SOME ANTHROPOLOGISTS REGARD MAN AS HAVING A MULTIPLE ORIGIN[47]
We must first discuss the word _race_ in its physiological sense.
A good many observers, who judge by first impressions and so take
extreme views, assert that there are such radical and essential
differences between human families that one must refuse them any
identity of origin.[48] The writers who adhere to such a notion assume
many other genealogies by the side of that from Adam. To them there is
no original unity in the species, or rather there is no single species;
there are three or four, or even more, which produce perfectly distinct
types, and these again have united to form hybrids.
The supporters of this theory easily win belief by citing the clear and
striking differences between certain human groups. When we see before us
a man with a yellowish skin, scanty hair and beard, a large face, a
pyramidal skull, small stature, thick-set limbs, and slanting eyes with
the skin of the eyelids turned so much outwards that the eye will hardly
open[49]—we recognize a very well-marked type, the main features of
which it is easy to bear in mind.
From him we turn to another—a negro from the West Coast of Africa, tall,
strong-looking, with thick-set limbs and a tendency to fat. His colour
is no longer yellowish, but entirely black; his hair no longer thin and
wiry, but thick, coarse, woolly, and luxuriant; his lower jaw juts out,
the shape of the skull is what is known as _prognathous_. “The long
bones stand out, the front of the tibia and the fibula are more convex
than in a European, the calves are very high and reach above the knee;
the feet are quite flat, and the heel-bone, instead of being arched, is
almost in a straight line with the other bones of the foot, which is
very large. The hand is similarly formed.”
When we look for a moment at an individual of this type, we are
involuntarily reminded of the structure of the monkey, and are inclined
to admit that the negro races of West Africa come from a stock that has
nothing in common, except the human form, with the Mongolian.
We come next to tribes whose appearance is still less flattering to the
self-love of mankind than that of the Congo negro. Oceania has the
special privilege of providing the most ugly, degraded, and repulsive
specimens of the race, which seem to have been created with the express
purpose of forming a link between man and the brute pure and simple. By
the side of many Australian tribes, the African negro himself assumes a
value and dignity, and seems to derive from a nobler source. In many of
the wretched inhabitants of this New World, the size of the head, the
extreme thinness of the limbs, the famished look of the body, are
absolutely hideous. The hair is flat or wavy, and generally woolly, the
flesh is black on a foundation of grey.
When, after examining these types, taken from all the quarters of the
globe, we finally come back to the inhabitants of Europe, and of South
and West Asia, we find them so superior in beauty, in just proportion of
limb and regularity of feature, that we are at once tempted to accept
the conclusions of those who assert the multiplicity of races. Not only
are these peoples more beautiful than the rest of mankind, which is, I
confess, a pestilent congregation of ugliness;[50] not only have they
had the glory of giving the world such admirable types as a Venus, an
Apollo, a Farnese Hercules; but also there is a visible hierarchy of
beauty established from ancient times even among themselves, and in this
natural aristocracy the Europeans are the most eminent, by their grace
of outline and strength of muscular developement. The most reasonable
view appears to be that the families into which man is divided are as
distinct as are animals of different species. Such was the conclusion
drawn from simple observation, and so long as only general facts were in
question, it seemed irrefutable.
