RACIAL DIFFERENCES ARE PERMANENT
The Unitarians say that the separation of the races is merely apparent,
and due to local influences, such as are still at work, or to accidental
variations of shape in the ancestor of some particular branch. All
mankind is, for them, capable of the same improvement; the original
type, though more or less disguised, persists in unabated strength, and
the negro, the American savage, the Tungusian of Northern Siberia, can
attain a beauty of outline equal to that of the European, and would do
so, if they were brought up under similar conditions. This theory cannot
be accepted.
We have seen above that the strongest scientific rampart of the
Unitarians lay in the fertility of human hybrids. Up to now, this has
been very difficult to refute, but perhaps it will not always be so; at
any rate, I should not think it worth while to pause over this argument
if it were not supported by another, of a very different kind, which, I
confess, gives me more concern. It is said that Genesis does not admit
of a multiple origin for our species.
If the text is clear, positive, peremptory, and incontestable, we must
bow our heads; the greatest doubts must yield, reason can only declare
herself imperfect and inferior, the origin of mankind is single, and
everything that seems to prove the contrary is merely a delusive
appearance. It is better to let darkness gather round a point of
scholarship, than to enter the lists against such an authority. But if
the Bible is not explicit, if the Holy Scriptures, which were written to
shed light on quite other questions than those of race, have been
misunderstood, and if without doing them violence one can draw a
different meaning from them, then I shall not hesitate to go forward.
We must, of course, acknowledge that Adam is the ancestor of the white
race. The scriptures are evidently meant to be so understood, for the
generations deriving from him are certainly white. This being admitted,
there is nothing to show that, in the view of the first compilers of the
Adamite genealogies, those outside the white race were counted as part
of the species at all. Not a word is said about the yellow races, and it
is only an arbitrary interpretation of the text that makes us regard the
patriarch Ham as black. Of course the translators and commentators, in
calling Adam the common ancestor of all men, have had to enrol among his
descendants all the peoples who have lived since his time. According to
them, the European nations are of the stock of Japhet, hither Asia was
occupied by the Semites, and the regions of Africa by the Hamites, who
are, as I say, unreasonably considered to be of negro origin. The whole
scheme fits admirably together—for one part of the world. But what about
the other part? It is simply left out.
For the moment, I do not insist on this line of argument. I do not wish
to run counter to even literal interpretations of the text, if they are
generally accepted. I will merely point out that we might, perhaps,
doubt their value, without going beyond the limits imposed by the
Church; and then I will ask whether we may admit the basic principle of
the unitarians, such as it is, and yet somehow explain the facts
otherwise than they do. In other words, I will simply ask whether
independently of any question of an original unity or multiplicity,
there may not exist the most radical and far-reaching differences, both
physical and moral, between human races.
The racial identity of all the different kinds of dog is admitted by
Frédéric Cuvier among others;[59] but no one would say that in all dogs,
without distinction of species, we find the same shapes, instincts,
habits, and qualities. The same is true of horses, bulls, bears, and the
like. Everywhere we see identity of origin, diversity of everything
else, a diversity so deep that it cannot be lost except by crossing, and
even then the products do not return to a real identity of nature. On
the other hand, so long as the race is kept pure, the special
characteristics remain unchanged, and are reproduced for generations
without any appreciable difference.
This fact, which is indisputable, has led some to ask whether in the
various kinds of domestic animals we can recognize the shapes and
instincts of the primitive stock. The question seems for ever insoluble.
It is impossible to determine the form and nature of a primitive type,
and to be certain how far the specimens we see to-day deviate from it.
The same problem is raised in the case of a large number of vegetables.
Man especially, whose origin offers a more interesting study than that
of all the rest, seems to resist all explanation, from this point of
view.
The different races have never doubted that the original ancestor of the
whole species had precisely their own characteristics. On this point,
and this alone, tradition is unanimous. The white peoples have made for
themselves an Adam and an Eve that Blumenbach would have called
Caucasian; whereas in the “Arabian Nights”—a book which, though
apparently trivial, is a mine of true sayings and well-observed facts—we
read that some negroes regard Adam and his wife as black, and since
these were created in the image of God, God must also be black and the
angels too, while the prophet of God was naturally too near divinity to
show a white skin to his disciples.
