ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES
NEXT to geographical discovery, perhaps the most stimulating influence
on Anthropology has been the succession of controversies in which it has
constantly been involved. It has always been regarded as a somewhat
anarchical subject, advocating views which might prove dangerous to
Church and State; and many are the battles which have raged within and
without. Huxley attributed the large audiences which were wont to throng
the Anthropological Section of the British Association to the innate
bellicose instincts of man, and to the splendid opportunities afforded
by Anthropology for indulging those propensities.[31]
Footnote 31:
Add. Brit. Ass., Dublin, 1878.
The discussions of the earlier centuries were focussed round the
question of the origin of man, and from this highly debateable problem
arose the two antagonistic groups of the monogenists, or orthodox
school, deriving all mankind from a single pair, and the polygenists,
who believed in a multiple origin. Before the discoveries of prehistoric
archæology had advanced sufficiently to show the futility of such
discussion, anthropologists were split up into opposing camps by the
question of the fixity of species, and became embroiled in one of the
fiercest controversies of modern times—that of evolution. A subordinate
subject of contention, implicated in the polygenist doctrines, was the
place of the Negro in nature, involving the question of slavery.
[Sidenote: =Origin of Man.=]
Among the ancient philosophers the question of the origin of man was
answered in various ways; some, like Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle,
believed that mankind had always existed, because there never could have
been a beginning of things, relying on the scholastic argument that no
bird could be born without an egg, and no egg without a bird. Epicurus
and Lucretius believed in a “fortuitous cause,” a preparation of fat and
slimy earth, with a long incubation of water and conjunction of heavenly
and planetary bodies. Others, that men and animals “crawled out of the
earth by chance,” “like mushrooms or blite.”
With the spread of Christianity the Mosaic cosmogony became generally
adopted, and monogenism developed into an article of faith. The Church
fulminated against those atheists who admitted doubts on the subject of
Adam and Eve, or believed in the existence of antipodal man, or that man
had existed for more than the 6,000 years allotted to him by Scripture.
If the censure of the Church did not lead to recantation, the heretic
was burnt. A seventeenth-century divine, Dr. Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor
of the University of Cambridge, was even more precise than Archbishop
Ussher: he reached the conclusion that “man was created by the Trinity
on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o’clock in the morning.”[32]
Footnote 32:
Clodd, _Pioneers of Evolution_, quoting from White, _Warfare of
Science with Theology_.
The discovery of the New World dealt a severe blow to the authority of
the Fathers on matters of science. Antipodal man, whom St. Augustine[33]
had extinguished as “excessively absurd,” was found to exist, and the
Spaniards forthwith excused their barbarities to the American natives on
the plea that they were not the descendants of Adam and Eve.
Footnote 33:
_De Civitate Dei._
[Sidenote: =Polygenism and Monogenism.=]
Henceforward the polygenists began to gain ground. Theophrastus
Paracelsus (1520) first asserted the plurality of the races of mankind,
and explained the Mosaic cosmogony as having been written
“theologically—for the weaker brethren.” Vanini (1616) mentions a
belief, entertained by atheists, that man was descended from or allied
to monkeys. In 1655 Isaac de la Peyrère, a Calvinist scholar of
Bordeaux, published in Amsterdam his _Præ-Adamitæ_, to prove that Adam
and Eve were not the first human beings upon the earth; and his work,
being prohibited by authority, became immensely popular.
His theory, though unorthodox, was founded on Scripture, and regarded
Adam and Eve as merely a special and much later creation; the Gentiles,
who peopled the rest of the earth, having been formed from the dust of
the earth, together with the beasts of the field, on the sixth day. The
inhabitants of the New World, which, being separate from the Old, could
not have been peopled with the same race, were of Gentile origin. This
theory was bitterly opposed. The _Parlement_ of Paris caused the book to
be publicly burned. The Inquisition laid hands on the author, and he was
forced to abjure both his Pre-Adamite heresy and his Calvinism. He died
in a convent in 1676.