Camper was one of the first to reduce these observations to some kind of
system. He was no longer satisfied with merely superficial evidence, but
wished to give his proofs a mathematical foundation; he tried to define
anatomically the differences between races. He succeeded in establishing
a strict method that left no room for doubt, and his views gained the
numerical accuracy without which there can be no science. His method was
to take the front part of the skull and measure the inclination of the
profile by means of two lines which he called the _facial lines_. Their
intersection formed an angle, the size of which gave the degree of
elevation attained by the race to which the skull belonged. One of these
lines connected the base of the nose with the orifice of the ear; the
other was tangential to the most prominent part of the forehead and the
jut of the upper jaw. On the basis of the angle thus formed, he
constructed a scale including not only man but all kinds of animals. At
the top stood the European; and the more acute the angle, the further
was the distance from the type which, according to Camper, was the most
perfect. Thus birds and fishes showed smaller angles than the various
mammals. A certain kind of ape reached 42°, and even 50°. Then came the
heads of the African negro and the Kalmuck, which touched 70°. The
European stood at 80°, and, to quote the inventor’s own words, which are
very flattering to our own type, “On this difference of 10° the superior
beauty of the European, what one might call his ‘comparative beauty,’
depends; the ‘absolute beauty’ that is so striking in some of the works
of ancient sculpture, as in the head of Apollo and the Medusa of
Sosicles, is the result of a still greater angle, amounting in this
instance to 100°.”[51]
This method was attractive by its simplicity. Unhappily, the facts are
against it, as against so many systems. By a series of accurate
observations, Owen showed that, in the case of monkeys, Camper had
studied the skulls only of the young animals; but since, in the adults,
the growth of the teeth and jaws, and the development of the zygomatic
arch, were not accompanied by a corresponding enlargement of the brain,
the numerical difference between these and human skulls was much greater
than Camper had supposed, since the facial angle of the black
orang-outang or the highest type of chimpanzee was at most 30° or 35°.
From this to the 70° of the negro and the Kalmuck the gap was too great
for Camper’s scale to have any significance.
Camper’s theory made considerable use of phrenology. He attempted to
discover a corresponding development of instinct as he mounted his scale
from the animals to man. But here too the facts were against him. The
elephant, for example, whose intelligence is certainly greater than the
orang-outang’s, has a far more acute facial angle; and even the most
docile and intelligent monkeys do not belong to the species which are
the “highest” in Camper’s series.
Beside these two great defects, the method is very open to attack in
that it does not apply to all the varieties of the human race. It leaves
out of account the tribes with pyramidally shaped heads, who form,
however, a striking division by themselves.
Blumenbach, who held the field against his predecessor, elaborated a
system in his turn; this was to study a man’s head from the top. He
called his discovery _norma verticalis_, the “vertical method.” He was
confident that the comparison of heads according to their width brought
out the chief differences in the general configuration of the skull.
According to him, the study of this part of the body is so pregnant with
results, especially in its bearing on national character, that it is
impossible to measure all the differences merely by lines and angles; to
reach a satisfying basis of classification, we must consider the heads
from the point of view in which we can take in at one glance the
greatest number of varieties. His idea was, in outline, as follows:
“Arrange the skulls that you wish to compare in such a way that the
jaw-bones are on the same horizontal line; in other words, let each rest
on its lower jaw. Then stand behind the skulls and fix the eye on the
vertex of each. In this way you will best see the varieties of shape
that have most to do with national character; these consist either (1)
in the direction of the jaw-bone and maxillary, or (2) in the breadth or
narrowness of the oval outline presented by the top half of the skull,
or (3) in the flattened or vaulted form of the frontal bone.”[52]
Blumenbach’s system resulted in the division of mankind into five main
categories, which were in their turn subdivided into a certain number of
types and classes.
This classification was of very doubtful value. Like that of Camper, it
overlooked many important characteristics. It was partly to escape such
objections that Owen proposed to examine skulls, not from the top, but
from the bottom. One of the chief results of this new method was to show
such a strong and definite line of difference between a man and an
orang-outang that it became for ever impossible to find the link that
Camper imagined to exist between the two species. In fact, one glance at
the two skulls, from Owen’s point of view, is enough to bring out their
radical difference. The diameter from front to back is longer in the
orang-outang than in man; the zygomatic arch, instead of being wholly in
the front part of the base, is in the middle, and occupies just a third
of its diameter. Finally the position of the occipital orifice, which
has such a marked influence on general structure and habits, is quite
different. In the skull of a man, it is almost at the centre of the
base; in that of an orang-outang, it is a sixth of the way from the
hinder end.[53]
Owen’s observations have, no doubt, considerable value; I would prefer,
however, the most recent of the craniological systems, which is at the
same time, in many ways, the most ingenious, I mean that of the American
scholar Morton, adopted by Carus.[54] In outline this is as follows:
To show the difference of races, Morton and Carus started from the idea,
that the greater the size of the skull, the higher the type to which the
individual belonged, and they set out to investigate whether the
development of the skull is equal in all the human races.
