University of California Berkeley 
 
 From the papers of 
 C. HART MERRIAM 
 

publications of tfye 
 
 rf of 
 
 THE PLUEALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 
 
 POUCHET. 
 
THE PLURALITY 
 
 or 
 
 THE HUMAN RACE: 
 
 GEOKGES POUCH ET, 
 
 DOCTOR OF MEDICINE, LICENTIATE OF NATURAL SCIENCE, AIDE-NATURALIRTE IN THE MUSKUM 
 
 OF BOUEN, MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PARIS, CORRESPONDING 
 
 MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, KTO. 
 
 TRANSLATED AND EDITED, 
 
 (jFront tfye ScconU tuition), 
 
 HUGH J. C. BEAVAN, F.R.G.S., F.A.S.L., 
 
 OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PUBLISHED FOB THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY, BY 
 
 LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS, 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1864. 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 SIR EDWARD G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, BART., 
 
 M.P., D.C.L., ETC. 
 
 litfj all tfje respect 
 
 DUE TO A GREAT WRITER AND LEARNED MAN, 
 
 BY 
 
 HUGH J. C. BEAVAN, 
 
EDITOK'S PEEFACE. 
 
 A FEW words by way of preface to a book on the Plurality of 
 the Human Race are necessary as well as advisable. They are 
 especially so when the Author and Editor differ considerably in 
 their opinions, as in this case; and although it is by no means 
 a sine qua non that they should always agree, there are certain 
 points on which a few lines may be required. 
 
 The Publishing Committee of the Anthropological Society 
 of London honoured me by committing the translation and 
 editing of this book to my care, and I set about the task with 
 some diffidence, as this is probably the first work of the kind 
 which has ever been given to the English literary world in a 
 convenient and popular form. Such being the case, there will 
 sometimes be found expressions which may be thought foreign; 
 but I have preferred on these occasions giving the more literal 
 translation, instead of one which possibly might fail to convey 
 the Author's real meaning. In books containing such very 
 peculiar ideas as those of M. Pouchet, it is requisite to be 
 especially careful on this head. 
 
 Of the clever nature and terse expression of ,the work there 
 can be little doubt, but I am sorry to find in it opinions with 
 which I cannot at all agree, and in order to prove which, or 
 rather endeavour to do so, science is strained in an unnatural 
 manner. The theory of spontaneous generation is by no means 
 a new one ; but M. Pouchet can throw very little light on the 
 subject, and leaves it as before entirely unproved. The extreme 
 sceptical nature of his views is much to be regretted, and in 
 
viii EDITOK'S PEEFACE. 
 
 this especially the Author and Editor are in entire disagree- 
 ment. The former is inclined to go out of his way to bring 
 forward those views, when they were not required, and would 
 have been better left unsaid. 
 
 We have, however, a new and extremely interesting field of 
 investigation opened to us; but the more pains our author 
 takes to explain and illustrate the wonders of our physical and 
 psychological nature, the more he seems to disprove his own 
 theory of spontaneous generation. Blackmore said 
 
 " Survey 
 
 Nature's extended face, then, sceptics say, 
 In this wide field of wonders can you find 
 
 No art?" 
 
 But M. Pouchet does find art in nature ; he tells us that its 
 ways are intricate and manifold, but still that it all arises from 
 some germ spontaneously generated, he cannot say how. 
 
 With this exception, which some may think no fault at all, 
 I recommend this book heartily to the Fellows. of the Society 
 and the public generally. The clearness and even brilliancy of 
 M. Pouchet's very peculiar style are soon discoverable, and it 
 is not astonishing that his book has had a great success in 
 France. That such will be the case in its English form is my 
 sincere wish. I must thank my friend Mr. Carter Blake es- 
 pecially for many kind and valuable hints, and I need scarcely 
 say, in conclusion, that as much care as possible has been taken 
 with the translation and editing. I now commit this little 
 work to the kind consideration of the Society and the world. 
 It is for them to judge how my duties have been performed. 
 
 H. J. C. B. 
 
 London, August 30^, 1864. 
 
TO 
 
 PROFESSOR RICHARD OWEN. 
 
 SIR, I begged to be allowed to dedicate to you the first 
 edition of this essay, in remembrance of the kind hospitality I 
 formerly received from you in the cottage at Mortlake, and 
 of our long conversations, in which you were so ready with 
 good advice. 
 
 The debt of hospitality can never be repaid. I am happy to 
 be able once more to express my gratitude to you, and my 
 admiration of your great works. 
 
 GEORGES POUCHET. 
 
 Museum de Rouen , July 1st, 1864. 
 
AUTHOE'S PKEFACE. 
 
 
 I now offer to the public the second edition of a book whose 
 success has far surpassed my expectations. Received with 
 kindness by some, it has been violently attacked by others. 
 It was denounced to the highest representatives of ithe univer- 
 sity authority on which I depended, and I owed my escape 
 from the trouble which might have been drawn on me, because 
 I brought forward a scientific opinion in disagreement with 
 the books attributed to the prophet Moses, to the justice of 
 one of the most honoured members of the Institute. I owe a 
 large debt of gratitude to my illustrious protector. The mind 
 has advanced during six years, and the same troubles will not 
 be met with again. 
 
 A good many alterations will be discovered in this Second 
 Edition ; this is always the case with science. In matters of 
 imagination, when the artist has finished his work, he can 
 cast it on the world and follow his fancy in some other 
 way. If science were only composed of truths, its conditions 
 would almost be the same for its disciples ; but the seeker- 
 after truth is not a creator like an artist, he explains and 
 reflects upon a world of facts, variable at every hour, ac- 
 cording as hypotheses are changed into certainties, or certain- 
 ties of yesterday into doubtful cases of to-day. It is, then, an 
 incessant work of reparation and alteration, in order to main- 
 tain even the most modest work in harmony with the daily 
 
xii AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 progress of science ; I have made this work as perfect as was 
 in my power. I have taken great care with the list of autho- 
 rities. I have also indicated by their titles all the articles from 
 periodicals, reviews, or academic collections, to which I refer 
 the reader. I am sure that those who know what an ungrate- 
 ful task it is to search such badly catalogued libraries as most 
 of ours are, will give me credit for this part of my work. We 
 can only see the expression of science at a given moment in 
 Memoires. Books are, after all, merely a summary : they are 
 behind-hand even on the day they are published. 
 
 G. P. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EDITOR'S DEDICATION - - - . . v 
 
 EDITOR'S PREFACE - v ii 
 
 AUTHOR'S DEDICATION * I - . - ix 
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE - - - . . - xi 
 
 CONTENTS - ..... x iii 
 
 INTRODUCTION - - . . i 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 THE HUMAN KINGDOM . . 10 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY - - - . -24 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 THE ORDER OF BIMANA . . . - 38 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES - 43 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES - - - 62 
 
 CHAPTEE "VI. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE - - - . . 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY 95 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SPECIES - 108 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 SYSTEM - 134 
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS - - 153 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS - - 156 
 
THE PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 FOR a long period, in medieval days, science was to most 
 people what it was to Servetus, a simple paraphrase or 
 glossary of a revealed text. In this was the truth, and if 
 observation itself seemed sometimes contradictory, it was 
 certain that there was some mistake; it was necessary to 
 re-examine the contested question, and by dint of inquiring 
 into the facts, they were altered so wisely, that in the end they 
 always were found to agree. 
 
 All over the East, among the Semitic race,* that which 
 above all other possesses respect for authority, science still 
 lives. Without the law there is no science, and the Koran is 
 what the books of the sons of Israel and the writings of the 
 apostles were in the middle ages, the great, the only authority, 
 to which everything was referred, f 
 
 * We must here inform the reader, once for all, that we shall use, until we 
 say anything to the contrary, the word "race" to designate the different 
 natural groups of the human genus (genus Homo). We intend definitely 
 to prove that these groups constitute veritable species. M. de Quatrefages 
 has on this matter reproached us with a confusion, which is accounted for 
 partly by the incorrectness of his quotation. He makes us say, " The plu- 
 rality of original races, otherwise the plurality of the species, of the genus 
 'man'" (Unite de I'Espece Humaine, 1861, p. 309). It stands as follows in 
 our own text : " The original plurality of races, otherwise the plurality of 
 the species composing the genus ' man,' " etc. It is evident that the con- 
 fusion which is found in these words is entirely voluntary. 
 
 f One day, I was talking with one of the principal officers of Mehemet- 
 Said, at Korosko, in Nubia, about the earthquake which was felt in Lower 
 Egypt on the 12th of October, 1856. He asked me the cause of this pheno- 
 menon. I attempted an explanation suited to the understanding of a" man 
 
2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 If science has shone with a bright light in the East, this 
 was due solely to the introduction of a more human philosophy, 
 born among another race, and conveyed there by the works of 
 Aristotle and the neo-Platonists. The East was inspired for 
 an instant with these foreign doctrines, which it would have 
 been incapable of originating itself. It revived for a century 
 or two under their influence, but soon everything reverted to 
 a former state of order ; having shone in the barbarism of a 
 pure theism, whence it would never have come out without the 
 contact of a world extrinsic and superior to certain considera- 
 tions, without the momentary education which it had thus 
 received from it. 
 
 All the sciences are not in the same intimate relation with 
 the texts called revealed ; the mathesiological order is that in 
 which the sciences have had, and could have, the least to suffer 
 from religious influence ; in the first place, mathematics, which, 
 from their nature, would never have known how to yield ; and, 
 lastly, geology and anthropology, allied by intimate relations to 
 the Divine tradition of the first chapter of Genesis. But see how 
 geology, which we thought for so long a time was in agreement 
 with it, grows more distant every day as new discoveries are 
 multiplied. The pretended epochs see, day by day, that their 
 artificial limits are disappearing, now that one finds reptiles in 
 coal-fields and mammalia in Trias. 
 
 Anthropology in France seems, at last, to desire to free 
 itself from the shameful yoke which has for so long paralysed 
 its flight. In its turn it claims independence. But, we 
 would declare this, that the principle of authority, defeated on 
 so many points, has concentrated its highest efforts behind 
 this last rampart, calling to its aid the pretence of morality 
 and propriety. The question of the unity or the plurality of 
 the human race, so far as relates to species, is only a scientific 
 
 who was without the slightest knowledge of this part of scientific informa- 
 tion. He replied by telling me the history of the cow who throws the earth 
 from one horn to the other, saying, that this was written, and therefore, such 
 a belief ought to suffice him. 
 
 [With this opinion may be compared the doctrine of the Muyscas or Chib- 
 chas of New Granada, who consider that the earth is supported by Chibcha- 
 cuni, their deity, on pillars of guiacum-wood, and that earthquakes are pro- 
 duced by his shifting the burden from one shoulder to the other. EDITOR.] 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 one ; but others make of it a question of principle, as in the 
 time of Galileo, when it was a matter of overturning the ideas 
 of the old world, supported by a testimony which was not 
 allowed to be doubted. So the struggle is a sharp one ;* it is 
 felt that it refers almost to a dogma, and not merely to an 
 accessory fact. Science clashes there with religion, as is the 
 case with geology, and as formerly with astronomy ; but in no 
 way is the shock so violent, in no way can its consequences be 
 as great. Anthropology, more than any other science, ought 
 to produce immense result s.f Who does not see that the 
 abyss becomes every day deeper under the belief of the past, 
 and that science, at a given moment, will become the founda- 
 tion of more perfect morality ? 
 
 This antagonism is the first difficulty which we find at the 
 threshold of anthropology. We should have wished to have 
 entered upon our subject without being obliged, not absolutely 
 to discuss it, but merely to show the disputed point in the 
 question. Unfortunately, the example has been given us ; we 
 must follow it. Two schools are to be found in anthropology ; 
 one called that of the Polygenists, the other that of the Mono- 
 genists,{ two words which came from America, and which we 
 receive because they have the great advantage of being clear 
 and precise, determining, by the opposing point of their doc- 
 trines, two distinct schools, the one recognising but one family 
 in the human race, of which some members have alone pre- 
 served the primitive type altered everywhere else ; the other 
 school recognising no direct relationship among the races of 
 mankind. The Polygenistic school is comparatively modern ; 
 the founders of anthropology the Blumenbachs and the 
 Prichards belonged to the other. Now, if they took their stand 
 on an entirely philosophic or experimental point of view, we 
 
 * It is only necessary, in order to be sure of this fact, to glance over the 
 Bulletins de la Socie'te' d Anthropologie, the creation of which is due above all 
 to the indefatigable zeal of a partisan of the doctrines which we defend to 
 M. P. Broca. 
 
 f Anthropology is not the only branch in modern science which opens new 
 paths to the human mind: see Michelet, L'Insecte, p. 106; see also Bourdet, 
 Traite d'education positive, 1863. 
 
 J This name has been definitely adopted in France in preference to that 
 of " Unitarians" (Unitaires), used by M. de Gobineau. 
 
 B2 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 should be very badly received now-a-days if we were to recon- 
 sider the question upon a burning soil. It has not been so, how- 
 ever. Most Monogenists* have, up to the present time, done the 
 universal wrong of invoking, in proof of their ideas, an autho- 
 rity which it is not allowable to discuss. Science is neither a 
 special attribute of privileged castes, nor given to certain 
 times in preference to others ; it has never been obliged to 
 wait for a revelation; it is universal, and all men, endowed 
 with the same faculties, have always been able, in all countries 
 and at all times, to carry it as far, when they have had the 
 same means and the same occasions of observation ; it is thus 
 that psychology, based upon simple reflection, has not farther 
 progressed in our days than at Athens or at Alexandria ; from 
 Plato to Descartes there is only the distance between one 
 system and the other. 
 
 " Historians of that which is," has said the illustrious chief 
 of the philosophical school of France, Etienne Geoffroy Saint- 
 Hilaire, " we cannot fail, except when we cease to relate the 
 truth." t Now, truth in science cannot be governed except by 
 two means, reasoning after the manner of mathematics, and 
 observation, of which experiment is but a variety. Every idea 
 d priori, every hypothesis is only good if we accept it with a 
 strong determination of abandoning it if the facts are no longer 
 explicable by its means. Without this, its influence is dis- 
 
 * "All monogenists," we said in the first edition of this book. M. de 
 Quatrefages has exclaimed loudly against these words (Unite de I'Espece Hu- 
 maine, 1861, p. 299), and in the same passage has shown himself an open 
 enemy to all mingling of religion in the domain of science. We are too 
 glad of this declaration not to recall it in this place. We should be sorry not 
 to be able always to agree in these pages with the masters of science, with 
 those, indeed, who have been our own. We have been led to touch on 
 several questions already treated of by them, by following another path, 
 by looking at facts from another point of view ; therefore, there are some 
 differences of opinion. Our excuse lies in the universal right of free inquiry ; 
 for the rest, we shall always name the persons with whom we think we do 
 not agree. " Not to do so," as Bayle said, " is in some measure an excess 
 of ceremony prejudicial to the liberty which we ought to enjoy in the re- 
 public of letters; it is to introduce therein works of supererogation. It 
 should be always allowable to name those whom we disprove ; this is sufficient 
 to prevent a bitter, injurious, or dishonest spirit." Dictionnaire Philoso- 
 phique, art. Pereira, note D. 
 
 t E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has not, however, been able to free himself 
 completely from the unhappy influences which we endeavour to oppose. See 
 Comptes rendus de V Academic des Sciences, vol. iv, p. 78. 
 
INTEODUCTION. 5 
 
 astrous, let the origin of this previous idea be in ourselves or 
 in others, whether it is our own or has been imposed upon us.* 
 In starting with a preconceived idea one arrives most often, 
 in science, at false allegations, always at uncertainties. It is 
 upon reasons of this sort that some have not feared to rest the 
 theory of the unity of the human race ;f since this hypothesis 
 being accepted, they have caused, willingly or otherwise, their 
 observed facts to correspond with it. Were the generally- 
 admitted principles of classification irksome to them ? They 
 passed on ; they shut their eyes to the most profound, the 
 most positive, the most evident differences. Ought not, then, 
 unity to triumph ? What did it signify, besides, whether the 
 Negro descended from the white man, or the contrary for 
 these two opinions have been defended; for some, a few 
 generations have been sufficient to transform the fine Greek 
 blood, which gave models to Phidias and Praxiteles, into an 
 Australian aboriginal. For others, the Negroes were the true 
 representation of our first parents, that perfect work which 
 last of all left the hands of God. Lieut. -Colonel H. Smith J 
 would admit that in the beginning were created separately 
 certain groups of men, if revelation were not positive on this 
 point. We notice especially in Kaempfer a specimen of what 
 we may call orthodox ethnology, which is curious above all 
 things ; having discovered that the Japanese have nothing in 
 common with the Chinese, he decides, with a marvellous 
 assurance, that they are directly descended from the men on 
 the scaffoldings of the Tower of Babel. And as their language 
 resembles no other tongue, he draws the conclusion that their 
 
 * "It is too evident," says a modern philosopher, "that in the eyes of 
 science, which, reasoning about discoveries, makes a rule to admit nothing 
 as a theory which cannot be proved by experience, the agreement of faith 
 with reason is a chimera : to speak more exactly, such a problem does not 
 exist. The conditions of science are the observation of facts, not of 
 facts exceptionally produced, seen by chance, noted by privileged witnesses, 
 and unable to be reproduced at will ; but constant facts, placed under one's 
 hand for observation, and always able to be verified. We must consider that 
 religion can in no way submit to such exigencies, and that the faith which it 
 proclaims must be, in this light, radically inconsistent." P. J. Proudhon, De 
 la Justice, vol. ii, p. 309. See also on this subject, L. Fleury, Le Progres, 1858, 
 No. 4, p. 92. De Jouvencel, Bulletins de la Societe d'Anthropologie, May 2, 1861. 
 
 f See Bertillon, Bulletins de la Societe Anthropologie, June 18, 1863. 
 
 j The Natural History of the Human Species, 1848, p. 40. 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ancestors must have travelled very fast, so as not to have 
 become acquainted with anybody else ! * 
 
 And let no one say that it is obsolete matter to treat of 
 science. Orthodox physics and chemistry are indeed no myths. 
 M. Marcel de Serres, who has also occupied himself with 
 anthropology, speaking of the discussions which have been 
 raised between the partisans of emission and those of luminous 
 undulation, adds, that this latter theory has more chances of 
 being exact, " because the facts related by the legislator of the 
 Hebrews seem to him to be more favourable to truth." f 
 The Congregation of the Index, judging Galileo, reasoned in 
 the same way.J We arrive thus at once at the proscription of 
 certain inquiries, and we ask ourselves, How two men, so 
 eminent as Humboldt and Bonpland, could have approved 
 of such lines as the following ? " The general question of the 
 first origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond tho 
 limits prescribed to history, perhaps it may not be even a 
 philosophical question." It is true that the work in which 
 this singular declaration is to be found is dedicated to his 
 Catholic Majesty Charles IV. 
 
 Thanks to these fatal influences, thanks to the interdicts 
 with which some would have desired to stifle the natural 
 history of mankind, as if they were afraid of seeing the spark, 
 which should accomplish the ruin of the past, disappear with 
 the full light; thanks to all these obstacles, anthropology was 
 for a long time thrown into the background. 
 
 It is in America where we behold it reinstated in its rank, 
 in that country of every kind of liberty. It is there that our 
 old continent ought to go in order to find masters who have 
 known how to enter into scientific pursuits with this free and 
 
 * Kaempfer, Histoire Naturelle, etc., du Japon, Lahaye, 1729, vol. i, p. 75. 
 
 f Marcel de Serres, De I' Unite de VEspece Humaine : Bib. Univ. de Geneve, 
 new series, vol. liv, 1844, p. 145. 
 
 J " The doctrine attributed to Copernicus," said the declaration made by 
 the Pope, and published by the Holy Office, " that the earth moves round the 
 sun, and that the sun remains motionless in the centre of the world without 
 moving either to the east or to the west, is contrary to Holy Scripture, and 
 consequently, can neither be professed nor defended/' Biot, La verite sur le 
 Proces de Galilee, in the Journal des Savants, July 1858, p. 401. 
 
 Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, vol. ii, p. 79. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 independent mind which, in old times, according to Epicurus, 
 freed mankind from the yoke of superstition, and gave to in- 
 telligence the sceptre of the world. 
 
 The eighteenth century, with all its scepticism, had not 
 done little in this way ; its fault, indeed, was in this scepticism, 
 in this doubting a priori. It rejected without examination, 
 therefore its work was not lasting, and the few lines of Voltaire 
 which his good sense had written with a Polygenistic ten- 
 dency, had no influence at all.* 
 
 At present France and England walk entirely in the sci- 
 entific path opened by the American school. It is some years 
 since it was vainly .endeavoured to establish in these two 
 countries learned societies for the study of ethnology; that 
 time has passed. Now Paris and London maintain two pros- 
 perous anthropological societies. f We do not hesitate in 
 attributing the reason of this success to the profound discredit 
 in which the continued blending of matters of faith with 
 matters of science, has justly fallen. 
 
 Apart from religious influence, there is another which may 
 make itself felt as regards anthropology. We mean those 
 very honourable sentiments about equality and confraternity 
 which an honest heart will feel towards all men, whatever 
 may be their origin, whatever the colour of their skin, but of 
 which the searcher J after truth must disembarrass himself, 
 cost what it may to him as a man. Such feelings honour 
 those who are animated by them, but when they interfere with 
 science, they can only injure it. How many years, how many 
 centuries, have anatomy and medicine been obliged to wait 
 until they could take a lasting and an upward flight ! Respect 
 for the dead is doubtless a human sentiment, if any ; but it 
 used to paralyse these two branches of our knowledge ; they 
 are only possible to be learnt by profaning mortal remains 
 
 * Essai sur les Mceurs : Introd., 2. 
 
 f There is an idea of adding to the Linnean Society a new section of An- 
 thropology. See " Letter from E. W. Brayley," Medical Times and Gazette, 
 p. 491, May 10, 1862. 
 
 Alphonse Karr was the first who proposed to substitute the name of 
 " searcher" (chercheur) for that of "learned man" (savant). Nouvelles Ouepes, 
 February 1859. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 reverenced by the religions of antiquity. Physiology, rendered 
 so clear by vivisection, knows no pity ; mankind feels it, but 
 the physiologist shuts up all knowledge of it from himself; it 
 is momentarily destroyed, since it would injure any inquiry 
 into the laws of life. 
 
 It must be owned that the science which engages our atten- 
 tion has not been able entirely to disembarrass itself among us 
 of that which we may call moral propriety * It has a powerful 
 influence on certain minds, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes 
 of their free will.f 
 
 We have ourselves heard eminent professors make a noble 
 appeal to the fraternity which ought to exist among men, 
 plead in their chairs the cause of inferior races, and proclaim 
 the equality of the African people with ourselves. Such noble 
 theories were received as they ought to be, with the most 
 ardent applause. There remains only to inquire if this is 
 truly philosophical progress, and if kindness, pity, or com- 
 passion, have any value in the great balance of facts. 
 
 It was time, indeed, that a new method an independent 
 one should see the light in anthropology, as "it has already 
 done in astronomy, as it also has begun to do in geology. It 
 was time to return to the human mind its wings. Facts, 
 reasonings supported by facts, are the sole basis of every solid 
 work of every certainty in scientific matters ; it is the only 
 method which can lead us by a slow path, perhaps, but a 
 sure one to the solution of the most difficult and the most 
 obscure problems. We do not except that of the origin of 
 man. 
 
 We do not pretend to be first in the path which we here 
 point out, but we wish to express our regret at not having 
 seen it openly enough followed by all those who are worthy to 
 enter it. As for ourselves, what we have desired in this essay 
 is, first, to hold ourselves apart from all extra-scientific data 
 from all sentimental science; we have desired to treat 
 some anthropological questions as they would have done at 
 
 * See, for example, Pucheran, Considerations Anatomiques sur les Formes 
 de la tete osseuse. Paris, 1841 (Thesis). 
 
 f M. de Serree, in his Lectures on Anthropology, at the Jardin des Plantes. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 Athens, Rome, or at Alexandria a task above our powers, 
 doubtless, but which we hold ourselves bound in honour to 
 attempt. 
 
 We shall carefully, then, avoid entering into any controversy 
 touching the dogmas of one religion or the other ; we shall not 
 contest the authority of the Scriptures, whatever they may be, 
 Hebrew, Christian, Arabic, or Buddhist ; we have put them on 
 one side, and that is all.* Descartes has truly observed that 
 every scientific question ought to be examined, even those 
 which are most superstitious and most false, " so as to recog- 
 nise their just value, and to guard against being deceived by 
 them/'t One may be free to consider this essay as an attempt 
 of that kind. 
 
 We shall be praised or blamed : we have been so already. 
 We have, for our comfort, the conscientious feeling of having 
 no other object before our eyes but an inquiry into truth, 
 the truth, the common end towards which the power of every 
 man who believes in progress should tend. " Where truth 
 reigns," says M. Chevreul, "no disputes or discussions are 
 possible." J The reign of truth is the reign of concord amongst 
 mankind. It is the golden age. 
 
 * P. J. Proudhon has said, in another arrangement of facts depending on 
 social science, " Revolution is not atheistical ; it does not deny the absolute, 
 it removes it altogether" (De la Justice, vol. ii, p. 301). See, for fuller devel- 
 opment of our ideas on this subject, the Progres of the 20th of May, 1859, 
 article on Science et Religion. 
 
 f Discours sur le Methode. 
 
 J Lettres d If. Villemain sur la Mtthode, Paris, 1856, p. 3. 
 
10 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 
 
 ABOVE inorganic matter, plants, and animals, is placed 
 Man. 
 
 Here, without any doubt, man is indeed the first of the or- 
 ganisms, when one tries to place in linear series all those which 
 move on our planet. It is, also, not his relative position in 
 the living world that it is difficult to discover ; it is what we 
 may call his true place. What is, in other terms, the value of 
 the differences which separate man from other mammalia ? and 
 at what distance is he from the animal that immediately follows 
 him in this linear series which we are supposing ? To examine 
 what man is with respect to the highest orders of mammalia, 
 and in a more general manner, to animals, is the primordial 
 question which presents itself in anthropology. It seems at 
 first sight that it would suffice, in order to settle it, to throw a 
 glance on this complete body, formed of the same anatomical 
 elements, absolutely submitted to the same exigences of devel- 
 opment, nutrition, and reproduction, as animals. Ought not 
 all this to make us think that we were not altogether made of 
 so immaterial a substance as the philosophers have generally 
 been satisfied to believe ? This has not been the case. 
 
 Two systems two theories, are before us. The one pre- 
 tends that man is but the first among animals, that he is similar 
 to them in the clear and precise sense in which this term is 
 taken in geometry, designing qualities, which may differ ad 
 infinitum, but which still may be comparable. 
 
 Another system, supported by the most illustrious names, 
 makes of man a sort of special entity, differing from other 
 organised beings by the distinct and clear nature of his intelli- 
 
THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 11 
 
 gence. It is an opinion adopted and defended to the last by a 
 learned man, to whoso memory we cannot, en passant, prevent 
 ourselves from rendering the homage which is his due, Isidore 
 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. We find in the second volume of 
 his Histoire Naturelle Generate, almost a return to Carte- 
 sian ideas. According to him animals do not think, they 
 possess only that sensibility that plants have not.* And the 
 celebrated naturalist agreed with the adoption of a human 
 kingdom, appearing as the crowning-point of the organic and 
 inorganic kingdoms, f and as distinct from the second as this 
 is from the third. 
 
 Before proceeding further, we may be permitted to make 
 one preliminary remark. We may thus declare it : 
 
 PROPOSITION. Man nearly approaches the Anthropomorphous 
 Apes in his Physical Organism. Whether one is a partisan or 
 not of the " Human Kingdom," this resemblance is a fact 
 which it will be in no person's ideas to contest. And it is not 
 merely in the external forms ; we find it even greater if, going 
 to the foundation of the facts, we give our attention to the 
 essential parts composing the body, to the anatomical ele- 
 ments, to those delicate particles visible only in the micro- 
 scope, and which always show, among animals of tho same 
 group, a marvellous uniformity. 
 
 It is here where, if not an impossibility, at least a sort of 
 contradiction presents itself to the defenders of the " human 
 kingdom;" for there are two organisms, scarcely different, at 
 the service of two directing powers, of two intelligences abso- 
 lutely and radically dissimilar. Doubtless all tho forces of 
 organised matter are not known to us, but does not this 
 resemblance, though even a superficial one, surprise us ; and 
 does it not seem that every organism constituted directly by 
 reason of the influences which it is qualified to receive or to 
 
 * See those ideas categorically explained, vol. ii, p. 281. 
 
 f M. de Quatrefages admits a sidereal kingdom ; and such a thesis seems 
 to us a very difficult one to sustain, after the experiments of Bunsen and 
 Kirchoff on the chemical composition of the stars. M. de Quatrefages ad- 
 mits also a human kingdom; but admitting that animals think, he makes 
 morality and religion characteristics of this kingdom. Unite de I'Espdce Hu- 
 maine, 1861, p. 30. Wo shall have occasion to revert again to those two 
 points. See Bert., Bulletins de la Societt d' Anthropologie, August 7, 1862. 
 
12 THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 
 
 transmit, ought to vary like these influences, and in the same 
 proportion ? 
 
 It is very easy to admit that there is more distance between 
 the intelligence of man and that of the anthropomorphous 
 apes, than between the intelligence of these last and that of the 
 smooth-brained squirrel, and that at the same time the im- 
 mense distance is only marked in the first case by very 
 superficial variations of the organ of intellectual manifestations, 
 whilst, in the second case, this lesser distance is explained by 
 enormous differences. 
 
 To admit, with Bossuet,* that this superior intelligence, the 
 appanage of man, is not attached to the organs reserved for 
 the manifestations of this inferior intelligence common to man 
 and animals, is to return to Descartes, and this is to fall again 
 into new difficulties. Will this superior intelligence, thus de- 
 tached from the material world, be then inaccessible to phy- 
 sical violence ? 
 
 Whilst the finger of the physiologist or the surgeon, pressing 
 the brain, extinguishes for a moment in the animal, the 
 faculty of thinking, will human intelligence, freed from this 
 servitude, remain, in the like case, undisturbed in a higher 
 sphere? No, by the compression of the brain man loses 
 consciousness like the animal. It is material substance, which, 
 brought into contact with the anatomical elements of the 
 nervous centres, can excite, f trouble, J or depress, the in- 
 telligence of animals, and leave no part of the human intellect 
 untouched. 
 
 Let us reconsider these two systems : viz., that man is 
 similar to animals as much by his intelligence as by his bodily 
 formation; or that he differs from them entirely. And now 
 we have two clearly stated theories before us for our considera- 
 tion. To embrace either one or the other d priori, merely for 
 the sake of propriety or sentiment, would be an arbitrary 
 proceeding, essentially faulty, and contrary to all rule ; as in 
 
 * See Is. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Histoire Naturelle Generale des regnes or- 
 ganiques, vol. ii, p. 252. 
 
 f Certain essential oils, like those of coffee, tea, or hemp. 
 j Alcoholic liquors. Narcotics. 
 
THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 13 
 
 natural science, no other assistance is required except facts,An 
 order to explain the origin of anything. However, without 
 prejudging the solution of this question, let us simply examine 
 the results to which, by its nature, it may lead us. That man 
 is of himself a special entity, a kingdom, a world of his own, 
 a sort of microcosm, a whole beyond the pale of universal life, 
 may be perhaps a flattering unction to our soul;* it does 
 little or nothing for science. Anthropology may have its 
 special means of inquiry ; perhaps these means are still to be 
 found, but she will stand alone without profit to the other 
 branches of human knowledge, a dead branch which will not 
 grow, casting all its leaves. If not if man enters into the 
 common course of life if he is merely a part of one grand 
 organic whole, necessarily allied to others by a thousand points 
 of contact and intimate relations, then anthropology, fertilised 
 by the principle of universality, becomes a science by which 
 we may profit; it gives to her sisters, the other natural 
 sciences, that assistance which she herself receives from them ; 
 the paths widen ; the science of organisation becomes easier, 
 more certain, and more enlarged; synthesis, displaying its 
 powerful energies, opens to us the path of the unknown ; the 
 mind, overleaping this obstacle, pointed out by Montaigne, 
 " of not understanding" animals, will study their intelligence, 
 and will search their inmost thoughts. As for ourselves, we 
 are learning to know them, like Galen the inspired, who ob- 
 tained a knowledge of human anatomy by dissecting a monkey. 
 Let us endeavour to obtain an exact idea of this bar- 
 rier, apparently impossible to be overcome, which separates 
 man from the brute creation. Whether we compare him to 
 the highest order of primates living on trees rthis genius 
 
 * " If I am not mistaken/' says M. de Quatrefages, " there is in this result, 
 independently of the scientific consequences which may proceed from it, a 
 something which responds to our most noble aspirations. Man confers upon 
 himself dominion of his own will; he loves to proclaim himself legitimate 
 sovereign of all things on the surface of this globe ; and, in fact, no creature 
 will dare to dispute with him an empire which, day by day, extends and in- 
 creases. Well ! is it not satisfactory to behold anthropological characteristics 
 sanction and ennoble this empire by placing by the side of the right, which 
 springs from intellectual superiority, the notion of duty, which arises from 
 morality and religion? (Unite de I'Espece Humaine, p. 33.) 
 
14 THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 
 
 which is the glory of humanity, which has raised to such a 
 height both science and art or only to the last from among 
 us, members of the great family rejoicing in a white skin, then 
 the transition is brutish, and it seems that an abyss separates 
 us from the famous wild man of the woods, so celebrated in the 
 travels of the last century. It is thus that the human king- 
 dom has been established, comparing the two extremes, with- 
 out taking account of the intermediate terms. 
 
 Let us put on one side, for an instant, the question of 
 origin. A race, or a family, endowed with a characteristic 
 and united activity, by the form of mind peculiar to itself, with 
 a prepossession for reuniting in a cluster the work of every 
 individual intelligence, forms out of it a sort of thought com- 
 mon to all, and transmits this inheritance from generation to 
 generation. One can understand that, as time goes on, this 
 family, or this race, will arrive at a degree of civilisation very 
 different to that which it showed at the time of its origin. 
 The concurrence of so many intelligent modes of action will 
 gently, but naturally, lead it to purely metaphysical ideas to 
 the intricate idea of a divinity, etc. But, in such an arrange- 
 ment, each one is, after all, but the representative of a secular 
 intellectual work, accustomed since the cradle, without any 
 self-knowledge of the fact, to natural habits and language. 
 We ask if it is right to compare a being thus raised and 
 exalted by his own means with an animal which has no more 
 remote past than its own birth ? * Let us take, then, for the 
 sake of comparing them with animals, those people in whom 
 life is in some sort individual, among whom no person adds 
 anything to transmitted inheritance, among whom even this 
 inheritance has originally come from outside, and who, we 
 know not why, having arrived at the lowest ebb of civilisation, 
 have not been able to improve or perfect it. 
 
 Some may say that they simply copy everything. Some 
 may say that the huge weapons used by the inhabitants of 
 Central Africa and Australia have only become known by 
 
 * Courtet de 1'Isle has already made this remark. (Tableau Ethnographique 
 du Genre Humain, 1849, p. 8.) 
 
THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 15 
 
 importation; that the savage is civilised at a given moment 
 by contact with some foreign nation by imitation, a faculty 
 which is possessed, within well marked limits, by the highest 
 order of apes ; and then, that progress has been stopped when 
 these people return to their own homes. How can we explain 
 otherwise, for example, that the Northern Esquimaux, living 
 on the ice by the borders of creeks and bays, can make 
 dresses and arms, and have never been able to construct a 
 machine capable of bearing them upon the waters ?* 
 
 If we break up one continuous series, and compare together 
 the two first terms with two of the fragments of the series, 
 they will in reality appear entirely distinct; in fact, almost 
 impossible to be connected with one common type. But, if 
 we compare the last term of one of these partial series with 
 the first term of the following, then the differences are blended, 
 because the transformations do not happen to hide the parts 
 so much that one cannot recognise their fundamental unity. 
 We discover, for example, that in the animal series, such -a 
 crustacean is almost a mollusk, such a reptile, such a mam- 
 mal, almost a bird.f Differences are extinguished; those 
 beings which were said to be most distant have become almost 
 allied one to the other. We can only perceive one continuous 
 series; so much so, indeed, that even where there are any 
 unfilled spaces, or missing links, we consider ourselves almost 
 justified in declaring the past existence (or the future one ?) of 
 some intermediate animal. 
 
 As for ourselves, the series of beings given by Bonnet and 
 Leibnitz, so far as regards any ulterior phenomenon, resulting 
 from the observation of beings who have not been of necessity 
 created in this order, is true not only of the physical, but also 
 of the intellectual world. Shall we desire to know what man 
 has in common with the ape what distance there is between 
 the one and the other, let us no longer put ourselves on the 
 stage, we who are privileged so to do ; let us descend boldly 
 
 * See the Voyage de I'Isabelle ; also Desmoulins, Histoire Naturelle des Races 
 Humaines, 1826, p. 276. 
 
 f Cirripeds, tortoises, ornithodelphi, and generally speaking, the extreme 
 representatives of the divisions of each natural classification. 
 
16 THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 
 
 the steps of the human ladder, and let us see what we shall 
 find as we do so. 
 
 Examples are not wanting of races placed so low, that 
 they have quite naturally appeared to resemble the ape tribe. 
 These people, much nearer than ourselves to a state of nature, 
 deserve on that account every attention on the part of the 
 anthropologist and the linguist, who may both discover, by 
 their means, problems otherwise difficult or impossible to be 
 solved. It is because we have not studied the psychological 
 characters of these races, that we have fallen into such strange 
 mistakes. What will become of all those superb theories 
 concerning this superior intelligence of man, so entirely in- 
 dependent and disengaged from the world, on which so 
 much praise is conferred ? What will become of the unity of 
 the human species, if we can prove that certain races are not a 
 whit more intelligent than certain animals, and have no more 
 idea of a moral world or of religion than they themselves 
 have ? 
 
 The most commonly quoted example is that of the aborigines 
 of Australia. "They have always shown complete ignorance," 
 say both Lesson and Garnot,* " a sort of moral brutality. . . . 
 A kind of highly developed instinct for discovering the food 
 which is always difficult for them to obtain seems, among them, 
 to have taken the place of most of the moral faculties of man- 
 kind." If the English police did not watch very strictly, they 
 would set at defiance every day, at least in the towns of their 
 colonies, all the laws of public decency without any more 
 thought than the monkeys in a menagerie. 
 
 In the account given of the American Expedition in 1838, 
 Mr. Hale writes that they almost possess the stupidity of the 
 brute, that they can only count up to four, and some tribes 
 only so far as three. " The power of reasoning," he says, 
 "seems but imperfectly developed among them: The argu- 
 ments used by the colonists to convince or persuade them 
 are often such as they would use towards children or persons 
 
 * Memoire sur les Tasmaniens, sur les Alfourous, et sur les Australiens, in the 
 Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1827, vol. x, p. 155. 
 
THE HUMAN KINGDOM. J 7 
 
 who are almost idiotic."* MM. Quoy and Gaimard, whom no 
 one will accuse of polygenist tendencies, give the following 
 account of their interview with these miserable people. " Our 
 presence seemed to cause them a sort of pleasure ; and they 
 endeavoured to explain their sensations on the subject with a 
 loquacity to which we could not respond, seeing we did not 
 understand their language. After this meeting they used to 
 come to us, gesticulating and talking rapidly ; they gave shrill 
 screams, and if we answered in the same way, their delight 
 was immense. Soon there was a change, and they did not 
 hesitate to ask for something to eat, by the simple mode of 
 hitting themselves on the belty."-f The spectacle these travel- 
 lers had before them is so sad and touching that they after- 
 wards add, as , if to satisfy their own consciences, " however, 
 they are not stupid." Doubtless, they are not ; but they do 
 not seem to deserve the epithet which the world gives to these 
 beings, who appear so completely inferior to others. " Mali- 
 cious as a monkey." They are not stupid, and that is all.J 
 The Australians are not exceptional in this ; Bory de Saint 
 Vincent has drawn for us a picture of the inhabitants of South 
 Africa, a beautiful and fertile land, which is almost as sad. 
 At the other end of the world, upon that ice-continent which 
 surrounds the north pole, we find the same abjection. 
 
 Sir John Ross, lost among the ice, found himself among a race 
 of people who had never seen an European ; this English sailor, 
 a strictly religious man, was peculiarly adapted to behold with 
 indulgence the only beings who were near him, but although he 
 was an attentive and scrupulous observer, and above all, a truly 
 sincere man, he seemed to despair of finding in their minds the 
 living spark for which he was searching. " The Esquimaux," he 
 
 * Hale, Natives of Australia, etc. See American Journal of Science, second 
 series, vol. i, p. 302, May 1846 ; extract from the account of C. Wilkes' Expe- 
 dition : Narrative of the U. 8. Exploring Expedition during the years 1838-1842, 
 vol. vi, " Ethnography and Philology." 
 
 f Voyage de I' Astrolabe : Zoologie, vol. i, p. 43. 
 
 j Even after the assertions of M. de Quatrefages in the Unite des Races 
 Humaines, p. 162, and following, we have not thought ourselves justified in 
 changing our opinions on the subject of the Australians, which have lately 
 been confirmed at the Anthropological Society; a Mr. O'Rourke, an eye- 
 witness, having answered M. de Quatrefages (Bulletins de la Socitte d'An- 
 thropologie, 21 June, 1860). 
 
18 THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 
 
 says, "is an animal of prey, with no other enjoyment than 
 eating : and, guided by no principle and no reason, he de- 
 vours as long as he can, and all that he can procure, like 
 the vulture and the tiger/'* And, farther on, "The Es- 
 quimaux eats but to sleep, and sleeps but to eat again as 
 soon as he can."f We shall descend still lower, in order 
 to find out men who are so degraded, that those who have 
 seen them have stated, that if they were in thick bushes 
 or the shadows of the forest, they would hardly have known 
 whether they were apes or men. And, let attention be paid to 
 this, these wretched beings, almost deprived of human form, 
 do not inhabit a poor or secluded country, but the continent 
 of Asia, to the south of the Himalaya chain, in the centre of 
 Hindoostan, in those regions which have been the cradle of 
 several huge species of apes, at that epoch, doubtless, when 
 the islands of the Indian Archipelago were joined to Asia, and 
 formed one immense continent, the land of the Malay race. J 
 
 In 1824, an English colonist, Mr. Piddington, a settler in 
 ,the centre of Hindoostan (towards Palmow, Subhulpore, and 
 the upper basin of the Nerbudda), relates that he saw amongst 
 a party of Dhangour workmen, who came every year to 
 work on his plantation, a man and a woman who were ex- 
 tremely strange and uncouth, and whom the Dhangours them- 
 selves called monkey -people. They had a language of their 
 own. From so much as could be understood by signs, it was 
 discovered that they lived far beyond the country of the 
 Dhangours, in the forests and in the mountains, and possessed 
 few villages. It would seem that the man had fled with the 
 woman in consequence of some misfortune, perhaps a murder. 
 But at all events, they were found by the Dhangours lost in 
 the woods, exhausted, and almost dead from hunger. They 
 disappeared suddenly one night, just as Mr. Piddington had 
 
 * J. Ross, Narrative of a Second Voyage, etc., 1835, p. 448. 
 
 f J. Ross, Narrative of a Second Voyage, p. 490. 
 
 J See Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Comptes Rendus, vol. v, p. 42. [We 
 should very much like to know at what period our author imagines this to 
 have been the case, and whether he considers that these apes were the " men 
 of the day." EDITOR.] 
 
 " Memorandum on an Unknown Forest Race," etc., Journal of the Asiatic 
 Society of Bengal, 1855, vol. xxiv, p. 207. 
 
THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 19 
 
 made arrangements to send them to Calcutta. It would seem 
 from other information that a Mr. Trail, for many years Com- 
 missioner at Kuman, had also seen these extraordinary beings, 
 and had even been so fortunate as to procure one of them, whose 
 appearance fully justified the traditional name given to them 
 by the natives. In fact, other evidence 'Some of it historical 
 may be added to this in order to prove the existence of such 
 an inferior race in different parts of the Indian peninsula. Mr. 
 Piddington thus describes him: "He was short, flat-nosed, 
 had pouch-like wrinkles in semicircles round the corners of 
 the mouth and cheeks ; his arms were disproportionately long, 
 and there was a portion of reddish hair to be seen on the rusty- 
 black skin. Altogether, if crouched in a dark corner or on a 
 tree, he might have been mistaken for a large orang-utan." 
 It must be noticed that Mr. Piddington had travelled a great 
 deal, and that he had acquired, even without his own know- 
 ledge, some experience in anthropology. He takes care to tell 
 us that he had seen in their turn the Bosjesmen, the Hotten- 
 tots, the Papous, the Alfourous, the aborigines of Australia, New 
 Zealand, and the Sandwich Islands, which, indeed, gives great 
 authority to the facts which he relates.* What, we may indeed 
 exclaim, are these really men ? After journeying over the 
 beaten track, see how far we are from that Aryan family, the 
 mistress of arts and science ; how much we approach the brute, 
 even if we have not already reached that point ? We have 
 descended ; let us now raise the other mammalia to man, and 
 in the highest degree to which we can attain, let us endeavour 
 to measure the distance to the point we have just left. Let it 
 be well understood, we shall only consider in this place the 
 highest mammalia ; for the question becomes more complicated 
 on every side as soon as the difference in the organisms be- 
 comes more apparent. In regard to this, facts have often 
 spoken for a long time, and the savant, whose testimony in 
 
 * M. Ehrenberg, speaking one day of the unknown centre of Africa, said 
 to us, " that it might not be impossible to find there men so different from 
 us that we ought to make of them, willingly or unwillingly, a special group." 
 I quote these words in no way with the design of presuming that there is 
 such an order of beings ; but in order to show that the father of the naturalists 
 of Europe, the friend of Humboldt, believes in something else than the unity 
 of the human species, because he admits that a generic plurality is possible. 
 
 c2 
 
20 THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 
 
 such a case possesses most value, Professor K. Owen, lias not 
 feared to say, that the distinction between man and certain 
 primates is the great difficulty felt by all anatomists.* Let 
 us pass on to intellect. 
 
 All animals feel, understand, and think (M. Flourens and 
 M. de Quatrefages), they dream, are capable of feeling distrust, 
 fear, joy,f sorrow, jealousy, etc. ; in fact, the entire list of human 
 passions. J All this is amply proved by a thousand examples ; 
 who does not remember the accounts of seals, elephants, dogs, 
 which have become celebrated, and which men who have lived 
 a short time with animals may see repeated every day ? Only 
 read the admirable account given by Buffon of the intelligence 
 of the dog; again, the detailed and valuable history which F. 
 Cuvier has left us concerning the orang-outang in the Museum, 
 without forgetting that this history could be neither complete 
 nor perfect on account of the various circumstances in which 
 the animal was placed, far from his own country, and under an 
 ungenial sky. 
 