The writings of the Encyclopedists, the freedom of thought claimed by
Voltaire and Rousseau, together with the classification of species by
Linnæus, emboldened the polygenists. Lord Kames[34] was one of the
earliest exponents in England, and he soon found many followers. Two
separate lines of antagonism may be distinguished in the controversy. In
one—the Anglo-French—Prichard, Cuvier, and de Quatrefages represent the
monogenists, and Virey and Bory de Saint-Vincent the polygenists; the
other, in which America and the slavery question were implicated,
polygenists and anti-abolitionists going hand-in-hand, was represented
by Nott and Gliddon in America, Knox and Hunt in England, and Broca in
France.
Footnote 34:
_Sketches on the History of Man_, 1774.
When materials began to accumulate they were detrimental to the
polygenist theory. Especially was this the case with regard to the proof
of what Broca termed “_eugenesis_”—_i.e._, that all the _Hominidæ_ are,
and always have been, fertile with each other. This, which formed a test
between species and varieties in Botany and Zoology, was claimed also in
Anthropology, and the polygenists had to seek for support elsewhere.
They found it in Linguistics; “language as a test of race” bulked large
in ethnological controversy, and is not yet entirely extinct.
At first the monogenists claimed language as supporting their views. All
languages were to be traced to three sources—Indo-European, Semitic, and
Malay; and these, in their turn, were the offspring of a parent tongue,
now entirely lost. But it was soon found impossible to reconcile even
Aryan and Semitic, and a common parent for all three languages was
inconceivable. The linguistic argument then passed over to the
polygenists.
Hovelacque stated that “the ascertained impossibility of reducing a
multiplicity of linguistic families to a common centre is for us
sufficient proof of the original plurality of the races that have been
developed with them.” M. Chavée[35] went further. “We might,” he says,
“put Semitic children and Indo-European children apart, who had been
taught by deaf mutes, and we should find that the former would naturally
speak a Semitic language, the latter an Aryan language.” F. Müller and
others took up this line of argument, holding that distinct stock
languages proved the existence of distinct stock races. But, as
Professor Keane points out, in his summary of the controversy (1896,
chap. vii.), _quod nimis probat, nihil probat_—what proves too much,
proves nothing—and the hundred or more stock languages in America alone,
reduced the argument to an absurdity.
Footnote 35:
See Topinard, 1878, p. 424.
[Sidenote: =Monogenists.=]
Among the monogenists may be included most of the older
anthropologists—Linnæus, Buffon, Blumenbach, Camper, Prichard, and
Lawrence. Since they held that all mankind was descended from a single
pair (the question as to whether this pair were white, black, or red,
occasioned a further discussion), they had to account for the subsequent
divergence producing the present clearly-recognised varieties; and, in
so doing, anticipated the theory of evolution, which was not clearly
enunciated until the time of Lamarck.
Linnæus believed in fixity of species, but had doubts about the Biblical
account. As a naturalist, he found it difficult to credit the
exceptional nature of a country which had supplied the wants of
zoological species as opposed to one another as the polar bear and the
tropical hippopotamus. Buffon ascribed the variations of man to the
influence of climate and diet. Though Prichard and Lawrence both denied
the possibility of the transmission of acquired characters, Prichard
believed that the transmission of occasional variations might, to some
extent, account for the diversities of races.[36] Lawrence wrote more
clearly: “Racial differences can be explained only by two
principles—namely, the occasional production of an offspring with
different characters from those of the parents, as a native or
congenital variety; and the propagation of such varieties by
generation.” He considered that domestication favoured the production of
these congenital and transmissible variations, and, anticipating the
Eugenic school, deplored the fact that, while so much care and attention
was paid to the breeding of domestic animals, the breeding of man was
left to the vagaries of his own individual fancy.
Footnote 36:
In an essay entitled “A Remarkable Anticipation of Modern Views on
Evolution,” Professor E. B. Poulton draws attention to the ideas
expressed in the first and second editions of the _Researches_, by
Prichard, “one of the most remarkable and clear-sighted of the
predecessors of Darwin and Wallace.... It is an anomaly that such
works as the _Vestiges_ should attract attention, while Prichard’s
keen insight, sound judgment, and balanced reasoning on many aspects
of organic evolution, and especially on the scope of heredity, should
remain unknown.” _Essays on Evolution_, 1908, pp. 192, 175.
