many respects, nothing has changed since
historic times, neither the earth, the sky, nor the river; habits,
customs, and daily life have remained as they were in the time of the
Pharaohs; the Egyptian even uses implements in our days, which are
exactly like those which were used fifty or sixty centuries ago by
his ancestors.
In Egypt, all the conditions of existence, and, consequently, the
actions of the conditions of life, are the same in our days as they
were in those distant times, the history of which is preserved by the
monuments. Far from tending to modify a race which is already fixed,
they have only helped to fix it more and more. In the order of ideas
which I support, a change in the Egyptian type would be inconceivable.
The persistence of a type, far from being an objection to the manner
in which I understand the conditions of life to act, viz.: the
formation and maintenance of races, is a confirmation of it.
XIV. In conclusion; like all animal and vegetable species, the human
species can vary within certain limits; like plants and animals, man
has his _varieties_ and _races_, which have appeared and been formed
by the action of the same causes.
In the human kingdom, as in the two other organic kingdoms, the first
causes of variation are, _conditions of life_ and _heredity_.
In phenomena of this kind, conditions of life act as the supreme
ruler. If they vary, they become modifying agents, if they remain
constant, agents of stabilisation.
In both cases their result is to harmonise organisms with the
conditions of their existence.
Heredity, which is essentially a preserving agent, becomes an agent
of variation, when it transmits and accumulates the modifying actions
of the conditions of life.
XV. It is now easy to understand, in the general sense, the formation
of human races.
Man at first doubtless peopled his centre of appearance and the
countries immediately adjoining. He then commenced the immense and
varied dispersion which dates from tertiary times and continues to
the present day. He has passed through two geological epochs, and is
now in his third. He has seen the mammoth and rhinoceros flourishing
in Siberia in the midst of a rich fauna; he has at least seen them
driven by the cold into the midst of Europe; and he has assisted
in their extinction. Later on, he has retaken possession of the
_barren-lands_ himself; he has pushed his colonies as far as the
neighbourhood of the pole, perhaps to the very pole itself, while at
the same time he has invaded the forests and deserts of the tropics,
reached the extremity of two great continents, and peopled all the
archipelagoes.
For many thousands of years, man has therefore been subject to the
action of all the external conditions of life with which we are
acquainted, to that of the conditions of life of which we can at the
utmost only form an idea. The various kinds of life to which he has
been subjected, and the different degrees of civilisation at which he
stopped or to which he has reached, have all diversified still more
his conditions of existence. Was it possible that he should retain
everywhere and for all time his original characters?
Experience and observation lead to an entirely opposite conclusion.
When we see the Anglo-Saxon of our days, although protected by all
the resources of an advanced civilisation, subjected to the American
conditions of life, and changed into a Yankee, we must admit that at
each of his great stages, when man is submitted to new conditions
of existence, he has had to harmonise himself with them, and in so
doing undergo modification. Each of these principal stations has
necessarily witnessed the formation of a corresponding race. The
original characters, thus successively affected, have become more
and more altered, by reason of the length of the journey, and the
difference of conditions. When they have reached the end of their
journey the grandchildren of the first emigrants would certainly only
retain very few of the characters of their ancestors.
The original human type has probably presented, for an indefinite
time, its original characters in the tribes which remained fixed to
the centre of appearance for our species. When the glacial epoch
began, which, according to all appearance, made the earliest country
of man uninhabitable, these tribes were forced to emigrate in their
turn. Since that time the earth has no longer had _autochthones_, but
has only been peopled by _colonists_. At the same time the modifying
action of the conditions of life was felt by these last comers, who
themselves were also transformed.
From this moment, the original type of man has been lost; the _human
species_ was only composed of _races_, all of which differed more or
less from the first model.
CHAPTER XXIII.
FORMATION OF MIXED HUMAN RACES.
I. The races which had been developed by the sole action of the
conditions of life and of heredity, did not remain isolated. The
earliest emigrants from the centre of appearance certainly did not
pass at once to the extremity of the area determined by their first
stages. They stopped on the way; they formed secondary centres, round
which fresh emigrations spread. The history of the Lenni Lenapes,
as of the Polynesians, proves that this must have been the case.
Consequently, in many cases, the races first formed must frequently
have come in contact. Then, as the waves of emigration followed
each other, the last comers would meet on their way with those who
preceded them. It will further on be proved that facts of this nature
have occurred since Quaternary times.
Whether peaceful or otherwise, these contacts would result in
reciprocal penetrations, and consequently in _intercrossings_.
The founders of anthropology, Buffon, Blumenbach, and even Prichard,
have taken very little notice of crossings between human races, and
have neglected their importance. It can scarcely be brought as a
serious reproach against them. The two former were unacquainted with
many of the facts which we possess at present. Prichard was neither
a naturalist nor a physiologist. Moreover, nothing forcibly directed
their attention towards crossings which might have occurred in more
or less distant times, or among nations still insufficiently known.
At the present time this indifference is impossible. On the one
hand, the better the various nations are known, the greater becomes
the number of those which derive their origin from intercrossing; on
the other hand, it is impossible not to pay attention to everything
which happens to mankind in consequence of the impulse to expansion
and mixture which takes place on every side. From seeing the
phenomena which occur in the present times, we are naturally led to
investigate those which may have taken place in times past.
II. Are _mixed human races_ formed now? In the presence of the
general facts which I have related in a preceding chapter, this
question might appear strange. Nevertheless, the question has been
asked, and in a more or less formal manner has been answered in the
negative. A few words on the subject are therefore necessary.
We may consider the era of modern crossings as dating from the
discovery of the new world. Nevertheless the mixture of bloods has
only taken place on a large scale at a later period, at the utmost
after the conquest of the Indies in 1515, that of Mexico in 1520,
and that of Peru in 1534. We are not separated from this epoch by
more than three centuries and a half. And yet M. d’Omalius, only
counting the products of the crossing of the European White with the
different coloured races, estimates the number of half-breeds at
eighteen millions. The population of the globe being estimated as
1200 millions, the product of cross-unions is already represented by
about 1/65th.
We know, moreover, how irregular is the distribution of half-breeds.
Immense tracts of country have not been affected. But where the
peoples are in intimate contact, the proportion is much greater. In
Mexico and South America half-breeds constitute at least one-fifth of
the population.
But, say Knox and the other anthropologists who more or less
explicitly adopt his views, the number of half-breeds is entirely
kept up by incessant cross-unions. If abandoned to themselves, and
if they no longer had access to the pure races, they would rapidly
disappear. I will confine myself to quoting a few facts in opposition
to these assertions.
At the Cape, the intercrossing of the Dutch and the Hottentots
has resulted in half-breeds called _Basters_, who soon became
sufficiently numerous to inspire alarm. They were banished beyond
the Orange river. Here they settled under the name of Griquas, and
they increased in numbers rapidly. A portion remained behind in the
colony, and formed villages, among others that of New Platberg. The
Basters intermarried between themselves, and travellers testify to
the fertility of these unions.
Martins has seen the _Cafusos_, the result of the crossing of escaped
Negroes with the Brazilian indigenes. Having retired into the woods,
where they found a refuge, they have formed a separate race there.
Admiral Jurien de la Gravière informs us that at Manilla the
half-breeds of Spaniards, Chinese, and Tagals, are much more numerous
than the original stocks. At Mindanao half-breeds of Spaniards and
Tagals form the majority of the inhabitants. “The fusion of races,”
he adds, “has taken place with marvellous facility in this isolated
corner of the earth.”
The Marquesas Islands, suffering the fate of the other Polynesian
countries, have been depopulated by that mysterious malady which
seems capable of annihilating oceanic populations. M. Jouan informs
us that they are repeopled by half-breeds.
Upon the whole of the littoral zone of South America, according to
M. Martin de Monosy, mixed peoples are prospering and rapidly on the
increase.
We may close this enumeration by a detailed account of a fact which
is well known, and which has all the value of a precise experiment.
In 1789, in consequence of a mutiny, nine English sailors went
and established themselves upon the small island of Pitcairn, in
the Pacific Ocean, accompanied by six Tahitian men and fifteen
Tahitian women. In consequence of the Whites becoming tyrannical,
the war of race began. In 1793 the population was reduced to
four Whites and to ten Tahitian women. Soon war broke out afresh
between the four chiefs of the colony, and Adams only was left.
But marriages had been fruitful; the first half-breeds grew up,
intermarried, and had numerous children. In 1825, Captain Beechey
found sixty-six individuals on Pitcairn Island. Towards the end of
1830 the population numbered eighty-seven. In spite of the deplorable
conditions of the outset, the mixed Pitcairn race had then almost
doubled in twenty-five years, and almost tripled in thirty-three
years. Now England, the most favoured country in Europe in this
respect, only doubles its population in forty-nine years. Thus the
half-breeds of banished English and Polynesians had on Pitcairn
Island about double the number of offspring that pure Anglo-Saxons
have when placed in their customary conditions of life.
Thus the white race, when crossed with races most different in
characters and habit, have given rise to mixed peoples, which have
continued to increase since their appearance. No reason can be given
why this movement of increase should stop or even slacken.
III. There remains the intercrossing of the White and the Negro. It
is with reference to this that some facts have been quoted tending
to prove that half-breeds cannot propagate among themselves. Let us
examine them rapidly.
Etwick and Long, in their _History of Jamaica_, have asserted that
Mulattoes cease to be reproductive in that island beyond the third
generation. Dr. Yvan has pointed out an analogous fact in Java. Dr.
Nott has found that in South Carolina, Mulattoes are endowed with
low fertility, that they have a shorter life than other human races,
and that they frequently die at an early age. Without going so far,
Dr. Simonnot attributes to these half-breeds a sort of ethnological
neutrality, “which only assures them an ephemeral duration as soon as
they are abandoned to themselves.”
Nothing is easier than to oppose contrary facts to the foregoing. I
can even invoke the testimony of some of the same authors whom I have
just quoted. Nott, after having in a general manner formulated the
aphorisms which I have just summed up, admits that they only apply
to South Carolina, whilst in Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama, the
Mulattoes are robust, fruitful, and energetic. I find that Dr. Yvan
himself states that his observations only concern Java, and that he
had pointed out the fact as exceptional.
On the other hand, Hombron declares that in our colonies “Negresses
and Whites show a moderate fertility; Mulatto women and Whites are
extremely fertile as well as Mulatto men and women.”
“Even in such conditions of life as those of the Gulf of Mexico, the
Mulatto,” according to M. Rufz, “is well developed, strong, alert,
more adapted than the Negro for industrial application, and very
productive.” According to M. Audain, in the Dominican Republic of
St. Domingo, “one-third are Negroes, two-thirds Mulattoes, and an
insignificant proportion Whites.” For a long time this population has
not been fed by any fresh arrivals; its continuance is entirely due
to itself.
More quotations, I think, are useless. When added to the numbers of
M. Martin de Moussey, who makes no exception concerning Mulattoes,
they are sufficient to demonstrate the following general fact, viz.,
that the Mulatto is as energetic and as fruitful as other races, at
least in a very great majority of those parts of the globe where this
mixed population has been formed.
IV. Nevertheless, I do not deny the facts advanced by Etwick, Long,
Nott, Yvan, and Simonnot. I accept them without so much as discussing
them. But what do they prove in the presence of the remaining
facts which are so numerous and so conclusive? At the most that
the development of the mulatto race can be favoured, retarded, or
hindered by _local_ circumstances. In other terms, that it depends
upon the influences exercised by the whole of the conditions of life
(_milieu_).
We see, then, in the formation of the mixed races, the reappearance
of this element, whose action plays so large a part in the natural
history of man, and great attention should be paid to it.
In the result of the crossing of the Negro and the White in Jamaica,
Java, &c., its intervention could be foreseen. The two races are
strangers to these countries, which are known to be very destructive
to foreign races. The question of crossing is complicated in these
cases, by the phenomena and difficulties of _acclimatisation_. Can
we feel surprised that unions contracted under such conditions of
existence should only present precarious guarantees for the future?
We must here, moreover, take into account an element which is
constantly neglected, and whose importance in questions of this
nature has always struck me strongly. I mean _morality_. It therefore
forms _one of the conditions of life_ (milieu). Now, if we pay
attention to the details, which are not numerous, but which are
very significant, given by some travellers upon the existence of
Europeans in the colonies, in Jamaica in particular; if we compare
these melancholy facts with those furnished by daily observation, an
entirely new light will be thrown upon the questions of _crossing_
and _acclimatisation_. We shall be obliged to recognise that the
death of the fathers, and the extinction of the descendants, are
often only the consequence of, and the punishment for, the deplorable
_moral conditions of life_, in which they have lived.
V. But the _physical conditions of life_ have also their peculiar
action. The following example may be quoted as a proof.
M. Simonnot has noticed natives of Senegambia, “who combine a
perfectly black skin, with all the characteristic forms of the Moor,
even at all ages.” According to him, these _black Moors_ are a mixed
race. If this is the case, it must, at least, be recognised that the
white blood predominates considerably, since all the forms belong
to this type. In order that the _colour_ of the Negro should be
persistent, in spite of this profound semitic influence, a _local
action_, that is, an _action of the conditions of life_, must have
neutralised the ordinary laws of the mixture of races, and united the
_colour_ of one race with the _features_ and _forms_ of another.
If this conclusion requires confirmation, the facts quoted by Prosper
Lucas will be sufficient. He treats of unions between Negroes and
Whites accomplished in Europe. In the same family we find the
black blood predominate at first, then lose its influence, and by
degrees become effaced almost entirely in the children of the later
generations. In one of these observations, the mother belonged to the
black race; so that infidelity was unable to effect any change in
the conditions of the experiment. It was then the conditions of life
which gradually blanched these half-breeds, who would all have been
black upon the borders of Senegal.
VI. Some anthropologists, although recognising the multiplicity and
fertility of the crossings between human races, only see in this fact
a _confusion of blood_, and complain that nowhere do they find a
mixed race of recent origin which is well characterised. Consequently
they deny that the crossing can have any influence in the formation
of the races with mixed but constant characters which form part of
the population of the globe.
This objection rests upon a disregard of the phenomena which
accompany the formation of animal races by the production of
mongrels. All breeders know well that a determinate and settled
race cannot at once be produced by crossing. In such a case, the
conflict and the compromises, of which I have spoken above, become
more marked, for the very reason that we have to blend two natures
which are dissimilar in some respects. _Immediate_ and _direct
heredity_ alone continually produces phenomena of _fusion_ or of
_juxtaposition_, or else causes the appearance of new features, the
_resultant_ of two different characters. _Mediate_ and _indirect
heredity_, as well as _atavism_, continually intervene and produce
numerous irregularities in the succeeding generations. The more the
races differ and are _equal in respect to blood_, the more marked
and persistent are these irregularities. In 1800 the Ancon race still
gave irregular products. For more than twenty years M. Malingié has
failed in settling his charmois race, so that it might itself serve
for fresh crossings.
The clever breeder, whom I have just mentioned, as well as all other
breeders, have moreover only attained their end by means of minute
care in the choice of the animals from which they breed. Now, between
human races there can be no question of _selection_. The unions have
always taken place by chance. Moreover, in the immense majority
of cases, the continual intervention of individuals of pure race
increases, and prolongs the confusion. This absence of uniformity,
which astonishes polygenists, is easily explained by those who only
consider human groups as _races_. From a general point of view it
is very instructive; if it brings forward _diversity of races_, it
attests _specific unity_. It is not between species that crossing
presents similar phenomena. But nevertheless, through this disorder,
there appear in the mixed populations of our colonies, general common
characters, which have attracted the attention of travellers, and
have been described.
Moreover, when, in consequence of some circumstance, the products of
these crossings are isolated and protected from new mixtures, the
race becomes characterised with rapidity. The Cafusos, Basters, and
Griquas, may be quoted as examples. Even the Pitcairn islanders, at
the time of Beechey’s visit, were beginning to become uniform.
VII. In the crossings between unequal human races, the father almost
always belongs to the superior race. In every case, and especially
in transient amours, woman refuses to lower herself; man is less
delicate.
From the point of view of the future of the mixed races, the
predominant action of one sex over the product should have then
great importance. The question has been put since the origin of
societies, as is testified by the laws of Manou; it has been
repeatedly discussed by thinkers and physiologists. Each sex has had
its champions; and numerous facts have been quoted on both sides.
Considering everything, it appears to me impossible to avoid deciding
in favour of _equality of action_.
Nevertheless this equality is purely virtual; it can, in fact,
only exist on the condition of an equal generating energy in both
parents. As soon as the equilibrium is interrupted, the stronger sex
predominates, and the product shows this superiority. The experiments
of Girou de Buzareingue upon the procreation of the sexes, appeared
to me to be most decisive in this respect.
Now what is true of the whole of the organism is equally true of
its different parts, functions, and energies. In the formation of a
new being, the action of heredity is divided into as many _cases_
as there are _characters_ to transmit. Both father and mother tend
to reproduce themselves in their offspring; there is, consequently,
a struggle between both natures. But the battle, if we may use the
expression, results in a number of single combats in which each
parent may be in turn victor or vanquished.
This very simple consideration, which is deduced from a number of
facts of detail, explains many results which cause surprise to
physiologists, anthropologists, etc. After having attributed a
preponderating action to the mother, Nott declares with surprise,
that, in point of intelligence, the Mulatto approaches more to his
white father. But is not the intellectual energy of the latter
superior to that of the mother? And is it not natural that it should
gain the ascendant in the struggle between the two hereditary powers?
We know how far this victory can go, and how the two natures can, so
to speak, divide the product of this crossing between them. Lislet
Geoffroy, entirely a Negro physically, though entirely a White in
character, intelligence, and aptitudes, is a striking example of it.
This victory of the superior energies is again shown in another very
remarkable manner, in the crossing of white and black races. The
former is, of all races, most sensible to malarious influences,
the latter best able to resist them. On this account it is almost
exempt from yellow fever. The Mulatto inherits this double power
of resistance. Nott assures us that a proportion of one fourth of
black blood is as sure a protection against the yellow fever, as
vaccination against the small-pox.
We may now understand, that, in crossing between different races,
the half-breeds possess the characters which, in each of them,
predominate over the corresponding characters of the other. If the
energies are in equilibrium, there will generally be a compromise.
The Negro and the White differ essentially in colour and the texture
of the hair; the colour of the eyes varies almost as much in one as
in the other. In the Mulatto, the two first characters almost always
betray the double origin of the individual; the third is uncertain.
On the contrary, in half-breeds of the white and the indigenous
American, the eyes and hair are almost always derived from the
latter. Humboldt has remarked that these two characters are
persistent even after several generations, in unilateral crossing
towards the White. M. Ferdinand Denis recognised a descendant of the
caciques by the eyes. On the other hand, in the same crossings, the
colour of the White overcomes that of the American at the second, and
sometimes even at the first generation.
The crossing of the Slav and the Bouriate presents similar facts. The
half-breeds invariably have the hair and eyes of the second.
VIII. “In Brazil,” says Martin de Moussy, “mixed races of every
origin increase, and form a new population which becomes more
_indigenous_ every day, if we may use the expression, and always more
similar to the white type, which, according to what takes place in
the whole of South America, will, in the end, absorb all the rest.”
An analogous fact has been pointed out at Buenos Ayres, in Paraguay,
etc.
Can we then consider this result as a sign of the ascendancy of
the white race? I do not think so. I rather consider it as the
consequence of the general tendency pointed out above.
In the countries which we are discussing, the Negress or Indian woman
readily crosses with the White. The female issue of these unions,
proud of the blood of her father, would consider herself degraded
if wedded to an individual of coloured race, and reserves all her
favours for those to whom she approximates by reason of the crossing.
The Quadroon reasons and acts in the same manner. In these regions,
where colour decides caste, it is always men of whiter race, and
especially the pure white, that the women prefer to marry.
The consequence of this is, that the crossing, although apparently
left to chance, is in reality _unilateral_, and always directed
towards the superior race. It is accomplished under the influence of
a real _unconscious selection_, and the predominance of the white
blood is the result of this selection.
Sooner or later it will also result in the fulfilment of the
prediction of Martin de Moussy. The mixed races will in a great
measure return to the superior race. But, when brought back to the
white type by this circuitous path, and through all these degrees
of crossing, they will possess one very great advantage over their
European counterpart: they will be acclimatised.
The reverse phenomena appear, according to Squiers, to be taking
place in Peru. Here the mixed population tends to return to the
indigenous type. The fact is explained, at least in part, by the
relations which, since the commencement of the conquest, were
established between the conquerors and the conquered race.
The former could not affect unlimited contempt for a conquered race
who were as civilised as themselves. Their leaders made alliances at
an early period with the families of the Incas, and this example was
followed. Consequently colour cannot exercise the same influence in
Peru as in Brazil or at Buenos Ayres. The numerical predominance of
the local race and the conditions of life had then a free field, and
their double influence is shown in the result pointed out by Squiers.
IX. Can human crossing, so general in our days, be a new phenomenon
in the history of mankind? Evidently not. In the past as in the
present, every contact between two races of any continuance, every
immigration, and every conquest has led to the formation of a mixed
race. It is one of the inevitable consequences of human instincts and
of physiological laws.
It is quite natural that polygenists should have neglected facts of
this nature. In their opinion a population with _mixed_ characters
is a _species_ as much as any other, which is intermediate between
two given specific types. But the indifference or the mistake of
monogenists is less easily explained. They are evidently ignorant of
the phenomena of crossings among plants and animals. When they meet
with a race of undecided characters, and which presents more or less
distant analogies with two different types, they have generally felt
embarrassed, and have put the question on one side, or have at most
invoked the action of conditions of life in a vague manner.
It is quite true that the latter, when effecting a resemblance
between foreign races and the local race, leads to results analogous
to those which result from crossing. We have seen an example of
it in the United States. Yet crossing has its peculiar phenomena,
which are persistent even after several generations. Moreover, to
the indications drawn from physical and physiological characters we
may add others borrowed from very different orders of facts, and
which, in many cases, permit us to draw a conclusion with remarkable
certainty. The mixture of beliefs, customs, and manners often
furnishes valuable information. But the comparison of languages
generally throws an unexpected light upon problems apparently most
difficult. From time to time legends and history confirm inductions
drawn from the orders of facts which I have just pointed out, and
testify to the correctness of views which, at first sight, might
appear conjectural.
As an example I will quote the Zulu Kaffirs. They are one of the
groups of which some polygenists make a distinct species. They are
in fact distinguished from other negro races by several characters.
But by these characters they are brought nearer to the white type.
Moreover, various travellers inform us that they present a great
variability of feature. Missionaries who have lived among them add
that, in the same family, and under conditions which render all
crossing impossible, individuals are met with who have the hair and
colour of a Negro, and others whose hair is smooth and whose colour
is brown. These facts alone would authorise the conclusion that the
Zulus are a mixed race.
Philology confirms this conclusion. Philologists agree in placing the
Kaffir languages in the group of Zimbian languages, whose grammar
and vocabulary are fundamentally negro, but which also include arab,
nilotic, and malgach elements. Thus language, as well as physical
characters, points to a mixture of blood.
The chronicle discovered by Captain Guillain justifies these
conclusions by giving the history of the arab colonies from Quiloa to
Sofala. It relates the wars which were raised for the possession of
the gold mines; it shows the conquerors driving out the conquered,
and compelling them to go southwards to seek a new country. It is
evident that the latter have crossed Delagoa Bay, where they have
left the black race in its state of original inferiority, and have
gone further to ally themselves voluntarily or involuntarily with
tribes whose type has thus risen.
In fact, far from being a _species_, the Zulus are a _mixed race_ of
Negroes and Arabs, whose formation is so recent that mediate heredity
and atavism still betray the double origin, which is also attested
by philology, but in which the negro element preserves a very great
superiority.
X. The investigation of mixed populations, the determination of the
part played by each of the elements which have assisted in their
formation, belong to the most interesting questions of anthropology.
This study ought not to stop at populations in which the mixture of
characters is evident at first sight. It ought also to bear upon
those which are generally regarded as quite pure. We should then find
that mixture of races has penetrated where it was scarcely suspected.
In China and especially in Japan, the white allophylian blood is
mixed with the yellow blood in different proportions; the white
semitic blood has penetrated into the heart of Africa; the negro and
houzouana types have mutually penetrated each other and produced all
the Kaffir populations situated west of the Zulus of Arabian origin;
the Malay races are the result of the amalgamation, in different
proportions, of Whites, Yellows, and Blacks; the Malays proper, far
from constituting a _species_, as polygenists consider them, are only
one _population_, in which, under the influence of Islamism, these
various elements have been more completely fused, etc.
I have quoted at random the various preceding examples, to show how
the most extreme types of mankind have contributed to form a certain
number of races. Need I insist upon the mixtures which have been
accomplished between the secondary types derived from the first? In
Europe what population can pretend to purity of blood? The Basques
themselves, who apparently ought to be well protected by their
country, institutions, and language against the invasion of foreign
blood, show upon certain points, in the heart of their mountains,
the evident traces of the juxtaposition and fusion of very different
races.
As for the other nations ranging from Lapland to the Mediterranean,
classical history, although it does not go back a great distance
in point of time, is a sufficient proof that crossings are the
inevitable result of invasions, wars, and political and social
events. Asia presents, as we know, the same spectacle; and, in
the heart of Africa, the Jagas, playing the part of the hordes of
Gengis-Khan, have mixed together the African tribes from one ocean
to the other.
XI. I need scarcely allude here to the general facts which follow
from the detailed history of races. Short though it be, this appeal
to the reader’s memory will, I hope, give a sufficient motive for the
following conclusions.
Conditions of life and heredity have fashioned the first human races,
a certain number of which, on account of their isolation, have been
able to preserve for an indefinite time this first characteristic.
Perhaps it was during this very distant period that the three great
types of the Negro, the Yellow, and the White were characterised.
The migratory and conquering instincts of man have brought about a
meeting between these primary races, and consequently a crossing
between them.
Since the appearance of mixed races, crossing itself has only acted
under the domination of the conditions of life and heredity.
The great movements of nations have only taken place at long
intervals, and as it were form so many crises. In the interval
between these crises, the races which have been formed by the
crossing have had time to settle and become uniform.
The consolidation of the mixed races, the relative uniformity of
characters effected by the crossing, have taken place very slowly,
in consequence of the absolute want of selection. Consequently every
mixed race which has become uniform is also very ancient.
Human instincts have produced the mixture of mixed races, just as
they have produced that of the primary races.
Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to play the
part of a primary race in fresh crossings. Mankind, in its present
state, has thus been formed, certainly for the greatest part, by the
successive crossing of a number of races at present undetermined.
The most ancient races which we know, the quaternary races, are still
represented in our own days, either by populations generally small
in number, or by isolated individuals, in whom atavism reproduces
the characters of our remote ancestors. This is a fact which will be
proved further on.
CHAPTER XXIV.
INFLUENCE OF CROSSING UPON MIXED HUMAN RACES.
I. Has the crossing of human races been, or will it be, advantageous
or detrimental to the species considered as a whole? The followers
of Morton in America, and of MM. de Gobineau and Perrier in France,
have stated that human crossing had, or would have in the future,
disastrous consequences. Has this opinion any foundation? Let us
study the facts.
M. Gobineau appeals to history, and goes back to the earliest ages
of mankind. According to him, three fundamental races, the black,
the yellow, and the white, were formed originally. The yellow race
occupied the whole of America; the negro race all the southern
parts of the old continent as far as the Caspian Sea; the white
race was localised in Central Asia. The two former, degraded from
an intellectual and moral as well as from a physical point of view,
and unable to elevate themselves unaided above the savage state,
only existed as _tribes_. The third was the only one which united
bodily beauty with a warlike spirit, to the faculty of initiative,
of organization and progress, which gives rise to societies and to
civilization. The day came when the yellow race burst upon Asia, and,
avoiding the central region occupied by the whites, went to people
the western regions of the old world. Then, this wave, continuing
its course, submerged the white race, which, in its turn, began to
emigrate; and by the mixture of its blood with that of the inferior
races, produced all the _peoples_ who have succeeded each other
upon the earth. At the beginning of this new era, the white blood,
being more pure and more abundant, produced superior civilizations.
Becoming rarer at each new emigration, it lost its influence, and
civilization diminished in every respect. The last effort of this
renovating race was the Germanic invasion which destroyed the
Roman world. It is now exhausted. The white blood, vitiated by the
mixture, has everywhere lost its first efficacy. Mankind for this
very reason is in a full decline. The fusion will soon be complete.
Every individual will have in his veins one-third of white blood and
two-thirds of coloured blood, and we shall then inevitably return to
barbarism. Finally, the repeated crossings will have rendered the
human species barren; it will then die out and disappear.
Such is, in a few words, the theory of M. de Gobineau. Let us accept
it with all its hypotheses, including that of the migration from
America to Asia, which is contrary to all our knowledge upon this
point. Does it follow that the author is consistent? In order to be
so, he ought to point out the privileged race, founding by itself
one at least of those great societies, one of those _civilizations_,
as M. de Gobineau calls them, recorded by history. Now the author is
unable to point out a single example, and is obliged to admit that
the _exclusively white civilization_ has existed in Central Asia
without leaving any other trace than the _tumuli_ which have for a
long time been attributed to Scythians, Tchoudes, etc. But everyone
knows the state of the whites, when they left their Asiatic centre.
In India they were the Aryans, still a half-pastoral race; in Europe,
the barbarians who destroyed the Roman world. Had either of them a
civilization equal to that of the Egyptians or the Greeks?
M. de Gobineau enumerates ten civilizations, namely, Assyrian,
Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Italian, German, Alleghanian,
Mexican, and Peruvian. All, according to him, were produced in
consequence of the mixture of whites with coloured races. But
admitting that such has been the case, is it not evident that this
mixture has everywhere given rise to an immense progress. The ruins
of Nineveh Thebes, Athens, Rome, and even those of Palanqué,
certainly point to populations of a different civilization to that of
the people who raised the tumuli in Central Asia.
In order to draw their logical consequences from the facts which he
admits or supposes, M. de Gobineau should regard the formation of
half-breeds as the most powerful element of progress. As we have
seen he adopts the opposite opinion. He considers that all these
civilizations, which were splendid in the case of the Assyrians and
Egyptians, have been dwindling away and diminishing, and what remains
in our own days, only deserves our scorn.
Without being blinded by self-conceit, we may protest against this
conclusion. Doubtless we no longer raise towers of Babel, nor do
we build pyramids. Gigantic works which are useless, or undertaken
for the glorification of a single man, do not belong to our time.
But when some generally useful work arises, do we recoil before the
magnitude of the task? The time truly has been badly chosen to accuse
us of feebleness. The Suez Canal has been made on a different scale
to the small trench of the Pharaohs, and in tunnelling the Alps for a
railway, we have accomplished what antiquity had never dared to dream
of.
It is still true that, taken _en masse_, we are less artistic than
the Athenians. But without leaving the domain of the arts, there are
points in which we surpass them. To judge from the anecdotes which
throw light upon the nature of the talent of their greatest artists,
painting and music among the Greeks were not up to the level of
sculpture. If we have not our Phidias, they had not their Raphael,
their Michael Angelo, their Beethoven, nor their Rossini.
But, when he condemns us to a radical inferiority, M. de Gobineau
especially forgets the most striking character of modern times. He
disregards the _scientific development_, which is without example
or analogy in the past, and which gives an absolutely fresh
appearance to our civilization. We who are sprung from races crossed
a hundred times, are at least the equals of our forefathers, but no
longer resemble them. Inferior in some respects, we make up for it
thoroughly in other respects. We manifest human power under different
aspects.
Highly gifted though man may be, he cannot at once reach all the
limits of the field which is open to his activity. For this reason,
in time as well as in space, we find by the side of inferior peoples
and _races_, other peoples and _races_ which are superior, equal
among themselves, but different. Such is the real information gained
by a comparison of the present and past condition of mankind.
II. M. Perrier is a polygenist and an autochthonist; he makes use
of the expression _pure race_ as equivalent to the term _species_.
Being a physician, and a learned one, he touches upon anatomical
and physiological questions, and upon the limited fertility and
sterility of half-breeds, and reproduces some of the opinions which
I have already attacked. He pays particular attention to present
populations, and endeavours to prove the superiority of those which
he regards as pure. He quotes the Arabs in particular, and praises
their ancient and modern civilizations. But on this point I make the
same objection to him which I made to M. de Gobineau. We know very
little of the Himyarites and the Adites. Caussin de Perceval shows
them to have played at different times the part of conquerors; but
they were conquerors who were barbarians, and whose manners were
thoroughly savage. When they left their deserts under the impulse
of Islamism, did they appear with the marks of civilized peoples?
Certainly not. It was only after their conquests, and in consequence
of the crossings which they underwent, that we find the great
Arabian civilizations rise in Africa, Asia, and in Spain. Was the
civilization, which was developed upon the spot, and which has been
brought to light by Palgrave, equal to that of the Almohades, the
Almoravides, or the Abassides? Evidently not. Here, again, crossing
is found to have given rise to most striking progress.
M. Perrier lays especial stress upon physical perfection, and
particularly upon that of women. Let us accept this criterion. Is
purity of blood the sole cause of this beauty? If this were so, in
the same country, the purest populations should show the fairest
women. But in France, for example, the inhabitants of Auvergne,
secluded among their mountains, are undoubtedly of a purer race than
the inhabitants of the plains in Southern France, where so many
different races have come in contact. Well, can the women of Upper
Auvergne dispute the prize with the grisette of Arles, Toulouse, or
of Montpellier? These three feminine types are very distinct; they
clearly point to a mixture of blood. They are not the less remarkable
in the matter of beauty, and are undoubtedly superior to the women
of Auvergne. In Sicily, where all the Mediterranean populations are
confused together, I have observed analogous facts at Taormina,
Palermo, Trapani, etc.
As to the possibility of meeting with women remarkable for their
personal attractions among mixed races, even when the Negro enters as
an element in their composition, the reputation of women of colour,
mulattoes and quadroons, is a sufficient proof. All travellers bear
witness to the charm which they exercise upon Europeans. Taylor is
most explicit upon this point, and it is at Tristan d’Acunha, a
distant island half-way between the Cape and South America, that he
makes his observations. In this isolated spot, a mixed population
of Whites and Negroes has settled. The English traveller speaks as
follows: “All who are born in the island are mulattoes, though of a
very slightly pronounced type, and of very fine proportions. Almost
all have the European, much more than the Negro type. I do not
recollect ever having seen such splendid heads and figures as among
their young girls. And yet I know all the coasts of the earth: Bali
and its Malays, Havana and its Creoles, Tahiti and its nymphs, and
the United States with their distinguished women.” It is evident
that we here have a most impartial judgment in favour of mulattoes,
and given by an experienced judge.
Thus female beauty is met with among certain mixed races, and is
wanting among other races which are rightly regarded as the purest,
the Bosjesmans and the Esquimaux. The adversaries of human crossings
cannot then regard it as an argument in their favour.
III. Although modern crossings only go back three centuries, they
have already produced results which make it certain that races
remarkable from every point of view may be produced by crossing. The
Paulists of Brazil are a striking example of the fact. The province
of Saint Paul has been peopled by Portuguese and inhabitants of
the Azores from the old world, who have formed alliances with the
Gayanazes, a hunting and pacific tribe, and with the Carijos, who
are warlike and agricultural. From these unions, which have been
regularly contracted, there has sprung a race whose men have always
been remarkable for their fine proportions, their physical power,
indomitable courage, and endurance of fatigue. As for the women,
their beauty has given rise to a Brazilian proverb which proves
their superiority. This population shows its pre-eminence in every
respect. If it was once remarkable for the expeditions of adventurers
in search of gold or slaves, it was also the first to plant the
sugar-cane in Brazil, and to breed immense herds of cattle. “In the
present day,” says F. Denis, “the highest moral development as well
as the most remarkable intellectual movements appear to come from
Saint Paul.”
Such praises paid to a population which is almost entirely the result
of a mixture of races, by a sagacious observer, who has long lived
in Brazil, form a contrast to the reproaches cast upon American
half-breeds by an immense majority of travellers. As a general rule
they are painted in the blackest colours. Although they are allowed
to possess physical beauty, and perhaps also a prompt and ready
intelligence, they are said to be almost entirely without morality.
Let us admit that they differ as much from the Paulists in this
respect as has been stated: the explanation of the contrast is not
difficult to find.
At Saint Paul, the earliest unions were from the first regularly
contracted, thanks to the intervention of Fathers Nobrega and
Anchieta. In consequence of different circumstances, the _mamalucos_,
who were the result of these marriages, were at once accepted as the
equals of the pure Whites. Here the crossing then was accomplished
under normal conditions, a fact, perhaps, unique in the history of
our colonies.
In reality, the mixture of races elsewhere owes its origin to the
worst passions; prejudices of blood have caused half-breeds to be
regarded as tainted by the vice to which they owed their origin,
as outcasts from _society_, or one might say, _outlawed_. Now what
branch of the pure white race being born, growing, and thriving
under contempt and oppression, would preserve an elevated and moral
character? Moreover, would the white fathers furnish examples capable
of influencing for good the children which they had abandoned? The
contrary is evidently the case. Unrestrained debauchery on one
side, and servile submission on the other, are the elements in the
production of a half-breed race. What could heredity transmit in the
way of moral character to the products of such unions?
If anything should surprise us, it is that half-breeds produced
under such detestable conditions should already have been able to
raise themselves. Now this has happened, even with the mulattoes,
in all cases where prejudices of race have been less deeply rooted,
and have yielded to personal merit. In Brazil, most of the artists
and musicians are mulattoes, say MM. Troyer and de Lisboa. In
confirmation of this testimony, M. Lagos added that the political
capacity and scientific instinct are scarcely less developed among
them than artistic aptitude. Several are doctors and medical
practitioners of the highest distinction. Lastly, M. Torres Caïcedo
enumerated to me among the mulattoes of his country, orators, poets,
public men, and a vice-president of New Grenada, who was at the same
time a distinguished author.
If the case is not the same where a social condemnation weighs
upon the man of colour, the reason is that the moral and social
conditions of life never lose their rights any more than the physical
conditions. But the preceding will, I think, be a sufficient proof
that, when placed under normal conditions, the half-breed of the
Negro and the European would certainly justify in every place the
words of the old traveller Thevenot: “The mulatto can do all that the
white man can do; his intelligence is equal to ours.”
IV. Although I protest against the doctrines which tend to depreciate
mixed races, I am far from pretending that the crossing is at
all times and in all places fortunate. Undoubtedly, if the union
has taken place between inferior races, the product will remain
at the level of the parents. But these unions are few in number.
Even in South America, the Zambo is relatively rare. The Negro
appearing everywhere in slavery, has been despised by the indigenous
populations, who, in spite of their dependent condition, have
preserved their individual liberty, and have avoided union with the
Negro.
It is the White who, impelled by his restless ardour, has invaded
the world, and is every day multiplying his conquests and colonies.
It is he who has searched out the home of the coloured races, and
who everywhere mingles his blood with their own. Almost all the
half-breed populations recognize him as their father, and this
gives rise to a double result. These races are at once raised above
the maternal race, and the two brought closer together, as if they
possessed a common element.
Will this connection extend as far as fusion, as Serres and Maury
have admitted? Will all our present races sooner or later be replaced
by a single homogeneous race, everywhere endowed with the same
aptitudes and governed by a common civilization? I do not think
so; and what has just been said justifies the statement that this
uniformity is impossible.
Doubtless the mixture of races, favoured and multiplied by the
growing facility of communication, appears to me to prepare a new
era. The races of the future, differing less in blood, and brought
together by railways and steamers, will have far more inclinations,
wants, and interests in common. Hence a state of things will
rise superior to that with which we are acquainted, although our
civilization ought, it seems to me, to continue growing in spite of
present evils and approaching storms. We know how the Greek, Roman,
and the modern world were developed in succession; the modern future
will embrace the entire globe.
But, although this civilization will become more general and more
widely spread, it will not suppress certain differences in the
conditions of life. As long as there are poles and an equator,
continents and islands, or mountains and plains, races will exist
distinguished by characters of every kind, and superior or inferior
in a physical, intellectual, and moral point of view. In spite of
crossings, varieties and inequalities will continue. But as a whole,
mankind will be perfected; it will have grown; and the civilizations
of the future, without causing those of the past to be forgotten,
will outstrip them in some as yet unknown direction, just as ours
have outstripped those of our predecessors.
* * * * *
V. I have just closed the statement of the most general questions
raised by the history of the human race.
The principal point to determine is the _unity_ or the _multiplicity
of the species_. There are some anthropologists, even men of high
distinction, who regard it as almost an idle question, as merely a
question of dogma or of philosophy. Nevertheless, a little reflection
is sufficient to make it intelligible, that the science is entirely
changed according as it is regarded from a monogenist’s or a
polygenist’s point of view. I have already pointed out this fact; and
beg permission to return to it in a few words.
After the fundamental question of unity comes that of _antiquity_.
This is put similarly in the two doctrines. But the problem is simple
and absolute for the monogenist, but multiple and relative for the
polygenist.
The _question of the place of origin_, which next presents itself,
only exists in reality for the believer in the specific unity
of human groups. The doctrine of autochthonism, though greatly
multiplying the question, reduces it to very simple terms, since
it declares that all the populations were born upon the spot whose
foreign origin it does not establish, and only admits movements of
expansion.
For the polygenist the _general question of migrations_ does not
exist. For particular cases autochthonism supplies everything. He
who regards the Polynesians as having appeared on the islands of the
Pacific has not to seek whence they might have come.
The _question of acclimatisation_ for the polygenist is reduced to a
small number of facts almost exclusively modern, human populations
being in his eyes naturally formed for living under the conditions of
life in which they were born.
The _question of the formation of races_ disappears entirely for the
polygenist, since the different species admitted by him have appeared
with all the characters which distinguish the different human groups.
At most he has to concern himself with the results of some modern
crossings which are too evident to be denied.
The _question of primitive man_ does not exist for the polygenist,
since he recognizes all _his species_ with the characters which they
have had from the commencement.
No one, I think, will dispute the truth of these propositions, which
compel the conclusion that anthropology is an entirely different
science to the monogenist and the polygenist.
Polygenism seems to simplify the science in a singular manner; it
will be said that it suppresses its most apparent difficulties.
In reality it only does so by veiling or denying them, and thus
conduces to inaccuracy. At the same time it gives rise to others,
which, although less easily perceived, are nevertheless more
important, for they are essentially of a physiological nature, and
cannot be solved by the general laws of physiology.
Monogenism seems at first to complicate and multiply the problems. In
reality it only states them clearly. By that very means, it causes
the necessity of long and persevering studies to be felt, which it
rewards from time to time with great discoveries. It has required
almost a century and the combined efforts of travellers, geographers,
physicians, linguists, and anthropologists to establish the origin
of the Polynesians, to follow their migrations, and to determine the
date of them. But when this work is once set on the right track,
human history is found to be enriched by a magnificent page, which
gives another testimony to the intelligent activity of the human race
and its conquests over nature.
BOOK VIII.
FOSSIL HUMAN RACES.
CHAPTER XXV.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
I. Tertiary man is only known to us from a few faint traces of his
industry. Of tertiary man himself we know nothing. Portions of his
skeleton have been discovered from time to time, it has been thought,
in France, Switzerland, and especially in Italy. Closer study has,
however, always forced us to refer to a comparatively much later
period these human remains, which, at first sight, were regarded as
tertiary.
It is different with quaternary man. We have much better and more
precise information about him than about many existing races. The
caves which he inhabited, those in which he buried his dead, and
the alluvial deposits formed by rivers, which have borne away his
corpses, have preserved numerous bones for our study. As many as
forty different places in all, especially in the western portion of
Europe, have supplied our museums with as many as forty skulls, more
or less intact, and numerous fragments of the cranium and face, which
science has been able to utilize, as well as a great number of the
bones of the trunk and limbs, and even some entire skeletons. The
most remarkable specimen, freed from the earth which covered it, but
still left in its place, was brought from Mentone by M. Rivière and
is now to be seen in the Anthropological Gallery of the Paris Museum.
Such is the accumulation of facts, already very considerable, which
M. Hamy and I have consulted in arranging the first part of our
_Crania-Ethnica_. The importance of the skull in anthropology is
well known. It is of itself sufficient to furnish the principal
elements of the distinction of human races. The study and comparison
of quaternary skulls enables us, therefore, to form a tolerably
definite conception of these ancient populations, of the principal
relations and most striking differences which, from this period,
have distinguished human groups. The examination of the bones of the
trunk and limbs tends, moreover, to confirm the results furnished by
that of the skull. Thus we feel ourselves justified in expressing the
hope that the future, by completing our work in many respects, by
modifying it perhaps in others, and by filling up gaps in it, will at
least confirm the essential conclusions.
It is evident that I here speak in M. Hamy’s name as well as my own.
The truth is, that what I am about to say on the subject of fossil
man is almost the summary, not only of our book, but of many other
general studies and of many discussions. It belongs, in fact, as much
to my coadjutor as to myself.
II. Let us, in the first place, briefly describe the climate in which
the fossil human races lived.
The quaternary or glacial period imposed severe conditions of
existence on man. What then existed of Europe was surrounded on all
sides by the sea, and was subject to all the consequences of an
insular climate, that is to say; it was very damp, and moderately
uniform in temperature, but chilled, to a great extent at least,
by the Polar ice which extended even into France. The heavy rains,
frequent in all seasons, took the form of falls of snow upon the high
lands, and supported vast glaciers, the traces of which may still
be seen in all our mountain chains. Immense water-courses hollowed
out valleys in some parts, and deposited thick beds of alluvium in
others. This vexed and watery land supported a fauna comprising,
besides existing species, others which have partly disappeared,
partly emigrated to distant countries. Thus, on the one hand, there
were the mammoth (_elephas primigenius_), the woolly rhinoceros
(_rhinoceros tichorhinus_), the gigantic Irish elk (_megaceros
hibernicus_), the cave bear (_ursus spelæus_), the cave hyæna
(_hyæna spelæa_), the cave tiger (_felis spelæa_), the horse (_equus
caballus_); on the other hand, the reindeer (_cervus tarandus_), the
elk (_cervus alces_), the musk-ox (_ovibos moschatus_), the aurochs
(_bison europæus_), the hippopotamus (_hippopotamus amphibius_), and
the lion (_felis leo spelæa_).
All these animals lived side by side during the greater part of the
quaternary period. They afterwards became by degrees either extinct
or separated. At the commencement of the present period, France, in
which at one time they were all to be found, only retains the horse;
and we must admit further, with M. Toussaint, that our beasts of
burden and draught, are descended from fossil species, an opinion
which is far from universal amongst palæontologists. We may remark
in passing, that the same uncertainty exists upon the subject of the
spotted hyæna and the grizzly bear, regarded by some palæontologists
as _races_ referable to the cave species.
Man was, in Europe, the contemporary of all these species.
The phenomena which have given to these countries their latest
characters, have not always had the same violence, nor have they
either commenced or terminated abruptly. They offered periods of
repose and of relative activity, till the time when the continents
assumed their definite proportions, when the glaciers were first
confined within their present limits.
The modifications of living beings accord with these oscillations of
the inorganic world. The principal animal species seem to predominate
in turn; the human races appear in succession, increase and decline.
During the deposition of the _lower alluvium_ (bas niveaux) of our
valleys, the mammoth, rhinoceros, and great carnivora, seem to have
played the principal part. Man disputed the ground with them, and
fed upon their flesh. The struggle against the conditions of life,
and the wild beasts of the ancient world was terrible. The race of
these primitive times bears in a high degree the mark of this savage
nature.