 Dr. Yvan, attached to the expedition which the French 
 government sent to China in 1843, has given us an ac- 
 count of an orang-outang at Borneo, which is, perhaps, the 
 best plea in favour of the connexion between primates and 
 mankind. Tuan, as this animal was called, began to dress 
 himself directly a bit of any stuff, or cloth, got in his way.|| On 
 one occasion, when his master had taken a mangrove from him, 
 ' ' he uttered plaintive cries like a child when it is sulky. This 
 
 * R. Owen, On the Characters of the Class Mammalia, 1857, p. 20, note. 
 The illustrious savant has himself treated on this subject, ex professo, in the 
 catalogue of the collection in the College of Surgeons. 
 
 f " The orang-outang is capable of a kind of laugh when pleasantly ex- 
 cited," J. Grant, "Account of the Structure of an Orang-Outang" (Edin- 
 burgh Journal of Science, vol. ix, 1828). 
 
 J Artificial love itself, with all the complexity of ideas which it is supposed 
 must thence arise, is not, as one may think, the debauchery of civilisation ; 
 it belongs to animals akin to man as well as to man himself. See Ch. Robin 
 and Beraud, Precis de la Physiologie de I'Homme, vol. ii, p. 384. It is the 
 same with impure connection, or coupling, radically inexplicable by instinct. 
 See Isidore Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Histoire Naturelle Generate des Regnes 
 Organiques, vol. iii, p. 142. 
 
 Doctor Yvan commanded the Archimedes ; he has written an account of 
 his voyage : Voyages et Recits, Brussels, 1853, 2 vols. in 12mo. 
 
 || " The Australians only wear woollen clothing in order to protect the 
 chest ; ... no idea of shame has ever led them to hide the natural parts." 
 Lesson et Garnol, Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1827, vol. x. 
 
THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 21 
 
 conduct not having been so successful as he expected, he threw 
 himself on his face upon the ground, struck the earth with his 
 fist, screamed, cried, and howled, for more than half-an-hour." 
 When the mangrove was given back to him, he threw it at the 
 head of his master.* It is a curious fact, but the particular 
 friend of Tnan was a negro from Manilla. At Manilla, he ac- 
 customed himself to Tagalf manners, and played with the 
 children. " One day, when Tuan was rolling on some matting 
 with a little girl, about four or five years old, he stopped all of 
 a sudden, and examined the child in a most minute and ana- 
 tomical manner. The results of his investigations seemed to 
 astonish him profoundly ; he retired on one side, and repeated 
 upon himself the same examination which he had made on his 
 little playmate/' We may all remember the eloquent pages 
 in Buffon, where, admitting the Adamic legend, he recounts 
 the impressions of our first parents. Has not nature been 
 here, we ask, a better historian than our naturalist, even with 
 all his genius ? 
 
 Over and above these facts, as their crowning-point, we 
 must invoke as a witness the man who has carried farthest the 
 spirit of philosophy in the natural sciences in France, Etienne 
 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. A cautious and profound observer, he 
 mingled with the crowd which the orang drew to the Museum 
 in 1836. Mistrusting his own judgment, he gathered the 
 opinions of all those who surrounded him, of all the visitors 
 who, as he said, " came to observe as unprejudiced spectators, 
 without any preconceived ideas, and without being hindered 
 by those deplorable trammels which we call our rules of clas- 
 sification. " J The result surprised even Etienne Geoffroy him- 
 self. These visitors, so different one from the other, all united 
 in this idea, " that the animal from Sumatra was neither a man 
 
 * The orang observed by J. Grant also showed these signs of desperation ; 
 " he poured it (a saucer) angrily out on the floor, whined in a peculiar man- 
 ner, and threw himself passionately on his back on the ground, striking his 
 breast and paunch with his palms, and giving a kind of reiterated croak." 
 " Account of the Structure of an Orang-Outang," Edinburgh Journal of 
 Science, vol. ix, p. 11. [The same demonstration of feeling was showed by 
 the orangs in the Zoological Gardens, May 1864. EDITOR.] 
 f [Tagal, a chief town of Java. EDITOR.] 
 j Comptes Rendus de V Academic des Sciences, vol. ii, p. 582. 
 
22 THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 
 
 nor an ape : neither one nor the other, that was what the mind 
 of each person at once acknowledged." 
 
 We might quote whole pages from this naturalist philosopher 
 in which the elevation of his style strives with the grandeur of 
 his ideas. " I never used my self-love," he says, " in bringing 
 forward other opinions against those of the visitors to the 
 orang-outang ... I never drove back the torrent of information 
 which I had the happiness of receiving from each separate 
 mind. ... I have faith in the soundness of popular opinions, 
 the masses rejoicing in an instinctive good sense which makes 
 them clear-headed, and renders them peculiarly able to seize 
 the salient point of any question." This was an excellent 
 method, and showed the power of Etienne Geoffroy Saint- 
 Hilaire. 
 
 It is curious to compare with him another writer who, from 
 within his study, invoked upon these questions, at least, that 
 which we may call universal acquiescence, it is Maupertuis. 
 Speaking of the characteristics which make man different from 
 animals, he says, " Simple good sense seizes these differences ; 
 they have always been felt, and there we behold one of those 
 convictions which the universality and uniformity of all men 
 characterise as the truth."* 
 
 Maupertuis did not certainly know that the orang-outang, 
 a word which means wild-man, -r-\$ no metaphor for the inhabit- 
 ants of the Indian Archipelago, and that in the country inhabited 
 by the " long-nosed" Guenon,f the popular belief is that, being 
 sharper than the others, he only keeps silent in order to pre- 
 serve his liberty. Nothing can be more fallacious than these 
 pretended truths, sustained merely by universal acquiescence. 
 At first it was invoked as a proof, at a time when scarcely one- 
 tenth of the inhabited world was known : J but let us proceed. 
 In our own day, we know a little better what to make of this 
 kind of proof, which science has abandoned to theologians. Ex- 
 perience has proved, day by day, what will become of this pre- 
 
 * Essai Philosophique sur I'dme des betes, 1728, p. 132. 
 
 f [Guenon, the Simia nasalis of Buffon. EDITOR.] 
 
 j Plato, Leges, x, 1. See Maury, Religions, vol. iii, p. 4, note 2. 
 
THE HUMAN KINGDOM. 23 
 
 tended universality among mankind, of certain thoughts, cer- 
 tain sentiments, and certain aspirations.* 
 
 We shall see, farther on, that the community of some of 
 those intellectual manifestations, which many have wished to 
 regard as general, is often restricted to one race alone amongst 
 mankind, and limited in space by the boundaries of the con- 
 tinent occupied by this race. And now we see how anthropo- 
 logy in her turn, can, in all these points, assist even philosophy 
 itself. For example, do we not feel that, from henceforward, 
 the words beautiful and right can mean nothing absolute ; since 
 whatever is beautiful and right upon a hemisphere, for any 
 given intelligence, cannot be so in an opposite hemisphere, 
 cannot possibly be so in a mind otherwise formed and belonging 
 to another race. To these two words we must, by means of 
 anthropology, restore an exclusively relative value, f The True 
 alone is absolute, unchangeable in both time and space. That 
 alone reigns universally, and let us not forget this, it flourishes 
 in science alone, it is only to be found there. J 
 
 * After having said that the idea of good and evil (moralite) exists among 
 all men, M. de Quatrefages adds, that " the notion of the Divinity and that 
 of another life are also generally diffused" (UniU de I'Espece Humaine, p. 23). 
 We shall demonstrate further on (chap, v) that this statement is incorrect, 
 and how fragile the bases are upon which M. de Quatrefages rests the funda- 
 mental characteristics which, according to him, distinguish the human 
 kingdom. 
 
 f M. Chevreul has already defined the " Beautiful" as " the expression of 
 causes whose influence has most force in moving mankind by appealing to 
 their senses" (Lettres d M. Villemain sur la Methode, 1856, p. 169). 
 
 j- |- Truth lies at the bottom of a well," is an old saying, but our author 
 does not seem to agree with it. We should be very sorry to think that truth 
 was only to be found in science. This is, doubtless, the opinion of a great 
 many learned men at the present day ; but we must candidly own we do not 
 agree with it, and certainly are not able to endorse M. Pouchet's sentiment. 
 We have ourselves not arrived at the point, and in this we are, doubtless, 
 old-fashioned, of referring everything to "reason,," as opposed to faith. 
 EDITOR.] 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 COMPAEATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 ON one occasion, two monkeys were brought into the presence 
 of the orang described by Grant, about which we spoke in the 
 last chapter. They were led by a chain up to the animal, and 
 were threatened with a stick. " Daring the whole interview," 
 says our informant, " the grave commanding attitude and 
 bearing of the orang, compared to the levity and apparent 
 sense of inferiority of the monkeys, was very striking, and it 
 was impossible not to feel that he was a creature of a much 
 more elevated order and capacity.* 
 
 " The animal from Sumatra is neither a man nor an ape," 
 said the crowd before the orang at the Museum. The commu- 
 nications which were then made to the Institute by Etienne 
 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire may be, one of these days, a new triumph 
 for him, the forerunner of a science which is not yet in exist- 
 ence, the study of intellect in animals, based upon observation 
 and experience ; as for instance, in the passage where he pro- 
 poses to submit the orang to a methodical education, in order 
 to study the modifications which would be caused by such an 
 alteration of method.f He who has discovered organic unity, 
 will have placed us in the way of a discovery not less important, 
 that of psychological unity .J A new science, which would 
 
 * Edinburgh Journal of Science, 1828, vol. ix, p. 10. 
 
 f Comptes Rendus de I'Academie des Sciences, vol. iii, p. 29. 
 
 | We can compare this passage from the naturalist philosopher with the 
 other quotations we made farther back. "Females are extremely curious 
 about this spectacle (the fondness of a " mother" monkey for her young one), 
 and doubtless their attention is caused by discovering therein a true mani- 
 festation of the feelings they have themselves experienced as mothers ; they 
 are, above all things, astonished to recognise in these ardent attentions the 
 
COMPAKATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 25 
 
 only date from the time of the reaction against Cartesian ideas, 
 a science still without a name, merely touched upon even 
 by great minds which have the inestimable privilege of un- 
 derstanding everything; it has never been studied, never 
 thoroughly investigated, never submitted to all our means 
 of information.* We should call it Comparative Psychology. 
 
 We should, then, re-enter into one great Unity. The intellect 
 of vertebrate animals would be identical, as their organism is 
 identical; thus gradually descending, passing through the orang, 
 from man himself to all the mammalia. It may be said that 
 these propositions are not yet proved, at least it will be 
 allowed, seeing what has passed during a very few years, that 
 the last word has not yet been said concerning the intellect of 
 animals. 
 
 Has this question, then, made so much progress, either to 
 the profit of animals or the detriment of mankind, that we 
 should wish to stop it, when it has started already on so 
 straight a path? Saint Chrysostom reproached the Gentile 
 philosopher, it is said, with having always been inclined to 
 assimilate that which they called the soul of animals with that 
 of man himself. t The opinion of these Gentiles, nevertheless, 
 is worth the trouble of being noticed. They were as well able 
 to observe animals as ourselves. Since then, the means of 
 study, as applied to intellect, have made little or no progress ; 
 observation and reflection are still the same ; we have found 
 no new process, no new method, by which we can more pro- 
 foundly examine into this subject ; we have, then, no reason 
 to think that the solutions given by ourselves upon this point 
 are at all preferable to those of the ancients. It may be rather 
 the contrary. For their opinion has this much in its favour, 
 that it was born free, in minds which did not restrain, even 
 unwittingly, any new influence or theory which might be 
 
 joy and pride of maternity, of which they believed themselves alone" to be 
 susceptible" (E. G-eoffroy Saint- Hilaire, Cours d'Histoire Naturelle des Mam- 
 miferes, Paris, 1829, vol. i; Lesson, vi, p. 16). 
 
 * Proudhon has already laid down as a principle the establishment of a 
 psychology among animals (De la Justice, vol. ii, p. 279). Frederick Cuvier 
 has done the same. 
 
 f Horn, iv in Acta Apostolorum. See Eechtenbach, De Sermone Brutorum, 
 Erfurt, 1706, p. 1. 
 
26 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 brought forward.* The idea of the intellectual gradation 
 from man to animals must have been necessarily offensive to 
 Christianity, which promised a future existence ; it was not so 
 for these Gentiles, who were much more occupied with matters 
 of the world. f 
 
 The principles which we are endeavouring to revive are not, 
 however, completely those of Aristotle. In his treatise on the 
 soul he admits this gradation, but as presenting in each degree 
 a new manifestation beyond the manifestations existing in the 
 inferior degrees. The principle of the soul is unity ; but as 
 we reascend the series, from plants to man, it invests itself 
 with a greatly increased number of faculties. Porphyrius, re- 
 suming the ideas of the Stagyrite, seems to go even further, 
 and to approach nearer the truth; it is not faculties joined one 
 to another that he recognises in man and animals, but the 
 same in all, only more or less developed. J 
 
 At the present day, if we have not returned to the ideas of 
 Pythagoras and the Stoics, at least w'e are very far from Pereira 
 and Descartes, with their animal machines, hydraulic-pneumatic 
 machines, as one of the partisans of the Bre'ton philosopher 
 (J. H. Crocius) calls them. 
 
 * Sometimes this restraint is openly avowed ; and we see M. Maire, who 
 is also engaged upon the same questions, admit that, without these influences, 
 he would embrace the same ideas that we are endeavouring to bring forward. 
 " Let us frankly avow," he says, " if we had not continually before our minds 
 the doctrines of a religion which we respect, if we had not a sincere faith, 
 this intuitive belief which tells us we must make a mistake, we should dare 
 to write thus. The more the organisation of the animal is perfected, the 
 more the spiritual element produced by the action of the various functions 
 is itself perfected. . . . There would then be only a hierarchical gradation of 
 one and the same principle. The psychical fluid would be always the same 
 in all individuals. The difference in its manifestations would refer to the 
 difference in the organisations which produce them" (Sodttt Havraise d' Etudes 
 Diverses, p. 109, 1855-1856. 
 
 f [We cannot exactly see why it must necessarily have been offensive to 
 Christianity. There is nothing injurious to religion in the theory of intel- 
 lectual gradation. EDITOR.] 
 
 J Jam vero nobis ostendendum est earn (bestia) habere rationem internam 
 et intus conceptam. Videtur sane a nostra differre, non essentia sed gradu. 
 Uti nonnulli existimant Deorum a nostra discrepare rationem, non differ- 
 entia essentiali, sed quod illorum magis, nostra minus sit accurata. Et qui- 
 dem quod ad sensum attinet et reliquam, turn instrumentorum sensus, turn 
 carnis universae, conformationem attinet, earn eodem nobiscum modo se 
 habere in animalibus, ab omnibus fere conceditur. Porphyrius, transl. by 
 Holsteinius, De Abstinentia, 1655, p. 108. Is not unity of composition here 
 conjectured, both for the intellect and the body ? 
 
 Disquisitio de Anima Brutorum, Bremae, 1676. 
 
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 27 
 
 We are really astonished at the infatuation for the opinions 
 of Descartes which took possession of Germany during the 
 latter half of the seventeenth century. They were pushed to 
 the extreme point, soul, reason, and intellect were denied to 
 all animals. A person named Stahl,* who had at least the 
 merit of being consistent to the last, brings forward a principle, 
 that animals do not feel, bruta non sentire. This announce- 
 ment is the conclusion of a very learned syllogism, and which 
 one Glaspard Laugenhert had added to the Compendium Phy- 
 sicce of Arnold Geulinx. 
 
 It is with much trouble that some strong minds have dared 
 to raise their voices in this Cartesian concert, having taken 
 good care to strengthen themselves by plenty of quotations 
 gathered from the Old and New Testament s.f These were 
 then proofs positive, and at times it was prudent to use them. 
 The side of the animals has been successively strengthened by 
 Buffon, and indeed by everybody. At the present day, M. 
 Flourens refuses them thought alone, " this supreme faculty 
 which the mind of man possesses, so that it may rely upon 
 itself, and study its own mind.J There is here," says the 
 physiologist of whom we are speaking, " a strong line of de- 
 marcation ; this thought which can reason about itself, this 
 intellect which beholds and studies itself, this knowledge 
 which is acquainted with itself, evidently forms an order of 
 determined phenomena of a clearly defined nature, and to 
 which no animal would know how to attain. There is a purely 
 intellectual world, if we may say so, and this world belongs only 
 to man. In one word, animals feel, understand, think ; but man 
 
 * Logicce Brutorum, Hamburg, 1697. This little treatise, in spite of the 
 extreme ideas of its author, is not the less precious. J. Stahl was one of 
 those wells of learning which Germany has so often produced. There is, 
 perhaps, not one passage in the old authors who wrote on this point to which 
 he has not referred in his work. 
 
 f See, among others, S. Gros, De Animd Brutorum, Wittemberg, 1680; 
 Klemnius, De Animd Brutorum, Vittembergise, 1704. 
 
 $ Upon this point, M. de Quatrefages agrees with M. Flourens ; but the 
 distinction which he endeavours to establish, being based upon morality and 
 religion, seems to us much more restricted and much less clear. Not being 
 able to answer everybody, we have been obliged to attend merely to the 
 opinions of that partisan of the Iranian kingdom who gives to animals the 
 largest portion of it. 
 
*28 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 is the only one among all created beings to whom the power 
 has been given of feeling that he feels, of knowing that he un- 
 derstands, and of thinking that he has the power of thinking."* 
 
 Such is the only difference. The question is now reduced 
 to a more limited field than it has ever been before, and infi- 
 nitely less vast. The thing which would be wanting in animals 
 is a kind of internal knowledge ; not the knowledge of oneself 
 (they know this since they feel) but the scientific knowledge of 
 oneself, which can bring reflecting and reasoning study to bear 
 on all the interior phenomena which may occur to each. We 
 desire fully that this may be a distinction, but solely a second- 
 ary one, and able at most to make certain races of men differ 
 one from the other. In fact, if we form an absolute and fun- 
 damental character of humanity out of this faculty, this power 
 of investigation into an interior world, we ought to find it in a 
 powerful manner among all men. It will resist every other 
 influence, it will be permanent, since, this being destroyed, 
 man would be no longer a man, and would be lowered by this 
 fact to the rank whence he is said to have come. 
 
 And do we consider that it may possibly be so ? Does this 
 reflected knowledge of oneself exist among inferior races, if 
 it does not exist among animals ? Certainly we shall never 
 maintain that these last enjoy such a faculty, the source of all 
 our legislation, and that which has made us what we are. 
 But we ask if it is well proved whether all human races possess 
 it. If we do not allow innate ideas to the orang, as F. Cuvierf 
 would do, be it so, but let it be remembered that certain phi- 
 losophers have refused them to man himself. We ourselves 
 agree that an animal has no abstract notion of right or duty, 
 or any idea of a divinity, J but it must also be remembered that 
 certain people have not even a word for the purpose of expressing 
 these things, and it is M. de Quatrefages himself who avows it. 
 
 We refer these persons to the following account of animal 
 
 * Proudhon says, in language which is even more concise and affirmative, 
 " In man, the mind knows itself; whilst elsewhere it seems to us that it does 
 not do so" (Systeme des Contradictions economiques, vol. i, 1850, p. 20). 
 
 f Annales du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, vol. xvi, p. 58. 
 
 j Maire, Societe Havraise d' Etudes Diver ses, 1855-1856. 
 
 Unite de I'Espcce Humaine, 1861, p. 24. 
 
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 29 
 
 economy, and we think that they will not deny their application 
 to various African and Oceanic tribes. ee Ideas, abstract ideas, 
 arise from their own domain ; the past, that which preceded 
 their birth ; the future, that which will follow their death, does 
 not occupy their attention ; the present is their only business 
 in life. They do not demand ' Whence do I come ? What am 
 I ? Where am I going ? And they have no idea whatsoever of 
 a Divinity/"* Bayle, Maupertuis,f andM. Flourens have, one 
 after another, declared how difficult it is to fix a limit, to say 
 where the intellect of animals ceases, and where that of man 
 commences. That limit escapes even ourselves ; whilst separ- 
 ating two terms specifically distinct we only see one continued 
 line from the other vertebrate animals to mankind, without any 
 clearly defined demarcation, the organism only of one mam- 
 mifer as separated by an unbroken limit from the organism 
 of another. It is a chain of which the links, if we wish, 
 may go on increasing from one extremity to the other, follow- 
 ing a given progression, but without ceasing to be like, and 
 consequently comparable amongst themselves. A certain 
 number of links may be wanting, but the mind re-establishes 
 them, and the continuity, although an abstraction, is not the 
 less real. It is even, if we may say so, the track of a hyper- 
 bolic curve, interrupted here and there, of which only the arcs 
 remain, quite different, and all, however, reducible by the mind 
 to one and the same system. 
 
 Unity of composition is the condition of all harmony, the 
 necessary rule of nature. As to ourselves, we only see every- 
 where the same faculties, extended and developed among the 
 superior vertebrate animals ; having even acquired among 
 mankind the singular property of aggrandising -itself almost ad 
 infinitum, confined among other vertebrata, enclosed in a small 
 circle, where they can even escape our own means of knowledge. 
 
 But there is everywhere the same nature, everywhere things 
 are alike. Life is unity ; we do not share it one with another ; 
 
 * Maire, Society Havraise d' Etudes Diverses, 1855-1856. We can make the 
 same comparison with a passage almost similar from Maupertuis, Essai Phi- 
 losophique sur I' fane des Betes, 1728, p. 134. 
 
 f Essai Philosophique sur VCcnie des B&tes, 1728, p. 95. 
 
30 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 both, the life of the body and the life of intellect, both matter 
 and the mind, and the organism and the faculties,* belong to 
 each one separately. Terms correlative one to the other, never 
 independent. There is an immense space between the intel- 
 lect of animals and that of a civilised European ; we will- 
 ingly recognise this, but encumbered by mean terms and nu- 
 merous transitions ; that these latter exist, or that they have 
 finished their time upon our planet, we also allow. The question 
 of language, so confused, and so full of obscurity, still remains. 
 
 " Whatever resemblance there may be between the Hottentot 
 and the monkey," says Buffon, " the distance which separates 
 them is immense, since internally it is filled by thought and 
 outwardly by speech. "f We know how to consider the first of 
 these appreciations. As to the second, let us see if we shall 
 not there perceive a sort of gradation which would insensibly 
 lead us from our own complicated languages to others of a 
 much greater simplicity, so much so that they can scarcely be 
 called by that name. Speech and language are two words 
 often confounded, but in science we must give to each of them 
 its own value. Speech is a language articulated by the respira- 
 tory channels. Language may be defined as "everything 
 spoken by well known and understood means between two in- 
 tellects." It may be seen that we give the fullest acceptation 
 possible to this word. It is a language that the Abbe de PEpee 
 invented for the deaf and dumb. The writing of this language 
 is another. A phonetic telegram is, as regards a stranger, 
 merely a succession of sounds, like the song of a nightingale ; 
 a naval telegram is only an assemblage and a combination 
 of colours like an arabesque, united the moment when the 
 necessary arrangement forms these sounds or these colours into 
 language, t 
 
 Speech alone being the habitual and natural language of 
 mankind, endowed otherwise with special organic specifica- 
 
 * See 1L Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Comptes Rendus des Seances de I' Academic 
 des Sciences, vol. iv, p. 261. 
 
 f See Flourens, Histoire des Travaux de Buffon, 1844, p. 135. Descartes 
 made use of the absence of speech in animals as a strong argument against 
 them. 
 
 J See Gratiolet, Bulletins de la Soc. d' Anthropologie de Paris, 18 April, 1861. 
 
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 31 
 
 tions in order to produce it, we have been generally led to con- 
 found these two distinct things in speaking of mankind, viz., 
 speech and language. This being allowed, the first question 
 which we have to examine is this, " Has man always possessed 
 the faculty of speech ?" A difficult question, but one which 
 we have no right to proclaim as impossible to be solved, which 
 is, perhaps, not the case, and of which the difficulty belongs 
 principally to the very imperfect knowledge which we possess 
 concerning the distant epoch which saw mankind in his cradle.* 
 Let us first of all remember that man has, in common with 
 animals, voice, cries, natural inflections (M. Flourens), that 
 which we otherwise call natural language. " Like a simple 
 animal," says Herder/)* " man possesses the faculty of speech. 
 All the most violent and painful sensations of his body, as well 
 as the strong passions of his mind, are manifested immediately 
 by cries or inflections of the voice, by natural and inarticulate 
 sounds. The animal which suffers as well as the hero Philoc- 
 tetes when it feels sorrow will moan and sigh, even when 
 abandoned in a desert island, far from the sight of any friendly 
 creature, without any hope of succour." This language is in- 
 telligible between all animals, between animals and ourselves, 
 and between ourselves and animals. We may affirm that man 
 possesses it always, from the first hour of his birth. As to 
 articulated language, as artificial language has been called in 
 opposition to the preceding, the question is much more con- 
 fused and much less clearly defined. 
 
 We think with Steinthal, with Jacob Grimm, J and with M. 
 Renan, that language is not innate in man, that is to say, it 
 is not, as the Buddhist philosophy has already declared, a ne- 
 cessary consequence of active intelligence. || Further, it has 
 
 * See J. Grimm, De I'Origine du Langage, transl., 1859, p. 53. 
 
 f Traite de I' Origine du Langage, Engl. transl., 1827, p. 6. 
 
 J De I'Origine du Langage, transl., 1859. 
 
 De I'Origine du Langage, 2nd edit., 1858. 
 
 || It is by tracing, according to custom, effects to their causes, that the 
 Buddhist philosophy arrives at the principles of joint responsibility, which, 
 according to it, unites reason to language, making them mutually flow one 
 from the other. " Name and form have as a cause, intellect, and intellect 
 has for a cause, name and form. See Burnouf, Le Lotus de la bonne loi, p. 550. 
 Mercurius Trismegistus, in the Pimander (Pimander, De sapientid et potestate 
 Dei), says almost the same thing: " Speech is the sister of intellect; intel- 
 
32 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 not been revealed this theory does not even deserve the honour 
 of having been opposed by Jacob Grimm.* But we may admit 
 that language is, if not a necessity, a least a direct consequence 
 of an intellect such as existed amongst mankind at the time, 
 whether long or short we know not, which preceded the ap- 
 pearance of language.* " The moment," says M. Eenan, sta- 
 ting the theories of Steinthal,f " that language arises from the 
 human soul and appears in the light of day and constitutes an 
 epoch in the development of the life of the mind, is the mo- 
 ment when intuition is changed into idea. Things appear first 
 to the mind in the complexity of the real, abstraction is un- 
 known to the primitive man." Here, then, are two well-cha- 
 racterised modes, two ways of being, entirely different from the 
 intellect of man. The one, where this intellect only possesses 
 intuition, the other where analysis sees the light, where the 
 mind is abstracted, and where, by a mechanism more or less 
 complicated, but at the same time by a real work,J it ends by 
 calling every abstraction of mind by a name; then he speaks. 
 But before the time when this revolution is accomplished, the 
 state of man is completely comparable to that in which animals 
 are placed. They have caught at certain relations by means of 
 their intelligence, without usually feeling any necessity for ex- 
 plaining them, a relation of a much more elevated order of 
 beings, for it has been truly remarked, and it must not be 
 forgotten, that the capital act of language is to " wish to 
 speak." 
 
 We have seen that certain abstract ideas, by reason of their 
 nature, were so entirely foreign to certain races of men, that 
 their intellects had never wished for a word in order to express 
 them. Well, if other ideas, expressing much more simple re- 
 lations, have escaped animals, there is only, in fact, a gradation 
 corresponding to what we have just said concerning intellec- 
 
 lect is the sister of language." See Rechtenbach, De Sermone Brutorum, 
 1706, p. 2. 
 
 * See De I'Origine du Langage, transl., 1859. 
 
 f De I'Origine du Langage, 1858, p. 31, 
 
 J See Jacob Grimm, De I'Origine du Langage, transl., 1859, p. 29. 
 
 Father Pardies (S. J.), in a work, otherwise of no great value, Discov.rs 
 de la Connaissance des Betes, 1672, p. 39. 
 
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 33 
 
 tual phenomena among the human race. As for the specific 
 difference which some have tried to establish under this head 
 between man and animals,, if it were correct it must be shown 
 that language is completely unattainable by any mammalia, 
 even within the most restricted limits. 
 
 And is it so ? Will it be mooted that certain animals have 
 not even a rudiment of language, whether articulated or not 
 it does not much signify, in their state of nature ? Will it be 
 mooted that they never make any sort of sign in order to com- 
 municate anything to one another, to call them, or give an 
 alarm, or express some peculiar sensation ?* 
 
 Experience would entirely deny any such assertion. And this 
 not only with reference to the superior animals, for this faculty 
 appears to be extended even to the invertebrata. The well-known 
 experiments of P. Huber seem to have proved in the most deci- 
 sive manner that ants,f like bees, are able to transmit certain 
 signs or indications from one to the other ; even if the mere 
 act of living in a republic, of joining together in one common 
 work, did not offer the strongest presumption of a language 
 peculiar to these creatures. If anyone dares to deny to animals 
 the spontaneous exercise of a restricted language, limited in 
 whatever way that may be desired, at least it cannot be denied 
 that many of the vertebrate animals are not capable of receiving 
 from it an equal education, of understanding the signification of 
 certain sounds, of certain signs, and of producing in their turn 
 such as may be understood by us, of communicating to us any 
 of their thoughts, or any of their appreciations. 
 
 We are not speaking here of animals who can reproduce 
 certain sounds belonging to the vocal organs of man ; that is a 
 fact of an entirely material character, and which has no refer- 
 ence to the question of language. It is evident that the animal 
 which articulates any word whatsoever does not understand it 
 a whit more than the man who imitates the cry of an animal, 
 and, in a general way, neither comprehends its sense nor its sig- 
 nification. 
 
 * Eecherches sur les mceurs defourmis indigenes, Geneve, 1810. 
 f We refer our readers for all these questions to the remarkable works of 
 M. Toussenel. 
 
34 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 Maupertuis alleges* that if animals were capable of under- 
 standing we could teach them to make themselves understood 
 by other signs in default of a voice. A strange aberration of 
 intellect for such a studious and learned man. This is the man 
 who makes an impossibility out of an everyday occurrence ; 
 for, first of all, most animals have some sort of voice, and if 
 they had it not, there are few persons who are ignorant of the 
 way in which certain mute dogs make themselves understood 
 when they particularly desire it. What would really be absurd 
 would be the hope of imparting ideas to animals, matters relat- 
 ing, indeed, to a higher order, since we see that even all men 
 are not capable of grasping them. Man has been able to train 
 animals, and to train implies precisely the idea of communicat- 
 ing a thought from man to an animal, and from the animal to 
 man. " Jump," says the shepherd to his dog, and the dog 
 knows that this vocal articulation orders him to make a given 
 muscular effort. The man has spoken to the dog. During the 
 night some one opens the gate of the farm-yard, and the 
 watch-dog barks ; he thus tells his master that something un- 
 usual is happening, f 
 
 That which proves besides that the barking of the dog is 
 merely a conventional sign, an artificial language, so to say, is 
 the fact, that in certain countries the dogs do not bark ; 
 jackals and wolves learn how to bark when in company with 
 the dogs who can talk in this manner, and that the same dogs 
 lose the power, or rather the habit of barking, if they return to 
 a savage state.J 
 
 We have already spoken of those inferior races which seem 
 to have borrowed from their better endowed neighbours a ru- 
 diment of civilisation, which, for a long time they did not know 
 
 * Essai Philosophique sur I'&me des Betes, 1728, p. 217. 
 
 f It may be seen, in analysing these two simple facts, that they lead us to 
 admit the existence of a notion of duty among animals, although, perhaps, 
 an obscure one : they know that they ought to act as they are doing from 
 fear of a whipping, and this is an operation of the mind which no one, we 
 think, will deny to be complex in its nature, and purely intellectual. 
 
 Isid. G-eoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Histoire Naturelle Generale, vol. iii, 1860, p. 
 114. M. Roulin has remarked, that there is something analogous in this as 
 regards the cat, which loses, in the savage state, those troublesome mewings 
 which we hear so often during the night from the European race. Memoires 
 du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, vol. xvii. 
 
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 35 
 
 how to develope in any way. Does it not seem that there is 
 here some comparison with what has just been stated ? that 
 under a civilising influence,, in contact with a superior being, 
 the dog has learnt a language ; but that not understanding its 
 general application (a more complex, and more highly elevated 
 idea), he has not known how to transmit the use of it to his own 
 race, or has himself forgotten it, from not having any occasion 
 to exercise this power ?* 
 
 The language of animals is still a question full of obscurity, 
 but which may eventually, we believe, become fruitful in new 
 facts.f 
 
 If Apollonius of Tyana and the ancient philosophers did 
 not understand the language of animals so well as has some- 
 times been believed, at least they did not do wrong in directing 
 their inquiries towards this matter. We have no doubt but 
 that in carefully studying animals, we shall arrive at a scientific 
 explanation of this well-known truth, recognised by all those 
 who live with them j which is that they can understand us, 
 that they make themselves understood by us, and that they 
 understood one another within certain limits. J 
 
 For a long time it was believed that intellect and thought 
 belong to man alone, and that he had only organic instinct in 
 common with animals. This opinion tends each day towards 
 
 * It is because there is a sort of capability for education in the animal, 
 and indeed in the whole of his race, placed under certain circumstances ; it 
 is because, on the other hand, we refuse to certain human races the " initia- 
 tive in progress," (see Broca, Bulletins de la 8oci4U d'Anthropologie, May 24 
 and June 21, 1860), that we cannot accept the " class man" of M. Chevreul, 
 preceding the " class mammalia," and having, as a characteristic, the capa- 
 bility of perfection in the individual, and in the association of individuals. See 
 Expose d'un moyen de Definir et de Nommer les Couleurs, 185. (Memoir es de 
 V Academic des Sciences f vol. xxxiii, 1861.) 
 
 f See Dr. Gibson, Amer. Assoc. (compare Ami des Sciences, 29 August, 1858.) 
 
 j It would be a curious study, for instance, to find out if certain noises, 
 certain sounds which have no signification to our ears, do not produce, 
 among some animals, clearly determined impressions, having their first 
 origin in these animals themselves, or in their mutual relations, the educa- 
 tion we give them going for nothing in this sort of evidence. 
 
 [The Rev. F. W. Robertson (who died some years ago), states some 
 opinions in his published sermons which show he was almost before his 
 time in his ideas concerning animals. He says, in comparing them with 
 mankind, " There is the same external form, the same material in the blood- 
 vessels, in the nerves, and in the muscular system. Nay, more than that, 
 our appetites and instincts are alike, our lower pleasures like their lower 
 pleasures, our lower pain like their lower pain ; our life is supported by the 
 
 D 2 
 
36 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 a change ; we hope that we have proved so much. Something 
 of the same sort will take place, we think, for the best studied 
 language. There, as with intellect, as with organism, we shall 
 doubtless be able to prove a unity which may be regarded 
 by analogy as necessary, offering alone degrees of gradation 
 in reference to organism and intellect. Every living being (we 
 are only speaking here of vertebrate animals) will appear to be 
 composed of the same constituent parts, but unequally devel- 
 oped, and of which some have only been taken by us for dis- 
 similarities or new parts, on account of our own want of suffi- 
 ciently deep study. As they formerly tried to discover new 
 bones in the heads of fishes, until the time when their relations, 
 connexions, and development were better studied ; so unity of 
 composition has been there recognised and proved where it 
 was least suspected. 
 
 We cannot do better, in order to sum up our ideas on this 
 subject, than quote a passage from the works of a learned 
 man, who in our days has gone most deeply into the study of 
 organic homology, Professor Richard Owen ; it is the last step 
 which has been taken, and indeed the most decisive one, in 
 the momentous question concerning man's place in nature. 
 
 " Not being able to appreciate or conceive of the distinction 
 between the psychical phenomena of a chimpanzee and of a 
 Bosjesman, or of an Aztec with arrested brain-growth, as being 
 of a nature so essential as to preclude a comparison between 
 them, or as being other than a difference of degree, I cannot 
 shut my eyes to the significance of that all-pervading simili- 
 tude of structure every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous 
 which makes the determination of the difference between 
 Homo and Pithecus the anatomist's difficulty. And therefore, 
 
 same means, and our animal functions are almost indistinguishably the 
 same." Sermons, 3rd series, 1857 (preached in 1850), p. 49. "It is the law 
 of being, that in proportion as you rise from lower to higher life, the parts 
 are more distinctly developed, while yet the unity becomes more entire. 
 You find, for example, in the lowest forms of animal life, one organ performs 
 several functions ; one organ being, at the same time, heart, and brain, and 
 blood-vessel. But when you come to man, you find all these various func- 
 tions existing in different organs, and every organ more distinctly developed ; 
 and yet the unity of a man is a higher unity than that of a limpet." (Sermons, 
 p. 57.) EDITOR.] 
 
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 37 
 
 with every respect for the author of the Records of Creation * 
 I follow Linngeusf and Cuvier in regarding mankind as a legi- 
 timate subject of zoological comparison and classification. J" 
 Is not the admission of gradation the means of binding more 
 firmly together the great chain of human beings, a thing quite 
 impossible, which could not exist, or rather, which would only 
 be a caprice, an artificial method or system, if the classified 
 beings were only thus classified by creatures of their own de- 
 scription ? Does it not confirm, even more strongly, the con- 
 tinuous series in which Aristotle, Leibnitz, Bonnet, Linngeus, 
 and de Blainville have believed ? We shall proclaim, then, 
 the law, shaped by M. Flourens, who, however, does not re- 
 ceive it, as we do, without reservation : 
 
 LAW. From animals to man everything is but a chain of un- 
 interrupted gradation ; therefore, there is no human kingdom. 
 Then comes this other conclusion, one and the same method 
 is applicable both to mankind and animals. 
 
 * A Treatise on the Records of the Creation, by J. Bird Simmer, Lord Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, 6th edit., 8vo, London, 1850. 
 
 f Nullum characterem hactenus eruere potui, unde homo a simia internos- 
 catur. Linnaeus, Fauna Suecica : prsefatio. 
 
 J Owen, On the Characters of the Class Mammalia, p. 20, note (Journal of 
 Proceedings of Linnean Society, 1857.) 
 
38 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE OEDEE OF BIMANA. 
 
 THE naturalist who has in our time most interested himself in 
 the classification of vertebrata, Prince Charles Bonaparte, gives 
 his own opinion as follows : " Man may be considered, in one 
 point of view, as constituting one single family ; in another, 
 as constituting an entire kingdom." But he also adds that 
 in this second case, " the characteristics are no longer in har- 
 mony with the rest of the system." In fact, we can hardly at 
 the same time admit both the general principles of classifica- 
 tion, as followed at the present day, and also the human king- 
 dom. One out of these two things must fall to the ground. 
 The system of classifying mammalia, adopted in all its 
 uniformity by the two Geoffreys, the Cuviers, De Blainville, 
 and Owen, cannot be maintained without involving man- 
 kind. If man were a kingdom by himself, this classification 
 would be a false one ; for ought we not then, at least, to create 
 a cetaceous kingdom, a bird kingdom, etc. ? As for ourselves, 
 the problem has been already solved, and we hesitated to 
 come into collision with this new inconsistency. Harmony is 
 the necessary condition of every really natural system. We 
 cannot arbitrarily give a different value to the same character- 
 istics ; and, reciprocally, the divisions of the same order ought 
 necessarily to agree with characteristics of the same value. 
 
 It has been thought necessary, at least, to create for man- 
 kind one of those great divisions into which the mammalia are 
 divided. An Order of Simana has been created. We do not 
 hesitate to say that this was a purely theoretical creation ; and 
 we will go even farther, we declare it could only be produced 
 
THE OEDEE OF BIMANA. 39 
 
 in a country where coverings for the feet are in daily and uni- 
 versal wear. We must not go into the midst of our great 
 cities if we wish to study the zoological characteristics of man. 
 
 Is there any reason for the Order of Bimana when we 
 consider man in his state of nature ? is it " the immediate 
 and necessary results of natural analogies, respectively va- 
 lued according to their degree ?" " No !" was the answer of 
 Etieime Greoffroy, in his eloquent pages, ' ' this Order must be 
 abolished/'* 
 
 E. Greoffroy saw workmen in the bazaars at Cairo employ 
 their great toe for numberless prehensile uses. A Nubian, 
 or a negro on horseback, generally takes the stirrup-leather 
 between his great toe and the others; all the Abyssinian 
 cavalry ride in this manner, f If the fact reported by Bory de 
 Saint-Vincent about the rosin-makers of the Landes is not con- 
 firmed, J we have at least seen the Barabras Nubians ascend 
 the great yard of the Nile dahabieJis by seizing with the great 
 toe the rope underneath them which supports the sail. 
 
 When the action of the foot is not paralysed by the size of 
 the shoe, which is elsewhere the exception, it is pre-eminently 
 adapted for laying hold of anything. And if certain kinds of 
 men seem to us very fit for the kind of existence led by the 
 Quadrumana, if they seem to us constituted in order to live 
 in trees, there is nothing there which ought to surprise us, 
 nothing but what is quite natural and quite consistent. 
 
 It has been truly said, tl^at man isfrugivorous. All the de- 
 tails of his intestinal canal, and above all, his dentition, prove 
 it in the most decided manner. He ought, therefore, from his 
 origin, to have all his organism modified in harmony with this 
 alimentation. Like the apes, he ought to possess such means 
 of locomotion as would enable him to procure the food specially 
 adapted to his wants. And therefore, what is there astonish- 
 ing in the fact that among certain races, which are scarcely 
 
 * Comptes Rendus de I'Academie des Sciences, vol. ii, p. 581. 
 
 f See the magnificent work, Sketches of Central Africa, and the portrait of 
 the chief, Kanema, in Earth's Travels, vol. iii. 
 
 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Hist. Naturelle Generale, vol. ii, pp. 200-515. 
 
 [See Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, 8vo, London, 1863 ; and the article 
 thereon in the Edinburgh Review, April, 1863. EDITOR.] 
 
40 THE ORDEE OF 
 
 removed from a state of nature, we find the remains of a mode 
 of life which was general at their origin. 
 
 Modera, quoted by Mr. Crawfurd, relates that one day, three 
 naturalists, travelling on the northern coast of New Guinea for 
 scientific purposes, found the trees full of natives, of both 
 sexes, who leaped from branch to branch like monkeys, with 
 their weapons fastened on their backs, gesticulating, shouting, 
 and laughing.* This singular race, of which we have before 
 spoken, and which has been noticed in Hindoostan by many 
 eye-witnesses, seems to live half its time in trees. We have 
 the right to ask, if the confused remembrance of such a race 
 and such habits was not the origin of the tradition which 
 served as a foundation for the poem of Valmiki. Rama goes 
 to the rescue of his wife, Sita, who had been carried off by 
 the evil genius, Ravana ; he is assisted in this enterprise by a 
 valiant army of monkeys, and at every moment expressions 
 are used in the account which recall the monkey-like and 
 quadrumanous nature of the combatants f. In casting our 
 eyes over the first groups composing the mammalian series, 
 we find some apes who walk upon the sole of the feet and 
 upon the palm of the hand ; others, who walk upon the sole of 
 the foot and the joints of the folded hands, a very peculiar 
 method of progression, of a strange and unexpected nature, 
 and which alone would serve to characterise a group ; these 
 are the anthropomorphous apes : lastly, another mammal who 
 walks only on the soles of the feet, the form of the body and 
 legs rendering the anterior members quite unfit to be used in 
 walking ; this is man. 
 
 The first apes of which we are going to speak, walking upon 
 the sole of the feet and the palms of their hands are, then, 
 unreservedly quadruped** In this particularity they resemble 
 other mammalia, among whom the pectoral, as well as the 
 abdominal, members are chiefly organs of locomotion; only 
 these apes also use their four extremities for another purpose, 
 
 * Crawfurd, On the Negro Race, etc. (British Association for the Advancement 
 of Science, 1852, p. 86.) 
 
 f See the translation of this veritable Iliad, by M. H. Fauohe. Rdmdyana, 
 1857. 
 
THE OEDEE OF BIMANA. 41 
 
 which appears to be entirely secondary and derived, that of 
 prehension. And it is precisely because the organisation of 
 their members is purposely modified by reason of a new, 
 special, and uncommon function, that they have been able to 
 furnish us with a sufficiently defined characteristic, so that we 
 may specify an order, that of the quadrumana. 
 
 Among the anthropomorphous apes, the folded or bent hand 
 seems an organ especially adapted for prehension,* serving, in 
 a secondary manner, for locomotion ; whilst the foot, the 
 especial organ of locomotion, preserves the faculty of seizing 
 anything by means of an opposing thumb. 
 
 In man, the superior member is not at all fit for walking ; 
 and the inferior, used for locomotion, as in the two preceding 
 groups, also preserves its faculty of prehension : observation 
 proves this as well as anatomy. 
 
 We see that there again, as everywhere else in an organic 
 point of view, the anthropomorphous quadrumana are a veritable 
 transition from man to the other families of apes. It has 
 been proposed to extend the signification of the word hand, 
 and to apply it to every terminal extremity of a member 
 capable of seizing anything, including the paw of the lemur 
 and the claws of the parrot. We are inclined to restrict the 
 name, like Linnseus, De Blainville, and Cuvier, to an extremity 
 formed of fingers, and with an opposing thumb. But even in 
 confining the definition to such a narrow compass, we think 
 we have shown that man, in reality, is quadrumanous, this de- 
 finition applying equally to the foot, where the great toe serves 
 among half the people, at least, on the earth for the purpose 
 of prehension, and remains, as E. Geoffroy has remarked, 
 
 * [We are told in the Voyages de Francois Pyrard, vol. ii, p. 331, Paris, 1615, 
 " that in the province of Sierra Leone there is a species (of orang-outang) so 
 strong limbed and so industrious that, when properly trained and fed, they 
 work like servants ; that they generally walk on the two hind feet ; that they 
 pound any substances in a mortar ; that they go and bring water from the 
 river in small pitchers, which they carry, full, on their heads. But when 
 they arrive at the door, if the pitchers are not soon taken off, they allow them 
 to fall ; and when they perceive the pitchers overturned and broken they 
 weep and lament." In the Voyages de Guat. Shoutten aux Indes Orientales, 
 we find nearly the same account of the orang : " they are taken with snares, 
 taught to walk on their hind feet, and to use their fore-feet as hands in per- 
 forming different operations, as rinsing glasses, carrying drink round to the 
 company, turning a spit," etc. EDITOR.] 
 
42 THE ORDER OP BIMANA. 
 
 quite separate from the other toes, when the foot is not de- 
 formed by boots or shoes :* therefore, nothing more can be said 
 in favour of an Order of Bimana, or a human kingdom. 
 