[Sidenote: =Lawrence.=]
Sir William Lawrence (1783-1867) was appointed Professor of Anatomy and
Surgery to the Royal College of Surgeons at the early age of thirty-two.
His lectures on “Comparative Anatomy, Physiology, Zoology, and the
Natural History of Man,” delivered between 1816 and 1818, raised an
immediate outcry; and the author (to use his own words) was charged
“with the unworthy design of propagating opinions detrimental to
society, and of endeavouring to enforce them for the purpose of
loosening those restraints in which the welfare of mankind exists.”
Lawrence was forced to bow before the storm of abuse, and announce
publicly that the volumes had been suppressed, as he was refused
copyright. It is interesting to note that these lectures are among those
at present recommended for the use of students of Anthropology.
Lawrence was far in advance of his time, and much of his teaching may be
said to have anticipated the doctrine of evolution. Unfortunately, the
theological protest raised by his lectures—published when he was only
thirty-five—resulted in his forsaking Anthropology altogether, and he
henceforward devoted himself entirely to anatomy and surgery.
[Sidenote: =Lord Monboddo.=]
Another prophet in advance of his times was Lord Monboddo. James Burnett
Monboddo (1714-1799) was regarded as one of the most eccentric
characters of the eighteenth century, mainly on account of his peculiar
views about the origin of society and of language, and his theories as
to the relationship of man with the monkeys. He was deeply interested in
all the current accounts of “tailed men,” thus justifying Dr. Johnson’s
remark that he was “as jealous of his tail as a squirrel.” Later
students of his writings are less struck by these eccentricities, which
afforded endless jests to the wags of the age, than by his scientific
methods of investigation and his acute conclusions. He not only studied
man as one of the animals, but he also studied savages with a view to
elucidating the origin of civilisation.
Many other pre-Darwinian evolutionists might be mentioned, but Professor
Lovejoy’s caution must be noted:—
The premature adoption of a hypothesis is a sin against the
scientific spirit; and the chance acceptance by some enthusiast
of a truth in which, at the time, he has no sound reason for
believing, by no means entitles him to any place of honour in
the history of science.[37]
Footnote 37:
_Pop. Sci. Monthly_, 1909, p. 499.
The first to enunciate a coherent theory of evolution—that of
Transformism or Transmutation—was Lamarck.[38]
Footnote 38:
De Maillet and Robinet had already outlined part of the Lamarckian
doctrine.
[Sidenote: =Lamarck.=]
Lamarck (1744-1829) believed that species were not fixed, but that the
more complex were developed from pre-existent simpler forms. He
attributed the change of species mainly to physical conditions of life,
to crossing, and especially to use or disuse of organs, which not only
resulted in the modification, growth, or atrophy of some, but, under the
stress of necessity, led to the formation of new ones. “_La fonction
fait l’organe._” He also held that changes produced in the individual as
the result of environment were transmitted to the offspring. Organic
life was traced back and back to a small number of primordial germs or
monads, the offspring of spontaneous generation. Man formed no
exception. He was the result of the slow transformation of certain apes.
Lamarck’s views were first published in 1801, and were enlarged in his
_Philosophie Zoologique_, 1809.
[Sidenote: =Cuvier.=]
Lamarck’s chief opponent was Cuvier (1769-1832), Professor of Natural
History and of Comparative Anatomy in Paris, who, besides being the
recognised authority on zoology (his great book, _Le Règne Animal_, was
long the standard work on the subject), was even more renowned as an
anatomist. He upheld the theory of Catastrophe, of alternate
destructions and regenerations, against the new theories of Transformism
and Evolution.
According to this widely accepted belief, the universe was subject to
violent terrestrial revolutions, involving the destruction of all
existing things and the total annihilation of all living beings
belonging to the past epoch.
The theory was by no means new; it was current in the East in the
thirteenth century. In a book written by Mohamed Kaswini on the wonders
of nature, he tells the following tale:—
In passing one day by a very ancient and extremely populous
city, I asked of one of the inhabitants who founded their city.