Unhappily, modern science has been able to provide no clue to the
labyrinth of the various opinions. No likely hypothesis has succeeded in
lightening this darkness, and in all probability the human races are as
different from their common ancestor, if they have one, as they are from
each other. I will therefore assume without discussion the principle of
unity; and my only task, in the narrow and limited field to which I am
confining myself, is to explain the actual deviation from the primitive
type.
The causes are very hard to disentangle. The theory of the unitarians
attributes the deviation, as I have already said, to habits, climate,
and locality. It is impossible to agree with this.[60] Changes have
certainly been brought about in the constitution of races, since the
dawn of history, by such external influences; but they do not seem to
have been important enough to be able to explain fully the many vital
divergences that exist. This will become clear in a moment.
I will suppose that there are two tribes which still bear a resemblance
to the primitive type, and happen to be living, the one in a mountainous
country in the interior of a continent, the other on an island in the
midst of the ocean. The atmosphere and the food conditions of each will
be quite different. I will assume that the one has many ways of
obtaining food, the other very few. Further, I will place the former in
a cold climate, the second under a tropical sun. By this means the
external contrast between them will be complete. The course of time will
add its own weight to the action of the natural forces, and there is no
doubt that the two groups will gradually accumulate some special
characteristics which will distinguish them from each other. But even
after many centuries no vital or organic change will have taken place in
their constitution. This is proved by the fact that we find peoples of a
very similar type, living on opposite sides of the world and under quite
different conditions, of climate and everything else. Ethnologists are
agreed on this point and some have even believed that the Hottentots are
a Chinese colony—a hypothesis impossible on other grounds—on account of
their likeness to the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire.[61] In the
same way, some have seen a great resemblance between the portraits we
have of the ancient Etruscans and the Araucans of South America. In
features and general shape the Cherokees seem almost identical with many
of the Italian peoples, such as the Calabrians. The usual type of face
among the inhabitants of Auvergne, especially the women, is far less
like the ordinary European’s than that of many Indian tribes of North
America. Thus when we grant that nature can produce similar types in
widely separated countries, under different conditions of life and
climate, it becomes quite clear that the human races do not take their
qualities from any of the external forces that are active at the present
day.
I would not, however, deny that local conditions may favour the
deepening of some particular skin-colour, the tendency to obesity, the
development of the chest muscles, the lengthening of the arms or the
lower limbs, the increase or decrease of physical strength. But, I
repeat, these are not essential points; and to judge from the very
slight difference made by the alteration of local conditions in the
shape of the body, there is no reason to believe that they have ever had
very much influence. This is an argument of considerable weight.
Although we do not know what cataclysmal changes may have been effected
in the physical organization of the races before the dawn of history, we
may at least observe that this period extends only to about half the age
attributed to our species. If for three or four thousand years the
darkness is impenetrable, we still have another period of three thousand
years, of which we can go right back to the beginning in the case of
certain nations. Everything tends to show that the races which were then
known, and which have remained relatively pure since that time, have not
greatly changed in their outward appearance, although some of them no
longer live in the same places, and so are no longer affected by the
same external causes. Take, for example, the Arabs of the stock of
Ishmael. We still find them, just as they are represented in the
Egyptian monuments, not only in the parched deserts of their own land,
but in the fertile, and often damp, regions of Malabar and the
Coromandel Coast, in the islands of the Indies, and on many points of
the north coast of Africa, where they are, as a fact, more mixed than
anywhere else. Traces of them are still found in some parts of
Roussillon, Languedoc, and the Spanish coast, although almost two
centuries have passed away since their invasion. If the mere influence
of environment had the power, as is supposed, of setting up and taking
away the limits between organic types, it would have not allowed these
to persist so long. The change of place would have been followed by a
corresponding change of form.