 We must return to the subdivision proposed by Charles 
 Bonaparte, & family. Man constitutes a simple family in the 
 Order of Quadrumana, distinguished by characteristics pre- 
 cisely equal in importance to those which make a difference 
 between other similar groups in the class of mammalia, that 
 which even comes to the assistance of the adversaries of the 
 human kingdom, and the partisans of the zoological system. 
 For want of positive characteristics taken from the extremities, 
 which could never, in the eyes of true naturalists, as we have 
 just said, favour a serious distinction between man and other 
 quadrumana, a characteristic in dentition has been discovered, 
 remarkable for its constancy even in the most degraded and 
 animal-like races, and which, first and foremost, distinguishes 
 man from the group which immediately follows him in the 
 zoological series. This characteristic, upon which Professor 
 Owen has, in many places, insisted, like the two Cuviers, 
 but with an entirely new vigour, f is the contiguity of the 
 teeth and the continuity of their crowns, not one of which ever 
 extends beyond the level of the others. J 
 
 Thus it is for man, like the rest of the mammalia ; it is the 
 dental system which gives us the best characteristic. A new 
 proof that the study of mankind and that of animals ought to 
 be conducted in one and the same manner ; a proof, indeed, 
 that these two studies are two parallel branches, intimately 
 united, of one and the same science. 
 
 * Comptes Rendus de I'Acadt'mie des Sciences, vol. ii. See, also, for the 
 separation of the great toe, the photographs in the Voyage a la Cote Orientale 
 d'Afrique, by Captain Guillain. 
 
 f Odontography, London, 1840, p. 452. Catalogue of the Hunterian Collec- 
 tion, " Osteology," vol. ii, p. 800. 
 
 X [A character which, as the Cuviers and Owen have pointed out, man 
 shares with the fossil Anoplotherium and its allies, from the Paris gypsum. 
 EDITOR.] 
 
48 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL 
 VAEIETIES. 
 
 WE have endeavoured to prove in the preceding pages the 
 specific unity of the biological phenomena in each Order, which 
 are to be found among the superior animals and man. This 
 unity has led us necessarily to another, that of method ; and 
 we have just seen that man forms simply a family, that is to 
 say, a very secondary division in the zoological series. 
 
 But we have only taken the first step of the path in which 
 we have to travel. The genus homo shows many varieties, and 
 many dissimilarities. We must try to estimate their value, 
 and to find out what the divisions to be established between 
 what we commonly call races of men may be worth. Now, the 
 only rule to be followed here is naturally that which is applied 
 by all zoologists to the other individuals composing the animal 
 series. The only way to arrive at such a goal will be, first of 
 all, the study of the physical differences, the necessary basis of 
 a rational classification. Thus we shall, at least, have important, 
 and what is more, comparable results. 
 
 The anatomy of races has been largely written about, and 
 yet we may even now offer this subject to the serious study of 
 anthropologists; perhaps, also, in carrying their attention 
 farther than the skin, the encephalic mass and the skeleton, 
 which have been nearly the sole objects of study up to the 
 present time, they will find in all syste'ms dissimilarities of the 
 same order, and as clearly defined.* These differences and 
 
 * Tiedemann, of Heidelberg, wrote to Knox with reference to the nervous 
 system, that he had great reason to believe that the natives of Australia 
 
44 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 
 
 varieties are such, that they are obvious, and at once appreciated 
 even by ignorant persons,* they are such that the most emi- 
 nent monogenists agree in regarding them as everywhere suf- 
 ficient to make a difference in species, or even in genus itself. 
 
 They refer to every point of organisation, and we shall see 
 farther on that they are found to be as decided and as palpable 
 both in the mind and in the natural constitution. We do not 
 pretend to speak of all of them in this place, not even to enu- 
 merate them ; we shall merely quote the principal points, or 
 those which appear to deserve some special remark. The 
 number of those which exist, or which are believed to exist, 
 for this is a necessary restriction, is immense ; in fact, if we 
 are the first to admit that there is an infinite variety of differ- 
 ences, considerable in themselves, between the various kinds 
 of men, we also wish to avoid falling into the errors which are 
 so often committed, and which happen from the small number 
 of facts which have been observed, the investigators having 
 often given the value of general facts to individual observation. 
 
 We find more than one example of these hasty opinions in 
 the history of anthropological studies. Towards the end of 
 the last century, when the colour of the Negro had already 
 been for a hundred years the dominant study of the scientific 
 world of Europe, f a certain Kluegel affirmed (in the Encyclo- 
 pedic de Berlin, 1782) that the lips of the Ethiopian were of a 
 fine red colour. A great commotion arose ; Summering him- 
 self was roused ; he wrote everywhere, sought for information, 
 
 differed in this matter from Europeans in an extraordinary degree. Knox, 
 The Races of Men, London, 1850, p. 2. 
 
 * " The physical characteristics which distinguish human races, one from 
 the other, are, perhaps, the one fact in natural history which has always most 
 struck the imagination of mankind. . . . Historians relate, that when Co- 
 lumbus first returned, Europeans could not take their eyes off the plants and 
 unknown animals which he had brought with him ; and above all, the Indians, 
 so different from all the races of men they had ever seen." Flourens, Con- 
 siderations sur I' enseignement de I'Histoire Naturelle de I'Homme. (Annales 
 des Sciences Naturelles, vol. x, p. 357.) This wonder is renewed every day; and 
 I once knew an intelligent negro who had a very unpleasant remembrance 
 of the French provinces, where he had been the object of a very general and 
 indiscreet curiosity. 
 
 f The works which followed one another on this subject are due to Reia- 
 hold Wagner (1699), B. S. Albin (1737), Barriere (1742), Mitchell (3 741), Baeck 
 (1748), Meckel (1753-1757), Le Cat (1756-1765), etc. See G. Pouchet, Des 
 Colorations de I'Epiderme, 4to, Paris, 1864. 
 
PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 45 
 
 and demanded fresh intelligence, which, quite naturally, was 
 found to be contrary to the opinion expressed by Kluegel. In 
 fact, we know that in the Negro the colouring matter extends 
 to most of the mucous membranes whose structure resembles 
 that of the skin. 
 
 The lips are generally black, and we usually find upon the 
 gums, and even upon the palate, a non-continuous coloured 
 membrane, which forms spots of a deep violet colour. Kluegel 
 had concluded too hastily from some particular fact ; he had 
 in his mind, very probably, some Negro with lips, gums, and 
 tongue of a fine rose colour, contrasting as much as possible 
 with the black of his skin. We have had occasion ourselves 
 to observe a similar case as regards a native of Soudan, who 
 was also affected with a sort of partial albinoism of the buccal 
 mucous membrane. 
 
 In anthropology, as in all science requiring observation, it 
 is the averages which ought to be admitted as evidence ; they 
 alone have an absolute value, and can alone lead to positive 
 results. Every isolated phenomenon has its individual value 
 as regards its simple truth, but we are exposed to the greatest 
 errors when we begin to generalise from it. 
 
 The osseous system has been most studied.* In the osseous 
 system, the head, and particularly the skull. We shall be obliged, 
 later on, to refer to the value of cranioscopic proceedings, and 
 the classifications resting on this base. 
 
 The face, as well as the skull, has been the object of atten- 
 tive inquiry ; the smallest differences have been noticed, and 
 almost all have been formed by some one or other into distinct 
 characteristics. We may quote here Berard' s classification, as 
 resumed and developed by Isidore Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire. He 
 divided the genus homo into four groups : 
 
 1. The orthognathi, or men with a flat face and oval coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 2. The eurygnathi, or men with a large face and projecting 
 cheek bones. 
 
 * The analysis of the anatomical differences in the skeleton has been, per- 
 haps, best made by Berard, in France, and Lawrence in England; I may 
 refer for the details to these two authors. Berard, Cours de Physiologic, 1848, 
 vol. i ; Lawrence, Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, 9th edition, 1848. 
 
46 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 
 
 3. The prognathi, or men with a protuberant countenance. 
 
 4. Lastly, these races, which are both eurygnatlii and progna- 
 thi, like the Hottentots, the development of whose face offers an 
 example of a manifest step towards the exaggeration of this 
 same development in the anthropomorphous ape in infancy.* 
 
 It has been endeavoured to establish, by means of averages, 
 an appreciable difference between the pelvis of various races. 
 Weber has considered that the form of the superior division is 
 not the same with all of them. According to him it would be 
 
 1. Oval, among Europeans. 
 
 2. Round, among Americans. 
 
 3. Square, among the Mongols. 
 
 4. Cuneiform or oblong, among the Africans. 
 
 The same ideas have been resumed and defended by French 
 anthropologists ;f it is right, however, to remark, that Weber 
 himself adds that varieties of every description of pelvis may 
 be met with among the same race. That which appears certain 
 is the fact, that in the Negro race the pelvis is, in general, 
 sensibly smaller. This is, at least, the opinion of Camper, J 
 Vrolik, Sommering, White, and Berard,|| who have measured 
 a great number of them. 
 
 The facility in parturition, so remarkable among the inferior 
 races, has therefore, as a cause, a relative smalmess in the head 
 of the foetus, even more remarkable. For we must admit 
 that, among these people, everything happens naturally, as 
 among animals ; it is the laborious childbirth among ourselves 
 which is exceptional and anomalous, and which requires to be 
 explained. This difficult and painful parturition, which we so 
 continually see, is, doubtless, the consequence of civilisation ; 
 
 * Is. Geoffrey de Saint-Hilaire, " Sur la Classification Anthropologique," 
 Mdm. de la Societe d' Anthropologie, 1861, vol. i, p. 125. 
 
 f [Compare Joulin, Anatomic et Physiologic compare du bassin des Mammi- 
 feres, 8vo, Paris, 1864 ; and Memoire sur le bassin considdre dans les Races 
 Humaines, 8vo, Paris, 1864. EDITOR.] 
 
 J The proportion given by Camper is this : the great diameter is to the 
 little, 
 
 In the European : : 41 : 27. 
 In the Negro : : 39 : 27'5. 
 
 Account of the Regular Gradation of Man, 4to, London, 1799, p. 118. 
 
 || Cours de Physiologic, Paris, 1848, vol. i, p. 394. See, also, on the same 
 question, A. Maury, in the Atheneum Franc,ais, 1853, No. 47. 
 
PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 47 
 
 only it is difficult to decide what may be its immediate cause, 
 and if this cause resides in the mother or in the foetus. Is it 
 the pelvis which has been made narrower in the European by 
 some custom in our manners by some habit of education ? or 
 must we admit and it is a serious question that the develop- 
 ment of such an organ as the brain in the fcetus, is subor- 
 dinate to the exercise of the functions of the same organ in 
 the progenitors ? 
 
 With the osseous system we may connect the differences of 
 height which are so apparent. Who does not recognise that 
 in Europe, for instance, the Anglo-Saxons, the Germans, the 
 Norwegians, and the Albanians, are of great stature ; whilst 
 the inhabitants of the south of France, the Irish, the Spaniards,* 
 and the Maltese, represent a shorter variety of the human race. 
 The members show the most marked differences among the 
 various races of mankind, by reason of the law which causes 
 the modifications of organism to become more and more de- 
 cided, and more and more clear from the centre to the peri- 
 phery. Naturalists seek for characteristics of families and 
 individuals in the fingers and in the teeth : it is in the extremes 
 of an individual, in the colour of the hair or the skin, that we 
 generally find the characteristics of species. We shall only 
 quote in this place facts which may be the object of some 
 particular remark. 
 
 It has been said continually that the Tartars have bowed 
 legs, and monogenists have not failed to discover from this 
 fact a new proof of the influences of their mode of life, so 
 necessary in order to maintain their thesis. They discovered 
 at first sight, in this general infirmity, a consequence of the 
 habit of riding on horseback, without considering that the 
 Arabs rode on horseback quite as often, and that, nevertheless, 
 their noble bearing and straightness of limb did not suffer 
 from it in the slightest. In tracing the source of this error, 
 we perceive that it is a singular exaggeration of the facts stated 
 
 * [We cannot entirely agree with the author regarding the low stature of 
 the Spaniards. From our own observation we may unreservedly say that, at 
 all events, the inhabitants of the south and south western parts of Spain are 
 a fine race, not at all liable to the charge of being diiferent in height from 
 the Anglo-Saxons. EDITOR.] 
 
48 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 
 
 by Pallas, who lived for so long a time amongst the Tartars. 
 He simply says, " The sole fault in conformation which is 
 rather frequent among them, is a bend in the arms and legs, 
 resulting from a kind of spoon, or saddle, upon which they are 
 always placed in their cradle, as if they were on horseback, 
 and therefore, as soon as they learn to walk, they are obliged 
 at every movement to accustom themselves to the position of 
 riding."* This is what Pallas says ; but it is very clear that 
 he is here speaking merely of exceptional cases, for he says 
 higher up, " I do not remember to have ever seen a child who 
 was a cripple. Their education, which is entirely left to nature, 
 can only form bodies which are healthy and without a blemish."-\- 
 If occasionally the accounts of travellers have been exagge- 
 rated, it is not less the rule, that certain races show a conform- 
 ation of the extremities very different to what it is among our- 
 selves. Albrecht Durer has already made this remark. In the 
 Negro, for instance, the length of the forearm is much greater 
 than in the European. It is proportional to the height in 
 these two races : : 107 : 100.J 
 
 The thumb of the Negro's hand is also generally much less 
 opposed to the other fingers. In certain races of mankind, 
 the hand itself is of an extraordinary small size. This is the 
 case among the Bosjesmans, the Chinese, the Esquimaux, and 
 the Cingalese. || It was the same among the races who built 
 the grand American temples, where we find upon the stones 
 the imprint in red of their hands. If The same thing has been 
 said about the ancient population of northern Europe, who 
 were ignorant of the use of iron, and only used weapons made 
 of bronze.** But the study of the magnificent collection of 
 
 * [Although our author rather despises the idea of the legs being bowed 
 by riding, it is tolerably well known in this country that too much riding on 
 horseback, when young, and especially on large animals, is very apt to alter 
 the shape of delicate and weakly limbs. EDITOR.] 
 
 t " Tribus Mongoles," translated by S. A. de Grandsagne, in the Memoires 
 du Museum, vol. xvii. 
 
 J See Broca, Bulletins de la Societe d' Anthropologie, 3rd April, 1862. 
 
 See Lawrence, Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, London, 1848,, p. 410. 
 
 || Davy, An Account of the Interior of Ceylon, 1821, p. 109. 
 
 If See Daniel Wilson, in the British Review, 1851 ; and in Stephens, the 
 description of the Temple of Uxmal. 
 
 ** See Bulletins de la Societe de Geographie, 4th series, vol. x, p. 45. It 
 
PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 49 
 
 Scandinavian antiquities in the Berlin Museum, has not proved 
 to ourselves that the hilts of all these arms were as small as 
 has been pretended. 
 
 The foot varies not less. The Negro races of the Oceanic 
 Islands, and of Africa, appear to show an exaggerated develop- 
 ment of the heel-bone. MM. Quoy and Gaimard have espe- 
 cially remarked it among the inhabitants of Yanikoro. In 
 fact, there is hardly anybody who will forget, when once he 
 has seen it, the special aspect of the instep in the Negro, 
 ridged with numerous folds commencing from beneath the 
 ankle. This is, besides, a particular mark, which is far from 
 showing itself, as may be well believed, among all people who 
 walk without foot- covering. The foot of the Nubians, and 
 especially that of the females, shows quite different character- 
 istics. The five metatarsi seem to rest their whole length 
 upon the ground, without being shaped by the instep ; their 
 anterior extremities are slightly diverted, the toes having the 
 same spaces between them, so that the foot is flat, but otherwise 
 than by the faulty conformation to which we give this name 
 among ourselves. This structure is, besides, perfectly repre- 
 sented in all Egyptian statues without exception, and more 
 sensibly, indeed, if we compare with those which are in the 
 galleries of the British Museum, a fragment of a colossal foot,* 
 found also in Egypt, at Alexandria, but evidently of Greek or 
 Roman origin ; the toes are close together, the great toe alone 
 being separated, the upper part of the foot being arched, as 
 among Europeans. 
 
 This resemblance between all the Egyptian statues and the 
 foot of the inhabitants of Upper Egypt, or Nubia, cannot be 
 an accidental circumstance. It is, besides, a veritable problem 
 in anthropology, to determine its value in accordance with the 
 monumental iconography of the ancient Egyptians. M. A. 
 Maury has determined with precision the authority of the 
 portraits almost all alike which cover the walls of the 
 
 must not be forgotten that these weapons with a small handle may have 
 been used by those valiant heroines, whose praises have so often been sung in 
 the songs of the north. 
 
 * Presented by A. C. Harris, Esq., 1840. 
 
50 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 
 
 temples. We ourselves, when visiting the famous cavern of 
 Abou-Simbel, were far from finding all that the writings of 
 certain anthropologists and partisans of Egyptian art, such as 
 Gliddon, Nott, etc., had promised us. Doubtless, one can 
 perfectly distinguish certain types,* that is indisputable ;f 
 but to desire to find a people in each portrait, Scythians, 
 Arabs, Philistines, Lydians, Kurds, Hindoos, Jews, Chinese, 
 Tyrians, Pelasgians, lonians, etc., is it not to give too great 
 an influence to the Egyptian artists, who were copyists without 
 skill, and but clumsy inventors ? Egyptian art, whatever may 
 have been said of it, has always been very much farther from 
 being a copy of nature than Grecian art ; the one tended to 
 the ideal, the other tended to transform it. Certain trees 
 which we see thrown down in the bas-relief of the great 
 temple of Karnak, are assuredly pure imagination. It may 
 have been the same with many other subjects to which a 
 scientific value has been given. 
 
 Let us return to anatomical differences, and to that which 
 has, since antiquity, most vividly struck the masses, as well as se- 
 rious investigators. We are going to speak about those colours 
 in the skin of man which run through almost the whole of the 
 chromatic scale, from dead white to the deepest brown. J There 
 is no system which has not been thought of in order to explain 
 these differences, even up to the influence of Noah's curse. 
 
 Unfortunately, we are wanting in those histological and 
 chemical researches which are necessary in order to form the 
 bases of a complete history of the colours of the skin in the 
 human race.|| We can merely say, that the recent works upon 
 certain morbid states, such as Addison's disease, and others 
 
 * [Compare the memoir of Professor C. Gr. Carus, Ueber die Typisch geurdenen 
 dbbildungen menschlichen kopfformen namentlich auf milnzen in verschiedenen 
 zeiten und volkern, published in the Novorum Actorum Academice CcBsarece Leo- 
 poldini-Carolince Germanicce natures curiosum for 1863, in which the author 
 gives characteristic examples of the ancient types, as deduced from the ex- 
 amination of coins, etc. Compare, also, Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind. 
 EDITOR.] 
 
 f See especially Lepsius, Denkmaeler von Egypten und (Ethiopen, vol. ii, pi. 
 133 ; vol. iii, pi. 116, 117, 118, 136. 
 
 % Berard, Cours de Physiologic, Paris, 1848, vol. i, p. 394. 
 
 See J. H. Hanneman, Curiosum Scrutinium Nigredinus Posterorum Cham, 
 in 4to, Kiloni, 1677, 14. 
 
 II See Pruner-Bey, Bulletins de la Soci6t6 d' Anthropologie, 5th March, 1863. 
 
PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 51 
 
 which may approach it, by making us acquainted with the 
 pathological circumstances under which the European with a 
 white skin becomes almost as black as a Negro, and by iden- 
 tical anatomical modifications, have nearly proved that atmo- 
 spheric phenomena have not the influence which monogenists 
 give to them, and that the first origin of the colour of the 
 epidermis in the human race resides rather in the depths of 
 the organism, inaccessible to celestial radiation.* 
 
 The varieties which the pilous system presents is the chief 
 point, and equal at least in importance to those of the cutaneous 
 system. If we think that a classification of races, based 
 simply upon the characteristics of the hair, as has been pro- 
 posed^ would leave much to be desired, and would be far too 
 artificial, we do not doubt, however, but that the pilous 
 system can furnish indications of great value when they have 
 been combined in a wise manner with other characteristics, as 
 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has done.J Doubtless, the 
 colours of the hair, from flaxen to black, and from brown to 
 red, are innumerable in France, and as generally so in countries 
 where the mixture of races has been carried as far as possible ; 
 but it must be remembered that among a purer population, less 
 mixed with foreign blood, the constancy of characteristics 
 taken from the hair is remarkably great. Besides, the differ- 
 ences which present themselves do not relate merely to colour ; 
 the hair of a race of men may be either smooth, or woolly, or 
 crisped, for in general these two latter terms are wrongly and 
 indifferently used, when they ought really to point out two 
 particular and distinct states. It is thus that the inhabitants 
 of Lower Nubia, for instance, who have a very deep shade of 
 colour, possess curled hair, truly woolly, and quite different to 
 that of the Negro, whose hair is really crisped. \\ Other cha- 
 
 * See, upon this point, G. Pouchet, Des Colorations de I'Epiderme, 4to, 
 Paris, 1864. 
 
 f Bory de Saint-Vincent divided mankind into Leucotriques and Ulotriques 
 (see Berard, Cours de Physiologie, 1848, vol. i, p. 394). Prichard refers all 
 these races to the three following types : 1. Melanocomous ; 2. Leucous ; 
 3. Xanthous (see English Cyclopaedia, art. "Man"). 
 
 J Tableau Synoptique des Races Humaines (Mem. de la Societe d'Anthropo- 
 logie, vol. i, p. 143). 
 
 See Pruner-Bey, De la Chevelure (Mem. de la Soc. d'Anthrop., vol. ii, p. 1). 
 
 i| See Smith, The Natural History of the Human Species, p. 189. 
 
 E2 
 
52 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 
 
 racteristics may be demanded from the length of the hair, 
 from its transverse section, the figure of which may vary 
 considerably, from its flexibility or its quantity ; in fact, even 
 from its manner of being placed in the head, the arrangement 
 of which upon the scalp has never been properly studied, and 
 which may, perhaps, vary with the different races of mankind. 
 In fact, human hairs, like that of many mammalia, are not 
 placed at equal distances the one from the other ; they approach 
 each other in little groups. This is especially seen in the nape 
 of the neck, and among the Negro race much more so than 
 among the Europeans. 
 
 This fact, joined to the irregularly prismatic form of the hair 
 in the Negro, is doubtless the origin of the following peculia- 
 rity : when the head of a Negro has been shaved, and the hair 
 begins to grow afresh, one is especially struck with its strange 
 appearance. It is arranged in little tufts about the size of a 
 pea, so that the head, it has been remarked,* resembles no- 
 thing more closely than an old worn-out brush. 
 
 This peculiarity is special to the Negro, and is not found in 
 the north-east of Africa, where the neighbouring population 
 have woolly hair. Among the enumeration of the numberless 
 perfections which a dogmatic Hindu, requires from Buddha, 
 and which Qakhya-Mouni possessed, it is said, ' ' The hair of 
 Buddha shoots forth in little ringlets. "f It is impossible to 
 describe better what happens with the Negro. All this Hin- 
 doo tradition is, besides, a veritable enigma for the anthropo- 
 logist. Why is Buddha depicted with the palms of the hands 
 descending to the knees ?J Why is the mendicant son of a 
 king, born on the banks 'of the Ganges, always represented 
 with the features or characteristics of a Negro, with black 
 skin, and crisped hair ? Nevertheless, Qakhya-Mouni did not 
 belong to these inferior varieties of the human race, of whose 
 existence in the Indian Peninsula we have already spoken ; in 
 that case, he would have been unfit to formulate any doctrine, 
 either moral or philosophic. 
 
 * See Earl, quoted by Crawford, On the Negro Race, etc. (British Associa- 
 tion, 1852, p. 86.) 
 
 f Compare Bornouf, Le Lotus de la bonne loi, p. 562. 
 Compare, idem, ibidem, p. 569. 
 
PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 53 
 
 The rest of the pilous system, not less than that of the hair, 
 merits the attention of the anthropologist. Thus, a very espe- 
 cial fact, and to which, in our opinion, sufficient importance has 
 never been attached, is, on the one hand, the relative abundance 
 of the beard among the various races of mankind ; and on the 
 other, the time of its development. The Chinese, for example, 
 is for a long time beardless, and it is only about his fortieth 
 year that a few stiff hairs begin to appear upon his face. 
 
 Among the Negroes, the Americans, and the Polar race, the 
 hair is, in the same way, very slightly developed on the face. 
 " The length of our beards (of thirty days growth), which had 
 not been shaved since we left the Victory " said Sir John 
 Ross,* " was, among other things, a source of great amuse- 
 ment, while one of them, a stranger, whose beard was of un- 
 usual length among this tribe, claimed consanguinity with us 
 on that ground." The thick and close beard seems, in regard- 
 ing the matter closely, the exclusive appanage of that race 
 which, sprung from the Imaiis, spread over the whole of Europe, 
 and whose finest representatives still inhabit the table-lands of 
 Iran.f Our neighbours, the Semites, are far from being so well 
 provided ; and Lieut. -Colonel H. Smith has J not, perhaps, 
 done wrong in proposing to make an abundant pilous system 
 the characteristic of one race, just as the crisped state of the 
 hair would become the characteristic of another. 
 
 The systems of animal life, doubtless, show as many varieties 
 among different races of men as the systems of the life of 
 relationship ; only these varieties are much less known. It 
 will be sufficient for us to remember in this place the darker 
 colour of the blood and the sperma among the Negro race, as 
 already remarked by Aristotle and verified by Jacquinot, and 
 the equally dark tint of the nervous centres ; so that the whole 
 oeconomy of the Negro is, even in the most hidden parts (and 
 those most distant from solar or atmospheric influence), im- 
 pregnated with colouring matter. 
 
 Let us notice, also, the development of the small labia 
 
 * Narrative of a Second Voyage, etc., 1835, p. 427. 
 
 f [The name given to Persia by its inhabitants. EDITOR.] 
 
 J Compare The Natural History of the Human Species. 
 
54 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 
 
 among the Hottentot women, that of the prepuce and the 
 clitoris among the Semitic race, and even the size of the penis 
 among the Ethiopians such a size that it would almost impede 
 the union of a black man with a white woman, whilst the union 
 of a white man with a Negress would occur without any impe- 
 diment. This remark, quite in agreement with the theories of 
 M. d'Eichthal, has been made by a monogenist;* we have 
 merely the right to wonder at it. How can we reconcile this 
 impossibility, were it even a shade of a real one, with the 
 notion of indefinite and universal reproduction, which all 
 monogenists wrongly, as we shall see make one of their 
 strongest arguments in favour of the specific unity of man ? 
 
 II. What we call physiological differences are certain func- 
 tional forms of the same organ, particular to certain races. 
 This is, as may be seen, an entirely artificial distinction, since 
 these differences must necessarily and forcibly refer to mate- 
 rial, that is, to anatomical differences. 
 
 These alone, either from their small value, or from some 
 other cause, have been hitherto unknown ; whilst their effects, 
 being more sensible, have not failed to escape our observation. 
 If an Esquimaux, for instance, eats in one day the food of six 
 English sailors,t it is evident that the intestines, the stomach, 
 and the glands which border on them, present special modi- 
 fications with reference to this kind of nourishment, so different 
 from the frugivorous diet for which man's organism is adapted. 
 When a Tartar sees further than a European who is using a 
 telescope, J it is certain that such a functional superiority de- 
 pends only on the material quality of the organ, from a more 
 perfect arrangement of the visual apparatus, from the more 
 perfect nature of the medium refractive powers of the eye. 
 
 It has often been desired to refer these kind of modifications 
 to the education of the race or the individual. The education 
 of the race by itself, independently of the ordinary course, 
 
 * M. de Serres, in his Lectures on Anthropology, at the Museum of Natural 
 History. 
 
 f Ross, Narrative of a Second Voyage, etc., p. 446. 
 
 t This fact is related by Pallas, Memoires du Museum, vol. xvii, p. 238. A 
 Kalrnuc saw a body of men thirty versts off [nearly twenty miles English], 
 while the Russian general could see nothing even with a telescope. 
 
PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 55 
 
 seems to us difficult to admit, since education, in this case, 
 would suppose a triumphant struggle against the ordinary 
 course of things. Every animal comes into the world as its 
 parents came, or, at least, apparently so. If he brings with 
 him, by inheritance, certain particular characteristics, they 
 must necessarily in time become obliterated either by their 
 own means, or by destroying all those who possess them (the 
 case of hereditary degeneracy) . In fact, if perfection in a race 
 were possible by means of an individual, the consequence 
 would be that very soon our descendants would be no longer 
 in relationship with the circumambient medium, which would 
 be an absurdity.* 
 
 As to individual education, it has an undeniable influence ; 
 but this does not suffice to explain such important differences. 
 We never find that Europeans, who happen to be thrown 
 among savages, attain to these peculiarly fine and delicate per- 
 ceptions so special to many aborigines. And, moreover, the 
 American residing in boundless forests, where the view is 
 always restricted, has as piercing a glance as the Kalmuc upon 
 his plain. The question of the education of an organ or a 
 system by the individual himself will be cleared up, doubtless, 
 one of these days, by attentive anatomy. And since we are 
 upon the subject, let us remember that an important study 
 still remains, hitherto merely glanced at, that of the influence 
 which, for instance, the milk of an animal or a female of an- 
 other race may have upon the development or the health of a 
 white child. 
 
 The differences which we call physiological are very nu- 
 merous; we shall, however, only quote two or three from 
 among the most striking. The principal point, perhaps, is the 
 peculiar smell of the Negro. This is so strong, that it even 
 impregnates for some time a place where a Negro may only 
 have remained for a few hours, and it is so characteristic, that 
 it alone constitutes a grave presumption in matters of slave- 
 trading; for Humboldt has stated concerning the Peruvians 
 
 * It would be interesting to discover if the fact related by Knox (The 
 Races of Men, 1850, p. 271) is true; namely, that the sharpness of sight, 
 which the Bosjesmans possess in a very high degree, is lost immediately on 
 crossing the breed with the whites. 
 
56 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 
 
 what Le Cat and Haller said about the savages of the Antilles, 
 that they could perfectly trace a Negro by scent, thanks to this 
 odour ; and it is, at the same time, a new proof of the sensitive 
 perfection of the American race. This odour is quite inde- 
 pendent of age, and sometimes is almost insupportable in 
 young children ; it is also independent of sweat, and, in fact, 
 of all the means of cleanliness of which a Negro can make 
 use.* It is due, according to all appearance, to a secretion 
 from the same glands which, in the white man, give such a 
 peculiar odour to the arm-pits; but this latter is absolutely 
 different from that of the Negro, f With regard to this, we 
 must not lose the occasion of noticing one of those contra- 
 dictions into which monogenists have so often fallen, and, in- 
 deed, it could not be otherwise. " The dog does not come 
 from the jackal," says M. Flourens,J "for the jackal has such 
 a peculiar smell, that it does not seem possible that, in this 
 case, the dog should not have preserved some traces of it at 
 least." Shall we reason in the same manner in order to make 
 a special race of the Negro, and would this monogenist ac- 
 cept it ? 
 
 Another very remarkable physiological peculiarity, and one 
 quite as worthy of being noticed, since it has a certain effect 
 upon physiognomy, upon the fades of a race, is a special mode 
 of standing, consisting in holding oneself in a squatting posi- 
 tion, the sole of the foot on the ground, and the thighs bent 
 up against the hams, without the iscliia touching the ground. 
 This effect is what Cook called " a monkey countenance." 
 
 * Le Cat, Traite des Sens, 1744 ; Haller, Elementa Physiologies, vol. v, p. 179 ; 
 Humboldt, Relation Personnelle, vol. iii, p. 229. 
 
 f See Robin, Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1845 ; Zoologie, vol. iv, p. 380. 
 
 J Histoire des Travaux de Buffon, p. 92. 
 
 [" Face to face with the present position of metaphysical thought in 
 England, that anthropology, which can find no higher employment for the 
 human mind than the ascertainment of man's relations with the baboons, 
 
 will find no place at all We have no real fear that the consequences 
 
 which may result from the practical application of this law (transmutation) 
 
 will be prejudicial to religion, morality, or society But until the day 
 
 comes when such a law shall be fully, entirely, and satisfactorily established, 
 we must strenuously protest against the diffusion, even amongst the ' wider 
 circle of the intelligent public/ of essays, the object of which is to render 
 ' Man's Place in Nature' closer to that of the brute creation." C. Carter 
 Blake, Man and Beast (Anthropological Revieiv, vol. i, pp. 154,161). EDITOR.] 
 
PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 57 
 
 We find nowhere that the Greeks, the inhabitants of the 
 ancient continent generally, the Arabs, or even the ancient 
 Egyptians themselves, have ever been accustomed to this posi- 
 tion, which necessarily implies some anatomical modification, 
 whether it be in the separation of the pelvis, the direction of 
 the neck of the thigh-bone, or the torsion of the bones, etc.* 
 This position seems, on the contrary, to have been always the 
 peculiarity of the Melanesian races ; it is the ordinary mode of 
 standing among the inhabitants in the upper course of the 
 Nile, and the Negroes of Africa and the Oceanic Islands. 
 They place themselves thus in order to look at anything, to 
 chat together, or to deliberate. The magnificent drawings 
 which illustrate the account of the travels of the English Em- 
 bassy to the Emperor of Abyssinia, f represent this monarch 
 as reviewing an entire army of infantry drawn up in order of 
 battle, and all squatting in this manner. 
 
 The ancient Egyptians generally kept themselves either on 
 their knees or seated on the ground, the legs brought together, 
 and the knees touching in front of the chest, as thousands of 
 statues, figures, and pictures show us. But their artists have 
 just revealed to us that the people of Central Africa have 
 always been as they are at the present day. The great paint- 
 ing of Beit-Oually, in Nubia, J represents Rameses the Great 
 as charging a troop of Negroes from Soudan; on one side, 
 farther off, we see a Negro near a saucepan, preparing, doubt- 
 less, some food ; he is squatting in the manner of which we 
 have just spoken. In this place, as is often the case, the 
 Egyptian artist has been clever in seizing a profile by its most 
 significant characteristic. 
 
 Gericault wished at one time to make a drawing of an epi- 
 sode in the " Shipwreck of the Medusa," Coreard making 
 
 * See Sommering, 1785, p. 42. 
 
 f Sketches of Central Africa. 
 
 J There is a copy of it at the British Museum. 
 
 We only know of one painting in which Egyptians themselves are re- 
 presented in a like position ; it is in the British Museum, and is on a tomb. 
 It is a group of persons squatted behind a flock of geese. It is right to re- 
 mark, however, that the artist may have been rather puzzled about its com- 
 position, more complicated than usual, and that the inartistic profiles of his 
 figures, which almost cover one another, greatly diminish the value of the 
 picture with reference to our subject. 
 
58 ANATOMICAL., PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 
 
 signs to an African chief who was seated on the sand; he 
 placed in his composition a Negro squatting, but he drew him 
 with one foot resting entirely on the ground, and the other 
 bearing only on the extremity of the metatarsi. At that time 
 Gericault had only a white man as a model ; a Negro would have 
 placed himself differently, with both his feet flat on the ground. 
 
 We might pursue the history of these physiological varieties 
 ad infinitum, it is a large field for the enquirer ; and to men- 
 tion one fact alone, the compared history of development 
 among the different races of mankind has still to be accom- 
 plished, especially the history of the intra-uterine development 
 of the Negro, and even partly the history of the first months 
 of his aerial life. 
 
 III. If organism, operating normally among different races, 
 presents such varities, why can we not suppose that it would 
 hence show correlative differences in its morbid changes ? 
 should there not be, also, an ethnic pathology ? This contains 
 a large question, and yet it was scarcely thought of a few years 
 ago. It seems to have been first proposed and studied by F. 
 Schnurrer in his treatise on Geographical Pathology,* in 1813, 
 in which the author seems to have perceived imperfectly, in 
 all its vastness, the matter which now occupies our attention. 
 The book is divided into three parts ; the first is entirely geo- 
 graphical, the second entirely anthropological, and the third is 
 given up to a description of maladies, commencing with two 
 introductory chapters ; the first describing the diseases of 
 each zone, and the second, containing eleven pages, is a 
 " Glance at the general Characteristics of Disease in each 
 Kace." "In fact," says Dr. Boudin,t in pointing out the 
 novelty of these enquiries, f< there are some races who show 
 themselves completely rebellious to certain pathological forms, 
 for which others, on the contrary, show a remarkable pre- 
 disposition." 
 
 Two particular maladies have been pointed out in this point 
 of view, marsh-poisoning in all its forms, and yellow fever. 
 
 * Geographische Nosologie oder die Lehre von den Verdnderungen der Krank- 
 heiten in den Vcrschiedenen Gegenden der Erde, in Verbindung mit Physicher 
 Geographic und Naturgeschichte des Menschcn, 8vo, Stuttgart, 1813. 
 
 f Trait^ de Geographic Medicale, 1857 : Introduction, p. 29. 
 
PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 59 
 
 Africans are evidently, at least in parts, exempt from these two 
 diseases, which only attack them with a very minor force. It 
 has been said that the question of marsh -poisoning is still ' 
 very doubtful ; it was allowed that the Negroes were less ex- 
 posed to its attacks than other men, but it was desired to 
 enter the question of acclimatisation* into the calculation of 
 facts. All the countries we know that are inhabited by blacks, 
 being nearly all subject to the noxious influence of marshes, it 
 was pretended that even stranger Negroes had acquired from 
 infancy, in their own country, an immunity by which they 
 benefited later in life, and even had the power of handing it 
 down to their descendants, f It is thus that some have ex- 
 plained, for instance, the unhappy results of the English 
 expedition to the Niger in 1841. Out of 145 whites belonging 
 to the crews, the three vessels, after a navigation of about 
 forty -nine days on the river, had lost 40 men (130 were at- 
 tacked). Out of the twenty-five coloured men embarked in 
 England, and who were mostly born in America, eleven were 
 seized with illness, but not one of them died.J This indivi- 
 dual acclimatisation can only be either a fiction, or a proof in 
 support of the ideas which we defend. In the presence of a 
 morbid influence which shows itself and continues, two things 
 alone can happen, either destruction, or permanent (that is 
 to say, specific) modifications of oeconomy, in harmony with the 
 ordinary manner in which this animal population continues to 
 exist. 
 
 * ["The great question of acclimatisation has hitherto been treated 
 lightly enough. ' A firm resolution not to be conquered by a malady/ says 
 Malte-Brun, ' is, in the opinion of most doctors, one of the most efficacious 
 preventives of disease. Our body depends on our intelligence. In every 
 climate the nerves, the muscles, the blood-vessels, in relaxing or in stretch- 
 ing, in dilating or in contracting, soon take the particular state which suits 
 the degree of heat or cold which is borne by the body.' Thus, according to 
 this celebrated geographer, man has only to exercise his will in order to ac- 
 commodate his organism to all the difficulties of a new temperature and a 
 new climate." H. J. C. Beavan, The Acclimatisation of Man (Social Science 
 Review, February 21, 1863.) EDITOR.] 
 
 f Hirsch, Handbuch der Historisch-Geographischen Pathologic, 10. With 
 the author of this immense compilation we refer our readers (with reference 
 to this relative immunity of Negroes from marsh-fever) to the works of Jobin, 
 Tschudi, M'Cabe, Hunter, Arnold, Cameron, Heymann, Epp, Bartlett, Thom- 
 son, Tidyman (Philad. Journ. of Med. Science, vol. iii, No. 6), etc. 
 
 J Epidemiological Society, 3rd June, 1861 ; Medical Times and Gazette, 29th 
 June, 1861, No. 574. 
 
60 ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND 
 
 The yellow fever, exercising its ravages upon shores equally 
 distant from whites and negroes, has brought very decisive 
 arguments into the question. We know, in fact, that the 
 whites suffer in America from the black vomit in all its vio- 
 lence; whilst the Negroes are not attacked by it, or if they 
 are, its effects are insignificant.* A ferocious maxim, one 
 worthy of the conquerors, has explained since the sixteenth 
 century this prerogative, which the Spaniards had so much 
 reason to envy, ' ' If we did not hang a Negro, he would never 
 die."f If some authors have timidly advanced the theory of 
 a former acclimatisation J with regard to marsh-poisoning, the 
 greater number of observers, Fenner, Nott, and Bryant, ought 
 to admit that there was, even in the constitution of the black 
 man, an obstacle otherwise absolutely unknown in his nature 
 to the manifestation of the yellow fever ; and that the black 
 blood appeared to carry on this resisting force to the mixed 
 breed, even if they were born far away. || 
 
 An extremely interesting experiment relating to this immu- 
 nity of the Negro from the yellow fever, was tried largely 
 during the disastrous Mexican expedition, and the conditions 
 of this experience ought to give it a capital value. At first, 
 our soldiers paid a terrible tribute to this scourge, and then 
 the French Government took up the excellent idea of profiting 
 by the resistance of the Negro race to the black vomit. It 
 
 * [" In spite of ' previous acclimatisation/ a Negro regiment was almost 
 entirely destroyed by chest disease at Gibraltar, in 1817, within the short 
 space of fifteen months." Acclimatisation of Man (Social Science Review, 
 February 21, 1863). EDITOR.] 
 
 f Si no acontecia ahorcar al Negro, nunca moria." Compare Herrera, 
 Hist. Gener. de los Hcchos de los Castellanos, dec. 2, Book in, chap. xiv. 
 
 J Bancroft (Essay 273) ; Blair, Some Account of the last Yellow Fever Epi- 
 demic of British Guiana, London, 1850 ; Jackson ; Hirsch, Handbuch dcr His- 
 torisch-Geographischen Pathologic, 36. 
 
 " It is a well-established fact, that there is something in the Negro con- 
 stitution which affords him protection against the worst effects of yellow 
 fever, but what it is I am unable to say." Fenner. Compare Hirsch, Hand- 
 buch, 36. 
 
 |j " The smallest admixture of Negro blood, even though the subject be 
 brought from a more northerly state, seems to be a potent antidote against 
 the morbid poison." Nott, Southern Journal of Medicine, February, 1847. 
 " The coloured people resisted the epidemic influence better than the whites ; 
 and, I believe I may hazard the observation, that their degree in resistance 
 \\ -;is in proportion to the admixture of white blood." Bryant, American 
 Journal, April, 1856, p. 301. Compare Hirsch, Handbuch, 36. 
 
PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 61 
 
 asked for a battalion of blacks from the viceroy of Egypt, con- 
 sisting of men recruited from the limits of Soudan, from Ber- 
 ber to Khartoum. It was not without anxiety that the issue 
 of this physiological experiment was watched, since it did not 
 happen, as in our laboratories, in anima vili. Some had con- 
 fidence in the functional uniformity of the Negro race, as being 
 beyond all local action ; others believing wrongly, as we said, 
 in a former acclimatisation of the only inhabitants of the 
 western coast of Africa, expected to find that all these Negroes 
 from the other side of the continent would perish. However, 
 in spite of what they had at first said, they could very soon 
 verify the almost complete immunity of the Negro battalion at 
 Yera-Cruz.* It was the first time, if we are not mistaken, that 
 anthropology has been directly applied in the Old World to 
 social science. Some time ago anthropologists were consulted 
 by the government of the Northern States of America upon 
 certain questions of slavery, at the time when terrible dissen- 
 sions were budding in the shadows of the distance. 
 
 * See Memoires de MMecine et de Chirurgie Militaire, November and De- 
 cember 1863 ; Societi d' Anthropologie, meeting of 19th March, 1864. 
 
62 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 
 
 FROM time immemorial, common sense has enlightened man- 
 kind upon the intellectual differences which make one nation 
 differ from another, and one race from another. Almost all na- 
 tions, in admitting that they are superior to their neighbours, 
 acknowledge thereby a characteristic difference between them- 
 selves and those whom they thus place below their own level. 
 An overweening sense of vanity may possibly cause deception 
 in this case ; but this belief is, at least, based on a veritable 
 fact, intellectual inequality. There are, indeed, sensible and 
 manifest differences, which no one will deny, especially those 
 who seek in the literary monuments of a race for the history 
 of its ideas and its tendencies, and those who have mingled with 
 other nations, and who have examined their manners, their 
 customs and their religion. "It is sufficient to have seen the 
 blacks," says their most enthusiastic defender,* tf to have lived 
 some time with them, to feel that there is in them a humanity 
 quite different to that of the white man."f Some persons have 
 
 * M. d'Eichthal, Lettres sur la Race noire, 1839, p. 15. 
 
 f [" The Arabs say that Mohammed, whilst on the road from Medina to Mecca, 
 one day happened to see a widow woman sitting before her house, and asked 
 how she and her three sons were ; upon which the troubled woman (for she 
 had concealed one of her sons on seeing Mohammed's approach, lest he, as is 
 customary when there are three males of a family present, should seize one 
 and make him do porterage), said, ' Very well ; but I've only two sons !' 
 Mohammed, hearing this, said to the woman, reprovingly, ' Woman, thou liest !' 
 thou hast three sons ; and for trying to conceal this matter from me, hence- 
 forth remember that this is my decree, that the two boys whom thou hast 
 not concealed shall multiply and prosper, have fair faces, become wealthy, 
 and reign lords over all the earth ; but the progeny of your third son shall, in 
 consequence of your having concealed him, produce seedis as black as darkness, 
 who will be sold in the market like cattle, and remain in perpetual servitude 
 to the descendants of the other two.' " This is the Arab theory of the 
 Negro's origin, mentioned in What led to the Discovery of the Source of the 
 Nile, by J. H. Speke, p. 341, London, 1864. EDITOR.] 
 
INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 63 
 
 wished to deceive themselves ; they have wished to raise the 
 Negro race to our own level, in the name of some sort of sen- 
 timental feeling, which, moreover, has always turned out to be 
 a mistake. Many persons have been engaged upon them. 
 Not being able to give them plastic equality, they had recourse 
 to intelligence, they wished to deceive themselves, like Des- 
 demona, when she said, 
 
 "I saw Othello's visage in his mind."* 
 
 The Negro was declared to be our equal by the moral law, only 
 with certain shades of distinction depending on some particular 
 and transient circumstances which would soon disappear. It 
 was announced that, in their turn, they would advance ideas, 
 and would work at what is called progress, that is to say, f ' the 
 increase of good on the earth. "f " In proportion as work 
 makes vital energy to predominate in the head," said M. Marcel 
 de Serres in 1844, "these deeply coloured men,{ with crisped, 
 woolly, or short hair, will tend in a manifest manner towards 
 the white race, will march with them in the path of pro- 
 gress.^ And farther on, " This experiment has scarcely com- 
 menced, but it already shows sensible effects." Unfortunately, 
 the twenty years which have passed since these words were 
 written, have not shown that they are true ; and the challenge 
 offered by an American has never yet been accepted, " Let 
 anyone quote to me one single line written by a Negro which 
 is worthy of being remembered." || They are not more ad- 
 vanced now than at the time when Mohammed refused them the 
 gift of prophecy. ^[ And, as Dr. Hunt remarks, there is cer- 
 
 * Othello, Act I, Scene 3. [Othello was, however, a Moor, not a Negro, and 
 capable of a far higher delicacy of mental perceptions than the veritable 
 " unbleached African." Perhaps one of the most absurd theatrical errors 
 was committed when the part of Othello was acted by a genuine Negro, Ira 
 Aldridge. EDITOR.] 
 
 f Edmond About, Le Progres, 1864, p. 15. 
 