During the period in which the _mean inferior alluvium_ (_moyens
niveaux inférieurs_) were formed, the great animal species still
inhabited the whole of Europe. The number of their representatives
seems, however, to be diminishing; less formidable species begin to
multiply, and the horse, in particular, forms, at least in places,
large herds, which offered an abundant source of nourishment to
man. The latter was represented especially by a race endowed with
remarkable aptitudes. At first, we find it struggling with as much
vigour as the preceding one, and under almost identical conditions;
but, by degrees, perfecting all its methods of action, and adapting
them to the new conditions introduced by the advance of time.
A great modification in the fauna corresponds to the deposition of
the _mean upper alluvium_ (_moyens niveaux supérieurs_). The great
carnivora and the mammoth become more and more rare, till at length
they disappear altogether; the horse no longer predominates; the
reindeer has taken its place, and wanders in vast herds over lands
which are gradually subsiding. Man has profited by these changes. New
races, perfectly distinct from the preceding ones, appear upon our
soil. That of the preceding age develops and attains a certain degree
of civilization, attested by true works of art.
At length, the bottom of the ocean rises, and Europe is complete.
The polar ice is confined within its present limits, and the insular
climate gives place to a continental one, with its extremes of heat
and cold. The glaciers of our mountains gradually contract, and
withdraw to higher regions. The animal species, no longer finding in
the same latitude the temperature suitable to them, emigrate, some to
the south, others to the north, or to the higher mountains.
Man must necessarily have felt the consequence of these changes.
When the animals which formed the basis of his nourishment
disappeared, never to return, a part at least of the population must
have followed, and emigrated at the same time. The rising societies
were thus shaken to their very foundations, and whilst some tribes
went off in opposite directions, those which remained behind,
experienced a decline of which we may observe the traces in the works
which they have bequeathed to us. They were but too easily absorbed
by superior races, who brought domestic animals with them, and
substituted the pastoral life for that of the hunter.
III. The man of the quaternary period has left here and there
a few of his bones by the side of those animals who were his
contemporaries. The human bones in question belong, however, almost
exclusively to Europe. The fossil man of other parts of the world is
almost unknown to us. Lund is said to have discovered it in certain
caves in Brazil. But unfortunately we have no other details of this
discovery than a short note and two drawings of small dimensions,
published quite recently by MM. Lacerta and R. Peixoto. Much has
been said about the skull discovered by Whitney in California.
Unfortunately, the description of this specimen has not appeared,
so that doubts have, on several occasions, been expressed as to the
existence of the fossil itself. The recent testimony of M. Pinart has
removed them, but has, at the same time, created the most serious
doubts as to the antiquity of this specimen, which seems to have been
found in disturbed grounds.
The restriction of the discovery of human fossils to Europe is much
to be regretted. We have no authority for regarding Europe as the
starting point of the species, nor as the theatre of the formation of
the primitive races. We should rather seek them in Asia. It was upon
the slopes of the Himalaya, at the base of the great central mass,
that Falconer hoped to find tertiary man. Assiduous and persevering
search can alone verify the prophecies of the eminent palæontologist.
This task might be performed by some of the learned officers of
the English army, by some of the military surgeons sent out by the
great institutions of London. Let us hope that they will set to work;
that they will utilize for this end, the leisure they enjoy when on
leave in some _sanitarium_ of the Himalayas or Nilgheries. There is
every reason to hope that they will enrich science with important and
magnificent discoveries.
IV. A few general facts, the interest of which will at once be
evident, may already be disentangled from details without leaving
European soil. We will first establish the fact, that in quaternary
ages, man did not present that uniformity of characters, which a
recent origin would lead us to expect. The _species_ is already
composed of several _races_; these races appear successively or
simultaneously; they live side by side; and perhaps, as M. Dupont has
thought, the _war of races_ may be traced as far back as this period.
The presence of these clearly characterised human groups in the
quaternary period, is enough to furnish a strong presumption in
favour of the previous existence of man. The influence of very
dissimilar and long-continued actions, can alone explain the
differences which separate the man of the Vézère in France from that
of the Lesse in Belgium.
V. In spite of some opinions which were brought forward at a time
when science was less advanced, and when terms of comparison were
wanting, we may assert that no fossil skull belongs to the African or
Melanesian Negro type. The true Negro did not exist in Europe during
the quaternary epoch.
We do not, however, conclude from this that the type must have come
into existence later, and dates from the present geological period.
Fresh research, especially in Asia, and in countries inhabited
by black nations, can alone decide this point with certainty.
Nevertheless, up to the present time, the results of observation have
been but little favourable to the opinion of some anthropologists,
who have regarded the Negro races as anterior to all others.
VI. In fossil, as well as in modern skulls, we find between races
and individuals oscillations of a more or less striking character.
It is, however, an important fact that these oscillations are often
of less extent in known fossil races than those observed in existing
populations. I shall only quote one example. The cephalic index of
the most ancient European race, taken from the Neanderthal man, in
which the characters are exaggerated, is 72; that of the La Truchère
skull, which belongs to the latter part of the quaternary period,
is 84·32, a difference of 12·32. Now, at the present time, the mean
cephalic index of the Esquimaux is 69·30, that of South Germans
86·20, a difference of 16·90. Thus, between the two extreme races
separated by the greater part of the glacial period, the oscillation
of the cephalic index is less than between two modern contemporary
races. Moreover, the latter range between wider limits, both above
and below the mean, than the two fossil races. This fact may perhaps
be explained by several considerations, which I cannot enter into
here.
I should, moreover, observe that the Lagoa Santa skull found by Lund,
and which has just been described by MM. Lacerta and Peixoto, effaces
in a great measure the differences which I have just pointed out.
According to the Brazilian savants, its cephalic index is 69·72,
descending almost as low as the mean index of the Esquimaux.
It is interesting to find that this smaller variability of fossil
races is established in one of the very characters which has been the
principal cause of the comparisons of some of our inferior existing
races with apes. Among quaternary skulls there are some which may
be considered as presenting the mean degree of orthognathism of
the white races themselves. The Nagy-Sap skull, the No. 1 of the
Trou du frontal, one of the women of Grenelle, etc., may be quoted
as examples. Others, such as the No. 2 of the Trou du frontal,
another woman of Grenelle, the old man of Cro-Magnon, several crania
from Solutré, are more or less prognathous. There are some which
equal, or even exceed, in this respect the mean of our Negro races.
Nevertheless, there are none which attain a degree of prognathism
equal to that presented by certain examples of the inferior
Australian types, or of the Kaffir race.
Another order of facts, which, without possessing the importance of
the preceding, are still of real value, present similar results. I
allude to the stature and to its variations. M. Hamy has determined
it by the measurement of the femur and humerus. It appears from his
investigations that the maximum presented by the Mentone skeleton is
1·85 m. (6·06 ft.), and the minimum, taken from one of the Furfooz
skeletons, is 1·50 m. (4·92 ft.) The difference between these two
numbers, 0·35 m. (1·14 ft.), is far smaller than that which exists
between the extremes of the table given above.
The mean of the numbers found by M. Hamy, 1·764 m. (5·839 ft.),
places the race of Cro-Magnon very near to the Patagonians of
Musters; but the Furfooz race, with its mean of 1·530 m. (5·019 ft.),
stands well above the Bosjesmans and Mincopies. It occupies almost
the same position as the Lapps.
Oscillations have taken place in time as well as in space. The
most ancient race is not the tallest. The skeletons of Neanderthal
and Brux give a mean of only 1·705 m. (5·593 ft.). The race of
Cro-Magnon, superior in height to all others, is chronologically
intermediate between them.
The preceding generalizations rest, it is true, upon a number of
observations as yet too limited to be regarded as conclusive. But
they at least confute some assertions, and tend to dissipate more
than one prejudice.
VII. Dolichocephalic or brachycephalic, large or small, orthognathous
or prognathous, quaternary man is always man in the full acceptance
of the word. Whenever the remains have been sufficient to enable
us to form an opinion, we have found the foot and the hand which
characterised our species, the vertebral column has displayed the
double curvature to which Lawrence ascribes such great importance,
and which was made by Serres the attribute of the human kingdom, as
he understood it. The more we study the subject, the more are we
convinced that every bone of the skeleton, from the most massive
to the smallest, carries with it, in its form and proportions, a
certificate of origin which it is impossible to mistake.
By reason of its special importance, the skull deserves consideration
for a moment from this point of view.
We will first state that all the bones of the modern human skull are
to be found in the fossil skull under the same forms, and presenting
the same relations. Whether we consider them separately or as a
whole, they cannot fail to awaken the recollection of what we see
around us every day. Even the immense development of the superciliary
ridges in the Neanderthal man cannot disguise the entirely human
character of this exceptional skull, which I shall presently discuss
more at length.
In all fossil races we find the essentially human character of the
predominance of the cranium over the face. With them, as with us, the
bony framework which contains the brain becomes longer, narrower,
or shorter, at the same time increasing in size; it rises or is
flattened, but always preserves a capacity comparable to that of the
crania of the present day. In the Neanderthal cranium, which has been
termed the most _brutal_ known, the cranial capacity, calculated by
men who, we may be sure, did not wish to exaggerate, was as much
as 1220 cubic centimetres (74·420 cub. in.). Even M. Schaaffhausen
considers it as equal to that of the Malays, and superior to that of
Hindoos of small stature. In the Brazilian skull from Lagoa Santa it
is 1388 cubic centimetres (84·66 cub. in.).
We can, therefore, with perfect safety apply to the fossil man, with
which we are acquainted, the words of Huxley: “Neither in quaternary
ages nor at the present time does any intermediary being fill the gap
which separates man from the Troglodyte. To deny the existence of
this gap would be as reprehensible as absurd.”
The eminent naturalist who wrote this sentence did not the less seize
every occasion which presented itself to point out, in the different
human races, what are called _simian traits_ and _characters_. Is
there then in Huxley an unfortunate contradiction? Evidently not. It
is in his case, as in that of all true naturalists, only an abuse of
language, against which I have already protested. Belonging to the
white race, which they naturally regard as the normal type, confining
their attention to the very substantial anatomical similarities which
exist between the man and the ape, they compare constantly and solely
the white on the one hand, with the anthropoid ape on the other.
They forget that the _oscillations of morphological characters_,
the inevitable result of the formation of the human races, must
necessarily sometimes increase and sometimes diminish, in however
small a degree, the distance which separates the extreme terms; they
allow themselves to employ these figurative expressions, and I should
let them pass without comment were they not sometimes understood
literally, either voluntarily or involuntarily. We know that the
English naturalist has himself been obliged to protest strongly
against the conclusions which have been drawn from his words or
writings.
Huxley allows that the oscillations are never so great as to cause
confusion. The _human character_, therefore, does not alter in
nature; it does not become _simian_. The oscillations to which I
allude may sometimes be observed in the same individual and even
in the same bone. In the old man of Cro-Magnon, of whom I shall
presently speak at some length, the femur is the broadest and
thickest that M. Broca has ever measured in man, and we have found
others of still greater size. Now, in the chimpanzee this same bone
is broader and much thinner. Are we therefore justified in saying
that the femur of Les Eyzies is partly _simian_ and partly _more than
human_?
Finally, what has really been proved, is the conclusion of Huxley
which I have just quoted. Believers in _pithecoid man_ must be
content to seek him elsewhere than in the only fossil races with
which we are acquainted, and to have recourse to the unknown. There
may be some who will murmur at this necessity, and protest in the
name of _philosophy_. Let them say what they will, we are content
with having experience and observation on our side.
VIII. If we consider the general formation of the skull, all fossil
races may be referred to two fundamental types; the one distinctly
dolichocephalic, and the other advancing by degrees from metacephaly
to a very strongly marked brachycephaly.
Animated discussions were held some years ago to decide which of
these two types preceded the other. This question again is connected
with a number of general ideas which may be designated as the
_mongoloid theory_.
At the conclusion of some excavations among ancient tombs and a few
dolmens, Serres announced in 1854 that the inhabitants of France
reckoned Mongolians among their ancestors. Some time previous to
this, some Scandinavian savants, among others S. Nilsson, Retzius,
Eschricht, etc., had connected with the Lapps, that is to say with
the Finnish race, round-headed skeletons which had been discovered
in the neolithic tombs and the peat-bogs of Scania. M. Pruner Bey,
combining these earlier notions with the data recently acquired
concerning the antiquity of man, has formulated by degrees a complete
theory, remarkable for its simplicity and for the light which it
throws upon the whole past history of the populations of France.
In the opinion of this eminent anthropologist, there still exists
at the present time a vast human formation which he designates
_mongoloid_, because it appears to him to be connected in certain
respects with the Mongol type, properly so called, whilst at the same
time preserving a certain number of characters in which it resembles
the white races. This great race, as it is understood by M. Pruner
Bey, occupies the greater portion of the north of the old continent,
and extends even into America. It is, moreover, represented in the
centre and south of Europe by several more or less isolated groups,
such as the Basques. Certain historical populations, such as the
Ligurians, have belonged to it. There is every indication of its
having once occupied the whole of Europe. Now, this race itself is
descended from the primitive quaternary race, as it is known to us
through the fossil skulls found by M. Dupont at Furfooz in the valley
of the Lesse. The parentage and filiation of these races appear to M.
Pruner Bey to be attested by the general form of the skull and by its
proportions, which in all these races are more or less brachycephalic.
The opponents of these general views brought forward the existence
of the crania found in the Neanderthal in Prussia, in the Engis
cave in Belgium, in the tufa beds of La Denise in Auvergne, in the
loess of the Rhine at Eguisheim in Alsace. All these heads are
dolichocephalic. They were said to be more ancient than those of
Furfooz. But at this time there were doubts of a different nature
with regard to nearly all these bones which might have appeared
legitimate, and the theory of M. Pruner Bey gained by this means
many strong adherents. When writing in 1875 my _Rapport sur les
progrès de l’Anthropologie_, I felt obliged to ascribe anteriority
to the brachycephalic type, though at the same time making formal
reservations, especially in favour of the Eguisheim skull. The
discovery at Cro-Magnon, in Périgord, which followed soon after,
showed how carefully we must guard against drawing too hasty
conclusions. It was evident, that, in presence of these great
dolichocepliali, incontestably anterior to the men of the Lesse, the
mongoloid theory must undergo serious modifications which I did not
hesitate to acknowledge.
Since then science has been enriched by new discoveries, and many
points have been cleared up. The old beds of the Seine, studied
with remarkable intelligence by M. Belgrand, have furnished us with
a _relative chronometer_, the indications of which have been fully
appreciated by M. Hamy. The work presented by him at the Stockholm
Congress leaves no room for doubt. Till the present time the
dolichoceplialic type only has been found in the _lowest gravels_ of
the plain of Grenelle. It is therefore represented by the _Canstadt
race_. It reappears in the form of the _Cro-Magnon race_, in the
_alluvial beds_ at the level of and below the erratic blocks at a
depth of from 3 to 4 m. (10 to 13 ft.). Skulls which approach more or
less to the brachycephalic type are only found above this level at a
depth of from 2·50 m. to 1·40 m. (8 ft. 2 in. to 4 ft. 7 in.).
The superposition, and consequently the succession of types, is here
evident. Does this authorise us to consider the dolichocephalic type
as having everywhere preceded the brachycephalic? We ought perhaps
still to retain some doubts on this point. Some fragments, belonging
probably to the latter, have been discovered at Clichy, very little
above a cranial vault of the Canstadt race, and the beautiful skull
from Nagy-Sap in Hungary was obtained from a well characterized
loess, the age of which does not however appear to have been
determined.
Perhaps, when fresh facts are forthcoming to dispel the latest
doubts, we shall find that the two types appeared at almost the
same time upon the lands which were one day to become Europe; but
at present everything argues in favour of the anteriority of the
dolichocephali. In America the only known fossil skull leads to the
same conclusion.
However this may be, the mongoloid theory can no longer be accepted
as absolute. The man of Cro-Magnon and that of Furfooz cannot be
placed in the same group, and considered as belonging to the same
race. The idea of M. Pruner Bey is, nevertheless, partly true; and
the honour of having connected living with fossil populations cannot
be denied to this eminent anthropologist. Still, what he has said
of one race must be applied to the rest. The inhabitants of Western
Europe are connected with the quaternary period, not by a single
root, but by six at least, and perhaps more.
IX. A methodical distribution of the different races of a species is
never an easy task. The difficulty is very strongly felt in the study
of living human races; it is still greater in dealing with fossil
races. Even if the materials were as abundant as they are rare, we
no longer have the perfect individual, and cannot attempt to apply
the _natural method_; we are forced to be content with a _systematic
classification_. This is what M. Hamy and I have been obliged to do;
and without sharing the absolute opinions which were once advanced by
Retzius, we took the general form of the skull as the starting point
for our classification. In so doing we have, moreover, only imitated
palæontologists in their studies upon fossil animals.
We have already seen that considerations drawn from this method lead
to a division of fossil man into two groups, the one dolichocephalic,
and the other brachycephalic. The Lagoa Santa skull, which must from
all appearance be the type of a distinct race, is evidently connected
with the former. The accounts of this fossil are, however, at present
so incomplete, that I cannot stop to consider it in such a rapid
sketch as this.
In these two fundamental groups differences exist side by side with
the common character. In the former these differences are very great
and strongly marked; they are generally less so in the latter. Thus
we have clearly distinguished the two dolichocephalic types, while we
have placed in the same chapter, and as it were in a kind of family,
part at least of the brachycephalic races.
Several objections may be raised against this nomenclature, of which
we are well aware. We understood perfectly that the skull of La
Truchère is as distinct from those of Furfooz as the Neanderthal
skull is from that of Cro-Magnon. On the one hand, however, this
skull is the extreme limit of a graduated series, from which it
seemed to us difficult to detach it; on the other, this fossil, at
the time when we were writing, was perfectly unique. Even at the
present time it has only again been met with in the neolithic period.
Thus, in giving it a place in our table, we did not wish to separate
in an absolute manner an individual case.
As to the other types which we have placed in the same chapter,
they form a true natural group, each at the same time having its
special characters, which by careful study we are able to recognise.
The races may, therefore, be clearly defined. The Grenelle race,
especially, will always be very distinct from the two Furfooz races.
Nevertheless, we here no longer meet with decisive characters which
strike us at the first glance, and the ethnical affinities are
evidently closer. It will, perhaps, at some future time be possible
to trace these three branches to the common source from which they
have all sprung. In short, we must represent the present state of
our knowledge without interfering with the rights of the future. Our
nomenclature satisfies, we believe, this condition.
We admit then two dolichocephalic races, those of Canstadt and
of Cro-Magnon. The more or less brachycephalic races are four in
number. Under the title of Furfooz races we have included two races
discovered in that famous locality. The Grenelle race and that of La
Truchère also take their names from that of the localities where they
were found.
Let us rapidly review all these races.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CANSTADT RACE.
I. The name of this race is that of the village near which the first
human fossil was found. In 1700, Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Wurtemberg
excavated a Roman oppidum in the neighbourhood of Stuttgard. A
portion of the cranial vault of a man was discovered in the midst of
a number of animal bones. Geology and palæontology were, however,
still in their infancy; and the nature of this precious fragment was
unknown till Jaeger, in 1835, recognised its value as an argument
in favour of the coexistence of man with the great extinct mammals.
After close study, thanks to the kindness of M. Fraas, M. Hamy and I
have been able, without any difficulty, to connect it with the famous
Neanderthal skull.
II. The latter was discovered in 1857 in a small cavern near
Düsseldorf. The skeleton was perfect. Unfortunately, the workmen who
discovered it, broke and dispersed the bones, of which part only
were saved by Dr. Fuhlrott. When exhibited the same year at the
Congress of Bonn, they became the subject of long-continued study
and discussion. M. Schaaffhausen, although himself sometimes going
beyond the truth, took his position from the first upon the right
ground. Some anatomists wished, however, to consider this specimen
as a special _species_, and even a fresh _genus_. It was especially
considered as intermediate between man and apes, and here and there
traces may still be found of these opinions.
The only cause of these exaggerations is a feature, striking it is
true, which is presented by this cranial vault. In the Neanderthal
man the frontal sinuses have an exceptional development, and the
superciliary ridges, almost lost in the middle of the glabella,
form a most strange protuberance above the orbit. This conformation
has not failed to be compared to the _bony ridges_ which the
anthropomorphous apes possess in the same place. Then, starting from
this fact, it has been thought necessary to find in the rest of the
cranium characters in harmony with this _simian feature_. Stress
has been laid upon its slight elevation, the lengthened form, the
projection of the occipital region, etc.
With a little partiality, and by only comparing it with modern
skulls, which are considered as normal, a separate species of being
has been made of the Neanderthal man. By degrees, however, other
crania equally fossil have been connected with this type. Indeed,
in several parts of Europe those characters which were too hastily
declared to be unique have been observed in dolmens in less ancient
burial places, in historical persons, and even in individuals
living at the present time. There was, then, no alternative but to
conclude that the Neanderthal man belonged to a formation which was
unquestionably human, to a _race_, certain features of which were
merely exaggerated in his case.
This race is none the less remarkable and perfectly characterized.
In all individuals of the male sex we find a greater or less
development of the superciliary prominences, which were so striking
in the Neanderthal man. The low and narrow forehead appears still
more receding in consequence of this contrast. The cranial vault is
much flattened. Tolerably regular in its two anterior thirds, it
rises towards the upper portion of the occiput, and is prolonged
backwards. The entire skull is relatively narrow, and we have already
seen that the cephalic index descends as low as 72. These bones
are also remarkable for their thickness, which in the Eguisheim
cranium reaches 11 millimetres (0·43 in.). Some of these features
are modified in the female skull. The superciliary ridges disappear
almost entirely. The occipital protuberance, and especially the
prominence of its upper portion, are much less marked. The cephalic
index rises one or two units, but the flattening of the vault and
the other characters are persistent.
The Neanderthal cranium, and all those which may also be connected
with the Canstadt type, are incomplete and without the face. One
skull alone, the age of which unfortunately is not determined with
certainty, enables us to fill up this gap. It is that from Forbes
Quarry near Gibraltar. In this case the cranium, and particularly the
forehead, exactly coincide with the description given above of the
Neanderthal cranium. Immense and almost circular orbits, the index
of which rises almost to 68·83, well agree with the vestiges in the
Neanderthal cranium, and hide by their external border the temporal
region. Below, the malar bones descend almost vertically; the nasal
bones are prominent; the nasal orifices very broad. The superior
maxillary bone is sensibly prognathous, and lastly the dental arch
is of a horse-shoe shape narrowing backwards. The whole is rude and
massive. A face recently discovered by M. Piette in the Gourdan
grotto, and which will shortly be described by M. Hamy, confirms the
connection which we have established between the Forbes Quarry skull
and the remains of the Canstadt race. Found in the inferior beds of
the cave, among flints of the Moustier type, this specimen reproduces
with some modifications the characters which we have just described.
The inferior maxillary bone recalls that of Arcy.
If these characters are united to those presented by the celebrated
maxillary bone of Naulette, we must add that the chin in the Canstadt
man is but slightly prominent, and that the lower part of the face
was sometimes more peculiar, in this respect, than the greater number
of the skulls of Negroes from Guinea. The researches of M. Hamy have,
however, shown that the singular maxillary bone discovered by M.
Dupont, was again only the exaggerated realization of a type which is
met with elsewhere under considerable modifications.
In short, the cranium and face of the Canstadt man must, as a rule,
have presented a strangely savage aspect.
The body appears to have harmonised with the head. The few bones of
the limbs, preserved more or less intact, indicate a stature of only
1m.68 to 1m.72 (5ft. 6in., to 5ft. 8in.); yet their proportions are
athletic. They are very thick relatively to their length, and the
protuberances and depressions serving for muscular attachments are
remarkably developed. Moreover, the tibia discovered in a quarry at
Clichy by M. Bertrand, presented the flattened form which has been
designated _platycnemic_, and the ribs of the Neanderthal skeleton
were sensibly more rounded than is generally the case.
III. As far as we know at present, the Canstadt race is undoubtedly
the most ancient European one. It disputed the ground with the great
extinct mammals, with the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave
bear, and the cave hyæna. It belongs, therefore, to the earliest ages
of the quaternary epoch. In the opinion of M. Schaaffhausen, it may
be traced to an earlier period still, and is identical with tertiary
man surviving the latest geological revolution.
The naturalist who has made us so well acquainted with the
Neanderthal man, only invokes, in support of his opinion, what he
calls the _typical inferiority_ of this man, and of those who are
connected with him. This reason would to many be an insufficient
motive for the view which he has taken. But I have observed above,
that we are justified in assuming that man followed into Europe
the great mammals which were driven by the cold into more southern
countries. There can, then, be nothing strange in the idea that the
race, to which everything points as having been the most ancient upon
our soil, should also have been the one to accomplish the migration.
But were the Saint-Prest, the Monte Aperto, and especially the Thénay
men only its pioneers? The future alone can answer this question
either in the affirmative or negative.
However this may be, the remains of human industry indicate a
well-marked progress since the earliest ages. Tools and arms became
more numerous and perfect. Deer’s antlers and bear’s jaw-bones are
worked into weapons and tools; in addition to scrapers and borers,
the form of which becomes more and more marked, we find knives,
chisels, and hammers, set in handles: hatchets of much greater size,
sometimes comparatively thin, flat upon one side but retouched upon
the other, sometimes thick and rudely cut on both sides, with or
without a handle, belong to the _moustierien_ and _acheuléen_ types
of M. de Mortillet; they assume definite forms by which we are
able to recognise several modifications characteristic of certain
localities; the arrow is larger and the lance has become a formidable
weapon. In the midst of the lowest quaternary alluvial deposits, we
meet with small heaps of _coscinopora globularis_, and other small
chalk fossils, all pierced either naturally or artificially. The
only possible explanation is to consider these polypi and shells as
having once formed necklaces or bracelets, the thread of which has
disappeared. Thus, the taste for adornment, so largely developed in
modern savages, was displayed as early as this period.
If we compare the industries, still very modest, with those of the
present day, we shall be able to form for ourselves an approximate
idea of what the race of Canstadt was when it occupied perhaps nearly
the whole of Europe. With M. Lartet we see in the obsidian lances of
New Caledonia, the flint heads of the lower alluvium of the Somme;
the hatchet of certain Australians reminds us, as it did Sir Charles
Lyell, of the Abbeville hatchet. It is with the latter and with the
Bosjesmans, that I should be tempted to connect the Neanderthal man
and his fellows. Like them, he seems to have most frequently led a
wandering life. But few of his dwellings, or places of meeting, are
known to us, such as the Naulette cavern. Nothing seems to indicate
that he had places of burial such as we find later. Everything tends
to show, moreover, that he lived entirely as a hunter, and there
is nothing to justify us in supposing that he was acquainted with
agriculture, which is carried to such a remarkable pitch by certain
Melanesian negroes.
IV. Judging from the geological distribution of the remains which
have been met with up to the present time, the Canstadt race during
the quaternary period principally occupied the basins of the Seine
and the Rhine, and extended perhaps as far as Stängenäs in the
Bohuslän; certainly as far as the Olmo in central Italy; as Brux in
Bohemia; as the Pyrenees in France, and probably as far as Gibraltar.
This race is not restricted in point of geological time. The
attention roused by the strange characters of the Neanderthal cranium
was the means of instituting widespread investigations, which have
rapidly drawn this specimen from the isolation in which, at first,
it seemed to be placed. B. Davis, Busk, Turner, King, Carter Blake,
Pruner Bey, Vogt, Huxley and Hamy have been particularly successful
in these investigations, and have brought to light relations which
are now generally adopted.
The result obtained from all these labours is that the Canstadt type,
sometimes remarkably pure, and sometimes again more or less modified
by crossings, is found in the dolmens and in the cemeteries of the
Gallo-Roman period, in those of the Middle Ages, and in modern tombs
from Scandinavia to Spain, from Portugal to Italy, and from Scotland
and Ireland to the valley of the Danube, in the Crimea at Minsk, and
as far as Orenbourg in Russia. This area of habitation comprises, we
see, the entire space of time which has elapsed from the quaternary
period to the present day, and the whole of Europe.
The remark has with justice been made by M. Hamy, that there
probably exist in India, in the midst of populations driven back
by the Aryan invasion, representatives of the Neanderthal type.
Nevertheless, to find them with any degree of certainty, we must go
as far as Australia. Our investigations have on this point confirmed
those of Huxley. Among the races of this great island there is
one, distributed particularly in the province of Victoria, in the
neighbourhood of Port Western, which reproduces in a remarkable
manner the characters of the Canstadt race.
Finally, the Canstadt race has had representatives in America also.
One of the drawings published by MM. Lacerta and Peixoto leaves no
room for doubt on this point. It represents almost the whole of
the upper part of a cranial vault found in the province of Ceara,
the resemblance of which with that of Eguisheim is very striking.
Unfortunately, the Brazilian naturalists say nothing about the
situation of this precious fragment at the moment of its discovery,
and we do not know whether the cranium in question is a fossil or
whether it belongs to the present epoch.
V. All these facts, which I have been obliged to sum up in a few
lines, raise an important problem, and lead to an interesting
conclusion.
Are we, in the first place, justified in connecting ethnologically
the crania of a more or less Neanderthal type, discovered in
the Antipodes as well as in Europe, with the races, the remains
of which have been preserved by the quaternary alluvium? Is not
the reproduction of this type purely accidental? Do not the most
ancient crania owe their remarkable characters to some pathological
condition, to a simple deviation from the normal development, and
particularly to a premature union of the bones of the cranium?
These several opinions have been maintained, and the latter in
particular has had adherents. It rests principally upon the condition
of the ossified sutures of the Neanderthal cranium. But these same
sutures may be observed in the Canstadt cranium. M. Sauvage found in
the almost infantine frontal bone of La Denise all the Neanderthal
characters, although the medio-frontal suture as yet only existed in
part. It is entirely open in the cranium of the young man, discovered
in a Poitou tumulus, described by M. Pruner Bey, and which it is
impossible not to connect with the preceding.
Thus we cannot attribute to the premature ossification of the
sutures, the form of the crania of the men of Canstadt. For a much
stronger reason, the clearly marked characters of the forehead and
face which remain cannot support this theory, and we must allow that
the whole constitutes a true ethnical type.
Since we meet with this type disseminated through time and space,
always fundamentally the same, and sometimes reappearing in all its
primitive purity, we are forced to choose between the two following
interpretations; we have here either an _example of atavism_, the
importance of which is attested by its generality: or else the
reproduction of these exceptional forms, in the midst of _the most
varied populations_ and under the _most different conditions of
life_, is due to mere _chance_.
The laws which govern the formation and maintenance of animal and
vegetable races, and from which man cannot escape, do not allow
the admission of the latter conclusion. This is why M. Hamy and I
have regarded the Canstadt race as one of the elements of modern
populations. In Europe it has blended with succeeding races, but
asserts its past existence by the marks which it impresses, even at
the present day, upon some rare individuals. In Australia, perhaps,
it has some direct descendants in the tribes of North Western.
VI. The epithets _brutal_ and _simian_, too often applied to the
Neanderthal cranium, and to those which resemble it, the conjectures
made with regard to the individual to whom they belonged, might lead
us to think that a certain moral and intellectual inferiority was
naturally connected with this form of cranium. It can easily be shown
that this conclusion rests upon a most worthless foundation.
At the Paris Congress, M. Vogt quoted the example of one of his
friends, Dr. Emmayer, whose cranium exactly recalls that of
Neanderthal, and who is nevertheless a highly distinguished lunacy
doctor. In passing through the Copenhagen Museum, I was struck by
the Neanderthal characters presented by one of the crania in the
collection; it proved to be that of Kay Lykke, a Danish gentleman,
who played some part in the political affairs of the 17th century.
M. Godron has published the drawing of the skull of Saint Mansuy,
Bishop of Toul in the 4th century, and this head even exaggerates
some of the most striking features of the Neanderthal cranium. The
forehead is still more receding, the vault more depressed, and the
head so long that the cephalic index is 69·41. Lastly the skull of
Bruce, the Scotch hero, is also a reproduction of the Canstadt type.
In presence of these facts, we must assuredly acknowledge that even
the individual whose remains were found in the Neanderthal cave
was capable of possessing all the moral and intellectual qualities
compatible with his inferior social condition.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE CRO-MAGNON RACE.
I. In the year 1858, in the valley of the Vézère, near to the
village of Les Eyzies, which had already been rendered famous by
the investigations of the elder M. Lartet and Christy, the workmen
brought to light in the rock-shelter of Cro-Magnon the bones of
three men, a woman and a child, which have been preserved to
science by MM. Berton-Meyron and Delmarès. M. Louis Lartet, to
whom the study of the deposit had been entrusted, determined their
geological age; MM. Broca and Pruner Bey described them with all
the precision which we should expect from their knowledge of the
subject, and the discussions which arose between these two eminent
anthropologists, brought the essential points still more strongly
forward. The Cro-Magnon bones thus became classic almost within a day
of their discovery; and M. Hamy and I could not do better than group
around them the human remains which resemble them. This has been
our reason for choosing the name which we have given to our second
dolichocephalic race.
Like the preceding one, this also has its typical individual who
exaggerates in certain respects the characters of the race, and thus
presents an extreme term of comparison. The contrast is only the more
striking. The only character common to both the Neanderthal man and
the old man of Cro-Magnon lies in the proportions of the cranium. The
cephalic index, here 73·76, differs but very slightly, as we see at
once from what we have already stated. It descends, moreover, as low
as 70·05 in a cranium of the same race found at Solutré; it is 70·52
in the famous Engis cranium. It was this elongation from the front
backwards which led Schmerling to connect the fossil man which he had
just discovered with the Ethiopian rather than with the European.
This, at least, partly accounts for the theory which makes the Negro
the starting point of our race. M. Hamy, in connecting the Engis
cranium with the Cro-Magnon type, has added one more fact to those
which are at variance with this doctrine.
In every other respect the Cro-Magnon head and that of Canstadt
are most dissimilar. Instead of a low and retreating forehead
above superciliary ridges which remind us of the ape, instead
of a flattened vault like that of the Neanderthal skull and its
companions, we here find a large forehead rising above frontal
sinuses but slightly marked, and a vault presenting the finest
proportions. The frontal bone is remarkably developed from before
backward. The fronto-occipital curve is continued with a striking
regularity till within a short distance above the lambda. It is there
bent so as to form a surface which is prolonged upon the cerebral
part of the occipital bone. The cerebral region of the same bone is
carried abruptly downward, and presents numerous strong impressions
of muscular insertions.
This skull, so remarkable for its fine proportion, is also remarkable
for its capacity. According to M. Broca, who could only work under
precautions calculated to diminish the amount, it is equal to at
least 1590 cubic centimetres (96·99 cubic inches). I have already
remarked that this number is far higher than the mean taken from
modern Parisians; it is equally so in comparison with the other
European races.
Thus, in the savage of quaternary ages, who had to fight against the
mammoth with stone weapons for arms, we find all those craniological
characters generally considered as the sign of great intellectual
development.
The features of the face are not less striking than those of the
skull. In the heads which M. Pruner Bey calls _harmonic_, a face
elongated from above downward corresponds to a skull elongated
from behind forward. When there is a disagreement between these
proportions the head is _dysharmonic_. This latter character is
very strongly marked in the old man of Cro-Magnon. The bizygomatic
transverse diameter acquires an extent rare even in harmonic
brachycephali. In his case the facial index descends as low as 63.
This exaggeration in breadth is present also in all the upper and
medial parts of the face. The orbits, almost rectilinear at their
extremities, are remarkable for their slight elevation, being on the
other hand very long. The orbital index descends lower than M. Broca
has ever known it to be: it is only 61.
But this tendency to breadth does not extend to the medial regions
or to the inferior portion of the face. The nose, the bones of
which are boldly projected forward and constitute a strongly marked
protuberance, is narrow; from its index, 45·09, it places the old
man of Cro-Magnon amongst the lepthorhini of M. Broca. The superior
maxillary bone is equally narrowed relatively to the face which
it terminates, and the alveolar arch is projected outward in such
a manner as to produce a very decided prognathism. The inferior
maxillary bone is especially remarkable for the breadth of its
ascending branches which, according to the investigation of M. Broca,
surpass in this respect all other known human jaw-bones. The breadth
in question is 49 m.m. (1·93 inch). Far from being obliterated and
retreating, as in the Canstadt race, the slightly triangular chin
projects forwards.
The cephalic characters of the old man of Cro-Magnon are to be found
more or less strongly marked in all the men of the same race. They
are generally modified in the women. Thus, even in that specimen,
the head of which, unfortunately incomplete, was discovered not far
from that of the old man, we see the beautiful lines of the skull
preserved, and the forehead even rising a little higher still. But
the posterior surface is less pronounced, the dysharmony is less
strong between the skull and the face. The latter is relatively
longer, the orbits are higher, the nose is broader, and the
prognathism is modified. We cannot, however, deny the ethnical
relation of the two heads which were found together, and which thus
constitute definite terms of comparison for the two sexes.
The Cro-Magnon race was tall. The mean height deduced from the
measurements taken by M. Hamy upon a skeleton and the isolated bones
of five men is 1·78 m. (5 feet 10 inches). With the old man of
Cro-Magnon it was about 1·82 m. (5 feet 11·6 inches), and with the
Mentone man, whose skeleton was found by M. Rivière entire and _in
situ_, it was as much as 1·85 m. (6 feet 0·8 inches). The Cro-Magnon
woman measured 1·66 m. (5 feet 5·3 inches). These bones and all those
which have been connected with them, moreover, give indications of
a remarkably strong race. They are thick and solid. In all cases
the muscular impressions are very strongly marked. In the old man
of Cro-Magnon the femurs are also the broadest and thickest that
M. Broca has ever measured, as we have already remarked. The linea
aspera is also of an unusual breadth and thickness, and forms a sort
of prominent column or buttress.
Finally, in the Cro-Magnon men, a fine open forehead, a large,
narrow, and aquiline nose, must have compensated for any strangeness
which the face may have acquired from the probable smallness
of the eyes, from very strong masseters, and from a slightly
lozenge-shaped contour. With these features, the type of which is
in no way disagreeable, and allows of real beauty, this magnificent
race combined a high stature, powerful muscles, and an athletic
constitution. It seems to have been fitted in every way for
struggling against the difficulties and perils of savage life.
II. We have already seen that the Cro-Magnon race was discovered
immediately above that of Canstadt in the alluvial deposits of
Grenelle. It is therefore very old, and was contemporary with the
great mammals, now either extinct or emigrated. More sociable,
doubtless, and more settled than the preceding race, it inhabited
caverns where it left numerous specimens of its handiwork; it buried
its dead under the shelters where they are now found. A great number
of eminent investigators have explored these _scientific quarries_. I
cannot enumerate them all here, but there is one name, the omission
of which would be unpardonable, that, namely, of Edouard Lartet. It
is well known with what persevering intelligence, sometimes alone,
sometimes accompanied by his friend Christy, this man, as modest
as he is learned, has explored these caves, what treasures he has
obtained from them, and the prudence and sagacity which he showed
in the interpretation of his splendid discoveries, and only justice
was done to him in awarding him the title of _founder of human
palæontology_.
Thanks to him, and to those who have followed in his steps, we
possess the essential elements of a history of the Cro-Magnon race.
Almost without leaving this valley of the Vézère, the name of which
stands so high in anthropology, we can, as M. Broca has done, follow
it step by step. In fact, from the village of Les Eyzies to the
rock-shelter of Moustier, within a distance of from seven to eight
miles we meet with no less than eight human settlements, all of which
have become more or less celebrated from the different records which
they have furnished. They are the _Moustier_ cavern, the _Moustier_
shelter, the shelter of _La Madeleine_, the _Cro-Magnon_ shelter and
burial-place, the _Laugerie-Haute_ shelter, the _Laugerie-Basse_
shelter, the _Gorge d’Enfer_ cavern, and the _Les Eyzies_ cavern.
The most ancient, that of Moustier, is connected by its fauna with
the lower alluvium (bas niveaux) of Grenelle, and dates at least
from the close of the age of the bear; that of La Madeleine cannot
be placed much before the present epoch. Between these two extremes
are ranged the other six, and altogether they mark out, so to speak,
the two last periods of the quaternary ages. Yet to obtain a clear
idea of the social and intellectual development of the race, to
learn how far it complied with the modifications of the climate, and
what progress or what decadence these modifications imposed upon
it, we must consult the evidences which it has left in many other
localities, and especially in the caves and shelters of Bruniquel, in
the burial-places of Solutré, in the caves of Gourdan, Duruty, and of
L’Homme-Mort, etc.
The men who frequented the Moustier cavern do not seem to have been
much superior to the Canstadt race, with which they were perhaps
associated, and whose industries they closely imitated. Their
conditions of existence were almost identical with those of the
preceding age. They lived among the great mammals which served them
for food. The horse and the aurochs were the general objects of their
sport. But they fed upon the mammoth, the bear, and even the lion and
the cave hyæna. To meet such enemies as these they employed a species
of spear-head and small lance, smooth upon one side, cut upon the
other, and sharp at the edges, constituting undoubtedly a formidable
weapon. This special form characterises the _Moustier type_ of M. de
Mortillet. The hunters of this epoch cut their arrows upon the same
model, but rarely made use of them; they seem to have despised birds
and small game; the other implements remained almost the same as in
the preceding age.
At Cro-Magnon, the progress is evident. Our fine old man and his
companions had arms and implements of flint, which were more
numerous, more varied and less massive. To judge from the remains of
their kitchen, they must have made frequent use of the bow, to obtain
birds and small mammals, while they still attacked large animals, and
especially the horse, with the lance, spear-head, and perhaps the
dagger.
At Laugerie-Haute, on the Vézère, at Solutré, in the Mâconnais, and
other contemporary settlements, the cutting of the flints reached
a degree of perfection which was truly marvellous. Sometimes
undoubtedly old types reappeared side by side with forms modified
by intelligent experience, and by perfected workmanship. Still
the predominance of the latter is so marked, that it distinctly
characterises this epoch. The points of the lances and javelins
are tapered off more or less in the shape of a walnut, laurel,
or plantain leaf. They are very pointed, and become perfectly
symmetrical. The arrow-heads are the object of most particular care.
M. de Ferry has very well shown that the general form, the weight,
the angle, etc., were calculated in such a manner as to be adapted to
the different distances of flight, to the necessities of the chase.
All these tools, finely cut upon both sides, present, moreover, a
much more remarkable finish than what we meet with in any of the
other implements. They were worthy of being taken for one of the
terms of comparison admitted by M. de Mortillet, and constitute his
_Solutré type_.
Essentially hunters, and certainly warriors, the men of this period
bestowed their chief attention upon their arms. They probably felt a
certain pride in possessing the finest or the best cut weapons; but
the relative indifference which they betrayed in the matter of other
objects, shows us that their chief aim in the finish of their work
was to make their weapons more terrible by increasing their power of
penetration. Several fragments of bone, discovered in places remote
from each other, and belonging to several periods, prove that these
weapons of flint, handled by strong hands, left nothing to be desired
in this respect. I shall only mention the vertebra of a reindeer,
which had been pierced through by a lance or a javelin, and a human
tibia, through the head of which an arrow has passed near to the
kneepan. In both cases the broken flint has remained, testifying to
the good quality of the weapon and to the strength with which it was
used.
At the time of the deposition of the upper river gravels, and when
the predominance of the reindeer was most marked, the industry of the
men of Cro-Magnon underwent a sudden change. Till then flint, and,
in its absence, other hard stones, had furnished both the implement
and the instrument formed by the aid of the former. Doubtless from
the earliest times, bones and the antlers of the stag or reindeer,
had been used from time to time; but they only played an almost
insignificant part in the manufacture of tools or weapons. During the
epoch of which we are speaking, they acquired a growing importance,
and soon furnished almost the only material for weapons. Flint was
now only used to make the implements, and these, on the other hand,
became more numerous, and fitted for the most varied uses. It was
with flints that the troglodytes of Les Eyzies, of Laugerie-Basse,
of La Madeleine, and a great number of other settlements, sawed
and carved their reindeer antlers to make strong harpoons, which
were barbed on one side only. It was with flint that they pointed
needles not much longer than our own, and pierced the eye. In some
specimens the latter is so small that the piercing of it remained a
problem, till Lartet reproduced it with his own hand, using one of
the implements which he had discovered. But the most characteristic
object of the _Magdalénian_ type is the arrow-head, regularly barbed
on both sides, the teeth of which contain little channels, probably
intended as the receptacle of some poisonous substance.
The succession of industries which I have just pointed out is,
moreover, by no means invariable. As the investigations and
discoveries increase in number, we are more and more impressed by
the fact that the several colonies of the race under consideration,
yielding to local necessities, or carried away by the accidents of
their development, do not present an unintelligible uniformity. The
last excavations carried out at Solutré by MM. Arcelin and the Abbé
Ducrost, show arms and instruments of the Magdalénian type which
are anterior to those of the Solutré type. In this epoch, as at the
present time, there existed a certain diversity which explains the
coincidence, in point of time, of different industrial types among
this population of similar origin.
III. The lighter, more trusty, and more varied weapons, announce a
change in the life of our troglodytes. They continue, it is true,
to hunt large game when it comes in their way; a few rare mammoths,
surviving the climatic modifications which were going on, still fell
under their hand; the horse also often contributed to their repast.
The reindeer, however, largely predominated in the _débris_ of their
kitchen. Mixed with them are found the remains of small mammals, such
as the hare and the squirrel. Birds also began to be used for food to
a considerable extent. From the bones discovered in the single grotto
of Gourdan, so admirably explored by M. Piette, M. Alph. Edwards has
been able to distinguish twenty distinct species. Lastly, the men
of the Magdalénian age fed also upon fish; but fishing again was to
them a kind of hunting. They evidently did not use the hook, and only
harpooned the larger species, the salmon in Périgord, and the pike in
the Pyrenees.
The conveyance of the large animals which fell under their hand to
their usual dwelling-place, would have been too much even for such
stalwart hunters. They cut them up upon the spot, leaving only the
skeleton of the trunk. We rarely find in the caves more than the
bones of the head and limbs, which, again, are almost always broken.
Like all savages, the troglodytes of the Vézère held the brain and
marrow in high estimation. The long bones which enclosed the latter
have evidently been split in a methodical manner, with a view to
preserving the contents. MM. Lartet and Christy even think that a
special implement was employed in eating these delicate morsels. A
kind of spatula made from the antler of a reindeer, with a conical,
richly carved handle, hollowed and rounded at the extremity, has been
regarded by them as a _marrow spoon_.
The large amount of ashes and burnt wood found in the Vézère
deposits, leaves no room for doubt that fire was used in the cooking
of food. The manner in which it was used is, however, rather a
difficulty. No trace of pottery has been found among these hunters,
and there is nothing to show that they were acquainted with the
_oven_ of the Polynesians. They must, therefore, have gone to work
like the Siberians, who, at the close of the last century, had only
vessels of leather or of wood, and nevertheless were able to boil the
water which they contained by throwing in highly heated flints.