After the Arabs, I will mention the Jews, who are still more remarkable
in this connexion, as they have settled in lands with very different
climates from that of Palestine, and have given up their ancient mode of
life. The Jewish type has, however, remained much the same; the
modifications it has undergone are of no importance and have never been
enough, in any country or latitude, to change the general character of
the race. The warlike Rechabites of the Arabian desert, the peaceful
Portuguese, French, German, and Polish Jews—they all look alike. I have
had the opportunity of examining closely one of the last kind. His
features and profile clearly betrayed his origin. His eyes especially
were unforgettable. This denizen of the north, whose immediate ancestors
had lived, for many generations, in the snow, seemed to have been just
tanned by the rays of the Syrian sun. The Semitic face looks exactly the
same, in its main characteristics, as it appears on the Egyptian
paintings of three or four thousand years ago, and more; and we find it
also, in an equally striking and recognizable form, under the most
varied and disparate conditions of climate. The identity of descendant
and ancestor does not stop at the features; it continues also in the
shape of the limbs and the temperament. The German Jews are usually
smaller and more slender in build than the men of European race among
whom they have lived for centuries. Further, the marriageable age is
much earlier among them than among their fellow-countrymen of another
race.[62]
This, by the way, is an assertion diametrically opposed to the opinion
of Prichard, who in his zeal for proving the unity of the species, tries
to show that the age of puberty, for the two sexes, is the same
everywhere and in all races.[63] The reasons which he advances are drawn
from the Old Testament in the case of the Jews, and, in the case of the
Arabs, from the religious law of the Koran, by which the age of marriage
is fixed, for girls, at fifteen, and even (in the opinion of
Abu-Hanifah) at eighteen.
These two arguments seem very questionable. In the first place, the
Biblical evidence is not admissible on this point, as it often includes
facts that contradict the ordinary course of nature. Sarah, for example,
was brought to bed of a child in extreme old age, when Abraham himself
had reached a hundred years;[64] to such an event ordinary reasoning
cannot apply. Secondly, as to the views and ordinances of the Mohammedan
law, I may say that the Koran did not intend merely to make sure of the
physical fitness of the woman before authorizing the marriage. It wished
her also to be far enough advanced in education and intelligence to be
able to understand the serious duties of her new position. This is shown
by the pains taken by the prophet to prescribe that the girl’s religious
instruction shall be continued to the time of her marriage. It is easy
to see why, from this point of view, the day should have been put off as
long as possible and why the law-giver thought it so important to
develop the reasoning powers, instead of being as hasty in his
ordinances as nature is in hers. This is not all. Against the serious
evidence brought forward by Prichard, there are some conclusive
arguments, though of a lighter nature, that decide the question in
favour of my view.
The poets, in their stories of love, are concerned merely with showing
their heroines in the flower of their beauty, without thinking of their
moral development; and the Oriental poets have always made their
girl-lovers younger than the age prescribed by the Koran. Zuleika and
Leila are certainly not yet fourteen. In India, the difference is still
more marked. Sakuntala would be a mere child in Europe. The best age of
love for an Indian girl is from nine to twelve years. It is a very
general opinion, long accepted and established among the Indian,
Persian, and Arab races, that the spring of life, for a woman, flowers
at an age that we should call a little precocious. Our own writers have
for long followed the lead, in this matter, of their Roman models.
These, like their Greek teachers, regarded fifteen as the best age.
Since our literature has been influenced by Northern ideas,[65] we have
seen in our novels nothing but girls of eighteen, or even older.
Returning now to more serious arguments, we find them equally abundant.
In addition to what I have said about the German Jews, it may be
mentioned that in many parts of Switzerland the sexual development of
the people is so slow that, in the case of the men, it is not always
complete at twenty. The Bohemians, or Zingaris, yield another set of
results, which are easily verified. They show the same early development
as the Hindus, who are akin to them; and under the most inclement skies,
in Russia and in Moldavia, they still keep the expression and shape of
the face and the physical proportions, as well as the ideas and customs,
of the pariahs.[66]
I do not, however, mean to oppose Prichard on every point. One of his
conclusions I gratefully adopt, namely that “difference of climate
occasions very little, if any, important diversity as to the periods of
life and the physical changes to which the human constitution is
subject.”[67] This remark is very true, and I would not dream of
contesting it. I merely add that it seems to contradict to some slight
extent the principles otherwise upheld by the learned American
physiologist and antiquary.
The reader will not fail to see that the question on which the argument
here turns is that of the permanence of types. If we have shown that the
human races are each, as it were, shut up in their own individuality,
and can only issue from it by a mixture of blood, the unitarian theory
will find itself very hard-pressed. It will have to recognize that, if
the types are thus absolutely fixed, hereditary, and _permanent_, in
spite of climate and lapse of time, mankind is no less completely and
definitely split into separate parts, than it would be if specific
differences were due to a real divergence of origin.
