Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

LECTURE III.

ON THE VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.

THUS far we have confined ourselves to the different classes of animals below the rank of man. The sketch has been rapid and unfinished, but I hope not altogether unfaithful, or without its use. Let us now proceed to a general survey of the human species; the generic character by which man is distinguished from other animals, and the family character by which one nation is distinguished from another nation.

If we throw an excursive glance over the globe, and contemplate the different appearances of mankind, in different parts of it, and especially if we contrast these appearances where they are most unlike, we cannot but be struck with astonishment, and feel anxious for information concerning the means by which so extraordinary an effect has been produced. The height of the Patagonian and the Caffre is seldom less than six feet, and it is no uncommon thing to meet with individuals among them that measure from six feet seven to six feet ten: compared with these, the Laplanders and Eskimaux are real dwarfs; their stature seldom reaching five feet, and being more commonly only four. Observe the delicate cuticle, and the exquisite rose and lily, that beautify the face of the Georgian or Circassian: contrast them with the coarse skin and greasy blackness of the African negro, and imagination is lost in the discrepancy. Take the nicely-turned and globular form of the Georgian head, or the elegant and unangular oval of the Georgian face compare the former with the flat skull of the Carib; and the latter with the flat visage of the Mogul Tartar, and it must, at first sight, be difficult to conceive that each of these could have proceeded from one common source. Yet the diversities of the intellectual powers are, perhaps, as great as those of the corporeal: though I am ready to admit, that for certain interested purposes of the worst and wickedest description, these diversities, for the last half century, have, even in our own country, been magnified vastly beyond their fair average, though the calumny has of late begun to lose its power.

The external characters thus glanced at form a few of the extreme boundaries but all of them run into each other by such nice and imperceptible gradations in contiguous countries, and sometimes even among the same people, as to constitute innumerable shades of varieties, and to render it difficult, if not impossible, to determine occasionally to what region an individual may belong when at a distance from his own home.

It has hence been necessary to classify the human form: and the five grand sections, for we can no longer call them quarters, into which the globe is divided by the geographers of our own day, present us with a system of classification equally natural and easy for in each of these sections we meet with a marked distinction, a characteristic outline that can never be mistaken, except in the few anomalies already adverted to, and which belong to almost every general rule; or in instances in which we can obviously trace an intermixture of aboriginal families.

Before we attempt, then, to account for these distinctions, let us endeavour, as briefly as possible, to point them out; and consider them under the five heads of the

[blocks in formation]

or, as they are denominated by M. Blumenbach, in his excellent work upon this subject, the Caucasian, Mongolian, American, Ethiopian, and Malay varieties.

* De Generi Humani Varietate Nativa

Gmelin has pursued the same general divisions, but has merely distin guished the respective races; and accordingly his five definitions are the white, brown, copper-coloured or red, black, and tawny man.

I. The most symmetrical, and therefore the most elegant variety of the human form, is that which I have called EUROPEAN, in consequence of its being traced in the European division of the globe more largely than in any other; and the most perfect lineaments of this variety are those of the region of Asia Minor, on the borders of Europe, the parent spot from which it has been imported-lineaments which we find distributed among the Georgians, Circassians, Mingrelians, Armenians, Persians, and other nations that skirt the southern foot of the vast chain of the Caucasus. And it is on this account that M. Blumenbach has given the name of the CAUCASIAN variety to the European form in general. It is remarkable that in this spot of the globe man was first created: here he first received the breath of life, and arose in the image of his Maker. The die has not yet lost its divine impress: for here we still meet, and in all ages have met (so far as relates to the exterior graces), with the most exquisite models of symmetry and beauty.

The general colour of the EUROPEAN OF GEORGIAN variety, the WHITE division of Gmelin, is fair; that of the cheeks more or less red; the head globular; the face straight and oval, with the features moderately distinct; the forehead slightly flattened; the nose narrow, and slightly aquiline; the cheek-bones unprominent; the mouth small; the lips a little turned out, especially the under one; the chin full and rounded; the eyes and hair variable, but the former, for the most part, blue, and the latter yellow, or brown and flowing.

