of America--to Cape Horn, and to the island off it, which projects
its desolate rocks into one of the most inhospitable climates in
the world. The inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego are perhaps the most
degraded among the races of mankind. How could they be otherwise?
“Their country,” says Mr. Darwin, “is a broken mass of wild rocks,
lofty hills, and useless forests; and these are viewed through mists
and endless storms. The habitable land is reduced to the stones of
the beach. In search of food they are compelled to wander unceasingly
from spot to spot, and so steep is the coast that they can only
move about in their wretched canoes.” They are habitual cannibals,
killing and eating their old women before they kill their dogs, for
the sufficient reason, as explained by themselves--“Doggies catch
otters, old women no.” Well might Darwin add, “While beholding these
savages one asks, Whence have they come? What could have tempted, or
what change compelled, a tribe of men to leave the fine regions of
the north, to travel down the Cordillera, or backbone of America, to
invent and build canoes which are not used by the tribes of Chili,
Peru, and Brazil, and then to enter on one of the most inhospitable
countries within the limits of the globe?” There can be but one
explanation. Quarrels and wars between tribe and tribe, induced by
the mere increase of numbers and the consequent pressure on the means
of subsistence, have been always, ever since man existed, driving
the weaker races further and further from the older settlements
of mankind. And when the ultimate points of the habitable world
are reached, the conditions of existence cause and necessitate a
savage and degraded life. Darwin gives the true explanation of their
condition when he says, “How little can the higher powers of the
mind be brought into play! What is there for imagination to picture,
for reason to compare, for judgment to decide upon?” The case of the
Fuegians is a case in which there can be no doubt whatever of the
causes of their degraded condition. On every side of them, and in
proportion as we recede from their wretched country, the surrounding
tribes are less wretched and better acquainted with the simpler arts.
And it is remarkable that in the case of this people we have proof
of another point of great interest and importance, viz., this--that
even the most degraded savages have all the perfect attributes of
humanity, which can be and are developed the moment they are placed
under favorable conditions. Captain Fitzroy had in 1830 carried
off some of these people to England, where they were taught the
habits and the arts of civilized life. Of one of these, who was
taken back to his own country in the _Beagle_, Mr. Darwin tells us
that his “intellect was good,” and of another that he had a “nice
disposition.” We see, therefore, that every fact and circumstance
connected with the Fuegians agrees with the supposition that their
“utter barbarism” was due entirely to the cruel conditions of their
life, and the wretched country into which they had been driven. The
Bushmen of South Africa are another case in point. It seems to be
clearly ascertained that they belong to the same race as other tribes
who are far less degraded, and that they are simply the descendants
of outcasts driven to the woods and rocks. So, again, among the great
islands of the Pacific, the natives of Van Diemen’s Land were the
most utterly degraded of all the Polynesian races.
With these facts staring us in the face, connecting themselves in
an obvious order with causes which we know to be all operating in
one direction, is it not absurd to argue that the condition of these
outcasts of the human family can be assumed as representing the
aboriginal condition of man? Is it not certain that whatever advances
toward civilization may have been made among their progenitors, such
advances must necessarily have been lost under the conditions to
which their children are reduced?
And now we can better estimate the value to be set on the arguments
which have been founded on the rude implements found in the river
drifts and in the caves of Northern Europe. I, for one, accept the
evidence which geology affords that these implements are of very
ancient date. I accept too the evidence which that science affords,
that these implements were in all probability the ice hatchets and
rude knives used by tribes which toward the close of the glacial age
had pushed their way to the furthest limits of the lands which were
then habitable. And what follows? The inevitable conclusion is, that
it must be about as safe to argue from those implements as to the
condition of man at that time, in the countries of his primeval home,
as it would be in our own day to argue from the habits and arts of
the Eskimo as to the state of civilization in London or in Paris.
