The general picture of nature which I have endeavored to delineate
would be incomplete if I did not venture to trace a few of the most
marked features of the human race, considered with reference to
physical gradations--to the geographical distribution of
contemporaneous types--to the influence exercised upon man by the
forces of nature, and the reciprocal, altho weaker action which he, in
his turn, exercises on these natural forces. Dependent, altho in a
lesser degree than plants and animals, on the soil, and on the
meteorological processes of the atmosphere with which he is
surrounded--escaping more readily from the control of natural forces
by activity of mind and the advance of intellectual cultivation no
less than by his wonderful capacity of adapting himself to all
climates--man everywhere becomes most essentially associated with
terrestrial life. It is by these relations that the obscure and
much-contested problem of the possibility of one common descent enters
into the sphere embraced by a general physical cosmography. The
investigation of this problem will impart a nobler, and, if I may so
express myself, more purely human interest to the closing pages of
this section of my work.
[Footnote 22: From his "General Review of Natural Phenomena" in Volume
I of "Cosmos." The translation by E. C. Otté and W. S. Dallas, which
came out in 1849-59. A version by Mrs. Sabine appeared in 1846; and
one by Prichard in 1845-48.]
The vast domain of language, in whose varied structure we see
mysteriously reflected the destinies of nations, is most intimately
associated with the affinity of races; and what even slight
differences of races may effect is strikingly manifested in the
history of the Hellenic nations in the zenith of their intellectual
cultivation. The most important questions of the civilization of
mankind are connected with the ideas of races, community of language,
and adherence to one original direction of the intellectual and moral
faculties.
As long as attention was directed solely to the extremes in varieties
of color and of form, and to the vividness of the first impression of
the senses, the observer was naturally disposed to regard races rather
as originally different species than as mere varieties. The permanence
of certain types in the midst of the most hostile influences,
especially of climate, appeared to favor such a view, notwithstanding
the shortness of the interval of time from which the historical
evidence was derived. In my opinion, however, more powerful reasons
can be advanced in support of the theory of the unity of the human
race, as, for instance, in the many intermediate gradations in the
color of the skin and in the form of the skull, which have been made
known to us in recent times by the rapid progress of geographical
knowledge--the analogies presented by the varieties in the species of
many wild and domesticated animals--and the more correct observations
collected regarding the limits of fecundity in hybrids. The greater
number of the contrasts which were formerly supposed to exist have
disappeared before the laborious researches of Tiedemann on the brain
of negroes and of Europeans, and the anatomical investigations of
Vrolik and Weber on the form of the pelvis.
On comparing the dark-colored African nations, on whose physical
history the admirable work of Prichard has thrown so much light, with
the races inhabiting the islands of the South Indian and West
Australian archipelago, and with the Papuas and Alfourous (Haroforas,
Endamenes), we see that a black skin, woolly hair, and a negro-like
cast of countenance are not necessarily connected together. So long as
only a small portion of the earth was known to the Western nations,
partial views necessarily predominated, and tropical heat and a black
skin consequently appeared inseparable. "The Ethiopians," said the
ancient tragic poet Theodectes of Phaselis, "are colored by the near
sun god in his course with a sooty luster, and their hair is dried and
crisped with the heat of his rays." The campaigns of Alexander, which
gave rise to so many new ideas regarding physical geography, likewise
first excited a discussion on the problematical influence of climate
on races. "Families of animals and plants," writes one of the greatest
anatomists of the day, Johannes Müller, in his noble and comprehensive
work, "Physiologie des Menschen," "undergo, within certain limitations
peculiar to the different races and species, various modifications in
their distribution over the surface of the earth, propagating these
variations as organic types of species.
"The present races of animals have been produced by the combined
action of many different internal as well as external conditions, the
nature of which can not in all cases be defined, the most striking
varieties being found in those families which are capable of the
greatest distribution over the surface of the earth. The different
races of mankind are forms of one sole species, by the union of two of
whose members descendants are propagated. They are not different
species of a genus, since in that case their hybrid descendants would
remain unfruitful. But whether the human races have descended from
several primitive races of men, or from one alone, is a question that
can not be determined from experience."
Geographical investigations regarding the ancient seat, the so-called
cradle of the human race, are not devoid of a mythical character. "We
do not know," says Wilhelm von Humboldt, in an unpublished work, "On
the Varieties of Languages and Nations," "either from history or from
authentic tradition, any period of time in which the human race has
not been divided into social groups. Whether the gregarious condition
was original, or of subsequent occurrence, we have no historic
evidence to show. The separate mythical relations found to exist
independently of one another in different parts of the earth appear to
refute the first hypothesis, and concur in ascribing the generation of
the whole human race to the union of one pair. The general prevalence
of this myth has caused it to be regarded as a traditionary record
transmitted from primitive man to his descendants. But this very
circumstance seems rather to prove that it has no historical
foundation, but has simply arisen from an identity in the mode of
intellectual conception, which has everywhere led man to adopt the
same conclusion regarding identical phenomena; in the same manner as
many myths have doubtless arisen, not from any historical connection
existing between them, but rather from an identity in human thought
and imagination.