He replied to me: “I know not, and our ancestors knew no more
than we do on this point.” Five hundred years afterwards,
passing by the same place, I could not perceive a trace of the
city. Inquiring of one of the peasants about the place when it
was that the city was destroyed, he answered me: “What an odd
question you put to me; this country has never been otherwise
than as you see it now.” I returned there after another five
hundred years, and I found in the place of the country I had
seen—a sea. I now asked of the fishermen how long it was since
their country became a sea; and he replied that a person like me
ought to know that it had always been a sea. I returned again
after five hundred years; the sea had disappeared, and it was
now dry land. No one knew what had become of the sea, or if such
a thing had ever existed. Finally, I returned once more after
five hundred years, and I again found a flourishing city. The
people told me that the origin of their city was lost in the
night of time.[39]
Footnote 39:
Quoted from R. Knox, _Anth. Rev._, i., 1863, p. 263.
Cuvier’s position was supported by the evidence brought to France by
Napoleon’s scientific expedition to Egypt (1801). Here were seen numbers
of mummified animals, probably dating back some three to four thousand
years, but showing no appreciable difference from existing types. This
was held to demolish the theory of evolution by proving the immutability
of species.
[Sidenote: =Étienne Saint-Hilaire.=]
Étienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), the zoologist on the
Egyptian expedition, interpreted the results differently, and was one of
the most brilliant supporters of Lamarck. In 1828 he published his
convictions that the same forms have not been perpetuated since the
origin of all things, though he did not believe that existing species
were undergoing modification. Cuvier returned to the charge, and in 1856
propounded his doctrine of the periodical revolutions of the earth, of
the renewal each time of the flora and fauna, and of the incessant and
miraculous intervention of a creative Will. And for a time, owing to his
position and authority, he held the field.
[Sidenote: =Robert Chambers.=]
In 1844 appeared a book which had an enormous influence on the
pre-Darwinian history of Evolution. This was an anonymous work entitled
_Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation_, the authorship of which
was not revealed until the publication of the twelfth edition in 1884.
It was the production of Robert Chambers (1802-1871), co-editor with his
brother William of _Chambers’s Journal_, and author of many books on
Scotland and a few on science. He traced the action of general laws
throughout the universe as a system of growth and development, and held
that the various species of animals and plants had been produced in
orderly succession from each other by the action of unknown laws and the
influence of external conditions. The _Vestiges_ became at once the
centre of scientific discussion, denounced by the orthodox, and held
“not proven” by most of the men of science of the time. Its supporters
were called “Vestigiarian,” a term which implied also “unscientific,”
“sentimental,” and “absurd.”
The curious point is that in the _Vestiges_ we find much of what was
subsequently called the Darwinian theory already enunciated. According
to Wallace, it clearly formulated the conception of evolution through
natural laws, and yet it was denounced by those who soon after were to
become the champions of Darwinism. This was partly due to the way in
which the doctrine was treated and expressed, partly also to the
“needless savagery” of Professor Huxley.
Huxley wrote in 1887: “I must have read the _Vestiges_ ... before 1846;
but, if I did, the book made very little impression on me.... I confess
the book simply irritated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly
unscientific habit of mind manifested by the writer.” Professor
Lovejoy[40] explains the reasons for Huxley’s attitude:—
Footnote 40:
_Loc. cit._
The truth is that Huxley’s strongly emotional and highly
pugnacious nature was held back by certain wholly non-logical
influences from accepting an hypothesis for which the evidence
was practically as potent for over a decade before he accepted
it as it was at the time of his conversion. The book was written
in a somewhat exuberant and rhetorical style. With all its
religious heterodoxy, it was characterised by a certain pious
and edifying tone, and was given to abrupt transitions from
scientific reasoning to mystical sentiment. It contained
numerous blunders in matters of biological and geological
detail; and its author inclined to believe, on the basis of some
rather absurd experimental evidence, in the possibility of
spontaneous generation. All these things were offensive to the
professional standards of an enthusiastic young naturalist,
scrupulous about the rigour of the game, intolerant of vagueness
and of any mixture of the romantic imagination with scientific
inquiry.... He therefore, in 1854, almost outdid the _Edinburgh
Review_ in the ferocity of his onslaught upon the layman who had
ventured to put forward sweeping generalisations upon biological
questions while capable of errors upon particular points which
were palpable to every competent specialist.