We have no reason for thinking that the Cro-Magnon man was a
cannibal. We find among the _débris_ of his kitchen, none of these
long bones, broken so as to extract the marrow, which could not but
have been mixed with those of the large mammals, had human flesh
formed even accidentally part of their repast. Nevertheless M. Piette
has found at Gourdan several remains of human skulls, bearing the
mark of flint knives, and the trace of blows which seem to have
broken them. Axes and atlases in great quantity, jaw-bones broken or
whole, accompany these fragments of the cranial vault. These facts
may justify the opinion of M. Piette. The Gourdan warriors after
having killed an enemy, doubtless brought his head home, scalped it,
and perhaps mixed the brain in some kind of pottage, as some of the
tribes of the Philippine islands do at the present day. But they did
not eat the flesh of the vanquished, whose decapitated corpses were
probably left on the field of battle.
IV. Needles, like those which I have mentioned above, would not
have been made had there not been something to sew. This fact alone
suggests the idea of clothes. The chase furnished the raw material.
The art of preparing skins must have been carried by these tribes
as far as it has been by the Red-Skins, to judge from the number of
scrapers and smoothers which have been found in their stations. The
marks left by flint knives at the points where long tendons taken
from the limbs of the reindeer were inserted, show how the thread
was procured. The clothes, when sewn, must have been ornamented in
various ways, as they are by savages of the present day. Upon the
skeleton discovered at Laugerie-Basse by M. Massenat, twenty pierced
shells were found placed in pairs upon different parts of the body.
This was not an instance of either necklace or bracelet, but of
ornaments arranged in an almost symmetrical manner upon a garment.
The skeleton of Mentone, discovered by M. Rivière, presented a
similar appearance.
Thus the taste for adornment, so striking at the present day in
the most savage as also in the civilized nations existed in the
troglodytic tribes of the quaternary epoch. There are, moreover,
numerous proofs of this fact. The fragments of necklaces, bracelets,
etc., have been found in a great number of stations. In most cases
marine shells, sometimes fossil and obtained from the tertiary beds,
formed these ornaments. But the Cro-Magnon man combined with these
the teeth of the large carnivora; he cut also with the same intention
plates of ivory, certain soft or hard stones, and even made beads of
clay which were merely dried in the sun. Finally, he tatooed himself,
or at least painted his body with the oxides of iron or manganese,
small stores of which have on several occasions been found in
different stations, and which have left their mark upon the bones of
some skeletons, for example, upon that of Mentone.
V. The Cro-Magnon race has up to this point shown scarcely any
superiority over the hunting tribes of America, unless perhaps it
is in the dexterity which they displayed in flint cutting. But
the artistic instincts which they showed almost from their first
appearance, and the point to which they carried drawing and sculpture
in the Madeleine age, gives them quite an exceptional position
amongst those nations whose evolution has been arrested at the
lowest stage of social life. The relative alleviation of climatic
conditions, the diminution of large and ferocious animals involving
the multiplication of useful species and especially that of the
reindeer, placed at this epoch the Cro-Magnon man in conditions of
welfare unknown to his predecessors. He profited by it in developing
in a most unexpected manner his very superior talents.
As a general rule the greater number of sculptures representing
animals leave, it is true, much to be desired. We can indeed
recognise the reindeer represented in high relief; nor would it be
difficult to recognise as a mammoth the little carving made from
the antler of the reindeer discovered at Montastruc. Nevertheless,
these specimens would give but a poor idea of Magdalénean art. The
ivory dagger-handles found by M. Peccadeau de l’Isle by the side of
the mammoth fortunately confirm this impression. In both a reindeer
is represented crouching, the legs bent, the head stretched out and
the antlers lying along the body so as not to inconvenience the
hand which should hold it. The attitudes are so natural, and the
proportions so exact, that a decorative sculptor of the present day,
in treating the same subject, could scarcely do better than copy his
antique predecessor.
Drawing or rather engraving was much more commonly practised than
sculpture. It offers also more points of interest. Armed with their
point of flint, the quaternary artists engraved in turn the bone and
the antlers of the reindeer, ivory from the mammoth, and stones of
different kinds. Sometimes they endeavoured to reproduce the plants
or animals around them; at other times they followed their own fancy,
and made designs of ornamentation, in which we meet with almost all
the principles reinvented many centuries afterwards. The multiplicity
and the variety of this kind of engraving show much imagination and a
real faculty of invention.
The faculty of imitation is equally striking in drawings representing
real objects, animals in particular. They are often very remarkable
for firmness of touch, showing a perfect comprehension of the whole,
and reproducing the details with such exactness that we are not
only able unerringly to recognise the group but even the species
represented by the artist. Thus we have found successively the
ox, the aurochs, the horse, the reindeer, the elk, the stag, the
steinbock, a cetacean, certain fishes, etc. After these faithful
representations, the models of which we know, there is no reason to
doubt the exactness with which certain extinct animals have been
drawn. This very simple consideration gives great interest to the
drawing of the cave bear found by M. Garrigou upon a piece of Massat
schist, and to those of the mammoth discovered by M. Lartet in the
Périgord caves. Thanks to the latter and to what we know from the
mammoths preserved in ice in Siberia, an artist of the present day
might produce in almost exact detail the portrait of this giant of
the ancient world, which disappeared so long ago.
VI. Man figures very rarely in these drawings or sculptures, and
the representations of our species which have been met with up to
the present time, display a relative inferiority which is indeed
most strange. The small ivory statue found by M. de Vibraye at
Laugerie-Basse scarcely testifies to even the infancy of the art. It
is a woman, whose sex we are able to recognise by a detail doubtless
exaggerated, but long, stiff and with very strange protuberances at
the lower extremity of the loins. The crouching human form found by
M. l’Abbé Landesque in the same locality is still more ill-formed.
The drawings of men or women are scarcely better, and the contrast
sometimes presented upon the same specimen between them and drawings
of animals is most strange. M. l’Abbé Landesque’s _reindeer woman_ is
grotesque, whilst the hind legs of the animal, which alone have been
preserved, present all the qualities which I have noticed above and
which may be observed in the splendid horse’s head engraved upon the
other side of the bone. In M. Massénat’s _aurochs man_, the animal
has much beauty both in form and movement; the man is stiff, without
proportion or truth.
This contrast is too great and too constant to be accidental. It must
be the result of a cause arising perhaps from some superstitious idea
similar to certain modern superstitions. When Catlin had finished
his first portrait of the Red-Skin, some of the tribe looked upon
him as a dangerous sorcerer, who had robbed the model of part of
himself. Perhaps some similar idea may have prevented the artists of
the Vézère from studying the human figure, for it always happens that
when they attempt to reproduce it their graving tool hesitates, and
loses all its good qualities.
These imperfect representations, therefore, tell us nothing of the
appearance or proportions of the race. The most we can say, if
we accept the interpretations of MM. l’Abbé Landesque and Piette,
is that it was remarkably hairy. But this opinion, which rests
chiefly upon the drawing of the _reindeer woman_, seems to me to be
contradicted by that of the _aurochs man_, whose small pointed beard
scarcely extends as far as the angle of the jaw-bone. The horizontal
hatching upon the legs and body cannot, it appears to me, be taken
for hairs, because it crosses at right angles the direction which
would have been taken by the latter. I should much rather consider
them as lines of painting, a kind of decoration which we know to have
been held in high estimation amongst these tribes.
VII. However bad they may be, the drawings which I have just
described furnish us, nevertheless, with some facts respecting the
mode of life pursued by these hunters. That of the _aurochs man_
informs us that they followed the largest game naked, as is often
the case with the Red-Skins, their hair raised in a tuft on the top
of the head, and armed only with the lance or javelin. The _whale
man_ is also naked, and the immense arm which he stretches out as
far as the fin of the fish, seems to indicate that he has fought
and conquered this monster, which had doubtless run aground in some
shallow. But, from this fact alone, it follows that the quaternary
man of Périgord must sometimes have left his mountains and travelled
as far as the sea-shore. His contemporaries in the Pyrenees did
the same, as is proved by the drawings of seals discovered in the
grottoes of Gourdan and Duruthy.
Again, those deposits which are situated at the greatest distance
inland have often furnished objects which can only have been
obtained upon the sea-shore. At Cro-Magnon more than three hundred
shells of _Littorina littorea_, an oceanic species, have been
found. On the other hand the _Cypræa rufa_ and _C. lurida_ found
upon the Laugerie-Basse skeleton, which I have mentioned above, are
unquestionably Mediterranean. Sometimes the molluscs peculiar to
the two regions have been found in the same place. In the Gourdan
grotto, in the middle of the central Pyrenees, M. Piette found five
oceanic species, one Mediterranean, and five common to both seas. The
fossil shells of the Périgord deposits were generally brought from
the _falun_ of Touraine, those of Gourdan must have been collected,
partly in the Landes and in the neighbourhood of Dax, and partly near
Perpignan. In this same grotto M. Piette discovered a pumice-stone,
which had been used in polishing needles, and which he considered had
come from the volcanic region of Agde.
From these, and some other analogous facts, M. Piette and M. de
Mortillet have thought there is sufficient reason to suppose that the
tribes of the Vézère had no fixed habitation, but led a nomad life,
visiting in turn the shores of the two seas, hunting in the mountains
during the summer the game of the season, and passing the winter in a
warmer climate. We cannot adopt this hypothesis. The ever-increasing
fauna among the cooking _débris_ denotes a population, which, as it
multiplied in every way, made more and more use of the resources of
the country. These same heaps furnished Lartet with reindeer bones
of every age, amongst which were those of young fawns. Our great
authority concludes from this fact that the tribe was stationary
during the entire year, and we believe him to be right. The man
of Cro-Magnon, La Madeleine and Gourdan, must undoubtedly have
always been within reach of the reindeer, from which they obtained
nourishment, arms and clothing. But the migrations of this animal,
under the influence of a but slightly varying maritime climate, could
not have been very extensive, and the troglodytes of Périgord or the
Pyrenees, if they wished to keep within its range, would not have had
such expeditions to undertake, as those of the Red-Skins in pursuit
of the bison.
This semi-stationary life did not exclude travels by land or even by
sea. Among the fossil shells found at Laugerie-Basse, there are some
which could only have come from the Isle of Wight. Now, in the age of
the reindeer, there was no longer land communication between France
and England. As M. Fischer has remarked, the presence of these shells
in a continental station proves the existence of navigation.
But, can it really have been the man of the Vézère who went to seek
these objects of adornment on the other side of the channel? It is
difficult to believe that these mountain tribes could have crossed
the sea. It is much more likely that this voyage was accomplished
by contemporaries, who, by long residence on the sea coast, had
developed navigating instincts. They, doubtless, would bring from the
English island those shells regarded as precious jewels, which would
then pass in exchange from hand to hand, till at length they reached
the valleys of Périgord. _Traffic_ of this kind can alone explain
this existence of an oyster-shell from the Red Sea in the Thayngen
grotto explored by M. C. Mayer, near to Schaaffhausen. We know,
moreover, that shells of the Pacific Ocean are in our day brought,
by a perfectly similar commerce, as far as the tribes of Red-Skins
inhabiting the shores of the Atlantic.
VIII. The history of the Cro-Magnon race, founded upon the industrial
remains which it has bequeathed to us, still presents many questions
answered in various ways by savants of the most different opinions. I
shall only point them out cursorily.
Did the quaternary tribes confine themselves to hunting those
animal species which are subject to us, and by which they were then
surrounded. Did they never domesticate the horse, or the reindeer?
M. Toussaint has answered the first question in the affirmative, and
M. Gervais the second. The accumulation, often prodigious, of the
bones of these animals is thus explained by all. At Solutré, a kind
of bone hollow, formed almost exclusively of the bones of the horse,
surrounds, so to speak, the space occupied by hearths and sepultures.
It comprises the remains of at least forty thousand horses, amongst
which we only occasionally meet with either foals or old animals.
The immense majority were killed at the age of from four to eight
years. This strange accumulation of remains furnished by one species,
and the choice of animals in their prime, are, in the opinion of
M. Toussaint, inexplicable facts, unless we admit the existence of
great herds from which man could draw supplies at will. The arguments
brought forward in favour of the domestication of the reindeer are
almost of the same nature. M. Piette, however, admits that the
latter, long hunted in a wild state, was only domesticated towards
the close of the quaternary period. His opinion rests upon the
proportion of reindeer bones which increase in number almost suddenly
in the upper layers of the Gourdan grotto. M. Piette also draws
attention to certain drawings in which reindeer are represented,
having upon the neck the appearance of a halter.
To these arguments, which are evidently not devoid of value, it has
been objected that man may very well have been able to tame some
individuals, without necessarily domesticating the species; that
the multiplication and utilisation of certain kinds of game under
general and better understood conditions, readily account for the
preference accorded to them at certain periods; and that a practised
hunter would, without difficulty, choose from among the herd the one
he wished to kill. All the facts brought forward by MM. Gervais,
Toussaint, and Piette with regard to France, are thus explained
without much difficulty. As to countries situated more to the north,
the facts obtained by M. Fraas from the grottoes of Suabia, and
his philological researches seem to support the opinions of these
savants. It is evident that the problem of the domestication of the
horse and the reindeer by quaternary man demands further study, and
may assume an entirely local character.
I should say almost the same with regard to social organisation. We
cannot doubt but that the tribes of La Madeleine and of Bruniquel
recognised chiefs, and that it was for them those daggers of
mammoth ivory were carved, of which I have spoken above. They were
evidently state arms. But was this universally the case? Was there,
even amongst these tribes, a true hierarchy, every grade of which
was marked by certain insignia? Certain large portions of reindeer
antlers, presenting a tolerably uniform appearance, diminished in
size by hand, and invariably decorated with special care, have, it
has been thought, offered sufficient proof for these facts. In some
cases they are whole, in others they are pierced at one extremity
with from one to four round holes, which sometimes encroach upon the
original drawing. These singular objects are certainly not arms.
They have been regarded as _commanders’ bâtons_, an interpretation
which appears to be plausible. Is it not, however, going rather too
far, when the number of holes are regarded as indicating the dignity
of the possessor, from which it would follow that these tribes
recognised five district grades of chiefs?
Had the quaternary man in question any belief in another life? Had he
a religion?
There can be no doubt as to the answer to the first of these
questions. The care bestowed upon burial places shows that the
hunters of Mentone, as also those of Solutré and Cro-Magnon, believed
in the wants of their dead beyond the tomb. Our acquaintance with the
customs of so many savage nations of the present epoch forbids any
other interpretation of the interment of food, arms, and ornaments
with the body.
The difficulty is greater in solving the problem of religion. It
is very probable that the man of this age had a belief similar to
that which we know to exist among nations leading almost the same
kind of life. We can scarcely help regarding a great number of small
objects, pierced so as to enable them to be worn round the neck, as
amulets, nor doubt that the troglodytes of the Vézère or the Pyrenees
attributed to them virtues analogous to those which are even now
ascribed to them by many savage tribes. M. Piette discovered one of
these amulets consisting of a plate pierced in the centre, from which
diverging lines took their rise; he found a similar emblem repeated
three times upon a _commander’s bâton_. He admits that they are so
many representations of the sun, and I very willingly accept this
interpretation. But does he not exceed the limits of legitimate
induction, when he concludes from this fact that the man of Gourdan
worshipped this heavenly body, and invented the _Sun God_, afterwards
discovered by the Egyptians and Gauls.
IX. Finally the race of Cro-Magnon was not wanting in either beauty
or intelligence. Taking its intelligence as a whole, it seems to me
to present striking points of resemblance with the Algonquin race,
as represented by the earliest travellers, and more especially by
missionaries who have spent much time amongst these Red-Skins. It had
undoubtedly both its good and bad qualities. Scenes of violence took
place upon the banks of the Vézère, as is proved by the hatchet-cut
in the skull of the Cro-Magnon woman. On the other hand, the burial
places of Solutré, though containing many indented male and female
heads, seem to show that old age received particular attention, and
was, therefore, honoured among these tribes. This race believed in
another life; and the contents of tombs upon the banks of the Vézère
and the Somme, seem to prove that a happy prairie-land was looked
forward to here, as upon the banks of the Mississippi.
The man of Périgord, like the Algonquin, did not rise above the very
lowest stage in the social scale; he remained a hunter, at least
till towards the close of that age, during which he appeared among
the mountains of France. It is, then, an error to employ the term
_civilization_ in speaking of this race. Yet he was endowed with an
intelligence both pliable and capable of improvement. We have seen
that he made progress and changes by himself, a fact, of which no
trace is to be observed in his American representative, so that,
in this respect, he was undoubtedly his superior. And lastly, his
artistic instincts, and the remarkable productions which he has left,
gain for him a special place among the savage races of all times.
X. During all the first part of the reindeer age, the Cro-Magnon
race supported itself in the state, of which I have just been
pointing out the principal features. But from the commencement of
the second half of the same age, during the deposition of the red
diluvium and the upper loess, we observe an unmistakable decline,
which becomes more and more striking as we proceed. The working
of bone and reindeer antlers diminishes and returns to its former
rudeness; flint cutting, on the contrary, gains in favour, and in
some places, as in the grotto discovered at Saint Martin d’Excideuil
by M. Parrot, acquires a most remarkable finish. But this very
perfection seems to herald the approach of a new age, and to betray
the influence of a strange element.
The fact is, that during this period an amelioration in the general
conditions of life was taking place. Europe had at length risen above
the waves; a continental climate was succeeding to the maritime
climate: the weather was more settled; warm summers followed winters
more severe, but less rainy; the glaciers consequently retreated and
became confined within their present limits; and consequently again,
the fauna became divided. Animals fond of cold, and organised for a
mountain life, such as the chamois and bouquetin, were content to
emigrate _in altitude_, and followed the glaciers in their retreat
to our highest mountain summits. The reindeer, in no way adapted
for climbing, was forced to emigrate _in latitude_ and go further
north. Its herds became more and more rare, and at length disappeared
from our countries, where, even if domesticated, it could not have
continued for long. The human population, who had, doubtless,
for centuries lived upon this animal, and obtained from it their
clothing, arms, and implements, must have felt the change intensely,
losing with the reindeer, what we may call their staff of life.
What happened now? According to MM. Cartailhac, Forel, and de
Mortillet, man disappeared or emigrated with the animal which had
become necessary to him, and the valleys of Périgord, Mâconnais, and
the Pyrenees became uninhabited. They hold that, after the close
of the reindeer age, there is an immense space, a great gap, during
which the fauna was renewed, and after which a new race of men
suddenly made their appearance, who polished stone instead of cutting
it, and surrounded themselves with domestic animals.
In spite of the incontestable authority of the savants whom I have
just named, their opinion has, I believe, gained but very few
partisans, and has been hotly contested. It is indeed possible, and
even probable, that a certain number of stations were abandoned
during the period in question, and that the inhabitants moved
northwards to seek those conditions of climate and facilities for the
chase to which they had been accustomed. But other tribes remained
where they were, yielding to the new necessities, adopting the arms
and customs of the immigrating populations, and becoming amalgamated
with them. I cannot here enter into the geological, zoological and
archæological considerations by which this view is justified. I shall
confine myself to mentioning some facts which belong especially to
anthropology.
MM. Louis Lartet and Chapelain Duparc discovered near Sorde, in the
department of the Basses-Pyrénées, a shelter in the lower bed of
which, after methodical excavations, a human skull and bones were
found, together with a necklace of the teeth of the lion and bear.
Immediately above, and mixed with the latter, was a thick layer of
charcoal from which the explorers obtained barbed arrows of the
Magdalénean type, and numerous instruments and implements of the
same age. Bones of the horse and ox were mixed with these products
of human industry. The reindeer was not wanting among this cooking
_débris_, but this species _was more rare_ than the others. Lastly,
above the charcoal, and partly confounded with its upper portion,
they discovered a layer which was, so to speak, composed of human
bones. The learned explorers here obtained several cut flints similar
to the preceding, but they also found a narrow, thin blade, as well
as a triangular dagger, which, from its form and the nature of the
work, is closely connected with the finest productions of the art of
polished stone.
The upper burial-place contained the remains of more than thirty
individuals. These bones have been taken to the museum, and M. Hamy
has not hesitated in referring them to the Cro-Magnon race. I had
only to confirm this opinion, as there could be no possible ground
for doubt. Upon the bones of the limbs as well as upon the skulls,
all those characters were observed which have become classic since
the great works of MM. Broca and Pruner Bey.
Thus, in this curious grotto at Sorde, we find the superposition of
two _archæological types_, the _cut_ stone (Palæolithic), and the
_polished_ stone (Neolithic); but there is only one human race, that
of Cro-Magnon. Is it not evident that this race must have known both
the latest times of the reindeer age, and the earliest of the present
epoch?
Whilst accommodating itself to the new conditions of existence, and
accepting the industries of strangers more advanced than itself,
the little tribe of Sorde seems to have preserved intact the purity
of its blood. This could not, however, be universally the case, for
the invasion must necessarily have occasioned crossing. Here, again,
facts fully justify all that is indicated by the theory.
In the cavern of L’Homme-Mort, situated upon a high plateau of the
Lozère, and so thoroughly investigated by MM. Broca and Prunières,
animal bones of the present epoch alone have been found; there were
neither reindeer, nor even horse, ox, or stag. Moreover, the head
of a lance or javelin had been worked with a fragment of hatchet
in polished stone. We here, then, find ourselves in the presence
of a population much posterior to the quaternary period, and very
probably contemporary with that which raised numerous dolmens in the
neighbourhood.
Now, the remains of this population betray in a high degree traces
of the Cro-Magnon type, modified partly, perhaps, by the action of
new conditions of life, but also by ethnological changes. The stature
is sensibly diminished; having descended to a mean of 1·62 m. (5
ft. 3·7 in.). The breadth of the upper part of the face is less
striking, and the whole head has become almost harmonic. But the
dolichocephaly remains; the lines of the skull are almost unaltered,
the orbits are always elongated, the nasal orifices narrow, the great
majority of the bones of the limbs especially have preserved their
very characteristic features. The same grooves are observed in the
fibula as at Cro-Magnon; the tibia is platycnemic; in the femur may
be observed that extraordinary prominence of the linea aspera which
constitutes one of the most curious features of the race; finally,
the ulna in every case possesses the sigmoid cavity, the curve so
often pointed out as _simian_. But at the same time we observe a
feature as yet foreign to the pure race of Cro-Magnon. The olecranon
depression of the humerus is perforated in a number of specimens in
as great a proportion as 26, or, perhaps, 33 per cent. This feature,
which we find in other fossil races, is of itself a sufficient
indication of crossing, and confirms the inferences which we might
have drawn from the diminution in height, modifications of the face,
etc.
Similar facts are proved by the two skulls, and the group of bones
from Géménos, near Marseille, which were saved from destruction by M.
Marion.
Thus, both upon the Lozère and in the neighbourhood of Marseille, the
Cro-Magnon race appears in the midst of the polished stone period,
but with a mixture of characters which indicates the influence of
a fresh element. We come upon it in the upper Cévennes and on the
shores of the Mediterranean just at the time when its tribes were
beginning to blend with those who had introduced among them the first
elements of modern civilization. We cannot be surprised that these
simple hunters should have been more or less absorbed by a denser
population, who possessed domesticated animals and raised dolmens.
XI. It may, however, be said with equal, and even with greater
truth, of the Cro-Magnon as of the Canstadt race, that it has not
disappeared. It may be traced through intermediate ages, and met with
again in certain populations of the present day.
In the neolithic tombs placed close beside the quaternary burial
places at Solutré, the old hunters of the horse are represented by
their descendants, of whom the more or less modified skulls have been
discovered. In the sepulchral grottoes of the Marne, so intelligently
and successfully explored by M. J. de Baye, the Cro-Magnon type is
found associated with those of four other quaternary races, and with
one neolithic race. In Germany, near the Taunus; in Belgium, in the
caverns of Hamoir and at Nivelles; in the neighbourhood of Paris,
in the recent alluvium of Grenelle; in the clays of the harbour of
Boulogne, human remains dating from the same epoch, and belonging to
the same race, have been found. M. Piette discovered a Cro-Magnon
skeleton in the Aisne, whilst excavating a Gaulish cemetery of the
iron age. At Paris even, the excavations of the Hôtel Dieu, those
of the Boulevard de Port Royal, etc., have brought to light skulls
of the same race, of probably as late a date as the fifth century,
and there are some more recent still. Modern specimens will most
certainly be found. I have myself twice observed in women features
which could only accord with the cranial and facial bones of the
race under discussion. In one of them, the dysharmony between the
face and skull was at least quite as striking as in the old man of
Cro-Magnon: the eye depressed beneath the orbital vault had the same
heavy appearance; the nose was straight rather than arched, the
lips somewhat thick, the maxillary bones strongly developed, the
complexion very brown, the hair very dark and growing low on the
forehead. A thick-waisted figure, slightly developed breasts, hands
and feet relatively small, served to form a whole, which, without
being attractive, was in no way repulsive.
The labours of M. Hamy have extended and enlarged this field of
research. He has again met with the type in question amongst the
Zaraus collection of Basque skulls, collected by MM. Broca and
Vélasco; he has followed it even into Africa in the megalithic tombs
explored principally by General Faidherbe, and to the Kabyles of the
Beni-Masser and the Djurjura. It is, however, chiefly in the Canary
Islands, in the collection of the Barranco-Hundo of Teneriffe, that
he has met with skulls, the ethnical relation of which with the old
man of Cro-Magnon is beyond discussion. On the other hand, some
points of comparison, unfortunately very few in number, have led him
to regard the Dalecarlians as connected with the same stock.
XII. However strange these results may appear, they are only a
repetition in the human race of what has already been proved in the
case of animals. It is now a long time since Lartet showed that at
the close of the quaternary age, and as the species peculiar to
this age were finally disappearing, the survivors were divided into
three groups. Some remained where they were, others migrated to
the north, and others again to the south. Perhaps the latter were
only persistent in Africa, from whence they had despatched their
representatives to us, and where we meet with them still, whilst
their colonies, which were at one time in a flourishing condition in
France, perished under the influence of the winters of the present
period. Finally, as an explanation is given of the ancient fauna,
and the cause which brought about their separation, we cannot be
surprised to find human populations presenting analogous facts.
During the quaternary period, the race of Cro-Magnon had its
principal European centre of population in the south-west of France.
The little basin of the Vézère was, so to speak, its capital; its
colonies spread into Italy, the north of France, the valley of
the Meuse, etc., where they encountered other races, to whom our
attention will soon be turned. But they themselves were perhaps only
a branch of an African population, which had emigrated to France with
the hyæna, the lion, the hippopotamus, etc. In this case, there is
no difficulty in explaining its existence at the present day in the
north-west of Africa, and in islands where it would be protected
from crossing. Some of its tribes, carried away in the pursuit of
the reindeer, will have preserved, in the Scandinavian Alps, the
tall form, black hair, and brown complexion which distinguishes
Dalecarlians of the neighbouring populations; others, mixing with all
the races by which France has been successively invaded, only betray
their ancient existence by the phenomena of atavism, which lays upon
some individuals the mark of the old hunters of Périgord.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
RACES OF FURFOOZ.
I. In giving the name of a locality justly celebrated in anthropology
to this group of races, and in applying it especially to the two
first, M. Hamy and I have been chiefly actuated by the desire to
honour the long and conscientious labours, which have led to the
discovery of quaternary man in Belgium. It is scarcely necessary to
remind my readers that it is due, after Schmerling, to M. Dupont, who
during seven years, from 1864 to 1871, has excavated more than sixty
caverns or rock-shelters, from which he has obtained, independently
of his human fossils, about forty thousand animal bones and eighty
thousand stones cut by the hand of man. The _race of Grenelle_ was
discovered by M. Émile Martin, in 1867, in the gravel-pits opened in
the neighbourhood of Paris, and afterwards characterised by M. Hamy.
The _race of La Truchère_ was found by M. Legrand de Mercey in a bank
of the Seille, near to the locality of which it bears the name.
II. Considered from the point of view of the general form of the
skull, these four types arrange themselves in an almost regular
manner. The cephalic index 79·31 places the first Furfooz race among
mesaticephali; the second Furfooz race becomes sub-brachycephalic by
its index 81·39; that of Grenelle, whose index rises to 83·53 in the
man, and 83·68 in the woman, approaches very nearly to brachycephaly
properly so called. This is also the case with that of La Truchère,
the index of which is 84·32.
Let us at once proceed to consider this latter, which, at present
represented in quaternary times only by a head, is, on that account
alone, far less interesting than its companions. The skull and face
are here remarkable for a dysharmony as striking as that of the
Cro-Magnon head; but the contrast is inverse. The skull, in this
case, is broad and short, while the face is long. The face view of
the former presents a very marked pentagonal appearance. The bones
are all strongly developed in the transverse direction, with the
exception of the inferior half of the coronal which slants rapidly
inward so as to form a narrow forehead. The whole face is relatively
small and narrow. The nose is very large and long; the massive cheek
bones are slightly prominent, and the superior maxillary bones are
slightly prognathous.
The two races of Furfooz, like that of Grenelle, have a certain
family resemblance, which does not exclude the existence of
distinctive characters. Thus, in the mesaticephalic race of Furfooz
the antero-posterior arc of the skull produces above the small but
well marked superciliary ridges, a very retreating forehead, and is
continued with no further inflexion than a slight depression at the
sutures. The face is broad and the index almost the same as that of
the race of Cro-Magnon. On account of the shortening of the skull,
the head is, however, _harmonic_, instead of being _dysharmonic_ as
in the troglodytes of Périgord. A slightly concave, but sufficiently
prominent nose, square orbits, slightly marked canine fossæ, and an
almost orthognathous superior maxillary bone complete this face,
the bony framework of which has a somewhat finely cut and delicate
appearance.
In this sub-brachycephalic race of the same locality, the forehead
rises in a somewhat perpendicular line to the level of the frontal
eminences. The arc then becomes suddenly flattened as far as the
first third of the parietal bones where the curve becomes more
inflected and is continued with almost unbroken regularity to the
foramen magnum of the occipital. We meet with almost the same index
in the face; but the orbits and the face are longer, the canine
fossæ form deep indentations, the superior maxillary bone projects
forward, the teeth follow the same direction, and the prognathism is
very striking.
In the race of Grenelle, the very prominent glabella and full
superciliary ridges give a slightly oblique direction to the base
of the forehead. But the arc soon rises and is regularly developed
without either projection or depression. The skull, viewed from the
face, appears as well proportioned as in profile. The face harmonises
with it. The cheek bones are well developed and prominent; the canine
fossæ high, but not deep; the orbits approach the square form; the
bones of the nose are concave and sufficiently prominent. Finally,
the maxillary bone and the teeth are equally prognathous, but less so
than in the preceding race.
III. The men of Grenelle, and still more those of Furfooz, were of
small stature. The former reached a mean of 1·62 m. (5ft. 3·8 in.),
but the latter descended to 1·53 m. (5ft. 0·2 in.) This is almost
exactly the mean height of the Lapps. Yet this reduced stature would
neither exclude the vigour nor the agility necessary to savage
populations. The bones of the limbs and trunk are strong, and the
eminences and depressions of their surface indicate a very marked
muscular development.
With the exception of this general appearance of strength superior
to that which is generally met with, the skeleton of the men of
Furfooz and Grenelle strongly resembles that of men of the present
day. The tibia in particular assumes the prismatic triangular form
which we are accustomed to observe in them. We remark, nevertheless,
the appearance of a character which we have as yet only noticed in
the cavern of L’Homme-Mort, where we considered it to be a sign of
crossing. The olecranon depression is often perforated in the races
now under discussion. In Belgium M. Dupont found this disposition to
exist in the men of the Lesse in the proportion of 30 per cent. M.
Hamy carries it to 28 per cent, in the fossil man of Grenelle, and to
4·66 per cent. only in the French of the present day.
IV. The races of Furfooz, coming after those whose history we have
just sketched, must have come in contact, and sometimes have formed
connections with them. The clearest demonstration of this fact is at
Solutré, where, side by side with Cro-Magnon skulls, two heads were
found belonging to the race of Grenelle. Intellectual and social
development must have progressed almost equally among men united into
a single tribe.
Our brachycephali have, however, had their special centres of
population where we can examine them in their home. The researches
of M. Dupont have been chiefly devoted to Belgium and the valley of
the Lesse. To give an idea of what the men of Furfooz were, we need
do no more than reproduce an abridged account of all that the learned
explorer of these caverns has said upon the subject.
V. The men of the Lesse, like those of the Vézère, inhabited caverns.
One of their complete stations comprised the grotto where they lived,
and a funeral grotto. M. Dupont found them almost in juxtaposition
at Furfooz, where the _Trou des Nutons_ presented all the characters
of a human habitation, and the _Trou du Frontal_ those of a place
of sepulture. These two localities alone would have furnished many
materials for the history of these ancient populations. Nevertheless
the _Trou de Chaleux_ excels them in this respect. It was long
inhabited by man, who left there a considerable accumulation of that
refuse which is now turned to such good account by science. The
roof one day fell in; the inhabitants escaped, leaving all that was
buried in their dwelling. Thus, when this heap of rubbish came to be
disturbed by the pick-axe, all was found just as it had been left at
the moment of the catastrophe, and it is with good reason that the
Grotto of Chaleux has been called a little quaternary Pompeii.
The man of Chaleux chiefly employed flint and reindeer horn to supply
his several wants. The former was used for the greater number of his
stock of implements; but he gave himself little trouble in varying or
perfecting the form. Narrow, elongated blades cut with a single blow
upon one side, with two or three upon the opposite face, and what are
called knives, seem to be the model from which all the implements are
worked. Notched upon one edge they became _saws_; rounded and recut
at one extremity they were transformed into _scrapers_, well adapted
for scraping and taking the hair off skins; tapered and chipped to a
point, they furnished _bodkins_, piercers, etc. As for reindeer horn,
it was divided into pieces from 10 to 15 centimetres (3·9-5·9 inches)
long, and then shaped so as to serve for lances or javelins. They
may possibly have sometimes received a point of flint. But M. Dupont
assures us that there are no grounds for supposing that the bow and
arrow were in use among these troglodytes.
The arms of the tribe of Chaleux, were then much inferior to those
of the Vézère or of Solutré. It still, however, hunted large game,
and knew also how to obtain the small. Its ancient dwelling-place
has furnished the remains of numerous horses, several oxen, some
reindeer, sixteen foxes, five wild boars, three chamois, three
aurochs, one brown bear, one Saïga antelope, etc.
The bones also of the hare, squirrel, water-rat and Norwegian rat,
have been found here; the remains of several birds, amongst others
those of the ptarmigan; and remains of fresh water fish. The fauna
of the Trou des Nutons is almost identical, but the proportion of
species is sometimes inverted. A much smaller number of horses and
much greater number of wild boars have been discovered there. Here
again, as in the stations of the Cro-Magnon race, the larger species
are scarcely represented by more than the bones of the head and
limbs, all those containing marrow having been carefully broken up.
Like the preceding race, that of Furfooz made use of the skins of
slain animals for clothing. This is proved by the bone needles found
at Chaleux. But they are here much ruder in form than those of La
Madeleine and other similar stations. Short and thick, they might be
taken for small bodkins were it not for the eye with which they are
pierced.
VI. The Belgian troglodytes were, from many points of view, far
behind those of Périgord and Mâconnais. The monuments of their
industry are much inferior to all that we have seen amongst their
predecessors, and they show no indication of the artistic aptitudes
so remarkable in the man of the Vézère. They surpass him however, in
one essential point; they had invented, or received from elsewhere,
the art of manufacturing a rude kind of pottery, of which M. Dupont
has found the remains in all the stations which he has explored, and
obtained in the _Trou du Frontal_ fragments in sufficient number to
restore the vase of which they had once formed part.
This, and some other facts, which it would take too long to discuss
here, have led some of the most competent _savants_, amongst others
MM. Cartailhac and Cazalis de Fondouce, to regard the Trou du Frontal
and the other contemporary stations as belonging to the neolithic
stone period, and not to the quaternary epoch.
But the character of the fauna discovered in the grottoes of Chaleux
and Furfooz makes it impossible in our opinion to accept this
opinion, which rests chiefly upon archæological considerations.
To refer the age of polished stone to an epoch when the chamois,
bouquetin, and Saïga antelope lived in Belgium with the Norwegian rat
and the ptarmigan, would be making it very distant. This question
may perhaps call for further study; but the juxtaposition of these
species in the neighbourhood of Dinant is, in our opinion, a proof
that the quaternary period had not then drawn to a close.
VII. The troglodytes of Belgium painted the face and perhaps the
body, like those of Périgord. The ornaments in use at Chaleux and
Furfooz were almost the same as those which we have found in the
south of France. We never, however, find amongst them any object
borrowed from marine fauna. This is a curious fact, as the man of the
Lesse journeyed in search of his _jewels_, as well as of the rough
material for his implements and arms much greater distances than that
which separated him from the sea.
In fact, the principal ornaments of the men of the Lesse were fossil
shells. Some, it is true, were obtained from the Devonian rocks
in their vicinity; but the greater part came from a considerable
distance, chiefly from Champagne and from Grignon near Versailles.
The flints, which our troglodytes used in such great numbers, were
obtained, not from Hainault or the province of Liège, but almost
entirely from Champagne. There are some even which could only have
been collected in Touraine, on the banks of the Loire. Judging from
the localities of these different objects, we might conclude that
the known world of the troglodytes of the Lesse scarcely extended
in a northerly direction for 13 to 25 miles, whilst to the south it
stretched to a distance of 250 to 300 miles.
There is something very strange in this fact, of which, however,
M. Dupont seems to have given what is, at least, a very plausible
explanation. He holds that two populations, perhaps two races, were
placed in juxtaposition in the countries in question during the
quaternary period. There must have existed between them one of those
many instances of, we may say, instinctive hatred similar to that
which prevails between the Red-Skins and the Esquimaux. Encircled on
the north and the east by their enemies, who occupied Hainault, the
aborigines of the Lesse could only extend towards the south, and,
through the Ardennes, communicate with the basins of the Seine and
the Loire.
But did they themselves undertake the long and difficult journeys,
by which alone they could procure the shells which they used for
ornaments, and the immense quantity of flint which they worked in
their caverns? We do not hesitate to assert with M. Dupont that
nothing is less probable. Everything, on the contrary, proves that
they obtained their supplies by means of a veritable commerce,
organised in a regular manner and upon a large scale; whether by the
existence of populations devoted to this form of industry, of which
there are several examples known to us in the present day; or by
the shells and flints passing from hand to hand through successive
exchanges, and reaching at length the banks of the Lesse. We cannot
explain in any other way the abundance of foreign flints at Chaleux,
Furfooz, etc., the prodigality with which they were used, and the
evident carelessness displayed in the preservation of tools which had
been manufactured from them.
VIII. In direct opposition to the men of Cro-Magnon, those of Furfooz
appear to have been eminently pacific. M. Dupont has not discovered
either in their grottoes or burial-places any warlike arms, and he
applies to them Ross’s remarks upon the Esquimaux of Baffin’s Bay,
who did not understand what was meant by war.
In the sepulchral grotto of Le Frontal, where the tribe of Les
Nutons buried their dead, a number of objects have been found, as
at Cro-Magnon, proving the existence of a belief in another life.
They consisted of a number of perforated shells, ornaments in spar,
flat pieces of sandstone traced with sketches, the vase which we
have mentioned above, and some selected flint implements. All these
objects are, moreover, of the same nature as those in the Trou des
Nutons. It is clear that they had been laid in the sepulchral vault
under the impression that they would serve to supply the wants of the
deceased in the new existence which was opening before them.
Another fact, upon which M. Dupont has with justice insisted, adds
to the probability arising from various considerations, of our being
right in attributing to these quaternary men a kind of religion more
or less analogous to Fetishism. In the Trou de Chaleux, a mammoth’s
ulna was placed by the side of a hearth upon a slab of sandstone. Now
the mammoth no longer existed in Belgium at the close of the age of
the reindeer, and this bone must have been found in the alluvium of
the preceding age. It had doubtless been the cause of an error which
may be observed even at the present day, and had been looked upon as
having belonged to a giant. The place of honour which was allotted
to it in the dwelling of the troglodytes seems to intimate that it
had become an object of veneration.
IX. Very few remains of the two races of Furfooz and that of
Grenelle, have been discovered in other quaternary deposits than
those which have just been mentioned. The former are, however,
represented in the basins of the Somme and the Aude; the latter has
been met with at two or three points in the basin of the Seine. We
have seen that it existed at Solutré, and the skull of Nagy-Sap in
Hungary must probably be referred to it. These facts are sufficient
to show that since the glacial epoch the races in question have
occupied an extensive area.
In the neolithic age, we find the mesaticephali of Furfooz extending
from the Var and Hérault to Gibraltar; the sub-brachycephali are
represented from Verdun to Boulogne-sur-mer, and to Camp-Long from
Saint-Césaire; they intermingled with the ancient inhabitants of
Cabeço d’Arruda in Portugal.
The brachycephalic race of Grenelle, has, however, left the most
distinct traces. It has been discovered in France in several dolmens,
and in the Round Barrows in England. In Denmark it constitutes the
brachycephalic type of Eschricht, and in Sweden forms a dozen of
the total number of the skulls found in dolmens by Retzius and his
successors.
The intervention of these different races in the formation of
existing races is equally evident. The exact demonstration of the
fact is, however, often difficult. The crossing which took place
between groups placed in such close contact with each other, more or
less confused the types. Other brachycephalic types, amongst others
the Celtic race, such as it has been described by M. Broca, came to
add to the confusion. Nevertheless, when visiting the valley of the
Lesse, several members of the Congress of prehistoric Anthropology
recognised skulls and faces as bearing in the clearest manner, the
distinctive marks of the local fossil races, and these traces are
still more frequent in the rural population which supplies the
markets of Antwerp.
It is the race of Grenelle, again, which reappears most persistently
in living populations. The numerous Parisian skulls in the Paris
Museum present several examples of this fact. The type is, however,
very rarely found pure, a fact, which is probably the result of two
causes. On the one hand, the new conditions of existence imposed
upon the quaternary races by change of climate, must have caused an
alteration in some of their characteristics. On the other hand, fresh
elements, differing but slightly from the fossil element, have been
blended with it. If the skulls of Grenelle are compared, as they
have been by M. Hamy, with Lapp skulls, we find that from the extent
of the horizontal arc, from the length of the antero-posterior and
transverse diameters, and from the cephalic indices, the former must
be placed almost exactly half-way between the two great known orders
of Lapp skulls. We observe indeed, certain differences between them.
For example, the cranial vault is more flattened in the Lapp than in
the man of Grenelle; but, on the whole, the analogies are far greater
in number than the differences.
The elder Retzius, Sven Nilsson, Eschricht, and others, had already
recognised, by means of their investigations of the ancient burials
of their country, the great extension of an ancient brachycephalic
race, which they identified with the true Lapps. M. Schaafhausen,
at the last Stockholm Congress, brought forward another example in
support of this opinion.
After considering these facts, M. Hamy and I have been led to admit a
_Lapp-like type_, to which, with the race of Grenelle, a great number
of populations scattered through time, and extending over nearly the
whole of Europe, may be referred. In the Dauphiné Alps particularly,
this type is represented in an almost pure state. A curious
collection of skulls in the possession of M. Hoël leaves no room for
doubt on this point. We have then confirmed, while giving it greater
precision and tracing it to an earlier period, one of those general
views, for which anthropology owes so much to the Scandinavian
savants.
X. Thus, the races of Furfooz and that of Grenelle, the last to
appear in the quaternary epoch, came in contact during the glacial
ages with the dolichocephalic races which had preceded them. In
certain respects they have become amalgamated with them; in others,
they have preserved their autonomy; and they have shared the same
fate. They also experienced that change of soil and climate,
which we have seen causing such trouble to the rising societies
of the Cro-Magnon race; they also witnessed a gradual change in
the conditions of existence; and the results of these changes have
affected them in the manner which we have already pointed out.
A certain number of tribes spread northwards, following the reindeer
and other animal species which they had been accustomed to regard
as necessary to their existence; they emigrated in latitude. Others
from the same motive emigrated in altitude, accompanying the chamois
and bouquetin into the mountain chains, which had been liberated by
the melting of glaciers. Others, again, remained stationary. The two
first groups were free for a much longer time from the influence
of ethnical mixture. The tribes composing the third soon found
themselves in the presence of brachycephalic and dolichocephalic
immigrants of the polished stone period, and were easily subjugated
and absorbed by them.
XI. On their arrival in Europe, the men of the polished stone period
did not meet only with those races which we have been discussing.
They came in contact with all the quaternary races. This is proved
by many of the facts already mentioned; and is proved merely by the
magnificent collection of skulls and skeletons collected by M. de
Baye from the sepulchral grottoes of the Marne. With the exception
of the Canstadt type, all those which we have just described seem
to have met together in this remarkable locality. Even that of La
Truchère is represented by a head almost as strongly characterised
as that of the Seille. The foundation of this neolithic population
still belonged, however, to a newly arrived type. It is scarcely
necessary to add that, whether old or recent, all these races have
intermingled, and that the crossing is betrayed sometimes by the
fusion, and sometimes by the juxtaposition, of characteristics.
Either by infiltration or conquest, new races mingled with the
preceding, before even the arrival of the Aryans. The latter spread
to the western extremities of the continent, leaving extensive
regions on the north and the south, where their predecessors
continued to exist. Then followed historic invasions. It is from the
mixture of all these elements brought together by war, and fused
by the experiences of peace, that our European societies have been
formed.
XII. Man has been the sole essential agent in the formation of fresh
ethnical groupings. From the earliest times of the polished stone
period, land and climate have remained unaltered in our western
world. European man has then been at liberty to obey the laws of
his evolution, to found, modify, or destroy his associations and
his societies, to traverse the ages of bronze and iron as well as
historic times, without having to battle with those invincible
forces, which perhaps arrested the development of the hunters of
Cro-Magnon.
In what degree does the anthropological past of the rest of the world
resemble that of Europe? Science will some day, undoubtedly, answer
this question, but we could now only form conjectures. It is wiser to
abstain, content with having deciphered in less than half a century,
almost a whole chapter of that prehistoric and palæontological
history of man, the existence of which was not even suspected by our
fathers.
BOOK IX.
PRESENT HUMAN RACES.—PHYSICAL CHARACTERS.
CHAPTER XXIX.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.—EXTERNAL CHARACTERS.
I. I considered that I ought to give a somewhat detailed account of
our knowledge of fossil human races. The interest and novelty of
the subject induced me to do so, and its moderate extent rendered
it possible. But I cannot treat the history of present races in the
same manner. If I wished to study them singly, I could scarcely
devote more than a few lines to each. Even if I grouped them into
_families_, I should only be able to give an incomplete and vague
account of them, unless I went much beyond the limits of this work.
It seemed to me then preferable to adopt the practice of botanists
and zoologists, who always begin with a general account of the nature
and significance of the characters of the group which they wish to
discuss. These notions, when affecting the whole group, are moreover
always necessary. They alone allow us to grasp and comprehend certain
general results. They become still more indispensable, when _races
derived_ from one and the same species are under discussion, because
they bring forward and render evident the unity of specific origin of
these races, just as much as direct proofs.
II. If we were familiar with primitive man, we should regard as
characterising races, everything which separates them from this type.
From want of this natural term of comparison, we have taken the
_European White_ as normal, and compared the remaining human groups
with him. This leads to a tendency, which must be pointed out at once.
Influenced by certain habits of thought, and by a self-love of race
which is easily explained, many anthropologists have thought that
they could interpret the physical differences which distinguish men
from one another, and consider simple characteristic features as
marks of inferiority or superiority. Because the European has a short
heel, and some Negroes have a long one, they have wished to consider
the latter as a mark of degradation. The remarks which were made upon
this subject, with so much justice, by Desmoulins with reference
to the Bosjesmans were forgotten. Because the greater number of
civilizations have risen among dolichocephalic nations, a head
elongated from before backwards has been regarded as a superior form.