It now becomes an easy matter for us to maintain this important
conclusion, which we have seen to be amply supported, in the case of the
Arabs, by the evidence of Egyptian sculpture, and also by the
observation of Jews and gipsies. At the same time there is no reason for
rejecting the valuable help given by the paintings in the temples and
underground chambers in the valley of the Nile, which equally show the
permanence of the Negro type, with its woolly hair, prognathous head,
and thick lips. The recent discovery of the bas-reliefs at Khorsabad
confirm what was already known from the sculptured tombs of Persepolis,
and themselves prove, with absolute certainty, that the Assyrians are
physiologically identical with the peoples who occupy their territory at
the present day.
If we had a similar body of evidence with regard to other races still
living, the result would be the same. The fact of the permanence of
types would merely be more fully demonstrated. It is enough however to
have established it in all the cases where observation was possible. It
is now for those who disagree to propose objections.
They have no means of doing so, and their line of defence shows them
either contradicting themselves from the start, or making some assertion
quite contrary to the obvious facts. For example, they say that the
Jewish type has changed with the climate, whereas the facts show the
opposite. They base their argument on the existence in Germany of many
fair-haired Jews with blue eyes.[68] For this to have any value from the
unitarian point of view, climate would have to be regarded as the sole,
or at any rate the chief, cause of the phenomenon; whereas the
unitarians themselves admit that the colour of the skin, eyes, and hair
in no way depends either on geographical situation or on the influence
of cold or heat.[69] They rightly mention the presence of blue eyes and
fair hair among the Cingalese;[70] they even notice a considerable
variation from light brown to black. Again, they admit that the
Samoyedes and Tungusians, although living on the borders of the Arctic
Ocean, are very swarthy.[71] Thus the climate counts for nothing so far
as the colouring of the skin, hair, and eyes is concerned. We must
regard them either as having no significance at all, or as vitally bound
up with race. We know, for example, that red hair is not, and never has
been, rare in the East; and so no one need be surprised to find it
to-day in some German Jews. Such a fact has no influence, one way or the
other, on the theory of the permanence of types.
The unitarians are no more fortunate when they call in history to help
them. They give only two instances to prove their theory—the Turks and
the Magyars. The Asiatic origin of the former is taken as self-evident,
as well as their close relation to the Finnish stocks of the Ostiaks and
the Laplanders. Hence they had in primitive times the yellow face,
prominent cheek-bones, and short stature of the Mongols. Having settled
this point, our unitarian turns to their descendants of to-day; and
finding them of a European type, with long thick beards, eyes
almond-shaped, but no longer slanting, he concludes triumphantly, from
this utter transformation of the Turks, that there is no permanence in
race.[72] “Some people,” he says in effect, “have certainly supposed in
them a mixture of Greek, Georgian, and Circassian blood. But this
mixture has been only partial. Not all Turks have been rich enough to
buy wives from the Caucasus; not all have had harems filled with white
slaves. On the other hand, the hatred felt by the Greeks towards their
conquerors, and religious antipathy in general, have been unfavourable
to such alliances; though the two peoples live together, they are just
as much separated in spirit at the present time as on the first day of
the conquest.”[73]
These reasons are more specious than solid. We can only admit
provisionally the Finnish origin of the Turkish race. Up to now, it has
been supported only by a single argument, the affinity of language. I
will show later how the argument from language, when taken alone, is
peculiarly open to doubt and criticism. Assuming however that the
ancestors of the Turkish people belonged to the yellow race, we can
easily show that they had excellent reasons for keeping themselves apart
from it.
From the time when the first Turanian hordes descended from the
north-east to that when they made themselves masters of the city of
Constantine, a period comprising many centuries, great changes passed
over the world; and the Western Turks suffered many vicissitudes of
fortune. They were in turn victors and vanquished, slaves and masters;
and very diverse were the peoples among whom they settled. According to
the annalists,[74] the Oghuzes, their ancestors, came down from the
Altai Mountains, and, in the time of Abraham lived in the immense
steppes of Upper Asia that extend from the Katai to Lake Aral, from
Siberia to Tibet. This is the ancient and mysterious domain that was
still inhabited by many Germanic peoples.[75] It is a curious fact that
as soon as Eastern writers begin to speak of the peoples of Turkestan,
they praise their beauty of face and stature.[76] Hyperbolic expressions
are the rule, in this connexion; and as these writers had the beautiful
types of the ancient world before their eyes, as a standard, it is not
very likely that their enthusiasm should have been aroused by the sight
of creatures so incontrovertibly ugly and repulsive as the ordinary
specimens of the Mongolian race. Thus in spite of the linguistic
argument, which may itself be wrongly used,[77] we might still make out
a good case for our view. But we will concede the point, and admit that
the Oghuzes of the Altai were really a Finnish people; and we will pass
on to the Mohammedan period, when the Turkish tribes were established,
under different names and varied circumstances, in Persia and Asia
Minor.