Huxley refers to this review as “the only review I ever have had qualms
of conscience about, on the grounds of needless savagery.” Darwin more
mildly described it as “rather hard on the poor author.” Indeed, he
confessed to a certain sympathy with the _Vestiges_; while Wallace, in
1845, expressed a very favourable opinion of the book, describing it as
“an ingenious hypothesis, strongly supported by some striking facts and
analogies.”
The strongest testimony to the value of Chambers’s work is that of Mr.
A. W. Benn, who writes in _Modern England_, 1908, concerning the
_Vestiges_:—
Hardly any advance has since been made on Chambers’s general
arguments, which at the time they appeared would have been
accepted as convincing, but for theological truculence and
scientific timidity. And Chambers himself only gave unity to
thoughts already in wide circulation.... Chambers was not a
scientific expert, nor altogether an original thinker; but he
had studied scientific literature to better purpose than any
professor.... The considerations that now recommend evolution to
popular audiences are no other than those urged in the
_Vestiges_.
[Sidenote: =Herbert Spencer.=]
The next great name among the pre-Darwinian evolutionists is that of
Herbert Spencer. About 1850 he wrote:—
The belief in organic evolution had taken deep root (in my
mind), and drawn to itself a large amount of evidence—evidence
not derived from numerous special instances, but derived from
the general aspects of organic nature and from the necessity of
accepting the hypothesis of evolution when the hypothesis of
special creation had been rejected. The special creation belief
had dropped out of my mind many years before, and I could not
remain in a suspended state: acceptance of the only possible
alternative was imperative.[41]
Footnote 41:
Duncan, _Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer_, 1898, II., 317.
This suspended state, the _tätige Skepsis_ of Goethe, was just what
Huxley was enjoying; in his own words, “Reversing the apostolic precept
to be all things to all men, I usually defended the tenability of
received doctrines, when I had to do with the transmutationists; and
stood up for the possibility of transmutation among the orthodox.”
Thus, up to the date of the publication of the _Origin of Species_,
scientific opinion was roughly divided into two opposing camps: on one
side were the classic, orthodox, catastrophic, or creationist party, who
believed in the fixity of species, and that each species was the result
of special miraculous creation; on the other, the evolutionists or
transmutationists, who rejected special creation, and held that all
species were derived from other species, by some unknown law.
It was the formulation of this unknown law that makes 1859 an epoch in
the history of Anthropology.
[Sidenote: =Charles Darwin.=]
Darwin’s work may best be summed up in the words of his loyal and
self-effacing co-worker, Alfred Russel Wallace:—
Before Darwin’s work appeared the great majority of naturalists,
and almost without exception the whole literary and scientific
world, held firmly to the belief that species were realities,
and had not been derived from other species by any process
accessible to us ... [but] by some totally unknown process so
far removed from ordinary reproduction that it was usually
spoken of as “special creation.”... But now all this is changed.
The whole scientific and literary world, even the whole educated
public, accepts, as a matter of common knowledge, the origin of
species from other allied species by the ordinary process of
natural birth. The idea of special creation or any altogether
exceptional mode of production is absolutely extinct.... And
this vast, this totally unprecedented, change in public opinion
has been the result of the work of one man, and was brought
about in the short space of twenty years.
Huxley describes the attitude towards the theory in the year following
the publication of the _Origin of Species_: “In the year 1860 there was
nothing more volcanic, more shocking, more subversive of everything
right and proper, than to put forward the proposition that, as far as
physical organisation is concerned, there is less difference between man
and the highest apes than there is between the highest apes and the
lowest.... That question was not a pleasant one to handle.” But the
“horrible paradoxes of one generation became the commonplaces of
schoolboys”; and the “startling proposition” of 1860 was, twenty years
later, a “fact that no rational man could dispute.”[42]
Footnote 42:
Add. Brit. Ass., 1878, Dublin.
This question of the difference between man and the apes was embittered
by the personal encounter between Huxley and Owen. Professor Owen, in
1857, stated that the _hippocampus minor_, which characterises the hind
lobe in each hemisphere in the human brain, is peculiar to the genus
_Homo_. This Huxley denied;[43] and, as neither disputant would
acknowledge that he was mistaken, the question became “one of personal
veracity.”
Footnote 43:
“It is not I who seek to base man’s dignity upon his great toe, or to
insinuate that we are lost if an ape has a _hippocampus
minor_.”—_Anth. Rev._, I., 113.