RACES OF MANKIND
--WILLIAM HUGHES
It is estimated that the earth is inhabited, at the present time, by
1,450 millions of human beings, who are distributed over its surface
in the manner shown in the following table:
----------------+-----------------+---------------+--------------
| Area in British | Population | Population to
| square miles | | square mile
----------------+-----------------+---------------+--------------
Europe | 3,700,000 | 320,000,000 | 86
Asia | 17,000,000 | 830,000,000 | 47
Africa | 12,000,000 | 200,000,000 | 16
North America | | |
(including | 8,600,000 | 68,000,000 | 8
West Indies) | | |
South America | 7,000,000 | 28,000,000 | 4
Oceania | 3,000,000 | 4,000,000 | 1
----------------+-----------------+---------------+--------------
Europe is, therefore, relatively to its size, by much the most
populous division of the globe, though Asia contains the highest
number of inhabitants--amounting, indeed, to little less than
two-thirds of the entire human race. The New World is very much
less populated by man than the older known portions of the globe,
though its capabilities for the support of man fully equal those of
any of the continents of the Eastern Hemisphere. Australia, and
the scattered islands of the Pacific Ocean, are the least populous
portions of the earth, the total present number of their inhabitants
amounting to a mere fraction of the entire number.[13]
The numerical distribution of mankind undergoes great change in the
present day, when emigration from over-populated lands to distant
parts of the globe is conducted on so extensive a scale. But this
affects the distribution of _race_ in much higher measure than it
does the merely numerical distribution of man. The fast-increasing
numbers of the settlers in the fertile plains and river valleys of
the New World, descendants of European colonists, perhaps hardly more
than replaces, numerically, the native races who occupied the same
regions prior to the first visit of the white man to their shores.
It is the tendency, everywhere, of the native races to decay before
the white settler. Wars, famine, epidemic diseases, and various
social causes, again, tend to keep down the total number of the human
family--at any rate, to check the more rapid numerical growth which
it would otherwise exhibit.
The generally recognized ethnological division of mankind, with
reference to race, is into three leading families--the Caucasian,
Mongolian, and Negro. Two other families--the Malay and the
American--are commonly added to these, making five in the total. The
first-named division is that suggested by the illustrious French
naturalist, Cuvier. The five-fold division is due to the German
philosopher, Blumenbach. In the scheme of the former, the Malay and
American are regarded as sub-varieties--the one of the Caucasian and
the other of the Mongolian family. Other writers again enumerate
a much greater number of varieties of mankind, each possessing
characters sufficiently distinct to entitle it to be regarded as a
separate family.
[In using the word _race_, as applied to different families
of man, the division must be understood as implying “variety”
only--not species. There is no _specific_ difference in the
various members of the human family--no difference, that is,
which implies anything in contradiction to the assumption that
all mankind have had a common origin, springing from a single
pair. The human family differs in this regard from all the lower
members of the animal kingdom. The order “bimana” (_i. e._,
_two-handed_), to which, in scientific classification, man is
referred, comprises only a single genus, and a single species.
The characteristic points of difference between the great
families of mankind above referred to are the color of the skin,
eyes, and hair (with the nature of the latter, whether curled,
lank, woolly, or frizzled), and the shape of the skull. All
other physical differences, as regards stature, form of limbs,
and general outline of body, seem capable of ready explanation
by reference to opposite conditions of climate, food, and habits
of social life. But between the Caucasian and the Negro, or the
latter and the Mongol, there is a broad and strongly marked
difference, and one that extends over the whole historic period.]
The distinguishing attributes of the Caucasian race, physically
considered, are the oval form of the skull with the generally
symmetrical shape of the entire head and frame of body. The face is
of oval form, the features moderately prominent, the forehead arched,
the cheek-bones only slightly projecting, the mouth small, the chin
full and round; with the skin generally of light color (varying,
however, from white to a deep brown, or swarthy, hue), the eyes
and hair of various hue, and the latter often curling. The facial
angle[14] is greater in the case of the Caucasian than in either of
the other varieties of mankind.
The epithet Caucasian, applied to this branch of the human family,
is derived from the high mountain range which stretches between the
Black and Caspian Seas, and is justified by the fact that the finest
specimens of man--physically considered--have in all ages been found
in proximity to that region. The perfect forms and external beauty of
the Circassian and Georgian people--male and female alike--are well
known. The finest types of the white race (mere physical beauty alone
being considered) are to be found within the elevated region of the
Caucasian isthmus; and it has even been sought to show that the human
form degenerates in proportion as its distance thence, in whatsoever
direction, is increased. To the westward of the Caucasus (whatever
may be the case in other directions), the grace which attends on
moral and intellectual dignity is, however, added to that of merely
personal beauty.