The Osmanlis did not as yet exist, and their ancestors, the Seljukians,
were already closely connected in blood with the races of Islam. The
chiefs of this people, such as Gayaseddin-Keikosrev, in 1237, freely
intermarried with Arab women. They did better still; for Aseddin, the
mother of another line of Seljukian princes, was a Christian. In all
countries the chiefs watch more jealously than the common people over
the purity of their race; and when a chief showed himself so free from
prejudice, it is at least permissible to assume that his subjects were
not more scrupulous. As the continual raids of the Seljukians offered
them every opportunity to seize slaves throughout the vast territory
which they overran, there is no doubt that, from the thirteenth century,
the ancient Oghuz stock, with which the Seljukians of Rûm claimed a
distant kinship, was permeated to a great extent with Semitic blood.
From this branch sprang Osman, the son of Ortoghrul and father of the
Osmanlis. The families that collected round his tent were not very
numerous. His army was no more than a robber-band; and if the early
successors of this nomad Romulus were able to increase it, they did so
merely by following the practice of the founder of Rome, and opening
their tents to anyone who wished to enter.
It may be assumed that the fall of the Seljukian Empire helped to send
recruits of their own race to the Osmanlis. It is clear that this race
had undergone considerable change; besides, even these new resources
were not enough, for from this time the Turks began to make systematic
slave-raids, with the express object of increasing their own population.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Urkan, at the instance of
Khalil Chendereli the Black, founded the Guard of Janissaries. At first
these were only a thousand strong. But under Mohammed IV the new guard
numbered 140,000; and as up to this time the Turks had been careful to
fill up the ranks only with Christian children taken from Poland,
Germany, and Italy, or from European Turkey itself, and then converted
to Islam, there were in four centuries at least 5000 heads of families
who infused European blood into the veins of the Turkish nation.
The racial admixture did not end here. The main object of the piracy
practised on such a large scale throughout the Mediterranean was to fill
up the harems. Further (a still more conclusive fact) there was no
battle, whether lost or won, that did not increase the number of the
Faithful. A considerable number of the males changed their religion, and
counted henceforth as Turks. Again, the country surrounding the field of
battle was overrun by the troops and yielded them all the women they
could seize. The plunder was often so abundant that they had difficulty
in disposing of it; the most beautiful girl was bartered for a
jackboot.[78] When we consider this in connexion with the population of
Asiatic and European Turkey, which has, as we know, never exceeded
twelve millions, we see clearly that the arguments for or against the
permanence of racial type find no support whatever in the history of
such a mixed people as the Turks. This is so self-evident, that when we
notice, as we often do, some characteristic features of the yellow race
in an Osmanli, we cannot attribute this directly to his Finnish origin;
it is simply the effect of Slav or Tartar blood, exhibiting, at second
hand, the foreign elements it had itself absorbed.
Having finished my observations on the ethnology of the Ottomans, I pass
to the Magyars.
The unitarian theory is backed by such arguments as the following: “The
Magyars are of Finnish origin, and allied to the Laplanders, Samoyedes,
and Eskimos. These are all people of low stature, with wide faces and
prominent cheek-bones, yellowish or dirty brown in colour. The Magyars,
however, are tall and well set up; their limbs are long, supple and
vigorous, their features are of marked beauty, and resemble those of the
white nations. The Finns have always been weak, unintelligent, and
oppressed. The Magyars take a high place among the conquerors of the
world. They have enslaved others, but have never been slaves themselves.