 J These are Negroes of whom he is speaking. 
 
 " De I' Unite de I'Espece Humaine," Biblioth. Univ. de Geneve, nouv. ser., 
 vol. liv, p. 145, 1844. 
 
 || Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 59. Cams has observed, that among the 
 remarkable Negroes mentioned by Blumenbach, not one of them was distin- 
 guished either in politics, literature, or in any high conception of art. Com- 
 pare Gobineau, De I'Inegalite des Races Humaines, vol. i, p. 122, 1853. 
 
 f See De MaiUet, Telliamed, 8vo, vol. ii, p. 187, Amsterdam, 1748. For 
 want of those passages of the Koran to which he refers, we give the whole 
 
64 INTELLECTUAL AND 
 
 tainly no means of civilising those who have been uncivilised 
 for three thousand years, during which time they have been 
 connected with the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, the Arabs, 
 the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English.* If it be objected 
 that they have always been slaves, we may say our Gallic and 
 German ancestors were so also ; but we ask, Why do they con- 
 tinue to be slaves ? 
 
 The merit of first endeavouring to distinguish races of men 
 by characteristics taken from without the physical world, by 
 the quality of the manifestations of their intelligence, is, per- 
 haps, due to Linnaeus. With this spirit of laconism, which led 
 him to group in one simple and easy formula the characteristic 
 facts which he desired to impress on the mind of the reader as 
 being important, he endeavoured to determine, in a few words, 
 the various tendencies of different races, and it must be ac- 
 knowledged that he has at times been happy in this kind of 
 synoptic classification. f 
 
 of Maillet's remark on the subject : " Mohammed was so struck with the dif- 
 ference between white and black men, that he did not hesitate to say, that 
 God had made the first with white earth, and the latter with black. He did 
 not imagine that men so different, not only in colour but in figure and in- 
 clination, could possibly be of one and the same origin. He observes, in 
 another place, that although there have been prophets of all other nations, 
 there was never one among the blacks ; which shows that they have so little 
 mind, that the gift of foresight, the effect of natural wisdom, which has 
 sometimes been honoured with the name of prophecy, has never fallen to 
 the lot of any of them." This passage is, besides, remarkable ; because this 
 custom of prophecy seems to be a special attribute of the Semitic race 
 (compare Renan, Histoire Gendrale des Langues Semitiques, 8vo, p. 8, Paris, 
 1855), and Mohammed, in making this distinction, declared almost a specific 
 characteristic. In the translation of the " fivangile de 1'Enfance," by G. 
 Brunet (Evangiles Apocryphes, 12mo, Paris, 1849), there is this curious docu- 
 ment (Jesus had just changed some children into rams in the sight of some wo- 
 men, who asked for their pardon), " The Lord Jesus having answered, that the 
 children of Israel were, among other nations, like the Ethiopians ; the women 
 said," etc. This is merely a proof of the contempt which overwhelmed this 
 unhappy race in the east. 
 
 * On the Negro's Place in Nature (Dr. Hunt, Anthropological Society of 
 London, November 17, 1863). 
 
 f See the table taken from the Systema Naturae. We know that LinnaDus 
 had adopted the geographical classification of human races. 
 
 Europe, 
 
 A f C Severus, fastuosus, avarus, 
 
 { Regitur opinionibus. 
 <" Vafer, segnis, negligens, 
 ^ Regitur arbitrio. 
 
PHILOLOGICAL VAEIETIES. 65 
 
 In proportion as modern knowledge has made us penetrate 
 more deeply into the minds of races, since we are no longer 
 contented with studying them superficially in the ordinary 
 manifestations of life, which we may call " common-place/' 
 and which belong to nearly all countries, we perceive that 
 insuperable limits separate one set of men from another with re- 
 gard to intellectual affinity, so that here, as in the case of physical 
 characteristics, each race is almost to be distinguished from its 
 neighbours. " Profound and unchangeable differences," said 
 M. Paul de Remusat,* in 1854, "which would, perhaps, suffice 
 of themselves to found definite and thoroughly limited clas- 
 sifications." 
 
 It was in order to point out a new branch of anthropology, 
 a new and fruitful branch, that a work appeared which was 
 destined to throw a bright light on the subject. It was neces- 
 sary to explain these distinctions, and not merely to enunciate 
 them. The merit in this matter belongs to M. Renan, who, 
 in his treatise on the languages of the great Semitic family, 
 has painted, from the most favourable characteristics, this hu- 
 manity which is, morally, so different from our own, however 
 like it may be in external form. The intellectual disparity of 
 races is henceforward an undeniable fact. 
 
 The religious or moral system of a people being the highest 
 manifestations of its intellectual tendencies, we see that the 
 study of religions enters quite naturally into anthropology ; it 
 is a part of this comparable study of the human mind, unfor- 
 tunately too much neglected, but which begins to take a place 
 worthy of its importance in the world of science. f We do 
 not wish to discuss theological or religious questions, the an- 
 
 * Des Races Humaines, in the Revue des Deux Mondes. 
 
 f [It is, indeed, worthy of a place in science, though not apparently in 
 the sense which is meant by our author, C. Carter Blake says, and says 
 truly, " In zoology, as in all other methods of human thought, the sincere 
 searcher after truth will reap some solid benefit for his labours if carried on 
 in a fair and honest spirit. What science reveals to us, and we know of no 
 source of knowledge whence the revelation of the truth, as it is manifested 
 in living nature, can be impugned, what science teaches us, a simple-minded 
 student will accept, that which the unbiassed evidences of his senses and 
 the manifestations of his own consciousness tell him to be true." (C. Carter 
 Blake, On the Doctrine of Final Causes, as illustrated by Zoology, Hastings 
 Philosophical Society, meeting of January 13, 1864.) EDITOR.] 
 
DO INTELLECTUAL AND . 
 
 thropologist ought to leave them to others. His duty is to 
 endeavour to put himself outside the narrow circle in which 
 nature has placed him ; to forge t, as much as possible, his in- 
 clinations and personal sentiments; to look around him; to 
 put the world in one view, and to endeavour to be the sole 
 spectator of the same. Then a curious phenomenon will strike 
 his gaze, the chains of mountains and the rivers which sepa- 
 rate the various races of mankind, will also separate different 
 religions. Like the sea which breaks on the shore, every 
 belief has seen its disciples, armed with the sword, or with the 
 pacific weapons of persuasion, stop at certain limits, over 
 which they are not permitted to pass. Of course, we only 
 speak here of true proselytism, of real progress in religion in 
 its form and spirit. Humboldt and Bonpland saw, one day, in 
 the Cordilleras, a savage crowd dancing and brandishing the 
 war-hatchet round an altar where a Franciscan was elevating 
 the Host. Such neophytes are only called Christians in the 
 Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, they are not converts in 
 the opinion of the anthropologist. 
 
 Pure monotheism seems always to have been the religion of 
 the Semitic race. Most European nations, on the contrary, 
 have professed from antiquity, a polytheism or a pantheism, 
 more or less disguised, more or less acknowledged. In fact, 
 by the side of those nations of Asia and Europe, where civili- 
 sation and religious ideas appear to have simultaneously been 
 developed, although in different directions, we find other 
 people who have neither religious ideas, nor gods, nor any 
 kind of worship.* 
 
 Three vast regions of the earth, inhabited by people still in 
 a savage state, appear to have remained, up to the present day, 
 free from religious beliefs ; these are Central Africa, Australia, 
 and the country around the North Pole, that is to say, the 
 
 * [" The natives of Australia," observes Hasskarl, " are deficient in the 
 idea of a Creator or moral Governor of the world, and all attempts to in- 
 struct them terminate in a sudden break up of the conversation. The Be- 
 chuanas, one of the most intelligent tribes of the interior of South Africa, 
 have no idea of a Supreme Being ; and there is no word to be found in their 
 language for the conception of a Creator." (Force and Matter, by Dr. Louis 
 Buchner, transl. and edited by J. F. Collingwood, F.E.S.L., F.G.S., F.A.S.L.). 
 EDITOR.] 
 
PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 67 
 
 three parts of the world which are most difficult to explore, 
 the only parts which have even not yet been thoroughly exa- 
 mined. And this is one consequence of this want of explora- 
 ration ; it supposes a sort of sequestration from the rest of the 
 world, which has not even succumbed to civilisation by this 
 contact and imitation of which we have already spoken. Let 
 us admit that relations were established by these people with 
 their neighbours; they would soon have imported from the 
 foreigner conceptions which would even then have never taken 
 a form, on account of the small portion of intellect which 
 nature had given to them. 
 
 Referring to the inhabitants of Australia, Latham acknow- 
 ledges that the general opinion is, in fact, that they have not 
 yet commenced to shape the rudest elements of a religion,* 
 <c an opinion," he says, ' ' which causes the idea that their in- 
 tellects are too sluggish even for the maintenance of super- 
 stition." It is certainly true that, in the American expedition 
 under Captain Gray, it was thought that some religious ideas 
 could be perceived among them ; but it appears from the same 
 account that the song which constituted all this apparent re- 
 ligion, had been brought from far by strangers, and adopted 
 by the natives, doubtless, by other Australians, who had 
 already been influenced by the Christian ideas of the white 
 men, or the Buddhist principles of the Malays. 
 
 To relate the history of the introduction of an idea among 
 a people is, in reality, to declare and prove that this idea did 
 not exist there before, which is sufficient for us if we can be 
 assured of the fact. The testimony of missionariesf is, besides, 
 consonant with that which we have just said ; and we may re- 
 mark on the importance of assertions coming from men 
 whose whole study is to discover, in the people whom they 
 desire to convert, ideas analogous to those which they endea- 
 
 * I translate in this way the word mythology, used by Latham ; it is the 
 real translation. Every religion is necessarily based on a fable, for whoever 
 does not practise it, " Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur." [This is an 
 assertion which our author has no right to make, and which certainly does not 
 redound to his credit. We must earnestly protest against it. A moment's 
 consideration, however, will satisfy most men that the translator's license 
 has here been carried to a most unwarrantable extent. EDITOR.] 
 
 f The Reverend Messrs. Schmidt, Parker, etc. 
 
 F2 
 
68 INTELLECTUAL AND 
 
 vour to propagate. " They have no idea of a Divine Being," 
 says one of these men ; f ' they appear to have no comprehen- 
 sion of the things they commit to memory, I mean especially 
 as regards religious subjects." "What can we do/ ' says an- 
 other, et with a nation whose language possesses no terms corre- 
 sponding to justice or sin, and to whose mind the ideas expressed 
 by these words are completely strange and inexplicable ?" 
 
 As to Central Africa, we confine ourselves to relating a few 
 facts relative to this want of religious belief, gathered from dif- 
 ferent points in the periphery of the vast triangle, almost un- 
 explored and unknown, which is described by lines joining 
 together Senegal, Zanzibar, and the Cape. 
 
 An American missionary,* who lived four years amongst the 
 Mpongwes, one of tie most important nations of Central 
 Africa, the Mandingos, and the Grebos, and who knew their 
 language perfectly, declares that they had neither religion, 
 nor priests, nor idolatry, nor any religious assemblies what- 
 soever. Dr. Livingstone says the same thing concerning the 
 Bechuanas.f The Austrian missionaries, established upon 
 the distant banks of the White Nile, have met with the same 
 want of religion, the same voidj in the mind. In fact, among 
 the Caffres, the name which they give to the Divine Being, as 
 among the Hottentots, is undeniable evidence that they for- 
 merly had no idea of anything similar. This name is Tixo, 
 and its history is too curious not to be related ; it is composed 
 of two words which, together, signify the " wounded knee." 
 It was, they say, the name of a doctor or sorcerer, well known 
 among the Hottentots and Namaquas, on account of some 
 wound which he had received on his knee. Having been held 
 in great estimation for his extraordinary power during his life, 
 the Wounded Knee continued to be invoked even after his 
 death, as being able to comfort and protect ; and consequently 
 his name became the term which best represented, to the minds 
 of his countrymen, their confused idea of the missionaries' God ! 
 
 * John Leighton. 
 
 f See Bertillon, Bulletins de la Socitte d' Anthropologie, March 15, 1860. 
 [See above, p. 66, note. EDITOR.] 
 
 I I had this fact from the mouth of M. de Lesseps, on his return from a 
 journey to Khartum. 
 
PHILOLOGICAL VAEIETIES. 69 
 
 As to the Esquimaux, since 1612, Whitebourne wrote that \ 
 they had no knowledge of God, and lived without any form of 
 civil government. And we can add to this distant testimony 
 the following lines from the journal of Sir John Ross, who 
 lived for a long time in the midst of them. ' ' Did they com- 
 prehend anything of all. that I attempted to explain, explaining 
 the simplest things in the simplest manner that I could devise ? 
 I could not conjecture. Should I have gained more had I 
 better understood their language ? I have much reason to 
 doubt. That they have a moral law of some extent ' written 
 in the heart/ I could not doubt, as numerous traits of their 
 conduct show, but beyond this, I could satisfy myself of no- 
 thing; nor did these efforts, and many more, enable me to 
 conjecture aught worth recording. Eespecting their opinions 
 on the essential points from which I might have presumed on 
 a religion, I was obliged at present to abandon the attempt, 
 and I was inclined to despair."* 
 
 This extract is so much the more important for our thesis, 
 since we perceive in every word the chagrin of a man who did 
 not find in the hearts of others a fraternal echo to his dearest 
 sentiments. It is, in truth, a difficulty peculiar to the study of 
 questions of this nature. We must, therefore, be very careful 
 in discussing the value of any testimony which may be brought 
 forward, and to distrust those minds which begin by declaring 
 a priori the universality of beliefs, hopes, and fears among 
 mankind, as a natural consequence of the primitive unity of 
 the human species. We must always examine most minutely 
 the accounts of travellers to which we are obliged to refer. 
 Thus, for example, it is evident that the older the evidence, 
 the better it is ; but at the same time, the farther it goes back, 
 the less chance there is that it emanates from an independent 
 and impartial mind, free from all prejudice. 
 
 Happily, the exaggeration of these ideas must often suffice 
 to put us on our guard against them, like the candid Jesuit, 
 whose zealous but hazy faith thought it had discovered traces 
 of St. Thomas's preaching in Brazil. f In an otherwise good 
 
 * J. Eoss, Narrative of a Second Voyage, p. 548, 1835. 
 
 f Emanuel Zobrega wrote to the Company from Brazil, in 1552 : " The 
 
70 INTELLECTUAL AND 
 
 notice of the Esquimaux,* Dr. King says, " that these people 
 have preserved, like many other uncivilised races, a vague re- 
 membrance of the creation and of the deluge, and that they 
 believe in future rewards and punishments." In his religious 
 zeal, Dr. King forgets that if the Esquimaux had been able 
 to bring a confused tradition of even the deluge and the crea- 
 tion from the valley of the Euphrates, it was impossible it could 
 have been the same with a belief in future rewards and punish- 
 ments, seeing that the Jews themselves never possessed this 
 belief before their contact with Assyrian civilisation. We may 
 read in Dr. Brecher's excellent workf the whole history of the 
 development of this belief in the immortality of the soul. If 
 the German doctor wishes piously to prove that the Jews 
 ought, morally, to have always believed in this immortality, at 
 all events, his zeal has been able to invent real proofs, which 
 in fact, are wanting. The famous scheol, which is mentioned 
 so often in old Hebrew books, appears to be merely the king- 
 dom of the dead, and not that of souls, like hell, Tartarus, the 
 Elysian fields, and Paradise ; the scheol is but an ideal repre- 
 sentation of the tomb. Even at the time when the Jews had 
 generally adopted the ideas of their neighbours, during the 
 Talmudic period, the belief in the immortality of the soul, if 
 it existed, was neither completely clear nor well reasoned, since 
 they refused all participation in a future life to those who 
 denied the resurrection and the last judgment, " which was 
 equivalent to entire annihilation.";); To believe this, is cer- 
 tainly not to believe in the immortality of the soul, since they 
 regarded eternal life not as a necessary consequence, but as a 
 recompense for good principles, and having faith in them. 
 Such an inconsistency is the clearest possible proof that, even 
 at this period, these ideas had not undergone the change which 
 brought them to the actual point of clearness. They were 
 
 inhabitants acknowledge Saint Thomas, whom they call Zorne (changing the 
 Th into Z, according to their dialect) ; and they have a tradition that he once 
 journeyed through this country." His letter is fully given by Meremberg, 
 Historia Naturae, fol., Antuerpige, 1635. 
 
 * " On the Intellectual Character of the Esquimaux" (Edinburgh New 
 Philosophical Journal, vol. xxxviii, p. 306, October 1844 to April 1845. 
 
 f U Lmmortalite de I'ame chez les Juifs, transl. by I. Cohen, 12uio, Paris, 1857. 
 
 J See Brecher, L'liiMiwrtaUtt dc V<ime chez les Juifs, p. 81. 
 
PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 71 
 
 also not yet completely freed from the ancient belief which the 
 Sadducees, besides,, had not abandoned ; they were the faithful 
 preservers of the ancient faith, and the pure tradition of the 
 sons of Israel. "They have the theory that the soul dies 
 with the body/' wrote Josephus,* " and consider that they ought 
 to keep nothing but the law." 
 
 We must be pardoned for insisting so much upon this point ; 
 but it is of importance as regards our thesis to show that the 
 belief in the immortality of the soul, and in a divinity, is not 
 universal on the globe, that one general characteristic of hu- 
 manity could not be formed from it, and that we ought even 
 less to rely upon the existence of such ideas in order to esta- 
 blish a human kingdom . We have only spoken of people who 
 are either entirely savage, or of Jewish opinions, which have 
 long been lost in the past. Even in our own time, there are 
 two hundred million Buddhists on the earth, who have reached 
 a marvellous point of civilisation, who ignore, in the most ab- 
 solute manner, the notion of another life and that of a divinity. 
 Eugene Burnouf, whose ability no one will deny, has already 
 said it; M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, after much hesitation, 
 which will remain as the seal of a firmly established conviction, 
 has decided in the same way, in the last edition of Bouddka et 
 sa Religion.-^ We quote his own words : " There is not the 
 slightest trace of a belief in God in all Buddhism; and to 
 suppose that it admits the absorption of the human soul into a 
 divine or infinite soul, is a gratuitous supposition which cannot 
 even enter into the ideas of the Buddhist. In order to believe 
 that man can lose himself in the God to which he is reunited, 
 this God must first be believed in as a necessary commencement. 
 But we can scarcely say that the Buddhist does -not believe in 
 Him. He ignores God in such a complete manner, that he 
 does not even care about denying His existence ; he does not 
 care about trying to abolish Him ; he neither mentions such a 
 being in order to explain the origin or the anterior existence 
 of man, his present life, nor for the purpose of conjecturing 
 
 * Josephus, Antiquities, xviii, ch. 2, transl. by D. G. Genebrard, Paris, 1639. 
 f Chapter upon the " Nirvana." 
 

 72 INTELLECTUAL AND 
 
 his future state, and his eventual freedom. The Buddhist has 
 no acquaintance whatsoever with a God, and, quite given up 
 to his own heroic sorrows and sympathies, he has never cast 
 his eyes so far or so high." And the author adds the follow- 
 ing lines, which have a direct bearing on anthropology, and 
 which are like the sum of all we have just brought forward : 
 ' ' The human mind has scarcely been observed but in the races 
 to which we ourselves belong. These races deserve, certainly, 
 a high place in our studies ; but if they are the most import- 
 ant, they do not stand alone. Ought not the others to be 
 noticed, although they are said to be so inferior ? If they do not 
 enter into the hastily drawn outline, must they be disfigured 
 by submitting them to over-strict theories ? Is it not a better 
 plan to acknowledge that old systems are faulty, and that they 
 are not comprehensive enough in everything which they under- 
 take to explain ?* 
 
 The question of intellectual differences, like, indeed, all the 
 other points in anthropological study, has largely exercised 
 the inventive genius of monogenists, for it must be owned 
 that all the efforts of imagination proceed from them. It is 
 not more difficult to admit the development of one or twenty 
 human species upon our planet, than the development of a 
 single moss or sea- weed; they are phenomena of the same 
 order, and equally beyond the actual limits of our knowledge; 
 but this first step taken, anthropology opens itself to the poly- 
 genist as simple and easy ; he follows, without any trouble, all 
 phenomena, from cause to effect, everything enters into one 
 general order, everything is marvellously simple, in spite of 
 apparent complication. It is not the same with the mono- 
 genist; ruled continually by his theory, he goes on almost 
 painfully, and at every step some new obstacle is raised to 
 impede his progress. If he thinks he has conquered physical 
 differences, psychological varieties start up; then will arise 
 families of different tongues, quite as radically distinct and as 
 difficult to explain ; and yet it is in vain that the obstacle seems 
 
 * Bartheleiny Saint-Hilaire, Bouddha et sa Religion, chapter upon the 
 Nirvana," 1862. 
 
PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 73 
 
 so great and insurmountable, it must be overcome, it must be 
 passed in the name of an admitted principle, cost what it may 
 so to do. Thus it is that monogenists have sometimes arrived 
 at the most curious, but at the same time most unfortunate, 
 results. 
 
 And if we wished to form sentiment from science, we should 
 ask, which is the most reasonable, the most worthy, and the 
 most consoling, whether to believe that we alone are perfect, 
 and that nine-tenths of our brethren who cover the globe are 
 disinherited ; or to consider all these varied existences which 
 we see around us as forming equal, if not similar, species, pur- 
 suing, each in its own way, a destiny, different, indeed, but 
 not degraded, not degenerated, in certain points even better 
 arranged than our own. ' ' God," said Niebuhr, ' ' has marked 
 on each race of men their destination with the characteristic 
 which best suits them ;" and the philosopher had already learnt | 
 by history that when civilisation has been suddenly introduced I 
 from without among a savage nation,* the consequence is an I 
 immediate physical degeneracy, that is to say, the destruction ! 
 of the people which has wandered from its usual mode of life. 
 The historian thus proclaimed a physiological law, which most 
 monogenists are glad to forget, that all degeneracy ends ne- 
 cessarily in death ; it kills itself, and always at the tenth gene- 
 ration, if not at the first. No group of human beings, after 
 two or three generations of unmixed existence, can be con- 
 sidered as degraded or degenerated, not more than we should 
 admit that a young girl, attacked with cretinism in its greatest 
 degree, had the characteristics of the Esquimaux or the Mon- 
 golian race.f 
 
 We can see, even in a humanitarian point 1 of view, the 
 point of view in which we refuse to place ourselves, that 
 the polygenists have the advantage. The mind is not of- 
 fended, and cannot be so, to see 'certain creatures possess 
 some particular faculty to the exclusion of others. Does not ' 
 
 * Niebuhr quoted, in support of this, the Nalhkis and the Guaranis in the 
 New Californian and Cape Missions. Schlegel (Essais, p. 341, Paris, 1841) 
 declares, that most savage nations ought always to remain so by the will of 
 nature. 
 
 f See Comptes rendus de I' Academic des Sciences, meeting of July 20, 1857. 
 
74 INTELLECTUAL AND 
 
 harmony obtain an absolute value from a necessary inequality 
 of parts, whilst she herself restores to each part an equal 
 value, in making them all co-operate towards the same end, 
 the same action, in which are distributed great and minor 
 parts, some brilliant, some humble, some concealed ?* 
 
 That fine North American race, which is so much admired 
 by all who have lived among them, will be no longer, accord- 
 ing to Dr. Martius,t the worthy descendant of the first mur- 
 derer, a collection of maniacs and insane folks, brought to that 
 state by misery and the reprobation of God. We only see in 
 them men endowed like ourselves, but more in harmony with 
 the nature which animates them, having, of course, their im- 
 perfections like ourselves, but giving us also an example of 
 great qualities, firmness, courage, patience, and an intense 
 love of liberty. Whites and blacks may be slaves, but the 
 American has never served a master. J The Negro himself 
 has his advantages ; and we could not, perhaps, struggle with 
 him about affective or hateful faculties. M. de Gobineau seems 
 to us to be strangely mistaken in the portrait which he has 
 attempted to draw of the black man ; he has made his race 
 
 * " I maintain/* says Courtet de 1'Isle (Tableau EthnograpMque du genre 
 humain, p. 89, 8vo, Paris, 1849), " that human races are unequal in intellec- 
 tual power, that they are, consequently, not susceptible of the same degree 
 of development, and that each of them is called upon to fill, in unequal con- 
 ditions, a mission marked out by Providence." 
 
 f Doctor Martius is a curious example of the extravagances to which mo- 
 nogenist ideas may lead. In order to explain the moral character of the 
 Americans, he is obliged to suppose a frightful cataclysm [great inundation] 
 which happened, he cannot say when, and adds, " Is it the profound terror 
 felt by those unhappy people who escaped from this awful calamity which, 
 being transmitted without a diminished intensity to following generations, 
 has troubled their reason, obscured their intelligence, and hardened their 
 heart ?" Compare Morel, Traite des Degene'rescences de Vespece humaine, 1857, 
 and Discours Inaugural a I' Academic de Rouen, 1857. 
 
 J D'Orbigny saw the Charruas continue a war against the Spaniards (who 
 decimated them) rather than renounce their much-valued independence. 
 (Voyage dans I'Amerique Meridionale, vol. iv, Introduction p. 4. [Our author 
 ought not to compare the northern Americans with the southern aborigines, 
 giving to both of them, apparently, the same characteristics. The northerners 
 are whites, and (supposing the Canadians and the north-western settlers are 
 spoken of) worthy of his praise. We put the present Northern States on one 
 side altogether, as the character given by our author cannot possibly apply 
 to them. The Charruas, who are mentioned in the above note, are Indians, 
 inhabiting the banks of the Uruguay in South America, and therefore, what- 
 ever may be their courage and love of liberty as aborigines, they cannot pro- 
 perly be classed with white inhabitants, who are merely settlers, EDITOR.] 
 
PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 75 
 
 hideous ; it is only inferior in relation to ourselves ; it is equal 
 to some, and superior to others, not partaking, indeed, of all 
 the advantages of the Iranian or Semitic races, but able to 
 display other qualities which belong particularly to itself. 
 
 In the place of this spectacle, which is thus presented to 
 our view, of degraded beings covering half the earth, we 
 simply see, for our part, intelligence developing itself in each 
 race, following certain directions and tendencies at the expense 
 of others. These special tendencies are sometimes very re- 
 markable. In his intercourse with the Esquimaux, Sir John 
 Ross, whose observing mind we have several times had occa- 
 sion to notice, found that they were nearly all good geogra- 
 phers. He put into their hands a pencil and paper (of the use 
 of which they were certainly ignorant), and they drew with 
 great correctness the bays, rivers, islands, and lakes of their 
 country, as well as the exact spots where they had encamped 
 at some former emigration. This is a curious contrast with 
 most of the African and Arab peoples, who seem to have but a 
 very vague idea of distance or time ; indeed, the difficulty of find- 
 ing out routes among the inhabitants of Soudan, which we have 
 ourselves experienced, has become almost proverbial.* With- 
 out going so far as all that, our neighbours, the Semites, differ 
 from ourselves in the manner and quality of their mind to an 
 extraordinary degree ; on the one side is the Aryan, an analyst, 
 a pantheist, given to the plastic or perspective reproduction of 
 everything which surrounds him ; on the other, the Semite, a 
 sensualist, a monotheist, an iconoclast. If it is radically im- 
 possible for the Semite to follow us in the depths of meta- 
 physics, his language even being opposed to all philosophic 
 demonstration ; in our turn, perhaps, we are lees religious, 
 that is to say, less solemnly struck by the universe. The 
 thought of demonstrating God, and proving this thought, will 
 never come to the Semite as it did to Bossuet, Fenelon, and 
 
 * Compare D'Escayrac de Lauture, Le Desert et le Soudan ; Memoire sur le 
 Soudan, etc. [These people are not so very peculiar in this respect. Even in 
 our own land, there is sometimes a good deal of difficulty in obtaining informa- 
 tion about routes ; and agricultural labourers especially are much given to 
 scratching their heads and chewing the cud of meditation, ending with an 
 indecision quite delightful to the tired traveller. EDITOB.] 
 
76 
 
 INTELLECTUAL AND 
 
 Newton.* The Semite feels God, if we may so express it ; and, 
 as if absorbed and astounded by this personified creative force, 
 whose shadow presses on him, he does not understand the arts 
 of reproduction, although among all the people who excel in it. 
 
 In fact, history itself will teach us that these tendencies are 
 so much accused and so general, that they are found every- 
 where ; in one place rising even above conquest, in another, 
 modifying itself to imported religions. When a religion, in 
 accordance with the genius of the men to whom it has been 
 addressed from the cradle, passes from this race to another, it 
 is necessarily modified. Pure monotheism, born in the east, 
 has only conquered the west and the Iranian race by transform- 
 ing itself to their pleasure. The Persians accepted Islam ; 
 but they have not been able to renounce this necessity for 
 plastic reproduction, which is one of the characteristics of the 
 Iranian family : a schism became formed, which authorised all 
 the arts, and left in entire freedom that natural tendency which 
 could not be smothered. Far more than the monsters in 
 Isaiah's dream, the lions of the Alhambra were a terrible pro- 
 phesy. Those who see them may read in their huge figures 
 the vitality of a conquered nation, whose love of the living 
 form invaded even the palace of the conquerors, and which 
 were soon to make them fly. The race which flourished at 
 Athens and at Eome only accepted Christianity, which also 
 came from the east, by despoiling it of its original character ; 
 and this religion would, at the present day, be incapable of 
 making proselytes in that east where it first took its rise. The 
 preaching of Mohammed was, as M. Renan has remarked, but 
 a reaction of pure monotheism against degenerated Christianity, 
 concealing but badly its polytheistic tendencies. 
 
 In truth, the psychological study of the human race is a new 
 science, which has been examined into on some points, but not 
 in all. To desire to sketch it would be to fall into the alter- 
 native either of doing what others have done perfectly, or to 
 fall into error for want of necessary materials. We can only 
 
 * See Philosophies Naturalis Principia Mathematica, pp. 482, 483, 4to, Am- 
 stelodami, 1723. 
 
PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 77 
 
 quote, as having been well studied, first, the Iranian race, by 
 all our moralists and philosophers ; secondly, the Semitic race, 
 by M. Renan ; and thirdly, the American race, by Humboldt 
 and Bonpland,* by d'0rbigny,t Morton, J and Coombe. 
 
 II. The study of languages is connected, on the one hand, to 
 the physiology of the human race, but more immediately still to 
 the study of the varieties of the human mind, of which they 
 are in some measure the organ. They can by this means assist 
 also in classifying mankind into natural groups. But where 
 the study of languages affects more especially the anthropolo- 
 gist, || is when it touches on the origin of the varieties of lan- 
 guage, and of the primitive state (either intellectual or social) 
 of the speaking man : when it endeavours to fathom the past 
 each day farther back, each day nearer to the origin. Thus 
 bound together, the two sciences ought to have the same des- 
 tiny; philology has had its monogenists and its polygenists. 
 The first have been obliged to give way, overpowered by the 
 number and the superiority of their opponents. They are 
 done for ; and the field remains free to the latter, who affirm, 
 through their studies, the multiplied origin of human langua'ge, 
 leaving the consequences to be deduced, or deducing them 
 themselves. ^[ 
 
 One sole declaration will suffice us, that of the history of 
 
 * See Essai Politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, Paris, 1811. 
 
 f Voyage dans VAmerique Mtridionale. 
 
 j Crania Americana, Introduction. 
 
 Memoire on the preceding work. 
 
 || [Dr. Hunt, however, does not think that language is such an unfailing 
 test as our author appears to imagine. He considers that language must be 
 utterly discarded as the first principle of anthropological classification, and 
 gives a far higher value to religion and to art, considering language merely 
 as the third element. It is possible to change the language of a race ; but 
 apparently impossible to change either their religion or their innate ideas of 
 art. See Hunt on Anthropological Classification (Brit. Assoc., 1863), Anthrop. 
 Rev., vol. i, p. 383. " On ethnology, Professor Miiller says, ' The science of lan- 
 guage and the science of ethnology have both suffered most seriously from 
 being mixed up together. The classification of races and languages should 
 be quite independent of each other. Eaces may change their languages ; 
 and history supplies us with several instances where one race adopted the 
 language of another. Different languages, therefore, may be spoken by one 
 race, or the same language may be spoken by different races ; so that any 
 attempt at squaring the classification of races and tongues must necessarily 
 fail.' " (On the Science of Language, E. S. Charnock ; Anthrop. Rev., vol, i, 
 p. 200.) EDITOR.] 
 
 ^f See Chavee, Les Langues et les Races, 1862. 
 
78 INTELLECTUAL AND 
 
 Semitic idioms. " If the planets, whose physical nature seems 
 to be analogous to that of the earth," says M. Kenan,* " are 
 peopled with beings organised like ourselves, we may presume 
 that the history and the language of those planets does not 
 differ more from our own than does the history and language 
 of the Chinese." It is impossible to establish by a clearer and 
 more striking image the individuality of the different families 
 of language, not one of which owes its origin to its neighbours, 
 and which have, probably, never been in one another's pre- 
 sence, except when they had already been formed, bringing 
 with them their own characteristics, their fundamental and 
 profound type, as unalterable by contact as is the physical 
 type of the men who spoke them. These, in presence of 
 others, may have been able to alter their traditions, their re- 
 membrances, their words, but these were never more than 
 simple loans ; we may be certain that these men were strangers 
 one to the other on the day when they uttered their first words 
 in their cradles. 
 
 We must limit ourselves merely to recording the result, 
 which is, that each system of language is absolutely irre- 
 ducible to others, both by its basis and its form ; all born 
 in human thought, it is true, but this thought following at each 
 point a particular path, so that each of these systems, as M. 
 Renan has said, only abuts on the others by the community of 
 the aim it is intended to reach. 
 
 Certain families of languages do not differ solely by their 
 constitution, they show special phonetic or physiological qua- 
 lities ;f that is to say, we can observe, in two different lan- 
 guages, varieties of the same order which is explained among 
 animals, by the words barking, braying, cooing, etc. This is 
 particularly the case with the strange language spoken by the 
 clear-complexioned race of South Africa, probably much more 
 widely diffused in former times than at present. It resembles 
 no other known language, and consists in a clucking which has, 
 they say, nothing analogous to it among any other nation on 
 
 * Histoire des Langues Semitiqucs, p. 467, Paris, 1855. 
 
 f See Prichard, The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, edited by Latham, 
 1857. 
 
PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 79 
 
 the earth. The English have characterised it by the names of 
 sighing, or duelling, and also especially click language* Here 
 is a new difference, a radical difference in relation to so many 
 others, which decidedly forms, from these Bosjesmans, a people 
 whom it is impossible to ally, it does not signify how, or under 
 what aspect, to any other of the divisions of the great human 
 family. 
 
 * " The sound of their voice resembles sighing." " Their language re- 
 sembles the clucking of a turkey." Compare White, Account of the regular 
 gradation of Man, p. 67, London, 1799. Appleyard, The Kafir Language, p. 3, 
 8vo, King William's Town, 1850. Morel, Traite des Degenerescences del'espece 
 humaine, p. 42, Paris, 1857. "The Kafirs have adopted some of the in- 
 flexions in use among their neighbours, but as a simple ornament to their 
 speech, without attributing any special signification to these ' duckings.' " 
 Is. Greoffroy- Saint-Hilaire (Correspondence). 
 
80 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 
 
 MONOGENISTS starting from unity of origin as a fact, if not 
 proved, at least accepted and unquestionable, were necessarily 
 led to discover a physiological explanation of the profound differ- 
 ences which we find at the present day among mankind, and 
 which would have led them, according to monogenists, from 
 one extreme state to the other, or from a medium state to the 
 two extremes. 
 
 Now, it is necessary to remember that every question con- 
 cerning influence implies a previous historic notion. We can- 
 not establish that a modification is not produced in a body 
 (here is humanity), except by comparing it with itself at two 
 distinct moments of duration, more or less distant. When a 
 monogenist admits as an origin one uniform human race, he 
 places a term of comparison in the past, he gives an historical 
 date more or less definite to this uniform human species. And 
 it is because religious cosmogonies alone dare, at the present 
 day, to arrogate to themselves the power of making history 
 dart back to the commencement of humanity, that we shall 
 always be much troubled by not seeing a theological influence 
 as the basis of monogenist ideas ; now, they say, however, that 
 they have discovered the trace of this human uniformity upon 
 which they rely, in order to prove this great historical fact. 
 
 In our own opinion, history is very far from commencing 
 with mankind ; it only goes back two or three ages before the 
 invention of figurative language, a more important and dif- 
 ficult language for man than articulated language, which was 
 discovered long before, and at many different points. It is 
 
THE INFLUENCE OP CLIMATE. 81 
 
 writing which, makes the Asiatics and the lost people of Central 
 America better than savages ; and if we were asked for a spe- 
 cific distinction with regard to intelligence between mankind 
 and animals, we should only be able to find it there. It will 
 be seen later that we are far from denying the influence of a 
 middle course ; but we maintain that every term of comparison 
 is wanting at the present day to show that man, since the most 
 distant historic periods, has ever shown less dissimilarities than 
 now. Most monogenists, disagreeing about the whole sys- 
 tem of modifying causes, agree generally in acknowledging 
 that climates and hybridity have a decisive creative influence 
 as regards races of men. These two kinds of influence alone 
 deserve our consideration. We shall commence by climate, 
 putting on one side, for the present, the study of the specious 
 question of hybridity, whose part is so badly understood by 
 those who believe that it creates varieties, when it can only 
 weaken differences. 
 
 An important part in the means of alteration from one race 
 to another has been given, by Hippocrates, to external influ- 
 ences. He seems to have been the first to point this out, in 
 his Treatise on Air, Water, and Places* " The form, colour, 
 and manners of nations," says Polybius, " depend solely on 
 the diversity of climates."t I n general, the ancients believed 
 in the immediate and sudden influence of climate, so much so 
 that a stranger, at the end of a few years, would be completely 
 changed and altered to the type of the inhabitants of the same 
 place. 
 
 In our days, Cabanis alone has dared to go so far as this.J 
 Some monogenists have simply enlarged Grecian theories, and 
 explained everything by the prolonged duration of the same 
 influences. Others have supposed that local changes in the at- 
 mospheric conditions of the world, anterior to the actual epoch, 
 were the cause. This is a sort of progress beyond the pre- 
 ceding hypothesis, in the sense that at least we must recognise 
 
 * Compare Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, 13th year, vol. ii, 
 p. 201 : Knox, The Races of Men, p. 82, London, 1850 : Morel, Degenerescences 
 de I'Espece Humaine, Paris, 1857. 
 
 f See Beddoin in English Cyclopaedia : see, also, Vitruvius, book vi, ch. i. 
 
 j Rapports du Physique et du Moral, 13th year, vol. ii, p. 294. 
 
82 THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 
 
 the insufficiency of actually existing causes, in order to explain 
 the great differences observed at the present day between men. 
 Isidore Greoffroy Saint-Hilaire has agreed with his father upon 
 the great question of the influence of the surrounding medium ; 
 but death seized him before he could apply these theories to 
 mankind. However, the high position that his Histoire Natu- 
 relle Generale has taken in science obliges us to pause a 
 moment on the subject of his opinions, which have, besides, 
 easily triumphed over the ruins of Cuvier's school. And if 
 we do not agree with all the doctrines propounded by the 
 second Greoffroy, we are all the more satisfied, since, differing 
 from the son, we incline more to the theories of the father. 
 
 Isidore Greoffroy believed in a decisive influence of the me- 
 dium, but only under certain conditions. He believed that 
 these influences are limited, as he nimself calls it, every time 
 that it relates to anything beyond the action of man, that is to 
 say, on savage or free animals. In this case, the action of the 
 medium, according to him, would be confined exclusively to 
 the producing of varieties in form and in the colour of the 
 skin,* a form we never see varied in the same class of men ; 
 the colour of the skin, which is sensibly the same among men, 
 among whom the fair type is itself exceptional, and spread 
 over a very small portion of the ancient north-west continent. 
 
 In every case, Isidore Geoffroy acknowledged that these 
 variations are sometimes very inconsiderable ;f an d although 
 they have in no way approached those which separate human 
 races, w may be allowed to believe that the differences 
 observed among savage species were, in his eyes, much less 
 important. He has endeavoured, on the contrary, to compare 
 insignificant differences among free animals with varieties 
 much more marked, and much clearer than those shown by 
 domestic animals, and therefore, doubtless, he wished to make 
 a step towards the fundamental question of anthropology, 
 
 * Histoire Naturelle Generale, vol. iii, p. 319, 1860. We do not here quote 
 the facts relative to the Barbary and Corsican stag (ibidem, p. 407), since 
 they rest only on the negative assertion of an old author. 
 
 f "Partout de petits changements, nulle part de grands." Hist. Naturelle 
 Generale, vol. iii, p. 388. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 83 
 
 which was evidently at the bottom of his thoughts, and which 
 he had for a long time resolved in a monogenist sense. 
 
 But domestic animals have quite special conditions, which 
 do not allow the assimilation of these varieties with those 
 which have been simply produced by natural forces. Cuvier* 
 had already pointed out this difference, and rejected all assimi- 
 lation between them and free animals. Without taking too 
 much account of the reasons "which impelled him towards such 
 opinions, we believe that upon this point, at least, he was en- 
 tirely in the right ; as to the rest, Isidore Greoffroy himself 
 furnishes us with weapons against his own theories. fc Since 
 nature, left to herself," he says, " does not give us witnesses 
 of the great changes in the conditions of existence, it is clear 
 that there only remains one means of seeing such changes, 
 and of deducing therefrom the effects upon organisation, it 
 is to force nature to do what she would not do voluntarily ."t 
 All the condemnation of this system of Isidore Geoffroy is 
 contained, in our opinion, in these last words. As for our- 
 selves, we reject, in the most absolute and formal manner, the 
 connexion which some have desired to make between man and 
 the domestic animals. Man is a sociable animal, like many 
 others ; but he only becomes exceptionally a domestic animal 
 when he falls into slavery. The domestic animal is a being 
 drawn from the normal state, and constrained by man. He is 
 constrained by nature to obey the influence of his master alone, 
 an influence infinitely variable. It resembles itself no longer ; 
 the habit of obedience does not even leave it its will ; it ceases 
 to be a personality, and becomes a mere machine, producing 
 for the benefit of another person. 
 
 Domesticity has certain characteristics of degeneracy ; the 
 animal loses its activity, it becomes less eager, and assimilates 
 itself more ; it becomes almost incapable of subsisting alone ; 
 it vegetates ; together with its personality it has lost this re- 
 sistence to the ambient medium, which is the necessary charac- 
 teristic of the species, the condition of the nisus formativus ; 
 
 * Recherches sur les Ossements Fossiles, 4to, vol. i, p. 59, 1831. 
 f Histoire Naturelle Generate, vol. iii, p. 389. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 
 
 it modifies itself to everybody's will. Its organism may be 
 considered as being in a state of unstable equilibrium, so that 
 the least influence causes this organism to vary, and with the 
 least possible delay, to a considerable degree.* But when 
 man ceases for an instant to be attentive in directing these 
 modifications, when he forgets himself for a moment, nature 
 always vigilant and ready to seize upon her rights destroys 
 all this human edifice, and recalls the animal to a type which 
 may be called normal, but which is not the type of the stock, 
 since nature, acting on an organism endowed, as we have just 
 said, with the wonderful malleability and ductility acquired by 
 domesticity, immediately and naturally modifies the animal, 
 which is restored to liberty, by the power of the new medium 
 into which it is cast. 
 
 Nothing of the same sort takes place with mankind. This 
 does not mean, however, that he cannot also be reduced to a 
 state of domesticity. f Slaves, indeed, are nothing else; and 
 all that is wanting in order to place them in comparison with 
 animal domesticity, would be the history of a race of Ilotes, 
 which has always been free from any mixture, and has continued 
 so during a time equal to that which separates us from the first 
 conquest of the dog, the sheep, and the ox, upon the high 
 table-lands of Asia. 
 
 Let us, then, leave all comparison J between man, free to 
 come, to go, and to choose his own food, and domestic animals. 
 Let us return to those who live free, and say, once for all, that 
 if we stop our progress with so many details concerning these 
 
 * " What would be thought of a breeder who took Norman colts or Flemish 
 calves to the high lands of the Alps and the Pyrenees, and then expected to 
 see them reproduce (their training having been finished) all the pure charac- 
 teristics of the original races ?" Isidore Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire, Histoire 
 Naturelle Gene'rale, vol. iii, p. 307. 
 
 f See Verneuil, Bulletins de la Societe d' Anthropologie, February 2, 1860. 
 Bonte, ibidem, August 6, 1863. 
 
 [" A priest who has drunk wine shall migrate into a moth or a fly, feed- 
 ing on ordure. He who steals the gold of a priest, shall pass a thousand 
 times into the bodies of spiders. If a man shall steal honey, he shall be 
 born a great stinging gnat ; if oil, an oil-drinking beetle ; if salt, a cicada ; 
 if a household utensil, an ichneumon fly" (Institutes of Menu, 353). Thus, 
 apparently with regard to comparison, the Hindu considers insects to be the 
 lowest form of animal life, into which moral criminals are to pass after death, 
 according to their doctrine of metempsychosis. EDITOR.] 
 
THE INFLUENCE OP CLIMATE. 85 
 
 comparisons, it is from a kind of respect for the character of 
 certain learned men who have thus treated anthropological 
 science. We believe very little in biology, or in demonstra- 
 tions by similarities. Every animal, every organ, every ana- i 
 tomical element, has its own life, its own laws of birth, 1 
 development, nutrition, and reproduction. At the commence- 
 ment of science, everything is clear and easy, like the cellular 
 theory, for instance, in the elements of anatomy; but every 
 day the laws of life (we might say, the laws of nature) are 
 multiplied and complicated ; every morning the searcher after 
 truth must expect to discover some phenomenon which will 
 disturb the scientific belief of the night before. " Every even- 
 ing," said one of the masters of science, " our best prayer is 
 to form afresh a synthesis of the sciences."* Well, if modern 
 anatomy has taught us that the initial phase of the develop- 
 ment of the egg differs according to the animal, f even as 
 nothing resembles less the development of certain bones of the 
 face than that of their neighbours, how shall we dare to com- 
 pare any animal with man ? J Having said this, let us return 
 to the influence of climate upon wild or free animals. 
 
 Isidore Geoffroy quotes, with complacency, the instance of 
 the Corsican and African stag taken from Europe to these two 
 countries scarcely twenty centuries ago, which form at the 
 present day two clearly distinct varieties. From that the au- 
 thor of the Histoire Naturelle Generale argues rapid and sen- 
 sible modifications, caused by the action of the medium. But, 
 
 * [Why will some scientific men persist in separating, so strongly, religion 
 and science, as if both could not be practised ? This is what the " master of 
 science" appears to think. Each student of science may well apply the 
 following lines : " It is your duty to go on steadfastly, unwaveringly, ohne 
 Hast, ohne East, conscious that you interpret, to the best of your finite ability, 
 your conceptions of the truths of science, equally conscious that whatever 
 may be the immediate result of your labours, they must eventually fulfil the 
 aspiration which tends ad majorem Dei gloriam." C. Carter Blake On the 
 Doctrine of Final Causes (Hastings Philosophical Society, meeting of January 
 13, 1864). EDITOR.] 
 
 f Eobin, Memoire sur la Production du Blastoderme (Journal de Physiologic, 
 p. 358, 1862). 
 