It was forgotten that the Negroes and the Esquimaux are generally
dolichocephali of the most pronounced type, and that European
brachycephali are in every case the equals of their dolichocephalic
brethren.
All analogous interpretations are absolutely arbitrary. In
fact, superiority between human groups depends essentially upon
intellectual and social development; it passes from one to another.
The Chinese and Egyptians were already civilized, when all Europeans
were true savages. If the latter had judged our ancestors as we too
frequently judge foreign races, they would have found many signs of
inferiority in them, commencing with the white skin of which we are
so proud, and which they would have been able to regard as betraying
an irremediable degeneration.
Is the fundamental superiority of one race really betrayed outwardly
by some material sign? We are still in ignorance upon this point. But
when we examine it more closely, we are led to think that it is not
so. In expressing myself thus, I know that I am separating myself
from the opinions which are generally admitted, and am at variance
with men whose works I value most highly. But I hope to give decisive
proofs in my favour further on.
Differences of every kind nevertheless exist between one human
group and another. These must be taken for what they are, for
_characters_ of _race_, for _ethnical characters_. It is the duty of
the anthropologist especially to recognise these differences, to make
use of them for defining the groups, then to connect or separate,
according to their affinities, the races thus characterised. In other
terms, his work is the same as that of the botanist or geologist
describing and classifying plants and animals.
Men of an impatient or venturous disposition will perhaps reproach
me with making anthropology too _descriptive_. I shall only make a
partial defence against the accusation. Provided that the description
embraces the entire being, it enables us to become acquainted with
it. If we take our stand on this point of view, we remain on the
ground of positive knowledge, and run less risk of losing ourselves
in hypotheses.
I still consider it the right and almost the duty of the
anthropologist, to investigate the causes which may have given
rise to the appearance of the features which characterise races.
The study of the actions of the conditions of life sometimes gives
valuable indications on this subject. The evolution of the human
being from his appearance in the embryonic state to the adult state,
especially furnishes facts of great interest. A simple _arrest_, a
slight _excess_ in the evolutive phenomena, are, it appears to me,
the causes of the principal differences which separate races, and
particularly the two extremes, the Negro and the White.
I know full well that a wish has been felt to go further back. Under
the more or less perceptible influence of transmutationist doctrines,
terms of comparison in the estimation of these differences have too
often been sought for among animals, and especially among apes.
Eminent men, without even adopting these doctrines, frequently use
the expressions, _simian character_, _animal character_. Why forget
the embryo or the human fœtus? Why not remember even the infant?
Question their history. It furnishes all the elements of a _human
evolution theory_, certainly much more precise and true than the
_simian theory_. This is again a result which will be made clear, I
hope, by the facts which I shall have to mention.
But whether or not I may be able to explain the appearance of the
features which distinguish races from each other, and whatever origin
may be attributed to them, I shall only take the word _character_ in
the sense which is given to it in botany and zoology.
III. An animal species is not characterised solely by the
peculiarities manifested by its physical organism. No history of
bees or ants omits to speak of their instincts, or to show how these
differ in different species. With much stronger reason ought we to
point out in the history of human races the characteristic points in
their intellectual, moral, and religious manifestations. Of course,
when approaching this order of facts, the anthropologist ought none
the less to remain exclusively a naturalist.
This very simple consideration is sufficient to determine the
relative value which ought to be attributed in anthropology to
characters of different orders. Here, as in botany and in zoology,
the first place ought to be given to the most persistent characters.
Now, a man, tribe, or an entire population can in a certain number
of years change its social state, its language, religion, etc. They
do not on that account modify their external or anatomical physical
characters. It is therefore to the latter that the anthropologist
will attach most importance, contrary to what the linguist, the
philosopher, or the theologian would certainly do.
Nevertheless we shall see that, in some very rare cases, the
linguistic characters preponderate over the physical characters, in
the sense that they furnish more striking indications on the subject
of certain ethnical affinities. Considered from a physical point of
view, man exhibits characters which may be divided into four distinct
categories, namely: external characters, anatomical characters,
physiological characters, and pathological characters.
IV. EXTERNAL CHARACTERS.—_Height._ All breeders regard height as
characteristic of race among animals. It is also one of the traits
which are most striking in man. This character sometimes shows that
it is very evidently dependent upon the conditions of existence.
Sheltering and feeding somewhat carefully the mares of La Camargue,
has been sufficient to raise the height of this excellent breed of
horses. With man, M. Durand (de Gros), confirming an observation
already due to Ed. Lartet, has shown that, in the Aveyron, the
populations of the limestone cantons are sensibly taller than those
of the granite or schistose cantons. He agreed with the statement of
Dr. Albespy, that liming lands in the non-calcareous portions of this
district has raised the height by two, three or even four centimetres
(·78, 1·17, 1·57 inch) on the lands where the practice has existed
for the longest time.
But on the other hand, it is indisputable, that races of very
different height live side by side, without its being possible
hitherto to point out the cause of this diversity. The dwarfed
Negroes, the Akkas and Obongos, seem to be placed under conditions
precisely similar to those under which much taller neighbouring
tribes live.
I have given above 163 statures of human races. I have insisted
with sufficient strength upon the consequences which follow from
them; from the point of view of the gradation and intercrossing of
characters. But we can extract from these numbers some other results
which are not less interesting.
The general mean given by these numbers will be 1^m·635 (5ft 4·37
inch). I regard it as a little too great, the measures being wrong
rather for the short races, than for the tall. Nevertheless it cannot
be very far from the truth, and may be accepted provisionally.
It is seen from the table that the Roumanians and the Magyars
represent, from this point of view, exactly the mean stature.
The oscillations of the mean statures above and below this general
mean, extend in the case of the Patagonians to +0^m·115 (4·53 inch),
and in the case of the Bosjesmans to -0^m·265 (10·43 inch). The
individual oscillations are +0^m·295 (11·71 inch) for the inhabitants
of Tongatabou, and -0^m·495 (1ft 7·49 inch) or -0^m·635 (2ft 1 inch)
for the Bosjesmans.
We see from the table that the oscillations below the general mean,
are less numerous than those above it. This result may be connected
with the fact which I have just pointed out. Nevertheless it appears
to me probable that the number of races above the mean stature, is
greater than those below it. The difference in number is compensated
for by the more than double extent of the oscillations below the mean.
Between the highest mean observed among the Southern Patagonians, and
the lowest mean among the Bosjesmans, we find a difference of 0^m·554
(1ft 9·8 inch). The difference between individuals will be 0^m·930
(3ft 0·6 inch). But I think that it ought to be reduced to 0^m·790
(2ft 7·1 inch), adopting as a mean the height 1^m·14 (3ft 8·88 inch)
given by Barrow as the height of a Bosjesman woman who had had
several children. We are thus certain that we are not taking a case
of teratological dwarfishness as a possible normal state.
Travellers have not often measured separately the height of men and
women. Uniting the facts of this nature which I have been able to
collect, we find 0^m·141 (5·57 inch) as the mean difference between
the heights of the sexes, and 0·973 as the mean ratio, the woman
being everywhere shorter than the man. Among the Lapps, according to
Capel Brooke and Campbell, the mean difference is as high as 0^m·278
(10·94 inches); in Austria, it is as low as 0^m·037 (145 inch)
according to Liharzik.
V. _Proportion of the body and of the limbs._ In all the races of our
domestic animals, the relative development of the different parts
of the body, the _proportions_, have a characteristic value, which
is equal and frequently superior to that of height. No one would
think of separating the greyhound from the harrier. It ought to be
exactly the same with man. With the animal, races are formed by a
selection more or less open, and undertaken for a fixed purpose. The
proportions of the different parts of the body thus acquire a fixity,
which cannot be found in human races on account of the absence of
selection.
This variability is found even in the simplest relations, and in
those which might be considered fundamental. Such is the relation
of the height of the head to the total height. Gerdy, who has taken
up this question in a special manner, has found that the height of
Frenchmen is rarely beyond 7½ heads, most frequently a little more
than 8 heads, and sometimes 9. The artistic ideal is no more fixed
than the reality, in spite of the mathematical rules laid down, from
Vitruvius to Liharzik and Silberman. The table drawn up by Audran
shows the variation from 7-19/48 heads (the Egyptian Termes) to
7-43/48 (the Farnese Hercules). The difference between these two
extremes is exactly half a head. Painters have taken still more
liberty. Raphael has only given a height of 6 heads to some of his
figures, and Michael Angelo has given them 8 or more.
The Pythian Apollo (7-42/48 heads), the Laocoon (7-27/48), are
nevertheless _chefs-d’œuvre_, and we rightly bestow an equal amount
of admiration upon the two Italian masters. The reason is just the
same as with the rest of organised beings: man’s organism is not
subject to absolute laws, nor to a rigorously fixed development.
Doubtless there have been noticed among some human races differences
of proportion generally sufficiently marked to serve as characters.
But it just as often happens that with some individuals the order of
these differences is inverted. It is another example of intercrossing.
Thus the African Negro has generally the upper limb, from the
shoulder to the wrist, relatively longer than the European White,
and we shall return to this point further on. Nevertheless, from
the measures of Quételet, it follows that a Negro, well known in
the studios, where he acted as a model, had much shorter arms than
the soldiers, and than a Belgian model, who were taken as terms of
comparison.
Moreover, the numbers found by Quételet place the individuals, upon
whom his observations were made, in the following order:—1st, mean
of ten Belgian soldiers; 2nd, an Ojibbeway chief; 3rd, a Belgian
model, and a Zulu Kaffir; 4th, an Amaponda Kaffir; 5th, the Negro
model; 6th, three young Ojibbeways; 7th, Cantfield, the Hercules of
the United States. Here intercrossing again appears in a well marked
manner, and it is in the White race that the Brussels savant has
found the two extremes.
In the general characteristic of negro races, we often find quoted
the slight development and the relatively high position of the calf
of the leg. I have no definite information upon the latter of these
characters. As for the former, it has been represented to be too
general. Two Blacks, the Amaponda Kaffir, and the Negro model in the
tables of Quételet, present the maximum 0^m·410 (16·14 inches), and
the minimum 0^m·328 (12·92 inches) of development of this part. They
are separated from each other by the Belgians, the Ojibbeways, and
Cantfield.
Finally, the _means_ taken for the different parts of the body will
doubtless give results useful for the distinction of races. But
still, account will have to be taken of many of the conditions. All
hunting peoples, including the Australians, according to travellers
who have been among them, could furnish models for the sculptor,
and are generally remarkable for the symmetry and beauty of their
proportions. In this respect civilized populations, especially
those of our great towns, present a deplorable inferiority. Is
our _fundamental type_ degraded in this respect? Certainly not.
But civilization itself, by the facilities of existence which it
procures, by the vices which it induces, by the weakly individuals
which it preserves, introduces into the race the elements of
degradation. Here again appears, in all its fulness, the influence of
the conditions of life.
VI. _Colouring._ With all anthropologists I recognise the high
value of the colour of the skin as a character. Nevertheless, its
importance must not be exaggerated. We now know that it does not
result from the existence or disappearance of special layers. Black
or white, the skin always comprises a white _dermis_, penetrated
by many capillaries, and an _epidermis_, more or less transparent
and colourless. Between the two is placed the _mucous layer_, of
which the _pigment_ alone in reality varies in quantity and colour
according to the race.
All the colours presented by the human skin have two common elements,
the white of the dermis and the red of the blood. Moreover, each
has its own proper element, resulting from the colourings of the
pigment. The rays reflected from these different tissues combine into
a resultant which produces the different tints and traverses the
epidermis. This latter plays the part of roughened glass. The more
delicate and the finer it is, the more perceptible is the colour of
the subjacent parts.
This arrangement explains why, among certain coloured races, for
example, among the Sandwich Islanders, the upper classes, who do not
live an exposed life, often exhibit the colour in a most pronounced
form. Among them _sun-burning_ masks the colour of the pigment, as it
masks with us the colour of the dermis and its vessels.
From the preceding, we can also understand why the White alone can
be said to _turn pale_ or to _blush_. The reason is, that in him the
pigment allows the slightest differences in the afflux of blood to
the dermis to be perceived. With the Negro as with us, the blood has
its share in the colouring, the tint of which it deepens or modifies.
When the blood is wanting, the Negro turns grey from the blending of
the white of the dermis with the black of the pigment.
It is well known that from the point of view of the colouring, human
races can be divided into four principal groups: white, yellow,
black, and red races. But we must guard against attaching an absolute
sense to these expressions. Every grouping of races founded solely
on colour would break close relations, and would lead to comparisons
which would evidently be at variance with the sum of the remaining
characters. Nevertheless, this systematic point of view brings to
light some interesting general facts.
The races of a white colour present sufficient homogeneity. From the
sum of their characters, they belong almost exclusively to the type
which borrows its name from this kind of colouring. It is, moreover,
useless to insist upon the differences of tint which the latter
exhibit, from the English or German woman of the upper classes to the
Portuguese, and especially to the Arab. Nevertheless, in the northern
regions and in Central Asia, some populations, the Tchukchees for
example, _appear_ to unite with a white colour certain characters
which connect them with the yellows.
In the purest white, the epidermis easily loses its transparency as
soon as the colour deepens. The sub-cutaneous veins can then only be
recognised by their swelling. It is only with individuals whose skin
is very fine and transparent, that the course of the veins is marked
by the well-known bluish colour. Whenever this trait is exhibited
by any population whatever, it may with certainty be connected with
the white type. For this reason I have not hesitated to place among
the Allophylians some of the most savage tribes of the north western
shores of North America, and the Tchukchees, of whom I have just
spoken.
The populations with a black skin are far from being as homogeneous
as the preceding. All _black men_ are not _Negroes_; there are some,
who, from the sum of their more important characters, are closely
connected with the white stock. Such, for example, are the Bicharis
and other negröid populations, on the borders of the Red Sea, whose
skin is much blacker than that of some negroes, but whose hair and
characters are perfectly Semitic.
Among Negroes properly so called, the tints vary, perhaps, much more
than with the White. Without going further than Cairo, individuals
may be seen, who, without any traces of the mixture of races, are of
a brown colour with a considerable mixture of black. The Yolofs are
of a bluish black, resembling the wing of a raven, and Livingstone
speaks of some tribes on the Zambesi who are the colour of _café au
lait_. But, perhaps, mixture of races has some action in this extreme
modification of the colour.
Populations with a yellow skin present facts analogous with the
preceding, but not so numerous nor so striking. Perhaps this
difference is only due to the difficulty of recognising the shades
of the fundamental colour. Nevertheless, a more or less pronounced
yellow colour equally characterises the great Mongolian stock, and
the Houzouana or Bosjesman race, which it is impossible to separate
from the Negroes. On the other hand, this same tint is so well marked
among the mulattoes that they are often designated by the name of
_yellows_, in distinction to the Blacks and the Whites.
Of the four groups into which the colour of human races may be
divided, the least characteristic is the red. It has been attempted
to make it the attribute of the Americans. This is a mistake. On the
one hand, in America the Peruvian, Autisian, Araucanian, and other
races are more or less deep brown, the Brazilio-Guaranians of a
yellowish colour slightly tinted with red, etc. On the other hand, in
Formosa a tribe has been found as red as the Algonquins, and more or
less copper tints are met with among Corean, African populations, etc.
Moreover, the red tint appears as the sole effect of the crossing
between races, neither of which possess it. Fitzroy informs us that
in New Zealand it frequently characterises the half-breeds of English
and Maories. This fact also explains why it should be met with among
many of the populations mentioned above. With man it is one of those
facts which show how intercrossing can give rise to the appearance of
new characters.
Finally we see that the colour of the skin, although furnishing
excellent secondary characters, cannot be taken as a starting point
in the classification of human races For man, as well as for plants,
we ought to recall the aphorism of Linnæus: “_nimium ne crede
colori_.”
The same may be said still more emphatically of the colour of the
eyes. Doubtless, the black colour is generally found among coloured
races, and sky-blue scarcely exists except among fair populations.
The former tint appears even to be constant among the yellows and
certain allophylian Whites. But, even among the Negroes, we often
meet with brown eyes, and sometimes with grey eyes.
Just as with the colour of the skin, the colour of the eyes is a
resultant due to the combination of the tints reflected by the
different layers of the iris, intensified by the colour of the blood
and seen through the transparent cornea. Hence arises the difficulty
experienced by painters in rendering the general effect.
VII. _The skin and its principal annexes._ The skin, which covers
the entire body, is a real covering composed of organs which are
anatomically and physiologically distinct. The principal one is the
_cutaneous organ_ or _skin properly so called_, to which are annexed
the _organs productive of villosities_, the _sudoriparous glands_,
the _cutaneous glands_, and some others which do not concern us.
In extreme cases, the surface of the skin is sometimes dry and rough,
sometimes supple and like satin. The first variety is generally
met with among Arctic races, the second among inhabitants of hot
countries, as the Negroes and Polynesians.
The two facts are easily explained by the sole action of the
temperature. Cold contracts the tissues, drives the blood towards the
interior, or checks its circulation towards the surface of the body.
It must consequently diminish the functional activity of the skin
properly so called, and partially diminish _perspiration_. Heat, on
the contrary, causes a flow of blood to the surface of the body, and
renders the functions of the skin, and especially the perspiration,
more active. The latter, by the production of a constant evaporation
on the surface of the body, maintains the suppleness of the epidermic
layer, and the general freshness which causes Negresses to be sought
after in harems.
From this action of heat, and the increased activity of the cutaneous
organs which is its consequence, other results follow which explain
some of the facts noticed by travellers and anthropologists.
Pruner Bey has insisted strongly upon the thickness of the cutaneous
layers, and especially upon that of the dermis in the Negro. Is not
this thickness the natural consequence of the flow of nutritive
principles brought by the blood, which is incessantly passing to the
surface of the body to keep up the perspiration?
It has long ago been remarked that the Negroes and other races
inhabiting hot countries perspire much less than the inhabitants of
temperate climates. This is accounted for by the preceding facts.
The blood, which is constantly brought to the surface and into the
cutaneous organs, does not flow so copiously in the sudoriparous
glands, which are deeply buried beneath the adipose tissue. Between
_transpiration_ and _perspiration_, in consequence of the position of
the organs, a real equilibrium should exist.
Probably, one of the difficulties of acclimatisation arises from the
fact that the proportional activity of these two functions has to be
changed when we pass from a temperate to a tropical climate, or _vice
versa_. The researches of Krause show that the body of a European
contains more than 2,281,000 sudoriparous glands. The total volume
of all these small organs would amount to about 40 cubic inches.
A sudden change in functions could not therefore be unimportant.
Moreover, the sebaceous glands, which are smaller but more numerous
than the sudoriparous, participate in this change, which can only
result in a serious shock to the organism.
The villosities are either very rare or absolutely wanting on the
surface of the body of a Negro, except some parts which in man are
always covered with hair. On the other hand, the glandular cutaneous
covering is highly developed in his case.
Both these facts may also be referred to the same cause, and are
explained by the balancing of connected organs. The blood, when
brought to the surface of the body, abandons the _bulbs of the hair_
which are too deeply planted; but, for the same reason it flows into
the sebaceous glands, which are situated near the surface. It easily
follows that the former suffer atrophy, and the latter experience an
exceptional development.
This development accounts for the exaggerated odour which is peculiar
to the Negro. It is known that a slave-ship may be recognised by
this smell. But African populations are not the only ones which are
characterised in this manner. Humboldt informs us that the Peruvians
distinguish the odour of a native, a white, and of a negro, calling
them _posco_, _pezuna_, and _graïo_. Amongst ourselves, every
individual has his own peculiar odour, which is easily detected by
the delicate sense of smell of the dog.
VIII. _Villosities, beard, hair._ Villosities in man represent the
hair of the mammalia; but whilst the latter are always covered,
with the exception of some special races, such as _chiens turcs_,
_calongo_ cattle, etc., man is generally only covered to any
notable extent upon certain places. In the African Negro, and most
of the yellow races, it only exists upon the normal parts of the
body. Nevertheless the practice of epilation, which is common to a
great number of coloured populations, has caused the frequency and
intensity of this character to be exaggerated. Eckewelder represents
Red-Skin warriors, in their leisure moments, as occupied in tearing
out the smallest hairs with pincers especially made for the purpose.
White races are generally more or less hairy, and this trait has long
been known to be developed to a very exceptional degree among the
Aïnos. The photographs of Colonel Marshall show that the Todas are
their equal in this respect. In certain individuals among the latter
the villosities form a real fur, especially on the lower limbs.
Of all the villosities of the human body, those which cover the
face and cranium have justly attracted most attention. All races
have hair; but a considerable number in Asia, America, and Africa,
have been noticed to be entirely without beards. Pallas, Humboldt,
Brasseur de Bourbourg and Pruner Bey, have contradicted these
assertions, and shown that the absence of beards is entirely due to
careful _epilation_. All human races are more or less provided with
a beard. Nevertheless great differences are known, even among races
belonging to the same fundamental type. Certain Melanesian Negroes
present a striking contrast in this respect to their African brothers.
The hair of the head is much more constant in respect to quantity
than that of the beard. Nevertheless it appears to be sensibly
thicker among some arctic races, who have moreover a more abundant
down than races in temperate climates. In this respect there is
perfect agreement with the known facts among animals.
With certain Negro races, the Bosjesmans of South Africa, the
Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, the Papuans of Melanesia, and some
African tribes, the hair forms upon the head small islands, separated
by spaces which are perfectly smooth. Hence results the heads of
hair _en grains de poivre_ noticed by different travellers. Amongst
most African Negroes, and amongst the Yellows and the Whites, the
distribution of the hair, on the contrary, is uniform.
The variation of the colour of the hair is well known. Some general
facts may nevertheless be collected from the midst of all these
special cases. I have said already that we find isolated cases in
all races of individuals with hair of a more or less reddish colour.
Fair hair has for a long time been regarded as the appanage of a
small number of Aryan groups. Nevertheless, according to Pruner
Bey, we also meet with it sometimes among the Asiatic Semites, and
we know for certain that they are very frequent among the Kabyles.
Facts such as Pierre Martyr, P. Kes, James, etc., have noticed among
the Parians, the Lee Panis, the Kiawas, etc., will no doubt one day
be explained by migrations and intercrossings. It seems to me, for
instance, almost evident that the Scandinavians must have introduced
their fair hair among several tribes of the American shore, and that
the facts noticed by Pierre Martyr are one of the proofs of their
extension beyond the Gulf of Mexico.
There is also something characteristic in the form of the hair taken
as a whole. Everyone knows the falsely called _woolly head_ of the
Negro, which is covered with very short and crisp hair. The very long
and harsh hair of yellow, American, and other populations, contrasts
in a striking manner with the preceding. That of the white races,
which is frequently curly, almost takes the mean between these two
extremes.
This general aspect ordinarily corresponds with the differences of
structure and general form of the hair. Brown has already proved that
a horizontal section of the hair varies from an elongated ellipse
with the Negro, to a circle with the Red-Skin, and that the hair of
the Anglo-Saxon is a mean between the two. Pruner Bey has resumed
this study, and described the form of a horizontal section of the
hair in several races belonging to the three fundamental types. He
has proved that the elongated ellipse characterises Negro races in
general, as well as the Hottentot-Bosjesman; that the oval forms
belong essentially to Aryan populations; that more or less regularly
circular forms characterise yellow, American, and other races, and
that in this respect the allophylian white races (Basques) appear to
resemble the preceding.
Brown and Pruner Bey moreover agree in the statement that a mixture
of forms is found upon the heads of half-breeds. Exactly the same
often happens in the crossing of the merino with races of sheep with
a coarse wool.
I have hitherto only spoken of the characters furnished by the
beard and the hair when grown freely. But it is well known that the
love of adornment, one of the most characteristic instincts of man,
endeavours to modify nature in these two directions. This results in
characters, which are doubtless artificial, but which have sometimes
a real value. This side of the question has often been attacked, and
M. E. Cortambert has made it the object of a work, in which he has
given a summary of the work of his predecessors in addition to his
own.
IX. _Characters of the cranium and of the face._ From the point
of view of descriptive anthropology as well as from an anatomical
point of view, the head is composed essentially of two regions, the
cranium and the face. The former is covered solely by the hairy skin
which follows all its contours, and it in reality therefore only
presents osteological characters. The general form, proportions,
etc., are almost the same in the living man as in the skeleton.
I will therefore go into greater detail upon this subject when
treating of the latter. Here 1 will only remark that the inequality
of the skin and of some subjacent muscular fibres necessitates
some corrections in the comparison of measurements taken from the
living head and from the skull. For example, the presence of the
temporal muscles increases to a sufficiently sensible extent the
transverse maximum diameter. Consequently the ratio of the latter
to the anterio-posterior diameter becomes raised. This ratio, which
constitutes the _cephalic index_, is one of the characters which
anthropologists employ most frequently, and it was important to
determine the correction to be made in case of comparison. Broca has
shown that it is two units when the ratio is expressed in the manner
which I shall mention further on.
The case is different with the face. Here the super-imposed soft
parts play a part of which the importance has been alternately
exaggerated or neglected. William Edwards considered that races
should be determined, as we judge of individuals, solely by the
facial characters. Serres, starting from the fact that the bony
framework determines the general form and the proportion of the face,
required that osteological characters only should be taken into
account. Both were too exclusive.
Doubtless the skeleton is important in the most superficial
characters of the face. But the muscles, the cellular and adipose
tissue, and the cartilages are much more developed on the face
than upon the cranium; and from their greater or less extension,
from their various relations, differences of feature result which
constitute so many characters. Unfortunately it is often very
difficult to define the latter. The most detailed descriptions
are rarely sufficient, and the most exact measurements are far
from giving an idea of certain variations of the human figure. For
example, they cannot make the difference intelligible, which is
nevertheless very sensible to the eye, which distinguishes the nose
of a negro of Guinea from that of a Nubian negro.
The nose is nevertheless one of the features of the face which
is best adapted for investigations of this kind. Its length is
determined by the point of attachment of the nasal bones to the
frontal bone and the position of the nasal spine; its breadth at the
bridge depends upon the angle formed by the nasal bones; its breadth
at the base is more or less related to the anterior opening of the
nasal fossæ. But the form and development of the cartilages, as well
as the thickness of the nostrils upon two very similar skulls, can
modify considerably the type itself of this organ; and the exterior
nasal index can give no idea of these variations. The study of
Topinard upon this subject, nevertheless, possesses a real interest;
but from the point of view of the characterisation of races, the
researches made by Broca upon the nasal osteological index, which we
will discuss further on, has a much more important value.
The characters drawn from the nose, which are observed upon the
living body, are however most important. This organ is more or less
pressed in, broad and flat among almost all Negroes, the greater part
of the Yellow races, and certain allophylian Whites; it is on the
contrary narrow and prominent in fair white races. These two general
types moreover present variations of which drawings only can give any
idea.
I may say the same with reference to the mouth. The thousand
differences of form and dimensions which it can exhibit, from
the negro of Guinea with his enormous and, as it were turned up
lips, to certain aryan or semitic Whites can neither be measured
nor described. We can only point out the general characters when
they become very pronounced. It may, however, be remarked that
the thickness of the lips is very marked among all negroes, in
consequence of their projection in front of the maxillary bones and
the teeth.
The mouth of the Negro presents another character which seems to me
to have been generally neglected, and which has always struck me. It
is a kind of clamminess at the outer border of the commissures, and
which seems to prevent the small movements of the corner of the mouth
which play such an important part in the physiognomy. The dissections
of M. Hamy have explained these facts. They have shown that in the
Negroes the muscles of this region are both more developed and less
distinct than in the Whites.
Independently of the colour of the iris, the eye also exhibits
differences which constitute so many characters, having at times a
real value in the development of the eyelids, and in the dimensions
of the palpebral fissure. Everyone knows _Chinese eyes_, which
slope from below upwards, and from inwards outwards. They have
been regarded as peculiar to Yellow races, whether pure or mixed.
Nevertheless these oblique eyes are found pretty frequently in
Europe, principally among women, and are united to a fairness and
freshness of colour which are almost exceptional, as well as to
features unanimously regarded as most pleasing.
The general form of the countenance, and some other peculiarities
drawn from the prominence of the cheek bones, from the form and
prominence or retreat of the chin, etc., favoured some considerations
analogous to the preceding. But here again the external characters
are wanting in the precision which we shall find in the osteological
characters.
X. _Characters drawn from the trunk and limbs._ When speaking of
proportions I have already pointed out some of these characters; I
will return to them when speaking of the skeleton. I will here only
make a few remarks, and point out two remarkable features.
One of the peculiarities, which, in our European eyes, chiefly
contribute to bodily beauty, is the width of the chest, of the waist,
and of the hips. A body of a uniform breadth we consider ungraceful.
It is a feature which is met with among several yellow and American
races. The comparison of these dimensions will furnish indices which
it is interesting to compare. But we have only taken that of the
chest, or more generally its circumference. To judge from the numbers
given by various authors, the Negroes of Fernando Po would have
the most fully developed chest. With them, its circumference would
be 95·2 c.m. (37·48 inches). The English would come next, and the
minimum observed would be among the Todas, whose thorax would only
have a circumference of 81·8 c.m. (32·2 inches).
The Hottentot, and especially the Bosjesman women, exhibit, in a
high degree, two peculiarities, which have for a long time been
considered special to them, but which have been met with elsewhere: I
mean _steatopygia_ and the _Hottentot’s apron_ (tablier). The first
consists of a strange development of the fatty folds in the buttocks,
from which results an enormous protuberance. The Hottentot Venus, of
which a model exists in the Paris Museum, gives a good example of it,
but it appears that this character can be still more exaggerated.
It is the reproduction in man of a feature noticed by Pallas as
characteristic of certain races of sheep of Central Asia, among which
the atrophy of the tail coincides with the appearance of enormous
fatty protuberances.
Steatopygia has been noticed among various black and Negröid
populations. It was very noticeable in a queen of Poun, figured upon
the Egyptian temple built by M. Mariette, for the Exhibition of 1867.
Livingstone assured us that it had begun to manifest itself among
certain women of the Boers, who are nevertheless of a quite pure
white race. But nowhere is it so pronounced as among the Bosjesman
women, and it constitutes one of the most striking characters of the
race.
It is not exactly the same with “_tablier_,” resulting from the
exaggerated development of the labia minora, which project out of
the vulva and hang down in front of the thighs. This feature is
found more or less developed in a number of races, and has given
rise to the practice of circumcision among women. In Europe there
is doubtless scarcely an accoucheur who has not noticed it on some
occasion in some perfectly pure Whites. Nevertheless it seems that
among the Bosjesman women it sometimes reaches a development which
is not noticed elsewhere. In the Hottentot Venus, of which the
Paris Museum possesses a model, the length from the right reaches
55 millimetres (2·16 inches), and from the left 61 millimetres (2·4
inches); the breadth is 34 millimetres (1·33 inch) from the right,
and from the left 32 millimetres (1·26 inch). The thickness, which is
uniform, is 15 millimetres (·58 inch).
CHAPTER XXX.
ANATOMICAL CHARACTERS.
I. _Osteological characters._—Without denying the very great value
of external characters, I agree with almost all anthropologists,
in attaching a greater importance to anatomical characters _in the
majority of cases_. Unfortunately, the comparative anatomy of human
races has, as yet, made but little progress. The fact is, that the
solid portions, the skeleton alone, have, necessarily, been the
subject of serious examination. The study of the perishable portion
has scarcely been begun. For this, and several other reasons, I shall
distinguish these two orders of facts, and discuss separately our
knowledge of _osteological characters_ and _organic characters_.
The skeleton, the framework of the body, presents the same regions
as the latter: we can distinguish the head, the trunk, and the
extremities. Each of these regions offers peculiarities more or less
connected with the diversity of human groups. The best studied, and
fortunately the most important, are furnished by the head. For some
years craniological collections have been singularly on the increase;
and throughout Europe, the study has been entered upon with equal
ardour. Craniometrical methods and instruments have multiplied,
perhaps a little beyond the actual need. MM. Vogt and Topinard have
made an excellent summary of this mass of research. I can only refer
to their publications. I cannot here even reproduce all the results
already acquired, and must confine myself to pointing out a few of
the principal ones.
II. _Characters drawn from the cranium alone._—From an
anthropological point of view, as well as in an anatomical sense, the
skull is divided into two parts, the _cranium_ and the _face_. Each
of these regions has its special indications, while new characters
again rise from their reciprocal relations. Let us briefly review
them.
The general form of the cranium depends, above all, upon the relation
existing between the _length_ measured from before backwards,
and the _breadth_ taken from one side to the other. The honour
of having appreciated the importance of this relation belongs to
Retzius. He made use of it to establish the distinction between
_dolichocephalic_, or long-headed races, and _brachycephalic_, or
short-headed races.
Retzius considered the relations 7 : 9 or 8 : 10 as representing the
limit, left by him uncertain, of dolichocephaly and brachycephaly.
M. Broca proposed the formation of a third group, which should
comprise all crania, the length and breadth of which presented a
relation comprised within these limits, and anthropologists now admit
with him the _mesaticephalic_ races. In expressing these relations
by decimals, and in creating the term _horizontal cephalic index_,
now universally adopted, M. Broca has, moreover, facilitated, to an
extraordinary degree, the study of this character, and the ideas to
which it may give birth. His sub-division of the two extreme groups
into two has also, in certain cases, been an advantage. He has
himself, however, shown that it is not wise to go too far in this
direction.
The definitions of dolichocephaly, mesaticephaly, and brachycephaly
have, it seems to me, been somewhat arbitrary. I draw this conclusion
from the following tables, which I borrow from MM. Broca and
Pruner Bey. They represent the means discovered by these eminent
investigators. I have merely substituted the serial order for the
purely geographical distribution adopted by M. Pruner. Moreover, I
have continued the calculation to the second decimal place, thus
rendering the distinctions more minute, and the general result more
striking.
INDICES OF HUMAN RACES AFTER M. PRUNER BEY.
Races. Indices.
Americans of the Pampas, of Bogota, etc. 0·93
Americans of Vera Paz 0·87
Germans of the south (men) } 0·86
Germans of the south (women) }
Laos }
Annamites } 0·85
Brachycephalic Turks }
Brachycephalic Malays }
Javanese }
Borneans }
Brachycephalic Peruvians } 0·84
Puelches }
Lapps }
Ancient brachycephalic Europeans }
Kalmucks } 0·83
Brachycephalic Bretons }
Brachycephalic Kanaks }
Aëtas (women) } 0·82
Ancient Europeans (women) }
Malays (women) 0·81
Brachycephalic New Guineans }
Mexicans } 0·80
Brachycephalic Peruvians (women) }
Indo-Chinese }
Tagals }
Belgians } 0·79
Dutch }
Hovas }
Papuans with aquiline nose }
Red-Skins } 0·78
Chinese (women) }
Bellovaques (men) }
Modern Greeks }
Kabyles (women) }
Jews (women) } 0·77
Kourouglis (men and women) }
New Guineans }
Intermediary Americans } 0·77
Araucanians (men) }
Chinese (men) } 0·77
Ancient Romans }
Kabyles (men) }
Aëtas (men) }
Tasmanians (women) } 0·76
Dolichocephalic Celts }
Scandinavians (men) }
Dolichocephalic Bretons }
Modern Italians (men and women) }
Arabians }
Sacalaves (men) } 0·75
New Zealanders }
Dolichocephalic Kanaks }
Micronesians }
Tasmanians (men) }
New Guineans (women) }
Dolichocephalic Turks } 0·75
Etruscans }
Phœnicians }
Scandinavians (women) }
Tahitians }
Americans of Brazil, Peru, etc. } 0·74
Araucanians (women) }
Negroes (women) }
Kaffirs }
Semitic Hindoos } 0·73
Ancient Celts (men & women) }
Irish }
Negroes (men) }
Sacalaves (women) }
Australians (women) }
Brahmans } 0·72
Dravidians }
Persians }
Bellovaques (women) }
Bosjesmans } 0·70
Hottentots (women) }
Hottentots (men) } 0·69
Esquimaux }
INDICES OF HUMAN RACES AFTER M. BROCA.
Races. Indices.
TRUE BRACHYCEPHALI.
Americans (deformed crania) { 1·03
{ 0·93
Syrians of Gébel Cheikh, slightly deformed } 0·85
Lapps }
Bavaria and Swabia } 0·84
Auvergnats of St. Nectaire }
Finns } 0·83
Indo-China }
SUB-BRACHYCEPHALI.
Alsace and Lorraine }
European Russia } 0·82
Bretons of the Côtes du Nord (Gaulish cantons) }
Javanese } 0·81
Turks }
Different Mongols } 0·81
Bretons of the Côtes du Nord (Breton cantons) }
Estonians } 0·80
French Basques }
MESATICEPHALI.
North Americans, undeformed }
South Americans, undeformed }
Non-Javanese Malays }
North French, Bronze age } 0·79
Parisians of 16th cent. }
Parisians of 12th cent. }
Parisians of 19th cent. }
Gallo-Romans }
Roumanians } 0·78
Mexicans, undeformed }
SUB-DOLICHOCEPHALI.
Spanish Basques of Zaraus } 0·77
Gauls of the Iron age }
Malgaches }
Chinese }
Copts } 0·76
Merovingian French }
Sclaves of the Danube }
Tasmanians }
Polynesians }
Ancient Egyptians }
Guanches }
Corsicans of Avapezza of the 18th cent. } 0·75
Bohemians of Roumania }
Papuans }
North French of the polished stone age }
TRUE DOLICHOCEPHALI.
Kabyles } 0·74
Arabs }
Nubians of Elephantine }
South French; Neolithic age (cave Homme-Mort) }
France; Palæolithic age } 0·73
Negroes of West Africa }
Bengalese }
Kaffirs } 0·72
Hottentots and Bosjesmans }
Australians }
New Caledonians } 0·71
Esquimaux }
These tables mutually confirm and complete each other in general
results. The secondary differences which distinguish them, are
doubtless occasioned, on the one hand, by the number of crania
employed by the two authors to obtain their means; on the other,
from some diversity in the use of these materials. M. Pruner Bey
distinguished the sexes, which are united by M. Broca: the latter has
placed in one group the Hottentots and Bosjesmans, separated by M.
Pruner, etc.
From M. Broca’s table it appears that the mean of all these indices,
leaving deformed skulls out of the question, is 0·78. From a
numerical point of view this would be that of true mesaticephaly.
The mean group ought, it seems to me, to descend equally as it
rises, and consequently to absorb at least a part of M. Broca’s
sub-dolichocephali. In fact, upon inspecting the two tables, it
appears that the indices above 0·74 and below 0·79 comprise the
greater number of races belonging to the three fundamental types,
and taken from all parts of the world. It seems to me that true
mesaticephaly should be comprised within these limits. I do not,
however, propose that those which have been adopted should be changed.
These tables give rise to many other observations, of which I shall
only point out the principal.
M. Pruner Bey carried his calculations to the third place of
decimals; M. Broca to the fourth. I have gone no further than the
second, that the eye may be more easily attracted by the series
formed by these numbers, so important in the characterization of
races. It should be remembered that the greater number are means
taken from a certain number of crania. Were there a sufficient
number of subjects for each race, and all the indices taken from
each arranged in serial order, the distance from one to the other
would undoubtedly be no longer 0·01, but would be diminished to
0·001, or even less. The insensible shades observed in passing from
one individual to another would here be as remarkable as in the
comparison of stature.
There is no need to insist at any length upon the intercrossing, so
strikingly betrayed by the two tables. We see that the same index
places side by side the most dissimilar races, the South German
with the Annamite, the Breton with the Kalmuck, the Belgian with
the Tagal, the Parisian with the Malay, the Italian with the Maori,
etc., and that by their several indices the white races are scattered
throughout almost all the coloured races. I need not return to the
consequences which may be drawn from these facts from a monogenistic
point of view.
The yellow and black races are not so widely separated as the white;
the former are either brachycephalic or mesaticephalic, the latter
all dolichocephalic, with the exception of the Aëtas. I have shown
that the latter belong to a group of populations extending from
the Andaman and Philippine Islands to Torres Strait in Melanesia,
penetrating New Guinea, and forming a special _branch_ in the midst
of the Melanesian Negro population.
The case appears to be somewhat similar in Africa. This discovery,
entirely contrary to the ideas generally maintained till the present
time, is due to M. Hamy. This excellent investigator recognized
brachycephaly in six skulls taken from the Paris collections, and
obtained from Cape Lopez, or the mouths of the Fernand Yaz. Shortly
afterwards, M. Duchaillu having brought from the same districts
ninety-three skulls, the measurements of which were made public
by Englishmen, M. Hamy calculated the indices, and found that
twenty-seven of these crania were brachycephalic or mesaticephalic.
There is then every indication that the Negro _stock_ in Africa
presents a special _branch_ corresponding to the Negritoes. This
result is confirmed by Schweinfurth, who places the Niams-Niams and
some neighbouring tribes amongst the brachycephali.
We see that the horizontal cephalic index cannot serve as a starting
point in the classification of human races, as Retzius imagined it
might. We also see, however, that all the value which was attributed
to it by its author, is preserved in the characterization of
secondary groups.
The extreme means given in M. Pruner Bey’s table were found in two
American races, the Esquimaux and the inhabitants of the Pampas of
Bogota, etc. Whatever the differences may be which separate these two
races, it is evident that neither of them belong either to the black
or the white type. They show the greatest affinity to the yellow type.
From one extreme mean to the other there is, according to M. Pruner,
a difference of 0·246 between the cephalic indices; according to M.
Broca of 0·14552 only. This difference rests chiefly upon the fact
of M. Broca rejecting, as deformed, skulls which M. Pruner seems to
accept without observation. Again, the individual indices present a
much wider variation than would, at first sight, be expected. Huxley
mentions a Mongol whose cephalic index rises to 0·977, and a New
Zealander, of unmistakable Melanesian origin, in whom it descends to
0·629. The difference is, therefore, 0·348.
The general relations of length and breadth in the cranium of human
races is apparent from birth. Nevertheless, from the researches
of Gratiolet, it appears that dolichocephaly is due to a relative
development of bones, which varies with age. In the infant it is
essentially _occipital_, in the child _temporal_, and _frontal_ in
the adult man. In the woman the elongation of the cranium depends
essentially on the length of the temporal regions; in this respect,
then, the woman remains a child all her life.
Starting from these primary results, the same observer has compared
dolichocephalic Whites with African and Melanesian Negroes. He found
that the frontal dolichocephaly of the former was replaced in the two
black races by an occipital dolichocephaly. M. Broca has established
the same fact in comparing Basques with Parisians. Thus the
distinction proposed by M. Gratiolet furnishes a secondary character,
which may be of use in certain cases, but which falls very short of
the importance with which some have attempted to invest it. They
would consider occipital dolichocephaly as a character which widely
separates the Negro from the White; the observations of M. Broca
show that this is not at all the case, and from the observations of
M. Gratiolet it appears that we have here only the persistence of an
anterior condition common to both. The Negro and the Basque preserve
throughout life the cephalic character of the infant Parisian, thus
forming one of the many examples of that cessation of evolution
which, as we see more distinctly every day, plays a considerable part
in the characterization of human races.
The study of the horizontal cephalic index might lead to many other
remarks. I shall only recall the results obtained by M. Diétrici. It
appears from his calculations that, the total population of the globe
given at 1288 millions, there are 1026 millions of dolichocephali,
and only 262 millions of brachycephali. But the Berlin savant places
in the first category the Chinese, who are mesaticephali, and must
alone be reckoned at 421 millions. All these facts considered, it
appears to me, from the tables of MM. Pruner Bey and Broca, and other
data, received up to the present time, that the mesaticephali are
much more numerous than either the brachycephali or dolichocephali.
If mesaticephaly is taken in the sense pointed out above, the latter
in their turn predominate over the brachycephali, owing chiefly to
African black populations, which we are daily learning to estimate as
much more dense than they were formerly thought to be.
Retzius only compared the antero-posterior and transverse maximum
diameters. Later investigators have sought the relation between the
latter and the height of the cranium. The _vertical cephalic index_
has thus been obtained, the importance of which is at once evident.
It plays an equally important part in the table of M. Pruner Bey,
and gives rise to considerations analogous to those just discussed.
I cannot, however, enter into all these details without exceeding
the limits of this book. From the same motive I shall not mention
the other measurements of the cranium, maximum and minimum _frontal
diameters_, _total circumference_, _antero-posterior arc_, and others.
The composition of the cranium can only vary within very narrow
limits. Nevertheless, in Negroes, in ancient Egyptians, etc., the
squamous portion of the temporal bone is sometimes united to the
frontal without the partial interposition of the wings of the
sphenoid. This is a remarkable fact, being in direct contradiction
to the _principles of connections_, so justly regarded by Etienne
Geoffroy as one of the most essential principles of comparative
anatomy.
In the preceding case, the composition of the cranium is altered
by the suppression of a normal suture. This may also be caused by
the appearance of an abnormal suture, by which two distinct bones
are formed from a single one. Such is the case when the occipital
bone seems to divide, so as to leave its upper portion free. We
then have what has been called the _epactal bone_, or _bone of the
Incas_, because Rivers and Tschudy imagined this conformation to
be a character peculiar to the race. M. Jacquart, however, showed
that it was merely the result of a cessation in the evolution of the
occipital bone, of which examples are found in the most different
human races. It is to a similar phenomenon that the persistence of
the medio-frontal suture is due. This, again, is doubtless universal,
but much more frequent in the Aryan white race than in coloured
races, and especially in the Negroes.
These facts are connected, moreover, with a group of observations
and ideas which Gratiolet has brought forward on several occasions.
According to this ingenious observer, the anterior sutures are
the first to unite in inferior races, while in superior races the
obliteration commences with the posterior sutures. Again, the
sutures, as a whole, have a tendency to disappear rapidly in savage
races, while the isolation of the bones of the cranium is persistent
in civilized races, and particularly in the European White. This
disposition allows a continuance of the development of the brain,
although it gradually becomes slower. Gratiolet thus explains the
continuance of the intellectual power, so remarkable in men who have
constantly exercised their intelligence. The statistic researches of
Dr. Pomerol, while correcting all that is absolute in this theory,
seems to confirm it in some respects.
Since I am unable to review all the cranial characters, I shall pass
by those drawn from the prominence of different bones, the occipital
indices of Broca, the cephalo-spinal of Mantegazza, etc. I shall only
say a few words upon the position of the foramen magnum, and the
sphenoïdal angle of Welker, but I shall dwell more at length upon the
_capacity_ of the cranium.
D’Aubenton, in a special work, shows that the foramen magnum is
always placed further back in animals than in man. Sœmmering remarked
that it seemed more so in the Negro than in the White; and this
opinion, which was apparently confirmed by some measurements, was at
once accepted by a number of anthropologists, and regarded by them
as a _simian character_, but this result was attained by considering
the position of the aperture relatively to the entire length of the
skull, including the face. Now it is at once evident that the forward
development of the latter, by reason of prognathism, would increase
the apparent retreat of the former.
The researches of M. Broca upon _cranial projections_ enable us to
state this problem correctly, and to give the solution of it. M.