Thus, since the Magyars are Finns, and are so different, physically and
morally, from all the other branches of their primitive stock, they must
have changed enormously.”[79]
If such a change had really taken place, it would be so extraordinary as
to defy all explanation, even by the unitarians, however great the
modifications that may be assumed in these particular types; for the
transformation-scene would have taken place between the end of the ninth
century and the present day, that is, in about 800 years. Further, we
know that in this period St. Stephen’s fellow-countrymen have not
intermarried to any great extent with the nations among whom they live.
Happily for common sense, there is no need for surprise, as the
argument, though otherwise perfect, makes one vital mistake—the
Hungarians are certainly not Finns.
In a well-written article, A. de Gerando[80] has exploded the theories
of Schlotzer and his followers. By weighty arguments drawn from Greek
and Arab historians and Hungarian annalists, by facts and dates that
defy criticism, he has proved the kinship of the Transylvanian tribe of
the Siculi with the Huns, and the identity in primitive times of the
former with the last invaders of Pannonia. Thus the Magyars are Huns.
Here we shall no doubt be met by a further objection, namely that though
this argument may point to a different origin for the Magyars, it
connects them just as intimately as the other with the yellow race. This
is an error. The name “Huns” may denote a nation, but it is also,
historically speaking, a collective word. The mass of tribes to which it
refers is not homogeneous. Among the crowd of peoples enrolled under the
banner of Attila’s ancestors, certain bands, known as the “White Huns,”
have always been distinguished. In these the Germanic element
predominated.[81]
Contact with the yellow races had certainly affected the purity of their
blood. There is no mystery about this; the fact is betrayed at once by
the rather angular and bony features of the Magyar. The language is very
closely related to some Turkish dialects. Thus the Magyars are White
Huns, though they have been wrongly made out to be a yellow race, a
confusion caused, by their intermarriages in the past (whether voluntary
or otherwise) with Mongolians. They are really, as we have shown,
cross-breeds with a Germanic basis. The roots and general vocabulary of
their language are quite different from those of the Germanic family;
but exactly the same was the case with the Scythians, a yellow race
speaking an Aryan dialect,[82] and with the Scandinavians of Neustria,
who were, after some years of conquest, led to adopt the Celto-Latin
dialect of their subjects.[83] Nothing warrants the belief that lapse of
time, difference of climate, or change of customs should have turned a
Laplander or an Ostiak, a Tungusian or a Permian, into a St. Stephen. I
conclude, from this refutation of the only arguments brought forward by
the unitarians, that the permanence of racial types is beyond dispute;
it is so strong and indestructible that the most complete change of
environment has no power to overthrow it, so long as no crossing takes
place.
Whatever side, therefore, one may take in the controversy as to the
unity or multiplicity of origin possessed by the human species, it is
certain that the different families are to-day absolutely separate; for
there is no external influence that could cause any resemblance between
them or force them into a homogeneous mass.
The existing races constitute separate branches of one or many primitive
stocks. These stocks have now vanished. They are not known in historical
times at all, and we cannot form even the most general idea of their
qualities. They differed from each other in the shape and proportion of
the limbs, the structure of the skull, the internal conformation of the
body, the nature of the capillary system, the colour of the skin, and
the like; and they never succeeded in losing their characteristic
features except under the powerful influence of the crossing of blood.
This permanence of racial qualities is quite sufficient to generate the
radical unlikeness and inequality that exists between the different
branches, to raise them to the dignity of natural laws, and to justify
the same distinctions being drawn with regard to the physiological life
of nations, as I shall show, later, to be applicable to their moral
life.
Owing to my respect for a scientific authority which I cannot overthrow,
and, still more, for a religious interpretation that I could not venture
to attack, I must resign myself to leaving on one side the grave doubts
that are always oppressing me as to the question of original unity; and
I will now try to discover as far as I can, with the resources that are
still left to me, the probable causes of these ultimate physiological
differences.
As no one will venture to deny, there broods over this grave question a
mysterious darkness, big with causes that are at the same time physical
and supernatural. In the inmost recesses of the obscurity that shrouds
the problem, reign the causes which have their ultimate home in the mind
of God; the human spirit feels their presence without divining their
nature, and shrinks back in awful reverence. It is probable that the
earthly agents to whom we look for the key of the secret are themselves
but instruments and petty springs in the great machine. The origins of
all things, of all events and movements, are not infinitely small, as we
are often pleased to say, but on the contrary so vast, so immeasurable
by the poor foot-rule of man’s intelligence, that while we may perhaps
have some vague suspicion of their existence, we can never hope to lay
hands on them or attain to any sure discovery of their nature. Just as
in an iron chain that is meant to lift up a great weight it frequently
happens that the link nearest the object is the smallest, so the
proximate cause may often seem insignificant; and if we merely consider
it in isolation, we tend to forget the long series that has gone before.