II. The colour of the ASIATIC, or MONGOLIAN, the BROWN-MAN of Gmelin, is yellowish brown or olive, with scarcely ever an appearance of red in the cheeks, which seems to be confined to the European variety; the head, instead of being globular, is nearly square; the cheek-bones wide; and the general face flat; the eyes are black and small; the chin rather prominent; and the hair blackish and scanty.

III. The AMERICAN, or RED-MAN of Gmelin, is of an obscure orange, rusty-iron, or copper colour; the head is less square, the cheek-bones less expanded, and the face less flattened than in the Asiatic; the eyes are deeply seated; and the hair is black, straight, and thick. This variety seems to form a middle point between the European and the Asiatic.

IV. The colour of the AFRICAN, the ETHIOPIAN of Blumenbach, and BLACKMAN of Gmelin, varies from a deep tawny to a pitch or perfect jet. The head is narrow; the face narrow, projecting towards the lower part: the forehead arched; the eyes projecting; the nose thick, almost intermixed with the cheeks; the lips, particularly the upper one, very thick; the jaws prominent; the chin retracted; the hair black, frizzled, and woolly. The countenance in this variety recedes farther than in any other from the European, and approaches much nearer than in any other that of the monkey.

V. The AUSTRALIAN, or inhabitant of New South Wales, and the numerous clusters of islands that begirt that prodigious range of unexplored country, together with the South Sea islands in general, constituting the MALAY of Blumenbach, and the TAWNY-MAN of Gmelin, is of blackish-brown or mahogany colour: the head is somewhat narrowed at its upper part; the forehead somewhat expanded; the upper jaw slightly prominent; and the nose broad, but distinct; the hair harsh, coarse, long, and curly. This variety seems to form a middle point between the European and the African; as the American does between the European and the Asiatic. So that, in a more compendious view of the human race, we might contract the five varieties into three :-the European, Asiatic, and African; and regard the other two as mere intervening shades of variety.

In this general classification of mankind, however, there are two observations that are peculiarly worthy of attention. The first is, that although these distinctive characters will hold in the main, it is not to be expected that they will apply to every individual of the particular division to which they

or rather of ages, acquiring a visible or oyster-like form, with little gills, instead of lungs, and, like the oyster, produced spontaneously, without distinction into sexes; that, as reproduction is always favourable to improvement, the aquatic or oyster mannikin, by being progressively accustomed to seek its food on the nascent shores or edges of the primæval ocean, must have grown, after a revolution of countless generations, first into an amphibious, and then into a terrestrial animal; and, in like manner, from being without sex, first also into an androgynous form, and thence into distinct male and female.*

It is not necessary to notice this dream of a poetizing philosopher, which had also been dreamed of long before his own day, any farther than to remark that it is in every respect inferior to the opinion of two of the most celebrated schools of ancient Greece, the Epicurean and the Stoic; who, though they disagreed on almost every other point, concurred in their dogma concerning the origin of man; and believed him to have sprung, equally with plants and animals of every kind, from the tender soil of the new-formed earth, at that time infinitely more powerful and prolific; produced in myriads of little wombs that rose, like mole-hills, over the surface of the ground, and were afterward transformed, for his nourishment, into myriads of glandular and milky bulbs, so as to form a marvellous substitute for the human breast. In the correct and elegant description of Lucretius,—

Terra cibum pueris, vestem vapor, herba cubile
Præbebat, multa et molli lanugine abundans.†

Earth fed the nursling, the warm ether clothed,
And the soft downy grass his couch composed.

And frivolous as such a theory may appear in the present day, it was the only one which was current among the Grecian or Roman philosophers, except that which supposed mankind to have been propagated by eternal generation, and of course the universe, like himself, to be eternal and self-existent: compared with which, an origin from the dust of the earth, even after the manner of vegetables, is incomparably less monstrous and absurd.