 It is thus that we do not see realised in man that general law which 
 decrees that animal species are large in proportion to the continent which 
 they inhabit; the mean size of the mammalia, in particular, is regularly 
 proportional to the extent of Australia, America, the ancient continent, and 
 the bottom of the ocean. 
 
86 THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 
 
 first of all, the evidence of this fact is simply negative ; the 
 old authors, who denied the existence of the stag in Corsica 
 and Africa, were perhaps simply ignorant of it. Then, this 
 introduction, if it did take place, was perhaps performed by 
 means of animals which had been kept in domesticity or cap- 
 tivity for many generations, and consequently, were easily 
 able to change their mode of life directly they recovered 
 their liberty, as we have already said. However this may be, 
 it is simply man himself whom it is necessary to examine, 
 without comparing him to any animal, and without misleading 
 ourselves with the connexion of climates, generally compared 
 too hastily, and with regard to mere equality of temperature. 
 
 It is sufficient to run over, in Humboldtfs Cosmos, the lengthy 
 enumeration of circumstances which make up a climate, in order 
 to understand that all the comparisons which our minds may 
 make between any two regions of the world are, at least, rash. 
 The analogy of two climates is rather a sort of experimental 
 notion, which can only be reasonably deduced by the similarity 
 of the biological as well as the meteorological phenomena of 
 every kind in the two regions to be compared. And when 
 climates shall have been able to change a white man into a 
 black (a fact we energetically deny), must we also lay to the 
 charge of meteorological influence the clear moral aptitude and 
 profound differences of the various species of mankind ? Shall 
 we admit that a little more cold or heat will alter the intellect ? 
 and why not language ? 
 
 But we are not the first to doubt all these marvels. Bacon* 
 and Albinf fairly doubted the effect of the sun on the colour 
 of the skin. Camper, who admitted that all varieties come 
 from external influences, acknowledged, and with good faith, 
 that the influences which we can appreciate are not sufficient 
 
 * Compare Mitchell, An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours, etc. 
 (Philosophical Transactions, 1745.) 
 
 f " Sole colorari homines non dubium, eosque autem ut nigrescant non 
 constat." Albums, De Sede et Causa Coloris JEthiopum, p. 12. He also says, 
 still speaking of Negroes, that they are coloured, " quod suum parentes co- 
 lorem in liberos propagaiit . . . . ; sethiops foemina si cum mare oethiope 
 rem habuerit, tethiopem, ni quid forte natura ludat, gignit ; alba si cum albo, 
 album." Ibidem, p. 10. It is in some manner the permanence of a declared 
 type. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 87 
 
 to explain fully either tlie prominent jaw-bone in the Negro, 
 the cheek-bone in the Kalmuc, or the obliquity of the eyes 
 in the Chinese and the Malay, etc. We can declare the same 
 about all the other peculiarities of the same order, the flat- 
 tening of the nose, the crisped state of the hair, the colouring 
 matter which we find even in the arch of the palate in the 
 Negro, etc. 
 
 We owe a very good observation to Camper : {{ The black 
 colourwhich is noticed in the natural parts of both sexes, and even 
 in white individuals, clearly proves that our reticular membrane 
 has its colour only from the blood."* This fact alone should 
 have long ago given a more rational impulse to researches on 
 this subject. If putting all these hypotheses on one side, for 
 all that we can bring forward has no other value if we wish 
 to study in a positive manner the influence of the sky upon 
 man, we have only in reality one resource, it is to shut our- 
 selves up in the limits of history, to study the effect of the 
 migrations of which it tells us, and to see whether man, trans- 
 ported far away, does become modified, and how this modifica- 
 tion takes place. Then we shall find two answers to these 
 questions, which form together a kind of anthropological law. 
 
 LAW. In historical times, either man (we mean a society of 
 men) who is taken far from his medium does not alter his type^ 
 or lie entirely disappears. 
 
 What nation has been transformed? We cannot answer, 
 even with history in our hand ; we know not of any. And yet, 
 the short period of time embraced by the records of mankind 
 would be quite sufficient if it were true, as Isidore Geoffrey 
 thought, that we could conclude from animals to men, and that 
 two thousand years would have been sufficient to alter funda- 
 mentally the genus stag.f It is a well-known fact, that the 
 inhabitants of the Island of Bourbon, who were colonists esta- 
 blished in the high lands for two centuries, have preserved 
 intact the purity of their blood. J The Spanish and Portuguese 
 
 * Dissertation Physique sur les Differences des Traits du Visage, p. 17. 
 f See above, p. 85. 
 
 $ Yvan, De France en Chine, p. 175, Paris, 1853. [" M. Perier lias men- 
 tioned, according to Yvan, the beauty of the inhabitants of the island of 
 
00 THE INFLUENCE OP CLIMATE. 
 
 families established in Brazil, and who have carefully avoided 
 foreign marriages, have lost nothing, it is said, of their original 
 characteristics.* The Icelanders have not become Laplanders 
 in their own island, and they have now been established there 
 eight hundred years; they are as fair and German-looking as 
 at first, f The Dutch have prospered at the Cape under the 
 name of Boers. They say that at Cochin and Malabar there 
 exists a Jewish tribe, which has been established there for a 
 long time, and which traces back its origin to the captivity; 
 it has remained pure,J and as similar to the inhabitants of the 
 Jewish quarter at Cairo, as to the Jews in Leonardo de Vinci's 
 Last Supper, and in the pictures of the Flemish school. 
 
 Indeed, among ourselves in Europe, have not the Irish pre- 
 served, under their foggy and cold sky, that southern nature 
 which is revealed in their taste for certain arts, their small 
 height, their black hair, the vivacity of the women, and the 
 indolence of the men ? Now, here is another order of facts, 
 man is not altered by emigration. Perhaps these facts are not 
 very conclusive to all people, either on account of the difficulty 
 of observation, or the short period which they embrace. They 
 must be taken just as science offers them to us, and we must 
 give our attention solely to reckoning the conclusion from the 
 value of the premises. 
 
 We now arrive at the second term of the law which we have 
 laid down, that man, transported to another country, even- 
 tually disappears. The theory which we thus form is of con- 
 siderable importance. It has even received a particular name, 
 it has been called the Theory of the non-Cosmopolitanism of 
 Man. It is at the present day defended in France by Dr. 
 Boudin, with as much energy as talent. In this matter, facts 
 are abundant enough, and they at once take a considerable 
 
 Reunion, who descend from a few couples only, and yet have known how to 
 preserve their purity of blood" (An Inquiry into Consanguineous Marriages 
 and Pure Races, Dr. E. Dally ; transl. by H. J. C. Beavan, Anthrop. Review, 
 p. 97, 1864. EDITOR.] 
 
 * White, Account of the regular Gradation of Man, p. 112. Morton, Crania 
 Americana, Introduction. Prince de Wied, Voyage au Bresil, vol. ii, p. 310. 
 Bory de St. Vincent, Essai Zoologique sur le genre huniain, vol. ii, p. 20. 
 
 f Desmoulins, Histoire Naturelle des races humaines, p. 162. Indigenous 
 Races of the Earth, p. 585. 
 
 t White, Account of the regular Gradation of Man, p. 104. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OP CLIMATE. 89 
 
 significance; and this is determined by figures, so that we , 
 must acknowledge that in most cases each race is by its nature 
 attached to the ground which supports it, and that it is not i 
 with impunity that it oversteps its limits. 
 
 It is because a foreign climate has in general a really de- 
 structive influence, producing degeneracy among emigrants, 
 that is to say, a parallel morbid alteration of both the intellect 
 and the body, that we always see the same races moving about 
 in the same areas, and disappear when they pass them.* If 
 the Semite, who has left Yemen, has come to pasture his 
 camels near the shores of the ocean, opposite the Fortunate 
 Islands, it is because he and his animals find in the Kiff the same 
 conditions of life that they did by the Nile and the Isthmus 
 of Suez. Whatever has been said about the Jews and some 
 other races, not one of them seems to be really cosmopolitan. 
 To admit that a Jewish tribe, thrown into the midst of a black 
 population, has become black by the sole action of the climate, 
 is to admit that there were no conversions, no adoptions, and 
 no sexual unions contrary to the law of Moses ; and in this 
 way the philosophic editors of the Code Napoleon, as well as 
 daily medical practice, teach us what to think. For our part, 
 we only see in these transformations of Jewish families, esta- 
 blished far away, the result of the absorption of the type of a 
 small group of emigrants by a population which outnumbers 
 them. The Jew has disappeared; the language has been 
 transmitted like the belief, and also the name. 
 
 The acclimatisation of man, as well as of the wild animal, 
 takes place only when he finds the conditions of existence sen- I" 
 sibly identical with those in which he has been created. Be- j 
 yond that, nature punishes him for having overstepped the/ 
 limits which she had assigned to him, and within which he^ 
 ought to continue to move his organism in relation to this de- 
 fined medium. The domestic animal, on the contrary, by rea- 
 son of this malleability of which we have before spoken, ac- 
 commodates itself in general very conveniently. And the 
 
 * W. Edwards, Des Caracteres Physiologiques des races humaines, p. 14. 
 Niebuhr (transl.), Lectures on Ethnography, vol. i, p. 374. 
 
90 THE INFLUENCE OP CLIMATE. 
 
 varieties which it shows on recovering its liberty, are of them- 
 selves a proof that it has been under a different sky to that of 
 its original country. 
 
 Such is, in our opinion, the sole manner of explaining at 
 the present day, in a serious and general point of view, all cli- 
 materic influences. We must render justice to some mono- 
 genists, that they have perfectly understood the real part taken 
 by these influences. Blumenbach calls them causce degenera- 
 tionis ; and here the German anatomist, in defending, like 
 Prichard, the specific unity of the human race, raises himself 
 above the English anthropologist, without, however, reaching 
 what we believe to be the truth. Prichard, inclining to the 
 belief that humanity is entirely descended from the Negroes,* 
 acknowledged, consequently, a kind of causce perfecticmis, that 
 is to say, an ascending march of phenomena, where his prede- 
 cessor had only seen an inverse march. Now, this ascending 
 march of phenomena is difficult to reconcile with the notion of 
 the specific unity of man. Every species, in fact, is neces- 
 sarily constituted by reason of the defined space in which it 
 ought to move. It is unreasonable to suppose that elsewhere 
 the same organism and the same species can meet with more 
 favourable conditions of existence. 
 
 ^. In Blumenbach's opinion, all races are unhealthy deviations 
 from a primitive type, of which we are the representatives ;f 
 so that nine-tenths of the human kind are, according to him, 
 'composed of degenerate individuals. Blumenbach did not 
 know that one of the essential characters of degeneracy is the 
 limited development of its produce, that is to say, the disap- 
 pearance of the race at a more or less distant period. J We 
 ask ourselves only how monogenists, who all partake more or 
 less of Blumenbach's opinions, and who nearly all pride them- 
 selves on moral and humanitarian sentiments, can consent to 
 
 * John Hunter also thought that man was originally black ; he had re- 
 marked that domestic animals become white by age. Compare White, Ac- 
 count of the regular Gradation of Man, p. 100. Hunter thus confounded men 
 with domestic animals. We have already said what must be thought of this 
 connexion. 
 
 f Compare Morel, Deglnerescence de I'espece humaine, p. 5, Paris, 1857. 
 
 J See above, p. 73. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 91 
 
 lower in this manner the number of human beings who are 
 worthy of this name ? Is not the best part, if there could be 
 one in the case of science, played by the polygenists, who con- 
 sider that other races are special entities, pursuing an end, 
 which is their own and not ours, and dividing with us the 
 planet, inaccessible in all its extent to the Iranian ; just 
 as certain kinds of animals, likewise, cover the globe with 
 different species ? Climate, we have said, has a decisive influ- 
 ence upon a man taken to another country ; it must only be 
 understood in the sense of this influence, and we have seen 
 that it is generally a pernicious one.* It makes itself felt in the 
 physical and moral nature of man, both deeply and superficially. 
 
 We may point out among the most simple and the most 
 profound climateric influences, the sun-burn, the study of 
 which is so interesting in anthropological study. We know, 
 at the present day, that the sun is far from being always the 
 cause of it ; that a bivouac at night has as powerful an action 
 in the same manner, and that the north-pole explorers found 
 that their hands and faces were browned under a northern 
 sky.f 
 
 Are these not facts which will diminish the decisive part 
 which has so long been given to solar heat in the production 
 of colouring matter in the Negro ? J The colour of sun-burn 
 
 * Climateric influences act probably upon wild animals in the same 
 manner ; it must be remarked, however, that a captive animal and a man, 
 taken to another country, are not exposed in the same, degree to the action of 
 the new medium ; conditions are not similarly altered as regards both of 
 them. Sometimes the man, sometimes the animal, will have most chances 
 of resistance ; the one being always obliged by his master to submit to an 
 intellectual government, approaching as much as possible his former state ; 
 the other, abandoned to himself, and drawn fatally into the new habits 
 which he sees around him. 
 
 f See, on this point, Boudin, Geographic Mtdicale, vol. ii, p. 15, Paris, 1857. 
 Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, p. 230, 1833. G. Pouchet, Des Colorations 
 de I'epiderme, 4to, Paris, 1864. 
 
 J [Dr. Waitz, in his Introduction to Anthropology (translated and edited 
 by J. F. Collingwood), gives an explanation concerning the colouring matter 
 in the Negro, which is very curious, but with which, however, he does not 
 agree ; viz., " that in hot climates the amount of oxygen inspired is insufficient 
 to change the carbon into carbonic acid, and that the unconsumed carbon 
 
 is deposited in the pigment-cells of the skin It is, however, difficult 
 
 to admit that the browning of the skin in our climate in summer is produced 
 by the same causes as the black colour of the Negro, and that it would only 
 require a greater intensity and a longer duration to become so entirely." 
 Part. I, sect, i, p. 35. EDITOR.] 
 

 92 THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 
 
 does not even seem to remain in the layers of the epidermis, 
 in which the normal colour is found. Indeed, we must re- 
 member, that it is always easy to distinguish a sun-burnt 
 nation, since individuals who, for some reason or other, are but 
 seldom exposed to external influences, like the women, are 
 infinitely whiter ; children are quite white when born, but as 
 soon as they go much into the air, they become brown. 
 
 Unfortunately, the action of climate upon a man taken from 
 his own country is not merely a case of sun-burn. And me- 
 dical statistics have shown, in treating on the different races 
 of mankind, the dangers of changing one's position on the 
 surface of the globe, even if it takes place in the sense of 
 isothermal lines. We find from the results of careful inquiries 
 made in the English colonies at the Antilles for about forty 
 years, that the black population is continually diminishing, the 
 number of deaths being to that of births : : 28 : 24. Under 
 the tropics, northern organisations are much disquieted, life 
 changes its aspect, and its course is much more rapid. The 
 glandular system governs ;* man becomes " more sensible to 
 pleasure, and less disposed to activity ;"f hi g mind loses its 
 vivacity. Those noble faculties, which have made the white 
 man the monarch of creation, become weakened, and that espe- 
 cially in some colonies where government is obliged to entrust 
 everything to Europeans. J Dr. Barnard Davis lately an- 
 nounced to the Paris Anthropological Society, that one of his 
 friends, Dr. J. A. Wise, after thirty years residence "in India, 
 had never been able, after numerous inquiries, to find any 
 descendants of a European in the third generation. 
 
 Our temperate regions are to the Negro what the tropical 
 zone is to the European. Even at Gibraltar, || the Negro 
 
 * The precociousness of the genital functions is in direct relation with 
 this general fact. 
 
 f W. Edwards, Caracteres Physiologiques, etc., p. 14. " The tropics alone 
 produce the combination of infantine grace with the full development of 
 female maturity." Smith, Natural History, etc., p. 190. See, also, Cabanis, 
 
 Rapports du Physique et du Moral, vol. ii; and Davy, Account of Ceylon. 
 These two authors in particular have quite appreciated these changes. 
 
 J Boudin, Geographic Medicate, vol. ii, p. 150, 1857. 
 
 Meeting of November 7, 1861. 
 
 || [See above, p. 59, note. EDITOR.] 
 
THE INFLUENCE OE CLIMATE. 93 
 
 contingent that was employed in the English army paid a 
 heavy tribute to death.* On the contrary, official documents 
 for 1861 tell us that, at Sierra Leone, f the respective mor- 
 tality of English and Negro soldiers was as follows : 
 
 Deaths per 1000. 
 English. Negroes, 
 
 Marsh fevers ... - 410-2 ... 2.4 
 Dysentery 41-3 ... 5-3 
 
 Liver disease - - - - 6'0 ... 1*1 
 
 It is an indubitable fact that, in general, the mortality of an 
 emigrated population is in an inverse ratio to the distance they 
 are taken. J During many years the island of Ceylon was 
 occupied by Hindu troops (from Madras and Bengal), Malays, 
 Negroes and English. The mortality of these races respec- 
 tively was, 12, 24, 50, and 69. 
 
 This is so clearly a biological law, that we again meet with 
 its application even in certain particular cases. Concerning 
 the yellow fever, for instance, Townsend has thus laid down a 
 rule, (( The mortality to the new-comer from the cooler lati* 
 tudes may be said to be in an exact ratio to the distance from 
 the equator of his place of nativity ." Daniel Blair || has 
 given the following statistics, according to his observations of 
 the same disease, made in British Gruiana, from 1827 to 1835 : 
 
 Natives (West Indian Islanders) ... 6.9 
 
 French and Italians - - - - - - 17'1 
 
 English, Scotch, and Irish - 19'3 
 
 Germans and Dutch ------ 2O2 
 
 Scandinavians and Eussians - 27'7 
 
 * It would appear from the documents collected by Nott (Two Lectures on 
 the Natural History of the Caucasian and Negro Races, Mobile, 1844, com- 
 pare Boudin, Geogr. Med., vol. ii, p. 144), that as we advance towards the 
 upper part of the Northern States, madness becomes very frequent among 
 the Negroes. It reaches the proportion of one case of insanity among 
 twenty-eight sane persons in Massachusetts and Maine. ' We hesitate in ac- 
 knowledging climateric influence, because the number of cases seems to 
 increase relatively to the degree of instruction among the people ; not that 
 madness depends on education, but because it finds out a great number of 
 cases of which we should otherwise have been ignorant, as often happens in 
 the east among a less enlightened people. 
 
 f Compare Boudin, Bulletins de la Socie'te' d' Anthropologie, August 1, 1861. 
 
 j Compare Boudin, Traite de Geographic Medicale, 1857, Introduction. 
 
 New York Medical Journal, p. 399, February 1831 (see Hirsch, Handbuch 
 der Historisch-geographischen Pathologic, 35, p. 1). 
 
 || Some Account of the Last Yellow Fever Epidemic of British Guiana, p. 59, 
 8vo, London, 1850. 
 
94 THE INFLUENCE OP CLIMATE. 
 
 The epidemic of 1853, at New Orleans, allowed Barton to 
 make a scale of mortality on the same principle, and absolutely 
 comparable, and which would take away all doubt in this re- 
 spect, if any existed.* 
 
 * Barton, Report of the Sanitary Commission of New Orleans for 1853, p. 
 248, New Orleans, 1854 (see Hirsch, Handbuch, etc., 35). He brings for- 
 ward several pieces of evidence in the same question. They seem to us too 
 decisive, in a polygenist point of view, for us not to give the entire list of 
 his quotations : Romay, Diss. sobre la Fiebre Amarilla, etc., Habana, 1797 : 
 Arnold, Treatise on the Bilious Remittent Fever, etc., p. 26, London, 1840 : 
 Zimpel, Jenaische Annalenfiir Med., i, p. 68: Dickinson, Observations on the 
 Inflammatory Endemic incident to Strangers in the West Indies, etc., p. 13, 
 London, 1819 : Ferguson, Notes and Reflections, p. 150, London, 1846 Dick- 
 son, Philadelphia Med. and Phys. Journal, iii, p. 250 : Lallemand, Das Gelbfleber, 
 etc., p. 121. [Schomburgk, A Description of British Gruiana, etc., p. 22, Lon- 
 don, 1840. EDITOR.] 
 
95 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF HYBEIDITY. 
 
 WE must regard hybridity in a double point of view, as being 
 able or unable to give an indication of the real value of different 
 human races, as compared with the acknowledged natural 
 groups in the greater number of zoological classifications ; and 
 on the other hand, we must study hybridity, belonging, as 
 has been asserted, to the creation of new races. 
 
 It has been said, we repeat, that all men being able to re- 
 produce one with another, the genus homo only constitutes one 
 single family. That this argument should hold good, it was 
 necessary to be proved that among animals (for thence it was 
 that it was borrowed) two well acknowledged species, more 
 different even than two human races, should never be prolific 
 one with the other. Now, this is far from being the case. 
 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who has treated this subject in 
 a masterly manner in his Histoire Naturelle Generale, acknow- 
 ledges that animals belonging to two different genera can, by 
 a union, produce a mixed breed, which, consequently he calls 
 bigenerate hybrids. 
 
 So we will not give ourselves the trouble of contesting, as 
 some polygenists have done, the universality of reproduction 
 between all races of mankind ; we will not ask if every degree 
 of combination has been observed, the union, for instance, of 
 an Esquimaux with a Negro, an American with an Australian, 
 a Tartar with a Bosjesman. Let us admit, what is, perhaps, 
 hardly the truth, that all races produce one with another, we 
 will admit all this ; and yet it will prove nothing in favour of 
 the monogenists who have brought forward this fact, since we 
 
96 THE INFLUENCE OF HYBKIDITY. 
 
 henceforth know that there is no basis in this universality of 
 reproduction for a serious argument, since we know that two 
 distinct species, two genera, in fact, can produce cross-breeds. 
 This faculty of reproduction has had too much importance 
 given to it, it is only a function, that is to say, a physiolo- 
 gical character quite improper for classification ; the existence 
 of bigenerate hybrids shows this sufficiently. It is a bad cha- 
 racteristic, because it is not a constant one ; because either 
 the man or the animal does not bear it in him, and that a 
 given uniformity of circumstances is necessary in order to 
 reveal this characteristic to an observer. It is the same with 
 animal forms, which do not countenance in any manner such an 
 observation; it is sufficient to recall the alternating genera- 
 tions of the invertebrata. Where shall we place all these aga- 
 mous animals ? how shall we class these proscolex and scolex, 
 which have no sex, and which will never have one ? Instead 
 of the idea of fecundity, which is insufficient to characterise a 
 species, we must substitute another, that of the development 
 of the produce. If everything shows us that zoosperms, pro- 
 ceeding from very different animals, can equally fecundate any 
 given ovum, if we even admit that we have no good reason 
 for rejecting the theory that each ovum can be impregnated by 
 different kinds of zoosperms, it is very easy, on the contrary, 
 to account for the fact that offspring will have no chance of 
 life, except so far as the two parents show a sufficient identity, 
 but which we cannot regard as fit to characterise species. 
 
 As the produce of two organisms, a descendant ought always 
 to be considered as the result of two united halves fitted 
 together, and combined one with the other. If the two halves 
 are identical, the animal is like its progenitors in everything. 
 If the two beings, who have endeavoured to unite themselves, 
 are too dissimilar, the two forces cannot combine, and there is 
 either no produce, or it is arrested in its development from the 
 first moment of its embryo life. If the two forces, or the sum 
 of the two forces, have a certain amount of common direction, 
 they can produce a new being, but an imperfect one, and 
 which will not have all the conditions of existence like its 
 parents ; it will not have genital power, and consequently will 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY. 97 
 
 not be fitted to become the founder of a series of individuals 
 similar to itself, succeeding it through time, " naturally, re- 
 gularly, and indefinitely."* 
 
 Putting on one side the power of reproduction, we must at- 
 tend solely to the union of different human races with regard 
 to vitality of produce, and let us see what observation will 
 teach us on this subject. 
 
 Jacquinot states, that " one can scarcely quote any cross 
 between Australians and Europeans." When the ancient in- 
 habitants of Van Diemen's Land, reduced to the number of 
 two hundred and ten, were taken from Flinder's Island, not 
 only had the union of the women with the unscrupulous con- 
 victs been unable to form a distinct race, but only two adults 
 were found who were the produce of these unions, f 
 
 " The Mulattoes," says Nott, " are the shortest-lived of any 
 of the branch races ; when they unite amongst themselves, 
 they are less prolific than if united to one or other of the 
 branches. J" This assertion is especially true concerning the 
 cross-breeds born of Negroes and inhabitants of the north of 
 Europe. At Java, crosses between Malays and Dutch appear 
 not to be able to reproduce beyond the third generation." 
 " The half-caste of India," says Warren, " comes to a prema- 
 ture end, generally without reproduction ; and if there are any 
 offspring, they are always wretched and miserable." || 
 
 We must say another word about Isidore Geoffrey Saint- 
 Hilaire's opinion on the important question of cross-breeding 
 in mankind. After having reproached Cuvier, and with rea- 
 son, with having often, in the interest of particular views, 
 admitted, as regards mankind, a flagrant contravention of the 
 biological laws which his genius proclaimed for other animals, 
 
 * Words borrowed from the definition of species by Isidore Geoffroy, His- 
 toire Naturelle Generate, vol. ii, p. 437. " The act which appears most natural 
 to living beings who are perfect, and who are not abortive, nor produced by 
 spontaneous generation, is the production of a being like themselves, the 
 animal producing an animal, the plant a plant, so as to participate in the 
 eternal and divine nature as much as they can." De I'dme, book ii, chap, iv, 
 2, transl. by Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire. 
 
 f Nott and Gliddon, Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 443. 
 
 J Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 373, 1854. 
 
 See Boudin, Gtographie Mtdicale, Introduction, p. 39. 
 
 || See Morel, Traitd des Drgi'ner.escences. 
 
98 THE INFLUENCE OF IIYBRTDITY. 
 
 Isidore Grcoffroy seems to us to have, in his turn, fallen into a 
 contradiction of the same kind. He especially calls hybrids 
 the crosses which occur from the cross of two different species, 
 and he remarks, besides, that hybrids have generally tolerably 
 decided characteristics, which are partly those of the father and 
 partly those of the mother; so that the offspring, he adds, 
 can resemble one more than the other, but not exclusively 
 either of them : the cross is always to be found in it. On the 
 contrary, it is not always so with the cross between two 
 varieties of the same species ; the produce has often the cha- 
 racteristics of both its parents, but very frequently, also, it 
 resembles one of them exclusively. 
 
 For these beings who are the offspring of two varieties of 
 the same species, and who very frequently reproduce entire the 
 1 1//><>, of one of their parents to the exclusion of the other, Isi- 
 dore Geoffroy reserved the name of homo'ides. Well, we ask 
 him this, in taking, as an example, the offspring of a union 
 between a white and a black, shall we find in it the character- 
 istics of a homoid cross ? Will it never resemble exclusively 
 one of the two founders ? Are not the characteristics of the 
 Mulatto perfectly represented, perfectly defined, and always 
 medium ? Are not exceptions, if any can be quoted, of ex- 
 treme rarity ?* In the name of this consistency, ought not 
 Isidore Geoffroy to have seen in a Mulatto something besides 
 a homoid mongrel, and to doubt even more that the different 
 races of mankind constituted only varieties of the same 
 species ? 
 
 However, let us examine into hybridity so far as it may 
 serve to produce new, or modify existing races, as Blumenbach 
 and Flourens have admitted. t Let us only remark that these 
 two authors, like most monogenists, in placing hybridity, as 
 (In- modifying cause, in the same rank as climate or medium, 
 commit a givjil error. Hybridity, even in giving it the creative 
 power which some have desired, goes entirely into the second 
 rank, for it supposes a pre-existing plurality. It can only act, 
 in the end, by weakening differences, by creating a middle 
 
 *' Perier, Socitt? d' Anthropologie, meeting of April 21, 1864. 
 f Des Rfi,ces Humaincs, IS 45. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY. 99 
 
 term to two extremes. It cannot of itself produce variety of 
 origin, it is the consequence of it, and we shall see that the 
 part it takes on this matter is extremely restricted. 
 
 White* supposes a colony composed of an equal number of 
 blacks and whites ; then he tries to find out what will happen 
 in the course of time, by supposing that a thirtieth part of 
 them die and are born each year. He arrives, by his calcula- 
 tions, at the following results : in sixty-five years the number 
 of blacks, whites, and mulattos will be equal ; in ninety-one 
 years the whites will only form one-tenth of the total popula- 
 tion, and the blacks one-tenth ; in three centuries, there would 
 not remain one hundredth part of them, either black or white. 
 
 This proposition is true, theoretically speaking ; it is prac- 
 tically false : it rests upon what we may call an unstable equi- 
 librium. In the physical world we may, by care, happen to 
 put an ellipsoid in a state of equilibrium on the extremity of 
 its greater axis, or a cone on its apex ; these are also unstable 
 equilibria, but the least cause intervening, the smallest move- 
 ment, and the balance is instantly destroyed. If we admit 
 into White's theory a birth which does not take place, or an 
 unproductive union, the conclusions are overturned at once ; a 
 part of the new generation will preserve the primitive type,f 
 and this portion will be much more considerable than White 
 imagined. When the facts of arrest of development, quoted 
 above, are not sufficient to prove that a mongrel breed cannot 
 subsist by itself, can we anywhere find one ? Do we find a 
 people preserving for centuries a medium type between two 
 other types which gave it birth? We see them nowhere, 
 just as little as we see a race of mules. The fact is that such 
 a hybrid race, intermediate to two defined types, can only have 
 a subjective and ephemeral existence. 
 
 The definition of the word type, both in natural history and 
 in the particular case in which we are engaged, is rather a 
 difficult matter, and which we can fed much better than we 
 can express it in writing. When we have seen a certain 
 number of men belonging to one race, the mind, without any 
 
 * Account of the Regular Gradation of Nan, p. 146. 
 
 f Compare W. Edwards, Des Caracteres Physiologiques, etc., p. 29. 
 
 H2 
 
100 THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITT. 
 
 particular study, takes from each a number of general charac- 
 teristics, and forms from them a sort of ideal being, to which 
 it refers the real beings which it may henceforth see, and with 
 which it identifies those who have a sufficient amount of simi- 
 larity with this being.* 
 
 We have seen in the preceding chapter that, as regards his- 
 toric times at least, a type invariably reproduces itself through 
 time and space, when it does not succumb to the new climate 
 in which it is about to live. If we admit, however, that two 
 types may have met with a harmony of influences, a medium 
 in which they can both live, we say that even with all the 
 care that may be taken to mix them we shall always find, 
 whatever White may say, black people and white people, if 
 these races were black and white originally ; and this by rea- 
 son of laws which we think we can shape, and whose demon- 
 stration will be as positive as that of the domain of history. 
 
 LAW i. A medium type cannot exist by itself, except on the 
 condition of being supported by the two creating types. 
 
 LAW ii. When two types become united, two phenomena may 
 arise: 1. Either one of them will absorb the other ; or, 2. They 
 may subsist simultaneously in the midst of a greater or less 
 number of hybrids. 
 
 These two laws are only, in fact, the formula of the prin- 
 ciples which Prichardf himself laid down long ago, and which 
 are held also by the editor of the Ethnological Journal^ by 
 Knox, and by William Edwards. || 
 
 * Individual distinctions can only, then, be based on the alterations of 
 type, in characteristics which are not those of the supposed ideal. It hence 
 results that, if we have lived with a stranger who has all the characteristics 
 of his race well marked, we think that we see him while travelling among 
 his fellow countrymen. 
 
 f " It is one of the clearest facts in the animal, as well as in the vegetable 
 world ; all races generally reproduce and perpetuate themselves without ming- 
 ling and confounding one with the other." Prichard, Eistoire Naturelle de 
 I'Homme, vol. i, p. 17. Compare Morel, Degenerescences de I'espece humaine, p. 2. 
 
 J Third number. Most of the articles in this remarkable production are 
 unsigned. 
 
 " No race will amalgamate with another ; they die out, or seem slowly 
 to be becoming extinct." Compare the Ethnological Journal, p. 98. 
 
 || " We arrive at the fundamental conclusion that it is useless for people 
 belonging to varieties of different races, but neighbours, to ally themselves 
 together; part of the new generation will always preserve the primitive 
 type." See Courtet de 1'Isle, Tableau Ethnographique, p. 77. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY. 101 
 
 By reason of these laws, we find that nowhere can a medium 
 race either establish itself on the ruins of two creating races, 
 or replace them, and live by itself with an independent exist- 
 ence, formed entirely of hybrids which propagate among them- 
 selves. In fact we have laid down a rule that conditions of 
 development are very much restricted among hybrids, and that 
 they can only go on decreasing in their descendants, if they 
 are capable of producing any. The crossed race will only 
 exist in the condition of being supported by the two creating 
 types remaining in the midst of it. If the value of this law 
 is only deduced from a negative fact, that is to say, from the 
 absence on the surface of the globe of any real hybrid race 
 existing by itself on a certain extent of territory, we shall 
 find, as regards the second, a great number of positive facts. 
 
 When two types unite, we said, a double phenomenon may 
 be observed ; either of these two types will absorb the other, 
 or they may subsist simultaneously, one near the other. The 
 first case ought to be the most frequent ; but it is the least 
 appreciable, because it does not leave sensible traces. We 
 must endeavour to discover in history the remains of a people 
 who formerly existed, and who have since disappeared. Thus, 
 the colony of Nubians, taken to the banks of the Phasis by 
 Ramases, have left no trace of their sojourn among the in- 
 habitants of the land. It is the same with the Greek colonies 
 of the Mediterranean coasts.* The Normans have only left, 
 on the coasts of Labrador, their engraved stelce;-f their race 
 has not remained. The primitive Turkish and Asiatic type 
 has likewise disappeared from Europe. This has been attributed 
 to the introduction of Georgian women into the seraglios, and it 
 is, perhaps, a reason only too readily accepted. It is, indeed, 
 very natural that the repeated introduction of Georgian and Cir- 
 cassian women into the harems should deprive the descendants of 
 the conquerors of their original characteristics ; but if this were 
 the case, the Turks of our days would, from continued unions with 
 
 * Latham thinks, however, that he has discovered some vestiges of the 
 Phosnician race in Africa and Cornwall. Compare Knox, The Races of Men, 
 1850. 
 
 f [Small columns, having neither base nor capital. EDITOR.] 
 
102 THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY. 
 
 the same race, have become real Georgians and Circassians 
 themselves. It has not been so, however, because the harems 
 are recruited in Europe as well as in Asia, and even then the 
 fact would only be applicable to families of high position. The 
 truth seems to be that the real Turkish blood has nearly disap- 
 peared, and has been encroached upon and replaced by the old 
 blood of the country, either Macedonian or Thracian. 
 
 We are ignorant of the laws which govern the disappearance 
 of one race in the sight of another. Sometimes it happens 
 very rapidly ; sometimes it does not show itself. The complex 
 conditions which rule it enter into the great order of facts 
 which Darwin has so ingeniously classed under the name of 
 the struggle for existence. They have always seemed to us to 
 present a complete analogy with the disappearance of certain 
 animal species before others, the steps of which disappearance 
 history sometimes allows us to measure ; so that there seems 
 to be a curious similarity between the great fluctuations of 
 nations and of animals upon continents. We are almost 
 tempted to say that the invasion of the West by the Barba- 
 rians, the black rat, and the field mouse, is the triple expres- 
 sion of one and the same biological law. The American popu- 
 lation retrogrades, like certain animals ;* that of the Australian 
 coasts has disappeared ; and we believe that the Negroes of 
 Africa themselves will be called, at some distant period, to 
 give up their place in their turn. 
 
 We do not know any more about the conditions which allow 
 two types to subsist indefinitely one near the other : must we 
 attribute this resistance to the country, or the races which are 
 always before them ? Why, if the Normans have disappeared 
 in America, Italy, and Asia, should they still remain in Nor- 
 mandy, few in number, it is true, but always the same, and 
 perfectly described by Linnaeus, when he said of the Goths in 
 the Scandinavian peninsula, " They have smooth, fair hair, 
 and the iris of the eye is of a bluish colour."t Even when 
 
 * It is the case with the hippopotamus and the lion. 
 
 f Thus, at least, Buffon translates " Gothi corpore proceriore, capiUis al- 
 bidis rectis, oculorum indibus cinere cserulescentibus." Linnieus, Fauna 
 suecica, p. 1. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OP HYBRIDITY. 103 
 
 cross-breedings take place between more than two races, 
 even when these various influences are mixed together, struggled 
 with, and assisted in a thousand ways, so that the question has 
 become almost inextricable to the anthropologist, in the midst 
 of the varied produce resulting from all these combinations, 
 we are astonished to see here and there individuals who have 
 the absolute and complete character of one of the original 
 stock. Whilst there remains among a people a considerable 
 amount of mixed blood, we may always expect to see some 
 one appear who will have the pure characteristics of the race 
 which was believed to be extinguished, and mingled for ever 
 with the blood of others.* 
 
 The most remarkable instance which can be quoted about 
 these crosses, and at the same time the easiest to notice, is 
 that presented by England, where two races live side by side, 
 mixed together, without one having absorbed the other since 
 the time of Strabo, Tacitus, and Julius Caesar. England, iso- 
 lated from Europe, ought necessarily to be a fertile field 
 for the anthropologist, and it will be there where the history 
 of historic and pre-historic races will soonest be made. Emi- 
 nent men work at it with ardour ; and the certainty of re- 
 mounting, through archaeology and palaeontology, to the first 
 races which invaded England, at a time when the use of metals 
 wa v s unknown in the west, makes this study one of the most 
 interesting of the present day. 
 
 Two distinct races divide Great Britain, or, at least, repre- 
 sentatives of two races are found there ; and in the midst of 
 an immense number of intermediate individualities, the least 
 accustomed eye will not fail to distinguish these two funda- 
 mental types, as different as two men with white skins can be. 
 One of these races is composed of tall, strong, powerful men, 
 with transparent skin, and blue eyes ;f the other, with a more 
 tawny complexion, has black, curling hair.J The first were 
 formerly called Caledonians, the second Silurians, very like the 
 
 * By virtue of the law which makes us find a family likeness in an indivi- 
 dual after it has been absent, or rather hidden, for one or more generations, 
 f " Rutike comse, magni artus." Tacitus, Agricola, ii, 11. 
 " Colorati vultus et torti pleruiuque crines." Idem, ibidem. 
 
104 THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY. 
 
 Iberians of the Spanish peninsula : the first, of Germanic, or 
 northern origin; the second, of Celtic, or southern origin. 
 Nobody denies, at the present day, that these two races 
 are well characterised, and every day one can meet perfect 
 specimens of them in England. We may quote certain dis- 
 tricts where the Silurian, Iberian, or Celtic race, as tradition 
 wills it, are dominant ;* for example, in the north-west of Gla- 
 morganshire, in the outskirts of Merthyr, and in the Yale of 
 Neath.f Mr. John Philips finds them equally abundant in the 
 DanelagJ district, between Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby, 
 with the same characteristics, ff black eyes and hair, uniform, 
 or rather, dark complexion. " Among these two races there 
 are of necessity a considerable number of cross-breeds who, 
 allying themselves among one another, or to the pure types, 
 produce varied results, and in this manner unite the two 
 groups by a multitude of inappreciable shades of difference. 
 
 Such is also the case in France. Edwards || has divined it 
 almost by inspiration ; and M. Perier^f has powerfully added 
 to his presumptions, by examining more attentively all ancient 
 documents which treat on the inhabitants of Gaul. M. Broca, 
 in the Memoire which inaugurated the proceedings of the Paris 
 Anthropological Society,** has proved in the clearest possible 
 manner, that if we draw a line passing by Cherbourg and 
 Nice,ff we shall divide France into two distinct zones as re- 
 gards the appearance and height of the inhabitants. In the 
 south-west, the ancient Celtic population is of small height, as 
 
 * Idem, ibidem. 
 
 f See Latham, Celtic Language, p. 371. J. B. Davis and J. Thurnam, 
 Crania Britannica, p. 53. Garnet, in the Transactions of the Philological 
 Society. E. Cull and Latham, in the Edinburgh New Physical Journal, 1854. 
 Perier, Fragments Ethnologiques, Paris, 1857. 
 
 J. Philips, see British Association, 1849. 
 
 The name itself of this district shows, however, the habitation of these 
 parts by the Scandinavians. 
 
 || Compare W. Edwards, Des Caracteres Physiologiques des Races Humaines. 
 Paris, 1829. 
 
 j[ See Perier, Fragments Ethnologiques, Paris, 1857. 
 
 ** Recherches sur I' Ethnologic de la France (Memoires de la Societe d'Anthro- 
 pologie, vol. i, p. 1). See, also, the discussion which followed the reading of 
 this paper (Bulletins de la Societe d' Anthropologie, meetings of July 21 and Au- 
 gust 4, 1859). 
 
 ft We may remark that this line is precisely perpendicular to the clima- 
 teric parallels which divide France. 
 
THE INFLUENCE 'OF HYBEIDITY. 105' 
 
 is proved by the great number of military exemptions.* In 
 the north-west, in the region which was always encroached 
 upon by the fair and powerful races of the north, the result is 
 quite the contrary. Here, then, are two distinct races : the 
 one, formerly mistress of the west, and then pushed to the 
 extremity of the continent ; the other, leaving its forests and 
 encroaching on the rest, both differing as much as possible 
 by physical aspect and by moral aptitudes, but now filling 
 up their numbers, so to speak, by each other's help, and 
 working together for the glory and prosperity of their common 
 land. 
 
 We must not, however, give a general meaning to these last 
 words, and thus extend their meaning to all cases of ethnic 
 cross-breeding. The two united terms must not be too dissi- 
 milar, so that the two branches may reunite as regards pro- 
 gress. This is essential ; and if we have endeavoured to prove 
 that the hybrids of distant races do not possess all the neces- 
 sary conditions of animal life and of propagation, it would be 
 easy to find numerous proofs in order to show that, generally, 
 the intellectual conditions of hybrids are not much more satis- 
 factory than their physical condition, since the two intelligent 
 organisms which are there combined do not show a decided 
 similarity. 
 
 Doctor Tschudif says, in speaking of the Zambos (hybrids 
 from aborigines and Negroes at Lima), "As men, they are ; 
 greatly inferior to the pure races ; and as members of society, j 
 they are the worst class of citizens :" they alone furnish four- . 
 fifths of the criminals in the prisons of Lima. Mr. E. Gr. Squier J 
 has made almost the same observation about the Zambos of 
 Nicaragua. In his part of the country, the union of Spaniards 
 with these same Americans, seems to have only produced dege- 
 nerate men, who show no capability whatsoever for perfec- 
 tion or improvement. In fact, it is on account of these same 
 principles that M. de Gobineau has set himself to prove at 
 
 * [The standard in France is, we believe, five feet. EDITOK.] 
 
 f Peru, 1846. 
 
 J Nicaragua : Us People, vol. ii, p. 153, New York, 1852. 
 
 Essai sur I'Inegalite des Races Humaines, Paris, 1852. 
 
106 THE INFLUENCE OP HYBRIDITY. 
 
 length that the mixture of races necessarily conducts mankind 
 to degradation and universal debasement. Cabanis had the 
 same ideas on the subject.* 
 
 The supposition which Cabanis and M. de Gobineau have 
 taken up will, doubtless, never be realised. To admit that all 
 human races can reach a complete hybridity, would be to ad- 
 mit that each race is cosmopolite, which it is not. But at least 
 it remains true, that when two very different races are united, 
 we must not hope for anything good or durable from their 
 union. The same phenomenon happens, with the simple dif- 
 ference of intensity, when two different species of animals are 
 united. So the monogenists are astonished at such a result in 
 man, " a result quite contrary," says one of them,f ' ' to what 
 one generally expects in crossing a race." J The astonishment 
 of the learned man, of whom we speak, is explained easily 
 enough by the ideas which he holds of human races, where he 
 only sees degenerated varieties of the original type, preserved 
 by the European in its primitive purity. 
 
 It is evident that in this monogenic hypothesis, which we 
 shall not touch on again, the union of one of these degenerated 
 races with the pure stock would be a sort of 7iygid consan- 
 guinity, and therefore favourable to the offspring. Here there 
 would happen something analogous to the practice of the pea- 
 sants in the cretin districts, who try to struggle against the 
 scourge by seeking for marriages in the plains, in order to 
 give purer blood to each generation. In a more general manner 
 it is evident that if we suppose two sets of people born of the 
 same stock, and that one of them, after various fortunes, after 
 having undergone fatal influences, should unite itself with the 
 other, which had remained unaltered, it is evident that the 
 
 * Rapports du Physique et du Moral, vol. i, p. 484. 
 
 f M. Morel, Traite des Deg6n6rescences. 
 
 j [" All races of mankind intermix, they are fertile, producing cross-breeds, 
 mulattoes, mestizoes, etc., which again are productive. All human races 
 constitute, therefore, on physiological principles, but one species, which is 
 here identical with genus humanum." So thinks Professor Rudolph Wagner, 
 but his arguments are not very satisfactory. He refers varieties of race in 
 a great measure to climatic influence. See Creation of Man and Substance of 
 the Mind (Anthrop. Rev., vol. i, p. 229). EDITOR.] 
 
 Compare Bulletins de la Socitte d' Anthropologie, vol. iii, p. 175. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF HYBEIDITY. 107 
 
 produce of such a union ought to tend to reproduce in its 
 purity the primitive type.* If it is not so with the union of 
 different races of men, the reason is simply that they do not 
 directly descend the one from the other; and from this de- 
 basement of produce there results a new proof in favour of the 
 ideas which we are defending. 
 
 It remains for us to speak of hybridity, as applied to the 
 propagation of a deformity or a monstrosity. We know that 
 when we experimentally unite one of this class to the other, 
 two individuals whose organism has equally deviated from the 
 usual type, ' ' nothing is more difficult than to prevent these 
 mischances from being done away with."f A stronger reason, 
 then, for the same when one of these individuals alone is de- 
 formed, which happens always in a state of nature. The races 
 which we can thus produce are a kind of experiment which 
 exist, but which it would be illogical to deduce can exist 
 naturally. Because we make in a laboratory oxygenated water, 
 or mixtures of hydrogen and chlorine, must we admit that 
 these bodies are to be found united in nature? Quite the 
 contrary ; we deduce from their instability that they do not, 
 and cannot thus exist in a natural state. 
 