This alone gives it meaning, but this, in all its strength and might,
derives from something that human eye has never seen. We must not
therefore, like the fool in the old adage, wonder at the power of the
roseleaf to make the water overflow; we should rather think that the
reason of the accident lay in the depths of the water that filled the
vessel to overflowing. Let us yield all respect to the primal and
generating causes, that dwell far off in heaven, and without which
nothing would exist; conscious of the Divine power that moves them, they
rightly claim a part of the veneration we pay to their Infinite Creator.
But let us abstain from speaking of them here. It is not fitting for us
to leave the human sphere, where alone we may hope to meet with
certainty. All we can do is to seize the chain, if not by the last small
link, at any rate by that part of it which we can see and touch, without
trying to catch at what is beyond our reach—a task too difficult for
mortal man. There is no irreverence in saying this; on the contrary, it
expresses the sincere conviction of a weakness that is insurmountable.
Man is a new-comer in this world. Geology—proceeding merely by
induction, but attacking its problems in a marvellously systematic
way—asserts that man is absent from all the oldest strata of the earth’s
surface. There is no trace of him among the fossils. When our ancestors
appeared for the first time in an already aged world, God, according to
Scripture, told them that they would be its masters and have dominion
over everything on earth. This promise was given not so much to them as
to their descendants; for these first feeble creatures seem to have been
provided with very few means, not merely of conquering the whole of
nature, but even of resisting its weakest attacks.[84] The ethereal
heavens had seen, in former epochs, beings far more imposing than man
rise from the muddy earth and the deep waters. Most of these gigantic
races had, no doubt, disappeared in the terrible revolutions in which
the inorganic world had shown a power so immeasurably beyond that
possessed by animate nature. A great number, however, of these monstrous
creatures were still living. Every region was haunted by herds of
elephants and rhinoceroses, and even the mastodon has left traces of its
existence in American tradition.[85]
These last remnants of the monsters of an earlier day were more than
enough to impress the first members of our species with an uneasy
feeling of their own inferiority, and a very modest view of their
problematic royalty. It was not merely the animals from whom they had to
wrest their disputed empire. These could in the last resort be fought,
by craft if not by force, and in default of conquest could be avoided by
flight. The case was quite different with Nature, that immense Nature
that surrounded the primitive families on all sides, held them in a
close grip, and made them feel in every nerve her awful power.[86] The
cosmic causes of the ancient cataclysms, although feebler, were always
at work. Partial upheavals still disturbed the relative positions of
earth and ocean. Sometimes the level of the sea rose and swallowed up
vast stretches of coast; sometimes a terrible volcanic eruption would
vomit from the depths of the waters some mountainous mass, to become
part of a continent. The world was still in travail, and Jehovah had not
calmed it by “seeing that it was good.”
This general lack of equilibrium necessarily reacted on atmospheric
conditions. The strife of earth, fire, and water brought with it
complete and rapid changes of heat, cold, dryness, and humidity. The
exhalations from the ground, still shaken with earthquake, had an
irresistible influence on living creatures. The causes that enveloped
the globe with the breath of battle and suffering could not but increase
the pressure brought to bear by nature on man. Differences of climate
and environment acted on our first parents far more effectively than
to-day. Cuvier, in his “Treatise on the revolutions of the globe,” says
that the inorganic forces of the present day would be quite incapable of
causing convulsions and upheavals, or new arrangements of the earth’s
surface, such as those to which geology bears witness. The changes that
were wrought in the past on her own body by the awful might of nature
would be impossible to-day; she had a similar power over the human race,
but has it no longer. Her omnipotence has been so lost, or at least so
weakened and whittled away, that in a period of years covering roughly
half the life of our species on the earth, she has brought about no
change of any importance, much less one that can be compared to that by
which the different races were for ever marked off from each other.[87]
Two points are certain: first that the main differences between the
branches of our race were fixed in the earliest epoch of our terrestrial
life; secondly, that in order to imagine a period when these
physiological cleavages could have been brought about, we must go back
to the time when the influence of natural causes was far more active
than it is now, under the normal and healthy conditions. Such a time
could be none other than that immediately after the creation, when the
earth was still shaken by its recent catastrophes and without any
defence against the fearful effects of their last death-throes.