"Another evidence in favor of the purely mythical nature of this
belief is afforded by the fact that the first origin of mankind--a
phenomenon which is wholly beyond the sphere of experience--is
explained in perfect conformity with existing views, being considered
on the principle of the colonization of some desert island or remote
mountainous valley at a period when mankind had already existed for
thousands of years. It is in vain that we direct our thoughts to the
solution of the great problem of the first origin, since man is too
intimately associated with his own race and with the relations of time
to conceive of the existence of an individual independently of a
preceding generation and age. A solution of those difficult questions,
which can not be determined by inductive reasoning or by
experience--whether the belief in this presumed traditional condition
be actually based on historical evidence, or whether mankind inhabited
the earth in gregarious associations from the origin of the race--can
not, therefore, be determined from philological data, and yet its
elucidation ought not to be sought from other sources."
The distribution of mankind is, therefore, only a distribution into
varieties, which are commonly designated by the somewhat indefinite
term races. As in the vegetable kingdom, and in the natural history of
birds and fishes, a classification into many small families is based
on a surer foundation than where large sections are separated into a
few but large divisions, so it also appears to me that in the
determination of races a preference should be given to the
establishment of small families of nations. Whether we adopt the old
classification of my master, Blumenbach, and admit five races (the
Caucasian, Mongolian, American, Ethiopian, and Malayan), or that of
Prichard, into seven races (the Iranian, Turanian, American,
Hottentots and Bushmen, Negroes, Papuas, and Alfourous), we fail to
recognize any typical sharpness of definition, or any general or
well-established principle in the division of these groups. The
extremes of form and color are certainly separated, but without regard
to the races, which can not be included in any of these classes, and
which have been alternately termed Scythian and Allophyllic. Iranian
is certainly a less objectionable term for the European nations than
Caucasian; but it may be maintained generally that geographical
denominations are very vague when used to express the points of
departure of races, more especially where the country which has given
its name to the race, as, for instance, Turan (Mawerannahr), has been
inhabited at different periods by Indo-Germanic and Finnish, and not
by Mongolian tribes.
Languages, as intellectual creations of man, and as closely interwoven
with the development of mind, are, independently of the national form
which they exhibit, of the greatest importance in the recognition of
similarities or differences in races. This importance is especially
owing to the clue which a community of descent affords in treading
that mysterious labyrinth in which the connection of physical powers
and intellectual forces manifests itself in a thousand different
forms. The brilliant progress made within the last half-century, in
Germany, in philosophical philology, has greatly facilitated our
investigations into the national character of languages and the
influence exercised by descent. But here, as in all domains of ideal
speculation, the dangers of deception are closely linked to the rich
and certain profit to be derived.
Positive ethnographical studies, based on a thorough knowledge of
history, teach us that much caution should be applied in entering into
these comparisons of nations, and of the languages employed by them at
certain epochs. Subjection, long association, the influence of a
foreign religion, the blending of races, even when only including a
small number of the more influential and cultivated of the immigrating
tribes, have produced, in both continents, similarly recurring
phenomena; as, for instance, in introducing totally different
families of languages among one and the same race, and idioms, having
one common root, among nations of the most different origin. Great
Asiatic conquerors have exercised the most powerful influence on
phenomena of this kind.
But language is a part and parcel of the history of the development of
mind; and, however happily the human intellect, under the most
dissimilar physical conditions, may unfettered pursue a self-chosen
track, and strive to free itself from the dominion of terrestrial
influences, this emancipation is never perfect. There ever remains, in
the natural capacities of the mind, a trace of something that has been
derived from the influences of race or of climate, whether they be
associated with a land gladdened by cloudless azure skies, or with the
vapory atmosphere of an insular region. As, therefore, richness and
grace of language are unfolded from the most luxuriant depths of
thought, we have been unwilling wholly to disregard the bond which so
closely links together the physical world with the sphere of intellect
and of the feelings by depriving this general picture of nature of
those brighter lights and tints which may be borrowed from
considerations, however slightly indicated, of the relations existing
between races and languages....
Let me close this general description of the natural phenomena of the
universe. From the remotest nebulæ and from the revolving double
stars, we have descended to the minutest organisms of animal creation,
whether manifested in the depths of ocean or on the surface of our
globe, and to the delicate vegetable germs which clothe the naked
declivity of the ice-crowned mountain summit; and here we have been
able to arrange these phenomena according to partially known laws; but
other laws of a more mysterious nature rule the higher spheres of the
organic world in which is comprized the human species in all its
varied conformation, its creative intellectual power, and the
languages to which it has given existence. A physical delineation of
nature terminates at the point where the sphere of intellect begins,
and a new world of mind is open to our view. It marks the limit, but
does not pass it.