Let us now pass on to the hypothesis of those modern philosophers who would associate the tribes of man with the tribes of the monkey, and originate both from one common stock, in the same manner as the ox and buffalo are said to be derived from the bison, and the different varieties of sheep from the argali.

There are a few wonderful histories afloat of wild men and wild women found in the woods of Germany and France; some of which are said to have been dumb, others to have had the voice of sheep or of oxen, and others again to have walked on all-fours. And from these few floating tales, not amounting, in modern times, to more than nine or ten, Linnæus thought proper to introduce the orang-otang into the human family, and to regard such instances of wild men as the connecting species between this animal and mankind in a state of civilized society. Whence Lord Monboddo has amused us with legends of men found in every variation of barbarism; in some instances even ungregarious or solitary; in others, uniting, indeed, into small hordes, but so scanty even in natural or inarticulate language, as to be obliged to assist their own meaning by signs and gestures; and, consequently, to be incapable of conversing in the dark; of a third sort who have in some degree improved upon their natural language, but have still so much of the savage beast belonging to them, as to employ their teeth and nails, which last are not less than an inch long, as weapons of defence; and of a fourth sort, found in an island of the Indian seas, with the full possession of speech, but with tails like those of cats or monkeys; a set of dreadful cannibals, which at one time killed and devoured every Dutchman they could lay their hands upon.

It is truly wonderful that a scholar of Lord Monboddo's accomplishments *See Temple of Nature, Cant. i. p. 26. 29, ii. p. 54, iv. 158, and the additional notes on Spontaneous Vital ity and Reproduction. † De Rer. Nat. v. 803.

could have allowed himself to be for one moment imposed upon by a mass of trash so absurd and extravagant as not to be worth the trouble of confuting. Such romances are certainly in existence; but they are nothing more than the fabled news of a few low and illiterate mariners, whose names were never sufficient to give them the slightest degree of authority, even when they were first uttered; and which, for the most part, dropped successively into an obscure and ignominous grave on the moment of their birth, and would have silently mouldered away into their elemental nothingness, had not this very singular writer chosen to rake up their decomposing atoms, in order to support an hypothesis which sufficiently proves its own weakness by the scouted and extravagant evidence to which it is compelled to appeal.

Of the wild men and wild women of Linnæus, some appear to have been ideots, escaped from their keepers; a few exaggerated accounts of stray children from some wretched hovel of Lithuanian peasants; and one of them, a young negress, who, during a shipwreck on the French coast, had swam on shore, and at once saved herself from death, and, what is worse than death, from slavery. She is said to have been found in the woods of Champagne, about the middle of the last century, and was at first exhibited under the name of la fille sauvage and la belle sauvage; and had the honour, soon afterward, of being painted as a sign-post to one of our most celebrated inns in this metropolis, which is still known by the name of the Bell Savage. This young negress was instructed in the French language by the family into whose hospitable hands she fell, and was afterward, from some unaccountable whim, denominated Mademoiselle LE BLANC.*

In order, however, to settle this question completely, let me mention a few of the anatomical points in which the orang-otang differs from the human form, and which cannot possibly be the effect of a mere variety, but must necessarily flow from an original and inherent distinction. More might be added, but what I shall offer will be sufficient; and if I do not touch upon a comparison of the interior faculties, it is merely because I will neither insult your understandings nor degrade my own, by bringing them into any kind of

contact.

Both the orang and pongo, which of all the monkey tribes make the nearest approach to the structure of the human skeleton, have three vertebræ fewer than man. They have a peculiar membranous pouch connected with the larynx or organ of the voice, which belongs to no division of man whatever, white or black. The larynx itself is, in consequence of this, so peculiarly constructed as to render it less capable even of inarticulate sounds than that of almost every other kind of quadruped: and, lastly, they have no proper feet; for what are so called are, in reality, as directly hands as the terminal organs of the arms: the great toe in man, and that which chiefly enables him to walk in an erect position, being a perfect thumb in the orang-otang. Whence this animal is naturally formed for climbing: and its natural position in walking, and the position which it always assumes excepting when under discipline, is that of all-fours; the body being supported on four hands, instead of on four feet as in quadrupeds. And it is owing to this wide and essential difference, as, indeed, we had occasion to observe in our last study, that M. Cuvier, and other zoologists of the present day, have thought it expedient to invent a new name by which the monkey and maucauco tribes may be distinguished from all the rest; and, instead of QUADRUPEDS, have called them QUADRUMANA, or QUADRUMANUALS; by which they are at the same time equally distinguished from every tribe of the human race, which are uniformly, and alone, BIMANUAL.