Broca compared 60 Europeans with 35 Negroes. Representing the _total
projection_ by 1000, he found that in the former the _anterior
projection_ was 475, and in the latter 498. The anterior border of
the foramen magnum is then further removed from the alveolar border
in the Negro than in the White, the difference being 23. But this
projection includes, with the _anterior cranial projection_, the
_facial projection_, which is 65 in the European and 138 in the
Negro. If this is deducted from the former, we find that the White
stands first in _cranial projection alone_, and that the difference
is 50.
We learn from these calculations that, relatively to the cranium
to which it belongs, the foramen magnum is placed more forward in
the Negro than in the White, which is by no means the case in apes.
These same calculations demonstrate the real difference which here
distinguishes the two, that, namely, of the forward prolongation of
the face.
In drawing comparisons between men and apes, the _sphenoïdal angle_
discovered by M. Virchow, studied by M. Welker, and which, thanks
to M. Broca, may be measured without making a section of the skull,
presents special interest. It presents an inverse evolution in man,
and the Quadrumana during growth. This may be seen from the annexed
calculations borrowed from M. Welker:—
MAN.
8 Infants 141°
10 Children from 10 to 15 years 137°
30 Adult Germans 134°
----
Difference -7°
APES.
Sajou, at birth 140°
” adult 174°
----
Difference +34°
Orang., young 155°
” adult 172°
” old 174°
----
Difference +19°
I have already insisted that facts of this nature are irreconcilable
with those theories which attribute a more or less pithecoid ancestor
to man.
In discussing the cranial cavity, our special object is to supply the
deficiency of information upon the volume and weight of the brain.
Now, from this point of view, we may easily fall into error. The bony
cabinet and its contents are developed, to a certain extent at least,
independently. This is very clearly demonstrated by a fact which was
observed by Gratiolet, and is too frequently forgotten. The subject
is an infant in whom the cranium presented the normal conformation.
The brain was, nevertheless, almost entirely wanting. In well-formed
men the sinuses and coverings of the brain may very easily be more or
less developed according to the individual or race, and influence the
relative dimensions of the brain.
Moreover, the exact measurement of the capacity of the cranium is
attended by difficulties which have not yet been entirely surmounted.
In spite of the improvements introduced by M. Broca in his method of
measuring with shot, consecutive measurements of the same cranium by
the same observer will vary considerably in the result.
Again, there are peculiarities to be taken into consideration, the
importance of which has long been neglected. We have known for
several years that the stature has an influence upon the weight of
the brain. It cannot be without influence upon the cavity by which
the latter is enclosed. M. Broca has shown that sex is of itself a
cause of variation. In the woman the mean cranial capacity is always
less than in the man, and the difference varies between different
races.
Nevertheless, in examining a sufficient number of skulls, the causes
of error may counterbalance each other, and the means may be accepted
as giving results sufficiently near the truth. The results obtained
by the same observer are especially favourable for comparison, and
from them certain results may be obtained. There is no reason,
therefore, why the cranial capacity should not be considered as
a character well worthy of study. But its importance must not be
exaggerated.
M. Broca arrived at the following result, in considering the
distinction of extreme races. The cranial capacity of the Australian
being represented by 100, that of the African Negro is 111·60, and
that of fair European races 124·8.
I borrow from my eminent colleague the following table, published by
M. Topinard in his _Anthropologie_. This table gives the mean cranial
capacity, in cubic centimetres, for a certain number of races in both
sexes. I have merely substituted the serial order in the men for
the almost geographical division of the author, and calculated the
difference between the sexes.
+-----------------------------------+------+---------+-------------+
| RACES. | MEN. | WOMEN. | DIFFERENCE. |
+-----------------------------------+------+---------+-------------+
| Cavern of Homme-Mort. Neolithic | 1616 | 1507 | 109 |
| Gallo-Bretons | 1599 | 1426 | 173 |
| Auvergnats | 1598 | 1445 | 153 |
| Spanish Basques | 1574 | 1356 | 218 |
| Bas-Bretons | 1564 | 1366 | 198 |
| Contemporary Parisians | 1558 | 1337 | 221 |
| Guanches | 1557 | 1353 | 204 |
| Corsicans | 1552 | 1367 | 185 |
| Esquimaux | 1539 | 1428 | 111 |
| Chinese | 1518 | 1383 | 135 |
| Merovingians | 1504 | 1361 | 143 |
| New Caledonians | 1460 | 1330 | 130 |
| Negroes of West Africa | 1430 | 1281 | 179 |
| Tasmanians | 1452 | 1201 | 251 |
| Australians | 1347 | 1181 | 156 |
| Nubians | 1329 | 1298 | 31 |
+-----------------------------------+------+---------+-------------+
We here observe facts of intercrossing similar to those which I have
so often pointed out. The Merovingians, a white race of the first
order, are placed between the yellow Chinese and the New Caledonians,
Melanesian Negroes.
But the chief value of this table is to show into what serious
errors an estimation of the intellectual development of a race from
its cranial capacity would lead us. By such an estimation, the
troglodytes of the cavern of L’Homme-Mort would be superior to all
races enumerated in the table, including contemporary Parisians, and
the Chinese would come after the Esquimaux. The French populations
occupy, it is true, the upper portion of the table, and the several
Negro races are at the bottom. But here, again, when we find the
Nubians following closely upon the Australians, we must confess that
there can be no real relation between the dimensions of the cranial
capacity and social development. We meet, moreover, with similar
questions when we turn our attention to the brain.
The following table, which I borrow from Morton, is as instructive
as the preceding. It includes a greater number of races. Moreover,
the American _savant_ has not only given the means, but also the
maxima and minima as established by his researches. His measurements
are given in cubic inches. As they are only required for comparison
with those of other observers, I have not reduced them to cubic
centimetres. I have again confined myself to arranging the means in
a descending series, and to calculating the differences between the
maxima and minima.
+-------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| RACES. | MEAN. | MAX. | MIN. | DIFF. |
+-------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| English | 96 | 105 | 91 | 14 |
| | | | | |
| Germans } | 90 { | 114 | 70 | 44 |
| Anglo-Americans } | { | 97 | 82 | 15 |
| | | | | |
| Arabs | 89 | 98 | 84 | 14 |
| | | | | |
| Greco-Egyptians of the Catacombs | 88 } | | 74 | 23 |
| Irish | 87 } | 97 | 78 | 19 |
| Malays | 86 } | | 68 | 29 |
| | | | | |
| Persians } | } | | | |
| Armenians } | } | 94 | 75 | 19 |
| Circassians } | } | | | |
| Iroquois } | 84 } | | | |
| Lenapes } | } | 104 | 70 | 34 |
| Cherokees } | } | | | |
| Shoshones } | } | | | |
| | | | | |
| African Negroes } | 83 { | 99 | 65 | 34 |
| Polynesians } | { | 84 | 82 | 2 |
| | | | | |
| Chinese } | 82 { | 91 | 70 | 21 |
| Creole Negroes of North America } | { | 89 | 73 | 16 |
| | | | | |
| Hindoos } | { | 91 | 77 | 14 |
| Ancient Egyptians of the Catacombs} | 80 { | 96 | 68 | 28 |
| Fellahs } | { | 96 | 66 | 30 |
| | | | | |
| Mexicans | 79 | 92 | 67 | 25 |
| | | | | |
| Peruvians } | { | 101 | 58 | 47 |
| Australians } | 75 { | 83 | 68 | 15 |
| Hottentots } | { | 83 | 63 | 20 |
+-------------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
This table, borrowed from one of the most eminent supporters of
polygenism, should, I think, excite reflections in all who pay any
attention to facts.
We find the Chinese placed, by their mean cranial capacity, below
the Polynesians, the African Negroes, and the savage tribes of North
America. Is this really the position which their civilization assigns
to them?
In Morton’s table the Creole Negroes of America fall below the
African Negroes by the lesser development of the same cavity. Meigs
has confirmed this curious fact in several ways, and has even made
the difference still wider; 80·8 for the former and 83·7 for the
latter. And yet it is universally acknowledged that Negroes born in
America are intellectually superior to their African brothers. Even
Nott allows that it is so. With them, therefore, the intelligence
increases, while the cranial capacity diminishes.
This fact is the more singular since the observations of M. Broca
upon Parisian skulls of the thirteenth to the nineteenth century
show that the Cranial capacity increases with general intellectual
progress. The measurements taken by the same observer upon
individuals belonging to the educated and illiterate classes lead to
the same conclusion.
Still, however, we cannot disregard the calculations of Morton and
Meigs; and this _experience_, bearing upon numerous populations of
the same race, seems to establish beyond a doubt the fact, which
already clearly results from the comparison of different races,
namely, that the development of the intellectual faculties of man is,
to a great extent, independent of the capacity of the cranium and the
volume of the brain.
I must here confine myself to the statement that the diminution of
the cranium is, in North America, one of the _characters of the
Creole Negro race_, derived from the _African Negro race_.
The intercrossing of races is again demonstrated in this table by the
means. The Hindoos and ancient Egyptians are separated from the other
White races of the Negroes, Chinese, Polynesians, and Red-Skins.
But the maxima and minima show still more clearly how far this
confusion would be carried, if individuals were compared. Hottentots
and Australians, by their maxima of 83, would stand before Germans
and Anglo-Americans, whose minimum is not so high. With much greater
reason would they be placed in the midst of all the other races,
which, by their means, are placed above them. This is not all.
Between the highest and the lowest mean, between the English and
Hottentots, or Australians, the difference in cranial capacity is
only twenty-one cubic inches. The difference between the maximum and
minimum of the Chinese is exactly the same. And it is much greater in
nine other races, being more than double in the Germans and Peruvians.
Do we meet with facts like those resulting from the measurements of
Morton in the _species_ of a single _genera_ of plants and animals?
Certainly not; and this table is of itself sufficient to prove that
the human groups are _races_, which have little uniformity owing to
the absence of selection, and in no sense _species_.
III. _Characters drawn from the face alone._—Similar conclusions to
those furnished by the examination of the cranium are suggested by
that of the entire face. It may be either broad or long; and in order
to distinguish these two forms by special epithets, we may employ the
terms _euryopse_, _dolichopse_ (οψις, _theatrical mask_).
Since the face is much more irregular in form than the cranium, it
gives rise to a far greater number of observations. Each one of its
features would deserve our attention, were we writing a detailed
work, and the more so, as such close study as this can only boast an
existence of a few years. Failing space, I shall confine myself to
pointing out the nature of the characters, and commenting upon some
of the principal results.
In the living subject the length of the face is estimated from
the commencement of the hair to the extremity of the chin. But
measurements of this kind are difficult to procure when exotic races
are in question. Skulls, therefore, have been examined. In the
latter, the inferior maxillary bone is very often wanting, and even
the teeth have, in too many cases, fallen out. The inferior limit of
the length of the face could therefore be carried no further than the
alveolar border of the superior maxillary bone. The _point sus-nasal_
of M. Broca serves as the superior limit. The interval comprised
within these limits is always less than the _breadth_ measured across
the zygomatic arches. In multiplying by 100 the length of the face
and dividing it by the breadth, M. Broca has obtained the _facial
index_. The following are some examples which I borrow from him with
M. Topinard:
Esquimaux 73·4
Negroes 68·6
Gallo-Bretons 68·5
Auvergnats 67·9
New Caledonians 66·2
Parisians 65·9
Australians 65·6
Tasmanians 62·6
In spite of the small number of these examples, they might lead to
remarks similar to those which I have already brought forward on
several occasions, and which I believe it to be unnecessary to repeat.
The nose is one of the most striking features of the human face. Its
general form and dimensions furnish some of the most special external
characters in the distinction of races. But the morphological
variations of this organ, presenting considerable difficulties,
had long been neglected. M. Topinard filled this gap, and showed
that it is possible, even upon casts, to take measurements suitable
for indices. Nevertheless, it is the skull that, up to the present
time, has contributed the clearest indications. The breadth of the
nose taken at the opening of the nasal fossæ and multiplied by
100, compared with the length from the spine to the naso-frontal
articulation, has furnished M. Broca with the terms of the relation
expressed by his _nasal index_, the study of which has led him to
important results.
Measurements, taken upon more than 1,200 skulls of all races, have
enabled M. Broca to give 50·00 as the mean nasal index. In the entire
number of races this index varies from 42·33 (Esquimaux) to 58·38
(Houzouanas). We see that the variation is only 16·05. The individual
differences are much wider, extending from 72·22 (Houzouanas) to
35·71 (Roumanians), thus giving a maximum variation of 36·51.
The difference between the maximum and minimum in the same race
is also very striking. When it exceeds ten, M. Broca seems to
attribute it almost exclusively to crossing. He has made an ingenious
application of this idea in the history of the crossing of the Franks
with the races who preceded them in France. But we can scarcely allow
that this is always the case when we see the difference rising to
21·98 in the Negroes of West Africa, and to 25·05 in the Hottentots
and Bosjesmans. It seems to me that this is only the repetition of
a fact which we have already proved with regard to the capacity of
crania.
M. Broca has made use of his nasal index to divide all human races
into three groups from this point of view. In races of a mean nasal
index, or _Mesorhinian_, it only varies from 48 to 53. Below these
are ranged races with a long narrow nose, or _Leptorhinian_; and
above, those with a broad and more or less flat nose, _Platyrhinian_.
The groups thus obtained are fairly homogeneous. The Leptorhinian
would comprise only Whites, if the Esquimaux had not most
unexpectedly stepped in. The Platyrhinian group is composed
exclusively of Negroes, and includes all the races of this type
studied by M. Broca, with the exception of the Papuans, who are
perhaps a mixed race. The Mesorhinians embrace all the Yellow races,
as well as the Polynesians, all the Americans and the Papuans, which
I have just mentioned. We also find in this group Allophylian Whites,
the Esthonians, and the Finns, who are thus separated from the Aryans
and Semites.
In short, if we take means alone into consideration, the nasal index,
taken as a basis in the division of races, breaks a much smaller
number of natural relations than the characters which we have as yet
discussed. Apart from the exceptions which I have just alluded to,
intercrossing here only appears between races belonging to the same
type. But as soon as we take individual variations into account, the
mixture, so often observed, reappears.
M. Broca has studied the nasal index not only in the adult, but also
when in a state of evolution. He found that in an embryo of three
months this index was 76·80; in a perfect fœtus, 62·18; in a child
of six years, 50·20; in modern Parisians, 46·81. Thus the index
constantly diminishes as the body approaches its definite form. Our
author concludes from this fact that the variations observed in the
same race may often be referred to an arrest of development, or
rather an arrest of evolution, and he seems disposed to attach the
platyrhinism of Negroes to the same cause. He thus adopts the idea
of Serres upon the general character of the Negro, which ideas we
shall examine presently. This I regard as a very correct explanation
of the origin of one of the distinctive features which most clearly
distinguishes the black race. It is not, however, to the nasal index
alone that this fact is applicable, as I have already proved.
The _orbital index_, also studied by M. Broca, is obtained by
multiplying the vertical diameter of the orbit by 100, and dividing
the product by the horizontal diameter. Considered from this point of
view, races are divided into three groups, namely, the _megasemes_,
whose mean index rises to 89 and higher; the _mesosemes_, whose index
varies from 83 to 89 only; and the _microsemes_, whose index fall
below 83.
The highest mean index stated by M. Broca, is found in the
Aymaras, in whom it rises to 98·8. But we know that the cranium is
artificially deformed by this people, and the practice may in some
measure influence the form of the orbit. The maximum in normal skulls
was observed in the Polynesians of Hawaï, where it was 95·40. The
minimum of 77·01 is presented by the Guanches of Teneriffe.
The mean maximum variation is then 18·30.
But here, as in all other cases, individual variations are much more
considerable. Without even taking the Aymaras into consideration,
whose index sometimes exceeds 109, M. Broca found 108·33 in a
Chinese, 105 in a Chinese and an Indian Red-Skin, 100 in two women
of the Marquesas Islands, a Peruvian woman, a Malay, a Mexican, an
Indo-Chinese, a woman of ancient Egypt, of Auvergne, and Paris. It is
unnecessary to insist upon the meaning of these similarities.
The smallest orbital index known is that of the old man of
Cro-Magnon, which we have seen to be 61·36. Above the latter, and
at small distances from each other, may be ranged a Tasmanian,
a Merovingian, the Mentone man (of the same race as that of
Cro-Magnon), a Guanche of Teneriffe, a New Caledonian, an Australian,
a Nubian, a Kaffir, a Spanish Basque, an Auvergnat, and lastly, the
woman of Cro-Magnon, whose index is 71·25.
The maximum individual variation is then 46·87.
Upon examining the table of M. Broca, we find that the white races
are represented in the three groups. The Dutch of Zaandam figure
among the megasemes between the aborigines of Mexico and those of
North-west America. The Gallo-Bretons are placed in the same group,
between the Chilians and the Indo-Chinese. The Whites form the great
majority in the group of mesosemes, and are much the most numerous
in that of the microsemes. One of their races indeed, the natives
of Teneriffe, terminates the series, immediately preceded by the
Tasmanians and Australians.
Thus, as far as the white race is concerned, the mean orbital index
proclaims an intercrossing comparable with all that we have hitherto
observed. The case is different with the two other fundamental types.
They are distinctly separated by this character. All the yellow races
are megasemes, for in my opinion the Lapps, considered by M. Broca
to belong to them, are in reality allophylian Whites. All the negro
races are mesosemes or microsemes. There is a difference of 4·03
between the aborigines of Brazil representing the last megasemes
which have not been deformed, and the Papuans of Toud Island, who
have, of all Blacks, the highest orbital index.
The usual intercrossing would undoubtedly reappear if we took
individual variations into consideration. The difference 9·89 which
separates the man of Cro-Magnon from the woman of the same race is
sufficient proof.
M. Broca has studied the influence of sex and age upon the orbital
index. I cannot follow him into these details, however interesting
they may be. I will only remark, that, as in the case of the nasal
index, it diminishes with the progress of evolution, and remains in
all races greater in the woman than in the man. The latter preserves,
then, throughout life, a certain infantile character.
This observation applies equally to races distinguished for the size
of their orbital index. The yellow races, including the Chinese,
present therefore, if compared with white races, _an arrest of
evolution_. Yet the Chinese are far superior to all the microseme
or mesoseme black races, and particularly the Australians and
Tasmanians, who are only followed by the inhabitants of Teneriffe in
the lowest places of the table. If we take the white as the normal
type, we must regard these two populations as presenting an _excess
of evolution_; but this excess is still more marked in the Guanches
of Teneriffe, who, in their mode of life, are considerably superior
to the Tasmanians and Australians.
A general conclusion follows from these facts, namely: that the
characters resulting from an _arrest_ or _excess_ of evolution, are
not of themselves a sign of superiority or inferiority.
M. Broca has, with great propriety, compared the orbital index of
apes with that of man. As might easily have been foreseen, the laws
of development are the same in the highest groups of apes as in man.
The influence of sex and age are as noticeable in the gorilla, the
orang, and in the chimpanzee as in our own races. It seems to be less
striking in the lower apes.
The orbital index groups apes, like man, into megasemes, mesosemes
and microsemes. But this character connects the anthropomorphous
apes with the lowest types, with the cebidæ, and even the lemuridæ,
which we now, from their embryogeny, connect with the ruminants or
edentata. The genera of simiadæ are divided into three groups. M.
Broca draws from these facts the very first conclusion that no value,
as characterising gradations, can be attributed to the orbital index.
It is well known that in the Negro the entire face, and especially
the lower portion, projects forward. This trait has been termed
_prognathism_. In the living subject it is exaggerated by the
thickness of the lips. But it is also apparent in the skull, and
constitutes one of its most striking characters. M. Topinard has
studied it in a special manner, and by a method of his own. He has
with justice separated _facial prognathism_, which embraces the
entire face, from the various _maxillary_ and _dental prognathisms_,
which distinctions I proposed some time ago. The index is here
furnished by the relation existing between the height, and the
horizontal projection of the region under consideration. But M.
Topinard has recently replaced this index by the angle formed by
the _profile lines_ with the horizontal plane. This is a happy
modification, as it presents a more precise idea to the mind.
The most important of the several prognathisms is that arising
from the portion of the maxillary bone situated below the nose,
and comprising the alveoli of the incisors and canines. This is
the _sub-nasal-alveolar prognathism_, or the _superior maxillary
prognathism_. It is this trait of the Negro which is opposed to the
_orthognathism_ of the White. This character suggests remarks similar
to those which I have already made so often. It is the evident result
of the following summary, which I borrow almost verbatim from M.
Topinard’s work.
All races and all individuals are more or less prognathous. As a
rule, in European races it is only slight; it is much more marked in
the Yellow and Polynesian races, and more strongly marked still in
Negro races. Let us remark, however, that even mean indices place the
Tasmanians (76°·28) above the Finns and Esthonians (75°·53), and very
near the Merovingians (75°·54).
The minimum prognathism, or maximum orthognathism, is found in the
Guanches (81°·34), and the opposite extreme in the Namaquois and
Bosjesmans (59°·88). The means establish limits between the various
sub-divisions of the great fundamental races. Individual variations,
however, in this case, as in others, obliterate these distinctions.
In all races there are exceptions, Negroes in whom prognathism is no
more marked than in Whites, and Whites in whom it is very pronounced.
M. Topinard regards these exceptional cases as examples of crossing,
atavism, or as pathological phenomena. There is certainly some truth
in this view. I have long referred the prognathism, sometimes so
curiously marked in certain Parisian women, to atavism. But we must
also take into consideration these _oscillations of characters_,
which we everywhere meet with in races not subject to selection with
any special aim.
In any case we cannot consider cessation of development as explaining
the existence of a most striking prognathism in certain individuals
of incontestably pure white race. In fact, far from diminishing with
age, like the preceding characters, it rather increases. Even in the
European, the child is manifestly more orthognathous than the adult.
With regard to Negroes, Pruner Bey observed some time ago, and I have
myself proved, that the child presents scarcely any trace of that
feature, so characteristic in the parents. It is not till the period
of puberty that it appears, and is rapidly developed. The forward
projection of the maxillary bone is, therefore, in both races a fact
of normal evolution, merely more marked in the one than in the other.
Far from being the result of a _cessation_, prognathism betrays an
_excess_ of development.
The absolute theory of Serres, which would treat the Negro merely
as a White, subjected to a cessation of general development, is
then here at fault. The truth is, that in the black race, organic
evolution is less advanced than the general type of white race in
some respects, and more so in others. This is a fact upon which
I have long insisted in my lectures at the Museum, and which is
confirmed, as we now see, by the more exact work of later years.
We see, also, that, in order to account for the differences
separating the Negro from the White, it is by no means necessary to
have recourse to phenomena of atavism as exhibited by animals. Simple
oscillations, above or below the mean in the normal evolution of man,
are sufficient to explain it. I feel myself, therefore, still more
strongly justified in opposing the _human evolution theory_ to the
_simian evolution theory_.
The zygomatic arches, the malar bone, the superior and inferior
maxillary bones also furnish the anthropologist with several more or
less essential characters which sometimes acquire, in reference to
a given race, a value superior to that which they have elsewhere.
Such is the slight elevation of the _palatine vault_ in the Lapps.
But I cannot here enter into these details, and refer the reader to
special books and memoirs.
IV. _Characters drawn from the skull considered as a whole._ When,
instead of studying the face or cranium alone, we consider them in
their reciprocal relations, we see new traits appearing, furnishing a
number of characters, some of which are of real importance.
Let us, in the first place, remark that there may be either _harmony_
or _dysharmony_ between these two great regions. The skull is
harmonic in the Negro, whose cranium and face are equally long,
and in the Mongol, who unites the two contrary characters; it is
dysharmonic, as we have seen, in the old man of Cro-Magnon, and in
the man of La Truchère, but for contrary reasons.
Cuvier endeavoured to find the relation of the skull and the face
by making an antero-posterior section of the skull, and directly
measuring the surfaces of the section. He found that in the White the
face represented about 0·25 of the skull, 0·30 in the Yellow, and
0·40 in the Black. These results entirely accord with those furnished
by the study of prognathism.
This relative difference of the development of the face led Camper
to the conception of his celebrated facial angle. Struck by seeing
painters represent Negroes as Whites painted black, he studied
the anatomical characters of the skull, and gave, as the proper
distinction, the angle formed by two lines; the one passing from
the auditory canal to the root of the nose, the other tangential to
the forehead and to the nasal bone, both being represented upon a
vertical projection of the model. Camper made use of his method to
distinguish between the products of Greek and Roman art. He thus
represented a decreasing scale from the works of art in statuary
to non-adult apes. I reproduce it, not because of its real value,
but on account of the importance which has been attributed to it.
The following are the variations of the facial angle, according to
Camper:
Greek statues 100°
Roman statues 95°
White race 80°
Yellow race 75°
Black race 70°
Young apes (superior type) 65°
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier, M. Jules Cloquet and Jacquard have
adopted different methods in determining the facial angle. Morton,
Jacquard, and M. Broca have invented instruments for measuring it
directly. M. Topinard, after having examined the several methods,
gives, with justice, his opinion in favour of that of Cloquet, which
places the upper extremity of the angle at the alveolar border. M.
Jacquard had chosen the nasal spine, remarking at the same time that
the difference between the two angles might be of service in the
calculation of prognathism.
Camper, or rather those who have followed him, wished to consider the
size of the facial angle as a sign of superior intellectual power.
His _graduated scale_ has evidently given rise to this false idea.
Pathological facts should have sufficed to show how great was the
error. The work of Jacquard has, moreover, established this fact
beyond a doubt. This author has proved a difference of more than
16° in the educated White of Paris, that is to say, 6° more than
the distance established by Camper as separating the Negro from the
White. Jacquard, again, has proved in the French race the existence
of an angle of 90°, an angle which Camper believed to belong only
to the ideal representations of the human form. Now this remarkable
angular superiority was by no means accompanied by an exceptional
intelligence.
If we pass from the psychological to the anatomical meaning I shall
have similar remarks to make. There has been much discussion as to
the position of the upper extremity of the facial line, which, with
the horizontal line, forms the angle of Camper. It has been thought
desirable to avoid the frontal sinuses, and to seek in the facial
angle indications relative to the dimensions of the encephalon,
and _not those of any particular bone_. I think, on the contrary,
that we must be content with the latter, and not go further. It is
evident that the dimensions of the encephalon are independent of
the position of the frontal point, and that it may be more or less
extended to the right, left, or behind this point without the facial
angle being affected in any manner whatever.
The exact determination of the _means_ of the facial angle will
still, however, be valuable, like all those which it is possible
to calculate upon the human body, provided there is a sufficient
distance between these means. But M. Topinard has shown that this
difference is not more than three degrees. Without altogether
renouncing the ideas of Camper, we see that science now has
characters preferable to those which he discovered.
A more important angle is the _anterior parietal angle_, formed on
both sides of the skull by two lines tangential to the most prominent
point of the zygomatic arch, and to the fronto-parietal suture. By
taking the most prominent point of the parietal eminences as the
second extremity, we obtain the _posterior parietal angle_. Prichard
applied the term _pyramidal skulls_ to those in which these lines
converged. I have endeavoured to measure the angle directly with an
instrument of my own invention, and my first researches have led me
to results which I believe to be interesting. The angle is sometimes
wide, sometimes narrow, and may be altogether wanting when the two
tangents are parallel. It is, then, sometimes positive, sometimes
negative. The latter is the case in the fœtus and infants of all
races. The negative angle is also met with in adults. This trait
appears to have been very striking in Cuvier, judging from a fine
portrait of the great naturalist when still young. I have found it
to be -18° and -22° in two living persons, both remarkable for their
intelligence. The positive maximum which I observed upon an Esquimaux
cranium was +14°. I have employed this character in my course of
lectures to complete the characterization of a great number of races,
but have never published any details.
M. Topinard has just filled this gap in a work which confirms, and
at the same time, completes all my first results. His researches,
bearing solely upon skulls, have given him as limits of individual
variations, 5° and +30°; as limits of the means, +2°·5 and +20°·3. He
found in the New Caledonians the most pyramidal heads. Finally, he
has seen in children from the age of four months to sixteen years,
the angle decreasing from -24° to 0° and rise to 7°.
Thus the negative parietal angle in the adult is nothing more than
a persistent fœtal or infantile character. It is evidently the
result of a _cessation of development_, or rather, a _cessation of
evolution_. Now, we have just seen that this character may exist in
individuals endowed with an intelligence above the average, and even
in men of genius. A _cessation of evolution_, the persistent trace
of a fœtal or infantile condition, is not, therefore, necessarily a
_character of inferiority_ either in individuals or races.
Two general views of the skull belong to the subject now under
examination. Blumenbach regarded and represented the human skull from
above. This is the _norma verticalis_, very valuable as permitting
the appreciation of the general form of the cranium and some of its
relations with the projections of the face. Owen has, so to speak,
regarded it from below, and insisted upon the differences which the
inferior surface offers between man and the highest types of apes.
Many characters of detail are brought to light by these two methods
which I cannot even mention here.
In this necessarily very incomplete sketch, I have been obliged to
pass by in silence a large number of characters which are often of a
very substantial importance. The greater number are obtained by the
method of projections so ingeniously perfected by M. Broca, and by
means of instruments, some of which were already in existence, such
as the diagraph, and others invented by various savants, amongst whom
we must, again, especially mention M. Broca.
V. _Skeleton of the trunk._ I have dwelt at some length upon the
characters drawn from the skeleton of the head; I shall be more
brief in discussing the other regions. They furnish characters
perhaps equally important, but they have been much less studied, and
the fault does not altogether lie with anthropologists. It is not
easy to procure skulls of the human races, even when we have to do
with populations living close to us; the difficulty of collecting a
certain number of entire skeletons is far greater.
The thoracic cage presents some interesting facts sufficiently well
proved. In consequence of the form of the sternum, the greater or
less curvature of the ribs, it is generally broad and flattened in
the White, narrow and prominent in the Negro and the Bosjesman.
According to d’Orbigny, it is still more prominent in certain
Americans. An analogous fact has been observed in some populations of
Asia Minor.
The pelvis is the portion of the trunk which has been most thoroughly
studied, by reason of the application which may be made of these
researches to obstetrics. As a rule, comparisons have been limited to
those between the Negro and the White. Vrolick, Weber, MM. Joulin,
Pruner Bey, and, quite recently, M. Verneau, have gone much further.
The latter, unfortunately, has not yet published his researches
relatively to the distinction of races. Vrolick insisted upon some
peculiarities of the pelvis of the Hottentot Venus, and endeavoured
to establish certain relations between her and the ape.
Weber found that in each of the races which he had studied, the
pelvis presented a predominant form, which, on that account alone,
became characteristic. He regarded the inlet as being generally
oval and of large transverse diameter in the White; quadrilateral
and of large transverse diameter in the Mongol; round, and of equal
diameters, in the American; cuneiform and of large antero-posterior
diameter in Negroes.
M. Joulin has disputed nearly all the propositions of Vrolick and
Weber, and seems unwilling to allow any characteristic value to
the pelvis. M. Pruner Bey has shown without difficulty the great
exaggeration of this view, and has determined the characters which
distinguish, from this point of view, the White from the Black.
The work of M. Verneau, much more complete than those of his
predecessors, but with the anatomical part of which we are at present
alone acquainted, will undoubtedly throw some light on the questions
raised by their controversies. At present, moreover, the work of
M. Verneau confirms the assertions of the greater number of his
predecessors, as to the reality of the characters of race to be found
in the pelvis.
Amongst these characters, there are some which have been pointed
out in the Negro as _indications of animalism_. Even M. Pruner Bey,
departing in this instance from his general practice, employs this
expression, though at the same time restricting its meaning by his
explanations. It seems to me much more natural to consider it as a
trace of a condition, normal at a certain period, and more or less
persistent according to the race.
In fact, the verticality of the ilia, and the increase of the
antero-posterior diameter of the pelvis in the Negro, have been
chiefly insisted upon as recalling characters which may be observed
in mammalia generally, and particularly in apes. But we meet with
the same anatomical characteristics strongly pronounced even in the
fœtus and children of the White. They, and especially the latter
peculiarity, are persistent to the age of seven years or more.
Their existence in the Negro is, then, nothing more than _relative
cessation_ in the evolution of this region of the skeleton. It is,
again, a _fœtal or infantile character_, and not _a character of
animalism_.
VI. _Skeleton of the limbs._—When speaking of fossil races, I pointed
out certain morphological characters of the bones of the limbs, and
among others, that of the perforation of the olecranon depression.
This character may be observed in the Bosjesman, the Guanches,
ancient Egyptians, and our own races. It seems to make its appearance
in Western Europe with the Quaternary brachycephalic races. M. Dupont
met with it in the proportion of thirty per cent. among the men of
the Lesse; according to M. Hamy, this proportion is twenty-eight per
cent. in the fossil race of Grenelle and only 4·66 per cent. in the
present population.
I have already observed that the upper limb is a little longer in the
Negro than in the White. The essential cause of this difference, is
the relative elongation of the fore-arm. M. Broca, after comparing
the radius and humerus of the two races, gives 79·43 for the Negro,
and 73·82 for the European. M. Hamy, who had more numerous materials
at his disposal, and followed a somewhat different method of
measurement, obtained as result 78·04 and 72·19.
This elongation of the radius, relatively greater in the Negro than
in the White, is one of the traits to which the expression _simian
character_ has been most frequently applied. We know, in fact, that
there is less inequality between the two regions of the arm in the
anthropomorphous apes than in man, and that in the orang the length
of the radius equals that of the humerus.
The researches of M. Hamy enable us to consider this peculiarity
of the Negro from an entirely human and truer point of view. This
anthropologist has followed the evolution of this limb with a view
of obtaining the changes which it involves in the relation under
consideration. The following table gives the results of these
investigations:
Embryo of 2½ months 88·88
Fœtus of 3-4 months 84·09
” ” 4-5 months 80·42
” ” 5-7 months 77·68
” ” 8-9 months 77·37
Infants of 1-10 days 76·20
” ” 11-20 days 74·78
” ” 21-30 days 74·51
” ” 2 months 73·03
” ” 6 months to 2 yrs. 72·46
” ” 5 months to 13½ yrs. 72·30
We see that in the development of the upper limb in man, there is a
constant tendency to diminish the relation in question. We see also
that the average of the Negro is almost that of a white fœtus of five
months. In his case, therefore, the elongation of the radius may be
explained quite naturally by an arrest of evolution, without giving
any occasion for comparing him with apes. Under what pretext should
we return to the simian theory in connection with this character,
after having seen that it is inapplicable in so many others?
The lower member presents similar facts. According to the
calculations borrowed by M. Topinard from M. Broca, the tibia, when
compared with the femur, gives a relation of 81·33 for the Negro, and
79·72 for the White.
By adding the figures which express the length of the radius and
humerus, we have the total length of the whole arm, with the
exception of the hand; and by acting in the same manner for the femur
and tibia, we have that of the lower member, with the exception of
the foot.
The relation of the former to the latter is 68·27 in the Negro, and
69·73 in the White.
The following is a table of several races, drawn up by M. Topinard
from his own researches and those of several other authors:
+----------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
| | Relation of | Relation of | Relation of |
| Races. | the inf. to | the femur to| the tibia to|
| | the sup. | the humerus.| the femur. |
| | member. | | |
+----------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
| Annamites | 67·5 | 76·7 | 67·5 |
| Tasmanians | 68·2 | 83·5 | 84·3 |
| Aënos } | 68·4 { | 75·2 | 76·8 |
| Bosjesmans } | { | 75·5 | 83·5 |
| Andaman Islanders | 70·3 | 79·9 | 81·8 |
| Australians | 70·7 | 75·6 | 76·9 |
| Blacks of Pondichery | 71·7 | 82·9 | 84·4 |
+----------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
We see that, by this character, the European White is placed between
the African Negro and the Andaman Islander.
I have already mentioned some remarkable morphological modifications,
such as the prominence of the linea aspera in the femur, the
platycnemism of the tibia, etc. I need not repeat them. The clavicle,
foot and hand, also suggest many details which I must pass by in
silence. I shall only observe that in Abyssinia it is neither
by his colour nor his hair that the true Negro is proved to be
characterised, but merely by the relatively exaggerated prominence of
the heel. But this sign, which has been asserted to be infallible,
is wanting in certain Negro races, not only in the Yoloffs, whose
inferior member resembles our own, but also in the Bambaras, who have
a _flat foot_.
VII. _Characters drawn from, the soft portions; nervous system._
After having examined the external forms of the body, and reviewed
the skeleton, we must take the organic apparatus one by one, and
study them in their turn. Unfortunately the facts collected are here
still more rare, when the observations should have been in larger
numbers in order to give a definite value to the results. This study,
which has been scarcely commenced, has in reality only been brought,
till the present time, to bear upon the two most distant terms of the
human series: the European White and the African Negro. This alone
will justify me in giving a very cursory exposition of the results
obtained.
The nervous system, of which Cuvier has said that it is the entire
animal, is fortunately the part about which we possess, perhaps, the
greatest number of comparative data. In the first place, we meet with
a general fact noticed by Sœmmering, and which is established beyond
a doubt by the splendid preparations of Jacquard, exhibited in the
galleries of the Paris Museum. Relatively to the White, the Negro
presents a marked predominance of peripheral nervous expansions. The
trunks are thicker, and the fibres more numerous, or perhaps merely
easier to isolate, and to preserve on account of their volume alone.
On the other hand, the cerebral centres, or at least the brain,
appear to be inferior in development.
In fact, in spite of what Blumenbach and Tiedmann have said on
this subject, the brain of the Negro is, as a general rule, less
voluminous than that of the White. This fact is chiefly the
result, it is true, of measurements of the capacity of crania. But
determinations of the weight confirm this result.
Seven Negro brains weighed by M. Broca gave a mean of 1316 grm.
(46·42 oz.). Upon uniting the weights of European brains I find,
however, a mean of only 1248 grm. (44·02 oz.), that is almost
exactly the average of the White woman. The average weight of adult
European brains is 1405·88 grm. (49·59 oz.). But in both races,
individual oscillations are very considerable. One of the skulls of
the Black race examined by M. Broca weighed 1500 grm. (52·91 oz.);
Mascagni had one of 1587 grm. (55·94 oz.), and another of only 738
grm. (26·03 oz.).
The truth is that the European White alone has been seriously
examined from the point of view of the estimation of cerebral
development by weight. The merit of having furnished the elements
of this study belongs incontestably to Rud. Wagner. Uniting the far
more important results of his own researches with those of Tiedmann,
Sims, Parchappe, Lélut, Huschke and Bergmann, this savant drew up a
table containing the weight of 964 brains, which had been directly
obtained after removing the coverings; he arranged them in order,
commencing with the heaviest and finishing with the lightest. But he
had not taken circumstances of sex, age, health, disease, etc., into
consideration. The results which he obtained were, therefore, subject
to alterations and corrections. M. Broca has accomplished this task.
He took 347 cases of healthy brains from Wagner’s table, and carried
out his investigations entirely upon them.
A certain number of general propositions rise from all these
researches, which may be formulated in the following manner:
1. Under similar circumstances, in other respects, the weight of
the brain varies proportionately, or almost proportionately, to the
height. According to Parchappe, the average weight of the brains of
two groups of men with an average height of 1·74 metre (5·7 feet)
and 1·63 metre (5·2 feet), was 1330 grm. (46·91 oz.), and 1254 grm.
(44·23 oz.). In this example the differential relation, 6 per cent.,
is exactly the same for the height of the body and the weight of
the brain. This influence of stature enables us to interpret and
comprehend the facts brought forward by Mr. Sandford Hunt. From the
calculations of this anatomist it would appear that the average
weight of the brain of Anglo-American soldiers exceeds the average
weight of European brains as deduced from Wagner’s tables; by from 19
to 14 grms. (·67 to ·49 oz.), or from 1·33 to ·99 per cent. But the
American anatomist did not take into consideration the difference in
stature, which he nevertheless notices. Now, from his calculations,
it appears that American soldiers have, in this respect, the
advantage over French and English soldiers to an extent of 3 per
cent. The increase is, therefore, only apparent, and, indeed, rather
points to a relative diminution.
2. Under similar circumstances in other respects, the female brain
weighs a little less than the male. M. Broca has shown that this
is the case at all periods of life. This difference appears to
me, however, to arise almost exclusively from that of the stature
of the body. Upon taking the woman as the term of comparison, and
representing her height and the weight of her brain by 100, we find
109·43 and 109·34 as the result for the man. The latter relation is
that given by Parchappe. M. Broca found 109·63; thus the relative
heights are intermediary.
3. The maximum average of the European is observed between the
thirtieth and fortieth years. It is then 1262 grms. (44·48 oz.)
in the female, and 1410·36 grms. (49·74 oz.) in the male, or, in
percentages, 100 and 111·7. The average for the entire period of
maturity, between 30 and 50, is 1405·88 grms. (49·59 oz.) in the
male, and 1261·5 grms. (44·5 oz.) in the female.
4. Beyond this maximum the weight of the brain appears to decrease
continually, and in a more or less constant manner. Such, at least,
is the result arising from calculations bearing upon decennial
intervals, which show a constantly decreasing average in the male, as
well as in the female. There is probably some relation between this
diminution and that of the horizontal circumference of the cranium
and the development of the frontal sinuses, observed long ago by
Camper.
5. In the European White, a brain, to be capable of performing its
functions, must weigh at least 975 grms. (34·39 oz.) in the female,
and 1133 grms. (39·96 oz.) in the male. These figures are the result
of the discussion upon Wagner’s table; they are, however, too high,
to judge from some of Hunt’s calculations. In the Bosjesman and
Australian, and probably in many other races, the weight of the brain
may descend as low as 907 grms. (31·99 oz.), without the intellectual
faculties being destroyed.
Let us add that this organ may, moreover, fall much below this weight
without causing cessation of life, or even the absolute disappearance
of the intelligence, as in some microcephali. The smallest brains
which have ever been weighed are those of Teite, quoted by Wagner,
300 grms. (10·58 oz.), and that of the woman who formed the subject
of a memoir by Gore, 283·75 grms. (10 oz.). These brains are
appreciably inferior in weight to those of the gorilla and orang.
6. In the European White, the maximum weight of a healthy brain
perhaps reaches 2231 grms. (78·69 oz.) (_Cromwell_), or even 2238
grms. (78·94 oz.) (_Byron_). But there is not the certainty we
should wish for about these figures. The weight of Cuvier’s brain
is, however, attested by the post-mortem examination conducted by
Professor Bérard; it is 1829·96 grms. (68·43 oz.). Mr. Sandford Hunt
quotes another at 1842 grms. (65·32 oz.). We may regard these figures
as indicating the superior limit which can be attained by the brain
in the White race without the general health appearing to be affected.
The figures obtained by Mr. Hunt from the calculations given by
several authors for 278 brains of European Whites agree sufficiently
well with the above. The average of the former is 1403 grms. (49·55
oz.). The maximum is that quoted above, 1842 grms. (64·97 oz.); the
minimum falls to 963 grms. (33·97 oz.), which is very remarkable from
its lightness, being below that which, in Wagner’s table, seems to
involve idiotcy. The results obtained by Mr. Hunt upon his Black and
White fellow-countrymen, present, as regards comparison, a special
interest. The brains of twenty-four American White soldiers gave an
average weight of 1424 grms. (43·2 oz.) in round numbers. The maximum
was 1814 grms. (63·98 oz.); the minimum 1247 grms. (43·98 oz.). The
brains of 141 Negroes gave an average of 1331 grms. (46·98 oz.),
which is greater than the results of investigations made in Europe.
The maximum was 1507 grms. (53·15 oz.); the minimum 1013 grms. (35·73
oz.).
The observations of Mr. Hunt upon 240 crosses between the White and
the Negro lead to interesting conclusions The following is the result:
grms. oz.
In crosses having ¾ white blood, the average weight
of the brain is 1390 49·03
” ” ½ ” ” 1334 47·05
” ” ¼ ” ” 1319 46·52
” ” ⅛ ” ” 1308 46·13
” ” 1/16 ” ” 1280 44·79
We see that the weight of the brain diminishes proportionately with
the white blood. But it is especially curious to observe, that in
crosses still possessing a tolerably strong proportion of superior
blood, the weight falls below that of pure Negroes. The average was
taken from twenty-two individuals, and the difference, 86 grms. (3·03
oz.), is too great not to be taken into serious consideration. We
should say that this is a phenomenon identical with that presented by
colouring. Certain crosses, in whom the black blood predominates, are
of a darker hue than the original Negro race.
To exhaust the little that we know of exotic races, I need only to
add that in a Hottentot examined by Wyman the brain weighed 1417
grms. (49·96 oz.). This weight, which is greater than that of the
average of Europeans, affords one more proof of that intercrossing to
which I have so often called attention, and which has, in this case,
perhaps a deeper meaning than elsewhere.
Since the publication of Gratiolet’s admirable work _Sur les plis
cérébraux de l’homme et des primates_, the study of _cerebral
convolutions_ has assumed considerable importance in anthropology,
although it has been somewhat exaggerated. The investigations
of MM. Dareste and Baillarger show that the development of
these convolutions depends to a great extent upon that of the
encephalon itself, and the influence exercised by stature at once
explains certain facts which had formerly been the cause of some
embarrassment. Under conditions similar in other respects, the brain
of _small races_ would be less convoluted than that of _large races_.
But, apart from this influence, it appears as a well established
fact, that in savage races the number and complication of the
cerebral convolutions are less than in intelligent and civilized
races. Intellectual culture would seem then to exercise an entirely
special action upon the cortical layers, and to favour their
development.
The known extremes at the present day of the character in question
are offered by the Hottentot Venus and Cuvier. The brain of the
former is the simplest that has ever been observed in an intelligent
person. It recalls that of an idiot. The brain of Cuvier, which
unfortunately has neither been modelled nor drawn, was, as we are
told by the eminent anatomists who saw it, distinguished by the
extraordinary complication of the convolutions and the depth of the
sulci. Moreover, each convolution was, as it were, doubled by a kind
of rounded ridge. In spite of these exceptional cases, no one would
surely dream of placing the great naturalist in any other _species_
than that to which his contemporaries belong. Neither can we consider
the simplification of the brain of the Hottentot Venus as a specific
character.
When comparative observations have sufficiently multiplied, we shall
doubtless find more or less striking characters in the relative
proportions of certain regions of the brain. For example, if Dr.
Nott’s observation be correct, the _cerebellum_ in the Red-Skin
extends beyond the cerebrum, while the latter, it is well known,
extends beyond the cerebellum in the White and Negro. The same organ
is longer in the Negro and broader in the White.
Naturalists, travellers, and anatomists announced long ago that
the brain of the Negro is distinguished from that of the White by
its blackish colour. An experiment performed at Paris under the
superintendence of M. Rayer, upon which I have already made some
passing remarks, confirms the general fact. I have already observed
how M. Gubler, by whom it was prepared, wished to discover if there
were no mean terms. He examined the colouring of brains obtained from
individuals, all belonging to the White race, but whose complexions
were differently coloured, and proved that the internal colouring was
in direct relation with the external. In fair individuals with blue
eyes and a pink and white skin, the pigment seemed to be entirely
wanting. In individuals with a brown skin, black hair, and a very
dark iris, “not only the brain enveloped by its membranes assumes a
deeper shade, but a layer of black matter, in every way comparable
to that of the Negro, covers the protuberance, the pineal gland, and
some other points of the nervous centres.”
Thus, internally, as well as externally, the colouring of tissues
presents that graduated series to which I have so often called
attention. This removes, therefore, the absolute nature which had
been attributed to a peculiarity which had so often been insisted
upon as separating the Negro from the White, to the extent of making
him a distinct species.