Considered in reference to color, the Caucasian is the _white_
variety of the human family; but the latter epithet must be
considered as applicable only in a general sense, for numerous
shades of color intervene between the swarthy complexions of the
sub-tropical regions that border on the Mediterranean and the fair
skins of the people of Northern and Northwestern Europe. These
differences are doubtless in some measure dependent on climate. Yet
there must be a well-grounded difference due to other causes, since
families of whites dwell during several successive generations within
the tropics without acquiring the hue of the Negro, or settle within
the western continent without gaining any external resemblance to the
copper-colored native of the New World.
The geographical distribution of the Caucasian family in the present
day is nearly co-extensive with the land area of the globe; but
this family of nations is most numerously developed within the
temperate latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Western Asia, the
European continent (with the exception of a portion in the extreme
north), and the northern belt of Africa, are the proper home of the
Caucasian tribes. Thence they have colonized nearly every part of the
New World, as well as Southern Africa and the more distant regions
of Australia and New Zealand, at the opposite side of the globe.
Nine-tenths of the population of Europe belong to the Caucasian
family of man, the small minority who constitute the exception
consisting of the Turks, the Magyars, the Finns, the Laplanders, and
the Samoiedes. In Asia, the Caucasian nations form but a minority
of its vast population; they include, however, the natives of the
Arabian or Semitic stock, the Persians, the Afghans, and perhaps also
(such, at least, is the generally received theory) the Hindoos--that
is, all the people dwelling to the south of the Himalaya and to the
west of the Bay of Bengal. In Africa, the proportion of Caucasians
to its population is probably small, though they are spread over the
whole of Northern Africa, from the Mediterranean to the southern
border of the desert, and the furthest limit of Abyssinia.
In America, the Caucasian family--settling in that part of the world
as colonists only within the last three centuries and a half--is
fast supplanting the indigenous races, and comprehends two-thirds of
the total number of its inhabitants in the present day. Within the
temperate latitudes of North America, that is, within the valleys of
the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, with the Atlantic seaboard from
the Gulf of St. Lawrence southward, the white race is most numerous.
Five-sixths of the present population of North America belong, either
in whole or in part, to the Caucasian stock.
In the case of Australia, the diminution in the numbers of the
native race has been even more rapid than in the case of the Western
Continent. The white race, whose date of settlement on the Australian
shores is as yet hardly more than three-quarters of a century, now
vastly outnumbers the indigenous tribes. In Tasmania, the latter have
indeed become extinct. Even in New Zealand, which was peopled by an
athletic tribe of savages when Captain Cook visited it less than a
century since, the colonial population, planted on its shores within
the last forty years, now greatly outnumbers the native tribes,
which, moreover, undergo gradual diminution in numerical amount.
The Mongolian variety of man is distinguished by a greater approach
to squareness in the shape of the skull (viewed from above), with
greater prominence in the cheek-bones--so that lines prolonged
from the sides of the face upward meet in a point, giving the
entire framework of the head a pyramidal shape. The forehead is
comparatively low and slanting; the face and nose broad and flat;
the eyes deeply sunk, with the inner corner slanting toward the
nose; the complexion of an olive or yellowish-brown color, the
hair lank and black, the beard scanty, the stature below that of
Europeans, and the frame generally broad, square, and robust, with
high shoulders, and the neck thick and strong. These attributes are
much less strongly marked in the case of some nations of Mongol
parentage than in others, and in the instances of the Magyars, Turks,
and Finns--long settled among the Caucasian family--have in great
measure disappeared. In point of color, the Mongolian is known as the
_yellow_ variety of mankind.
The name of Mongolian, applied to this branch of the human family, is
derived from the nomad races who peopled the upland plains of Central
Asia. It comprehends, besides the Mongols proper, the vast population
of China (above a third of the entire human family), together with
the Burmese, Siamese, and other inhabitants of the southeastern
peninsula of Asia, and the native tribes of the Siberian lowland.
The Turks and the Magyars, in Southeastern and Central Europe, the
Finns, Samoiedes, and Laplanders, in the extreme north of the same
continent, and the Eskimos, in the correspondent latitudes of the New
World, belong to the same stock. In all, probably three-fifths of the
population of Asia, and more than a half of the population of the
globe, are comprehended within this division of mankind.
The Negro, or _black_ variety of mankind, is distinguished in general
by the elongated form of the skull, combined with a low facial angle.
The eyes, as well as the skin, are black; the nose broad, flat,
and thick; the cheek-bones prominent; the lips thick; the jaws
(especially the lower one) narrow and projecting; the hair woolly;
the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet flat; and the forms
of the arms and lower extremities generally clumsy and ungraceful.