Assuming the unitarian theory, we cannot give any later date for the
separation of types.
No argument can be based on the accidental deviations from the normal
which are sometimes found in certain individual instances, and which, if
transmitted, would certainly give rise to important varieties. Without
including such deformities as a hump-back, some curious facts have been
collected which seem, at first sight, to be of value in explaining the
diversity of races. To cite only one instance, Prichard[88] quotes
Baker’s account of a man whose whole body, with the exception of his
face, was covered with a sort of dark shell, resembling a large
collection of warts, very hard and callous, and insensible to pain; when
cut, it did not bleed. At different periods this curious covering, after
reaching a thickness of three-quarters of an inch, would become
detached, and fall off; it was then replaced by another, similar in all
respects. Four sons were born to him, all resembling their father. One
survived; but Baker, who saw him in infancy, does not say whether he
reached manhood. He merely infers that since the father has produced
such offspring, “a race of people may be propagated by this man, having
such rugged coats and coverings as himself; and if this should ever
happen, and the accidental original be forgotten, it is not improbable
they might be deemed a different species of mankind.”
Such a conclusion is possible. Individuals, however, who are so
different as these from the species in general, do not transmit their
characteristics. Their posterity either returns to the regular path or
is soon extinguished. All things that deviate from the natural and
normal order of the world can only borrow life for a time; they are not
fitted to keep it. Otherwise, a succession of strange accidents would,
long before this, have set mankind on a road far removed from the
physiological conditions which have obtained, without change, throughout
the ages. We must conclude that impermanence is one of the essential and
basic features of these anomalies. We could not include in such a
category the woolly hair and black skin of the negro, or the yellow
colour, wide face, and slanting eyes of the Chinaman. These are all
permanent characteristics; they are in no way abnormal, and so cannot
come from an accidental deviation.
We will now give a summary of the present chapter.
In face of the difficulties offered by the most liberal interpretation
of the Biblical text, and the objection founded on the law regulating
the generation of hybrids, it is impossible to pronounce categorically
in favour of a multiplicity of origin for the human species.
We must therefore be content to assign a lower cause to those clear-cut
varieties of which the main quality is undoubtedly their permanence, a
permanence that can only be lost by a crossing of blood. We can identify
this cause with the amount of climatic energy possessed by the earth at
a time when the human race had just appeared on its surface. There is no
doubt that the forces that inorganic nature could bring into play were
far greater then than anything we have known since, and under their
pressure racial modifications were accomplished which would now be
impossible. Probably, too, the creatures exposed to these tremendous
forces were more liable to be affected by them than existing types would
be. Man, in his earliest stages, assumed many unstable forms; he did not
perhaps belong, in any definite manner, to the white, red, or yellow
variety. The deviations that transformed the primitive characteristics
of the species into the types established to-day were probably much
smaller than those that would now be required for the black race, for
example, to become assimilated to the white, or the yellow to the black.
On this hypothesis, we should have to regard Adamite man as equally
different from all the existing human groups; these would have radiated
all around him, the distance between him and any group being double that
between one group and another. How much of the primitive type would the
peoples of the different races have subsequently retained? Merely the
most general characteristics of our species, the vague resemblances of
shape common to the most distant groups, and the possibility of
expressing their wants by articulate sounds—but nothing more. The
remaining features peculiar to primitive man would have been completely
lost, by the black as well as the non-black races; and although we are
all originally descended from him, we should have owed to outside
influences everything that gave us our distinctive and special
character. Henceforth the human races, the product of cosmic forces as
well as of the primitive Adamic stock, would be very slightly, if at
all, related to each other. The power of giving birth to fertile hybrids
would certainly be a perpetual proof of original connexion; but it would
be the only one. As soon as the primal differences of environment had
given each group its isolated character, as a possession for ever—its
shape, features, and colour—from that moment the link of primal unity
would have been suddenly snapped; the unity, so far as influence on
racial development went, would be actually sterile. The strict and
unassailable permanence of form and feature to which the earliest
historical documents bear witness would be the charter and sign-manual
of the eternal separation of races.