semblance of proof whatever. Let our readers judge;--we have quoted
very fully. Notice, moreover, the phrase "earlier rise of civilization
in the Old World." But who knows that it rose earlier in the Old World?
Or who cares? Who argues therefrom? The point is, that it rose higher,
immeasurably higher, in the Old World; but this, the kernel, is not
mentioned. All this was mere "chance"! Yes, perhaps; in the same sense
that the higher rise of the Himalayas than of the Andes was mere
"chance"; that the richer fauna and flora of the Old World were mere
"chance"; that the greater energy and stature and cranial capacity of
the Aryan were mere "chance"; in the same sense that everything in
Euclidean space is a mere "chance". In order to justify any assertion,
it will suffice to enlarge sufficiently the meaning of your terms. But
we do not think that the cause of truth is prospered by such methods.
Some one may ask, however, is there not some grain of correctness in
this contention that capacity cannot always be measured by achievement?
We grant it cheerfully, and we applaud our opponent and his school for
calling this connection in question, and bidding the current assumption
answer for itself. We, too, would "test all things," but we would also
"hold fast the good." The savant has been unscientific in his
procedure; he has gone too far; he has thrown out the baby with the
bath. He has neglected the central principles of the doctrine of
probability. If there be two members of two families, and one succeeds
greatly in life, along this path and that, while the other fails here,
there, everywhere, we are strongly tempted to ascribe higher faculty to
the one than to the other. Yet we may very well be wrong. The latter
might put up a plausible defence. He might reason as this school has
done. He might say that the game was called too soon, that various
circumstances continually favoured his rival, that in a perfectly fair
field he would have shown himself at least equal. All, then, that we
could say would be, that the Inverse Probability was somewhat against
him. His failure is a fact: it may have been due to lower faculty, it
may have been due to something else; but it stands against him, and it
raises a certain probability of inferiority. No such failure stands
against the other. No such probability of inferior faculty is
suggested, though it remains barely possible that he was really
inferior.
But now, suppose there are a million or a trillion in each of the two
families; and of these the one trillion attain varying but splendid
success along every line of endeavour, while the other trillion fail,
more or less completely, along the same lines. What, then, shall we
say? What, then, must we say? Unhesitatingly, that there must have been
a very decided difference of average faculty. While we might admit the
measurable possibility that chance and time and circumstance played a
conspicuous and even a determining part in the fortunes of the one
pair, yet we could by no means admit the like for any great number of
pairs; and when the number of pairs becomes enormously great, the
possibility in question becomes vanishingly small--too small to be
dealt with in any system of our thought. Here is the given effect:
success of the one class, failure of the other. What the cause? Is it
mainly, at least, an (average) uniform difference of faculty? This
cause is simple and intelligible and self-repeating; if it worked in
one case, it would work in all cases and explain everything as easily
as any one thing. But the other cause, the conspiracy of chance and
time and circumstance, is not self-repeating, and however great the
likelihood of a single such chance combination, the likelihood of
innumerable such repetitions is inexpressibly small--on the same
principle that the chance of throwing heads once is one-half, but the
chance of throwing them consecutively twice is only one-fourth, and
thrice is only one-eighth, and so on. We need not parade here the
mathematical formulae for the reckoning of the so-called inverse
probability of each of these two hypotheses. Common sense tells us at
once that the difference of faculty is practically certain, the
chance-effect or coincidence-effect is practically impossible.
Now, such is the case really presented. On the one side, the
generations of generations of Caucasians; all have distinguished
themselves by high and varied achievements along every line of activity
yet opened up to man. On the other hand, the primitives--the backward
races of Australia, particularly of Africa; they seem scarcely yet
quite conscious. Not one has done anything historical. The failure is
complete and universal. That this uniform and immense diversity is a
mere accident, the age-long result of a fortuitous concourse of
circumstances, or ascriptible to any such trivialities as those
enumerated, is almost incalculably improbable, except we expand the
term accident to include the laws of gravitation and the conservation
of energy. We might as well say that the different behaviours of two
bodies of oxygen and hydrogen were to be "explained as a chance," and
did not argue any greater mass in the average molecule of the former.
This conclusion would hold, even if the higher faculty of the Caucasian
were antecedently extremely improbable; the _a priori_ unlikelihood
would become _a posteriori_, in view of the facts of history, a
practical certainty. However, the case is immeasurably stronger. For a
difference in faculty, not merely in kind, but also in degree of
faculty, is not only not improbable _a priori_--it is probable almost
to certainty. All nature around us is one endless spectacle of such
diversities. Equality is absolutely unknown. This observation is
altogether too trite to dwell on. Will any one deny that the degrees of
faculty are often inexpressibly apart in members of the same family?