VIII. _Vascular and respiratory systems._ Considered as a whole, the
vascular system of the Black and that of the White present facts
somewhat similar to those which we have observed in the nervous
system. According to Pruner Bey, the venous system predominates
visibly over the arterial in the Black; and here, again, the
admirable preparations of Jacquard are a material proof of the
correctness of the observations of the savant I have just quoted.
This predominance seems to extend to the right cavities of the heart.
The lungs are less developed in the Negro than in the White. M.
Pruner Bey has observed cases in which they seem to be pressed
upwards by the abdominal viscera. The characters peculiar to the
blood of the Negro, which were noticed in a preceding chapter,
will, perhaps, at some future time, be connected with this group of
anatomical conditions.
We have already seen that the cutaneous glandular system is more
developed in the Negro than in the White. The investigations of
M. Pruner Bey demonstrate that the same fact reappears throughout
the whole length of the intestinal canal, the surface of which is
everywhere marked by the prominence of secreting organs, especially
in the stomach and colon. The large glands which are connected with
the alimentary canal are also remarkably developed, particularly the
liver. The case is also the same with the supra-renal capsules. All
these organs are in a constant state of venous hyperemia. Finally,
these intestinal mucous membranes are very thick, and present the
appearance of adipose tissue. Facts of a similar nature will perhaps
be observed in the greater number of intertropical races. We already
know that in the Javanese the liver is as fully developed as in the
Negro.
CHAPTER XXXI.
PHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERS.
I. The special history of human races presents a considerable number
of interesting physiological facts which are sufficiently different
and well marked, to serve as _distinctive characters_. We find in
the tropics peoples remarkably abstemious, and living entirely upon
vegetables, without their organism being injuriously affected; in
the polar regions there are others who eat fat in quantities which
would be rejected by our digestive organs; there are also some slight
variations between the respiration, circulation, animal temperature,
secretions, etc. of the White man and the Negro; the muscular energy
and the manner in which it is employed, sometimes vary considerably
in different races; general sensibility, and consequently aptitude
for feeling pain, are very unequally developed. The same surgical
operation will not cause as much pain to a Chinese as to a European.
But the greater number of these traits arise from peculiarities
which do not belong to general considerations. Many are the _result
of anterior facts_, and are connected with conditions of life,
habit, etc., sometimes even with beliefs and institutions. Even if
we confined ourselves to a mere sketch, we should have to enter
into details incompatible with the plan of this book, if we wished
to discuss all these questions. I shall, therefore, here confine
myself to pointing out some general phenomena to justify the above
statements.
II. I will, in the first place, say a few words upon certain facts
and ideas which have often been the occasion of animated discussion.
I mean the degree of relation admissible between the development of
the intelligence and that of the brain. This question may seem at
first sight to belong almost entirely to the study of the individual.
But, from the manner in which it has been applied to the appreciation
of the intellectual power of races, it has acquired a real interest
in general anthropology.
On no occasion, perhaps, has this question been treated more
thoroughly and by more competent judges than by the Paris
Anthropological Society in the great discussion of 1861. Many
speakers took part in it, but the two principal champions of the
rival doctrines were Gratiolet on the one hand, and M. Broca upon the
other. Some of their statements, if taken literally, would lead us
to imagine that an impassable gulf lay between them. If, however, we
read them again, after the excitement of the moment has passed away,
we find, from the summaries which they themselves have drawn up, that
such is by no means the case, and that, far from their being divided
in principle, it would not be difficult to effect an understanding
between them.
Gratiolet considers “that power which lies in the brain, and which
can only be estimated by its manifestations,” far more important than
weight or form. But he is far from absolutely refusing to recognise
the influence of cerebral development; he allows that below a certain
limit the human brain no longer performs its functions in a normal
manner. This limit he places at 900 grms. (31·74 oz.) in the female.
M. Broca raises the number to 907 grms. (31·99 oz.), and adds that,
in the male, the limit is 1049 grms. (37 oz.). He attributes great
importance to the volume of the brain, estimated either directly, by
weight, or by the capacity of the cranium. But on several occasions
he protests most strongly against the intention which might be
imputed to him, of wishing to establish an absolute relation between
the development of the intelligence and the volume or weight of the
brain. “No well-instructed man,” he says, “would ever think of
estimating the intelligence by measuring the encephalon.”
The two following tables, borrowed from M. Broca, will suffice to
show the truth of these words:
AVERAGE WEIGHT OF THE BRAIN IN MAN.
grms. oz.
From 1 to 10 years 985·15 (34·75).
From 11 to 20 years 1465·27 (51·68).
From 21 to 30 years 1341·53 (47·67).
From 31 to 40 years 1410·36 (49·74).
From 41 to 50 years 1391·41 (49·07).
From 51 to 60 years 1341·19 (47·30).
From 61 and upwards 1326·21 (46·77).
WEIGHT OF THE BRAIN IN SOME EMINENT MEN.
NAME. AGE. PROFESSION. WEIGHT OF BRAIN.
grms. oz.
1. Cuvier 63 years naturalist 1829·96 (64·54).
2. Byron 36 years poet 1807·00 (63·73).
27. Lejeune·Dirichlet 64 years mathematician 1520·00 (53·61).
34. Fuchs 52 years pathologist 1499·00 (52·87).
43. Gauss 78 years mathematician 1492·00 (52·62).
52. Dupuytren 58 years surgeon 1436·00 (50·65).
92. Hermann 51 years philologist 1358·00 (47·90).
158. Haussmann 77 years mineralogist 1226·00 (43·24).
The numbers placed before the name of each person indicate the
position held by the latter in the list of 347 cases of healthy
brains taken by M. Broca from the general table of Wagner. We find
that the celebrated mineralogist Haussmann stands almost half-way
down the list, and that he is separated from his eminent colleagues
by a considerable number of unknown examples. Again, we observe that
the weight of his brain is 100 grms. (3·5 oz.) below the average
weight of men of his age. On the other hand, in all the other cases
the weight of the brain was above the average.
The exception presented by Haussmann, the manner in which all these
eminent men are scattered among their ordinary brethren, should
be sufficient to make us reject all exaggerated connection of the
magnitude of the intelligence and that of the brain. This result
is still more striking if we group these same numbers as Gratiolet
has done, calculating the mean of the contiguous weights. We thus
obtain for the first group (Cuvier, Byron) an average weight of
1818·48 grms. (64·14 oz.); for the second (Dirichlet, Fuchs, Gauss,
Dupuytren) 1487 grms. (52·44 oz.); for the third (Hermann, Haussmann)
1292 grms. (45·57 oz.). The latter is below the average weight of
German brains, that is to say, of the fellow-countrymen of the two
eminent men in question.
This remark is important. In the question under discussion it will
not do to compare separately the celebrities who figure in Wagner’s
table; we must connect them with the rest of mankind, with diseased,
as well as with other brains. To act otherwise would be to give rise
to the idea that we had wished to evade a difficulty by neglecting to
turn the attention to the fact that, immediately after the brain of
Byron, and long before that of Gauss, stands the brain of a madman.
Are, then, genius and madness in such close relationship? Are the
volume, the weight, and the peculiar characters of Cuvier’s brain
indeed due to a hypertrophy which came to a standstill just at the
right moment, as Gratiolet thought?
III. However abridged and curtailed this statement of facts may
be, it seems to me sufficient to justify us in drawing conclusions
equally applicable to individuals and to races.
We shall certainly not be accused of an exaggerated immaterialism
if we estimate the action of the brain as we estimate the action of
a muscle. Now experience and observation daily testify that in the
latter volume and form are not everything. Functional energy often
more than compensates for what is wanting with respect to mass.
Many other organic systems would furnish similar facts, well-known
to all doctors and all physiologists. To assert that the case is
different with the brain would be, even in the absence of all direct
observation, a purely gratuitous hypothesis, and, in the presence of
Wagner’s tables, a contradiction of evidence. With his small brain,
Haussmann, the correspondent of the French Institute, has evidently
surpassed, in the matter of intelligence, almost all his large-headed
contemporaries.
But, on the other hand, beyond a certain stage of decrease, the
muscular apparatus becomes incapable of effort. We can readily
understand that it should be so with the brain also. It is,
therefore, most natural to find that, when it has fallen below a
certain volume and weight, it gradually passes from weakness to
impotence. Even M. de Bonald could not consider it strange, that an
_intelligence_ when provided only with _imperfect or almost useless
organs,_ should only manifest itself in an incomplete manner.
Thus, irrespective of all dogmatic or philosophic ideas, we are
led to the conclusion that there is a certain relation between
the development of the intelligence and the volume and weight of
the brain. But, at the same time, we must allow that the material
element, that which is appreciable to our senses, is not the only
one which we must take into account, for behind it lies hidden
_an unknown quantity_, _an x_, at present undetermined and only
recognised by its effects.
IV. Thus from this fact alone it follows that we cannot act with too
much caution in forming an estimate of a race from the dimensions of
its cranium, and the relative development of the bones of which it is
composed. Gratiolet proposed to distinguish _frontal_, _parietal_,
and _occipital races_, characterised by the predominance of the
anterior, medial and posterior regions of the cranium and the brain.
If we accept the word character as it is understood by naturalists,
we shall have no objection to make to these denominations. But to go
beyond that, to attribute to one or other of these races any kind
of superiority by virtue of any one or other of these characters,
would be mere hypothesis. In fact, the Basques, with their occipital
dolichocephaly, are in no way inferior to the frontal dolichocephali
of Paris.
V. In those phenomena, amongst which, _à priori_, we should be
tempted to look for ethnological characters, we must give the first
place to _organic evolution_ at different periods of life. Now,
the examination of facts establishes the important fact, that, in
this respect, all human races present a remarkable uniformity. When
some slight differences are manifested, they show such coincidence
with the action of the conditions of life, that it is impossible
not to recognise the relation of cause and effect, and this fact
alone produced a most significant intercrossing between peoples
evidently identical in origin. Thus, the whole mass of physiological
phenomena, considered as characters, add one more proof in favour of
the monogenistic theory. A few examples will suffice to justify these
statements.
VI. Let us first prove that the duration of gestation is the same
in all human races. The importance of this fact will be readily
understood.
It is generally known that the intra-uterine life presents a notable
disparity in the same zoological group, and sometimes in nearly
related species. If men constituted _a genus_, it would be very
strange if they were exempt from this law, and that no differences
should have been observed, as they certainly would have been, between
groups. These differences may indeed exist to a certain extent
without rising to a specific character, for they are observed in our
races of domestic animals, where they appear to bear some relation
to stature. Gestation lasts sixty-three days in large races of dogs;
from fifty-nine to sixty-three in the small. This is the period
observed in menageries for the gestation of the jackal, the wild
stock of the dog. But it rises to something over a hundred days for
the wolf, however nearly related it may morphologically be to some
canine races.
The period of lactation is very variable as to duration in different
human peoples. Without even going beyond France, we should have no
difficulty in giving examples of such differences, in which the
maximum would almost double the minimum. It is evident that in this
case manners, customs, etc., play the most important part, and that
the question of races scarcely enters at all. With the Negroes,
lactation lasts, as a general rule, for two years, and the period
is quite as long in all oriental populations. It lasts for five
years in China. But as M. Morache tells us, the Chinese mother only
prolongs it in order to retard the recommencement of the monthly
courses, which, in this fertile race, is rapidly followed by a fresh
pregnancy. There is nothing surprising in the possibility of such
prolonged lactation. It is generally known that the secretion of the
milk is supported by its use. Amongst ourselves, according to the
evidence of Desormeaux, one nurse will sometimes suckle three or four
infants in succession.
VII. The period of suckling is followed by that of childhood, a
condition very distinct from those by which it will in turn be
followed. The human being is as yet neither male nor female. The
first manifestation of sex is one of the most important epochs of
life, and it is interesting to observe that the arrival of this epoch
varies within very wide limits.
The female, on account of the phenomena to which she is then subject,
and which admit the possibility of direct observation, is, in this
case, specially adapted for the researches of the anthropologist.
Now, taking extreme numbers, obtained by different observers upon
several peoples of the globe, we find that the minimum age at which
the female becomes pubescent is that of eight to nine years, as
observed by Oldfield in the Eboes, and the maximum age, that of
eighteen to twenty years, noticed by Rush, among some tribes of North
America. Setting aside these exceptional numbers, we find as general
extremes, ten to eleven years on the one hand, and fifteen to sixteen
on the other.
The variation we see is great, and we are naturally led to ask if it
is at all constant in human groups. The numerous statistics which
have been collected upon this subject, seem to justify us in giving
an absolutely negative reply to the question.
And, in the first place, there is no doubt that here _conditions of
life_ play an important part. From the researches of M. Brierre de
Boismont, it appears that, in the same locality, the higher or lower
social position, and the consequent difference in mode of living,
produces an average variation of fourteen months. In Paris, the women
of the lower classes are pubescent at fourteen years and ten months,
those of the middle class at fourteen years and five months; those of
the upper class at thirteen years and eight months.
The mode of life is sufficient to produce differences of a very
marked character in the age at which the female becomes capable of
conception. At Strasbourg, as at Paris, the young country girl is
behind those of the town. The difference is about 8½ months for
Strasbourg and 4½ for Paris. In Alsace, as upon the banks of the
Seine, the hardships of field labour render the functions of the
individual life more active at the expense of those connected with
the sexual.
Again, we cannot doubt the influence which is certainly exercised by
temperature. M. Raciborski, adding to his own investigations those
of a large number of other medical men, has even thought himself
justified in drawing the conclusion that the age of puberty is
advanced or retarded by a little more than a month for each degree
of latitude, according as we calculate from the equator or the pole,
with the condition only that the temperature increases or decreases
with the latitude.
The action of the three causes I have just mentioned are most
evident. But, as we have already remarked, food, temperature, and
even mode of life do not alone form _conditions of life_. Many other
influences besides these act upon the organism. The greater or less
amount of light, and of actinic rays, cannot be without effect.
All these influences explain how it is that the age of puberty varies
with the habits in the same race; how women, belonging to the same
branch of the white aryan race, may present the extremes which I have
alluded to above. From among the latter the Swedes and Norwegians are
pubescent at from 15 to 16 years; the English at from 13 to 14; but
the English Creoles of Jamaica at from 10 to 11 years. At Antigoa,
Negro and White women, transported into the same common conditions
of life, no longer present any difference in this respect. We see
also how it is that women belonging to the most different populations
and races, Swedes, Dacotas, Corfiotas, Potowatomies, English, and
Chinese, become pubescent at the same age.
Does then race stand for absolutely nothing in the physiological
phenomena under consideration?
Some facts seem to authorize us in holding a contrary opinion. The
Esquimaux women of Labrador are as forward in this respect as the
Negresses of our colonies. In the Potowatomies (Algonquins) and
the Dacotas (Sioux) there seems to be an average difference of a
year in the appearance of the first phenomena of puberty. Several
other observations of the same nature might be quoted from various
travellers. There is, however, nothing to astonish us in these facts.
They are only the reproduction in the human species, of what we
observe every day in our domestic animals and cultivated plants, all
of which have forward and backward races.
M. Lagneau studied this question with particular reference to
France. He came to the conclusion that the conditions of life are
not sufficient to explain the differences which were proved by his
investigations, and that the age of puberty, depending upon the
rapidity of the development of the organism, varies slightly with
the race. This opinion, which it seems as if we might accept within
the limits he himself has prescribed, M. Lagneau states with great
reserve.
These limits are very narrow. They vary from fourteen years and five
days to sixteen years, one month and twenty-four days. The minimum
age is presented by the female population of Toulon: the maximum,
by that of Strasbourg. But between these two localities there is a
difference of about three degrees of latitude and five degrees in the
mean temperature. Toulon enjoys a very equable climate; the climate
of Strasbourg is, on the contrary, _excessive_; at Toulon the climate
is sunny, while at Strasbourg there is much cloud; the _Toulonaise_
lives in the open air, and breathes the stimulating air of the
sea, the _Strasbourgeoise_ lives in the house and breathes an air
which is generally damp; the former drinks wine, the latter beer.
All these conditions, stimulating on the one hand, and debilitating
on the other, must exercise some influence. After taking all these
circumstances into consideration, we see that, in France at least,
the influence of race scarcely exceeds that exercised by difference
in social position upon the population of the same town.
The researches of M. Lagneau also have reference to the time when,
both in the male and in the female, the reproductive faculties become
extinct. The evidences are here neither so numerous nor so definite.
Nevertheless, from the little that we know on this point, the result
would seem to point to conclusions similar to those which we have
mentioned above.
VIII. We might easily be led to think that forwardness or
backwardness in organic development, defined by the age at which
puberty appears, should involve a proportionately longer or shorter
duration of human life. Precise observations are far from being
so numerous and complete as to solve this important problem with
any degree of certainty. The greater number of facts with which we
are acquainted, scarcely seem, however, to support the theoretical
conclusions admitted by some anthropologists, by Virey among others.
Everything seems to indicate, on the contrary, that the limits of
life are almost the same for all human races, _provided that_ they
are placed in conditions of existence, which are _relatively_ equally
favourable. It is, in fact, evident that these conditions exercise a
most marked influence upon the duration of organisms. When life is in
question we do not deny the _action of the conditions of life_.
Here, again, appears the multiple nature of these conditions. We find
from the statistical researches of Boudin that in sixty-seven years,
from 1776 to 1843, the average life of man in France was increased
by eleven years. It has, therefore, gained sixty days a year; it has
attained almost the highest limit gained in this respect by European
peoples (34·45 years). The temperature has not changed, nor has there
been any amelioration in the climate. But the general conditions
of existence are modified and the result appears in these very
significant figures.
The average life of European Whites, the only peoples concerning whom
we possess sufficiently exact data, oscillates between 28·18 years
(_Prussia_) and 39·8 years (_Schleswig-Holstein, Lauenbourg_); a
difference of more than eleven years.
The tables of average duration of life, collected by Boudin and
borrowed from Hain and Bernouilli, prove beyond a doubt that, amongst
our European peoples at least, mean duration of life depends to a
very slight extent, if at all, upon the race. The German states
present an average of from 28·18 years (_Prussia_) to 36·8 years
(_Hanover_).
Temperature, at least when considered alone, seems to exercise hardly
any notable influence, Naples standing almost midway between the
preceding numbers (31·65 years).
These facts, obtained from among the best known peoples, justify
us in thinking that, _other things being equal_, the duration of
life must be almost universally the same. It will be understood
that all strict comparison is here out of the question, for want of
statistical documents, properly so called. Still, a number of facts
obtained by various travellers amongst peoples of very different
races, and, in some cases, placed under opposite conditions of
existence, seem to justify this conclusion.
All travellers, who have been in a position to judge for themselves,
have spoken of the Lapps as generally living to a great age; men of
from seventy to ninety years are not rare amongst them.
Upon the evidence of travellers of the highest reputation, it seems
that the greater number of American peoples also reach an advanced
age, and often without bearing any external traces of decrepitude.
However rude and often precarious their mode of life may be, the
representatives of these races are in no way inferior to Europeans,
as regards duration of life.
Is it different in the case of the Negro, as Virey has thought?
Everything seems to prove the contrary. Even when removed from his
native land, and placed under conditions which we have seen to be
very unfavourable to him, the Negro lives as long as the European.
This result is obtained from the register of slaves consulted by
Prichard in the West Indies. This anthropologist has shown, by
examples drawn from different sources, that centenarians were far
from rare among the individuals of this race scattered through
different parts of America. From the documents which he quotes, it
even appears that in the States of New Jersey, an official census
gave a little more than one Negro centenarian in the thousand, but
only one White centenarian in one hundred and fifty thousand.
Nevertheless Adanson, Winterbottom, and others, state that the Negro
of the Senegal and Guinea age early in life, and the latter adds that
individuals of this race rarely reach an advanced age. Dr. Oldfield,
in the great English Expedition up the Niger, makes the same remark
with reference to the part of the country which skirts the river
Nunn, a marshy region, covered with a luxuriant vegetation supported
by inundations. But higher up the river, in the country discovered by
Nyffé, he met, on the contrary, with a large number of old men who
must have been upwards of eighty, and visited an old chief, who, he
says, was 115 years old.
There is nothing contradictory in these facts. They merely show us
that the Negro is subject to the law common to all other men. It is
in vain that he has conformed to conditions of existence, which the
White has so much difficulty in living under; when these conditions
are aggravated and exceed a certain limit, he suffers, and his life
is shortened. The native of the banks of the Nunn is placed, _as a
Negro_, under conditions of existence similar to those to which, in
former times, the _Whites_ of the Dombe in France were subject, and
in both cases the result was the same.
But beyond these exceptional localities, when the conditions are
equally favourable, the duration of life seems to be the same in the
two typical races which are the most widely separated of all in the
human species. In any case the same extreme limits have been proved
for the Negro and the White.
CHAPTER XXXII.
PATHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS.
I. The pathological, as well as the physiological, condition in the
various human groups presents peculiarities which may be considered
as _characters_. These characters are sometimes even more clearly
defined, because morbid phenomena are often very strongly marked.
This question is one of great interest; but to treat it in the detail
which it deserves, would require a greater amount of both time and
space than can be given it here. I shall, therefore, confine myself
to recalling a few general facts already known, and to quoting a
few examples which will serve to fix the nature and meaning of
pathological facts regarded from an anthropological point of view.
II. We have, as yet, in treating of the conditions of life,
scarcely considered more than their _modifying action_, while it is
universally known that they also exert a _disturbing_ action. Actions
of this kind are in most cases the fundamental cause of disease.
We are here, therefore, again led to considerations similar to
those with which we have so often been brought in contact. We will
therefore recall in a few words the general results of the preceding
investigations.
1. The _fundamental nature_ of all men is the same.
2. The formation of distinct races has been the sole cause of
modifications in this fundamental nature of all human groups.
3. The several characters and special aptitudes which constitute
a kind of _acquired nature_, have, in each of the groups, been
developed under the influence of the conditions of life.
It is clear that when the disturbing action, the cause of disease,
works upon the _fundamental_ element, the same causes will produce
_fundamentally similar effects;_ when, on the contrary, this action
is exercised upon the _acquired and special_ element of each race,
the same causes will produce _different effects_. In other words,
_unity of species_ and _multiplicity of races_ involve the liability
of all men to common diseases, which will, at most, vary as to
accessory phenomena; but also allow the existence of diseases more or
less peculiar to certain human groups.
Nevertheless, the great majority of diseases will be common to all
men, and merely present modifications in the different groups. For
example, one race may be either more liable to or more unsusceptible
to certain affections than another.
Let me observe in passing, and without insisting upon facts known to
all agriculturists and to all breeders, that similar phenomena are
presented by the _races_ of vegetable _species_ which have long been
under cultivation, and of animal _species_ for centuries subject to
domestication.
The propositions which I have just brought forward are the natural
result of the facts to which I have already drawn attention, and of
the principles admitted at the commencement of this book. They are in
remarkable accordance with the results of experiment and observation.
III. It becomes more and more evident, from investigations which
are daily increasing in number, that all human races are subject to
almost every disease.
The Negro and the White have often been contrasted from a
pathological point of view, and it has been stated that localities
in which the latter succumb, are not unhealthy to the former. It is
said that marsh fevers, dysentery, and abscess upon the liver, so
feared by Europeans, do not attack the inhabitants of the coasts
of Guinea, and the banks of the Senegal and the Gaboon. These are
exaggerated statements which were reduced to their true value by the
observations of Winterbottom, Oldfield, and others. More recent
works confirm these earlier observations in every respect: “The
Negro race,” says M. Berchon, “suffers from dysentery and abscess
on the liver like the white race.... The deadly fevers, which, with
the two diseases just mentioned, form the pathognomonical trilogy of
Senegalese pathology, will first attack Europeans; but the Blacks are
by no means exempt from them.”
The last remark is confirmed in a very remarkable manner by the
numbers given in the accompanying table, which I borrow from M.
Boudin. He gives a summary of the English official documents upon the
annual mortality in the thousand at Sierra Leone from 1829 to 1836.
DISEASES. WHITES. NEGROES.
Marsh fevers 410·2 2·4
Eruptive fevers 0·0 6·9
Diseases of the lungs 4·9 6·3
Diseases of the liver 6·0 1·1
Gastro-intestinal diseases 41·3 5·3
Diseases of the nervous system 4·3 1·6
Dropsy 4·3 0·3
Other diseases 12·0 6·2
Sierra Leone is one of the most unhealthy stations for the White
race, while for the Negro it is, on the contrary, one of the places
where the rate of mortality is lowest. The relation which shows
this difference is indeed most alarming (483·0 to 30·1). Yet the
nosological table is the same for the two races, for although in
this statement there are no eruptive fevers given for the English
soldiers, we know very well that the White races are by no means
exempt from them.
Other tables drawn up by M. Boudin, with the assistance of the same
documents, bring into still stronger relief the fundamental fact
now under consideration. In one of them we learn the comparative
mortality of the Negro and the Black from marsh fevers in seventeen
localities, taken from nearly all parts of the globe, from Gibraltar
to Guiana, and from Jamaica to Ceylon. The number of deaths is always
considerably greater for the Europeans, but they almost always rise
or fall simultaneously, and in the same place, for the two races,
when both are immigrants.
It is almost unnecessary to repeat the remark that all the great
epidemics are common to all races, and that the yellow fever attacks
indifferently the White, Yellow, or the Black race. The yellow fever
is so far from being special in character, and is so subordinate
to the action of the conditions of life, that Mexicans from colder
regions are as liable to it as even Europeans; and in the islands
of the Gulf of Mexico the creole Whites easily withstand those
influences which are so fatal to immigrants.
IV. Eruptive maladies, and particularly small-pox, seem to have
been unknown in America till they were brought by Europeans to that
continent. On the other hand, the latter gave them some of the most
serious forms of syphilis, which characterised the terrible epidemic
of the fifteenth century. In this fatal exchange, the character of
the two diseases was remarkably aggravated in passing from one race
to the other, so that populations attacked by them for the first
time would suffer much more than those who had communicated the
disease. In America, whole populations have disappeared from eruptive
fevers, sometimes with terrible rapidity. The celebrated tribe of
the Mandans, when blockaded by the Sioux, and unable to escape this
scourge, was entirely annihilated in a few days, with the exception
of a few absent individuals. Catlin, to whom we are indebted
for these details, and who obtained them from Whites protected
by vaccination, adds that those who were attacked by small-pox,
succumbed in two or three hours. On the other hand, we know what were
the consequences in Europe of that infection, which, even at the
present day, too often poisons the very sources of life.
Thus, a human race may be unacquainted with one, or several diseases,
or with certain morbid forms, though at the same time but too apt to
contract them. Once attacked, it may even develop this disease, which
is new to it, in a more violent form than any hitherto known.
V. There are diseases which, though common to all human races, attack
some in preference to others. The latter then enjoy, compared with
the former, a _relative immunity_. This would necessarily result
from what we have already seen. Let us add that these differences
in the action of the same pathogenistic cause, are evident in cases
of epidemics. When Guadaloupe was attacked by cholera in 1865 and
1866, the rate of mortality was 2·70 per cent for Chinese, 3·86 for
Hindoos, 4·31 for Whites, 6·32 for Mulattoes, and 9·44 for Negroes.
These figures are the more interesting from the fact that all these
races were immigrants.
It seems sometimes, as if two causes of death maintained a kind
of equilibrium and reciprocity between two races. I have already,
when speaking of acclimatisation, pointed out the contrast which is
presented by the Negro and the White from this point of view. Of all
human races the White is most sensitive to marsh fevers, and the
Black least so. On the other hand, the Negro race suffers more than
any other from phthisis, while the White race may, in this respect,
be almost classed with other groups, with the Malays for example.
But, again, there are immunities more complete than that of the
Negro, from marsh affections; and, further, these immunities may be
lost, either in the case of an entire group of population, or in that
of isolated individuals. I will here borrow two striking examples
from M. Boudin’s work.
Elephantiasis, that affection by which certain parts of the body are
sometimes deformed in so strange a manner, is found in the Indies
and at Barbadoes. In the latter island, Negroes alone were attacked
by this hideous disease till the year 1704. _One White_ was, in that
year, affected by it for the first time. But the disease made way,
and in 1760 it had extended to the _creole_ population. Whites _of
European origin_ have, as yet, escaped.
The elephantiasis of India is found in Ceylon. There, again, it only
attacks natives, creoles and individuals of mixed blood. Hindoos and
Europeans, strangers in the island, are exempt from it. Scott, quoted
by M. Boudin, states that _only one case_ of this disease had been
observed in a European White. But this individual had inhabited the
island for thirty years; acclimatisation had been earned so far in
his case as to cause him to lose his _ethnological immunity_.
On the other hand, we have seen, in speaking of acclimatisation, that
creoles easily live and prosper in certain localities which are most
dangerous to immigrants. They have, therefore, acquired, at the price
of sacrifices made by preceding generations, a relative immunity
which is not enjoyed by the majority of Europeans.
In the acquisition of one of these immunities, a race may lose
another. In connection with the cholera which I have just mentioned,
creole Whites and Negroes were attacked to an appreciably greater
extent than Whites and Negroes who had recently immigrated, and were
consequently not yet acclimatised. Thus, the conditions of life in
Guadaloupe, and those of other Mexican islands, seem to exercise
a double action. On the one hand, it diminishes in a considerable
degree the aptitude to contract yellow fever; on the other, it
renders the human organism appreciably more accessible to the
influence of cholera.
VI. Such significant facts as these require no comment. It is
clear that we have here those _relative immunities_ which several
polygenists wished to consider as _specific characters_. Without
possessing anything approaching the importance which, from this
point of view, is possessed by physiological phenomena, they equally
render evident the fundamentally identical nature of all human
groups. Owing their special element essentially to _acquired nature_,
they demonstrate the difference of races rather more clearly than
physiological phenomena. Both, however, are equally _functional_;
and the functions acting necessarily under the immediate influence
of the conditions of life, demonstrate almost in the same degree the
preponderating influence of the latter.
VII. We cannot touch upon questions of ethnological pathology without
saying a few words upon the strange and fatal influence which the
White race seems to exercise upon certain inferior races whose
territories it has invaded.
Nowhere is this melancholy phenomena more striking than in Polynesia.
Figures here speak with touching eloquence.
In the Sandwich Islands Cook calculated the population at 300,000.
In 1861 there were but 67,084, about 22 per cent. of the original
population.
In New Zealand Cook found 400,000 Maories. In 1858 there were only
56,049 remaining, 14 per cent. of the former population. Depopulation
has continued from that time. From 1855 to 1864 the loss was 22 per
cent. for the province of Rotorua, the Lakes and Maketou; it was 19
per cent. _in two years_, from 1859 to 1861, in the Chatham Islands.
In the Marquesas Islands, in 1813, Porter calculated there were
19,000 warriors, giving a population of from 70,000 to 80,000.
In 1858 M. Jouan found 2,500 or 3,000 warriors and about 11,000
inhabitants, a decrease of 86 per cent.
From a comparison of the estimates of Cook and Forster, it appears
that the population of Tahiti must have been at least 240,000. In
1857 the official census only gave 7,212, that is to say, a little
more than 3 per cent. of the original population.
These facts would be equally strange, were they purely local. But
they are universal, appearing even in the most isolated islands, in
the Bass islands, which form the extreme limit of Polynesia on the
south-east. At the beginning of the century Davies counted 2,000
inhabitants; in 1874, Moerenhout only found 300, 15 per cent. of the
former population.
The preceding calculations have all been taken from eastern
Polynesia, which, as we know, was the first to attract Europeans. A
few years ago, however, the western archipelagoes were in their turn
invaded, and the population is already sensibly decreasing in the
islands of Tonga, Vavau, Tongatabou, etc. The case seems to be the
same in the Fijis.
Not only does the rate of mortality increase in this unfortunate
Polynesian race; there is also a decrease in the number of births.
The fact has long been noticed in a general manner. The following
figures give it a strange precision. In the Marquesas Archipelago, at
Taïo-Hae, M. Jouan saw the population fall in three years from 400
to 250, during which time only three or four births were registered.
In the Sandwich Islands, from among 80 women legitimately married,
M. Delapelin found that only 39 had children. There were only 19
children in the twenty principal families of chiefs. Finally, in
1849, the official statistics quoted by M. Remy, give 4,520 deaths,
and only 1,422 births. The case is the same at the other extremity
of Polynesia. In New Zealand, says M. Colenso, marriages are rarely
fertile. The seven principal chiefs of Ahuriri are without children,
with the exception of Te-Hapuku; but of the four married sons of
the latter, three are as yet without a family. Nine out of eleven
marriages were here barren.
Many causes have been proposed in order to explain these melancholy
phenomena. Wars, famines, and epidemics have been suggested in
turn, but these scourges are only local in their effects. Some
have mentioned syphilis, but they forget that the mother of Œdidée
had died of this disease before even Wallis undertook his voyage.
The blame has been laid on drunkenness introduced, it is said, by
Europeans; but before the importation of our spirits the Polynesians
were quite able to inebriate themselves with their _kava_, more
terrible even than our brandy. As to debauchery, we know to what
an extent it was carried by the natives, who had, in that respect,
nothing to learn from Europeans.
Can it be that a higher civilization bears within itself something
which is incompatible with the existence of inferior races? Do the
dominion exercised by the stranger, the invasion of the land, and
the violence done to religion and customs inspire these men, once
so free and proud, with such despair that they refuse to have any
posterity? We may allow some consideration to these moral causes in
the phenomena which occur in Tahiti, the Sandwich Islands and New
Zealand. But how can we apply this explanation to those archipelagoes
where the local race has remained dominant, and where, with its
ancient mode of life, it has preserved all the traditions of its
ancestors? Now this was the case in the Marquesas during the time
that M. Jouan and P. Mathias were there; European inhabitants are
still rare in the Samoan and Tongan Islands.
Two naval surgeons, MM. Bourgarel and Brulfert, have alone been able
to throw some light upon this melancholy problem. The former found
that tubercles were _invariably_ present in the lungs of bodies
submitted to post-mortem examination. The latter tells us that almost
all Polynesians suffer from an obstinate cough, and that in eight
cases out of ten tuberculosis follows these bronchial catarrhs. Now
phthisis does not appear in the list of diseases drawn up by the old
voyagers. Have we, then, imported it into these islands? Developing
in a new region, in a race to whom it was formerly unknown, has this
disease assumed a more terrible form, with examples of which we are
acquainted? Already hereditary in our own case, has it become endemic
or epidemic in Polynesia? If it is so, we may say that it is all
over with the Polynesian race. In another half century, or at most a
century, it will have disappeared, at least as a pure race; it will
have been replaced by a cross, which in the Marquesas Islands has
already begun to increase the population.
BOOK X.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS.
I. In this book I propose to give under a common title a concise
examination of the characters due to _intelligence_, _morality_
and _religion_. I shall thus, perhaps, be reproached with having
connected too closely phenomena which, elsewhere, I have attributed
to different causes, and consequently with having, apparently at
least, contradicted myself. But, on the one hand, after what I have
said upon this subject in the first chapter, there can be no doubt
as to the manner in which I regard this question; and, on the other
hand, intellectual phenomena acquire such a development in man,
that sometimes they almost rise to the dignity of attributes, and
therefore deserve to be placed by the side of phenomena which are
entirely human.
II. In the preceding chapters we have reviewed physical man. But man
is not merely a certain portion of organised and living matter like
a plant. Besides this there is in man _a something_ which _feels_,
_judges_, _reasons_, and _wills_. This _something_, the origin and
nature of which it is not the duty of the naturalist to discover,
is manifested by actions and by _facts_. These facts differ in
different human races. They may, _they ought to_ be, looked upon as
_characters_, equally with the actions of our animal races, such as
the _pointer_, the _greyhound_, the _terrier_ or the _collie_.
We shall see that, although approaching ground generally regarded
as belonging by right to philosophy, anthropology does not on that
account show any less respect for the domain of the latter. The
philosopher is concerned with the distinction to be established
between mind and matter, and with the discovery of the mysterious
link which unites the physical with the intellectual being; the
anthropologist with the investigation of the several manifestations
resulting from this connection, and with the recognition of the
distinctive characteristic marks of the groups which he is studying.
The former goes back to causes; the latter confines himself to
effects, and therefore does not exceed the limits of natural science.
For this very reason, in treating of man, we meet with a difficulty
at starting, which has been already pointed out. When entering
upon the examination of psychological facts, science has scarcely
more than details to study, as in the examination of physiological
characters. Here, as elsewhere, _the conditions of life_ play
a considerable part. If they exercise an influence upon the
manifestations of organic life, they influence to an almost equal
extent those actions which interpret the acting and reacting
element in us. And not only does our intelligence conform to
present conditions, but indefinitely multiplies their influence by
accumulating and combining all anterior facts by means of memory,
and imposes upon itself new conditions from which new phenomena
incessantly result.
The study of intellectual characters must, therefore, for the
most part be carried out by the detailed examination of races.
Nevertheless, we may notice in passing the most general features of
some races, if only in order to explain more fully the truth of the
statements which have just been made.
III. _Language._ “Animals have voice, man alone has speech.” This
truth, proclaimed by Aristotle, is universally accepted at the
present day. Every one acknowledges that speech is one of the highest
attributes of the human species. _Languages_, that is to say, the
various forms assumed by speech among the different human races and
their sub-divisions, have, on this account, a separate importance as
differential characteristic facts.
Without being a linguist, the anthropologist can well avail himself
of the results obtained by philology, and compare them with those
obtained by the study of physical characters. When by two such
different methods we arrive at the same conclusions, we are evidently
very probably in the right.
While giving the detailed history of the different races in my
course of lectures at the Paris Museum, I was often obliged to
extend considerably the comparison which I have just mentioned. I
have almost invariably found the most striking resemblance between
descriptive philology and anthropology. When, as an exception to
this rule, we find a want of resemblance, or, better still, a
contrast, such as that which exists between the physical characters
and the language of the Basques, when compared with the neighbouring
population, the problem always, as in their case, presents special
difficulties, from whatever point of view it is approached.
It it more especially amongst the mixed races that the general
agreement which I have mentioned is exhibited. Language often betrays
at once the mixture of races, their succession, and the nature of the
influence exercised by the different elements which have assisted in
their formation. I will here give a striking example.
All polygenists have regarded the Malays as one of their _human
species_; many monogenists have considered them as one of the
principal races. I showed long ago that, in reality, they are only a
mixed race in which white, black and yellow elements are associated,
and that they are closely allied to the Polynesians. These facts
become more striking every day as we know more of these two families
which have sprung from a common stock. And further, as we study more
thoroughly the history of these countries, we find that the relations
between the insular and the continental regions must have been much
closer than it was long thought could ever have been the case. Such
are the results arrived at by anthropology.
On the other hand, philologists have only been able to form one
_linguistic family_ from all the Malayan and Polynesian languages,
when considered from a _grammatical_ point of view. As to
_vocabulary_, the following are the results given by Ritter.
The Malay language comprises in every 100 words—
50 Polynesian words, all answering to a very inferior social
condition, only designating arts and objects for which all languages
have names (heaven, earth, moon, mountain, hand, eye, etc.).
27 Malayan words, giving evidence of a more advanced civilization,
and of the existence of arts already in a state of perfection (kriss).
16 Sanscrit words expressing religious ideas and abstract terms
(time, cause, wisdom, etc.).
5 Arabian words relating to mythology, poetry, etc.
2 Javanese, Dravidian, Persian, Portuguese, Dutch or English words,
all relating to commerce.
We see, therefore, that the language of the Malays explains, so
to speak, under another form, the same facts as their physical
characters.
IV. Although a naturalist, and therefore habitually disposed to
attribute to the characters drawn from physical man a preponderating
importance, I cannot allow that this superiority is absolutely
constant. There are some facts which speak too strongly. Had it
not been for their special language no one would have hesitated
to consider the Basques as belonging to the same family as other
Southern Europeans. Had their special dolichocephaly been discovered,
as it has been by M. Broca, no one would have thought of making
them _allophylian whites_. It is the same with the peoples of the
Caucasus, who were long considered, entirely on account of their
physical characters, as the pure stock of White European populations.
We must, therefore, acknowledge that in some cases language has a
characteristic importance superior to that of external features and
anatomical facts, or, at least, that it furnishes indications more
readily understood.
This _alternation of value_ between certain characters will cause no
surprise to naturalists who are familiar with the results of modern
zoology. They know that it is the same with animal species. In the
vertebrata the respiratory organs furnish characters of the first
order, which are _dominant_: in annelids, and in secondary types in
which this function is less rigorously localized, families, perfectly
similar in other respects, have the branchia very highly developed
or altogether wanting. In their case the characters drawn from the
respiratory organs are evidently secondary and _subordinate_. If this
is the case between _different species_ and _different groups_, we
must not be surprised if, with still greater reason, it should be the
same between _different races_.
V. In anthropological applications of the science of language,
every one will allow that far more importance must be attributed to
grammar than to vocabulary; it is clear that it cannot be otherwise.
But have we not in certain cases, despised too much the information
which may be derived from the latter? The results to which Young
has arrived from the calculation of probabilities may, it seems to
me, be very aptly quoted here. The object of the illustrious author
was to discover, how many similar words in two different languages
were necessary to authorize us in considering these words as having
belonged to the same language. From these calculations it appears
that the common possession of one word has no meaning. But the
probability of unity of origin is already three to one when there
are two words common to both, and more than ten to one when there
are three. When the number of words common to both is six, the
probability is more than 1,700, and almost 100,000 when there are
eight.
It is, therefore, almost certain that eight words common to two
different languages have originally belonged to the same language,
and when isolated in the midst of a language to which they do not
belong must be regarded as _imported_. These conclusions of the
learned Englishman are of extreme importance. They tend to make
anthropologists regard the relations between various peoples in a
different manner from that to which many anthropologists have been
accustomed, and force us to admit the existence of communications
which we should otherwise be inclined to doubt.
VI. Whilst fully recognising the undoubted importance of linguistic
characters, we must not trust to them entirely as guides in the
estimation of ethnological relations. A language may become extinct
and be replaced upon the same spot. The mere linguist would then
assume the annihilation of a race or population which was in reality
flourishing. This was the case with the Canary Islanders. The
descendants of the Guanches having all adopted the Spanish language,
it was thought that they no longer existed, till M. Berthelot showed
that in reality they formed the basis of the population of the whole
archipelago.
VII. Monogenism and polygenism have fought, and are still fighting
upon linguistic as well as upon organographical grounds. Thus it has
very often happened that the scientific question has been obscured
by considerations entirely foreign to science; and with the less
reason as the opposed doctrines have really less connection with this
subject than has generally been supposed.
From a linguistic point of view the problem may be stated in the
following terms:—Was there in times past, a single primitive
language, from which all languages, living or dead, have sprung? Or
rather, have languages existed, and do languages still exist, which
cannot be traced to a common origin?
We shall at once understand the reply of the polygenistic
philologist. Arguing from the differences by which certain families
of languages are separated, they declare them to be _irreducible_,
and with Crawfurd, M. Hovelacque, and others, state their belief
“in the original plurality of the _races_ which have been formed
with them.” On the other hand, this irreducibility is denied by Max
Müller, who, without as yet affirming the existence of a primitive
language, allows us to see that, in his opinion, all philological
researches are tending to the demonstration of this fact.
Being a complete stranger to studies of this nature, I cannot express
an opinion upon special questions. I shall confine myself to the
statement of some general facts, and to pointing out the sense in
which they seem to me to claim most attention.
This irreducibility, upon which the polygenistic philologists rely,
recalls the argument, which is based upon physical characters, and
consists in contrasting the Negro with the White. This argument
long possessed a certain appearance of strength, which it has lost
as more numerous intervening links were discovered between these
two extremes. It seems to me that the general progress of philology
is tending to the same result. All linguists now place side by
side languages which would have been considered irreducible at the
beginning of the century.
A certain number of languages may remain isolated without this fact
affording any evidence against the specific unity of man. In all
philological schools it is acknowledged that languages are variable
and perishable. Now we do not know all the _dead_ languages, and if
some of the links in the chain are wanting it will at once be evident
that relations which formerly existed have been lost to us for ever.
Let anyone, moreover, refer to the observations of Lubbock upon
roots, and he will at once admit that a certain number among them can
scarcely be common to all languages. Those who hold that language is
not of divine origin, but a human invention and creation, cannot help
adopting the conclusions of the learned Englishman on this point.
Now, however few these radical differences may be, they necessarily
involve irreducibility, which cannot, however, on that account be
invoked as an argument against monogenism.
In support of this conclusion, I am fortunate enough to be able to
appeal to the testimony of a judge, both competent and trustworthy.
Whitney, in his work upon “The Life of Language,” has examined the
same question. With Crawfurd and M. Hovelacque, the American linguist
admits that there are linguistic families which cannot be referred
to a common origin. He does not, however, stop at the bare fact; he
demonstrates and discusses the causes of it. He then gives, in the
following terms, the general conclusion of this discussion: “The
incompetency of the science of philology to decide upon the unity or
diversity of human races appears to be completely and irrevocably
demonstrated.”
However this may be, the results thus acquired bring to light a fact,
the importance of which ought not, it seems to me, to be overlooked.
Taking as guide the work of a man whose competency is above dispute,
arranging the tables of the linguistic families admitted by M. Maury,
and representing by _lines_ the relations pointed out by this learned
writer, we see that there exists between one language and another
an _intercrossing of characters_ extremely analogous to that which
I have so often pointed out in human groups. No one has supported
the hypothesis of the multiple origins of languages more resolutely
than Agassiz. In the memoir, which I attacked from a geographical
point of view, he expressed himself very clearly upon this point.
Since then he has developed the same ideas. I have already said
that, in his opinion, mankind was created by _nations_, that each
received, with its physical features, its particular language,
developed in every direction, and just as characteristic as the
voice of an animal species. I feel it necessary to insist upon this
point here, and to quote the text itself: “Let anyone follow upon a
map,” says Agassiz, “the geographical distribution of the bear, the
felidæ, the ruminants, the gallinaceæ, or of any other family: we
can prove, with just as much evidence as any philological research
can for human languages, that the growling of the bear of Kamschatka
is allied to that of the bear of Thibet, of the East Indies, of
the Sonda Islands, of Nepaul, Syria, Europe, Siberia, the United
States, the Rocky Mountains, and the Andes. Yet all these bears
are considered to be distinct species, having in no way inherited
voice from each other. Nor have the different human races done so.
All this is equally true of the crowing of the gallinaceæ, of the
quacking of ducks, as well as of the song of thrushes, who all pour
forth their gay and harmonious notes, each in their own dialect,
which is neither inherited nor derived from another, although all
sing in _thrush language_. Let philologists study these facts, and if
they are not absolutely blind to the signification of analogies in
nature, they will themselves come to doubt the possibility of placing
any confidence in philological arguments employed to prove genetic
derivation.”
Agassiz is logical, and he exhausts the consequences of his theory.
But he forgets one important fact which may be opposed to all those
who, either fully or partially, embrace this order of ideas.
No animal species has ever changed its _voice_ for that of a species
nearly allied to it. An ass’s colt, reared by a mare and isolated
in the midst of horses, never forgets its bray or learns to neigh.
While, on the contrary, it is well known, that a White, if placed in
earliest infancy in the midst of Chinese or Australians, will only
speak their language. The converse is equally true.
The reason of this is that the _animal voice_ is a fundamental
character, adhering evidently to the nature of the being, susceptible
of slight modification, but incapable of disappearing, or of
transference as a whole; it is a _specific character_.