These attributes, however, are very much modified in the case of some
members of the Negro race, and they belong in very various degree to
the different Negro nations who inhabit the African continent. The
black skin, woolly hair, thick lips, and elongated skull are the most
striking features of the Negro race.
Africa, to the south of the desert, is the proper home of the Negro
race. Tribes of true Negro stock occupy by far the larger portion
of that great continent to the southward of the Senegal, the Niger,
the basin of Lake Chad, and the highlands of Abyssinia. The Arabs,
however, have penetrated Central Africa within the basins of the
Niger and Lake Chad, and have been settled for upward of five
centuries upon the coasts of Eastern Africa.
The Hottentot and Caffre families, who inhabit the extreme south of
the African continent, must be classed as sub-varieties of the Negro
stock. The epithet _negroid_ is generally applied to these races.
But between the Hottentot and Negro types there is a well-marked
distinction, and not less so between the Hottentot and the Caffre
families. The color of the Hottentot is a dark and yellowish brown;
the hair short and frizzled, and distributed over the head in tufts;
the stature short. The Caffres are well made and (comparatively to
their neighbors of Hottentot race) of muscular frame--their limbs
of rounded form, their skin of deep brown color, their hair short,
black, and curly, but less woolly than that of the Negro.
The Negro race, through the iniquities of the slave-trade, has been
transplanted from Africa to the other side of the Atlantic, and now
forms a considerable item in the population of the New World. In
North America, the people of pure Negro blood amount, however, to
hardly more than a twelfth part of the total population; in South
America the proportion is perhaps rather more considerable.
The Malay, or brown family of nations, is distinguished, besides the
color of the skin, by lank, coarse, and black hair; with flat faces
and obliquely set eyes. Their stature is below the average height
either of the Caucasian or the Negro, and the figure generally square
and robust.
If the nations of the Malay family are to be referred to one of the
three greater divisions, they must be regarded as a sub-variety
either of the Mongol or the Negro stock. Proximity of geographical
position, with other circumstances, would lead us to prefer the
former. The Papuans, however, who inhabit New Guinea and the adjacent
islands to the eastward, exhibit many of the characteristics of the
Negro type, and the native race of Australia is of the Papuan or
Austral-Negro family. There is, in truth, throughout the Australian
and Polynesian division of the globe, a well-marked distinction
between the brown and the black races. The former, who belong to the
true Malay family, comprehend, with the Malays proper (that is, the
bulk of the inhabitants of the Malay peninsula and the adjacent
islands), the people of Madagascar; also the New Zealanders, and the
inhabitants of most of the smaller Polynesian archipelagoes, from
the Sandwich Islands on the north to the Society, Navigators, and
Friendly groups in the south. The Austral-Negro or Papuan division,
on the other hand, includes the native tribes of the Australian
continent and the adjacent island of Tasmania (the latter now all
but extinct), with the inhabitants of New Guinea, the Louisiade
archipelago, New Britain, the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, New
Caledonia, and the Fiji Islands.
The American, or red variety of mankind, has its home in the two
great continents which are together known as the New World. Its
distinguishing attributes are a reddish or copper-colored skin, with
long, coarse, black hair (which is never crisped like that of the
Negro, or curled, as that of the white often is), and scanty beard.
The cheek-bones are prominent, but more arched and rounded than those
of the Mongol, without being so angular, or projecting at the sides;
the orbit generally deep, and the outer angle slightly elevated. In
point of temperament, the Indian (as the native inhabitant of the
American wilderness is termed) is cold and phlegmatic to an unusual
degree, and he manifests an extraordinary insensibility to bodily
pain. His bodily senses--of sight, hearing, and smell--are remarkably
acute. These, as well as many other attributes of the Indian race,
have probably resulted from the conditions of the hunter’s life,
pursued through many generations.
The above characteristics, however, are exhibited in widely
different measure in the case of the numerous native tribes and
nations that are found through the whole wide extent of the American
continent, though all of them (with the exception of the Eskimos)
are classed under the common term Indian. The native races of South
America are generally further removed than those of North America
from the higher type of the American family, and they become
progressively more degraded toward its furthest extremity. Some of
the Indian tribes who dwell in the Brazilian forest exhibit a degree
of personal ugliness, and a degradation of condition in general,
which contrasts strikingly with that of the higher classes of North
American Indians, and the native savages of Tierra del Fuego are
among the most misshapen and degraded of the human race. In these and
some other cases the distortion of feature, and even that observable
in the shape of the head, is produced by artificial means, applied in
infancy.
