her masterly introduction she went still further. Carrying the
exposition to its final consequences, she provoked a useful revolution
in the ideas then current. She dared to say what many men of science
would only have left to be inferred. Her translation, revealing the
name of Darwin to the French public, who hardly knew of it at that
period, gave the occasion for a very active conflict between the
partisans of "creationism" and the Nantese philosophy. The success of
this work was so great as to induce her to complete her preface by
publishing a few years afterward a work wholly her own, _Origine de
l'Homme et des Sociétés_ (Origin of Man and Societies, 1870), which,
being her best production, deserves a special analysis. With the
assistance of documents collected by the most famous anthropologists,
Madame Royer reconstitutes the history of the primitive ages of
mankind, and after studying its origins and development she seeks for
the bonds that connect the great human family with the rest of living
Nature; and finally forecasts its future from its past.
In the first part she takes up the question of the origin of life and
of its transformations upon the earth. The living species are grouped
around man, who is the topmost shoot of the gigantic "tree of life."
Two laws regulate the transmission of life--the law of heredity and
the law of variability. The former assures the continuation of the
type, and the latter variety in its modifications. The organic kingdom
as a whole oscillates between these two contrary rules which fix
limits each upon the other and which suffice to explain the successive
appearance through the ages of different forms of life. The organic
individual is thus the solution of a problem in algebra set to
Nature. Atavism is the constant quantity, and the force of variation
is the perpetually changing unknown factor. The problem is therefore
complex, but the principles to which the variable is subject resolve
themselves into a series of partial laws which are deduced from an
aggregate of observations, and which, according to our author, one may
summarize as he goes.
Most of the variations reveal themselves in the embryo during the
fætal period. But after its birth the young product is affected not
only by the ambient medium, but also by the consequences of the
reproductive act. The latter, in fact, having impressed the initial
movement upon its organism, reacts incessantly against the modifying
influences of the ambient, and atavism prevails as always the
resultant unless important accidents come in to change the course.
It is only necessary to add a few experimental considerations to
complete a rapid sketch of the laws of variability. First, correlation
of growth: Homologous organs tend to vary in the same direction, and
together. Are the fingers joined or divided? The hand follows similar
variations. Then there is a compensation of growth which prevents the
excess of the preceding rule; when one organ is developed, another is
atrophied. Also vital competition. Every organized being must be in
harmony with the conditions of its existence or it will not subsist;
the monster may appear, but will not live. Lastly, by virtue of
natural selection, the individual must likewise possess the means of
perpetuating its species. Otherwise, a series of transformations will
come to pass in the course of successive generations, improving the
organism and adapting it more and more to the exigencies of its
habitat. The least prolific species of to-day fulfill these conditions
so well that they of themselves alone would cover the surface of the
earth if their multiplication was not checked by that of other
species. But as only a limited quantity of life is possible on our
planet, the less well-adapted organisms perish. The struggle therefore
produces a selection. It is hence presumed that in the same species
only varieties manifesting tendencies in most complete harmony with
the method of their existence will be preserved, all the intermediate
varieties being destroyed. Consequently, if we push the doctrine of
Darwin to its extreme limits, we arrive at the idea, now rejected,
that in the beginning only a single germ arose at one point on the
globe. All the analogies, on the other hand, lead us to suppose that
the earth was fruitful over its entire surface.
This leads us to inquire how life appeared on the earth. The debate
between the heterogenists and the panspermists has been long vain,
because the question has been laid before them in insoluble terms. In
order to resolve it, therefore, we must take ourselves back in thought
thousands of thousands of centuries in the past. A thin crust of
red-hot lava, hardly solidified, extended over the incandescent
nucleus of our globe. An eternity then passed before the fiery sphere
was forever confined within its coffin of granite. The metalloids
dominant in this chaos of affinities and repulsions were then floating
in an irrespirable atmosphere along with a mass of aqueous vapors. At
the end of many millions of years, the waters definitely took their
place around the globe. But who can ever tell what useless abortions,
to be destroyed as soon as they were created, arose in these oceans
saturated with anomalous substances? The first germs of life doubtless
arose from the thick proliferous stratum which was developed under the
pressure of a dense atmosphere in contact with liquids still warm,
incessantly traversed by electric currents of unimaginable intensity.
It was a sprout that arose everywhere at once. But in those
innumerable spontaneous efforts, continued during the enormous length
of time required to purify the atmosphere from its acrid vapors and
the seas from their foreign matters, only a small number of these
germs achieved a beginning of vegetation. This, according to Madame
Royer's theory, was the way life began on the globe.