To solve this question, Morton took a certain number of heads belonging
to whites, Mongols, negroes, and Redskins of North America. He stopped
all the openings with cotton, except the _foramen magnum_, and
completely filled the inside with carefully dried grains of pepper. He
then compared the number of grains in each. This gave him the following
table:
┌────────────────────┬─────────┬───────┬───────┬───────┐
│ │Number of│Average│Maximum│Minimum│
│ │ skulls │number │number │number │
│ │measured.│ of │ of │ of │
│ │ │grains.│grains.│grains.│
├────────────────────┼─────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┤
│White races │ 52│ 87│ 109│ 75│
│Yellow races│Mongols│ 10│ 83│ 93│ 69│
│ │Malays │ 18│ 81│ 89│ 64│
│Redskins │ 147│ 82│ 100│ 60│
│Negroes │ 29│ 78│ 94│ 65│
└────────────────────┴─────────┴───────┴───────┴───────┘
The results set down in the first two columns are certainly very
curious. On the other hand, I attach little importance to those in the
last two; for if the extraordinary variations from the average in the
second column are to have any real significance, Morton should have
taken a far greater number of skulls, and further, have given details as
to the social position of those to whom the skulls belonged. He was
probably able to procure, in the case of the whites and the Redskins,
heads which had belonged to men at any rate above the lowest level of
society, while it is not likely that he had access to the skulls of
negro chiefs, or of Chinese mandarins. This explains how he has been
able to assign the number 100 to an American Indian, while the most
intelligent Mongol whom he has examined does not rise above 93, and is
thus inferior even to the negro, who reaches 94. Such results are a mere
matter of chance. They are quite incomplete and unscientific; in such
questions, however, one cannot be too careful to avoid judgments founded
merely on individual cases. I am inclined therefore to reject altogether
the second half of Morton’s calculations.
I must also question one detail in the other half. In the second column,
there is a clear gradation from the number 87, indicating the capacity
of the white man’s skull, to the numbers 83 and 78 for the yellow and
black man respectively. But the figures 83, 81, 82, for the Mongols,
Malays, and Redskins, give average results which evidently shade into
one another; all the more so, because Carus does not hesitate to count
the Mongols and Malays as the same race, and consequently to put the
numbers 83 and 81 together. But, in that case, why allow the number 82
to mark a distinct race, and thus create arbitrarily a fourth great
division of mankind?
This anomaly, however, actually buttresses the weak point in Carus’
system. He likes to think that, just as we see our planet pass through
the four stages of day and night, evening and morning twilight, so there
_must_ be in the human species four subdivisions corresponding to these.
He sees here a symbol, which is always a temptation for a subtle mind.
Carus yields to it, as many of his learned fellow-countrymen would have
done in his place. The white races are the nations of the day; the black
those of the night; the yellow those of the Eastern, and the red those
of the Western twilight. We may easily guess the ingenious comparisons
suggested by such a picture. Thus, the European nations, owing to the
brilliance of their scientific knowledge and the clear outlines of their
civilization, are obviously in the full glare of day, while the negroes
sleep in the darkness of ignorance, and the Chinese live in a half-light
that gives them an incomplete, though powerful, social development. As
for the Redskins, who are gradually disappearing from the earth, where
can we find a more beautiful image of their fate than the setting sun?
Unhappily, comparison is not proof, and by yielding too easily to this
poetic impulse, Carus has a little damaged his fine theory. The same
charge also may be levelled at this as at the other ethnological
doctrines; Carus does not manage to include in a systematic whole the
various physiological differences between one race and another.[55]
The supporters of the theory of racial unity have not failed to seize on
this weak point, and to claim that, where we cannot arrange the
observations on the shape of the skull in such a way as to constitute a
proof of the original separation of types, we must no longer consider
the variations as pointing to any radical difference, but merely regard
them as the result of secondary and isolated causes, with no specific
relevance.