 * In applying these principles to family consanguinity, we may say in a 
 general manner, that it will be favourable or not to the oifspring according 
 to the state of the parents. If the parents are perfectly healthy, and ex- 
 empt from all commencing degeneracy, they can only give birth to children 
 at least as healthy as themselves. If one of the two parents is tainted with 
 a commencement of degeneracy, the descendant, in his quality of offspring, 
 will perhaps bear the trace of this degeneracy, but sensibly weakened. If 
 the two parents are separately tainted with a different commencement of 
 degeneracy, one or the other ought to continue it in the child, only in a lesser 
 degree. But if the same degeneracy has already tainted both the parents, 
 the offspring will show it in a greater degree, and will tend towards entire 
 disappearance. 
 
 f Flourens, Histoire des Travaux de Buffon, p. 180. 
 
108 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SPECIES. 
 
 WE have now arrived at the limits of the task which we pro- 
 posed to attempt, and we hope, after what has gone before, 
 that we shall be able to arrive at some scientific conclusion. 
 
 After having endeavoured to establish in the introduction 
 the route we had to follow in anthropological studies, we gave 
 an account of the system of purely philosophic researches, 
 putting every foreign or prejudicial idea on one side, and, rest- 
 ing on facts and on mathematical reasoning, we have endea- 
 voured to apply these principles. We endeavoured at first to 
 prove that man was not a being as foreign and superior to the 
 rest of animal nature, as certain naturalists have thought, 
 taking themselves, the first from among men, as the point of 
 comparison. We have considered the inferior races, and we 
 have shown that between these and the first animals the dis- 
 tance was neither absolute nor well-defined; that man came 
 into the zoological series, and that he only forms definitively a 
 separate family. Changing our direction, we abandoned this 
 acquired knowledge, and we passed on to the study of varieties 
 among men ; we found them profound, indeed, and of every 
 description. 
 
 Then came the study of the influences to which man may 
 be subjected. We saw that hybridity did not play any serious 
 part in this, since it could only weaken pre-existing differences. 
 On the other hand, we have acknowledged that in the limits of 
 time accessible to our knoivledge, nothing justified the hypo- 
 thesis, that climate had such an extensive influence in changing 
 man so as to make the differences which we may observe be- 
 
SPECIES. 109 
 
 tween ancestors and descendants such as would suffice, in any 
 other zoological group, to characterise distinct species. 
 
 In regarding man as a separate kingdom, we are, by this 
 fact, exempted from applying the same rules as in zoology; 
 but, by proving that he comes into the zoological series, we 
 have implicitly proved that he must be submitted to the same 
 laws. Science cannot have two different modes of proceeding : 
 it must follow the same paths in the same subjects in order to 
 arrive at comparable results. It is the only truly philosophic 
 road : nature is one, and the work of the modern sciences is 
 precisely to tend towards unity. The most diverse phenomena 
 in the hands of analysts compare and assimilate themselves to 
 the rays of a spirit of synthesis ; magnetism, electricity, light, 
 heat, motion, everything is mingled and linked together so 
 well, that we know not how to make a distinction any more. 
 
 The pure and simple adoption of the law of organic unity 
 brings us to the following proposition : 
 
 PROPOSITION. Either we must admit different species in the 
 genus Homo, or we must entirely reform zoological classification. 
 
 This last hypothesis will mean, then, that the works of 
 Linnaeus, Cuvier, De Blainville, and the two Greoffroys, will be 
 of no value, and that we must commence anew the great work 
 of classification upon the same basis which we wish to adopt 
 in anthropology. Of the two terms of the preceding propo- 
 sition, the second merits particular consideration. Zoological 
 classification has been created and established by the greatest 
 thinkers of which humanity can boast ; even more, indepen- 
 dent by its nature from all religious influence, it has been 
 freely done, and without prejudice, as every scientific question 
 ought to be, by means of facts and reasoning. It has not 
 always been so with the works of those who desire that man 
 should be an exception to universal nature, and beyond the 
 limits of the animal kingdom. Zoological classification need 
 not be reformed, it is that of the genus Homo. 
 
 We touch now on the much discussed and controverted 
 question of species, and at the same time on the question of 
 the origin of man. We do not believe, as many eminent men 
 have done, that this origin must eternally be concealed, that 
 
110 SPECIES. 
 
 man will never be permitted to tear the veil from this statue of 
 Isis. Let it suffice us to say that we are about to enter on 
 slippery ground, where we shall only find as few resting places 
 as the stones of a ford half destroyed by a torrent. And since 
 we shall only find here and there the fragile aid of one hypo- 
 thesis against so many others, in order to assist the conse- 
 quents of our reasonings, is it a reason for drawing back ? 
 We do not think so. 
 
 Every period of a science has its own tendency ; at given 
 moments the efforts of all tend involuntarily towards one sole 
 end, one question absorbs all, and all partial solutions tend 
 to the same general solution. At the present day, the great 
 question in natural history is that of species; inquiries are 
 ardently pursued, and materials are produced from every side, 
 opinions are mooted, and objections raised. We have only 
 to call attention on this point to the works of Isidore Geoffroy, 
 Morton, Nott, Godron, Broca,* Darwin, Fee, etc. Jhe ques- 
 tion of spontaneous generation is but a phase of the same dis- 
 cussion, an episode in the work of the birth of time. 
 
 Some people have made a sort of bugbear out of this word 
 spontaneous generation, or rather, spontaneous genesis. f And 
 yet, here is one of these truths to which, we think, we shall 
 be led by the observation of facts and by reasoning. The 
 great harm of examining into the question is to be strangely 
 mistaken as to its bearing, and inclined to restrict its limits. 
 It has, in fact, been said, that every day genital organs are 
 discovered in beings whom it was thought were reproduced 
 spontaneously. This is a specious argument to which Plutarch 
 has long ago done justice. A person, whom he brings forward 
 in one of his books, asks, ' ' Which had the first existence, the 
 egg or the hen ?" and concludes that " it was evidently the 
 hen." Even in treating lightly on this subject, in making it 
 a familiar conversation, the Greek physician was, however, not 
 mistaken about the importance of the matter. " So that," 
 answers one of the guests, "with this little question of the 
 
 * [Ou the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo, edited by C. Carter 
 Blake, F.G.S., F.A.S.L. EDITOR.] 
 
 f Compare G. Pouchet, Precis d' Histologie Humaine, 5. 
 

 SPECIES. Ill 
 
 egg and the hen, we raise, as with a lever, the great and dark 
 question of the generation of the world."* 
 
 That the animals which we know all reproduce by eggs, is 
 possible, although it has not been proved, but this is not an 
 important point ; we want to know if all the animals which we 
 are able to observe do not remount necessarily, in a more or 
 less direct manner, and at a more or less distant period, to a 
 spontaneous beginning, j- The difficulty is everywhere the 
 same, everywhere we arrive at that immense obscurity which 
 envelopes the origin of life on the surface of our planet ; but 
 it is essential in every case not to give to the phenomenon of 
 spontaneous beginning any other signification than it ought to 
 have. We must not believe, for instance, that matter is formed 
 by the agglomeration of parts which do not yet live in a per- 
 fect being, having already all its organs distributed and pro- 
 portionate, uniting in one living whole. This would be to 
 cast ourselves on the field of an absolutely improbable hypo- 
 thesis. Histology teaches us that each animal, its instincts 
 and intellect included, is at a given moment merely a mass of 
 amorphous matter, which, at a later period, will form itself, 
 or in the midst of which will be spontaneously developed an 
 anatomical element, that is to say, an organised body. To 
 admit spontaneous genesis, then, is simply to admit the formation 
 of organic amorphous primitive matter apart from an already 
 living body, at the cost of and in the heart of which can be 
 born the initial anatomical element of one of these animals, 
 very properly called protozoa. We can even ask, whether this 
 latent primary life, this atomic life, has not always been the 
 ruling life on our planet. J And since, when account is taken 
 
 * "Ac Sylla quidern. sodalis noster, fatus nos parva qusestione tanquam 
 instrumento ingentem et gravem de origine mundi qusestionem subruere." 
 Qucestionem Convivalium, book ii, quest. 3; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841. 
 
 f Buffon said that (Supplements, vol. iv, p. 335) this method of generation 
 is not only the most frequent and the most general, but the most ancient, 
 that is, the first and most universal one. Plutarch (Qucest. Conviv., book ii, 
 quest. 3 ; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841) makes the same remark : " Pro- 
 inde probabile est primum ortum ex terra gignentis perfectione ac robore 
 absolutum fuisse, nihilque indigentem hujusmodi instrumentis, receptaculis 
 et vasis, qualia nunc ob imbecillitatem natura parit atque machinatur pari- 
 entibus." 
 
 J It must not be forgotten, that organic substances are supposed to have 
 been found even in the formation of certain aerolites. 
 
112 SPECIES. 
 
 of everything, we are almost entirely ignorant of the conditions 
 necessary to the fecundity of any primitive embryo, excepting 
 certain physical conditions of temperature, liquidity, etc. ; and 
 as, on the other hand, nothing authorises us to believe that 
 the laws existing at the origin of life on our planet have since 
 been abrogated, we see that, if we must necessarily conclude 
 a spontaneous primitive genesis, there is nothing irrational in 
 admitting, until we know farther on the subject, the persistence 
 of the phenomenon. 
 
 Let us return to the subject of species, which, however, we 
 did not quite leave in speaking on the subject of spontaneous 
 generation. Isidore Geoffroy wishes to advance slowly in this 
 matter, and only when facts become patent to all. But he 
 himself has more than once shown, by a noble example, the 
 benefits which science obtains by casting itself beyond the 
 limits of fact, provided that care is taken at first not to give 
 more than a simple hypothetical value to that which we may 
 desire to bring forward. In the question which occupies our 
 attention, we must embrace at one glance the whole animal 
 kingdom since its commencement, in order to deduce the truth 
 of facts which have been observed ; only then these relations, 
 for which science so ardently seeks, would appear in their 
 proper light. On account of this impossibility, we must hope 
 for some more enlightenment, chiefly from geology, and per- 
 haps from experiments. " How many facts would be neces- 
 sary," said Buffon, " in order to pronounce authoritatively, or 
 even to conjecture ? How many experiments are to be tried in 
 order to discover these facts, to acknowledge them, or even to 
 anticipate them by well-founded conjectures ?" 
 
 Two opinions on the origin of species deserve to be noticed, 
 those of Cuvier and Lamarck. This last held Buffon's 
 opinions at the end of his career, and it ought to find in 
 Etienne Geoffroy a defender even more powerful in our eyes 
 than Isidore Geoffroy himself; and especially Darwin, to whom 
 belongs the merit, however, of having propagated, in his 
 popular work, the ideas of Lamarck. 
 
 Cuvier's theory seems to be still the dominant one ; it is sur- 
 rounded by that scholastic prestige which is explained by the 
 
SPECIES. 113 
 
 word classical ; it is only fit for universities. Cuvier proclaimed 
 the immutability of species, and wished that at every revolution 
 of the globe (the word alone then made his fortune), a new fauna 
 might come ready made from the hands of Grod, to animate 
 the burning or icy lands of the old world. But Cuvier, in 
 proclaiming organic immutability, excepted mankind. We 
 must be allowed to doubt whether it was done with good faith. 
 ' ' Cuvier, full of good taste regarding political propriety," said 
 a son of the republic, his former master, now his adversary, 
 " Cuvier, filling his mind with wise mental reservations con- 
 cerning the future of society, declared that it was not fit- 
 ting that new discoveries, just dug from the heart of the 
 earth, should attack and oppose with hostile malignity the 
 venerated and ancient revelations of our holy books."* This 
 remark, in which Etienne Geoffroy has concealed his anger and 
 contempt under a guise of perfect urbanity, will remain to the 
 end, we are convinced, as the judgment of posterity upon the 
 naturalist statesman, and upon that which they call in France 
 at the present day official science. Species was, then, a definite 
 entity in Cuvier' s opinion, and if he had been consistent, he 
 would doubtless have become the promoter of the idea which 
 has been taken up by Agassiz, that there were several centres 
 of creation on the surface of our planet after the last flood ; in 
 each of these centres would appear a special fauna, and also 
 one of the species constituting the genus homo. 
 
 These different species of men and these different fauna 
 would since have continued to occupy the same geographical 
 areas with merely some alteration. An absolute value is given 
 to species in Cuvier's theory, as well as in that of Agassiz ; it 
 is unchangeable ; it may disappear, but cannot be modified, so 
 that " each of them," as Buffon said at the commencement of 
 his career, when he held the same views, " remains always 
 separated from the others by an interval which nature cannot 
 overstep. "f 
 
 *. IL Geoffroy, Comptes Rendus des seances de I' Academic des Sciences, vol. 
 v, p. 193. 
 
 f See Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Histoire Naturelle Generate, vol. iii, 
 p. 210. 
 
114 SPECIES. 
 
 Such has been, for a long time, the theory of the origin of 
 species which we have held, and which we maintained in the 
 first edition of this book. In fact, the solution which we now 
 offer differs considerably from that which we then gave. But 
 there is evolution rather than contradiction in going from one 
 to the other. The differences which separate mankind are not 
 lessened, and have not diminished in value in our eyes : we 
 merely explain these differences in another way. It cannot be 
 called contradiction, or even inconsistency, to change one's 
 manner of viewing things with the times ; to regard things 
 otherwise which, as we said before, have no absolute basis ; or 
 to change in five years one's opinion concerning the origin 
 of the living beings on the surface of the globe. 
 
 In Buffon' s last opinion* species was not that definite entity 
 in which Cuvier believed, commencing at a given geological 
 moment, in order to terminate at another. Buffon says, in his 
 latest works, that the idea of species can only be seized upon 
 by man at "this or that instant of his age/'f an ^ that it 
 is merely the expression of the ambient medium. Let this 
 remain as before, it will not change ; but when the conditions 
 of the medium become modified, species will change. We thus 
 arrive at this definition : 
 
 * [We are almost tempted, in all kindness, to refer our author to the follow- 
 ing remarks in the Reliques of Father Prout, p. 264. " I have been at some 
 pains to acquire a comprehensive notion of the Count de Buffon' s system, 
 and, aided by an old Jesuit, I have succeeded in condensing the volu- 
 minous dissertation into a few lines, for the use of those who are dissatisfied 
 with the Mosaic statement : 
 
 1. In the beginning was the sun, from which a splinter was shot off by 
 chance, and that fragment was our globe. 
 
 2. And the globe had for its nucleus melted glass, with an envelope of hot 
 water. 
 
 3. And it began to twirl round, and became somewhat flattened at the poles. 
 
 4. Now, when the water grew cool, insects began to appear, and shell-fisli. 
 
 5. And from the accumulation of shells, particularly oysters (see vol. i, p. 
 14, 4to, 2nd ed.), the earth was gradually formed, with ridges of mountains, 
 on the principle of the Monte Testacio at the gate of Some. 
 
 6. But the melted glass kept warm for a long time, and the arctic climate 
 was as hot in those days as the tropics now are, witness a frozen rhinoceros 
 found in Siberia." Let the leaven work, although a mere joke to M. Pouchet's 
 reality. EDITOR.] 
 
 f Histoire Naturelle, vol.ix,p. 127, 1761. ^tienne Geoffroy (Comptes Rendus, 
 vol. iii, p. 29) says the same thing " as regards the actual constitution of the 
 globe ; each race is a species sui generis, a form or combination of its own 
 in nature." 
 
SPECIES. 115 
 
 DEFINITION. " Species is a collection or group of individuals 
 characterised by a similarity of distinctive points, the transmis- 
 sion of which is accomplished naturally, regularly, and inde- 
 finitely, in a given order of things."* 
 
 It is, in more scientific terms, the definition by Lamarck, 
 "a collection of similar individuals which generation perpe- 
 tuates in the same state, so that the circumstances of their 
 situation do not sufficiently alter so as to make their habits, 
 their character, or their form vary."f Lamarck, to whom 
 Isidore Geoffrey has rendered greater justice than any one else 
 before or after him,J admitted the unlimited variableness of 
 species. He admitted that we all descend, just as we are, from 
 an anatomical element, developed in a determinate sense, and 
 that we may have been worms, insects, birds, and mammals be- 
 fore becoming men, running through all the phases through 
 which animal organisation has passed during our uterine life. 
 We see that Lamarck approached frankly and resolutely the 
 problem of the origin of humanity. 
 
 In taking but superficially certain exaggerations into which 
 Lamarck fell, at a time less rich in facts than our own, it is 
 not difficult to give a certain grotesque turn to his ideas, and 
 to laugh at them as being unnatural ; but we must not thus 
 judge the work of a man's whole life, and we must appreciate 
 Lamarck by the basis of his doctrine more than by the ex- 
 amples he has given us : ' ' a profound philosopher," said 
 Etienne Geoffroy,|| "able in laying down principles, less able 
 in the choice of his proofs." 
 
 We must judge Lamarck as Isidore Geoffroy has done in his 
 Histoire Naturelle Generale, where we find a complete and im- 
 
 * The terms of this definition are almost entirely borrowed from Isidore 
 Geoffroy. By ending it with these words, " in the present order of things," 
 Isidore Geoffroy only defined the existing species, and took away, without any 
 reason, the palseontologic species. . 
 
 f Lamarck, Discours de I' An XI, p. 45. 
 
 See Flourens, Examen dit, livre de M. Darwin sur I'Ovigine des Especes, 
 18mo, Paris, 1864. We are at least astonished to find the name of the Geof- 
 froys mentioned but once in such a work (p. 45) . M. Flourens charges Darwin 
 with only quoting the partisans of his own opinions (p. 40). 
 
 [See above, p. 84, note. EDITOR.] 
 
 || Sur I' Influence du monde ambiant, 1831 (Memoires de I'Acaddmie des Sciences), 
 vol. xii, p. 81. 
 
 i2 
 
116 SPECIES. 
 
 partial chronological statement concerning the grave question 
 of species.* " Circumstances have an influence upon form 
 and organisation/' such is the fundamental principle of La- 
 marck's doctrine ;f he says the same elsewhere :J "Circum- 
 stances determine positively what each body may be ;" and he 
 concludes, " among living bodies, nature only shows indivi- 
 duals who succeed one another. Species, amongst themselves, 
 are only relative, and are only temporarily so." 
 
 If from these general considerations we enter in detail into 
 Lamarck's theory, we find room for the objections with which 
 the opponents of the system of variety are engrossed, with 
 which they have made those weapons of ridicule which act so 
 well on minds which are not forewarned, and who are ignorant of 
 this master's whole system of ideas. The grandeur of Lamarck's 
 views, the majestic simplicity of his theory, ought to be suffi- 
 cient to shield him from such attacks. He saw at the begin- 
 ning organic matter grouping itself under simple forms. These 
 first outlines, altered by time and circumstances, have succes- 
 sively given birth to radiated creatures, to the inferior molluscs, 
 the articulate animals, then the lowest fishes, then man. 
 
 Here is a mistake, in our opinion ; if there exists (until we 
 know more) an immense and impassable difference somewhere 
 in the animal kingdom, it is between the vertebrate and the 
 invertebrate animals. Whilst the first show an admirable 
 unity of organic composition, the second do not seem to have 
 any at all, so that they do not admit of serial or linear classi- 
 fication. Each of the groups which they form is united by 
 some particularity to all the other groups, and naturalists hUve 
 even been able to differ about what must be considered as the 
 highest round in the animal ladder. The organism of the in- 
 vertebrata possesses a flexibility and immense variety, which 
 is almost a characteristic special to these beings in which the 
 nervous system ceases to present the profound unity which we 
 
 * Vol. ii, second part, 1859. 
 
 f Philosophic Zoologique, vol. i, p. 221. 
 
 j Systeme des Connaissances Positives, p. 143, 1820. 
 
 Discours de I' An XI, p. 45. He says, also, in another place (Philosophic 
 Zoologique, vol. i, p. 66), "What we call species, has only a relative constancy 
 in that state, and cannot be as ancient as nature itself." 
 
SPECIES. 117 
 
 see in the vertebrata ; whilst the entire group has only a nega- 
 tive characteristic, the want of vertebrce, which is sufficient 
 alone to show how unnatural it is. As for the rest, the verte- 
 brate animal, even at the first moment of his embryo life, is 
 absolutely irreducible to any invertebrate type whatsoever, 
 contrary to Lamarck's opinion. A vertebrate is to an inver- 
 tebrate as two first numbers are to one another ; all the verte- 
 brata, on the contrary, are one to another as a simple number 
 raised to different powers ; they can all be brought back to 
 their origin, and both the most complicated and the most ele- 
 vated of the series are only the most simple ones arrived at a 
 state of considerable perfection. 
 
 A still weaker side of Lamarck's theory is certainly the 
 decided influence which he attributes to the actions and habits 
 of organised beings, so as to modify them by their own means. 
 The pedantic caprice of his enemies has always hit on this 
 point. ' ' The habit of exercising an organ," he says, ' ' makes 
 it acquire developments and dimensions which insensibly change 
 it, so that in time it becomes very different. On the contrary, 
 the faulty continual exercise of an organ impoverishes it gra- 
 dually, and ends by destroying it."* But it must not be 
 thought that Lamarck gave an appreciable alteration to the 
 organ, an alteration sufficiently rapid to be noticed by our- 
 selves. If some passages of his works make the reader think 
 so, it is plain that they are only the wanderings of a great 
 mind, always weak on the side of the ideas which he has 
 created, and which he cherishes. Lamarck knew very well that 
 an infinite time is the condition of unlimited variability, f 
 
 Darwin is the direct successor of Lamarck, and, in our 
 opinion, the success of his book both in England and France 
 is an index of the progress which scientific ideas have made, 
 since the days of Cuvier, in the path of liberty and indepen- 
 dence. Darwin, like Lamarck, admits unlimited variety; he 
 thinks that all animals must descend from four or five primitive 
 types, and plants from about an equal number ; he is almost 
 
 * Lamarck, Organisation des Corps Vivants, p. 53. 
 
 f For nature " time lias no limit, and consequently has it always at its 
 disposal." Lamarck, Systcme des Animaux sans Vertebres, p. 13, 1801. 
 
118 SPECIES. 
 
 disposed to admit but one primordial type for all organic 
 nature.* 
 
 Darwin, however, seems to us to have fallen into a grievous 
 exaggeration, or error of interpretation, formerly laid to La- 
 marck's charge, while he is at the same time defending an 
 excellent cause. Without speaking here of the relationship 
 (forced, in our opinion) which Darwin makes out between wild 
 and domestic animals (of which we have before spoken), the 
 learned Englishman seems to have accorded too much to indi- 
 vidual action in the production of specific modification. He 
 sees a powerful activity, which he calls natural selection, where 
 we can only see absolute passiveness. We will explain what 
 we mean : in the midst of this vital concurrence, which he has 
 in part so well described, in the midst of this immense 
 struggle, where all which has life on our planet is engaged in 
 combat one against the other, or against all, on this eternal 
 field of battle, where the victors become the victims, Darwin 
 supposes that an animal brings into the world with him, by 
 chance, some psychological modification, or some anatomical 
 disposition, which is individually advantageous to him in the 
 great struggle for life ; after this he will have a chance of 
 being among the victors, of uniting himself to another animal 
 as happily endowed by birth by having also conquered ; they 
 will together leave a numerous posterity, and there is every 
 chance that some of the descendants of such a couple may 
 inherit either the same instinctive disposition or the same con- 
 formation; definitively, and by the repeated action of this 
 natural proceeding, a new variety can be formed, and may 
 either supplant the parent species or coexist with it.f 
 
 Such is, in a few words, the theoiy of natural selection. In 
 our ideas, there is here a false interpretation of facts ; we do 
 not believe in this chance of a native disposition, which thus 
 transmits itself in order to become in time a specific charac- 
 
 * Darwin On the Origin of Species, p. 518, London, 1861. " I believe that 
 animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants 
 from an equal or less number. Analogy would lead me one step farther, 
 namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some 
 one prototype." 
 
 f Compare Darwin On the Origin of Species, p. 96, 1861. 
 
SPECIES. 119 
 
 teristic. We have shown, while speaking of hybridity, that a 
 native individual disposition ought always to disappear by the 
 mere fact of its being individual ; it quickly disappears through 
 cross-breeding at the tenth generation, if not at the first, in 
 the midst of a population which does not possess it. We fully 
 admit, like Lamarck, that species are formed from one another 
 by the appearance of organic modifications, more or less de- 
 cided ; but we do not leave anything to chance in this pheno- 
 menon, as Darwin does, and we can only see there the applica- 
 tion of general laws. 
 
 It is not one or two animals, born with some special psycho- 
 logical or anatomical disposition, who are destined to generalise 
 themselves by generation : it will be all the individuals of the 
 same species in a certain radius, who will be born with a 
 scarcely appreciable organic modification, resulting, as far as 
 we can tell, in an action of the medium also nearly inappre- 
 ciable by ourselves, but which long ago will have made itself 
 felt by the parents. The new variety will be propagated quite 
 naturally, since it is general, and can but increase with each 
 generation as long as the modifying cause continues to act. 
 
 Etienne Geoffroy had been the worthy successor of Lamarck, 
 with a larger and more philosophical mind. He never fell into 
 his exaggerations, nor into the restrictive applications of the 
 system, like Darwin. Let us see how Isidore Geoflroy* con- 
 tinues his father's theory : " Species is variable under the in- 
 fluence of the ambient medium; differences, more or less 
 considerable according to the power of the modifying causes, 
 may in time be produced, and the present beings may be the 
 descendants of the former being." This doctrine is our own 
 also. 
 
 As to the idea of limited variety, propounded by Isidore 
 Geofiroy, we can only see in it an unfortunate restriction of his 
 father's theory, one of those errors into which even the most 
 judicious minds are liable to fall. Limited ! Does he mean 
 that there is a point where these variations stop, and conse- 
 quently a point where they have commenced ? Does he mean 
 
 * Histoire Naturelle Generate, vol. ii, p. 421, 1859. 
 
120 SPECIES. 
 
 that some neighbouring animal species are derived from a 
 given prototype, similar to themselves, and without any ante- 
 cedents in the organic world ? This is to return to Cuvier ! 
 Limited ! Does he mean that the modifications will not be 
 considerable in the present state of things, on account of this 
 present state being more or less modified ? It comes to nothing 
 directly we admit variety as a consequence of the medium. 
 Etienne Geoffroy was led by this kind of idea, when, limiting 
 his view to the short period of historical time, and thinking 
 he had discovered that our present climates do not sensibly alter 
 existing species,* he asked, "if there had not been on the 
 earth revolutions and disturbances of so vast a character that 
 their influence may not have been enormous ; whilst in our 
 days, changes may have been according to the power of their 
 effects, that is to say, almost nothing." And he explained 
 everything by this convenient theory of geological floods. 
 
 Before going farther, let us consider what we ought to think 
 about the disturbances of the terrestrial globe thus invoked by 
 Etienne Geoffroy. Now, to our mind, we have no authentic 
 proof that the past of our planet has really been marked by 
 such frightful revolutions, and geology does not make the 
 tradition as clear as some have desired. We think, although 
 this is not the place to prove it, that if the changes which have 
 happened to the surface of the globe have been considerable, 
 they ought to be proportionally weak, resulting less from sud- 
 den and powerful efforts than from those small and continuous 
 actions f in which nature puts forth its most formidable ener- 
 gies, but the progress of which is not to be measured by the 
 memory of man. In general, our mind seizes but badly the 
 notion of duration beyond certain limits. It is not the same 
 with the notion of force. Hence, the belief in floods. In the 
 presence of gigantic effects, the mind, in the appreciation of 
 the movers of this effect, has done what we have done every 
 
 * " The observation of species in a state of nature, by revealing to us a 
 multitude of modifications more or less important, cannot show us any se- 
 rious deviation from the types formed or preserved by the influence of the 
 existing state of things." Isidore Geoffrey, Vie d'Etienne Geoffroy, p. 349. 
 
 f See Leibnitz, Protog^e, transl. by Bertrand de Saint-Germain, Introduc- 
 tion, p. 61. 
 
SPECIES. 121 
 
 day in mechanics. " It has changed mind into force." It is 
 certain that weak but continuous forces (everywhere, however, 
 the most powerful) have been able to play a grander part in the 
 history of our globe, than these disturbances which we are in 
 the habit of seeing everywhere. 
 
 We consider that there ought to be an entire revolution 
 in the system of geological research; it ought to commence 
 at ancient times, and come down to the present day, not 
 vice versa; we ought, in fact, to substitute synthetic for ana- 
 lytical geology. After having carefully noticed contempo- 
 raneous phenomena, we should doubtless be in time able to 
 read simply the trace of a feeble revolution in the geolo- 
 gical past, accomplished under the government of the same 
 forces which are daily preparing new lands, new elevations, 
 new depressions, and a new organic world on the surface of 
 the globe, for the future. If it is probable that the atmo- 
 sphere has changed within certain limits, if the nature of the 
 waters has also been altered, at least all these geological phe- 
 nomena, these abysses, chains of mountains, and submerged 
 continents, can only be the result of the forces now at work 
 under our own eyes, the comparison of animals which for- 
 merly existed with those which exist at the present day, shows, 
 as we shall see farther on, that the conditions of life have not 
 sensibly changed on the surface of the globe since the forma- 
 tion of the rocks subjacent to the metamorphous rocks. 
 
 We deny that the earth is actually passing through a period 
 of repose, and we do not believe that it has ever formerly been 
 more disturbed. Since the age of the first vestiges of the 
 organic life, which we find in the most ancient rocks, we think 
 that our planet has not ceased to move in a calm and con- 
 tinuous march of existence ; we think, in fact, that geological 
 phenomena of all sorts, which we hear of now-a-days, are the 
 exact history of the past, during which some volcanic pheno- 
 mena have also taken place, but in an entirely sporadic manner. 
 " The day is, perhaps, not very distant," said M. Lartet, at 
 the Institute,* in 1858, "when it will be proposed to strike 
 
 * Comptes rendus des seances de I' Academic, February 22, 1858. 
 
122 SPECIES. 
 
 out the word ' flood' from the vocabulary of positive geology." 
 This day approaches still nearer.* 
 
 Before mooting, in our turn, a theory about the vertebrate 
 animal kingdom (the only one which ought to occupy our atten- 
 tion) on the surface of the globe, we simply ask, what is meant 
 by Etienne Greoffroy by the words some considerable time ? 
 This is a difficulty, we own, and we have just said so. We 
 wish that the thirty thousand years,f the maximum time which 
 we give to the farthest origin of man, should be considered as 
 being the age which separates us from the first organic matter 
 cast into the bosom of the waters, in the same proportion as 
 the radius of the earth is to the distance which separates our 
 sun from the most distant star of the most distant nebulous 
 
 * We shall be thanked for publishing here the following extract from a 
 letter addressed to us by Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the 3rd of June, 
 1860, and which relates to all these questions. " I said, two or three years 
 ago, as I have learnt from M. Lartet (who remembered the expression which 
 I had myself forgotten), that the present movement of science tends to sub- 
 stitute in geology the idea of the evolution of the globe for that of revolutions. 
 M. Lartet has taken up this view, and adheres to it. It is of great import- 
 ance to me, as regards my works on species, in which we must in this case sub- 
 stitute the notion of evolution for that of revolution ; revolutions are here pre- 
 tended creations, abruptly successive. It is time to have done with these 
 views, which, instead of taking creation as having been once concluded, make 
 at every instant the Deus ex machinti intervene." 
 
 f [" In the neighbourhood of Mount JEtna, or on the sides of that exten- 
 sive mountain, there are beds of lava covered over with a considerable thick- 
 ness of earth ; and at least another, again, which though known from ancient 
 monuments and historical records to have issued from the volcano at least 
 two thousand years ago, is still almost entirely destitute of soil and vegeta- 
 tion ; in one place a pit has been cut through seven different strata of lava ; 
 and these have been found separated from each other by almost as many 
 thick beds of rich earth. Now, from the fact that a stratum of lava, two 
 thousand years old, is yet scantily covered with earth, it has been inferred 
 by the ingenious Canon Recupero, who has laboured thirty years on the na- 
 tural history of Mount -ZEtna, that the lowest of these strata which have 
 been found divided by so many beds of earth, must have been emitted from 
 the volcanic crater at least fourteen thousand years ago, and consequently, 
 that the age of the earth, whatever it may exceed this term of years, cannot 
 possibly be less." Brydone's Tour through Sicily and Malta (1770). Plato, in 
 his Critias, mentions the island Atalantis as having been buried in the ocean 
 nine thousand years before his own time. In the Universal History, vol. i, 
 (preface,) we are told that the astronomical records of the ancient Chaldeans 
 carry back the origin of society to the remote period of four hundred and 
 seventy-three thousand years. Among comparatively well-known authorities, 
 there is a good deal of difference in the time of the supposed formation of 
 the world. The Hebrew bible makes the creation 3,944 years before the 
 Christian era. The Samaritan bible, 4,305 years; the Septuagint, 5,270 
 years ; Usher, 4,004 years ; Josephus, 4,658 years ; M. Pezron, 5,872 years. 
 In all these differences, however, there is nothing so striking as in the theo- 
 ries we mention above, of Eecupero, the Chaldeans, etc. EDITOK.] 
 
SPECIES. 123 
 
 system winch the best telescope can observe. The extent alone 
 of the heavens can give us an idea of the extent of the past. 
 
 This being granted, let us see how we can represent the 
 history of organic development upon the earth in a few words, 
 without hiding from ourselves the immense obscurity which 
 covers all origins. We are here expressing merely a hypo- 
 thesis. It will suffice us to see if this hypothesis will agree in 
 a satisfactory manner with the facts noticed at the present 
 day, on the surface and in the interior of the globe. 
 
 At the origin of the vertebrate world, since we are only 
 examining this, it seems rational to admit a primordial com- 
 mencement, which nothing prevents us from considering as a 
 new and special combination of organic matter, derived from 
 the invertebrate world, which we may believe to have formerly 
 existed. In the heart of this embryo will have appeared, by 
 spontaneous generation, the first organism connected with the 
 vertebrate type. This was, doubtless, a simple anatomical 
 element, like that which histologists see every day formed in 
 certain granular liquids. 
 
 We do not imagine that the origin of life can be otherwise 
 represented ; for to admit, as Isidore Geoffrey has done in cer- 
 tain passages of his works, that the will of a God peopled the 
 earth suddenly with perfect beings, fit for producing other 
 beings like themselves, would be to admit a miracle, and 
 science teaches us at the present day what to think of all 
 divine interventions, either past or present.* 
 
 We defy anyone to get out of this alternative, either that 
 there was an instantaneous and miraculous creation of a cer- 
 tain number of perfect animals ;t or that there was a succes- 
 
 * [Our author is quite right. Science does teach us what to think of divine 
 power in its outward manifestations. The more we understand nature, 
 the more ready will earnest-minded men be to praise and give glory to 
 the God who made it, who created man and beast with such marvellous and 
 exquisite regularity, and who continues to govern the world and all that is 
 upon it. Perhaps M. Pouchet thinks he himself could have made a better 
 one. It is a pity that a clever mind is so warped by that science which 
 ought to make him more satisfied than ever that God is the creator of the 
 world ; and that spontaneous generation, and the never-clearly explained 
 origin of the first matter, about which even M. Pouchet cannot tell us, with 
 all his scepticism, ought to go to pave the "pathway of good intentions." 
 EDITOR.] 
 
 f [Why not ? EDITOR.] 
 
124 SPECIES. 
 
 sive evolution, which is Lamarck's idea, modified by the sense 
 of the new knowledge which we have at the present day, arising, 
 on the one hand, from geology, and on the other, from philoso- 
 phical anatomy. 
 
 Let us return to this primordial anatomical element which 
 we may call individual-element. It virtually represents a 
 vertebrate animal just as the ovum detached from the ovary 
 of the female represents a man, who is only waiting for 
 favourable circumstances in order to develope himself. This 
 individual-element, according to our hypothesis, is at first 
 simply reproduced; then, after some considerable time, its 
 descendants, will, little by little, in their own sphere of 
 activity, give birth to other elements in juxtaposition to 
 themselves, in this manner perfecting it and identifying it 
 more and more with the vertebrate type which it offers for 
 our consideration. After some considerable time vertebrates 
 of as simple an organism as mixinae and lampreys will have 
 thus appeared. Then, again, after another considerable lapse 
 of time millions of centuries, rather than thousands these 
 animals with elementary vertebra will have successively pro- 
 duced, by transformation, all the vertebrata which stock the 
 globe at the present day. 
 
 We must here make an important remark. We have inferred 
 by all which precedes this, that the vertebrata of the present 
 day and the fossil vertebrata all descend from the same in- 
 dividual-element prototype, whose existence we have admitted. 
 In one word, we think that all the vertebrata, both present 
 and past, have the same genealogy, and are all relations. 
 That may doubtless be the case; but nothing will make us 
 admit that there once existed on our planet conditions fit for 
 the birth of this individual- element prototype, and that these 
 circumstances have never since been represented; so that the 
 most simple vertebrata of our time may very well descend from 
 a less ancient spontaneous genesis than the mammalia and 
 man himself. Nothing hinders such a supposition. It does 
 not cost us any more to admit that one day or other a simple 
 organic element is formed, endowed with a life of its own, and, 
 even more, with a latent life, which it can, by means of time 
 
SPECIES. 125 
 
 and circumstances, diffuse around it ; it does not cost us more 
 to admit this than to admit that similar elements have arisen 
 at different periods of time. This last supposition may even 
 be regarded as so much more probable, that we must renounce 
 entirely, in order to explain specific transformations, the influ- 
 ence of the geological revolutions of which Etienne Geoffrey 
 took so much account. We have seen higher up that these were 
 far from being proved; we can add, in support of our asser- 
 tion, a fact which we think has not been sufficiently remarked. 
 If these revolutions ever existed, we have a strong proof that 
 they have only very slightly altered the conditions of life 
 on the surface of the globe, at least since the ancient pe- 
 riods during which the first alluvium was deposited; if we 
 dredge some yards deep in the ocean, the drag brings up 
 terebratulao and encrini; that is to say, animals identical 
 with those which we find in the most ancient alluvia. Is 
 it not remarkable that the lowest placed fossil in the strati- 
 graphic ladder of the beds of the terrestrial surface, the most 
 ancient fossil which we know, is precisely this same terebratula, 
 which still lives in our seas ? What must we hence conclude ? 
 That there once existed on the globe, at least to a certain 
 extent, conditions of aquatic life sensibly identical with those 
 which exist at the present day. 
 
 Whether all the species of vertebrata descend from one 
 original spontaneous beginning, or from many successive ones, 
 signifies very little, since, in the second case, the primordial 
 individual- elements which have thus appeared at various times, 
 would always show a great analogy to one another. 
 
 Now, after all that we have said, this is how we may, in our 
 opinion, represent by a graphic figure the whole of the ver- 
 tebrate kingdom,* in the present and in the past. Let us 
 image a conical figure : the individual- element of which we 
 have spoken will occupy its summit. From this point a num- 
 ber of straight lines, few at first, will start, branching off and 
 
 * Some may be astonished at our applying the word kingdom to the verte- 
 brata. We do so because, in truth, the distance which separates them from 
 other animals seems to us almost as great, and even more decided, than that 
 which separates the invertebrata from plants. 
 
126 SPECIES. 
 
 always multiplying themselves with more or less regularity, 
 but so as to form an immense cone.* 
 
 Each of these straight lines would represent a specific modi- 
 fication, accomplished after a certain number of generations 
 under the combined influence of the ambient medium and of 
 some considerable time : in other terms, each ramification 
 would represent a species having once existed or now exist- 
 ing on our planet. The length of each line would measure 
 the time which the species in question has existed. These 
 lines would never converge, because we do not believe in the 
 creation of permanent species by means of hybridity. 
 
 Now the mind must admit here all possible combinations ; 
 certain species have disappeared without producing any others 
 after them : others exist actually without our having any idea 
 of one of the intermediary species which have been allied to 
 primitive species ; others have subsisted slightly or not at all 
 altered from the remotest antiquity up to our own days, thus 
 becoming through contemporaneous time the transformed 
 descendants of fossil species, of which they were also formerly 
 the contemporaries ; it is even not impossible but that certain 
 species succeeding one another may have presented a retro- 
 grade evolution, so that we must not always conclude that 
 because one animal is only inferior to another, it has therefore 
 preceded it : without going so far as all this, the evolution of 
 certain species may have presented a long time of cessation 
 whilst all others were progressing around them, so that they 
 appear to have retrograded. This is what has made M. 
 Micheletf say, " Nature has not progressed with a continuous 
 flow, but with retrograde movements, and stoppages, which 
 allow her to harmonise everything." These times of repose 
 in a specific evolution, as well as the hypothesis of successive 
 geneses which are already admitted, explain how the stratified 
 beds of the earth's surface, in showing from low to high what 
 we may call more perfect organic means, unveil at the same 
 
 * The diagram which Darwin has placed in his book On the Origin of 
 Species, is only a fraction and piece of detail of the general figure which we 
 are endeavouring to place before the mind of the reader. 
 
 t L'Insecte, p. 128, 1858. 
 
SPECIES. 127 
 
 time to our eyes here and there a certain number of species, 
 inferior in organisation to those in the most ancient rocks. 
 
 As to explaining how a part of the ancient species has been 
 able to modify itself whilst another has remained stationary, 
 we must admit that all these influences of medium have always 
 been exclusively local, so that all the coexisting vertebrata have 
 never been able to submit at once to its influence. We must 
 understand by medium, the whole of the circumstances, past 
 or present, which are able to influence organism mediately or 
 immediately in any manner whatsoever. The ancestors of an 
 animal, as well as the sun which warms it, and the parasites 
 which devour it, make up a part of this medium. 
 
 But if it is easy to explain variety by the medium, it is a 
 difficulty against which the mind struggles. How can we 
 explain ascending and progressive variety ? must we believe 
 in some finality, an end settled beforehand ? We do not think 
 so. Finality is a sort of divine prevision, and the world as 
 regards this hypothesis is still in tutelage ; we would rather 
 believe in a creating intelligence. A simple example will make 
 our meaning understood. In the vegetable world this strikes 
 us forcibly : the most simply formed plants are precisely 
 those which approach most nearly to animals by reason of 
 their physiological manifestations.* The plants which they 
 call superior, by placing them in an organographic point of 
 view, are in reality inferior, so that these plants are simple in 
 reference to the dicotyledons which have necessarily succeeded 
 them, and there has been in reality a retrograde march of life, 
 instead of the ascending march of the animal kingdom. Must 
 we seek for the reason of this difference in the presence of a 
 nervous system ? We think so. We then would admit that 
 organism would tend to modify itself by an inconscient act of 
 the will, analogous to those which rule most physiological 
 actions; this would be something like the possible increase 
 or growth of the head by reason of the influence of civilisation 
 of which we have before spoken, f And whilst all the specific 
 
 * Predominance of the immediate azotic principles, respiration comparable 
 to that of animals, voluntary movements, indivisibility of organism, etc. 
 f [See above, pp. 46, 47. EDITOR.] 
 
128 SPECIES. 
 
 varieties would result among plants from the influence of the 
 physical medium, we must add to the notion of this medium, 
 as regards animals, the nervous activity of the ancestors. 
 
 By the side of this creating influence we must recognise in 
 the medium a parallel destructive influence. Now, we can 
 appreciate this every day. The present tells us about the 
 past ; we cannot doubt but that species formerly disappeared 
 exactly as we see them still disappear under our eyes by the 
 manifestation of some new condition of the medium; these 
 may be sudden; volcanic phenomena, floods, extreme varia- 
 tions of temperature, diseases, famines, enemies all these 
 hypotheses are possible, and all equally reasonable : the dodo 
 has disappeared some years ago, having been destroyed by the 
 hand of man ; they say that the apterix will soon disappear in 
 the same way, devoured by cats. But actions only moderately 
 destructive were doubtless otherwise very important, and we 
 find here all the phenomena which have been so well described, 
 and so well explained by Darwin* under the name of vital com- 
 petition. By this we see, even since the most ancieni historic 
 periods, that certain savage animals, like the lion,f crocodile, J 
 and hippopotamus, || retire before mankind; that the black 
 rat is disappearing in Europe to give place to the field mouse, 
 and that a race of savages disappears when their country begins 
 to be inhabited by a more civilised race, even when the victors 
 in this organic, as well as political, struggle, are not able to 
 reproach themselves with any cruelty. 
 
 Now, let us apply to man the theory of the origin of species 
 which we wish to be dominant, for there is no reason to think 
 that man forms any exception to the common rule. Before all 
 
 * See On the Origin of Species, chap. iii. 
 
 f Lions hindered the army of Xerxes in Macedonia. They abounded in 
 the province of Africa in the time of the Eoman Emperors. At the present 
 time, however, Gerard was obliged to watch for three hundred nights in order 
 to kill only thirty or forty. 
 
 J The crocodile, which used to swarm on the Delta, is now only found in 
 Upper Egypt. 
 
 || The hippopotamus, since the Eoman occupation, has successively re- 
 tired from the mouth of the Nile to the fourth cataract. Some years ago, 
 there existed one, and one only, at the Island of Argo, on this side of New 
 Dongolah. Some hunters killed it, and since then, they have only been found 
 at the Berber level. 
 
SPECIES. 129 
 
 things, we must remember that human races cannot lend 
 themselves to any classification in natural series. It is also 
 as impossible for the naturalist to point out a race at the 
 present day from which all the others are derived, either 
 parallelly or successively, as for the historian to discover in the 
 past any trace of a homogeneous humanity. If even such an 
 uniformity had ever existed, how would the remembrance of it 
 have been kept, for it is evident that this primitive form, 
 constituting at the beginning all the human genus, would be 
 the same inferior form, such as the Negro or the Bosjesman, 
 for instance, nature rising in general from inferiority to per- 
 fection. This was for a long time Pri chard's idea, and 
 certain monogenists think the same at the present day. This 
 hypothesis, entering at its basis into the doctrine of evolution, 
 has nothing in itself which is startling ; we can only say one 
 thing against it, and that is in its admitting as proved that 
 filiation which would connect one with the other all the groups 
 composing in our times the genus homo. For our part, we 
 wish simply to extend the same manner of viewing the matter, 
 to generalise it, and to place it in relation with this immense 
 unknown which is behind us, and of which monogenists do 
 not take enough notice. We maintain that there has existed in 
 the night of time a certain species, less perfect than the most 
 imperfect man, remounting by a certain number of inter- 
 mediary species, of whose nature it is impossible for us at 
 present to form, any idea, to this primordial vertebrate animal 
 which we admit. This species, a rough outline of what man 
 now is, gave birth, after a considerable time, to many other 
 species, whose parallel and unequal evolution, following what 
 we have said concerning animals, has at the present day as 
 contemporaneous (but not the last) illustration, the different 
 species of men designated by the name of races. So that all 
 humanity would be in relationship, if the expression be allowed 
 us, not in the serial sense, as monogenists take it, but in the 
 collateral sense, and at a degree which we cannot determine ; 
 the prognathous races probably less deviated from the former 
 type, the others more separated from this type, and more 
 perfect. 
 