_Human language_ is entirely different. It is essentially variable,
and subject to modification from one generation to another it is
subject to transformation; it borrows and loses; it may be replaced
by another; it is evidently subordinate to the intelligence and
to the conditions of life. We can only, therefore, regard it as a
secondary character; a _character of race_.
From the linguistic point of view, the specific attribute of man is
not the _special language_ which he employs, it is the _faculty of
articulation_, _speech_, which has given him the power of creating
a primitive language, and to vary it infinitely by means of his
intelligence and will, more or less influenced by innumerable
circumstances.
Here, again, I am fortunate enough to be able to support opinions,
which I have long maintained, by the conclusions of Whitney upon
this point. “Now,” says this learned linguist, “to pretend, in order
to explain the variety of languages, that the power of expression
has been virtually different in different races, that one language
has contained, from its origin and in its primitive materials,
a formative principle which is not in others; that the elements
employed for a formal usage were formal by nature, and so on,—all
this is pure mythology.”
VIII. _General relations between languages and human races._
It is generally admitted that human languages may be traced to
three fundamental groups; the first, monosyllabic, or isolating
languages; the second, agglutinative, or suffix languages; the third,
inflectional languages. Thus, there are three linguistic types, as
there are also three physical types. It will not be without interest
to discover what relations are displayed by the characters drawn from
these two orders of considerations.
The monosyllabic languages represent the most rudimentary condition
of human language, which, moreover, has only arrived at inflection
after passing through the period of agglutination. Considered from
this point of view, languages have arrived at perfection by degrees,
and it is only natural to inquire if the general degree of elevation
of races corresponds with that of the development of language.
From a comparison of the results of philological and physical
studies, it is at once evident that this is not the case. Chinese,
the most monosyllabic language, is spoken by one of the earliest
civilized nations, belonging fundamentally to the yellow type. Tribes
holding the lowest place, springing from the Negro type, speak, on
the contrary, agglutinative languages, that is to say, have attained
the second stage. I have already pointed out this fact, and insisted
upon the consequences which arise from it with reference to the
relative antiquity of human groups.
Nevertheless, we must remark that the greater number of Whites
speak languages which have attained the highest degree of
perfection—inflectional languages. Allophylian Whites, alone, are
still in the agglutinative stage.
If, after having read the information which is given by philologists
upon the distribution of races, we look at the map, we shall again
meet with some very interesting general facts.
Monosyllabic languages are only found in Asia, as it were localized,
and only occupy a very limited space. They were at one time even
restricted to a kind of island, bounded by the sea on the east, and
on all other sides by agglutinative languages. It is entirely due
to the Aryan conquest that they have been placed in contact with
inflectional languages.
The latter, now universally distributed, were for a long time
confined to the old continent, of which, moreover, they were far from
occupying the greatest part. Their expansion dates from the great
modern discoveries.
Languages of intermediate development, the agglutinative languages,
occupied before this epoch, as they still do, the larger portion of
the surface of the globe. We do not know at what period they lost
ground in Europe, but we can already almost assert as a fact, that
they predominated there in former times. They probably occupied
the whole of this part of the world before the Aryan invasion or
infiltration. Perhaps they were spoken by quaternary man. However
this may be, before the great and quite recent emigrations of
European races, agglutinative languages reigned throughout the
greater part of Asia, almost the whole of Africa, and all America
and Oceania.
In pointing out approximately the areas occupied by the three
fundamental groups of languages, we find that the agglutinative
languages alone occupied but a short time ago about 22/25 of the
earth’s surface, inflectional languages 3/15, and monosyllabic
languages 1/25; or nearly 74/100, 20/100 and 6/100.
Agglutinative languages, again, have the advantage over the others in
number. Finally, the number of nations, peoples or tribes, speaking
these languages, is also superior to that of the groups which speak
monosyllabic or inflectional languages.
But it is well known how slight a relation there is between the
population of a country, and either its extent or the number of
human groups by which it is peopled. In order to gain an idea of the
importance, or of the part played upon the surface of the globe,
by one, or by a group of languages, we must calculate the number
of individuals by whom it is used. Now, in comparing statistical
and linguistic data, for which we are indebted to MM. d’Omalius
and Maury, we find that inflectional languages are spoken by
536,900,000 human beings; monosyllabic languages by 449,000,000; and
agglutinative languages only by 216,550,000.
IX. _Writing._ Writing is, so to speak, to speech what speech is
to thought. Nevertheless, by its very nature it furnishes the
anthropologist with but very few precise data. Invented in a very
limited number of places, it has been communicated from place to
place, and by initiation. In their passage from one nation to
another, the graphic representations of languages are often sensibly
modified, and, from this point of view, they may undoubtedly be of
real assistance to ethnology. But there is no real relation between
the several forms which they assume, and the human groups by which
they are employed.
We can hardly connect with writing the various arrangements of
stories which were used by the Mexican Neophytes to recall to memory
their prayers, or the purely mnemo-technical process observed by
different travellers, such as the _Wampum_ of the Red-Skins. But the
latter, and especially the Chinese, Thibetian and Peruvian _Quipos_,
were something more than this. Here the colour and the mode of
juxtaposition of straws, shells, or wood, the knots and the colour
of the threads, had a conventional value permitting the expression
of ideas, of great and multiple numbers, etc. In Peru it seems that
real books were _written_ in this manner. Unfortunately, as M. Maury
remarks, it is now impossible to decipher these singular productions.
Pictography, even, in a form as rudimentary as that which existed and
which still exists among the Red-Skins, where Schoolcraft has studied
it very thoroughly, was probably the universal starting point for
writing properly so called. It is well known that pictography bears
a strong resemblance to our _rebus_, and that it has its monuments,
which have been discovered by several travellers in Siberia, North
America, the basin of the Orinoco, and even as far as Patagonia.
When symbolism was introduced into pictography, it would seem that
a step had really been made, although grave errors may result from
this manner of representing events, when the sense of the symbol is
forgotten. The Virginians represented the Europeans, their ships and
arms, by a _white swan vomiting fire_. There was here evidently the
germ of some legend. This observation alone, enables us to comprehend
and interpret some of the traditions, fabulous in form, but having
a foundation of truth, which have been collected with reference to
the past history of certain American tribes. Nevertheless, symbolism
has the advantage of accustoming the mind to detach itself from
the material reproductions of objects. It is then an easy matter
to pass to the graphic reduction of the symbol, and afterwards to
the _idiographic sign_. At length, spurred on by the stimulus of
necessity, the _phonetic sign_ is reached.
Even when the representation of the syllable is attained, writing
has made immense progress. It seems as if certain races, in spite of
contact with more advanced nations, and though they may have before
their eyes examples of alphabetic writing, can never get beyond this.
So at least it is at the present time with the Cherokees in Florida
and the Veï on the coast of Africa. Sequoyah and Doala Bukara,
in their efforts to imitate the Yankees and Arabs, only invented
spelling-books. And yet the papers printed by the former bore, by the
side of the Cherokee text, the English alphabetic translation.
It is unnecessary to insist upon the immense superiority of
alphabetic writing. This means of fixing speech, at once so simple
and so complete, has always presented an appearance of the marvellous
to those who were unacquainted with it; and the ancients, struck with
its utility, and not knowing that man had gained the art by slow
stages, did not hesitate to regard it as a divine invention. Cicero
himself seems inclined to share this opinion. We now know that the
honour of this great discovery really belongs to the Phœnicians.
But the Phœnicians did not make this discovery at once or by their
own efforts. MM. Wuttke and Lenormand have rightly given the
honour of having prepared the way for, and of almost achieving the
discovery, to the Egyptians. Egyptian writing, with its figurative,
idiographic and phonetic signs, displays the whole course traversed
by the human mind in rising from simple pictography to the alphabet.
Unfortunately the Egyptians, fettered by the combined influences of
their past, and by the very mass of ideas and facts represented in
their complicated writing, especially perhaps by their religious
traditions, could not free themselves from the cumbersome element
in their system of writing. A strange people, free from these
restraints, could alone, as M. Maury has remarked, take this step.
The Phœnician alphabet once discovered spread rapidly. At the same
time, however, it necessarily underwent modifications to suit,
sometimes veritable necessities, sometimes simple convenience or
caprice. M. Lenormand admits five great families of writing, as
representing this filiation. These are the Semitic, Greco-Italian,
Western or Iberian, and Northern or Indo-homerite. The latter,
perhaps, owed its origin to the alphabet of Yemen, which, introduced
into India about the third or fourth century of our era, has
engendered almost all the Oriental alphabets.
Egypt and Phœnicia were not the only centres in which the art of
writing took its rise. It also came into existence in the Old
World in Mesopotamia and China, and in Mexico in the New World.
Hieroglyphic writing, itself arising out of pictography, has been the
universal starting point, but in each case writing has stopped short
at different stages.
Cuneiform writing has not attained the alphabet, and seems to consist
of a mixture of idiographic and syllabic signs. In China writing has
remained idiographic. Under the influences, however, of Buddhist
missionaries, who made known the Devânagari alphabet in the extreme
East, the Japanese and the Coreans, after having servilely imitated
the Chinese, were the first to reach syllabism, the second to attain
a veritable alphabet.
In Mexico, writing consisted of the mixture, still very confused, of
symbolic, idiographic and phonetic signs, the latter representing,
in some cases syllables, in others, simple letters. The discoveries
made by l’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg seem to indicate that in Yucatan
greater progress had been made, and that the Palanqué inscriptions
are really alphabetic. It is much to be regretted that up to the
present time the important facts, for which we are indebted to the
aged curé of Rabinal, have not been utilized. The reading of the
inscriptions of Central America would have a very different interest
to the deciphering of a few more Egyptian tablets. However this may
be, it is evident that the multiplicity, the variety of alphabets,
and even their filiation furnish the anthropologist with characters
of great importance, and specially fitted to establish ancient
relations between human groups in some cases widely separated.
X. _Social condition._ Man is essentially a social being. “Were any
one to ascend to heaven _alone_, and listen _alone_ to the harmony of
the spheres, he would not enjoy these marvels,” a Greek philosopher
has said. Thus we find the human species everywhere collected into
more or less numerous societies. In exceptional cases, which may be
generally explained by a violent dispersion, these societies always
consist of a more or less considerable number of families, and
deserve at least the designation of _peoples_.
However limited or numerous peoples, tribes, or nations may be,
the existence of three elementary social conditions has long been
accepted as a fact, each of which is connected with the satisfaction
of the first and most imperious of all necessities, that, namely,
of nourishment. A certain gradation may, moreover, be observed in
these conditions. Man at first only depended upon daily industry for
his subsistence: he hunted either terrestrial or aquatic animals: he
became a hunter or a fisherman. He afterwards brought the herbivorous
species under his power, and found an unfailing resource in his
flocks: he became a shepherd. Finally he directed his attention to
the earth; he multiplied and cultivated certain plants which he
learnt to know by experience; he became an agriculturist. In the
latter case his diet would be fundamentally vegetables; in the two
former flesh would form the basis of his food.
It is clear that these several kinds of existence place man
under very different conditions of life, and impose upon him
certain necessities, by demanding the development of physical and
intellectual faculties which sometimes bear but a very slight
resemblance to each other. In this manner certain physical and
intellectual peculiarities are engendered, which, developed by
exercise and heredity, finally become characters of races.
The hunter and fisherman present some points of resemblance in
their manner of life. Both are obliged to display in turn, and
occasionally at the same moment, according to the animal they are
pursuing, a great amount of patience and courage; they must never
be at a loss for a resource. Both, even when placed in the most
favourable circumstances, pass alternately from extreme activity
to almost complete repose. But the fisherman’s field of action is
on the whole less extensive than that of the hunter, and he is not
like the latter, forced to exercise all his physical faculties. He
will probably never possess the same delicacy of hearing, or the
same agility. Moreover, neither of them are placed in conditions
favourable to intellectual development properly so called.
The shepherd is much more independent in certain respects, while at
the same time he is subject to greater regularity. He is always sure
of his morrow. The daily duties to his charge once fulfilled, he is
at liberty to abandon himself to reflection and revery, so that his
intellectual faculties have every facility for development.
This is still more strongly the case with the agriculturist.
Seed-time and harvest are to him times of inevitable physical
activity. Between the two he can rest at leisure, and apply the
faculties with which he is endowed to something entirely different.
These three elementary modes of human society involve immediate
consequences.
Game, in the true acceptance of the term, is nowhere so abundant
as to afford an indefinite amount of nourishment to populations,
however small, accumulated upon one spot. A great extent of country
is absolutely necessary to the hunter, so that he can only form very
limited communities. As soon as they increase in size they are forced
to separate. Fishermen may form larger communities, particularly upon
the shore of a productive sea. Even in their case, however, the size
of the population is necessarily confined within somewhat narrow
limits.
The pastoral condition allows the formation of more numerous
societies; but it also involves the existence of vast tracts entirely
given up to grazing. Like the chase, therefore, though in a less
degree, it enforces sub-divisions.
The culture of the soil permits the development of a population at
once dense and continuous.
The hunter, as a natural consequence of his warlike habits,
is inevitably a warrior; war is, in fact, nothing more than a
“man-hunt.” Any discussion about a _hunting-ground_ may easily result
in war, as the subsistence of the hunter is in question. This war
would be conducted without mercy, for every prisoner would not only
be useless, but an incumbrance to the conqueror; another mouth to
feed. The hunter would kill him, and however little may be due to
passion on the one hand, and pride on the other, he will put him to
death with torments endured with heroic firmness.
The shepherd also will often be involved in armed conflict, for he
must defend his pastures and his flocks. But, in his case, war will
be less bitter; the prisoner may be useful to him. He can be forced
to attend to the flocks, and, in return, be fed without involving any
sacrifice: he can be a slave.
Were it not for the necessity of mutual destruction, which seems to
be innate in man, and which, as yet, civilization has not been able
to extirpate, agricultural tribes would have no cause to make war
upon each other; indeed, it would be much more to their interests
to avoid it. All that can be said, however, is that in their case
it becomes by degrees less cruel. Here, again, the prisoner can be
utilized. He is first reduced to slavery. Then it becomes evident
that a certain amount of liberty might be profitable to the master,
so he passes from the condition of a slave to that of a serf.
The three conditions which I have just described still exist upon
the globe; and in each of the three great types of mankind, examples
may still be pointed out at the present day. The White tribes of the
north-west coast of America are fishers; some Arab tribes are still
in the pastoral state, through which the Aryans, the progenitors
of the present Indians, who are so essentially agricultural, have
passed. Among the Yellows, the Tunguses of Daouria, are perhaps the
most perfect type of a hunting people, as the hordes of Central Asia
are of a shepherd people, and the Chinese of an agricultural people.
Finally, among the Negroes, the Tasmanians were exclusively hunters
and fishers, the Kaffirs are essentially shepherds, and the natives
of Guinea agriculturalists.
Thus the fundamental nature of the social condition is not a
character of race. The three physical types present the three social
types.
From this fact alone we might conclude that between the three human
types, regarded from the point of view of civilization, there are
none of those radical differences which have been admitted, _à
priori_, by some authors.
This conclusion can only be distinctly shown by a detailed study of
the races. I can here merely state it, insisting upon this point
that, in spite of the assertions of M. de Gobineau to the contrary,
there still exist _Whites_ in a distinctly _savage_ state. We need
only read the details given by Cook, La Pérouse, Meares, Marchand,
Dixon, Dr. Scouler, and others, upon some Kolushes, and we shall be
forced to recognise these _fishers_, whose women besmear themselves
with grease and soot, and wear a girdle, as both _true Whites_ and
_true savages_, who in many respects must rank below the Negro of
Ardra or Juida.
On the other hand, the very names which I have just mentioned,
especially those of Ghanata, Sonrhaï and Melle, with which Barth
has made us acquainted, suffice to prove that the most strongly
characterized Negro, the _typical Negro_, has the power of raising
himself to a considerably advanced social condition. It has been
said, that, without being a _savage_, he has remained a _barbarian_,
as was the case with our German or Gaulish ancestors. This view is
not a just one; the Negro has risen much higher. The annals of Amed
Baba show that in the Middle Ages the basin of the Niger contained
empires very little inferior in many respects to European kingdoms of
the same epoch.
As to the Yellow races, it will be sufficient to remember that the
whole of the Aryan race was plunged in barbarism at the time when
China was acquainted with the calendar, had determined the form of
the earth, and recognised the flattening of the poles, had woven
materials in silk, and possessed a coinage.
XI. Ought we to conclude from these and from many analogous facts
which I cannot quote, that there exists a perfect equality between
human races, that they all possess the same aptitudes, and can
all rise, in every respect, to the same degree of intellectual
development? Not so, for this would be a departure from the truth,
and an evident exaggeration. Here, again, we must return to the
comparison of man with animals. Does it follow that, because all the
races of dogs belong to one and the same species, they all have the
same aptitudes? Will a hunter choose indifferently a setter, or a
blood-hound to use as a pointer or in the chase? Will he consider
the street-cur as of equal value with either of these _pure-breeds_?
Clearly not. Now we must never forget that, while superior to animals
and different to them in many respects, man is equally subject to
all the general laws of animal nature. The law of heredity is one of
those from which he cannot escape, and it is this law which, under
the influence of the conditions of life, fashions races and makes
them what they are.
When centuries have passed over a group of men, when from generation
to generation, and under the influence of certain physical,
intellectual and moral conditions, the whole being has contracted a
certain habit, we cannot form any definite idea as to what length of
time and what fresh circumstances would be necessary to efface this
impression and form the race anew. In any case, it can only rise by
undergoing modifications, and this fact alone produces a new or a
derived race.
The result of all the conditions by which races have been formed has
been to establish between them a _present_ inequality which it is
impossible to deny. Such, however, is the exaggeration into which
_negrophiles_ by profession have fallen, when they maintain that the
Negro in former ages, and _in his present condition_, is the equal of
the White. A single fact will be a sufficient answer to them.
The discoveries of Barth have placed beyond a shadow of doubt
the existence of a _political history_ among the Negroes, which
had previously been a matter of doubt. But this very fact alone
only serves to place in still stronger relief the absence of that
_intellectual history_ which is demonstrated by a general progressive
movement, by literary, architectural and artistic monuments. The
Negro race, left to itself, has produced nothing of this kind.
An attempt has been made, in order to disguise this too manifest
inferiority, to refer to the Negro race those peoples of black
colour, who can only be said to be connected with it by crosses in
which the superior blood predominates.
XII. Must we therefore pass to the opposite extreme, and admit that
there are races radically incapable of elevating themselves above the
social condition in which their ancestors have lived? This question
has often been proposed, and has been answered in two different ways.
The attempt has been made, by means of a certain number of facts
taken from America and Oceania, as well as from Africa, to show that
certain human populations were irrevocably destined to a savage
condition. The upholders of this opinion have chiefly quoted as
examples the indigenous inhabitants of North America and Australia.
Yet whoever will consider the matter from an unprejudiced point
of view, will see at once, sometimes in the very facts brought
forward by those who depreciate them, a clear proof that, _placed in
favourable conditions_, these races would be able to raise themselves
far above the condition in which we have found them, and would, in
some respects at least, very quickly reach our level.
As far as the Red-Skins and the allied groups are concerned all doubt
has been dissipated by the great work of Schoolcraft, and several
_reports_ since published.
There is, at the present day, upon the banks of the Cattaraugus, an
agricultural and laborious population, formed from the remnants of
the Iroquois, which has its schools, its printing establishments,
and its journals. It is useless to insist upon what the Kreecks,
Cherokees and Choctaws have become. We know that these nations of the
South had, of their own accord, started on the high road of settled
civilization, that they cultivated and exported cotton, and published
journals written in their own language, and printed in characters
invented by one of their own nation. The government of Washington
drove them from their lands, and transported them to the basin of the
Arkansas. They there set themselves to work again, and travellers
tell us that some of their farms even rival those of the Yankees.
But in reply to this the objection will be made that the Algonquins
and the Dacotahs have resisted every attempt which has been made to
assimilate them to Whites, and to civilization. This is an error, or
rather it is but half the truth, and for this very reason affords
important information to those who are inclined to receive it. The
Algonquins (_true Red-Skins_), and the Dacotahs (_Sioux_) separated.
Some renounced their ancient mode of life, and imitated that of the
Cherokees, others adhered to it; how variable, then, is this supposed
indelible character; how completely subordinate to a thousand
insignificant local circumstances!
In fact, nothing has taken place with regard to the American
Aborigines which could not also be observed among Whites. Side by
side with the Arab of the town, dwells the Arab of the desert and the
tent. In the same manner the natives of North America, when left to
themselves, differed upon certain points. In the basin of the Rio del
Norte, and beyond it, side by side with the urban and agricultural
inhabitants of the _pueblos_, dwelt nomad and hunting tribes. The
latter sometimes pillaged the former, but they did not the less
recognise the kinship existing between them.
What here took place spontaneously still takes place under the
pressure of the White. Is there anything strange in this? In every
case when the half of a nation transforms its social condition, we
cannot draw our conclusion from the backwardness of the other half,
and say that it would be incapable of doing so as a whole. We might,
with equal reason, maintain that a great number of Europeans were
incapable of learning to read.
There remain the Australians.
I approach this subject very unwillingly. In no part of the globe
has the White shown himself so merciless towards inferior races as
in Australia; nowhere has he so audaciously calumniated those whom
he has plundered and exterminated. In his opinion, the Australians
are not even _men_. They are beings “in whom are combined all the
worst characters which mankind could present, at many of which,
monkeys, their congeners, would blush.” (Butler Earp.) Noble minds
have doubtless protested against these terrible words, addressed to
convicts who were about to seek their fortunes in Australia; but
what could be expected of them when every evil passion was called
forth and supported by similar arguments, which, again, rested upon
assertions given as scientific? The result of these experiences in
Australia and Tasmania is well known; and those who wish for further
information have only to consult travellers of every country, Darwin
as well as Petit-Thouars.
To maintain at the present day that the Australians are what Bory
de Saint-Vincent and the anthropologists of that school endeavoured
to prove them to be, is to deny unquestionable facts established by
travellers of every description. This race has no more shown itself
to be absolutely savage than any other human race. It organised
the family and divided the tribe and nation into true _clans_, the
account of which is still extant. The Australians, more advanced
upon this point than the Tahitians, understood the division of land
amongst themselves, and the fixed limits agreed upon were religiously
respected, except in time of war. I shall speak about their religious
and moral characters at another time. We have here only to consider
their intellectual characters, and I shall only add that these
savages possessed villages of from 800 to 1000 inhabitants, that they
knew how to hollow out canoes, and made nets for hunting and fishing,
which were sometimes 80 feet long and of sufficient strength to
resist the struggles of a kangaroo.
It will, however, be objected that all this does not constitute a
well advanced social condition. Granted; but are the Australians
incapable, as it has so often been said, and as it still is asserted,
of raising themselves above this condition?
We have only to consult the writings of Dawson, who made a kind of
farmers out of these savages, those of Salvado, who found them to
be both devoted and useful workmen, those of Blosseville, declaring
that he thought himself fortunate to be able to turn to them when the
_gold fever_ robbed him of European hands, and we shall be convinced
of the inaccuracy of the assertions made on the subject of the
radical incapacity of the Australians. Finally, if we still retain
some feeling of doubt, we need only look back upon those tribes which
were settled and _civilized_ by William Buckley, the deserter, and we
shall be forced to allow that the faculty of raising themselves above
their past condition exists among the Australians as among other
human populations.
XIII. There are two causes which tend to lead us into error when
we are dealing with the question of the appreciation of the social
condition of races.
The first arises from the manner in which we regard, as a whole,
the population to which we belong. The offspring of instructed and
civilized classes, we forget that part of the nation which we left so
far behind, which doubtless profits by the work of the intelligent
classes, but does not follow them at all, or but very little, in the
path of progress. There is not a country in Europe where numbers of
facts, justifying what I have briefly stated here, may not be met
with. If Lubbock had taken more notice of the facts around him, he
would most certainly have modified many conclusions in his book.
The other cause proceeds from our pride of race, from the prejudices
of our education, which altogether prevent us from going to the
root of the matter, and from recognising extreme resemblances,
almost identities, if they are in the least degree obscured by the
slightest difference of forms or words. It was a long time before the
resemblance was observed between the organisation of the Maories and
that of the ancient Scotch. And yet if we deduct anthropophagy from
the one people and from the other all that it has borrowed from the
neighbouring nations, we shall be forced to admit that at the period
when Cook visited the New Zealanders, the latter offered strange
points of resemblance to the Highlanders of Rob Roy and Mac Ivor. As
to the _Children of the Mist_, akin to the other Scotch clans, were
they much above the Australian tribes?
We must conclude, therefore, that civilization, with improvements and
learning of every kind, is an exceptional fact, even in the midst of
a most privileged people, and that upon their own territory they have
had, and still have, their savage representatives. We must add that
this fact is exhibited in different degrees among yellow and black
tribes. Lastly, in reflecting upon our past history, we must avoid
denying to other races aptitudes, which remained latent for centuries
in our ancestors before they were developed, and which are still in
the same condition in too many of our fellow-countrymen, and of our
contemporaries.
XIV. In his remarkable work upon _Origins of Civilization_, Sir John
Lubbock admits that the “primitive condition of man was a state of
_absolute barbarism_.” But he does not say what he means by this
expression. Have there indeed ever been men living for centuries in
the state depicted in Chinese traditions, men acknowledging no law,
destitute of industry, ignorant of the use of fire, abandoning their
dead without sepulture, living in trees...? There is every reason to
doubt it, for all established facts protest against this conclusion.
Whenever it has been possible to attain even a slight knowledge of
the life of savage tribes, they have been found subject to laws,
which, although not written, are still rigorously observed. This fact
is proclaimed by Lubbock himself. True, these laws may often appear
to us iniquitous or barbarous, but sometimes there is, even in their
severities towards certain classes of the population, a trace of the
most just and praiseworthy sentiments. We cannot indeed approve of
the _Australian code_ as regards the enactions which make a miserable
slave of the woman; the privileges which it reserves to the chiefs
are perhaps excessive; but how can we help being struck when we see
it grant to age the same advantages as to rank. Respect for old age
was a feature in the manners of the Spartans which met with the
admiration of the Athenians; we may well recognise its value in the
Australians.
Mention has sometimes been made of races or populations _dwelling in
trees_, such as the Orang-Kubus, certain Blacks of New Guinea, etc.
They have been described as making their homes in trees after the
manner of monkeys. Earle has reduced these exaggerations to their
true value. He has shown that upon certain coasts, lined with a belt
of mangroves, it is easier to walk upon the crowded, interlaced
branches, than to force a passage along the network of aërial roots
plunging into a bed of mud. He saw European sailors several times,
with their muskets slung, passing over marshes of this nature in
single file, in the same way as the Indians. We see, therefore, that
it is not at all necessary to be absolutely savage and nearly allied
to monkeys to travel in this manner.
The Tasmanians, as good an example of a nomad people as it would be
possible to mention, only erected temporary shelters, and yet they
burnt their dead, and raised to them mausoleums of branches and bark,
which have been described and figured by Péron. I have just remarked
that the Australians had their institutions and their industries.
Undoubtedly in Tasmania and Australia man is exhibited with the
smallest amount of human development. And yet we nowhere observe that
_absolute barbarism_ which is apparently admitted by the learned
Englishman.
However far we go back into our past history we shall meet with
similar facts. The little that we know of tertiary man shews him to
be in possession of fire and the art of cutting flints. He already
has his industries, and this fact alone proves that his mode of life
was different to that of the brute.
It could not be otherwise. Whatever the cause may have been which
determined the appearance of man upon the surface of the globe,
he has, from the first, always been in possession of his specific
nature. He has had from the outset his intelligence and his aptitudes
which, though at that time in a torpid and slumbering state, were
ready to start into life under the spur of necessity. To procure
nourishment and to defend himself against the external world, he
could only have recourse to them, and the smallest manifestations
of these superior faculties have of necessity traced from the
commencement a line of demarcation between him and the brute.
XV. The intelligence and the aptitudes of man have manifested
themselves in a thousand ways, which may be included under the
general name of _industries_. Pacific or warlike, relating to the
individual or to the whole population, they very often differ in
different races, in different peoples, sometimes almost in different
tribes. The greater number may consequently be considered as so many
_characters_ by which the different groups of the human species
may be distinguished. It will, however, at once be understood that
questions of this nature can only be discussed in a detailed history,
and I must here confine myself to stating one of those general facts
which, by themselves, are sufficient to separate man from animals.
The latter have only physical wants which they satisfy as completely
as possible. But, this end once attained, they go no further. The
animal, when left to itself, does not know, or has scarcely a
suspicion, of the superfluous. His wants are, therefore, always the
same.
Man, on the contrary, whether the mind or the body is in question,
is always seeking the superfluous, often at the expense of utility,
sometimes to the detriment of the necessary. The result is that his
wants increase from day to day. The luxury of the evening becomes the
indispensable of the morrow.
This fact is just as true with regard to the savages as to civilized
peoples. We must, then, consider it as one of those characters which
belong to the very nature of beings. Regarded systematically from
this point of view, man might be defined as an _animal requiring
the superfluous_, with just as much reason as he has been called a
_reasoning animal_.
Moralists have at all times severely blamed this tendency and
condemned those insatiable appetites which are always asking for more
and for what they do not possess. I cannot share this view. Far from
blaming in principle that which essentially is but the _desire for
the better_, I cannot but see in it one of the noblest attributes of
man. This _faculty_ is, in reality, one of the most important causes
of his greatness. When men are once fully satisfied and have no more
wants, they will come to a standstill, and _progress_, that great and
sacred law of mankind, will come to a standstill also.
In reality, it is the want of the superfluous which has developed
all our industries, which has engendered the arts and sciences
without which many races and nations, and, even among ourselves,
whole populations exist perfectly well. We must therefore, with every
reservation as to wrong applications, accept it in the first place as
a fact, in the second as a benefit.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MORAL CHARACTERS.
I. In spite of all that is exceptional and elevated in the
intellectual phenomena displayed by man, they do not, when
considered as characters, isolate us from animals. It is different
with moral and religious phenomena. The latter, as we have seen,
belong essentially to the human kingdom; they are the attributes of
our species. Let us examine them rapidly, and, at the same time,
invariably from this point of view.
Confining ourselves rigorously to the region of facts, and
carefully avoiding the territory of philosophy and theology, we
may state, without hesitation, that there is no human society or
even association in which the idea of _good_ and _evil_ is not
represented by certain acts regarded by the members of that society
or association as morally _good_ or morally _bad_. Even among robbers
and pirates theft is regarded as a misdeed, sometimes as a crime,
and severely punished, while treachery is branded with infamy; the
facts noticed by Wallace among the Kurubars and Santals shew how the
consciousness of moral good and truth is anterior to _experience_,
and independent of questions of _utility_.
Nevertheless, Sir John Lubbock, in a work with which all my readers
are doubtless acquainted, states that the moral _sense_ is wanting
in the savage. In support of this opinion he quotes some vague and
general assertions, bearing more particularly upon the Australians,
Tahitians, Red-Skins, etc. The assertions of the eminent naturalist
have been so often repeated that it will only be necessary for me to
examine them in a few words.
In the first place, I might produce numerous quotations of the same
nature in opposition to these assertions. I shall only recall the
words of Wallace, speaking of the tribes in the midst of which he had
lived. “Every individual,” he says, “scrupulously respects the rights
of his neighbour, and these rights are but rarely infringed.” Is it
possible to admit that this _respect_ does not rest upon something
analogous to that which we call morality. I shall, moreover,
presently shew that this is really the case.
Again, Lubbock seems to have contradicted himself when pointing out
in his book the small amount of real liberty enjoyed by savages. He
represents them, correctly, as being the slaves of a multitude of
customs, having the importance of laws, which rule all their actions.
Now, amongst these customs, there are a great number which are at
variance with the most natural passions, such as the instinct of
reproduction, the choice of nourishment, etc. An infringement of
these laws is followed by a punishment often terrible. Is it not
evident that the greater number of them can only be based upon the
more or less distinct idea of good and evil?
But the idea in question resembles mathematical formula. The result
of the solution of a general equation varies with the data: and
according to the latter may sometimes be represented by the sign
_plus_, sometimes by the sign _minus_. So morality varies in its
manifestations by virtue of innumerable circumstances which, again,
originate in numerous causes. The same acts are often regarded as
good, bad, or indifferent, according to the special organisation,
the religion, or the traditions of the society in which they have
occurred.
These acts do not, on this account, cease to belong to a faculty
essentially human; and, whether of themselves, or from the idea with
which they are connected in the different human groups, they furnish
the _naturalist_ with _characters_ as true as those belonging to the
intelligence.
This is still more certainly the case when _institutions_ are
produced by this order of facts and ideas. These sometimes present
such a characteristic appearance, that at the first glance they
seem to isolate a people or a race, and reflection is necessary to
discover the true relations which unite the group by which this
peculiarity is presented to other populations and races. The _tabou_
of the Polynesians was long considered by many writers as something
absolutely special, whilst in reality we meet with the _civil tabou_
in every European nation, and the Mosaic law throughout is a _tabou
code_ based upon religion.
To arrive at the truth in this study we must approach it with perfect
impartiality, with all the mental freedom which a zoologist brings
to the examination of the physical characters of a mammal or bird.
We must avoid judging foreign peoples whether civilized, barbarous,
or savage, by our own fixed ideas. If we act differently, we only
render ourselves liable to error and injustice. A momentary return
to our own case, to the history of our race and our most advanced
populations, is often useful in making us appreciate justly the
moral characters of tribes and peoples which we are far too fond of
representing to ourselves as occupying a position far below our own.
II. By using this precaution, and adhering to general facts, we can
scarcely help being struck by the intimate resemblance which moral
manifestations establish between all men, both in good and in evil;
and, melancholy though the conclusion is, especially perhaps in the
latter respect. For example, the infamous debauches of the Polynesian
areoïs, the hideous vices of some American populations, have often
been insisted upon. But let us not forget the orgies of Greece and
Rome, certain haunts in our own great cities, and the terrible
revelations which from time to time are made in the police courts of
our proudest capitals.
Fundamentally, the White, even when civilized, from the moral point
of view is scarcely better than the Negro, and too often, by his
conduct in the midst of inferior races, has justified the argument
opposed by a Malgache to a missionary, “Your soldiers seduce all our
women you come to rob us of our land, pillage the country, and make
war against us, and you wish to force your God upon us, saying that
He forbids robbery, pillage, and war! Go, you are white upon one side
and black upon the other; and if we were to cross the river, it would
not be us that the caimans would take.”
Such is the criticism of a _savage_; the following is that of an
European, of M. Rose, giving his opinion of his own countrymen: “The
people are simple and confiding when we arrive, perfidious when we
leave them. Once sober, brave and honest, we make them drunken, lazy,
and finally thieves. After having innoculated them with our vices, we
employ these very vices as an argument for their destruction.”
However severe these conclusions may appear, they are unfortunately
true, and the history of the relations of Europeans with the
populations which they have encountered in America, at the Cape, and
in Oceania, justify them only too fully. As for Africa, it seems to
me that the two words, _trade_ and _slavery_, are quite sufficient to
prevent a European from boasting too loudly of the morality of his
race.
It may, however, be objected that these crimes were perpetrated long
ago, and will never be repeated, that slavery has been abolished in
our colonies never to reappear. The answer is but too simple, and
will, I am sure, be confirmed by the reminiscences of more than one
of my readers. In every case this allegation only applies to the
_Aryan_ White. The _Semitic_ Whites have preserved slavery, and the
accounts of all travellers, especially those of Barth, Livingstone,
Nachtigall, and Schweinfurth, show us but too clearly that it is
still the trade of Central Africa. But is the _Aryan White_ himself
free from all blame upon this point? As an answer to this question,
I shall confine myself to mentioning some facts, which happened,
so to speak, only the other day. However melancholy the narration
may be, it will at least serve the purpose of proving that the
_savage element_ still exists in the most _civilized nations_. I
have borrowed them from A. H. Markham, commander of the _Rosario_,
which was sent out by the English government to cruise among the
archipelagoes of Santa Cruz and the New Hebrides, for the purpose
of putting a stop to the practices in question. The truth and
accuracy of this testimony, which was given in 1873, are therefore
unfortunately indisputable.
Forty years ago the sandal-wood trade reached a development which is
accounted for by the high value attached to this wood by the Chinese.
Speculators fitted out ships, and cut down the forests of the
Melanesian Islands. The natives naturally resisted this devastation:
they were answered by the rifle. In 1842 the crews of two English
vessels landed at Sandwich Island, one of the most luxuriant in the
archipelago of the New Hebrides. The islanders, when resisting the
destruction of their woods, were set upon by the Whites, who killed
twenty-six, and, driving a great number into a cave, suffocated them
with smoke till not one remained.
The atrocities committed by the sandal-wood robbers have been
surpassed by those of the pirates, who devoted themselves to the
_labour traffic_, or _labour trade_, which arose and increased with
the cotton plantations which the Civil War in the United States
multiplied in the English colonies, not only in Australia, but even
in the Fiji Islands, and as far as some of the New Hebrides.
The want of hands being felt, the idea struck Captain Towns of having
recourse to the indigenous Blacks of the South Sea, offering them the
inducement of wages. Success crowned the enterprise, and the Captain
soon had imitators. The original plan was to engage the islanders for
a fixed time, with the understanding that they should then be sent
home. But the considerable gains thus obtained excited cupidity, and
_slave-dealers_ began to carry off Papuans in order to transport them
to plantations where veritable slavery awaited them. This _trade_
became so extensive that it acquired a name which was also bestowed
upon _child-stealing_. It is called _kidnapping_, an expression which
been authorised by official documents.
All means were legitimate to the _kidnappers_ in order to procure
their human cargo without cost. I might here borrow many horrible
details from Markham, but I will only quote one. A brig had just
anchored at some little distance from the coast of Florida, one
of the Solomon Islands. A canoe filled with natives coming close
alongside was upset by a manœuvre, apparently accidental. The
boats were immediately lowered as if to render assistance to the
shipwrecked natives. But the spectators on the rocks, or in other
canoes saw European sailors seize the wretched men, and with a long
knife cut off their heads on the gunwale of the boat. This done,
the sailors returned to the brig which immediately set sail. The
heads thus obtained were destined to pay for the engagement of a
certain number of labourers. In many of those Melanesian Islands
the victorious warrior decapitates and carries off the head of his
vanquished enemy, and the respect which he gains increases with the
number of these trophies in his possession. Now it had been agreed
between certain chiefs and captains of vessels, that the latter
should procure heads, and, in exchange, receive a certain number of
living individuals, engaged for one or two years.
It need hardly be said that at the expiration of their engagement
the unfortunate Papuans did not regain their liberty. In 1867, for
example, there is proof that, of 382 islanders who ought to have been
sent home, only 78 had been allowed to go.
It will easily be understood that these ships, laden with unfortunate
creatures, carried off by force or by stratagem, were necessarily the
theatre of terrible scenes. Here again the commander of the _Rosario_
quotes many facts. I shall only borrow the account of what happened
on board the _Carl_, for the history of this slave-ship seems to me
to present a summary of all the atrocities of _kidnapping_.
The _Carl_ quitted Melbourne in 1871, with the avowed intention of
engaging black labourers. With her, under the title of passenger,
went a certain Dr. James Patrick Murray, who was interested in the
enterprise, and who seems to have played the part of leader. When
they arrived at the New Hebrides, the kidnappers seem to have made
ineffectual efforts to obtain labourers by legitimate means. They
soon had recourse to others. At Palmer Island one of them dressed
himself as a missionary, hoping thus to attract the islanders on
board, who fortunately discovered the trap. From this moment the
slave-dealers had recourse to violence alone. Their method was to
approach the canoes manned by Papuans, and to destroy or capsize them
by throwing into them some of those large bars of iron which are used
as ballast. The crews were then easily captured.
Eighty blacks had been collected in this manner. During the day
they were allowed to come on deck, but in the evening they were
thrust into the hold. During the night of the 12th of September, the
prisoners made some noise. They were silenced by firing a pistol
over their heads. During the following night the noise began again,
and the same means were employed to stop it. But the blacks had set
to work to break up the camp-beds, and thus armed they attacked the
hatchway. The whole crew, sailors and passengers, then began to fire
into the crowd. The firing lasted eight hours. It stopped perhaps for
a few moments, but began again at the least noise.
Day broke, and all seemed quiet; the hatchways were opened wide, and
those who could were invited to come up There were _five_; all the
rest were either dead or wounded. The corpses were hastily thrown
into the sea, and at the same time _six living individuals_ who were
badly wounded.
Could we find among savages many _industries_ more infamous than
kidnapping, many deeds more atrocious than those of which Dr. Murray
and his accomplices were guilty?
Let us hasten to do justice to the local legislature and the
English Parliament, which promulgated severe laws and rules for the
prevention and punishment of the crimes of kidnapping. Unfortunately,
the colonists, more or less interested in procuring labourers at a
cheap rate, show themselves remarkably indulgent towards those whose
business it is to provide them with _coolies_. Some officers of the
English navy have learnt this to their cost. Captain Montgomery,
commander of the _Blanche_, had seized, and sent to Sydney, the
schooner _Challenge_ as a slave-ship. It was proved that on two
occasions the _Challenge_ had imprisoned blacks in her hold, who had
been fraudulently enticed on to the ship; that two of them had been
taken, under circumstances of violence, to the Fijis; that the others
had only been released, because in their despair they had set to
work to make a leak in the side of the vessel with a hatchet; and,
finally, that these wretched creatures were obliged to swim back to
their island, from which the _Challenge_ already lay at a distance of
about 6¾ miles. In spite of these grave facts, the _Challenge_ was
acquitted. On the other hand, Captain Montgomery was condemned to pay
£900 sterling damages, and interest to the owners of the ship.
III. If it is only too easy to detect amongst ourselves the evil
deeds of savages, it is, happily, easy to point out among these
people, whom we are so ready to accuse and despise, the feelings
upon which our own societies are founded, the good which, as a
whole, predominates in them, and the virtues which we most honour.
My readers will, however, understand that I cannot here enter into
details incompatible with the nature of this work. We must confine
ourselves to a rapid glance at the opinions held by men in general
upon _property_, _respect of human life_, and _self-respect_, and
compare what travellers have told us of some of the most inferior
races with what we know of our own and of ourselves.
It has often been said, in speaking of certain races and peoples,
that they have no idea of property. Those who look a little closer
into the matter will see that this is an error. Among tribes of
warriors, hunters, or fishers, however low a position they may hold
in the scale of humanity, arms and tools are looked upon as personal
property, and the testimony of travellers, who have taken but little
interest in the question, is very explicit upon this point. In the
Paris Museum there is a boomerang upon which some signs are roughly
carved. M. Thozet, the donor, was showing it on some occasion to an
Australian from the neighbourhood, when the latter at once discovered
from the signs to whom it had belonged. But there is another form
which property assumes among savage or barbarous populations. If
it is a question of land, it will often be found to be under the
jurisdiction of the clan, tribe, or nation. The _hunting-grounds_
of the Red-Skins are met with in every place where civilization has
stopped at the level which they represented at the epoch of their
discovery. This species of property exists in New Holland among
peoples, supposed by some to be _degenerate monkeys_, and the right
which rules it is so rigorous that the Australian never enters the
property of a neighbouring tribe without express permission. To
act otherwise is equivalent to a declaration of war. Our common
lands, and the annual conflicts which took place formerly, and
which, perhaps, still take place, in spite of official settlements,
between French and Spanish shepherds, will give some idea of such
a state of things. Among certain Australian tribes, territorial
property is still more divided and definite; every family has its
hunting-grounds, which are inherited by the sons to the exclusion of
the daughters.
Among the most savage peoples, when we have been able to gain
definite information as to their manners, we find that theft is
regarded as something wrong, and punished. Among the Australians,
poaching is punished with death.
But theft is only a crime when it is committed under certain
circumstances. When under others it is, on the contrary, regarded
as meritorious. To rob an enemy of his horses or cattle is a
praiseworthy act of cunning. It is no longer theft, but an act of
hostility. Now, to the savage the stranger is almost always an enemy.
The case is the same with a great many Aryan and Semitic peoples.
Was it not so among the classic nations from which we derive our
civilization?
Nothing is more common than to hear travellers accuse entire races
of an incorrigible propensity for theft. The insular populations
of the South Sea have, amongst others, been reproached with it.
These people, it is indignantly affirmed, stole even the nails of
the ships! But these nails were _iron_, and in these islands, which
are devoid of metal, a little iron was, with good cause, regarded
as a treasure. Now, I ask any of my readers, supposing a ship with
_sheathing_ and _bolts_ of gold, and nails of diamonds and rubies,
were to sail into any European port, would its sheathing or its nails
be safe? And would not numbers of people be found ready to reason
like the Negroes, who make no scruple of robbing a White? “You are so
rich,” they say, when reproached with any misdeed of this kind.
These same Negroes, however, have a great respect for property among
themselves. Theft does not appear to be more frequent with them than
it is with us between Europeans, and the thief is punished upon the
coast of Guinea precisely in the same manner as in Europe.
We ought, perhaps, to refer to the idea of property the manner in
which adultery is regarded by some peoples. In countries where the
woman may be bought, it is evidently a violation of the rights of
the proprietor. Nevertheless, even amongst the most savage tribes,
a more elevated feeling, and one which is connected with moral or
social ideas, as we ourselves understand them, may be proved, often
in the clearest manner. The gravity of the punishment incurred by the
culprit scarcely permits of a doubt that it is so. The Australian,
uncorrupted by the vicinity of the White and brandy, never forgives
one who has destroyed the purity of his wife, and kills him on the
first occasion. With the Hottentots, death again is the punishment
for adultery. It is the custom among the Negroes of the Gold Coast
for the culprit, as a general rule, to make an arrangement with the
injured party, if it is a question of one of the women of the third
order, who are merely concubines. But if it is a question of the
_great wife_ or the _Fetish wife_, then death, or at least the ruin
of the culprit, will alone suffice to avenge the injury.
Yet Negresses are not Penelopes. I do not for a moment think of
challenging the unanimous evidence of travellers on this point,
and the husbands, as we have just remarked, do not always invoke
the rigour of the local code. What may we legitimately infer from
this fact? Merely that the customs and the law of these races are
at variance. But is it not often so amongst ourselves. Is adultery
practised with impunity only among Negroes? Do complaisant husbands
exist only among Australians?
IV. Respect for human life is universal. The murderer is everywhere
punished. But, amongst ourselves, murder supposes certain conditions.
In spite of the law, he who kills his adversary in a fair duel is
regarded by no one as a murderer; he who kills or causes the death of
a great number of enemies in pitched battle is a hero.
With the savage the formula is still more elastic. As I have just
remarked, he regards a stranger in almost every case as an enemy, and
to kill him is no crime; it is often a title of honour. Moreover,
among the greater number of savage or barbarous peoples, blood
demands blood, and for vengeance to be complete, it is not necessary
that the true culprit should be overtaken. Every individual of the
same family, tribe, or nation, _can_, and _must_ pay for his crime
if occasion offers. When Takouri _treacherously_ massacred Captain
Marion du Fresne and his sixteen sailors, he only obeyed the laws of
his country. He had avenged his relative Nagui Noui, _treacherously_
carried off three years previously by Surville, who wished to punish
the theft of a canoe. In this manner many Europeans have fallen
victims to the misdeeds of their countrymen, and certain peoples have
acquired an unmerited reputation for ferocity.