Did any amount of opportunity serve to raise any other member of the
Bonaparte family quite to the level of the first Napoleon? If, then,
such inherent disparities in individuals be undeniable, is parity among
tribes or races to be expected? Is it not, in fact, antecedently
incredible? To us it seems no more unlikely that one race should be
superior to another than that one man should be taller, or one mountain
range higher, or one ocean deeper, than another. The question of
equality or inequality between two races of men is a mere question of
present facts, to be settled without any bias, now and here, precisely
as you would settle the like question between the Numidian lion and the
Colorado cougar. And when some one pleads for the backward "primitives"
that they need only a little more time, a few millenniums, we answer
once more: Very possibly; but time may be all that the jaguar needs to
surpass the tiger, or the ant to rival the eagle.
So much, then, for the historical argument. As already brought forward
in our Chapter Two, it is shaken by the scruples presented even as an
oak is shaken by a zephyr.
Let us now pass to the anatomical argument (p. 308). "There is no doubt
that great differences exist in the physical characteristics of the
races of man." But these cannot, of themselves, decide the question of
superiority. While skin, hair, lips, and nose "distinguish the African
negro clearly," yet Americans (aboriginal) have occasionally skin,
lips, nose, but not hair, mistakable "for those of a negro." In
general, variations in any race over-lap variations in another, showing
that "existing differences are not fundamental" (whatever that may
mean). It is held that the varying proportions of the body may be
rather cultural than racial, like the differences between wild and
domesticated animals (Fritsch). "The differences which cannot be
explained by functional causes are few in number and they are not of
such a character as to stamp one race as lower than the other."
Conceded. But notice here the logical process. Whatever _can_ be
explained functionally "must" be explained functionally; a functional
cause that is _possible_ is held to be _ipso facto_ certain; racial
causes are antecedently so extremely improbable as to be admissible
only under extreme compulsion. Now this is altogether vicious. The case
is just the reverse. It is the functional causes that are pressed into
service, that remain mere possibilities. Even at the utmost they refuse
to explain all the differences. Some "few" are admitted to be racial.
But, as some are certainly racial, then all or at least most may be
racial, the invocation of supposed functional causes becomes
unnecessary, and the cultural explanation improbable. We may apply the
razor of Occam: _Entia non multiplicanda sunt praeter necessitatem._
We pass now to theromorphisms among the lower races (p. 310). For
example, in man the temporal and frontal bones are separated by the
sphenoid and parietal, but in the ape the temporal encroaches on the
second pair and meets the frontal. This simian formation is found
occasionally among all races, but "more frequently among primitive
people." However, it is thought "probably" due to "malnutrition in
early infancy," and to be no indication of closer kinship to the ape.
There follow (p. 310) some half dozen other variations, long thought to
be characteristic, that "occur all over the world,"--"but the degree of
variability is not everywhere the same." "Presumably such variations"
"have not yet" "become stable," but are "still in process of
evolution." "It might seem," then, that the races in which they "are
more stable" are "more highly organized." It is said that "this would
refer, however, only to such features as are not caused by the
influence of environment." Moreover, "it may be that the greater
variability of certain races, in regard to these phenomena, is not an
expression of a lower degree of development of the whole group, but of
the presence of a great number of members of a family which possessed
the peculiar character".
It is needless to contest or criticise such ingenious maybes. It is
enough to note, once again, the logic. It is not denied that _prima
facie_ all these phenomena suggest and indicate lower development;
it is merely sought to avert the indication by devising an hypothesis
to account for each fact some other way. In place of the one
supposition of lower development, there is put a whole series of
independent suppositions. In order to avail for the purpose, all of
these must hit true at the same time; if each were as likely as not,
having a probability of one-half, the chance that five such shall hit
true simultaneously is only the fifth power of one-half--that is, one
thirty-second. This rapid diminution of the chance of all being correct
is wholly overlooked in such argumentation.
Regard is now turned (p. 311) upon the cranial features: "While the
consideration of the characters treated heretofore has not given any
conclusive evidence of the superiority of certain races, the study of
the form and size of the head seems to promise better results."
Note here the word "conclusive"; clearly, it is admitted that these
characters furnish some evidence of the "superiority" claimed, but
denied that it is "conclusive." But who ever held that such evidence
was "conclusive"? There is no single variety of evidence in the case
that is or can be "conclusive." The evidence is cumulative its
conclusiveness is found in its mass, in the concurrence of all its
disconnected indications. This is the decisive aspect of the whole
matter, and of this there is betrayed no consciousness.
Relatively "to the skull, the face of the negro is larger than that of
the American, whose face is, in turn, larger than that of the white.