130 SPECIES. 
 
 It may be seen, and we are bound to make the remark, that 
 we no more pretend to make man a descendant of the ape, than 
 a white man a descendant of a Negro ; but it is not impossible, 
 in our opinion, that species of men, as well as the great apes 
 whose relationship hurts our vanity so much, may remount 
 infinitely far in the past to an unknown single species, whose 
 descendants, submitted to multiplied influences, might be 
 modified in different ways by reason of these different influ- 
 ences. 
 
 We admit, then, that species is an instant of a constant 
 evolution; that it does not exist by itself; and that it is only an 
 appreciation of our senses, localised by time. In our opinion, 
 if species is fixed, it is fixed after the manner of the sun. 
 That is to say, that we cannot perceive any movement in it 
 beyond the merest trifle. 
 
 It requires thousands of years to discover either solar dis- 
 placement or specific alteration. This is what makes the 
 determination of species so difficult; some of which may be 
 considered as in progress of formation in reference to others. 
 The difficulty is the same with mankind as it is with animals. 
 We would not dare to contradict, for instance, the opinions of 
 those who see in the Hindu, German, and Celtic population 
 three species in course of formation, all three being probably 
 derived from a species anterior to that which history endea- 
 vours at the present day to name ; that Aryan race of which 
 such a noble picture is made, and which we believe to be 
 primitive because it is in the horizon of history, just as the 
 ancients saw in the ocean the limits of the world. In a short 
 time, perhaps, some discovery in a poor Asiatic field will take 
 away from the Aryas the characteristic nobility and intelli- 
 gence which we give to them with so much satisfaction. It 
 belongs to human palaeontology alone to enlighten us upon 
 the origin of the present human types ; it alone can lead us in 
 a sure path towards the great problem of their origin. 
 
 But both geology, and paleontology which depends on it, have 
 the singular destiny of showing at one and the same time both 
 great certainties and insoluble doubts. The stratification of 
 rocks, for example, gives us very clearly the notion of the sue- 
 
SPECIES. 8 
 
 cession of these rocks with regard to one another. But it leaves 
 us in absolute ignorance of all which has passed between the 
 deposit of one stratum and the deposit of that which we meet 
 with above it; in this unknown time all may take place, 
 ten series of rocks may have been placed upon it, and then 
 have been so well mingled together that we cannot discover 
 their individual trace. Who will tell us about the continents 
 engulphed by the sea ; has it not already ground up under its 
 waves those memorials of ancient days, which would be so use- 
 ful to us as a means of reconstructing the history of man? 
 Geology is a gigantic inscription lacerated for ever : each age 
 will decipher some fragment, but we shall never be able to 
 read it in its perfect state. 
 
 Besides its great advantages, palseontological inquiry has 
 its great inconveniences. Its advantages are the studying of 
 animal forms which are fixed for ever, and not seeing the 
 field of such studies continually increasing on our view. The 
 limit of its inquiries is the origin of the alluvium; all the facts 
 which we are thereby called upon to study are within this 
 boundary. Palaeontology alone, among the sciences of the 
 present day, knows the extent of its domain. 
 
 But palaeontology, proceeding step by step, by blows of the 
 pickaxe in an otherwise inaccessible mass, is composed of two 
 orders of facts, which must be distinguished one from the 
 other, resting either on affirmative evidence (the existence 
 of organic remains in a rock) or' on negative evidence (the 
 absence of organic remains in a rock) . Human palaeontology 
 itself has its own inconveniences. A bone or a skull of a man 
 are things which are well known ; they have not that strange 
 appearance in the eyes* of the crowd which makes them take 
 ammonites for petrified serpents, hamites* for leeches, radiated 
 animals for stars ; when we dig up some singular bone, some 
 carapace of a lizard, a fish, or of some unknown animal, we 
 pick it up, and take great care of it. But if it is a man's 
 head, it is generally replaced religiously in the earth, and these 
 remains are for ever lost to the scientific world. 
 
 * [Hamites, a genus of extinct Cephalopods, found in the greensand forma- 
 tion in England. EDITOR.] 
 
 K 2 
 
132 SPECIES. 
 
 There result from all this two sorts of ideas in palaeontology, 
 the one positive, the other negative : it is true, however, that 
 the latter diminish continually the profit we obtain from the 
 former, and it is important to remember that this negative 
 evidence is the only basis upon which rests the hypothesis that 
 man is so new to our globe as some imagine. Every moment 
 we may expect to see the interior of the earth prove the con- 
 trary. Instead of discoveries following one another, and being 
 linked together as in other sciences, forming a whole which 
 hangs together by itself, palaeontology goes on from hand to 
 mouth, as it were, at the caprice of whatever may happen, 
 without knowing the wonder which is about to be revealed, 
 perhaps at a few steps from a path which millions of men have 
 passed by. 
 
 It is very true that the human bones which have hitherto 
 been found in the ground in caverns seem to proceed from a 
 form but slightly different from our own ; but all this is very 
 recent, relatively to this considerable time of which we have 
 before spoken. Who can say but that we may find very soon 
 a skull which must be classed, whether one will or not, be- 
 tween the anthropomorphous apes and man ? 
 
 fitienne Geoffroy, led by the logical nature of his ideas, 
 naturally admitted this intermediary form, anterior to our 
 own ; but seeing the mammalia of the last geological ages 
 generally larger than those which are contemporary with our- 
 selves, he concluded besides that our immediate ancestors were 
 giants, and that we have degenerated, like the descendants of 
 the bears and hyenas found in caverns.* Nothing has ap- 
 
 * Comptes Rendus, vol. iv, p. 58. Perhaps the only logical deduction which 
 we can really draw from the greater size of these animals, is the greater ex- 
 tent of the continents which they inhabited. The belief in the gigantic 
 dimensions of the fossil fauna and flora, is also a remains of the marvels 
 which the first inquirers into science involuntarily reported. In examining 
 matters nearer and more impartially, we see that certain zoological groups 
 have been, in fact, formerly represented by larger species than at the present 
 day ; but until we arrive at some new discovery, we have the right to think 
 that the other groups of animals, on the contrary, have a class of larger 
 representatives than in former times ; like the quadrumana, the cetacea, in- 
 sects, cephalopods, acephalous mollusks, etc. But this pretended decay is 
 especially false as regards plants ; if we find in the ground some large ferns, 
 or enormous grasses, we must subtract a good deal from those so-called ante- 
 diluvian forests, which many have not hesitated to bring forward in support 
 
SPECIES. 133 
 
 peared in order to justify this hypothesis, and everything seems 
 to show that since that epoch the height of the genus homo 
 has not much altered, whilst the size of the different genera of 
 ferines, ruminants, and pachyderms has positively varied. 
 
 Recapitulation. Since we have found that man is com- 
 parable in all points to animals, we ought to seek for him and 
 for them a common origin, and the difficulty of admitting an 
 initial miracle has led us to the idea of evolution. If in the 
 science of observation it is permitted to refer to general ideas, 
 assuredly it is so in this case ; philosophy commences where 
 science ends, and it belongs to it to give us an explanation of 
 the matter ; but we must wait for the future for a true positive 
 solution of the problem, perhaps from advanced geology, per- 
 haps from experiments. The genius of man has no bounds, 
 who can say to what it may reach ? who knows whether, like a 
 new Prometheus,* a creator in his turn, he may not one day 
 breathe life into some new species, which will suddenly appear 
 from his laboratories ? 
 
 of their ideas. All the fossil plants that we know are, without exception, 
 extremely wretched in comparison with the gigantic conifers and dicotyledons 
 in the forests of the old and new world. 
 
 * [If this new handiwork of man, so charmingly arranged by our author, 
 is not more successful than Pandora, as made by Vulcan, we fear the world 
 will not gain much by it. In the olden times, the man who propounded 
 such curious ideas would probably have had a punishment awarded him, 
 something similar to that suffered by Prometheus. Does M. Pouchet, in 
 quoting this personage, entirely forget the rest of the tale, and the conse- 
 quences of his rashness ? We are really sorry, however, to see science per- 
 verted to a pet idea, if we may use the expression, and twisted by means of 
 " bad anatomy and worse theology," as a friend of ours calls it, for the sake 
 of proving facts quite impossible to be solved. M. Pouchet gives us, in spon- 
 taneous generation, a first germ with which to start a primordial anatomical 
 element, as he calls it. He starts with this, and argues in what manner we 
 leave it to our readers to determine that, from this germ there have, in time, 
 sprung all the animals on the surface of the globe. But he does not tell us 
 how this first germ itself arose. That is put entirely on one side, and taken 
 for granted. We cannot take it for granted however ; and until we have it 
 satisfactorily proved that he is right in any part of his idea, we shall go on 
 thinking and believing as we have done before. EDITOE.] 
 
134 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SYSTEM. 
 
 ALL science leads necessarily to a system ; and system signifies 
 here, not the proceeds of observation or a route followed by 
 analysis or synthesis in order to arrive at the knowledge of the 
 truth. System here means, a mode of classifying beings or 
 observed facts, a mode essentially in connection with the 
 science which treats of these beings or of these facts, and 
 often applicable to itself alone. 
 
 A perfect system can only be really established a posteriori, 
 after the knowledge has been acquired of all the phenomena 
 which are to be classed. This is absolute. In practice, a 
 system can only be observed a priori , by reference to a certain 
 number of facts which it is destined afterwards to embrace ; it 
 is only true that the more facts we acquire, the more chance 
 has a system of being exact, without our ever having the right 
 of proclaiming it to be absolutely good ; it may be satisfactory, 
 and remain so for a long time, but one fine day a new fact may 
 prove it to be false. " I am of opinion," said Etienne Geoffrey, 
 " that a perfect system cannot exist ; it is a sort of philoso- 
 pher's stone, impossible to be discovered."* 
 
 A science being given, it does not at all follow that there 
 already exists a proper method for classifying in a natural 
 series the phenomena which manifest themselves to us in this 
 branch of human knowledge. If we have not yet succeeded in 
 discovering a true anthropological system, if Camper, Prichard, 
 and Morton have' been foiled, it is because the science of man- 
 kind is still too new. 
 
 Even in making an abstract of the difficulties always to be 
 
 * See Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Vie d'E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, p. 287. 
 
SYSTEM. 135 
 
 found in determining every animal species, difficulties which 
 are derived from the way in which we understand its evolu- 
 tion,* must we be astonished that the human race is not yet 
 divided into distinct groups, when animals, much more easy to 
 class on account of their lesser degree of intellectual and 
 social activity, are not yet classed in a satisfactory manner,* 
 when the Geoffroys, Cuvier, and De Blainville have failed in 
 something or other, since this question seems still worthy of 
 examination by the greatest minds of Europe with which the 
 natural sciences are honoured at the present day ? The natu- 
 ral history of man is of to-day, and the difficulties are great, 
 because by virtue of his intellect man possesses resistance and 
 special affinity. Living by nations, he lives a double life ; his 
 own, and that of the nation which is a separate thing into 
 which a neighbouring race or species can enter wholly, adopt- 
 ing the same customs, the same dress, and the same lan- 
 guage. There are difficulties which we meet with in anthro- 
 pology, and which we only meet with there. A species has 
 been known to disappear, for instance, and has left its name to 
 some group entirely different from it, for if the Ethnic name 
 has served at the origin to name the inhabited country, the 
 geographical name has reacted in its turn, and has imposed 
 itself on all the people who have successively occupied the same 
 area. Other difficulties will arise from regions inhabited by 
 distinct species, if these limits are not marked by some physi- 
 cal barrier almost impossible to be passed. 
 
 Thus we are far, even at the present day, from agreeing 
 about the bases of a good anthropological classification. Many 
 methods have been tried, but none have as yet succeeded. 
 Some have adopted geographical division. Others, the colour 
 of the skin. Others, the state of the hair. Others (the most 
 numerous class), have stopped at the shape of the head. The 
 skull has chiefly exercised the sagacity of anatomists and 
 anthropologists, and we can say fairly that there is no com- 
 bination to which it has not been submitted in order to arrive 
 
 * See above, chap. viii. 
 
 f Compare Owen, On the Characters, Principles of Division, and Primary 
 Groups of the Class Mammalia (Brit. Assoc.for the Advancement of Science, 1857.) 
 
136 SYSTEM. 
 
 at the distribution of mankind into natural groups. We must 
 remark that all these cranioscopic classifications rest involun- 
 tarily upon this datum, that the different kinds of men are 
 unequally endowed with intellect. Starting, then, from this 
 principle, that the volume of the brain is in ratio to intelligence, 
 or that intellect is in ratio to the volume of the brain, people 
 tried to find a simple, rather than an easy, method of taking 
 account of such an irregular solid : and Camper opened the 
 way with his famous angle. 
 
 This system was soon followed by others who are less cele- 
 brated, having come after him. We may quote, among others, 
 the interior angle of Walther, described by two lines, the one 
 going from the occipital protuberance to the crista galli pro- 
 cess, the other from the frontal prominence to the root of the 
 nose. There is also the external angle of Mulders, described 
 by the facial line of Camper, and another line going from the 
 base of the process to the root of the nose. And, lastly, that 
 of Daubenton, described by a line going from the inferior 
 margin of the orbit to the posterior region of the occipital 
 orifice, and by another following the direction of the plane of 
 the same.* All these systems are worth as much as Cam- 
 per's. All, including Camper's, are false and worthless, from the 
 mere fact that they pretend to measure a solid by the inclina- 
 tion of two of its boundary-planes one upon the other. After 
 these methods of measurement, and superior to all of them, 
 comes the norma verticalis of Blumenbach ; then the measure- 
 ments of Cuvier, Owen, etc. Here we gain a step ; we endeavour 
 to measure a solid by its outline, or by the area of a systematic 
 division or section. Already had Camper, better gifted than 
 his angle would inform us, endeavoured to compare the dif- 
 ferent diameters of the profile of the skull, as seen in front.* 
 As to Cuvier's division, it is a very happy modification of a 
 former proposed measurement, the incisive-occipital line of 
 Doornick. It is obtained by lowering a vertical line to the 
 plane of the external auditory orifice, and by leading another 
 
 * See, for the explanation and discussion of these different systems, Crull, 
 Dissertatio de Cranio, 1810. 
 
 f Compare Crull, Dissertatio de Cranio, p. 28, 1810. 
 
SYSTEM. 137 
 
 line from the incisors to the extreme protuberance of the 
 occipital region. The relation of the two determinated divisions 
 in this line by its intersection with the first, will give the 
 statistics of comparison.* 
 
 Progress has been immense, and yet our systems remain 
 very unsatisfactory ; the skull seems to escape every method 
 of measurement. Some time ago a meeting of craniologists 
 took place at Gottingen, and yet the learned assembly was 
 obliged to separate without settling any thing, f It seems that 
 the old saying of Bernard Palissy about measuring some 
 peculiar skull, will remain true in spite of all our efforts : " I 
 have never known how to obtain a correct measurement. "J 
 Another method is that of Morton, to which he has attached 
 his name by the multiplicity of facts which he has drawn 
 from it, by the justice of the views which he has expressed, 
 after having used it thousands of times ; we speak of the direct 
 measurement of the interior capacity of the skull. It is for 
 ever to be regretted that Morton finished his laborious career 
 without having been able to publish the ultimate results of his 
 long researches ; but this method (which M. Broca has 
 actively applied), is, however, not quite perfect. If there was 
 merely a difference among the different races in the amount of 
 
 * Compare Crull, Dissertatio de Cranio, p. 52. 
 
 f Busk and Quekett (Medical Times and Gazette). 
 
 J One always endeavours to find some former indication or presentiment, 
 although even confused and full of obscurity, beyond the origin of positive 
 science ; it is curious to find in the works of the potter physician a sort of 
 germ which, when developed, may have given birth to cranioscopy, a sort 
 of foresight of the importance which the measurement of the skull would 
 one day acquire. It is in the Recepte Veritable : one of two speakers relates a 
 dream in which he saw the diiferent instruments used in geometry dispute 
 about precedence : he answers them, that man is above them all ; they exclaim, 
 that man cannot even use one of them in order to measure any part of his 
 body. [We think it best to give the original here. EDITOR.] " Quoy voyant, 
 il me print envie de mesurer la teste d'un homme, pour scauoir directement 
 ses mesures, et me sembla que la sauterelle, la reigle, et le compas me seroient 
 fort propres pour ceste affaire, mais quoy qu'il en soit, ie n'y sceu iamais 
 trouver une mesure asseuree." Bernard Palissy, (Euvres, p. 93, 12mo, Paris, 
 1844. Blumenbach says somewhere, " The habit and constant use of my 
 collection of skulls makes me understand every day the impossibility of sub- 
 jecting a variety of skulls to the rule of any possible angle, the head being 
 susceptible of so many forms, and the parts which compose it being of so 
 many different proportions and directions." See Morel, Traite des Degene- 
 rescences dans I'espece humaine, p. 68. M. Aitken Meigs, at the present day, 
 shows no less than twenty -nine different measurements of the skull which 
 must be obtained if we wish to have anything like a satisfactory idea of the same. 
 
138 SYSTEM. 
 
 intellect shown in their works, this measurement would be 
 sufficient to establish a division ; but there is more than that ; 
 all races have different aptitudes, and here is to be found the 
 fault of Morton's system, which only takes the whole, which 
 makes no distinction between very different skulls if they 
 have the same volume, like those of the Esquimaux, for in- 
 stance, and those of Americans. The subject of measurement 
 differs, like intellect, otherwise than merely in dimension, and 
 that which craniology wants is the definition of all these special 
 tendencies of the intellect by as many tangible varieties as 
 possible.* 
 
 Craniology is not anthropology ; it assists it materially, but 
 the partial results which it obtains have not necessarily the 
 same value in the more general point of view of anthropology. 
 Every classification, based on the form of the skull, will be 
 necessarily an artificial classification, because it will only rest 
 upon one sole order of phenomena. Besides, this study pre- 
 sents great difficulties from the individual differences which 
 the various heads show, in which the qualities belonging to the 
 individual have been so far able to hide the general characters 
 of the race, that these often remain unrecognisable. Divisions 
 have also increased in proportion as craniological collections 
 have come richer in specimens. Morton only reckoned eleven 
 human races, but he believed under the truth. We may very 
 well have a poor idea of the value of this classification by study- 
 ing the materials which were used by the philosopher of Phil- 
 adelphia. JBesides the American race, Morton had only a 
 very few skulls at his disposal. The Philadelphian collection, 
 which has been much increased since his death, contained, 
 only a few years ago, 1035 skulls, 38 of them pathological; 
 there remain therefore but 997. Out of this number the 
 American race figures in 502, or more than one-half. There 
 remains, therefore 495, 154 of which came from the valley of 
 the Nile; so that merely 350 skulls represent the whole of 
 Europe, Asia, the Oceanic countries, and Africa (excepting 
 Egypt) . This is not much for the purpose of classing a popula- 
 tion likely to be raised to five hundred millions of inhabitants. f 
 
 * See above, chap. iv. f See Indigenous Races of the Earth, p. 320. 
 
SYSTEM. 139 
 
 It remains for us to study and determine the intrinsic value 
 of each of these heads. The authentic production of a skull 
 is not always easy to be established when it comes from the 
 other side of the world, obtained by travellers who have not 
 made a special study of anthropology ; it is even less so when 
 a skull is dug up in a burial ground, where there may be a 
 certain promiscuousness very apt to hinder our inquiries. 
 Errors of this kind steal into science only too often, and we 
 have for a long time in particular objected to the name of 
 Gallic mummy, which has been given to a body in a collection 
 at Paris, the history of which does not at all justify this deno- 
 mination, since we simply believe that when it was first dug up 
 it was only referred back to the thirteenth century !* 
 
 Craniology was anthropology itself, whilst this science was 
 being cultivated merely by learned men in their studies. If 
 a skull does not always bear about it the stamp of the race 
 to which it belongs, we must nevertheless own that it is the 
 best representative of the dead individual. Craniology obtains 
 all its weight and powers from the study of ancient races and 
 extinct peoples. There it ought to intervene with an un- 
 equalled importance, for want of better points of reference. 
 By its means anthropology can search in the past, clearing up 
 those questions which history is incapable of explaining. In 
 this manner Morton has been able to prove better than by any 
 historical document that Ancient Egypt was inhabited by 
 very mixed races, and composed of the most different elements, 
 exactly as in our own days. But there remained a problem 
 even more interesting : that of knowing if the different races 
 who then inhabited the banks of the Nile were as much divided 
 into various occupations as at the present day,: the Albanians 
 are all soldiers, the Copts all scribes and officials, the Fellahs 
 all labourers, etc. Doubtless it would be possible, if not easy, 
 to arrive at the solution of this new problem by collecting 
 skulls arid mummies with more care than has hitherto been 
 
 * See Strope, Description d'une Momie tres-ancienne (Recueil Period. d'Observ. 
 de Medecine, vol. iv, p. 290, Jan. 1756). One may see in reading the account of 
 a very able and judicious narrator now much, ancient scientific observations 
 alter with the times, when no care is taken to refer to the original sources. 
 
140 SYSTEM. 
 
 done, and, above all, by assisting the researches of the Egypti- 
 ologists, who can read upon the coffin that such and such a 
 body is that of a workman, a priest, or a king. We may thus 
 be able to ascertain if the kings of such or such a dynasty were 
 black or yellow ; if the dominant population of such or such a 
 nome had the Coptic, Berberine, or Fellah type. Here we have a 
 large field for study, which has been almost entirely neglected by 
 the American school of anthropology, precisely because Morton 
 found himself without information about the production and 
 true age of the immense materials which he had at his disposal. 
 
 But we must not be forgetful : the classification of skulls by 
 their shape, of hairs by their colour, or skins by their hue, is 
 not the classification of races of mankind. We only perceive 
 here one order of phenomena. A classification established 
 upon such bases has its point of departure only in the mind of 
 him who conceived it, and not in the nature of things. 
 
 We shall only have a natural and rational classification by 
 comparing entire individuals one with the other.* To this we 
 must come ; we must study at one and the same time the height, 
 the skin with its dependencies, and, above all, the character of 
 the countenance, the attitude, the fades, and the habitus of dif- 
 ferent races, which Caldwell called " the variety discoverable 
 in the complexion and feature, the figure and stature of the 
 human race ;f" this something is explained in one word, which 
 we call type, about which we are never mistaken, and which 
 makes us say, " This is a man from the south, that is a man 
 from the north; this is a Mongolian, that an Indian. "J By 
 this means alone we can form natural groups ; difficulties will, 
 doubtless, be great at the beginning, but light will come little 
 by little, and time will teach us surely to distinguish certain 
 distinctive characteristics, whose expression will be gradually 
 more and more simple. This is a work for the future. 
 
 * See Vivien, in the Memoires de la Societe Ethnologique, vol. ii, p. 59. 
 
 f Portfolio, Philadelphia, 1814. 
 
 J W. Edwards, Des Caracteres Physiologiques des races humaines, p. 4jp, 
 has especially noticed the great importance of external characteristics ; he 
 has only done wrong in excluding the hair, and attending solely to the form 
 of the skull, which never concerns us when we endeavour to picture or recall 
 to our mind the features of a man. 
 
SYSTEM. 141 
 
 Anthropology regarding man as a whole, classifiers ought 
 not to neglect his psychological value. Although craniology 
 is only an indirect appreciation of the same, few had ever 
 thought, Linngeus excepted, of using the purely intellectual 
 characteristics of races in order to assist them in classification, 
 when all at once the American school gave an immense import- 
 ance to these characteristics, and placed psychological varieties 
 above all the material differences which can be observed in the 
 configuration of the bony case of the skull. The American 
 school has gone too far, for it is tangible forms especially which 
 must furnish specific characteristics in the animal kingdom. 
 
 However this may be, we may willingly give a secondary value 
 to the intellectual classification of the human race, although data 
 are still wanting in order to establish one which can be con- 
 sidered as complete. We will even add that the characteristics 
 of this order are the more authentic and the more precious since 
 they are not the expression of a given moment, nor that of a 
 certain number of individuals. They belong to a whole race. 
 
 We must seek for them in the literary remains of a people. 
 These teach us surely, even after many ages have elapsed, 
 about the mind, belief, and thoughts of their readers. The 
 monuments of plastic art remain, even if they were a complete 
 contradiction against their time, their epoch, the men who 
 ordered them, and the crowd which now regards without un- 
 derstanding them.* A book, on the contrary, has no success 
 except as it enters into the mind of a people, except as the 
 ideas which it expresses are those of all the world. Each book 
 which is published, then (like the Mosaic books among the 
 Jews, the Koran amongst the Mussulmen), is the true expres- 
 sion of the mind of a race at all the periods of its existence, 
 even were it written in a language which is no longer spoken. 
 The best Greek and Eoman works, written for men of the 
 same blood as ourselves, have remained classical. We must 
 understand them, even at the present day, and we do under- 
 stand them, because the thoughts which animated their 
 authors are still our own. If, on the contrary, we wish to 
 
 * See Michelet, with regard to the paintings in the Sixtine Chapel, Histoire 
 de France, Renaissance. 
 
142 SYSTEM, 
 
 penetrate into any foreign literature, it becomes a labour and 
 a fatigue, we only reach it by making an abstraction of our 
 thoughts and our ideas, by endeavouring to enter entirely, by 
 a violent effort, into the life and feelings of another people. 
 
 Languages also have been considered capable of serving as 
 a basis for the classification of the human race. Their im- 
 portance has been largely discussed, and counts numerous 
 warm partisans.* At their head we may perhaps mention 
 Latham, who wishes the ancient history of mankind to be 
 studied by languages, f and agreeing in Prichard's ideas about 
 the production of intermediary hybrid races, he only sees this 
 method of reading the history of the past, and he is quite 
 naturally led to language, which seems to him to offer better 
 conditions of resistance J than physical characteristics. 
 
 It is true that philology, applied to anthropological research, 
 is of immense assistance to it; it can give us powerful in- 
 ductions on the history of the past, and on the origin of the 
 present human species. But even these solutions agree very 
 well with the theory of gradual evolution, and with the co- 
 rollary of this theory, namely, that man has not always pos- 
 sessed the faculty of speech. Philologists tell us, for instance, 
 
 * " Philology is at once the most elevated and the most positive branch of 
 the natural history of the human race." Chavee, Noise et les Langues (La 
 Revue). M. Flourens seems to give philological a superior rank to physical 
 characteristics. [See above, p. 77, note. EDITOR.] 
 
 f He believes that by their means we can go back to the most distant geo- 
 logical periods. See Apophthegms (Edinburgh New Philosophical Journ., vol. li.) 
 
 J Latham thus explains it : " This is because whilst A and B, in the way 
 of stock -blood or pedigree, will give c a true tertium quid, or a near approach 
 to it, and A and B, in the way of language, will only give themselves, i. e., 
 they will give no true tertium quid, nor any very close approach to it." Celtic 
 Nations, p. 33. We have endeavoured to prove that this true tertium quid 
 this real mean term, is never produced as far as species. 
 
 [" Either language must have been originally revealed from heaven, or 
 it must be the fruits of human industry. The greater part of Jews and 
 Christians, and even some of the wisest Pagans, have embraced the former 
 opinion, which seems to be supported by the authority of Moses, who repre- 
 sents the Supreme Being as teaching our first parents the names of animals. 
 The latter opinion is held by Diodorus Siculus, Lucretius, Horace, and many 
 other Greek and Roman writers, who consider language as one of the arts 
 invented by man. The first men, say they, lived for some time in woods and 
 caves, after the manner of beasts, . uttering only confused and indistinct 
 noises, till, associating for mutual assistance, they came by degrees to use 
 articulate sounds mutually agreed upon, for the arbitrary signs or marks of 
 those ideas in the mind of the speaker which he wanted to communicate to 
 the heaver. This opinion sprung from the atomic cosmogony which was 
 
SYSTEM. 143 
 
 that two sister tribes may have been able, at some past time, 
 to create on each side of a mountain two different idioms, 
 which may produce in their turn two families of languages 
 absolutely irreducible one from the other. This is what would 
 take place, according to M. Renan, when the sons of the same 
 parents, separating on the sides of the Imaus, became the 
 double branch from whence have sprung the Semites on one 
 side, and the Aryas on the other. This would be the explana- 
 tion of the fact so embarrassing for anthropologists, that 
 physical characteristics are sensibly identical among the Se- 
 mites and Europeans, whilst these races are as distinct as 
 possible in the matter of language. Now, we may even go 
 further, and infer from these facts that the common species 
 from whence the Semites, on the one hand, and the Aryas, 
 on the other, are descended, did not yet know how to 
 
 Inversely to Latham, some anthropologists have given, in 
 our opinion, too little importance to language : we speak espe- 
 cially of Edwards and M. Omalius d'Halloy.* The .truth lies, 
 doubtless, between these two extremes. It must be acknow- 
 ledged that language can very often furnish excellent evidence, 
 but it must not be forgotten that it shows at the same time a 
 more rapid liability to change than moral characteristics and 
 corporal form. Niebuhr seems to us to be right when he 
 insists upon the precautions to be taken in order to apply 
 philology in a useful manner to the determination of races, and 
 he concludes that we must give the greatest attention to physi- 
 
 framed by Mochus, the Phoenician, and afterwards improved by Democritus 
 and Epicurus ; and though it is part of a system in which the first men are 
 represented as having grown out of the earth, like trees and other vegetables, 
 it has been adopted by several modern writers of high rank in the republic 
 of letters, and is certainly in itself worthy of examination." Encyclop. Brit., 
 vol. ix, p. 530, 1797. EDITOR.] 
 
 * I do not here mention thS opinions of the Swede (see Latham, Celtic 
 Nations, p: 2), who thinks that important changes can be introduced into a 
 language by certain customs of a people, who change, for instance, the lips 
 for the nostrils, and thus substitute nasal for labial consonants. These facts 
 are, perhaps, true in the detail, but they ought not to have much importance, 
 as they do not alter the specific and personal character of the language, 
 which is far from consisting in the relative number of one or two kinds' of 
 letters. 
 
144 SYSTEM. 
 
 cal configuration.* This is also the opinion of Humboldtf 
 and M. Vivien. J A language, like every custom, and every 
 act of individual relation, can transmit itself from one race to 
 another which is very different. The unity of a family of lan- 
 guages is not always sufficient to establish that the people who 
 speak these idioms are of one and the same origin ; we can 
 only conclude from it that they have been in relation one with 
 the other, and it is even reasonable to admit that this cause has 
 been able to act with a decisive influence at the epoch when 
 man first commenced to lisp. These two tribes meeting for the 
 first time, physically strangers one to the other, were doubt- 
 less able to borrow mutually certain habits, and to mingle in a 
 decided manner their two manners of explaining their thoughts, 
 from which has resulted one sole language, in which we cannot 
 distinguish except by analysis the two different branches which 
 have contributed to its formation. This hypothesis has been 
 even elevated to a general thesis by several philologists, and 
 M. d'Escayrac de Lauture, among others, believes that the 
 centre of Africa, that land of the unknown and of mystery, 
 is reserved to us as a spectacle of this phenomenon. || Without 
 going back to origin, it is evident that two neighbouring 
 peoples, in continual relation one with the other, ought to end 
 by borrowing mutually the forms of language, letters, and arti- 
 culation, especially when they have neither of them any litera- 
 
 * Bunsen (Eng. transl.), Niebuhr's Life and Letters, vol. i, p. 39. 
 
 f " Languages," he says, " give but feeble probabilities in Anthropology." 
 Voyage aux regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, vol. iii, p. 352. 
 
 J See, in the Memoires de la Socir'te Ethnologique (July 1843), a letter in 
 which M. Vivien denies a first rank to language as a distinctive characteristic, 
 and gives it to physical type. 
 
 See above, p. 32. 
 
 || "I am led to believe that familiar languages (if this philological barba- 
 rism is permitted me) do not resemble one another because they come from 
 the same parent, but because they have been brought up together; Africa 
 especially seems to me to furnish a proof of it, for we must study the history 
 of families of languages, especially in the place where they began to be 
 formed, and I believe that language was formed in Africa. My hypothesis is 
 not applicable to all cases, but to several ; thus, the French, Italian, Spanish, 
 etc., come from the Latin, and were born at its death ; but many other lan- 
 guages appear to me to take their features one from the other by simple 
 frequentation, by the natives being often in company together, and, as time 
 goes on, these mutual loans make two or several languages, like the branches 
 of the same tree, only, in my idea, the tree does not exist." Correspondence, 
 1857. 
 
SYSTEM. 145 
 
 ture capable of retaining the language within its limits, and of 
 preserving it from all separation. 
 
 Hence it results that anthropology must take its most pre- 
 cious authorities from the study of languages, in the language 
 of the islands, for instance, and in the idioms spoken at the 
 extremity of the continents : thus surrounded by the sea, in 
 relation by its less extent with the others, these idioms will be 
 preserved even more intact. We shall find here the real ex- 
 pression of the most ancient state of things which we can 
 directly recognise by philology. The click language, so pecu- 
 liar to one single race,* exists only in the most southern part 
 of Africa. They still speak the ancient Pali-f in the south . 
 of Asia and at Ceylon. The most ancient language of Europe, 
 so far as we know, namely the Celtic, still remains in Britanny , 
 and in Wales. 
 
 From all which has gone before, we may then conclude that 
 in order to establish a rational classification of human species, 
 the first characteristics to be considered will be the external 
 aspect, and perhaps the moral characteristics ; the rest will come I 
 in the second rank : at first, language, then deep anatomical 
 varieties which do not strike us at the first glance, then physio- 
 logical and pathological varieties, etc. Such is, we think, the 
 only certain basis upon which anthropology can rest the true 
 distinctions between human species. We do not even yet 
 know exactly their number, and naturalists do not at all agree 
 on this subject ; the work is to be done over again, by follow- 
 ing a new route. 
 
 Without troubling ourselves with enquiring into the whole 
 system of the genus homo, we must at first examine these well- 
 characterised centres of population which are entirely distinct 
 as regards aspect and physiognomy. We must mark these 
 centres with care, paying attention to all the physical, moral, and 
 philological varieties which we are able to notice. M. Flourens 
 has given some excellent principles for the study of animal 
 species ; he wishes simply to apply them to the study of human 
 
 * See above, p. 78. 
 
 f [Pali, the ordinary language of daily life in Hindoostan at the time when 
 Sanscrit was used in elevated literature alone. EDITOR.] 
 
146 SYSTEM. 
 
 species ; and from this connection, which nobody can con- 
 tradict as a means of investigation, there arises a farther proof 
 of the rank which we must give to man in the organic 
 series. " We must observe the living animal/' said M. Flou- 
 rens ; " we must observe him for a long time, and also both 
 sexes and all ages. We must study his nature, his instincts, 
 and his intellect. Each of these things has its own charac- 
 teristic in each animal, and it is by the whole of these character- 
 istics put together that species is denned." It is impossible 
 to trace in a better manner the anthropologists' task. 
 
 When we have well studied a homogeneous centre of popu- 
 lation under all its aspects, when we have rendered an account 
 of its physiological, psychological, and philological character- 
 istics, we may stop; and without prejudging anything con- 
 cerning the area of this race, may then pass on to another 
 centre, which we shall notice in the same way, without 
 troubling ourselves with intermediary varieties, which will al- 
 ways be in a greater or lesser number wherever we do not 
 happen to meet with a physical barrier, like the sea or a chain 
 of mountains, which may separate the two centres which are to 
 be observed. Then we shall, doubtless, have numberless shades 
 and transitions ; but these are merely the phenomena of hy- 
 bridity, entirely secondary, and which ought not at all to in- 
 fluence our essays on anthropological classification. At a later 
 period, when we know more, we shall be able to review all 
 these intermediary varieties, when we understand their con- 
 ditions of existence better. In this manner we must take care 
 at the beginning to study certain countries, places of travel, 
 and meeting, to which all the neighbouring races have given 
 some portion of their blood. Such are most European coun- 
 tries, and such always was the Valley of the Nile and the Blue 
 Nile. The streets of Cairo are not only a picturesque spec- 
 tacle ; from thence did fitienne Geoffrey borrow his grand 
 views about the position of the genus homo in nature ; the man 
 of science profits here as much in his search after truth as the 
 artist in his search after the beautiful. 
 
 Who can forget, even if he has only once seen it, this phan- 
 tasmagoria of customs and physiognomies which developes itself 
 
SYSTEM. 147 
 
 before our eyes at every moment ; here a gigantic Circassian, 
 there a smaller sized Copt, with an arched nose; a Nubian, 
 with his " violet ebony" colour, but with a pleasing figure, 
 nose straight and small, thin lips, well arranged teeth ; a Turk, 
 with as white and transparent a skin as a man of the north ; a 
 Negro, with crisped hair, flat nose, prominent cheek-bones, 
 thick lips, large and projecting teeth ; a Fellah, with olive 
 complexion ; a Bedouin, almost as black as a Nubian, but tall, 
 with aquiline nose, thin lips, and kingly bearing. 
 
 We must not seek for a pure population in the streets of 
 Paris, London, Marseilles, Trieste, or Constantinople : we only 
 find in these capitals isolated facts, good specimens, perhaps, 
 of different species, but lost in the multitude of hybrids. We 
 can only study in these places individuals, not species. In 
 those parts alone which we must make centres of observation, 
 can we see the same man indefinitely multiplied among really 
 primitive people, still free from intermixture, or with the least 
 possible taint of the same. Then we must hasten to seize his 
 general characteristics, and take both his physical and moral 
 portrait. 
 
 The physical portrait in particular comprises two series of 
 data, features and colour. As to feature, photography is an 
 unequalled resource, but it belongs to anthropological study to 
 settle its application in a clear manner : we must always choose 
 some individual presenting the usual type of the population in 
 the midst of which he is found, rather than among the chiefs 
 or nobles of the land. We must select this type in the prime 
 of life, when the animal ceconomy has arrived at its perfect 
 development, and has not yet commenced to decay, and still 
 shines in all the splendour of its reproductive force ; this would 
 be, for man, from twenty-two to twenty-seven years of age. 
 For photographic portraits to be of real utility to anthro- 
 pologists, they ought to represent the individual completely 
 full face, or in profile; thus only can they be of use in measure- 
 ments. For it is important not to confound anthropology with 
 ethnology, as is done every day. They are two things entirely 
 different. Dressed-up portraits are the domain of the latter, 
 the natural history of man demands always absolutely nude 
 
148 SYSTEM. 
 
 representations, and the best will be those which show us the 
 individual with untouched beard and hair. 
 
 As to colour, we must refer as much as possible to oil-paint- 
 ing. In fact, the colour of the human skin, as we have formerly 
 said,* is, in reality, a complex visual impression; all the 
 coloured rays (we employ the term here in the conventional 
 sense given to it in physics) which emanate from the skin, and 
 which strike the eye of the observer, are not formed by the 
 same plane surface ; they arise from the more or less profound 
 parts seen by transparency, through a more or less diaphanous 
 medium, more or less favourable for the emission of these rays. 
 Hence results, as regards the eye, a special sensation, and as 
 regards the mind, a special notion, which we explain in the 
 arts by the word transparency or diaphaneity. 
 
 Now, this kind of sensation will not be reproduced by the 
 artist unless he employs certain processes recalling to the 
 mind those of nature itself. This is not the case with water- 
 colour painting. The colouring matter, reduced to extremely 
 fine particles, is applied, it is true, in a transparent vehicle 
 water; but this, destined to evaporate almost immediately, 
 leaves the colour on the surface of the paper, stretched into an 
 extremely fine layer, without appreciable thickness. We per- 
 ceive from this the radical imperfection of water-colour for 
 portraiture, and the impossibility of rendering by such means, 
 at least with truth, the effect of skin colours. Oil painting 
 offers far better resources, and here is the secret of its in- 
 comparable superiority. The colouring matter, diluted by the 
 oil, remains suspended as before in its transparent medium 
 when the painting is dry ; so that the luminous rays, in order 
 to arrive at the eye, start from the surface of the paint as well 
 as from its interior substance. We find exactly the same 
 process in nature ; an impalpable powder, like the pigmentary 
 granulations, or the globules of blood in the capillaries of the 
 skin, is spread over a diaphanous substance. 
 
 We may now understand the advantage of such a process in 
 anthropological iconography. We must, indeed, almost give 
 
 * Des Colorations de I'epiderme, 4to, Paris, 1864. 
 

 SYSTEM. 149 
 
 up all other methods. It is easy to convince oneself of the fact 
 by examining the coloured portraits which illustrate the works 
 of Prichard,* Nott, and Grliddon,f who are, however, extremely 
 particular about the correctness of the types which they 
 bring before our notice. But all these coloured portraits are 
 unsatisfactory, and when we see some anthropologist invoke 
 the authority of these bad prints, we really ask ourselves 
 which we ought most to admire, either the blind confidence of 
 the savant, the imprudence of the author, or the rashness of the 
 artist. Fancy, however, attacking with such platitudes the 
 portraits of dark-coloured men which the masters of painting 
 have left us, from Veronese to Gericault ! They alone have 
 been able, by their process, to seize the reality of the com- 
 plexion and colour of their models .J 
 
 But the surest method of arriving at conclusive evidence in 
 anthropology is necessarily travels. Doubtless the study alone 
 of the materials collected from afar is of the greatest possible 
 use. But we repeat concerning the study of mankind what 
 we said about the study of animals ; the anthropologist must 
 leave his library and go into the great continents, in order to 
 study by means of his own eye-sight. " We can only arrive 
 at the distinction of species/'' says M. Flourens, "by direct 
 and complete personal observation" That it must be complete, 
 we have endeavoured to show ; but the only condition for its 
 being complete is its being direct. Had we even the genius 
 of Buffon, we should see but poorly by means of others ; facts 
 reach us distorted and altered, because they have not always 
 been observed by competent men ; they are not comparable, 
 
 * See The Natural History of Han, 1844. 
 
 f See Ethnographic Tableau (Indigenous Races of the Earth, London, 
 1857). 
 
 J We may quote, as types of genus, two paintings, incomparable in an 
 anthropological point of view, Portrait d'un Negre ; Portrait d'un Oriental, 
 by Herschop (Berlin Museum, Nos. 825 and 827). 
 
 M. Flourens, in saying that Buffon collected the accounts of different 
 travellers in order to write his Histoire des Races, adds, " Whatever they have 
 only seen with the eyes of their body, he sees with the eyes of his mind, and 
 by that means alone he sees better than they can ; each of them has seen 
 merely some scattered characteristics, Buffon sees everything ; he links to- 
 gether whatever they may have separated, and separates whatever they have 
 confounded." Histoire des Idces de Buffon, p. 167. 
 
150 SYSTEM. 
 
 resulting as they do from diverse individual impressions. It 
 will be especially necessary to control with care travellers' 
 tales as regards the study of intellectual tendencies, since they 
 are too often influenced by their own ideas on the subject. 
 
 Let us say this before concluding: among the a priori 
 proofs which polygenists can bring forward on their side, 
 there is one which is of some importance ; it is this, that while 
 contraiy ideas have been sustained and defended by men who 
 never go beyond their own studies, the former have been 
 generally brought forward by travellers and sailors, by those 
 indeed who have been best able to put in practice this direct 
 observation, which is generally conclusive and decisive. It is 
 these whom we find the most ready to separate mankind into 
 distinct groups, and to recognise in the inferior species a 
 manifest tendency to approach nearer the nature of the anthro- 
 pomorphous apes. A valuable source of information, from 
 which anthropologists must not neglect to borrow, are tho 
 accounts of those who landed for the first time on certain 
 islands and continents. 
 
 If they have even conceived any erroneous ideas, it must 
 usually be acknowledged that they are most likely to be able 
 to give us a tolerably faithful portrait of the nations with whom 
 they have met, even more important in certain points of view 
 than the accounts afterwards given of them, since at that time 
 these people have not been submitted to the various influences 
 which necessarily result from contact with Europeans. 
 
 We can study philology and craniology in the library and 
 in solitude, assisted by proper documents and sufficient mate- 
 rials, but not anthropology ; because anthropology is a science 
 still in its cradle, and observation must have furnished its 
 proper and necessary contingent before we can endeavour to 
 apply any general idea or view. But anthropology ought, more 
 especially, to disengage itself from all trammels of former 
 ideas, as well as from all pretended humanitarian tendencies. 
 It would be nonsense to believe that the advance of the truth 
 will not contribute to social progress. The searcher after it 
 can free himself in all tranquillity of mind from this kind of 
 trouble. Haller has said, in reference to this matter, "The 
 
SYSTEM. 151 
 
 cultivation of truth alone is sufficient for the good man."* 
 That which is truest cannot be evil, because it is in the eternal 
 order of nature. 
 
 Thus,, free from fetters, and obeying pure reason, resting 
 on all the sciences which can assist it, anatomy, physiology, 
 psychology, and philology, the science of mankind will advance, 
 like every other science, towards the conquest of that truth 
 which is so much to be desired ; and sooner or later, by means 
 of archaeology and palaeontology, retracing its steps in the past 
 beyond history itself, and beyond the remotest geological epochs 
 of which we have any record, science will eventually discover 
 the grand problem of the origin of mankind, if the elements 
 themselves are not for ever engulphed in the depths of the 
 ocean. 
 
 * " Boni viri nullam oportet esse causam prseter veritatem." 
 f [Yes, but the difficulty is to determine if it is true. We cannot receive 
 anything as true merely because a savant says it is so. We must go on en- 
 quiring in a proper spirit ; but we must not put inquiry after truth in the 
 same category with scepticism, " that cheerlessness of soul to which cer- 
 tainty respecting anything and everything here on earth seems unattainable." 
 This is the age for seeking after truth ; but in how many different ways do 
 men endeavour to attain to it ! We must search the past carefully in all its 
 scientific and natural facts, and as Longfellow beautifully says, 
 
 " Nor deem the irrevocable past, 
 
 As wholly wasted, wholly vain, 
 If, rising on its wrecks, at last 
 To something nobler we attain." 
 
 This is the true aim of all inquiry. EDITOR.] 
 
 FINIS. 
 