The author next examines the complete series of the phases of
evolution gone through by the species, and then the development of the
mental faculties, the chief feature of difference which in the view of
some thinkers creates a gap between man and the rest of the animal
kingdom. She demonstrates that the primary qualities of mind are
identical in all living creatures, even in those of least development.
The intelligence of man is simply superior to the mental organism of
the animal. This is, however, only a relative superiority, not
differing in nature from the animal's intelligence, but only in form
and intensity.
After relating the history of man in prehistoric times, our
philosopher gives, in the second part of her work, the present picture
of the races as their physical characteristics and their social orders
differentiate them so profoundly: At the top, the white race, the last
flower of the genealogical tree, to which all the great nationalities
belong. By the side of it, its two diverging branches, the Turanians
(Hungarians, Finns, and Turks) and the Aramæans or Semites (Jews,
Arabs, and Syrians). Then come the three--Hyperborean, Mongolian, and
Sinitic--branches of the yellow stock, who inhabit eastern and
northern Asia. We find also the Malays covering the surface of the two
southern peninsulas of Asia and Oceania. They constitute a lateral
ramification, which, together with the red or copper-colored race of
North America, may have had the same point of departure as the
Mongols. Lastly comes the negro race, which has been separated a much
longer time from the common stock from which man has diverged.
Further on, Madame Royer discusses the anatomical relations of man and
the ape, with the conclusion deduced as resulting from phenomena of
observation that the human family is only a term in a series of which
the different primates are the other steps. In short, the further we
go back in the past of primitive man, the more we meet manifestations
of passions as ferocious as base. This is, moreover, easily
conceivable. The savage, at war with Nature and his like, and placed
in conditions of life common to the animal world, has in the beginning
all its bad instincts.
The end of the second part of _L'Origine de l'Homme et des Sociétés_
is devoted to the most complex problem of anthropology--that of the
beginning of speech and the origin of language. Man, in the view of
the author, first makes his wants and feelings known to other beings
by a series of signs. The three primordial faculties--feeling,
thinking, and wishing--were the point of departure, the cause and the
rule of all languages that man has created in his entire progress. As
his mind has shaped a new idea, it has found a new sign to express it;
but the process varying with the race, time and the environment have
produced the diversity of tongues which we observe. In the beginning a
more or less complicated cry suffices to express the thought in its
original syncretism. Then, under the influence of reflection continued
through ages, from generation to generation, it becomes transformed
and decomposed into various elements. Every noun was primarily an
adjective-substantive. For example, thunder was designated by
imitating it; the horse, by its neighing and the sound of galloping.
The relations of place, possession, and those of many other kinds were
probably expressed by the look, the attitude, a motion with the hand,
etc. Ideas of number were developed slowly. The earliest languages
contained only about a hundred words, and these sufficed for centuries
for the needs of human thought, confined within the narrow experience
of a generation. It results from these facts that in every sense the
formation of languages is a consequence of social relations. But here
rises a question as important as difficult to answer: When did man
begin to speak? From the harmony between the anthropological
classifications deduced from philological research and those drawn
from the labors of the physiologists it appears evident that the
spontaneous and primitive constitution of the first elements of
language was, among all known human races, posterior to their
geographical and ethnical separation. In other words, local varieties
had already been formed, and men had acquired the anatomical
differences that distinguish them to-day before they conquered the
faculty of speech. However it may be with these hypotheses, we may
assent fully to the conclusion of the chapter that man will never
deserve the name of the reasoning animal till he shall possess a
logical and single language for all the members of the great human
association. May this dream be realized by the destruction of the
barriers which now divide so many peoples!
In the third part of the work, Madame Royer treats of the development
of human society. Everything permits the supposition that from a very
remote period the anthropoid primate that served as the root stock of
man became omnivorous, with a predominance of carnivorous tastes.
These conditions of life therefore invoked an at least rudimentary
social instinct--that is, animals lived in troops collected under
chiefs, with a tactics for mutual defense. The most ancient documents,
in fact, show the human species living in rival or allied tribes.
Hunting and fishing were the principal business of these primitive
races, which relied for assistance at first on their agility, muscular
strength, and arms of stone of a workmanship still in its infancy.
Flint was then very roughly cut. But now a great advance was achieved
for man, a step toward industry and civilization. This second stage
was the discovery of fire, an immediate consequence of the cutting of
flints, when sparks would fly out at each blow. Yet a later epoch
probably had to be reached for the real employment of fire in cooking
food. Previous to that it could serve man only for warming himself, or
for protecting himself at night against wild beasts.