The cry of victory may be raised a little too soon. It may be hard to
find the correct method, without being necessarily impossible. The
“unitarians,” however, do not admit this reservation. They support their
view by observing that certain tribes that belong to the same race show
a very different physical type. They cite, for instance, the various
branches of the hybrid Malayo-Polynesian family, without taking account
of the proportion in which the elements are mingled in each case. If
groups (they say) with a common origin can show quite a different
conformation of features and skull, the unity of the human race cannot
be disproved along these lines at all. However foreign the negro or
Mongol type may appear to European eyes, this is no evidence of their
different origin; the reasons why the human families have diverged will
be found nearer to hand, and we may regard these physiological
deviations merely as the result of certain local causes acting for a
definite period of time.[56]
In face of so many objections, good and bad, the champions of
multiplicity tried to extend the sphere of their arguments. Relying no
longer on the mere study of skulls, they passed to that of the
individual man as a whole. In order to prove (as is quite true) that the
differences do not merely lie in the facial appearance and the bony
conformation of the head, they brought forward other important
differences with regard to the shape of the pelvis, the proportions of
the limbs, the colour of the skin, and the nature of the capillary
system.
Camper and other anthropologists had already recognized that the pelvis
of the negro showed certain peculiarities. Dr. Vrolik pushed these
inquiries further, and observed that the difference between the male and
female pelvis was far less marked in the European, while in the negro
race he saw in the pelvis of both sexes a considerable approximation to
the brute. Assuming that the configuration of the pelvis necessarily
affected that of the embryo, he inferred a difference of origin.[57]
Weber attacked this theory, with little result. He had to recognize that
some formations of the pelvis were found in one race more frequently
than in another; and all he could do was to show that there were some
exceptions to Vrolik’s rule, and that certain American, African, and
Mongolian specimens showed formations that were usually confined to
Europeans. This does not prove very much, especially as, in speaking of
these exceptions, Weber does not seem to have inquired whether the
peculiar configuration in question might not result from a mixture of
blood.
With regard to the size of the limbs, the opponents of a common origin
assert that the European is better proportioned. The answer—which is a
good one—is that we have no reason to be surprised at the thinness of
the extremities in peoples who live mainly on vegetables or have not
generally enough to eat. But as against the argument from the
extraordinary development of the bust among the Quichuas, the critics
who refuse to recognize this as a specific difference are on less firm
ground. Their contention that the development among the mountaineers of
Peru is explained by the height of the Andes, is hardly serious. There
are many mountain-peoples in the world who are quite differently
constituted from the Quichuas.[58]
The next point is the colour of the skin. The unitarians deny this any
specific influence, first because the colour depends on facts of
climate, and is not permanent—a very bold assertion; secondly because
the colour is capable of infinite gradation, passing insensibly from
white to yellow, from yellow to black, without showing a really definite
line of cleavage. This proves nothing but the existence of a vast number
of hybrids, a fact which the unitarians are continually neglecting, to
the great prejudice of their theory.
As to the specific character of the hair, Flourens is of opinion that
this is no argument against an original unity of race.
After this rapid review of the divergent theories I come to the great
scientific stronghold of the unitarians, an argument of great weight,
which I have kept to the end—I mean the ease with which the different
branches of the human family create hybrids, and the fertility of these
hybrids.
The observations of naturalists seem to prove that, in the animal or
vegetable world, hybrids can be produced only from allied species, and
that, even so, they are condemned to barrenness. It has also been
observed that between related species intercourse, although possibly
fertile, is repugnant, and usually has to be effected by trickery or
force. This would tend to show that in the free state the number of
hybrids is even more limited than when controlled by man. We may
conclude that the power of producing fertile offspring is among the
marks of a distinct species.
As nothing leads us to believe that the human race is outside this rule,
there is no answer to this argument, which more than any other has
served to hold in check the forces opposed to unity. We hear, it is
true, that in certain parts of Oceania the native women who have become
mothers by Europeans are no longer fitted for impregnation by their own
kind. Assuming this to be true, we might make it the basis of a more
profound inquiry; but, so far as the present discussion goes, we could
not use it to weaken the general principle of the fertility of human
hybrids and the infertility of all others; it has no bearing on any
conclusions that may be drawn from this principle.