153 
 
 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 Aborigines, 54 
 
 Abou Simbel, 50 
 
 Abyssinia, 57 
 
 Acclimatisation, 58, 89 
 
 Aerolites, 112 
 
 Africa, Central, inhabitants of, 14, 68 
 
 African equality with European, 8 
 
 Age of the world, 122 
 
 Aldridge, Ira, 63 
 
 America, 6, 67, 74 
 
 Anatomy, human, 13 
 
 Angles of the skull, 137 
 
 Anoplotherimn, 42 
 
 Anthropological Societies of Paris and 
 
 London, 7 
 
 Anthropomorphous apes, 11, 41 
 Antilles, 56 
 Ants, 33 
 Arabs, 47 
 
 Aryan family, 19, 131, 143 
 Asiatic tribes, 18 
 Australia, 14, 67 
 Australian aborigines, 5, 16, 17, 41 
 
 Babel, Tower of, 5 
 Bedouin, 147 
 Bees, 33 
 
 Bigenerate hybrids, 96 
 Bimana, order of, 38 
 Blood, 53 
 
 Bosjesmans, 55, 79 
 Bourbon, Isle of, 87 
 Bowed legs, 47 
 Brain, 12 
 Brazil, 69 
 Brute and man, 19 
 Buddha, 52, 67, 71 
 
 Caffres, 68, 79 
 Cairo, 146 
 (^akhya-Mouni, 52 
 Caledonians, 103 
 Cartesian theory, 26 
 Causse degenerationis, 90 
 
 Central America, 81 
 Chain of gradation, 37 
 Chinese, 5, 53, 78 
 Circassia, 147 
 Classification, 64, 135 
 Climate, 92 
 Clitoris, 54 
 Colour, 148 
 Consanguinity, 107 
 Consciousness, 12 
 Copts, 147 
 Cordilleras, 66 
 Craniology, 138 
 Cretins, 106 
 Crocodile, 128 
 Cross-breeding, 97 
 
 Danelag, 104 
 Degraded nations, 75 
 Desdemona, 63 
 Development of animals, 15 
 Dhargonis, 18 
 Disease, 58 
 Dog, 34 
 
 Earth, motion of, round the sun, 6 
 
 Egyptians, 49, 139 
 
 England, 103 
 
 Esquimaux, 15, 17, 18, 53, 54, 68, 75 
 
 Eurygnathi, 45 
 
 Evangile de 1'Enfa-nce, 64 
 
 Evolution, 122 
 
 Family of man, 42 
 Fellah, 147 
 Flinder's Island, 97 
 Flood, the word, 122 
 Foot, 49 
 
 Forearm in Negro, 48 
 France, ethnology of, 104 
 Frugivorous man, 39 
 
 Gallic mummy, 139 
 God, belief in, 71 ' 
 
154 
 
 INDEX TO SUBJECTS. 
 
 Good and evil, 23 
 Goths, 62 
 
 Gradation, chain of, 37 
 Grecian theories, 81 
 
 Hair, colour of, 50, 52 
 
 Half-castes, 98 
 
 Hamites, 131 
 
 Harems, 101 
 
 Height, differences of, 47 
 
 Hindoostan, 40, 145 
 
 Hippopotamus, 128 
 
 History, 80 
 
 Homoides, 98 
 
 Host, elevation of the, 66 
 
 Hottentots, 68 
 
 Human kingdom, 10 
 
 Humanitarian considerations, 73 
 
 Hybridity, 95 
 
 Iconography, 148 
 
 Ilotes, 84 
 
 Index, the congregation of the, 6 
 
 Individual-element, 124 
 
 Intelligence of man, 12 
 
 Japanese, 5 
 Jesus, 64 
 Jews, 70, 89 
 
 Koran, 1, 141 
 
 Labrador, 101 
 
 Language, 30, 33, 142, 145 
 
 Leucous, 51 
 
 Lima, 105 
 
 Linear series, 10 
 
 Lions, 128 
 
 Man and brute, 18 
 Marsh fever, 59 
 Material substance, 12 
 Mathesiological order of science, 2 
 Mechanical theory of mind, 26 
 Mediaeval science, 1 
 Medium, action of, 82 
 Melanesians, 57 
 Melanocomous, 51 
 Monkey-countenance, 56 
 Monkey-people, 18 
 Monogenists, 3, 80 
 Monotheism, 66 
 Moral sense, 23 
 Mosaic statement, 114, 141 
 
 Namaquas, 68 
 
 Natural selection, 119 
 
 Negroes, 5, 39, 44, 48, 52, 53, 54, 58, 
 
 59, 60, 63, 64, 86, 147 
 Neo-Platonists, the, 2 
 
 New Guinea, 40 
 Nicaragua, 106 
 Niger, 59 
 Nile, 68 
 Nile-boats, 39 
 Noah's curse, 50 
 Norrna verticalis, 136 
 Normans, 101, 13 
 Nubians, 39, 101, 147 
 
 Official science, 113 
 Orang-outang, 19, 20, 22, 24, 41 
 Orthodox ethnology, 5 
 Orthognathi, 45 
 OtheUo, 63 
 
 Palaeontology, 131 
 
 Pali, 145 
 
 Pandora, 133 
 
 Pathological varieties, 43, 58 
 
 Pelvis, form of, 46 
 
 Penis, 54 
 
 Peruvians, 55 
 
 Phidias, 5 
 
 Physiological varieties, 43 
 
 Polygenists, 3 
 
 Praxiteles, 5 
 
 Prepuce, 54 
 
 Prognathi, 45 
 
 Prometheus, 133 
 
 Protozoa, 111 
 
 Psychology, comparative, 24, 3(5 
 
 Races, 65 
 
 Reason and faith, 23 
 
 " Records of Creation," 37 
 
 Religious dogmas, 9, 65, 67, 85 
 
 Reproduction by eggs, 111 
 
 Reunion, Isle of, 88 
 
 Revealed religion, 2 
 
 relations with science, 4 
 
 Revolution, 122 
 Riff, 89 
 Rosin-makers of the Landes, 39 
 
 Scandinavian antiquities, 48 
 Scriptures, the Holy, 1 
 Selection, natural, 118 
 Self-consciousness, 28 
 Semitic race, 1, 53, 65, 75, 89, 143 
 Sidereal kingdom, 11 
 Sierra Leone, 41, 93 
 Silurians, 103 
 i Slaves, 84 
 Soudan, 45, 61 
 Soul in animals, 25 
 South Africa, 78 
 Spaniards, 47 
 Species, definition of, 108 
 Speech, 30 
 
INDEX OP SUBJECTS. 
 
 155 
 
 Sperma, 53 
 
 Spontaneous generation, 110, 123 
 
 Squatting attitude, 57 
 
 Stags, 85 
 
 Stirrup leather, 39 
 
 Struggle for existence, 102 
 
 Sumatran animal, 21 
 
 Sunburn, 91 
 
 Tartars, 47, 54 
 Thomas, St., 69 
 Toe, great, 39, 42 
 Truth, the reign of, 9, 23 
 Tuan, an orang-outang-, 20 
 Turk, 147 
 Type, 99 
 
 Valmiki, poem of, 40 
 
 Vanikoro, 49 
 
 Variability of species, 115 
 Vera Cruz, 61 
 Vertebrate kingdom, 125 
 Vital competition, 128 
 Voice in animals, 34 
 Vulcan, 133 
 
 Wild man of the woods, 14 
 Woolly hair, 51 
 
 Xanthus, 51 
 Yellow Fever, 94 
 
 Zamboes, 105 
 Zoology, 65, 85, 109 
 
156 
 
 INDEX OF AUTHORS. 
 
 About, 63 
 Agassiz, 113 
 Albin, 44 
 Albinus, 86 
 Apollonius, 35 
 Appleyard, 79 
 Aristotle, 2, 28, 37, 53 
 Arnold, 59, 94 
 
 Baeck, 44 
 
 Bancroft, 60 
 
 Barriere, 44 
 
 Bartlett, 59 
 
 Barton, 94 
 
 Bayle, 4, 28 
 
 Beavan, 59, 88 
 
 Berard, 20, 45, 46, 50 
 
 Bert, 11 
 
 Bertillon, 5, 68 
 
 Bertrand de Saint-Germain, 120 
 
 Biot, 6 
 
 BlainviUe, 37, 38, 41, 109, 135 
 
 Blair, 60, 93 
 
 Blake, Carter, 57, 65, 85, 110 
 
 Blumenbach, 3, 90, 98 
 
 Bonaparte, 38, 42 
 
 Bonpland, 6 
 
 Bonnet, 15, 37 
 
 Bonte, 84 
 
 Bory de Saint- Vincent, 17, 39, 50, 
 
 Bossuet, 12 
 
 Boudin, 58 
 
 Bourdet, 3, 88, 91, 07 
 
 Brayley, 7 
 
 Brecher, 70 
 
 Broca, 3, 35, 48, 110, 137 
 
 Brunet, 64 
 
 Bryant, 60 
 
 Brydone, 122 
 
 Biichner, 66 
 
 Buffon, 21, 28, 102, 111, 113 
 
 Bunsen, 11, 144 
 
 Burnouf, 30, 52 
 
 Busk, 137 
 
 Cabanis, 81, 106 
 CaldweU, 140 
 Cameron, 59 
 Camper, 46, 134, 136 
 Carus, 50, 63 
 Charles IV, 6 
 Charnock, 77 
 Chavee, 77, 142 
 Chevreul, 8, 23, 35 
 Chrysostom, Saint, 25 
 Cohen, 76 
 Collingwood, 66, 91 
 Cook, 56 
 Coombes, 77 
 Copernicus, 6 
 Coreard, 57 
 
 Courtet de 1'Isle, 14, 100 
 Crawfurd, 40, 52 
 Crocius, 26 
 CruU, 136 
 Cull, 104 
 
 Cuvier, Frederic, 25, 28, 38, 41, 42 
 Cuvier, G., 38, 41, 42, 82, 83, 100, 
 112 
 
 Daily, 88 
 
 Darwin, 110, 115, 118, 126 
 
 Davis, 92 
 
 Davy, 48 
 
 D'Eichthal, 54, 62 
 
 Descartes, 4, 12, 26 
 
 D'Escayrac de Lauture, 75, 144 
 
 De Maillet, 63 
 
 Desmoulins, 15 
 
 Dickinson, 94 
 
 Dickson, 94 
 
 Didot, 111 
 
 Doornick, 136 
 
 D'Orbigny, 74, 77 
 
 Durer, 48 
 
 Earl, 52 
 
 Edwards, 89, 99, 100, 140, 143 
 
 Ehrenberg, 19 
 
INDEX OP AUTHORS. 
 
 157 
 
 Epianus, 7 
 Epp, 59 
 
 Fauche, 40 
 Fee, 110 
 Fenner, 60 
 Ferguson, 94 
 Fleury, 5 
 
 Flourens, 20, 27, 28, 30, 37, 44, 98, 
 107, 115, 142, 145 
 
 Galen, 13 
 
 Galileo, 3, 6 
 
 Garnot, 16, 104 
 
 Genebrard, 71 
 
 Geoffroy St.-Hilare,Barthelemy, 71, 97 
 
 Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, Etienne,4, 17, 20, 
 
 27, 38, 39, 109, 114, 132, 146 
 Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, Isidore, 11, 12, 
 
 20, 34, 38, 39, 79, 81, 83, 84, 87, 95, 
 
 109, 110, 113 
 Gericault, 56 
 Geulinx, 27 
 Gibson, 34 
 Gliddon, 63 
 Gobineau, 3, 63, 105 
 Godron, 110 
 Grandsagne, 48 
 Grant, 20, 24 
 Gratiolet, 30 
 Gray, 66 
 Grimm, 30 
 Gros, 27 
 Guillain, 42 
 
 Hale, 16 
 
 Haller, 56 
 
 Hanneman, 50 
 
 Harris, 49 
 
 Hasskarl, 66 
 
 Herder, 30 
 
 Herrera, 60 
 
 Herschop, 149 
 
 Heymann, 59 
 
 Hippocrates, 81 
 
 Hirsch, 59, 60, 93 
 
 Holsteinius, 26 
 
 Huber, 33 
 
 Humboldt, 6, 19, 55, 57, 66, 77, 84, 144 
 
 Hunt, 63, 77 
 
 Hunter, 59, 90 
 
 Huxley, 39 
 
 Jackson, 60 
 Jacquinot, 53, 97 
 Jobin, 59 
 Josephus, 70 
 Joulin, 46 
 Jouvencel, 5 
 Julius Caesar, 103 
 
 Kaenipfer, 5, 6 
 
 Karr, 7 
 
 King, 6 
 
 Kirchoff, 11 
 
 Klemnius, 27 
 
 Kluegel, 44 
 
 Knox, 43, 54, 81, 100 
 
 Lallemand, 94 
 
 Lamarck, 112, 115 
 
 Lartet, 121 
 
 Latham, 66, 78, 101, 104, 142 
 
 Laugenhert, 27 
 
 Lawrence, 45, 48 
 
 Le Cat, 44, 56 
 
 Leibnitz, 15, 37, 120 
 
 Leighton, 68 
 
 Lepsius, 50 
 
 Lesseps, 68 
 
 Lesson and Garnot, 16, 20, 25 
 
 Linnaeus, 37, 41, 64, 102, 109 
 
 Livingstone, 68 
 
 Longfellow, 151 
 
 Maire, 26, 28 
 
 Malte-Brun, 59 
 
 Martius, 74 
 
 Maupertuis, 20, 29, 34 
 
 Maury, 22, 46, 49 
 
 McCabe, 59 
 
 Meckel, 44 
 
 Meigs, 137 
 
 Mercurius Trismegistus, 36 
 
 Michelet, 126, 141 
 
 Mitchell, 44, 86 
 
 Montagne, 13 
 
 Morel, 74, 79, 81, 90, 97, 100, 106 
 
 Morton, 76, 110, 134, 137, 138 
 
 Mulders, 136 
 
 Miiller, 77 
 
 Newton, 76 
 Niebuhr, 73, 89 
 Nott, 50, 60, 97, 110 
 
 Omalius D'Halloy, 143 
 
 O'Eourke, 17 
 
 Owen, 20, 36, 38, 42, 135 
 
 Palissy, 137 
 Pallas, 48, 54 
 Pardies, 32 . 
 Parker, 66 
 Pereira, 26 
 Perier, 87, 98, 104 
 Philips, 104 
 Piddington, 17, 18 
 Plato, 4, 22, 122 
 Plutarch, 111 
 Polybius, 81 
 
158 
 
 INDEX OP AUTHORS. 
 
 Porphyrius, 26 
 
 Pouchet, 50, 123 
 
 Prichard, 3, 51, 78, 100, 129, 134, 142 
 
 Proudhon, 5, 8, 24 
 
 Prout, 114 
 
 Pruner-Bey, 50, 51 
 
 Pucheran, 8 
 
 Pyrard, 41 
 
 Pythagoras, 26 
 
 Quatrefages, 1, 4, 11, 12, 13, 17, 20, 
 
 23, 27 
 
 Quekett, 137 
 Quoy and Gaimard, 17, 49 
 
 Rechtenbach, 25 
 
 Remusat, 65 
 
 Renan, 32, 64, 65, 76, 78, 143 
 
 Robertson, 35 
 
 Robin, 20, 56, 84 
 
 Romay, 94 
 
 Ross, 17, 18, 53, 54, 69, 75 
 
 Roulin, 34 
 
 Schlegel, 73 
 
 Schmidt, 66 
 
 Schnurrer, 58 
 
 Schomburgk, 94 
 
 Shoutten, 41 
 
 Serres, 6, 8, 54, 62 
 
 Servetus, 1 
 
 Smith, Hamilton, 4, 51, 53 
 
 Sommering, 44, 46, 56 
 
 Speke, 62 
 
 Squier, 105 
 
 Stahl; 27 
 
 Steinthal, 31, 32 
 
 Strabo, 103 
 Suniner, 37 
 Strope, 139 
 
 Tacitus, 103 
 Thomas, Saint, 69 
 Thomson, 59 
 Thurnam, 104 
 Tidyman, 59 
 Tiedemann, 43 
 Toussenel, 33 
 Townsend, 93 
 Trail, 19 
 Tschudi, 59, 105 
 
 Verneuil, 84 
 Vitruvius, 81 
 Vivien, 140, 144 
 Voltaire, 7 
 Vrolik, 46 
 
 Wagner, 44, 106 
 Waitz, 9 
 Warren, 97 
 Weber, 46 
 White, 46, 79, 88 
 Whitebourne, 69 
 Wied, 88 
 Wilkes, 17 
 Wilson, 48 
 Wise, 92 
 
 Yvan, 20, 87 
 
 Zimpel, 94 
 Zobrega, 69. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 122, line 11 from bottom, for " Atalantis" read "Atlantis. 
 
 135, bottom line, for " British Association for the Advancement of 
 Science, 1857," read " Journal of Linnean Society, 1857." 
 
 T. RICHARDS, 37, GREAT QUEEN STBBET. 
 
of 
 
 4, ST. MARTIN'S PLACE, TRAFALGAR SQUARE. 
 
 HIS SOCIETY is formed with the object of promoting 
 the study of Anthropology in a strictly scientific manner. 
 It proposes to study Man in all his leading aspects, 
 physical, mental, and historical ; to investigate the laws 
 of his origin and progress ; to ascertain his place in 
 nature and his relations to the inferior forms of life ; and 
 to attain these objects by patient investigation, careful induction, and 
 the encouragement of all researches tending to establish a de facto 
 science of man. No Society existing in this country has proposed to. 
 itself these aims, and the establishment of this Society, therefore, is an 
 effort to meet an obvious want of the times. 
 
 This it is proposed to do : 
 
 First. By holding Meetings for the reading of papers and the 
 discussion of various anthropological questions. 
 
 Second. By the publication of reports of papers and abstracts of 
 discussions in the form of a Quarterly Journal ; and also by the 
 publication of the principal memoirs read before the Society, in 
 the form of Transactions. 
 
 Third. By the appointment of Officers, or Local Secretaries, in dif- 
 ferent parts of the world, to collect systematic information. It will 
 be the object of the Society to indicate the class of facts required, 
 and thus tend to give a systematic development to Anthropology. 
 
 Fourth. By the establishment of a carefully collected and reliable 
 Museum, and a good reference Library. 
 
 Fifth. By the publication of a series of works on Anthropology which 
 will tend to promote the objects of the Society. These works will 
 generally be translations ; but original works will also be admis- 
 sible. 
 
 Translations of the following works are now ready. 
 
 Dr. THEODOR WAITZ. Introduction to Anthropology. First Part. Edited from 
 
 the German by J. Frederick Collingwood, Esq., F.E.S.L., F.G.S., Hon, Sec. 
 
 A.S.L., with corrections and additions by the Author. Price 16s. 
 BROCA, Dr. Paul. On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo. Edited 
 
 from the French by C. Carter Blake, Esq., F.G.S. Price 5s. 
 POUCHBT, Georges. On the Plurality of the Human Eace. Edited, from the 
 
 French (Second Edition), by H. J. C. Beavan, Esq., F.E.G.S., F^A.S.L. 
 
The following work is in the press and will be delivered to all 
 Fellows for the year 1864 : 
 
 CARL VOGT. Vorlesungen iiber des Menschen, seine Stellung in der Schopfung 
 und in der Geschichte der Erde. Edited by Dr. James Hunt, F.S.A., Pres. 
 A.S.L. 8vo, Giessen, 1863. 
 
 The Translation of the following works is contemplated : 
 
 BLUMENBACH, J. F. De Generis Humani varietate nativa liber. Edd. 1775, 
 
 1781, 1790. And other works. By T. Bendyshe, Esq., M.A., F.A.S.L. 
 GRATIOLET. Memoire sur les Plis Cerebraux de l'Honime et des Primates. 
 
 4to, Paris, 1855. Edited by Dr. Daniel H. Tuke. 
 A. DE QUATREFAGES. Unite de 1'Espece Humaine. Edited by G. F. Rolph, 
 
 Esq., F.A.S.L. 8vo. Paris, 1861. 
 The Anthropological Papers contained in the Comptes Rendus des Seances de 
 
 1'Academie des Sciences. Edited by George E. Roberts, Esq., F.G.S., F.A.S.L. 
 DR. THEODOR WAITZ, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Marburg. 
 
 Anthropologie der Naturvolker. 1861. Second part. Edited by J. Frederick 
 
 Collingwood, Esq., F.G.S., F.R.S.L., Hon. Sec. A.S.L. 
 
 GOSSE. Memoire sur les Deformations Artificielles du Crane. 8vo. Paris, 1855. 
 RETZIUS, PROFESSOR. The collected works of. 
 
 BORY DE ST. VINCENT. Essai zoologique sur le genre humain. 2 vols. Paris, 1827. 
 CRULL. Dissertatio anthropologico-medica de Cranio, ejusque ad faciem rationo 
 
 8vo. Groningen, 1810. 
 
 Sixth. By the appointment, from time to time, of various Committees 
 authorised to report to the Society on particular topics which may 
 be referred to them ; the results of such investigations being in 
 all cases communicated to the Society. 
 
 OFFICERS AND COUNCIL FOR 1864. 
 
 President. 
 
 James Hunt, Esq., Ph.D., F.S.A., F.R.S.L., Foreign Associate of the Anthropological 
 
 Society of Paris, etc. 
 
 Vice-Presidents. 
 
 Captain Richard F. Burton, H.M. Consul at Fernando Po, etc. 
 Sir Charles Nicholson, Bart., D.C.L., LL.D., F.G.S., etc. 
 The Duke of RoussiUon. 
 
 Honorary Secretaries. 
 
 J. Frederick Collingwood, Esq., F.R.S.L., F.G.S., Foreign Associate of the Anthro- 
 pological Society of Paris. 
 George E. Roberts, Esq., F.G.S. 
 
 Honorary Foreign Secretary. 
 Alfred Higgins, Esq., Foreign Associate of the Anthropological Society of Paris. 
 
 Treasurer. 
 
 Richaid Stephen Charnock, Esq. F.S.A., F.R.G.S., Foreign Associate of the 
 Anthropological Society of Paris. 
 
COUNCIL. 
 
 Hugh J. C. Beavan, Esq., F.E.G.S. 
 T. Bendyshe, Esq., M.A. 
 
 W. Bollaert, Esq., Corr. Mem. Univ. Chile, and Ethnological Socs. London & New York. 
 S. Edwin Collingwood, Esq., F.Z.S. 
 George D. Gibb, Esq., M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.G.S., &c. 
 Professor G. W. Leitner, Ph.D., M.A., F.E.A.S., &c. 
 J. Norman Lockyer, Esq., F.E.A.S. 
 S. E. Bouverie-Pusey, Esq., F.E.S. 
 
 W. Winwood Eeade, Esq., F.E.G.S., Corr. Mem. Geographical Society of Paris. 
 C. Eobert des Euffieres, Esq., F.G.S., F.E.S. 
 Dr. Berthold Seemann, F.L.S. 
 William Travers, Esq., F.E.C.S. 
 
 W. S. "W. Vaux, Esq. M.A., F.S.A., F. and Hon. Sec. E.S.L., President of the 
 Numismatic Society of London. 
 
 Curator, Librarian, and Assistant Secretary. 
 C. Carter Blake, Esq., F.G.S., Foreign Associate of the Anthropol. Society of Paris, etc. 
 
 The Terms of Membership for the first five hundred Fellows (who 
 will be called Foundation Fellows) are Two Guineas per annum, 
 which will entitle every Fellow to admission to the Meetings, one copy 
 of the Quarterly Journal, the Memoirs of the Society, and a Volume 
 (or Volumes) of the Translations printed by the Society. Life Mem- 
 bers, Twenty Guineas. 
 
 Further particulars will be forwarded on application to the Honorary 
 
 Secretaries. 
 
 The following papers, amongst others, will be laid before the Society 
 in the next Session. 
 
 DR. JAMES HUNT, F.S.A., F.E.S.L.,On the Principles of Anthropological Classification. 
 EDWARD LUND, Esq., F.E.C.S.E., and DR. F. EOYSTON FAIRBANK, F.A.S.L., On the 
 
 Discovery of Syphilis in a Monkey. 
 DR. JOHN SHORTT, On the Leaf-wearing Tribes of India. 
 T. W. PRITCHARD, Esq., F.G.S., F.A.S.L., On Viti and its Inhabitants. 
 W. BOLLAERT, Esq., On the Astronomy of the Eed Man of the New World. 
 A. HIGGINS, Esq., Hon. For. Sec. A.S.L., On the Orthographic Delineation of the Skull. 
 T. BENDYSHE, Esq., M.A., F.A.S.L., On Early Anthropology. 
 W. BOLLAERT, Esq., F.A.S.L., Introduction to the Anthropology of America. 
 E. BURNET TYLOR, Esq., F.E.G.S., F.A.S.L., On some British Kjokkenmoddings. 
 CAPTAIN BURTON, V.P.A.S.L., A Visit to Dahomey. 
 C. CARTER BLAKE, Esq., F.G.S., F.A.S.L., On the Cranioscopy of South American 
 
 Nations. 
 C. CARTER BLAKE, Esq., F.G.S., F.A.S.L., On the Form of the Lower Jaw in the Eaces 
 
 of Mankind. 
 
 DR. MURIE, On the Stature of Tribes inhabiting the Nile Valley. 
 E. S. CHARNOCK, Esq., F.S.A., F.A.S.L., On the People of Andorra. 
 J. F. COLLINGWOOD, Esq., F.E.S. L., On Eace- Antagonism. 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 Now Ready, in 1 vol., 8vo., pp. 400, price 16s., cloth, 
 
 Waltz's Introduction to Anthropology. 
 Edited, from the FIRST VOLUME of Anthropologie der Naturvolker, by 
 J. FREDERICK COLLINGWOOD,F.R.S.L., F.G.S., F.A.S.L., Foreign Associate 
 of the Anthropological Society of Paris, Honorary Secretary of the Anthro- 
 pological Society of London. 
 
 Extract of a Letter from the Author to the Editor. 
 
 " I have received your translation of the first volume of my 'Anthropologie der 
 Naturvolker,' and hasten to return you my heartfelt thanks for the great care and 
 assiduity which you have bestowed on the task. I am fully cognisant of the 
 great difficulties you have to contend with, especially as my style, as alluded to 
 in your preface, possesses many peculiarities, so that even German men of 
 science consider the reading of my books rather hard work. All these difficulties 
 you have surmounted with the greatest skill, so as to render my work, as it 
 appears to me, into very pleasing, readable English." 
 
 OPINIONS OF 
 
 "A more felicitous selection could not, 
 we conceive, by any possibility have been 
 made than the very one which has re- 
 sulted in the publication of the book 
 lying before us. For within the com- 
 pass of the first volume of Dr. Waitz's 
 Anthropologie der Naturvolker is com- 
 pacted together the most comprehen- 
 sive and exhaustive survey of the new 
 science yet contributed, we believe, in 
 any tongue to European literature. To 
 the English public genernlly, however, 
 it is a book almost unknown, saving and 
 excepting alone by reputation. Al- 
 though merely a translation from the 
 German, therefore, the work is virtually, 
 if not an original work, a perfectly new 
 work to the mass of readers in this 
 country. So far as this same rapidly 
 executed work of translation can be 
 compared and collated with the original, 
 it appears to be a version singularly 
 faithful and accurate. . . . The book, ns it 
 now appears, is a work of especial value, 
 and also one of very peculiar interest. 
 It thoroughly fulfils itn design of afford- 
 ing the reader of it, within a single 
 volume, the very best epitome any- 
 where to be found of what is the actual 
 'present state' of anthropological sci- 
 ence in Christendom. Dr. Waitz takes 
 a far wider range within his ken than 
 Piichard and Nott and Gliddon com- 
 bined." The Sun, Dec. 14, 18C3. 
 
 " The volume in every page exhibits 
 great research ; it abounds with inter- 
 esting speculation, all tending the right 
 way, and the information it presents is 
 happily conveyed in a popular manner." 
 Morning Advertiser, Nov. 10, 
 
 THE PRESS. 
 
 "So comprehensive is the view taken 
 by the author of all that pertains to 
 man,thatamereenumeration even of the 
 leading topics of the work is beyond 
 our space, and we must content our- 
 selves with recommending its perusal to 
 such of our readers as are interested in 
 the subject, with the assurance that it 
 will well repay the trouble." Weekly 
 Dispatch, Nov. 29, 1863. 
 
 " This handsomely printed volume 
 discusses at great length and with 
 much ability the question as to the races 
 of man. ... At the hands of Dr. Waiix it 
 has met with calm consideration, and in 
 its English dress will prove both inter 
 eating and instructive. It displays 
 great research, and contains a large ex- 
 tent of highly interesting matter." 
 Liverpool Albion, Nov. 9, 1863. 
 
 " From such a bill of fare, our readers 
 will be able to judge that the work is 
 one of value and interest. ... It is of 
 the nature of a review, arriving at a 
 comprehensive and proportional esti- 
 mate, rather than at minute accuracy 
 of detail, such as may be sought else- 
 where in each department." Medical 
 Times, Dec. 26, 1863. 
 
 " Crammed as full of hard facts as 
 wellnigh 400 pages of large 8vo. can 
 contain ; all these facts attested by foot- 
 note authorities marshalled knee-deep 
 at the bottom of every page; with a list 
 of contents so copious as to eclipse 
 everything of the kind in any recent 
 scientific volume, and yet followed by 
 an index more minute and ample ; this 
 work is a magazine of the infant science 
 of Man; a model of German industry, 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 erudition, and philosophical devotion ; 
 and a credit to the Society which has 
 sent forth, in a shape so serviceable, 
 what might otherwise have proved a 
 tantalising mass of learned collectanea. 
 . . . We have perused this translated 
 volume with alternate wonder and 
 amazement at its strange assemblage 
 of facts, its curious classifications, its 
 marvellous revelations of human pecu- 
 liarities ; and we do not hesitate to say 
 that more food for speculation, a more 
 cosmopolitan and comprehensive glance 
 over all the developments of savage and 
 civilised man has been collected here, 
 than could have been dreamed of by those 
 who may not have given it a perusal." 
 Dorset County Chronicle, Nov. 18, 1863. 
 
 " Dr. Waitz would appear to have 
 collected together all the authorities 
 and contradictory statements of former 
 writers. . . . The present work will be 
 hailed with pleasure by all who are in- 
 terested in the study of anthropology, 
 and will, it is hoped, induce a more 
 universal acquaintance with the sci- 
 ence." Observer, Nov. 8, 1863. 
 
 " The Anthropological Society of 
 London have done well in publishing 
 a translation of Dr. Waitz's Anthropo- 
 logic der Naturviilker, of which this 
 volume is the first instalment. Dr. 
 Waitz's work is by far the most com- 
 plete that exists on the subject of 
 which it treats. It is the fullest col- 
 lection of facts, interwoven with, and 
 made to bear upon, all the theories 
 (and their name is legion) which have 
 been advanced in explanation of the 
 endless diversities and resemblances 
 that exist among mankind. Dr. Waitz 
 himself is wedded to no particular 
 theory, and in this volume, at least, 
 advances none, but be points out with 
 great clearness the effects that may be 
 fairly attributed to the various in- 
 fluences, external and internal, physical 
 and psychical, which affect the human 
 form and national character." The 
 Press, Dec. 5, 1863. 
 
 " This volume will help to put the 
 science of anthropology in a proper 
 light before the scientific men of this 
 country. Whatever faults we may have 
 to find with this work, we feel sure that 
 its publication marks an epoch in the 
 study of anthropology in this country. 
 The anthropologist can now say to the 
 inquirer, Read and study Waitz, and 
 London : LONGMAN, GREEN, 
 
 you will learn all that science has yet to 
 reveal." AnthropologicalReview, No. 3. 
 
 " The Anthropological Society de- 
 serve great praise for the energy and 
 activity they display in prosecuting 
 their object. . . . We find in this volume 
 a fair statement and discussion of the 
 questions bearing on the unity of man 
 as a species, and his natural condition 
 He gives a very clear account of the 
 different views held on these questions, 
 and a full collection of the facts, or 
 supposed facts, by which they are sup- 
 ported. The chief fault of the book is, 
 indeed, this very fulness and fairness in 
 collecting all that can be said on both 
 sides of a question. . . . We must regard 
 the work as a valuable addition to the 
 books on this subject already in our 
 language, and as likely, by the thought 
 and inquiry it must suggest, to promote 
 the great end of the Society a truer and 
 higher knowledge of man, his origin, 
 nature, and destiny." The Scotsman, 
 Dec. 7, 1863. 
 
 " We need hardly say, that it is quite 
 out of our power to give any detailed 
 account of this volume. It is itself a 
 volume of details. Its nature, charac- 
 ter, and value, may be gleaned from 
 the criticism bestowed upon it by the 
 Anthropological Society, and by the 
 fact of its being their first offering to 
 their members. There can be no doubt 
 that it is the best epitome of matters 
 anthropological now contained in our 
 language ; and will be of great service 
 to the student as a book of reference." 
 British Medical Journal, December 
 26,1863. 
 
 " The difficulties which a reader 
 experiences who studies Waitz's original 
 German version difficulties attendant 
 on the involution of his style, and the 
 frequent mistiness of his forms of 
 expression vanish in the English 
 edition, which also differs from its 
 German prototype, inasmuch as the 
 embarrassing references which Waitz 
 intercalated in his text are prudently 
 cast down by Mr. Collingwood to the 
 foot of the page. . . . The student will 
 but have to read it through, in order to 
 feel himself endowed with an enormous 
 power of acquired facts, which, if he 
 duly assimilates, will enable him to 
 wield a tremendous weapon in contro- 
 versy against the unskilled anthropo- 
 logist." Reader, November 7, 1863. 
 and Co., Paternoster Row. 
 
6 
 
 PUBLICATIONS OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
 Now ready, in 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 134, price 5s., cloth. 
 
 On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus 
 HOMO. By Dr. PAUL BROCA, Secretaire General a la Societe 
 d'Anthropologie de Paris. Edited, with the permission of the Author, by 
 C. CARTER BLAKE, F.G.S. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PKESS. 
 
 " Although the author of the essay 
 can scarcely be supposed to have satis- 
 fied himself much less to have satis- 
 fied his scientific readers that he has 
 arrived at any certain and well-ground- 
 ed conclusion, he deserves the credit of 
 having written with some research and 
 acumen. It is evident that the writer 
 of the book has a strong bias to the 
 polygenist theory of the origin of man- 
 kind, but although we do not agree with 
 him in his principal deductions and 
 statements, we willingly allow his work 
 to be an able monograph on a highly- 
 interesting and curious subject, and one 
 that will well repay perusal." Medical 
 Times, March 1864. 
 
 " While we find fault with the con- 
 clusions at which M. Broca arrives, we 
 cannot deny that he has given to the 
 student of Anthropology a very valuable 
 collection of information on an almost 
 unexplored subject. We have only to 
 guard ourselves from being led away by 
 the specious fallacies of his reasoning, 
 and we shall find before us a wide field 
 of thought and a subject of enquiry al- 
 most inexhaustible. We need only add 
 that the English edition has been pre- 
 pared with great care, and reflects ex- 
 treme credit upon its indefatigable 
 editor." Tablet, June 4, 18G4. 
 
 " This is a work on a very abstruse 
 and much-debated question, and the 
 author has brought to bear upon its 
 elucidation a vast amount of scientific 
 research, being the results of observa- 
 tions in almost every part of the world." 
 Observer, April 10, 1804. 
 
 '* It is wonderful what solid and valu- 
 able information has been here com- 
 pacted together within less than one 
 
 hundred pages octavo. Another work 
 of very considerable value has thus 
 been added to the list of publications 
 now commenced, with a prospect, let us 
 hope, of fast multiplying into a sub- 
 stantial library, under the auspices and, 
 more than that, under the careful su- 
 pervision and at the direct instance of 
 the Society of our London Anthropolo- 
 gists." Sun, April 7th, 1864. 
 
 " As a statement of the argument on 
 both sides of a subject very difficult of 
 investigation, Dr. Broca's treatise is 
 most acceptable, although we are by no 
 means satisfied that he has entertained 
 all the causes which may be concerned 
 in influencing the fertility of races, inter 
 se, in his estimate." London Review, 
 June 4, 1864. 
 
 " The whole subject is too obscure to 
 warrant us in advocating either the one 
 view or the other ; but we can recom- 
 mend those who wish to make them- 
 selves acquainted with the present state 
 of our information on the question to 
 study the able treatise before us." 
 Scotsman, June 25, 1864. 
 
 "It may be stated that the present 
 volume is the only one which completely 
 investigates the subject of human hy- 
 
 bridity The volume is an addition 
 
 to scientific lore ; we have no doubt that 
 the members of our various learned 
 societies will appreciate its worth, and 
 experience the same pleasure in reading 
 the translation which Mr. Blake states 
 he received when he first perused the 
 original. It is dedicated as a testimony 
 of respect and friendship to Richard 
 Owen, F.R.S." Morning Advertiser, 
 May 2, 1864. 
 
 London : LONGMAN, GREEN, and Co., Paternoster Row. 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW, 
 
 ANl) 
 
 Journal of the Anthropological Society of London. 
 
 VOL. I NOW READY, PRICE IBs. 
 
 (A few copies only remaining.) 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 On the Study of Anthropology. By Dr. James 
 
 Hunt, F.S.A., President A.S.L. 
 Wild Men and Beast Children. By E. Burnet 
 
 Tylor, F.A.S.L. 
 On the Tribes of Loreto in Northern Peru. 
 
 By Professor Raimondi. Translated from 
 
 the Spanish by William BoUaert, F. A.S.L. 
 A Day with the Fans. By Captain E. F. 
 
 Burton, H.M. Consul at Fernando Po, 
 
 and V. P. A.S.L. 
 On the Difference between Man and the Lower 
 
 Animals. ByTheodorBischoff. Translated 
 
 from the German. 
 Summary of the Evidence of the Antiquity 
 
 of Man. By Dr. James Hunt. 
 Huxley on Man's Place in Nature. 
 Jackson on Ethnology and Phrenology. 
 Lyell on the Geological Evidence of the An- 
 tiquity of Man. 
 Wilson's Pre-historic Man. 
 Pauly's Ethnographical Account of the Peoples 
 
 of Russia. 
 Commixture of the Races of Man. By John 
 
 Crawford, Esq., F.R.S. 
 Burton's Prairie Traveller. 
 Owen on the Limbs of the Gorilla. 
 Man and Beast. By Anthropos (C. Carter 
 
 Blake). 
 
 Dunn's Medical Psychology. 
 Human Remains from MouHn-Quignon. By A. 
 
 Tylor,Esq., F.G.S.f Withan Illustration.) 
 Notes of a Case of Microcephaly. By R. T. 
 
 Gore, Esq., F.A.S.L. 
 Notes on Sir C. Lyell' s Antiquity of Man. 
 
 By John Crawfurd, Esq., F.R.S. 
 Falconer on the reputed Fossil Man of Abbeville 
 Miscellanea Anthropologica. 
 Journal of the Anthropological Society of 
 
 London. 
 On the Science of Language. By R. S. 
 
 Charnock, Esq., F.S.A., F.A.S.L. 
 Fergusson on the Influence of Race on Art. 
 On the Creation of Man and Substance of the 
 
 Mind. By Prof. Rudolph Wagner. 
 Pictet on the Aryan Race. 
 Ethnological Inquiries and Observations. By 
 
 the late Robert Knox, M.D. 
 On the Application of the Anatomical Method 
 
 to the Discrimination of Species. By 
 
 the same. 
 On the Deformations of the Human Cranium, 
 
 supposed to be produced by Mechanical 
 
 Means. By the same. 
 
 History of the Proceedings of the Anthropo- 
 logical Society of Paris. By M. Paul 
 
 Broca, Secretary- General. 
 On the supposed increasing Prevalence of Dark 
 
 Hair in England. By John Beddoe, M.D., 
 
 F.A.S.L. 
 The Abbeville Fossil Jaw. By M. A. de 
 
 Quatrefages. Translated by G. F. Rolph, 
 
 Esq. 
 Miscellanea Anthropologica. 
 
 On Cerebral Physiology. 
 
 Seemann on the Inhabitants of the Fiji Islands. 
 By A. A. Eraser, Esq., F.A.S.L. 
 
 The relation of Man to the Inferior Forms of 
 Animal Life. By Charles S. Wake, 
 Esq., F.A.S.L. 
 
 Proceedings of Anthropological Society of Paris 
 
 Anthropology at the British Association: 
 Dr. Hunt on Anthropological Classifica- 
 tion ; Mr. Carter Blake on South Ameri- 
 can Cranioscopy ; Dr. Hunt on the Negro ; 
 Mr. W. Turner on Cranial Deformities: 
 Mr. Duckworth on the Human Cranium 
 from Amiens ; Professor King on the 
 Neanderthal Skull ; Dr. Embleton on the 
 Anatomy of a Young Chimpanzee; Mr. 
 Carter Blake on Syndactyly ; Mr. Roberta 
 and Professor Busk on a Cist; Mr. 
 Crawfurd on the Commixture of Man; 
 Dr. Camps on Troops in India; Dr. 
 Murray on Instinctive Actions; Mr. 
 Samuelson on Life in the Atmosphere ; 
 Mr. Glaisher on the Influence of High 
 Altitudes on Man ; Mr. Hall on the Social 
 Life of the Celts; Mr. Petrie on the 
 Antiquities of the Orkneys ; Lord Lovaine 
 on Lacustrian Human Habitations ; Pro- 
 fessor Beete Jukes on certain Markings 
 on the Horns of Megaceros Hibernicus ; 
 Mr. Crawfurd on Sir C. Lyell's Antiquity 
 of Man; Professor Phillips on the An- 
 tiquity of Man; Mr. Godwin- Austen on 
 the Alluvial Accumulation in the Valleys 
 of the Somme and Ouse; Mr. Wallace 
 on Man in the Malay Archipelago ; Mutu 
 Coomara Swamy on the Ethnology of 
 Ceylon; Mr. Crawfurd on the Origin! of 
 the Gypsies ; Mr. Crawfurd on the Celtic 
 Languages ; Mr. Charnock on Celtic Lan- 
 guages ; Personal Recriminations in Sec- 
 tion D ; Concluding Remarks. 
 
 Waitz's Introduction to Anthropology. 
 
 Kingsley's Water Babies. 
 
 Lunacy and Phrenology, by C. Carter Blake, 
 Esq., E.G. S., F.A.S.L. 
 
 The Rival Races ; or, the Sons of Joel. 
 
 Ramsay on Geology and Anthropology. 
 
 Baruch Spinoza. 
 
 Anthropology in the Nursery. 
 
 Miscellanea Anthropologica. 
 
 JOURNAL OP THE ANTHEOPOLOGICAL SOCIETY : 
 Tylor on Human Remains from Moulin - 
 Quignon ; Schvarcz on Permanence of 
 Type; Wake on Man and the Lower 
 Animals ; Bollaert on Populations of the 
 New World ; Marshall on Microcephaly; 
 Busk on Human Remains from Chatham ; 
 Bendyshe on Anglo-Saxon Remains from 
 Barrington ; Charnock on Science of Lan- 
 guage ; W. Reade on Bush Tribes of 
 Equatorial Africa; General Meeting of 
 the Society; Carter Blake on Antiquity 
 of the Human Race. 
 
 LONDON: TRUBNER & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW. 
 
 CONTENTS OF No. IV.-PEBEUART 1864. 
 
 1. On the Human Hair as a Race Character. 
 By Dr. Pruner-Bey. 
 
 2. Pott on the Myths of the Origin of Man 
 
 and Language. 
 
 3. Italian Anthropology. 
 
 4. On the Scytho-Cimmerian Languages. 
 
 5. Notes on Scalping. By Rd. F. Burton. 
 
 6. Renan on the Sheraitic Nations. 
 
 7. Abnormal Distortion of the Wrist. By 
 Charles H. Chambers. 
 
 8. Human Remains from Lough Gur, County 
 Limerick. 
 
 9. Danish Kitchen-middens. By Charles H. 
 Chambers. 
 
 10. Miscellanea Anthropologica. 
 JOURNAL OP THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
 OF LONDON : Carter Blake on the An- 
 
 thropological Papers read at Newcastle; 
 G. E. 'Roberts and Professor Busk on the 
 Opening of a Cist of the Stone Age ; 
 Captain Eustace W. Jacob on Indian 
 Tribes of Vancouver's Island ; Dr. James 
 Hunt on the Negro's Place in Nature ; 
 C. R. Markham on Quartz Cutting Instru- 
 ments from Chanduy, near Guaj'aquil; G. 
 E. Roberts on Mammalian Bones from 
 Audley End ; A. Bryson on Arrow Heads 
 from the Bin of Cullen ; Dr. F. R. Fairbank 
 on Flint Arrow Heads from Canada ; Count 
 Oscar Reichenbach on the Vitality of the 
 Negro Race; General Meeting of the 
 Society; President's Annual Address; 
 R. Lee on the Extinction of Races. 
 
 CONTENTS OF No. V.-MAY 1864. 
 
 An Inquiry into Consanguineous Marriages 
 
 and Pure Races. By Dr. E. Dally. 
 Peyrerius, and Theological Criticism. By 
 
 Philalethes. 
 Miscegenation. 
 
 Anthropology in its Connection with Chemistry. 
 Savage Africa. 
 Ethnology and Phrenology as an Aid to the 
 
 Biographer. By J. W. Jackson, Esq., 
 
 F.A.S.L. 
 Proceedings of the Anthropological Society 
 
 of Paris. 
 Correspondence. 
 Miscellanea Anthropologica. 
 JOURNAL OP THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
 
 OF LONDON : Lee on the Extinction of 
 Races (continued) ; T. Bendyshe on the 
 Extinction of Races; Dr. C. G. Carus on 
 the Construction of the Upper jaw of the 
 SkullofaGreenlander; C. Carter Blake's 
 Report on same subject ; Jas. Reddie on 
 Anthropological Desiderata; Rev. J. M. 
 Joass on some Pre-historic Dwellings in 
 Ross-shire; with an Introduction by 
 George E. Roberts ; C. Carter Blake on 
 the Alleged Peculiar Characters, and 
 assumed Antiquitv of the Human Cranium 
 from the Neanderthal; Alfred R. Wallace 
 on the Origin of Human Races, etc. 
 
 CONTENTS OF NO. VI.-AUGUST 1864. 
 
 On the Distinction between Man and Animals. 
 
 By Philalethes. 
 
 On the Phenomena of Hybridity. 
 Thoughts and Facts contributing to the 
 
 History of Man. 
 On the Importance of Methodical Classification 
 
 in American Researches. By A. De 
 
 Bellecombe. Translated by W. H. 
 
 Garrett, Esq., F.A.S.L. 
 Anthropotomy. 
 Doyle's Chronicle of England. 
 Anthropological Documents of the State of 
 
 New York. By Geo. E. Roberts, Esq., 
 
 F.G.S., Hon. Sec. A.S.L. 
 Doherty's Organic Philosophy. 
 Proceedings of the Anthropological Society of 
 
 Paris. 
 
 The Fossil Man of Abbeville again. 
 Miscellanea Anthropologica. 
 JOURNAL OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
 
 OF LONDON : Wallace on the Origin of 
 
 Human Races (continued discussion) ; 
 
 Schlagintweit on some Ethnographical 
 Casts, etc. ; Dr. Shortt on the Domber ; 
 Pike on the Place of the Science of Mind 
 and Language in the Science of Man; 
 Guppy on the Capabilities of the Negro 
 for Civilisation ; Farrar on the Universal- 
 ity of Belief in God, and in a Future 
 State ; Farrar on Hybridity ; Burton and 
 Carter Blake on Skulls from Annabom in 
 the West African Seas; Thurnam on 
 the Two Principal forms of Crania in the 
 Early Britons ; Bollaert on the Palaeogra- 
 phy of the New World ; Bendyshe on the 
 Precautions which ought to have been 
 taken to ensure the health of British 
 Troops had any been sent to Copenhagen ; 
 Roberts and Bolton on the Kirkhead Cave, 
 near Ulverstone; Blake and Roberts on 
 Human Remains from Peterborough ; 
 Bollaert on the Alleged Introduction of 
 Syphilis from the New World, etc. 
 
 LONDON: TRUBNER & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
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 If' 
 
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