Next came the earliest industries--the potter's art, the making of
rude clothing, and the construction of habitations; and about this
time the instinct of property begins to develop. For a long time there
are no other securities than force. On the other hand, the diversities
of the faculties, which are very unequally distributed among the
various races, and even among the different individuals of each of
them, create social inequalities, the chief cause of the crime, wars,
and misery with which every page of the history of man is soiled, and
from which the original organization of civil society sprang.
At the close of her treatise the eminent anthropologist states the
formula of the highest social prosperity: she believes that it resides
in an equal liberty for each member of a national collectivity and in
the free play of individual initiatives. Man will work in as large a
sphere of action as the right of another leaves him, striving to
broaden his place at the feast of life. Each one will climb the social
ladder in his own way and will fix himself on the step on which his
aptitudes will meet the best reward. Each individual will therefore
gain a large sum of well-being, and the species will possess a total
maximum of enjoyment.
Such, in broad outline, is the substance of this book, which
naturalists and philosophers have consulted now for many years. It is
not within the province of our sketch to dwell upon any of the bold
assertions and hypotheses in it that have been invalidated by later
geological discoveries; and, notwithstanding a few errors in detail,
almost inevitable in a book of the kind, the _Origine de l'Homme_ is,
as a whole, a work as vigorously thought out as clearly and generously
written.
Madame Clémence Royer has further occupied herself with special
researches on subjects of the same nature. Their results have been
published in the highly esteemed review, the Bulletin of the Société
d'Anthropologie. The most important of these memoirs relate to the
Craniology of the Quaternary Period, the Celts, the Origin of the
Different Human Races (1873), and the Domestication of Monkeys (1887).
The last work was published at the time of the appearance of a book by
M. Victor Meunier,[42] a believer in the possibility of domesticating
the simian race. His proposition, received in France as a kind of a
joke, taxed the genius of the Parisian caricaturists, because the
author had suggested that newborn children be nursed by monkeys, whose
milk was most like that of the human mother. Of course it was an easy
subject to joke about. Madame Royer showed how little originality
there was in this book. We might, she said, undoubtedly succeed in
educating monkeys, and they would at the end of many generations be in
certain cases superior to the dog and the horse. Unfortunately, the
struggle for existence opposed the adoption of the Utopian idea. The
place for each human recruit at the social table is now too narrow for
any part of it to be left for "our lower brethren."
Anthropological sciences were not the only ones to which the
encyclopedic mind of our learned philosopher was attracted. A few
years ago she returned to her earlier studies, and collaborated on the
_Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Économie Politique_ of Léon Say (1891-'92).
The most profound article she wrote for this work was that on the word
positivism. According to it, the Positive Philosophy dates, not from
Auguste Comte, who is believed to have introduced it, but from Bacon;
for its essential features may be found in the _Novum Organum_ and the
_Scientia nuova_. Furthermore, Madame Royer found that Comte
"emasculated" the doctrine of the famous chancellor. The principal
dogma of the system is the impossibility of knowledge of first causes
by our reason. This is an error, says Madame Royer. Two distinct ideas
have been confounded in the term first causes: first, the permanent
cause of phenomena, their essential "substratum," the discovery of
which man may perhaps some day reach; and, second, the supposed
primary term of each phenomenal law. But if the world is eternal, this
last does not exist, since "the eternity of the substantial involves
the eternity of its effects." Yet, while she attacks Comte's errors in
the sphere of sociology, she renders full justice to his Course of
Positive Philosophy, which was often in advance of its time in respect
to the exact sciences. Among other of Madame Royer's publications we
may cite _Zoroastre, son Epoque et sa Doctrine_ (Zoroaster, his Epoch
and his Doctrine, two volumes, 1875); _Les Ages Préhistoriques_ (The
Prehistoric Ages, 1876); _La Terre et ses Anciens Habitants_ (The
Earth and its Ancient Inhabitants, 1891), a sort of summary of recent
progress in paleontology, and of facts that may be derived from the
study of living beings; and _Les Variations Séculaires des Saisons_
(Secular Variation of the Seasons, 1892), a little work in which the
author endeavors to confirm by observation a theory that climatic
variations are dependent, in the meteorological sense, on planetary
movements. She showed, for example, that in the cold winter of
1879-'80 the distribution of the planets around the sun was precisely
that which should give the greatest degree of cold for our hemisphere.
We notice also her occasional contributions to different periodicals:
to _Le Temps_, the _Revue des Revues_, the _Journal des Économistes_,
etc. Her last two treatises were published in 1895: _La Matière_ (or
Matter), and _L'Inconnaissable_ (or The Unknowable).