But let us remember that the Scotch and the Corsicans scarcely acted
differently in their vendetta. With them, as with the Red-Skin, the
Maori, and the Fijian, the blood of every member of the family or
clan might atone for the blood spilt by another. Again, that which
we now call _wilful murder_, was no more considered by the European
as an act of cowardice or treason than it is by the savage. Let
us remember, moreover, that in the Middle Ages, chiefs occupying
the highest positions in European society, did not hesitate to act
in this manner; let us remember that the commanders of our ships,
when punishing savages for some attack, bombard and burn the first
villages that they meet without any scruple, although they may be
almost sure that many innocent will pay for the guilty; and perhaps
we shall be less severe.
As to a want of respect for human life, the white European race
cannot reproach the most barbarous. Let us look back upon our own
history, and recall some of those wars, those pages written in
letters of blood in our own annals. Let us not, above all, forget our
conduct towards our inferior brethren; the depopulation which marks
every step through the world; the massacres committed in cold blood,
and often for amusement; the man-hunts organized after the manner
of stag-hunts; the extermination of entire populations to make room
for European colonies, and we shall be forced to acknowledge that
if respect for human life is a moral and universal law, no race has
violated it oftener, or in a more terrible manner than our own.
V. Modesty and sense of honour are undoubtedly two of the principal
manifestations of self-respect. Neither the one nor the other are
wanting among savage peoples. But the former, especially, often
shows itself in customs and practices widely opposed to our own, or
bearing no resemblance whatever to them. This has given rise to many
misconceptions, such as that which, among certain Polynesians, has
been considered as a refinement of immodest sensuality, what in their
opinion is only an act of elementary modesty.
I might multiply examples of this nature, but for what purpose? Is it
not the same in matters of politeness? We rise and uncover the head
before a stranger or a superior; in a similar case the Turk remains
covered, and the Polynesian sits down. Though differing so entirely
in form, are they not inspired by the same sentiments? Is not the
faculty by which they are called into play everywhere the same?
It is the same also with the sense of honour. Here, however, more
than in any other case, we meet with conceptions remarkably in
accordance with our own. The history of savage nations abounds with
traits of warlike heroism, and nothing is more common than to see
savages prefer torture and death to shame. The Algonquin and the
Iroquois challenge their executioners to invent fresh tortures. The
Kaffir chief asks as a favour to be thrown to the crocodiles rather
than lose the feather, which to him represents the epaulette, and
serve as a common soldier after having been an officer. The duel of
the Australian is more logical than ours, and always in earnest.
That which we call chivalrous generosity in speaking of Europeans, is
by no means wanting in savages. In the struggles at Tahiti several
officers owed their lives to this feeling. After peace had been
concluded, Admiral Bruat asked a Tahitian chief, to whose fire he had
been exposed for an hour while he bathed, why he had not fired: “I
should have been dishonoured in the eyes of my people if I had killed
such a chief as you, naked, and by surprise,” replied the savage.
Could the most civilized man have acted or spoken better?
We might quote various actions of Red-Skins and Australians, arising
from sentiments of the same nature.
VI. In conclusion, if it is sad to be forced to recognise _moral
evil_ in races and in nations which have carried social civilization
to the highest degree of perfection, it is consoling to acknowledge
the _good_ in the most backward tribes, and to find it there in its
most elevated and refined form. The fundamental identity of human
nature is nowhere displayed in a more striking manner.
Does this assertion lead to the inference that all human groups
are upon the same moral level? By no means. From this, as from
the intellectual point of view, they may hold a higher or lower
position of the scale, without any of them falling to zero. It is
precisely this moral inequality which has for the anthropologist an
interest at once scientific and practical. The very development of
the faculty, the acts which it inspires, the institutions of which it
is the foundation, present differences sufficiently great to make it
possible to discover characters in this order of facts.
CHAPTER XXXV.
RELIGIOUS CHARACTERS.
I. If scientific impartiality and calm judgment are necessary in
the study of moral phenomena, they are much more indispensable when
we have to account for facts depending upon religious feeling.
Unfortunately this condition is too rarely fulfilled. Passion,
with lamentable facility, becomes involved in whatever resembles a
religious question. Many other causes, easy to mention, join passion
in leading our judgment astray, and it is not difficult to explain
how, under these several influences, it has been possible, honestly
to ignore manifestations of religion in the more or less important
divisions of mankind.
The most frequent cause of error to which I feel myself bound to call
attention, has its origin in the high opinion which the European
has of himself, in the habitual contempt which is the most striking
feature of his relation with other populations, and especially to
those which, with greater or less reason, he treats as barbarians or
savages. For example, a traveller who, as a general rule, speaks the
language of the country very badly, interrogates a few individuals
upon the delicate questions of the Deity, future life, etc., and his
interlocutors, not understanding him, make a few signs of doubt or
denial, which have no reference to the questions asked. The European
in his turn mistakes their meaning. Having, in the first instance,
merely regarded them as beings of the lowest type, incapable of
any conception however trifling, he concludes without hesitation
that these peoples have no idea either of God or of another life;
and his assertion, soon repeated, is at once accepted as true by
readers who share his opinions about populations unacquainted with
our civilization. The history of travel would furnish us with many
examples of this fact. Kaffirs, Hottentots, etc., have often been
spoken of as atheists, while we now know that this is by no means the
case.
Should the traveller, moreover, speak the language of the country
with ease, he is still liable to fall into error. Religious belief
forms part of the most hidden depths of our nature; the savage
does not willingly expose his heart to a stranger whom he fears,
whose superiority he feels, and whom he has often seen ready to
ignore or ridicule what he has always regarded as most worthy of
veneration. The difficulty which a Parisian experiences in France
in understanding the superstitions of the Basque sailor, or of the
Bas-Breton peasant, should make him able to appreciate those which he
would find in giving an explanation of similar subjects in connection
with Kaffirs or Australians. Campbell had great trouble in obtaining
from Makoum the avowal that the Bosjesman admitted the existence of
a male god and of a female god, of a good and evil principle. He
left many other, and much more important discoveries to be made by
MM. Arbousset and Daumas. Wallis, after a month’s intimacy with the
Tahitians, declared that they possessed no form of worship, whilst it
entered, so to speak, into their most trivial actions. He had seen
nothing beyond a cemetery in the Moraï, those venerated temples, of
which no woman might even touch the sacred ground.
The lively faith of a missionary is, again, often a cause of error.
Whatever the Christian communion may be to which he belongs, he
generally arrives in the midst of the people whom he wishes to
convert, with a hatred of their objects of belief, which are to
him works of the devil. Too often he neither seeks to account for
them, nor even to become acquainted with them; his sole endeavour
is to destroy them. I could here mention one of these too zealous
apostles, who sees nothing in the Brahminical religion but the utmost
barbarism united with the utmost absurdity. It is clear that the
much more rudimentary belief of a Kaffir or of an Australian could
not be a _religion_ in the opinion of such a judge as this. He
expresses and publishes his ideas, and another name is added to the
list of atheist populations.
Fortunately amongst lay Europeans there are some who, permanently
settled in the midst of these populations, become initiated into
their customs and manners, so as to understand them and to fathom
mysteries, which would by others be passed over on account of
offensive or curious forms. Among missionaries there are some who,
more indulgent, because they are more enlightened, can recognise
the religious conception, however feeble it may be, or however
it may have been transformed. Little by little the light has
appeared, and the result has been that Australians, Melanesians,
Bosjesmans, Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Bechuanas, have, in their turn,
been withdrawn from the list of atheist nations and recognised as
_religious_.
II. Can the justice of this conclusion be denied? Can anyone
refuse to allow a religion, properly so called, to these peoples,
to recognise as true divinities beings who receive a tribute of
affection or terror, homage and prayers on the part of populations,
who either fear or trust in them? It is possible. Here again our
European pride seems to me to have often led to false conclusions.
Believers or unbelievers, freethinkers or zealous Christians, savants
and philosophers have been too much under the influence of the idea
of the Deity as conceived by our most cultivated classes. Often when
this idea is even slightly degraded or modified, they no longer
acknowledge its existence; when the conclusions drawn from it upon
the origin, nature, and destiny of man or of the universe, differ
even slightly from those which they admit themselves, or have been
accustomed to hear, they refuse them the name of _religion_.
I can only explain in this manner the judgment passed upon a very
considerable portion of mankind by a number of savants and eminent
thinkers, amongst whom we must reckon the illustrious Orientalist
Burnouf. In his opinion Buddhism is true atheism. In a work which has
been deservedly successful, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire has supported
this view with incontestable talent and learning. He has, moreover,
placed on an equality with Buddhist beliefs, and perhaps even below
them, those which had preceded them among the Mongols, Chinese, and
Japanese. Thus, in the opinion of this eminent writer, nearly all the
yellow races, much more than the third of mankind, are _atheists_.
But, in formulating this conclusion, the learned author of _Buddah_
chiefly consulted his own reason and conceptions. “Buddhists,” he
says, “may without any injustice be regarded as atheists. I do not
mean that they profess atheism, that they glory in their incredulity
with that boasting of which more than one example might be quoted
amongst ourselves; I only mean that these nations have not been able
to rise in their noblest thoughts to the conception of God.”
In these few lines the idea of the book and the cause of the
disagreement which separates me from M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire is
clearly evident. The Buddhists, who everywhere give a place to _gods_
in their legends, who have everywhere raised temples consecrated to
these deities, who fear and worship them, who have made prayer an
institution, who admit the dogma of future life and of remuneration,
have not formed that idea of _God_ to which we have all more or
less attained; they are therefore atheists. This is evidently the
prepossession under the influence of which this work has been
written, which, however, should be read by all who are desirous of
gaining correct impressions concerning some of the grave questions so
hotly disputed at the present day.
The savant who considered Buddhism as atheism would with still
greater reason make the same estimate of the ancient beliefs of
Japan, China, and Mongolia. Nevertheless, there was in this case
also a belief in numerous divinities, always subordinated to one
supreme, uncreated and creating God. In Japan, we are told by
Siebolt, there were counted no less than seven celestial gods, and
eight million kamis, or spirits, of which 492 were superior gods. The
inferior Kamis, to the number of 2640, were deified men. In China,
the aim of the reform of Lao-tseu and of Khoung-tseu was, partly, the
destruction of idolatry, and idolatry is not atheism. The populations
of northern and central Asia have in almost all cases been accused by
travellers especially of superstition, and not of atheism. They also
have their idols. The case is similar with all northern populations.
In the sacred island of Waygatz, near to the straits of the same
name, the missionaries burnt, in 1827, 420 images collected upon
the promontory of Haye-Salye alone. Throughout this vast area, the
inhabitants believed, or still believe, in _spirits_ dwelling in
rocks, trees, mountains, or the celestial bodies, and offered to them
an interested homage.
Still, however, there was an universal belief in a _Supreme God_, who
had created these very spirits, and was the Preserver of all living
things. The Lapps and Samoyedes had, or still have on this point, the
same conceptions as the ancient Chinese. Their _Jubmel_, and their
_Num_ answer exactly to the _Chang-ti_ of Khoung-tseu himself, while
popular idioms show that they regard him as the first dispenser of
all good. _Num tad_ (may Num grant), and _Num arka_ (thanks be to
Num), are apparently of frequent occurrence in the language of the
Samoyedes. This belief in a Supreme God and in secondary _spirits_,
of vast number, but still presenting a kind of hierarchy, is a very
ancient one in China, for we find the emperor Chun 2225 years before
our era “offering sacrifices to the Supreme Sovereign of Heaven,
and the usual ceremonies to the six great spirits, as those usually
offered to mountains, streams, and spirits in general.”
Possessing beliefs of this kind, attested and sanctioned by public
acts, can they be regarded as atheists? If so, we must at least
allow that this is a very different atheism from that which has been
professed, and is still professed, by certain European schools of
philosophy.
III. I might make similar observations upon the subject of the
opinions published by Sir John Lubbock in the two works which have
gained for him in anthropology a reputation equal to that which he
already enjoyed as a naturalist. “It is difficult,” he says, “to
suppose that savages so rude as not to be able to count their own
fingers, should have acquired intellectual conceptions sufficiently
advanced to possess a system of belief worthy of the name of
religion.”
Leaving on one side what the author here says about numeration, which
rests, I think, upon a false assumption, do not these words, “worthy
of the name of religion,” show us that, like M. B. Saint-Hilaire,
Sir John Lubbock takes his own conceptions in religious matters as a
criterion of those of savages?
In the opinion of Sir John Lubbock, atheism is not “the negation of
the existence of a God, but the absence of definite ideas upon this
subject.” Here, like M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, the English savant
gives to the word _atheism_ a very different sense to that which it
has held hitherto. Moreover, he quotes elsewhere without comment
several passages, the sense of which clearly implies a negation of
all divinity, and sometimes himself makes use of expressions which
seem to prove that such is his conviction, at least with regard to
certain savages. Thus, the testimony which he makes use of, and his
own words, are often employed in the support of the opinion which
denies any religion to certain human groups.
The choice, moreover, of the quotations in question seems to me
liable to a serious objection. When the writers, against whom I am
now arguing, have to choose between two evidences, the one attesting,
the other denying the existence of religious belief in a population,
it is always the latter which they seem to think should be accepted.
More often than not, they do not even mention the contrary evidences,
however definite, however authentic they may be.
Now it is evidently much _easier not to see_ than to _discover_ that
which may be in so many ways rendered inappreciable to our eyes.
When a traveller states that he has proved the existence of religious
sentiments in a population, which by others had been declared to be
destitute of them, when he gives precise details upon such a delicate
question, he has unquestionably at least probability in his favour.
I see nothing to authorize this rejection of _positive evidence_ and
unconditional acceptance of _negative evidence_. This, however, is
too often the case.
I might justify this imputation by taking, one by one, almost all the
examples of so-called atheist populations pointed out by different
authors. I shall confine myself to some of the most striking.
With reference to the Americans, Robertson is quoted, who states
that several tribes have been discovered in America possessing no
conception of a Supreme Being and no religious ceremonies. No mention
is made of the information, for which we are indebted to D’Orbigny,
although it is very precise. The author of _l’Homme Américain_
deserves this neglect the less, since he directly contradicts the
opinions held upon this subject by several writers, and by Robertson
himself. “Although several authors,” he says, “have denied all
religion to certain Americans, it is evident in our opinion that all
the nations, even the most barbarous, possessed one of some kind.”
D’Orbigny develops this opinion by giving details of the dogmas
accepted by all the races of South America, and he proves in all the
belief in another life, as attested by their funeral ceremonies.
Is not this of more importance than the simple negative assertion
borrowed from a traveller?
It may be objected that D’Orbigny spoke only of the tribes of
South America, and that the atheist populations must be sought in
the northern portion of this continent. The Californians have, in
fact, been quoted, upon the authority of P. Baegert, as having
neither government, religion, idols, temples, nor form of worship.
But nothing is said of the facts observed by M. de Mofras, which
directly contradict this assertion. The Californians, this traveller
tells us, believe in a superior God. “This God has had neither
father nor mother. His origin is entirely unknown; they believe
that He is omnipresent; that He sees everything, even in the middle
of the darkest nights; that He is invisible to all eyes; that He
is the Friend of the good, and that He punishes the wicked.” The
Californians build oval _temples_, or, perhaps, rather _chapels_,
from 10 to 12 ft. in diameter, which are regarded as asylums, even
in case of murder. Clearly, the Californians must be erased from the
list of atheist populations, the conception which they have formed of
their superior God being, on the contrary, a remarkably elevated one.
In this respect these poor savages greatly surpassed the Greeks and
Romans.
The Californians rank amongst those human tribes which are least
elevated in the social scale; but there are some which are considered
to stand far below them, the Mincopies, for example. Some writers,
adopting the ideas of Mouat, regard them as atheists. They make
no mention of the evidence of Major Michael Symes and Mr. Day.
The former relates the information which he received from Captain
Stocker, who lived for several years in the midst of these islanders;
the latter relates what he saw. From their combined evidence, it
appears that the Mincopies worshipped the sun as the primal source
of all good; the moon as a secondary power; the genii of the woods,
rivers, and mountains as agents of the first divinities. They
believe that a malevolent spirit raises tempests, and they sometimes
endeavour to pacify it by songs, sometimes menace it with their
arrows. These Mincopies believe in another life, and keep a lighted
fire under the platform which bears the corpse of a chief to appease
his _powerful spirit_.
The evidence of Le Vaillant is accepted with reference to the absence
of all religion in the Hottentots. No notice is taken of the contrary
opinion held by Kolben, the accuracy and truth of which, though
formerly doubted, are now placed above suspicion by the inquiry
instituted by Walkenaer. Kolben, moreover, only confirmed the
statements of his predecessors Saar, Tachard, and Boeving. He had
also the advantage of having studied the aborigines before they were
subdued and dispersed by the Europeans. Now Kolben tells us that the
Hottentots believed in a God, the creator of all existing things,
doing no harm to anyone, and living beyond the moon. They called Him
_Gounja Ticquoa_, that is to say, God of Gods. They also recognized
an evil divinity, called _Touquôa_. The moon was, in their opinion,
an inferior gounja. They believed, moreover, in another life, for
they were afraid of ghosts, and rendered a sort of adoration to their
great men, by dedicating to them a field, a mountain, or a river, to
which they made, in passing, some sign of respect. These details,
given by the old Prussian traveller, agree with those which Campbell
received from the lips of a Hottentot chief.
Burchell, it is stated, could discover no religion in the Bachapine
Kaffirs. Nevertheless, and Lubbock allows it himself elsewhere, we
find in the writings of this traveller that the Bachapines believed
in a malevolent being called _Mouliimo_, to whom they attribute
everything of an unpleasant nature which happens to them. To defend
themselves against him they cover themselves with amulets, and they
hold many other superstitions. It is evident that Burchell was not
acquainted with everything which the Bachapines believed, either
because he did not attach great importance to the investigation,
or because he was prevented by the difficulty which Kolben has
mentioned, and which I have pointed out above.
Thus the Bachapines believe in a superior, but evil being, in a _kind
of devil_. It would be very singular if they did not believe in a
_species of God_. Schweinfurth believes he has discovered something
similar among the Bongos; but he himself insists several times upon
the difficulty of determining exactly what to believe in questions
of this kind. Let us admit, however, that this may be true in the
case of these Negroes as also in that of the Bachapines. We can only
regard it as an accidental and local phenomenon, and in no way as a
character of race. I shall return later to the Negroes; I will now
only add a few words with reference to the Bachapines.
This population is only a portion of the Bechuana Kaffir race. Now,
thanks to Livingstone, M. Cazalis, and others, we have, upon the
subject of the religious beliefs of these tribes in general, details
which are very minute and of incontestable authenticity. The Basutos
have their legends, their cosmogony, and their rudimentary mythology.
They admit the existence of a being who _destroys by thunder_, they
give to him the name of _Morena_, literally, _Intelligent Being who
is above_, they have, moreover, _Molimos_, a kind of household gods,
to whom they offer prayers and sacrifices, and in whose honour they
purify themselves; they believe in another life, in another world
situated in the centre of the earth, which they call _the abyss which
is never filled_. The Bechuanas believe so strongly in ghosts that
the fierce Dingan dare not go out in the evening, for fear of meeting
the spectre of Chaka, whom he had assassinated.
IV. The result of my investigations is exactly the opposite of that
to which Sir John Lubbock and M. Saint-Hilaire have arrived. Obliged,
in my course of instruction, to review all human races, I have sought
atheism in the lowest as well as in the highest. I have nowhere met
with it, except in individuals, or in more or less limited schools,
such as those which existed in Europe in the last century, or which
may still be seen at the present day.
Can it be that analogous facts have occurred elsewhere, and that
some American tribes, some Polynesian or Melanesian populations,
some hordes of Bedouins may have entirely lost the conception of
the divinity and another life? It is certainly possible that it may
be so. But side by side with these tribes dwell other tribes, other
populations, of _precisely the same race_, which still possess a
religious faith. Such is indeed the result of the examples quoted by
Lubbock.
This is the great point. We nowhere meet, with atheism except in an
_erratic condition_. In every place, and at all times, the mass of
populations have escaped it; we nowhere find either a great human
race, or even a division however unimportant of that race, professing
atheism.
Such is the result of an inquiry which I am justified in
calling conscientious, and which commenced before I assumed the
anthropological professorship. It is true that in these researches
I have proceeded and have formed my conclusions, not as a thinker,
a believer, or as a philosopher, who are all more or less under the
influence of an ideal which they accept or oppose, but exclusively
_as a naturalist_, whose chief aim is to seek for and state _facts_.
In the scientific study of religions we must avoid acting in the
manner of the physiologist, who, having experimented upon the
vertebrata alone, refused to recognise the characteristic functions
of animal life in the lower animals, because they were in those cases
simpler and more obscure. Here, more perhaps than elsewhere, we
should imitate modern naturalists, who have traced the fundamental
functions even in the lowest molluscs and zoophytes, where all
special organization is often wanting.
The physiologist does not deny the existence of a phenomenon
because it occurs in a place, and by methods, different to those to
which he is accustomed. In almost all animals, even to the lowest,
chymification takes place in the interior of the body. In the
Physalia the same physiological act is performed externally, by the
numerous appendages which serve for both arms and mouth to these
singular zoophytes. In spite of the strangeness of the process, the
function has neither disappeared, nor changed its nature in the eyes
of the scientific man.
The naturalist who studies the history of man, that is to say, the
anthropologist, should neither act nor judge otherwise. However
simple or incomplete, however naïve and childish, however absurd it
may be, a belief should not lose its character in his eyes, if it has
any connection with that element which is common and essential to all
religions.
Now, whatever the dogmas and doctrines of the latter may be, we
may accept as a general formula, which embraces them all, the two
following points: a belief in beings superior to man and capable
of exercising a good or evil influence upon his destiny; and the
conviction that the existence of man is not limited to the present
life, but that there remains for him a future beyond the grave.
Every people, every man, believing these two things, is _religious_,
and observation shows more and more clearly every day the
universality of this character.
Like intelligence and morality, religious feeling has, moreover, its
several degrees and manifestations. To seek for these manifestations,
to determine their nature and intensity in the various human groups,
must be the task of the anthropologist. In order to be faithful
to the modern method, he must neglect nothing. Sometimes the most
rudimentary religion will have for him a greater interest than
one which is fully developed, because it exposes more clearly the
primary religious elements. In their progressive development, in the
harmony or discord existing between this development and that of the
intelligence or morality, he will find many characteristic features
suitable for distinguishing races, and sometimes their sub-divisions.
V. The point of view taken by the naturalist differs, then, in
certain respects, from that which has hitherto been adopted by the
greater number of eminent men, who have endeavoured to establish the
_Science of religions_. Even M. Émile Burnouf, who has so clearly
characterised this new science, who has shown so admirably in what
respects it differs from theology, who has so justly insisted upon
the necessity of enlarging the area of studies of this kind, and of
no longer confining ourselves to the beliefs of ancient and modern
Europeans, seems to me to have yielded to the prejudices which he
opposes.
In fact, this author divides religions into _great_ and _small_.
The former in his opinion are: Christianity, Judaism, Mahomedanism,
Brahmanism, and Buddhism. He turns his attention to these only,
leaving all others in the background. M. Burnouf may, it is true,
argue from the relative number of adherents.
The following are, in fact, from the latest researches of M. Hubner,
the general religious statistics of the globe.
{ Catholics 200 millions.
Christians, { Protestants 110 ”
400 millions. { Greeks 80 ”
{ Various sects 10 ”
{ Buddhists 500 ”
{ Brahminists 150 ”
Non-Christians, { Mahomedans 80 ”
992½ millions. { Israelites 6½ ”
{ Known different religions 240 ”
{ Unknown religions 16 ”
-----
Total 1392½ ”
The same author gives about one thousand as the number of the
religions or sects into which mankind is divided. The majority is
unquestionably greatly on the side of the small religions, which
present, at least in certain respects, a variety of conception
equal, if not superior, to all that has been observed in the great.
M. Burnouf acts, therefore, like the naturalist, who would form his
judgment upon the animal kingdom from the vertebrata alone, and
would neglect all the rest, that is to say, three-fourths of the
fundamental, and a very considerable number of the secondary types.
Without even mentioning Christianity, the great religions of M.
Burnouf are doubtless of interest to us in many respects, on account
of the relations which many of them present with the beliefs of
almost all Europeans, and also from the historical, social, and
political importance of the nations by whom they are professed. But
considerations of this kind are far from being everything in science.
Mammifers are of much more use to us than worms or zoophytes: yet
the zoologist takes as much interest in the latter as in the former;
and it becomes more evident every day how useful, and often how
necessary the study of these simplified organisms is, for the better
understanding of the more complex organisms of higher animals.
The examination of the _small religions_ will render an analogous
service to the science of the _great_ religions. It will be, perhaps,
amongst the former that we shall be forced to seek the origin of
those beliefs which now include so many millions of men; under one
form or another, we shall, doubtless, often meet with traces of them
side by side with, or even in the midst of the most fully developed
religions, and those which are apparently most widely separated from
them. Upon these two points our opinions will not I think clash with
those of M. Burnouf and Sir John Lubbock.
VI. The latter, in his _Origins of Civilization_, has, in fact,
endeavoured to trace the gradual development of religion in the
inferior human races. Unfortunately, he seems to me to have, as
a rule, undervalued the greater number of these conceptions, and
to have ignored the remarkably elevated character which many of
them exhibit. This alone may have led him to consider religion as
proportional to civilization, and developing only with the latter.
I cannot share this view; and the disagreement between Lubbock and
myself is also due in a great measure to the importance which I have
attached to certain evidences which seem to have escaped the notice
of the English savant. A few examples will justify these observations.
Of all the peoples, concerning whose beliefs we possess an almost
sufficient amount of information, the Australians certainly take
the first place. Upon this point I am entirely agreed with Sir John
Lubbock. But I cannot hold with him, that these populations do not
believe in a god of any kind; that they never offer prayers; that
they have no form of worship at all.
In support of his opinion my eminent colleague quotes Eyre, Collins,
and MacGillivray; but he forgets Cunningham, Dawson, Wilkes, Salvado,
and Stanbridge. In comparing the information obtained by these
travellers in different parts of New Holland, we everywhere observe
a similar foundation in the beliefs, which well deserve to be termed
_religious_.
The Australians admit a good principle, called, according to the
locality, _Coyan, Motogon, Pupperimbul_, who is sometimes spoken of
by them as a kind of giant, at others as a kind of spirit. Coyan is
beneficent, and regards the recovery of lost children as almost his
special duty. To obtain his favour, darts are offered to him. If the
child is not found, it is supposed that he is angry. In New-Nursie,
Motogon is the creator. He had only to cry: Earth, appear! Water,
appear! and to breathe in order to give birth to all things that
exist. Without being so precise, the natives of Tyrril Lake ascribe
the creation of the sun to Pupperimbul, who belonged to a class of
beings resembling men, but who had been transported to heaven before
the appearance of the present race. In south-east Australia, Coyan
watches over the _evil principle_, called _Potoyan, Wandong, Cienga_,
who roams about at night to devour men as well as children, and
against whom they protect themselves by fire. The moon, again, is,
in the opinion of the Australians, a malevolent being, whose evil
influence is counteracted by the sun. Several good and evil genii,
_Balumbals_ and _Wanguls_, complete this rudimentary mythology,
which has also its fabulous monsters, its great serpents hidden in
deep rivers, etc. The Australians believe, moreover, in a kind of
immortality of the soul, which passes successively from one body to
another. But before finding a new abode, the spirits of the dead
wander for a certain length of time in the forests, and the natives
very often affirm that they have been seen or heard.
True, these are not very noble beliefs. There is, however, here
something of a very different nature from what Sir John Lubbock’s
view of the matter would lead us to expect. The idea of creation
by the word and breath of a powerful being is a noble conception,
and appears distinctly in several tribes: oblations and prayer have
been proved in others. In all we observe the germ of that belief in
_dualism_, that antagonism of benevolent and malevolent super-human
powers, which is found in _the greatest religions_, and which is
the basis even of Christianity. As to the belief in another life,
no one has of late, I believe, denied the possession of it to the
Australians.
In treating of the religion of the Polynesians, Lubbock quotes
chiefly Mariner, Williams, and Sir George Grey. These authorities
are unexceptional as regards their statement upon what they have
discovered. But their silence upon certain points does not justify
us in concluding that there are real gaps in those cases. Other
travellers have gone much further than they went, known what they
were ignorant of, and have imparted the knowledge to us. Moerenhout
was the first, I believe, to publish original documents upon the
most ancient Tahitian traditions. Others followed; and, thanks
to favourable circumstances, I have been able to profit by these
researches. In the work which I published eight years before that of
Lubbock, I reviewed and discussed the principal documents for which
we are indebted to Captain Lavaud, General Ribourt, the missionary
Orsmond, M. Gaussin, and others. All these documents, obtained from
chiefs belonging to the most ancient families and well versed in the
traditions of their ancestors, have the appearance of incontestable
authenticity, and throw an entirely fresh light upon the early
history of religion, at least in Tahiti. I believe I have defined
with sufficient clearness what these religious beliefs were, and
established beyond a doubt that, side by side with notions arising
entirely from superstition, the Tahitians had attained conceptions
remarkable for their purity and elevation.
Let us first prove that in the island where Wallis declared he had
not been able to discover the least trace of religious worship, this
worship was, on the contrary, mixed up with the most trivial acts of
life. It was even productive of melancholy consequences. _Formalism_
reigned supreme-Trusting in his religious observances, in the prayers
of his priests, and in the indulgence of his gods, the Tahitian
thought himself at liberty to do almost anything. He combined the
strongest and most simple faith with manners remarkable for their
violence and licentiousness. But does not all Europe of the Middle
Ages, and, even at the present time, do not many provinces, which in
other respects are by no means behind the age, present phenomena of a
similar nature.
Yet the Tahitians believed in another life, in rewards and punishment
after death. Their paradise, of which they gave an enticing
description, was reserved for the chiefs, and for those who had made
sufficient offerings to the gods, that is to say, to the priests. Was
not, and is not this still, the object of pious donations?
The souls of the remainder, whose life had been regular, went at
once into Po, into obscurity, a kind of _limbo_, where there seems
to have been neither pain nor pleasure of a very decided nature. But
guilty souls were condemned to undergo a certain number of times,
_a scratching of the flesh upon every bone_. Their sins expiated,
they too were admitted into Po. The Tahitians thus admit a kind of
purgatory and no hell. It should also be observed that the punishment
inflicted upon the guilty supposes a kind of materiality of the soul.
But is not this also the case with those torments which nearly all
our Christian populations still believe to be reserved for the sinner
cast into the _flames of hell_.
We find in the pantheon of the Tahitians a hierarchy equal to, but
much exceeding in number that of the Greeks and Romans. At the
lowest extremity of the scale we find innumerable _Tiis_, whose
duty it was to preside in every place over the smallest actions,
the smallest movements of the soul, even to the _wishes of day and
night_. Above the latter come the _Oromotouas_, who represented the
domestic gods, the Lares and Manes of the ancients. The _inferior
Atouas_, dwelling upon the earth, inhabiting rivers, woods,
valleys, and mountains, answer very fairly to the Fauns, Sylvans,
Dryads, Oreads, &c. Moreover, it is from among the divinities of
this class that the various professions choose their patrons. The
singers, choreographers, and doctors had four, sailors twelve, and
agriculturists thirteen. The gods of the first rank were _Atouas
properly so called_. They also were equally numerous. But nine of
them, created (_oriori_) directly by Taaroa, before the formation of
man, composed, correctly speaking, the _divine family_.
Finally, above all those divinities, stood the Supreme God. There
can be no doubt as to the conception which the Tahitians formed of
the latter. Traditions, collected at different times by different
persons, and from equally different sources, agree perfectly upon
this point. The song received by Moerenhout from the lips of a
_harepo_ began thus: “He was; Taaroa was his name; he existed in
space; no earth, no heaven, no men.” The manuscript of General
Ribourt describes him as _toïvi_, having had no parents, and existing
from time immemorial. The sacred song translated by M. Goussin begins
with the following declaration: “Taaroa the great orderer, is the
origin of the earth. Taaroa is toïvi; he has no father, no posterity.”
The Tahitians regarded this uncreated God, moreover, as almost a
pure spirit, and he was undoubtedly so in the estimation of the
more enlightened islanders. Certain traditions represent him with
_a body_; but, says General Ribourt’s manuscript, this body is
_invisible_, and further it is merely, “a shell which is frequently
renewed, and which the God loses, as a bird its feathers.” In
Moerenhout’s song, it is he who changes himself into the universe;
but “the great and sacred universe is only the shell of Taaroa.” In
that of M. Gaussin, Taaroa raises his head out of his covering, which
disappears and becomes the earth. In the magnificent dialogue, also
translated by M. Gaussin, and in which Taaroa calls, so to speak,
upon all the different parts of the universe, who in turn answer him,
it is said: “The soul of Taaroa remained God.” Unfortunately, after
the creation was finished, this God seems to have reassumed his state
of repose, and to have left to the inferior deities the government of
this world.
We see here, again, that as far as the first conception is
concerned, we are far above the Zeus of the Greeks, or the Jupiter
of the Romans. And yet who would dream of comparing the Tahitian
civilization with the civilization or the intellectual productions of
the Greeks? It is one of the many facts which show the independence
of the phenomena of the intelligence and those of the religious
feeling.
It is not in Tahiti alone that this elevated spiritualism has been
observed, though concealed under very different appearances. The rude
images, the _toos_ placed in the _moraï_ have been regarded by almost
all travellers as statues of atouas. They are, in reality, nothing
more than _tabernacles_ hollow within, and destined to receive
different objects, oblations, etc. A priest of the Sandwich Islands
told Byron that, when a child, it happened that he eat something
which had been deposited in the sacred images. Surprised and
reprimanded by his father, he excused himself by saying that he had
found out by various experiments that these gods of wood neither saw
nor heard. The old priest then said to him in a severe tone: “My son,
the wood, it is true, neither sees nor hears; but the spirit which is
above sees and hears all, and punishes wicked actions.”
Do many among ourselves draw such a clear distinction between the
_spirit_ and the _wood_?
A remarkable feature of the Tahitian religion is, that we find in
it no trace of Manicheism. They have, in fact, only _gods_, and
no _devils_. It is true that the priests spoke in the name of the
Atouas, and that the _sorcerers_, hated and feared in Tahiti as
elsewhere, addressed themselves solely to the Tiis. But the latter
were not in any way considered as antagonistic to the Atouas.
Moerenhout tells us that their images might be seen as guardians at
the entrance of the moraï and sacred enclosures.
Although not so clearly defined as those of the Tahitians, the
religious beliefs of the Algonquin and Mingwe Red-Skins are very
superior in some respects. Their _Great Spirit_, the _Michabou_ of
the Algonquins, the _Agrescoue_ of the Iroquois, is the Father of all
existing things. To him alone true worship is rendered in smoking
the sacred calumet towards the four points of the horizon and the
zenith. The Creator of all that exists, he is not so disinterested
in his work as Taaroa. He himself, or his messengers, watch over
children, and direct the events of the world. Again, it is to him,
before all others, that the Red-Skin addressed his prayers when
he asks, and his thanks when he has gained his demands. I might
here multiply examples and quotations. I shall confine myself to
reproducing in part the song of the Lenapes on the eve of their
departure for war, as it has been preserved for us by Heckewelder.
It is a national song, and of itself refutes many strange assertions
frequently made with regard to the populations who once occupied the
territory of the United States.
“Oh, poor me—who am just about to depart to fight the enemy—and know
not if I shall return—to enjoy the embraces of my children and wife.”
“Oh, poor creature—who cannot order his own life—who has no power
over his own body—but who tries to do his duty—for the happiness of
his nation.”
“Oh, thou Great Spirit above—take pity upon my children—and upon my
wife—keep them from sorrowing on my account—grant that I may succeed
in my enterprise—that I may kill my enemy—and bring back trophies of
war.”
“Give me strength and courage to fight my enemy—grant that I may
return and see my children again—see my wife and my relations—have
pity upon me and preserve my life—and I will offer to thee a
sacrifice.”
It is true that, after the Great Spirit, we find the Red-Skins
believing in an immense number of _Manitous_, one of whom, inhabiting
the centre of the earth, is a kind of demon. But these beings,
whether good or evil, although possessing an influence over the
destiny of man, have nothing of the divine character. They are
nothing more than a kind of genii, fairies, ogres, etc., more or less
resembling those mentioned in Oriental tales, and all absolutely
dependent upon the Great Spirit. The latter alone is omnipotent,
while the evil spirit is weak and his power is limited.
The belief in another life was, moreover, universal amongst these
populations. Their ideas upon the other world, the transmigration
of souls, the multiplicity of existences were vague enough; but in
several legends, collected either by the first travellers, or in the
present century by Schoolcraft, we find, given in the most explicit
manner, the doctrine of recompense promised to the good, and the
torments which await the wicked.
The Algonquins and Mingwes deserve to be regarded as monotheists
as much as any other people we can mention, much more so than the
Arabs before Mahomet. There is, moreover, no reason to think that
these spiritual beliefs were due to the exceptional intelligence
of an isolated individual who played the part of prophet after the
manner of Mahomet. They have all the characters of a spontaneous
manifestation of the instincts of the race itself. Now this fact is
the more remarkable, as these Red-Skins, almost exclusively hunters,
had scarcely advanced beyond the lowest stages of the social scale.
The Negroes of Guinea, much superior to the Algonquins and Mingwes,
from a civilized point of view, are far inferior to them in religion.
Still, to speak only of their _fetishism_, would be doing them a
great injustice. This is, in reality, only a form of superstition
more or less intimately associated with a basis of far nobler
beliefs. Here, again, the greater number of observers have stopped
at what was immediately presented to the eye; others, however,
have fortunately been found who have looked beneath these first
appearances.
Numerous evidences, too unanimous to admit of doubt, prove that from
Cape Verd to Cape Lopez the inhabitants believe in a Supreme God, who
has created all existing things. The natives of Dahomey hold that
this God is himself subject to a more elevated being, who, say these
Negroes, is perhaps the God of the Whites. In most cases, it is true,
this supreme Deity is regarded as governing the universe through
the agency of his ministers; but often, also, direct intervention is
attributed to him. Petitions, thanks, and prayers, are then addressed
to him, with the formula of some of which we are acquainted. In that
which D’Avezac received from the lips of Oche Fecoue, the Yebous
request Obbâ-el-Orum (_King of Heaven_) to preserve them from illness
and death. They add: “Orissa (_God_) give me prosperity and wisdom.”
We find that almost all the natives of Guinea, besides their _good
God_, had their _evil spirit_, also very powerful. Oblations are
offered to appease him. The Negroes often think that they see or
hear him in the night. We know too well, however, that the shores of
Guinea are not the only place where such visions have been seen in
imagination.
Then come the inferior gods, very numerous, and sometimes arranged in
a hierarchy. It is they who are sent into _Fetishes_ to watch over
and protect man. The Fetish, according to the evidence of devout
priests and Negroes, is not the _God himself_, but only the _abode of
the God_.
The natives of Guinea all believe in another life, but have very
different ideas upon this subject. In general they regard it
as almost similar to the present. Some have a confused idea of
metempsychosis, or think they are born again in a child. The Issinois
believe in the immortality of the soul, which, on leaving this earth,
is born again in another world, situated in the centre of the globe,
and _vice versa_. This is almost the _alternating life_, as conceived
by Hyppolyte Renaud, a distinguished artillery officer, and one
of those thinkers who have felt the want of an explanation of the
destiny of man.
The idea of retribution is clearly defined by many Guinean tribes.
In the opinion of many, the wise and the intelligent become the
messengers of the gods; the wicked are drowned in passing a certain
stream, and die for ever or become demons. Others hold that the souls
of those who have led evil lives go to the evil spirit, but can
be redeemed by oblations offered to the gods. Here, then, we find
the Negro possessing the idea of _purgatory_ and of _redemption_,
together with that of _hell_.
VII. I think I have said enough thoroughly to establish a fact
independent of all hypothesis, and which seems to me to be of
serious importance. It is that we often find ideas of an extremely
elevated nature, and resembling in a singular manner those which
distinguish the _great religions_, existing in the _small_, though
obscured by other notions of an inferior nature. Again, that we must
almost everywhere, probably everywhere, distinguish _religion_ from
_superstition_. But before we can, in this case, recognise the gold
in the midst of the surrounding dross, time is required, serious
study, and a mind entirely free from prejudice.
I grant that religion and superstition are often, as it were, fused
into the creeds of certain races, so that the priest and the sorcerer
are confounded in one person. But this is not always the case; and,
even where the connection forms an apparent confusion, we should
unquestionably endeavour to distinguish the two elements. Now this
task has been too often neglected in dealing with inferior races.
Here again.
I remark at each step the prejudicial influence of European
pride. The most careless writer would certainly not connect with
Christianity, as it is understood at the present day in France, the
dismal or ludicrous tales collected in the country districts by
Villemarqué, Souvestre, and others. He would place them, with all
their accompanying practices, in what may be called the _popular
mythology_. Should not also the man of science make a similar
distinction, when trying to form a true estimation of the religion,
properly so called, of barbarous or savage nations?
To those who ask how Fetishism came to be implanted in Guinea side
by side with the conception of a Supreme Being, the creator and
governor of all that exists? how northern populations could reconcile
Shamanism with the belief in that God of whom Ghengis Khan had
formed such a great and elevated idea? I ask again how the strangest
superstitions came to be accepted in former times by all Christian
sects? how it is that they still exist amongst us? True, in our
enlightened classes, neither Protestant nor Catholic would enter upon
a course of sorcery, of which there were so many instances but two or
three centuries ago, and which were so often followed by condemnation
and capital punishment. In our more remote country districts,
however, the belief in sorcery is as strong as it was universal
in the Middle Ages. The newspapers inform us from time to time of
actions, proving that, if left to themselves, these populations would
willingly burn the unfortunate victims suspected of having _told
fortunes_; protect themselves against _witchcraft_, the _evil eye_,
etc., these same populations have often had recourse to practices
strongly resembling those signalized by travellers as the proof of
inferiority in certain races. In reality, the amulets of our peasants
are identical with the _grisgris_ of the Negroes.
In all these respects and in many others, all Aryan Christians have
believed in that which we proudly reproach the Negroes and Mongols
with believing. All Christian communities have sanctioned, and
sometimes _sanctified_, these absurd superstitions.
The anthropologist, who has to do with science and not with theology,
who has to seek the pure element in the inferior religions, ought
not, on the other hand, to hesitate in pointing out that singular
admixture of alloy in the superior religions, of which I have just
quoted a familiar example.
From this double form of investigation, a general fact, to which
I have often called attention, will, I think, be established in
the minds of all, a fact which may be formulated in the following
terms; great or small, religions are principally connected by the
most elevated and the lowest element possessed by each; they are
principally separated by intermediary forms and conceptions.
VIII. The following fact has, in several instances, been remarked,
that a religion when replaced by another, leaves upon the latter
more or less evident traces. Often also, the divinities of the
former, without entirely disappearing, will undergo a singular
process of degradation, and find a place only in the region of
popular superstition. Which of our readers will not call to mind the
articles, at once so charming and so impressive, of M. Heine upon
the poor gods of the Greek and Roman Olympus, passed into legendary
characters? These representatives of classical mythology have, in
the heart of popular beliefs, become associated with Germanic and
Scandinavian divinities; but have not both had predecessors?
From Quaternary ages to the present time, many races have inhabited
Europe. None, undoubtedly, have entirely passed away. They have been
successively subjugated, and more or less absorbed. Can the beliefs
even of our most remote ancestors be entirely lost? I think not.
Undoubtedly, a portion has been forgotten, but very probable also
a large part has survived, more or less modified by the additions
of each fresh immigration. In this manner would be formed, little
by little, that popular mythology which has resisted all official
doctrines, and even found a place by their side.
What has happened in our own case cannot but have happened elsewhere.
Future research will perhaps show this to be the cause of the
common element of the religious beliefs of peoples, separated by
their different degrees of civilization, as well as by geographical
position.
IX. M. Burnouf has remarked that the _science of religion_ does not
as yet exist. This is true, especially from the point of view to
which I have just called attention. All general classification is,
then, premature. Before attempting one, let us wait till we are at
least fairly acquainted, not only with the great mass of doctrines
supported by profound metaphysics, which have been accepted by
civilized nations, but also with the simpler, more artless beliefs
which preceded them, some of which are still in existence. Then
only shall we be in a position to trace the general form and the
sub-divisions of the several manifestations of the religious faculty
common to all human beings. Then, also, we shall be in a position
to follow the development of this faculty, and to mark its stages,
by a process similar to that of the embryogenist, who studies the
different phases undergone by the same being before attaining its
state of perfection.
Such as it is however, consisting at present of isolated facts
only, or of facts merely collected into groups, the science of
religions has already acquired a marked importance in anthropology.
It leaves no doubt as to one of the fundamental characters of the
human species; it furnishes facts of so independent a nature as to
serve for the characterization of races; it reveals relations; it
adds its testimony to that of philology in throwing light upon the
filiation of certain races, in attesting the existence of ancient
communications between nations long regarded as entirely separate. In
these various aspects it should not be neglected by those who wish to
consider the natural history of man as a whole.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 16: ‘Athough the preceding’ replaced by ‘Although the preceding’.
Pg 57: ‘protruberance of the’ replaced by ‘protuberance of the’.
Pg 67: ‘Koebreuter showed’ replaced by ‘Koelreuter showed’.
Pg 85: ‘Colombus commenced’ replaced by ‘Columbus commenced’.
Pg 111: ‘recal the normal’ replaced by ‘recall the normal’.
Pg 121: ‘Claperède has only’ replaced by ‘Claparède has only’.
Pg 133: ‘in the skormoses’ replaced by ‘in the skovmoses’.
Pg 138: ‘the Eskimas are’ replaced by ‘the Esquimaux are’.
Pg 161: ‘Frabricius’ replaced by ‘Fabricius’.
Pg 185: ‘the Salomon Islands’ replaced by ‘the Solomon Islands’.
Pg 194: ‘of the Tahitans’ replaced by ‘of the Tahitians’.
Pg 207: ‘that the Alonquins’ replaced by ‘that the Algonquins’.
Pg 231: ‘the Caribean race’ replaced by ‘the Caribbean race’.
Pg 234: ‘of the Semetic’ replaced by ‘of the Semitic’.
Pg 268: ‘Giron de Buzareingue’ replaced by ‘Girou de Buzareingue’.
Pg 291: ‘discovered by Witney’ replaced by ‘discovered by Whitney’.
Pg 292: ‘sanatarium’ replaced by ‘sanitarium’.
Pg 297: ‘S. Nilson, Retzius’ replaced by ‘S. Nilsson, Retzius’.
Pg 300: ‘have, morever, only’ replaced by ‘have, moreover, only’.
Pg 325: ‘The fosail shells’ replaced by ‘The fossil shells’.
Pg 364: ‘the Kiavas, etc.’ replaced by ‘the Kiawas, etc.’.
Pg 412: ‘small brain, Haussman’ replaced by ‘small brain, Haussmann’.
Pg 442: ‘and 6/300’ replaced by ‘and 6/100’.
Pg 464: ‘the Salomon Islands’ replaced by ‘the Solomon Islands’.
Pg 489: ‘singers, chorographers’ replaced by
‘singers, choreographers’.
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