As a possible explanation of this famous dispute, it is interesting to
note the discovery announced by Professor D. J. Cunningham of the
absence of this cavity on one side of the brain of an orang-utan, with
the suggestion that Owen “may in the first instance have been misled by
an abnormal brain of this kind.”[44]
Footnote 44:
Cunn. Mem., II., R.I.A., p. 128.
The further history of the development, expansion, and curtailment of
the Darwinian theory as such lies beyond the scope of this little book.
The criticisms of sexual selection and of the origin of the higher
mental characters of man by Wallace; the denial of the inheritability of
acquired characters by August Weismann and others; the orthogenesis
theory of Theodore Eimer, the “mutation” theory of Hugo de Vries and
Mendel’s researches—all opened up lively controversies, and the field of
science is still clouded with the smoke of their battles.
The ferment provoked by the publication of Darwin’s _Origin of Species_
profoundly affected, as was natural, the nascent science of
Anthropology. At the meeting of the British Association in Nottingham in
1866 Dr. James Hunt read an address before the Anthropological
Department to show that “the recent application of Mr. Darwin’s
hypothesis of ‘natural selection’ to anthropology by some of Mr.
Darwin’s disciples is wholly unwarranted either by logic or by
facts.”[45] In this address he said that he still believed the deduction
he had made three years previously—“that there is as good reason for
classifying the negro as a distinct. species from the European as there
is for making the ass a distinct species from the zebra; and if, in
classification, we take intelligence into consideration, there is a far
greater difference between the negro and the European than between the
gorilla and chimpanzee.” He insisted that “anthropologists are bound to
take the totality of the characteristics of the different types of man
into consideration. “It is to be regretted, however,” Dr. Hunt
continues, “that there are many writers in Germany who have recently
written as though the question of man’s place in nature were settled”;
but he is delighted to find that “Professor Carl Vogt is doing all he
can to show the fallacy of the unity hypothesis.” He quotes Professor
Vogt as saying: “This much is certain, that each of these anthropoid
apes has its peculiar characters by which it approaches man.... If, in
the different regions of the globe, anthropoid apes may issue from
different stocks, we cannot see why these different stocks should be
denied further development into the human type, and that only one stock
should possess this privilege. The further we go back in history the
greater is the contrast between individual types, the more opposed are
the characters.”
Footnote 45:
_Anth. Rev._, iv., 320.
The controversies and discussions of this period were not confined to
those who had technical knowledge or scientifically trained minds. All
sorts of people joined in the fray, mainly because they fancied that the
new ideas were subversive of “revealed religion”; but it would serve no
useful purpose to recall the false statements and bitter expressions
that were bandied about. Some had merely a sentimental objection to the
doctrine of evolution; but at the present day most people would
subscribe to the declaration of Broca, who wrote: “Quant à moi, je
trouve plus de gloire à monter qu’à descendre et si j’admettais
l’intervention des impressions sentimentales dans les sciences, je
dirais que j’aimerais mieux être un singe perfectionné qu’un Adam
dégénéré.”[46]
Footnote 46:
_Mémoires d’Anthropologie_, iii., p. 146.
[Sidenote: =The Negro’s Place in Nature.=]
Another controversy, which, though mainly political in origin, cleft the
ranks of the anthropologists, arose from the slavery question. Clarkson
had started his agitation for the abolition of the slave trade about
1782, and during the early years of the nineteenth century many
unsuccessful attempts were made to bring the system to an end in
America. In 1826 over a hundred anti-slavery societies were in
existence, mainly in the middle belt of the States, while the Cotton
States were equally unanimous and vehement in opposition. Feeling
naturally ran high; riots, murders, lynchings, raids, and general
lawlessness characterised the agitation on both sides, and added fuel to
the flames which finally dissolved the Union in 1860. At home the
question was hotly debated, and popular feeling was excited by the
speeches of Clarkson and Wilberforce, and, most of all, by the
publication of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ (1852). Being mainly a question of
race, Anthropology was soon implicated, monogenists and polygenists
naturally ranked themselves on opposite sides, and the Ethnological
Society became a strong partisan of the philanthropists and
abolitionists.