The Indian family of nations makes, perhaps, nearer approach to the
Mongol than to either of the other two great divisions of mankind,
and must be regarded as a sub-variety of that family, if three great
varieties only be allowed. The Eskimos, who inhabit the extreme
northern shores of the New World, are uniformly regarded as of Mongol
origin.
THE HUMAN RACE
--LOUIS FIGUIER
What is man? A profound thinker, Cardinal de Bonald, has said:
“Man is an intelligence assisted by organs.” We would fain adopt
this definition, which brings into relief the true attribute of
man, intelligence, were it not defective in drawing no sufficient
distinction between man and the brute. It is a fact that animals
are intelligent and that their intelligence is assisted by organs.
But their intelligence is infinitely inferior to that of man. It
does not extend beyond the necessities of attack and defence, the
power of seeking food, and a small number of affections or passions,
whose very limited scope merely extends to material wants. With
man, on the other hand, intelligence is of a high order, although
its range is limited, and it is often arrested, powerless and mute,
before the problems itself proposes. In bodily formation man is an
animal, he lives in a material envelope, of which the structure
is that of the Mammalia; but he far surpasses the animal in the
extent of his intellectual faculties. The definition of man must
therefore establish this relation which animals bear to ourselves,
and indicate, if possible, the degree which separates them. For this
reason we shall define man: _an organized, intelligent being, endowed
with the faculty of abstraction_.
By saying that man appeared for the first time upon the globe at the
commencement of the Quaternary Period, we establish the fact, which
is agreeable to the cosmogony of Moses, that man was formed after
the other animals, and that by his advent he crowned the edifice of
animal creation.
At the Quaternary Period almost all the animals of our time had
already seen the light, and a certain number of animal species
existed which were shortly to disappear. When man was created,
the mammoth, the great bear, the cave tiger, and the cervus
megaceros--animals more bulky, more robust, and more agile than the
corresponding species of our time--filled the forests and peopled the
plains. The first men were therefore contemporary with the woolly
elephant, the cave bear and tiger; they had to contend with these
savage phalanxes, as formidable in their number as their strength.
Nevertheless, in obedience to the laws of nature, these animals were
to disappear from the globe and give place to smaller or different
species, while man, persisting in the opposite direction, increased
and multiplied, as the Scripture has said, and gradually spread into
all inhabitable countries, taking possession of his empire, which
daily increased with the progress of his intelligence.
Did man see the light at any one spot of the earth, and at that
alone, and is it possible to indicate the region which was, so to
say, the cradle of humanity? Or are we to believe that, in the first
instance, man appeared in several places at the same time? That he
was created and has always remained in the very localities he now
inhabits? That the Negro was born in the burning regions of Central
Africa, the Laplander or the Mongolian in the cold regions to which
he is now confined?
There is a school of philosophers who assert that man was manifold in
his creation, that each type of humanity originated in the region to
which it is now attached, and that it was not emigration followed by
the action of climate, circumstances, and customs which gave birth to
the different races of man. This opinion has been upheld in a work by
M. Georges Pouchet, son of the well-known naturalist of Rouen.
If there existed several centres of human creation, they should
be indicated, and it should be shown that the men who dwell there
nowadays have never been connected with other populations. M. Georges
Pouchet preserves prudent silence upon this question; he avoids
defining the locus of any one of these supposed multiple creations.
We, on our part, think that man had on the globe one centre of
creation, that, fixed in the first instance in a particular region,
he has radiated in every direction from that point, and by his
wanderings, coupled with the rapid multiplication of his descendants,
he has ultimately peopled all the inhabitable regions of the earth.
We need hardly say that animals, like plants, are attached to various
localities which they rarely quit with impunity, since they have not
the faculty of acclimatizing themselves at will. The elephant lives
only in India and in certain parts of Africa; the hippopotamus and
giraffe in other countries of the same continent; monkeys exist in
very few portions of the globe, and if we consider their different
species, we shall find that the place of abode of each species is
very limited. For instance, of the larger apes the orang-outang is
found only in Borneo and Sumatra, and the gorilla in a small corner
of Western Africa. Had man originated in all those places where now
his different races are found, he would stand alone as an exception
among organized beings.