The lower portion of the face assumes larger dimensions. The alveolar
arch is pushed forward and thus gains an appearance which reminds us of
the higher apes. There is no denying that this feature is a most
constant character of the black races and that it represents a type
slightly nearer the animal than the European type. The same may be said
of the broadness and flatness of the nose of the negro and of the
Mongol; but here again we must call to mind that prognathism and low,
broad noses are not entirely absent among the white races [neither are
idiots and all sorts of reversions to older types], although the more
strongly developed forms which are found among the negroes do not
occur. The variations belonging to both races overlap. We find here at
least a few indications which tend to show that the white race differs
more from the higher apes than [does] the negro. But does this
anatomical difference prove that their mental capacity is lower than
that of the white? The probability that this may be the case is
suggested by the anatomical facts, but they by themselves are no proof
that this is the case."
True; but they are not "by themselves." They are in goodly company with
a long series of facts already mentioned, with a still longer series
immediately to come, and with a wholly overwhelming confirmative
history of ten thousand years. It is idle, then, to say "they by
themselves are no proof." The question is, Are they, in their own
anatomical and historical connection, any proof? It is impossible not
to answer, Yes. They are the very strongest proof.
Promising "to revert to this subject later on," the savant passes over
(p. 312) to the important matter of arrested development. Among such
phenomena may be noted that the noses of children are more alike than
those of adults. The Mongol nose changes less during adolescence than
the White. According to Quatrefages, the Negro basin differs less from
foetal forms and resembles more the ape form than that of other races.
All of which points to relative lowness of developmental type. "On the
other hand, the face of the negro child is less prognathous than that
of the adult. In this case we find that the more energetic development
tends to produce a type which is apparently lower than that of the
white. We may even go a step farther and say that the ontogenetic
development of the higher apes and of man is such that the young forms
are more alike than the old ones. While in man the face develops
moderately only, it grows considerably among the apes. The earlier
arrest in this case is, therefore, an indication of higher type. Thus
it will be seen that it is not the earlier arrest alone which
determines the place of a race, but the direction of this development."
Hence he refuses to draw a conclusion against the Mongol, but says
nothing more of the Negro. The argument of Dr. Boas, at this point,
seems strangely vague and irresolute. It seems hardly possible to join
direct issue. But this fact appears noteworthy: The ape face grows more
than the human; also the Negro face grows decidedly more than the
White--at least relatively to the head, since the adult is more
prognathous than the child; this "more energetic development" relates,
then, the Negro to the ape more nearly than the White man.
The general reply that is made (p. 313) to the argument from arrested
development is that the female sex is in all proportions more like the
child than the male, "but who would explain this earlier arrest of
development of women as mark of a lower type?" We let this go for what
it is worth, merely remarking that it is thoroughly invalidated by the
remark on page 315 (quoted at p. 144).
With page 313 we pass to the question of the length of time during
which certain organs grow, especially the brain. "If we could prove
that the brain of certain races ceases to develop at an earlier period
than that of others, the inference of the inferiority of race would
seem highly probable." Now, this is precisely what many naturalists of
the first rank affirm is the case with the Negro. But it is here
declared, "At the present time no satisfactory basis for such
comparisons exists." Possibly;--we recognize the difficulties of the
case: still, the returns thus far received, so far as they indicate
anything at all, do indicate a much shorter period of development for
the Negro (see p. 147).
The next question (p. 314) is the crucial one of brain-weights--"the
one anatomical feature which bears directly upon the question at issue.
It would seem that the greater the central nervous system, the higher
the faculty of the race and the greater its aptitude to mental
achievements.... There are sufficient data available to establish
beyond a doubt the fact that the brain-weight of the whites is larger
than of most other races, particularly larger than that of the negroes.
That of the white male is about 1370 grammes. The investigations of
cranial capacities are quite in accord with these results. According to
Topinard, the capacity of the skull of males of the neolithic period of
Europe is about 1560 cc.; that of modern Europeans is the same; of the
Mongoloid race 1510 cc.; of African negroes 1405 cc., and of negroes of
the Pacific ocean 1460 cc. Here we have, therefore, a decided
difference in favor of the white race. These differences cannot be
explained as the effect of difference in stature, the negroes being at
least as tall as the Europeans."
"In interpreting these facts, we must ask, Does the increase in the
size of the brain prove an increase in faculty? This would seem highly
probable and facts may be adduced which speak in favor of this
assumption." A number of these, familiar enough, are mentioned, and
there follows: "While the force of these arguments must be admitted, a
number of restricting facts must be enumerated. The most important
among these is the difference in the brain-weight between men and
women. When men and women of the same stature are compared it is found
that the brain of the woman is much lighter than that of the man.
Nevertheless, the faculty of woman is undoubtedly just as high as that
of man. This is therefore a case in which smaller brain-weight is
accompanied throughout by equal faculty. We conclude from this fact
that it is not impossible that the smaller brains of males of other
races should not (_sic_) do the same work that is done by the larger
brain of the white race. But this comparison is not quite on equal
terms, as we may assume that there is a certain structural difference
between male and female which causes the difference in size between the
sexes, so that comparison between male and female is not the same as a
comparison between male and male. We will also remember that, although
the brains of eminent men are, on the average, larger than those of the
average individual, there are some small brains included in their
number." We observe that, the sentence "But this comparison ..." (p.