But throwing the monkey kind out of the question, as in no respect related to the race of man, it must at least be admitted, contend the second class of philosophers before us, that the wide differences in form, and colour, and degree of intellect, which the several divisions of mankind exhibit, as you

* See Monboddo on the Origin of Language, &c. vol. i. p. 193, 480.

have now arranged them, must necessarily have originated from different sources; and that even the Mosaic account itself will afford countenance to such an hypothesis.

This opinion was first stated, in modern times, by the celebrated Isaac Peyrere librarian to the Prince of Condé; who, about the middle of last century, contended, in a book which was not long afterward condemned to the flames, though for other errors in conjunction with the present, that the narration of Moses speaks expressly of the creation of two distinct species of man;-an elder species which occupied a part of the sixth day's creation, and is related in the first chapter of Genesis; and a junior, confined to Adam and Eve, the immediate progenitors of the Hebrews to whom this account was addressed; and which is not referred to till the seventh verse of the second chapter, and even then without any notice of the exact period in which they were formed. After which transaction, observes this writer and those who think with him, the historian confines himself entirely to the annals of his own nation, or of those which were occasionally connected with it. Neither is it easy, they adjoin, to conceive upon any other explanation, how Cain in so early a period of the world as is usually laid down, could have been possessed of the implements of husbandry which belonged to him; or what is meant by the fear he expressed, upon leaving his father's family, after the murder of Abel, that every one who found him would slay him; or, again, his going forth into another country, marrying a wife there, and building a city soon after the birth of his eldest son.

Now, a cautious perusal of the Mosaic narrative will, I think, incontestably prove that the two accounts of the creation of man refer to one and the same fact, to which the historian merely returns, in the seventh verse of the second chapter, for the purpose of giving it a more detailed consideration; for it is expressly asserted in the fifth, or preceding verse but one, as the immediate reason for the creation of Adam and Eve, that at that "time there was not a man to till the ground;" while, as to the existence of artificers competent to the formation of the first rude instruments employed in husbandry, and a few patches of mankind scattered over the regions adjoining that in which Cain resided, at the period of his fratricide, it should be recollected that this first fall of man by the hand of man, did not take place till a hundred and twenty-nine years after the creation of Adam: for it was in his one hundred and thirtieth year that Seth was given to him in the place of Abel: an interval of time amply sufficient, especially if we take into consideration the peculiar fecundity of both animals and vegetables in their pri meval state, for a multiplication of the race of man, to an extent of many thousand souls.

On such a view of the subject, therefore, it should seem that the only fair and explicit interpretation that can be given to the Mosaic history is, that the whole human race has proceeded from one single pair, or in the words of another part of the Sacred Writings, that God "hath made of ONE BLOOD all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth."* The book of nature is in this as in every other respect in union with that of Revelation: it tells us that one single pair must have been adequate to all the purposes on which this class of philosophers have grounded their objections: and it should be farther observed to them, that thus to multiply causes without necessity is not more inconsistent with the operations of nature than with the principles of genuine philosophy.

But the question still returns: whence, then, proceed those astonishing diversities among the different nations of mankind, upon which the arrangement now offered is founded?

The answer is, that they are the effect of a combination of causes; some of which are obvious, others of which must be conjectured, and a few of which are beyond the reach of human comprehension:-but all of which are common to other animals, as well as to man; for extraordinary as these

*Acts, xvii. 26.

« EdellinenJatka »