So great intellectual activity has given Madame Royer a first place
among women as students of science. Hence, on March 10, 1897, her
numerous admirers and friends offered her a jubilee banquet, under the
chairmanship of M. Levasseur, member of the Institute of France. The
toasts spoken to on this occasion retraced the brilliant career of the
heroine of the feast; and, as the chairman justly declared, the
occasion was "the glorification of woman's knowledge." Madame Clémence
Royer is at present living a very retired life in the _Maison de
Retraite_ founded by the Duchess Galigani at Neuilly, near Paris,
where she enjoys the rest earned by a half century of persevering
labor. Her body is feeble, but her ample brow and her yet lively eyes
seem still to have preserved the recollections of the struggles of
other days.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] Pascal Duprat, born at Hagetman (Department of the Landes), March
24, 1816, was professor of history at Algiers and at Paris. He took
the direction of the _Revue independante_ in 1847; founded with
Lamennais the journal _Le Peuple constituant_, and was an ardent
promoter of the Revolution of 1848. Having became a member of the
National Assembly, he opposed the _coup d'état_ of Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte. Being obliged in consequence of this act to exile himself,
he retired to Belgium and afterward to Lausanne. He did not return to
France till after the war of 1870, and died in August, 1885. The most
interesting of his works is the Historical Essay on the Races of
Africa (_Essai historique sur les Races de l'Afrique_, 1845).
[42] Les Singes domestiques. Paris, 1886.
* * * * *
DR. SHELDON JACKSON, superintendent of Government schools in
Alaska, corrects a report that has been published, that his
experiment in naturalizing reindeer in that Territory has
failed. Three hundred and twelve of the five hundred and
twelve head imported died, it is true, at Seattle and
Haines, "because of a combination of circumstances and
Government red tape," but the two hundred and twenty-eight
deer that were allowed to reach the moss, fifty miles from
the coast, are doing well, and will be used next winter in
carrying the mails. Instead of scarcity of moss, the
pasturage is more abundant than in Lapland or Siberia, and
the reindeer thrive better than they did in their native
habitat.
Editor's Table.
_WORDS OF A MASTER._
The address, which we print elsewhere, delivered by Sir Archibald
Geikie to the students of Mason College, Birmingham, is one to which
we feel it a duty to draw special attention. It would be difficult, we
think, to state more lucidly than the eminent author has done the
advantages to be derived from a course of scientific study, and the
principles which must be kept in view, not only during the period of
study, but through life, if a training in science is to have its best
results.
The address begins with a few words of caution as to the drawbacks
which are apt to attend on the exclusive, or nearly exclusive, pursuit
of science. In the reaction which the present age has witnessed
against the old literary and linguistic curriculum of studies, a
tendency is manifesting itself to undervalue the older learning. This
Sir Archibald considers to be a matter for serious regret. He
recognizes the impossibility of combining any large amount of literary
or philological study with the requirements of an extensive scientific
course; but he advises those who make choice of the latter to "cherish
the literary tastes they have acquired, and to devote themselves
sedulously to the further cultivation of them during such intervals of
leisure as they may be able to secure." A training in science, he
observes, "admirable as it is in many ways, fails to supply those
humanizing influences which the older learning can so well impart."
Times will therefore come, even to the most enthusiastic student, when
"scientific work, in spite of its absorbing interest, grows to be a
weariness"; and it is then that the value of any literary culture
which may have been received at school or college will be appreciated.
It is a quite true remark that "men who have been too exclusively
trained in science, or are too much absorbed in its pursuit, are not
always the most agreeable members of society." It is also true that
"one result of the comparative neglect of the literary side of
education by many men of science is conspicuously seen in their
literary style," which is not infrequently so "slipshod,
ungrammatical, and clumsy that even the meaning of the authors is left
in doubt." This is a great evil under the sun: a man goes through a
vast amount of labor to ascertain facts and discover their meaning;
and when he is ready to transfer the knowledge that he has gained to
other minds he lacks the skill to do it in any satisfactory manner.
Yet so far is it from being the case that there is any necessary
incompatibility between scientific and literary cultivation, that
several of the most distinguished scientific investigators have ranked
among the best writers of the day. We need only cite such names as Sir
John Herschel, Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Clifford, and Sir
Archibald Geikie himself: to read any of these is a pleasure from a
literary no less than from a scientific point of view. No very
satisfactory excuse can therefore be made for those scientific writers
who can not compass a style of reasonable perspicuity and elegance. We
can only think of them as having fallen victims to the hurtful error
that literary style is of no advantage to a scientific man.