315) so restricts the foregoing "most important restriction" as to
deprive it of all the force it might otherwise have with some. As to
eminent men having small brains, to be sure; but eminent men may have
small minds also; very extraordinary special endowment does not by any
means imply general endowment; not every genius is a good "all-around"
man; even as physically some are strong in arm but weak in legs, strong
in the chest but weak in the back, and so on. Besides, no one has ever
held that mind-power is merely a matter of brain-weight. We hold only
that, other things being equal, brain-weight is a fair index of
mind-power. Perhaps in no two cases are the other things equal; but in
the average of a large number of cases these inequalities are smoothed
out; hence it is that we may rely upon the average with no little
confidence.
"Notwithstanding these restrictions, the increase of the size of the
brain in the higher animals, and the lack of development in
microcephalic individuals are fundamental facts which make it more than
probable that increased size of the brain causes increased faculty,
although the relation is not quite as immediate as is often assumed."
We ask no greater concession.
It is next contended (p. 316) "that the average sizes of the brain of
the White are numerously represented among other races". Middle-sized
capacities (1450 to 1650 cc.) are found in 55 per cent. of Europeans,
and in 58 per cent. of Africans and Melanesians; also 50 per cent. of
Whites rise above 1550 (the mid-line), 27 per cent. of Africans, 32 per
cent. of Melanesians. "We might, therefore, anticipate a lack of men of
high genius, but should not anticipate any great lack of faculty among
the great mass of negroes living among whites and enjoying the
advantages of the leadership of the best men of that race."
These words seem to surrender everything. They admit a sensible
inferiority of the Negro. This defect may be slight as expressed in
ounces, and yet, as measured by achievement, it may be inexpressibly
great. Nay, more! The admission goes much further still. The
"anticipation" of no "great lack of faculty" is wholly unwarranted. We
have no right to assume that medium skull-capacities among Africans
imply the same medium faculties as would the same capacities among
Europeans. By no means! Not unless the average brain-texture of the
former be as fine-grained and highly organized as of the latter. But
this is very improbable. With the difference in quantity will most
likely be linked a far more significant difference in quality. So much
is, in fact, admitted in the next paragraph, which merits special
attention. This, however, is hardly the correct standpoint, as mental
ability certainly does not depend upon the size of the brain alone. The
proper point of view of the question is brought out most clearly by Dr.
H. H. Donaldson whose opinion I will quote. He says, "I consider the
significance of the encephalon to depend upon the number and size of
the cells composing it. In the negroes and lower races generally, the
number of cells is probably less than in the white. This is mainly an
inference from the total weight of the encephalon. Equally important
are the final stages in the enlargement of the structural elements,
stages which apparently have the result of bringing a larger number of
elements into physiological connections by means of a very slight
quantitative extension of their branches. Changes, which moreover can
be followed, say in the cortex of the brain of the white in individuals
thirty or more years of age (_sic_). When we compare the capacity
for education between the lower and higher races, we find that the
great point of divergence is at adolescence and the inference is fairly
good that we shall not find in the brains of the lower races the
post-pubertal growth in the cortex to which I have just alluded. As to
the sculpturing of the brain surface by gyri and sulci we still lack
any good racial characters."
We have no occasion to take the slightest exception to this statement
of Professor Donaldson's. But we are at a loss to perceive any support
it gives to the general contention of this address, which, indeed, it
seems to overturn completely. Observe especially that Donaldson
recognizes unequivocally "the great point of divergence at adolescence"
"in the capacity for education, between the lower and higher races." We
may be allowed to add some later remarks of the Chicago authority,
culled from his "The Growth of the Brain" (1895), which also fully
sustain, incidentally, the theses of our earlier chapters.
"Statistically the results are satisfactory" (p. 114), being said of a
table showing the inferior brain-weights of inferior races, indicates
that Professor Donaldson recognizes that inferiority unreservedly.
"On neurological grounds, therefore, nurture is to be considered of
much less importance than nature, and in that sense the capacities we
most admire in persons worthy of remark are certainly inborn rather
than made" (p. 344).
"Size, therefore, has a meaning; but it is by no means entitled to
dominate the whole interpretation of the central system" (p. 352).
"No amount of education will cause enlargement or organization where
the rough materials, the cells, are wanting; and, on the other hand,
where these materials are present, they will in some degree become
evident, whether purposely educated or not" (p. 355).
"Races which have progressed farthest in civilization are also those
which possess a large brain-weight; but the converse of this
proposition is by no means true, for the tables also show that there
are races possessed of a large brain-weight and yet uncivilized" (p.
359).