In the midst of the excitement James Hunt, Honorary Fellow of the
Ethnological Society and President of the newly formed Anthropological
Society, read (1863) his paper on “The Negro’s Place in Nature.”[47] In
this he carefully examined all the evidence on the subject, physical and
psychical, and arrived at the conclusion that “the negro is
intellectually inferior to the European, and that the analogies are far
more numerous between the ape and negro than between the ape and the
European”; moreover, that “the negro becomes more humanised when in his
natural subordination to the European than under any other
circumstances,” “that the negro race can only be humanised and civilised
by Europeans,” and “that European civilisation is not suited to the
negro’s requirements or character.” An abstract of the paper was read by
Dr. Hunt at the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle, 1863,
where the presence of an eloquent coloured speaker enlivened the
subsequent discussion.[48] A tremendous outcry greeted the publication
of this paper, and tightened the tension on the already strained
relations between the two societies. Fierce denunciations from Exeter
Hall and the “broad-brimmed school of philanthropists” were matched by
equally vehement applause from the opposing camp. When Dr. Hunt died, a
few years later, the following obituary notice, extracted from a New
York paper, appeared in the _Anthropological Review_,[49] under the
heading “Death of the Best Man in England”:—
Footnote 47:
_Mem. Anth._, I., p. i.
Footnote 48:
_Anth. Rev._, i., p. 386.
Footnote 49:
January, 1870, p. 97.
We are pained to hear of the death of Dr. James Hunt, beyond
doubt the best, or at all events the most useful, man in
England, if not, indeed, in Europe. The man that leads all
other men in knowledge essential to human well-being, that
thus extends the bounds of human happiness, and best
illustrates the wisdom and beneficence of the Almighty Creator
to His creatures, is, _per se_ and of necessity, the best man
of his generation; and such a man was the late Dr. James Hunt
of England.... Dr. Hunt, in his own clear knowledge and brave
enthusiasm, was doing more for humanity, for the welfare of
mankind, and for the glory of God, than all the philosophers,
humanitarians, philanthropists, statesmen, and, we may say,
bishops and clergy of England together.... His death at the
early age of thirty-six is a great loss to England, to
Christendom, to all mankind; for, though there are many others
labouring in the same great cause, especially in France and
Germany, there was no European of this generation so clear and
profound in the science of humanity as Dr. Hunt.
A serious discussion of the anatomical and psychological relation of the
negro to the European is still to the fore, especially in the United
States of North America. But even as late as 1900 a book was published
in America with the following title, and we have been informed that it
has had a very large sale in the Southern States:—
THE NEGRO A BEAST; or, “IN THE IMAGE OF GOD.” _The Reasoner of
the Age, the Revelator of the Century! The Bible as it is! The
Negro and His Relation to the Human Family!_ The Negro a beast,
but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may be of
service to his master—the White man. _The Negro not the Son of
Ham_, neither can it be proven by the Bible, and the argument of
the theologian who would claim such, melts to mist before the
thunderous and convincing arguments of this masterful book. By
Charles Carroll, who has spent fifteen years of his life and
$20,000.00 in its compilation. Published by American Book and
Bible House, St. Louis, Mo., 1900.
The publishers are “convinced that when this book is read ... it will be
to the minds of the American people like unto the voice of God from the
clouds appealing unto Paul on his way to Damascus.”
This preposterous book could appeal only to the ignorant and bigoted,
and we mention it merely as an extreme instance of the difficulties
against which science has sometimes to contend when dealing with burning
social questions.
The latest word on this subject is by Professor F. Boas, who believes
that the negro in his physical and mental make-up is not similar to the
European. “There is, however, no proof whatever that these differences
signify any appreciable degree of inferiority of the negro ... for these
racial differences are much less than the range of variation found in
either race considered by itself.... The anatomy of the American negro
is not well known; and, notwithstanding the oft-repeated assertions
regarding the hereditary inferiority of the mulatto, we know hardly
anything on the subject.”[50] The real problem in America is the
mulatto, since “the conditions are such that the persistence of the pure
negro type is practically impossible.”
Footnote 50:
Franz Boas, “Race Problems in America,” _Science_, N.S. xxix., p. 848,
1909.
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