influences just mentioned remains very stable; yet may fall under the
influence of conditions which will greatly modify it.
Changes in climatic surroundings and of the food supply exert a visible
effect. These generally come about by migration, though geologic action
has occasionally completely altered the climate of a given locality,
as at the glacial epoch, which change would have the same effect as
migration.
How far migration may alter race-types after many generations is not
yet defined. The Spanish-American of pure white blood, whose ancestors
have lived for three centuries in tropical America, the citizen of
the United States who traces his genealogy to the passengers in the
Mayflower or the Welcome, have departed extremely little from the
standard of the Andalusian or the Englishman of to-day, though the
contrary is often asserted by those who have not personally studied
the variants in the countries compared. Conditions of climate and food
materially impress the individual, but not the race. The Greeks of
Nubia are as dark as Nubians, but let their children return to Greece
and the Nubian hue is lost. This is a general truth and holds good
of all the slight impressions made upon pure races by unaccustomed
environments.
Another cause of variation is the recurrence to remote ancestral
traits, or the appearance of what seem merely accidental variations,
which may be perpetuated. It is not very unusual in pure African
negroes and Chinese to observe instances of reddish hair and gray or
brown eyes.
Those peculiar congenital conditions known as _albinism_ and _melanism_
may be frequent and are unquestionably transmissible by descent.[23]
_The Mingling of Races._--But the mightiest cause in the change of
types is intermarriage between races, what the French call _métissage_.
This has taken place from distantly remote epochs, especially along the
lines where two races come into contact. In such regions we always
find numerous mixed breeds, leading to a shading of one race into
another by imperceptible degrees.
The widespread custom of exogamous marriage fostered the blending of
types, and it was greatly increased in early days by the institution of
human slavery, the habit of selling captives taken in war, the purchase
of wives and concubines, and the rule in early conquest that the men of
the conquered were killed or sent off, and the women retained as the
spoils of the victors. In all ages man has been migratory, and very
remote relics of his arts show that war and commerce led to extensive
intermixture of races long before history took up the thread of his
wanderings.
It is noticeable, however, that these prolonged interminglings have
not produced another race. The nearest approach to it is in the
Australians, but these do not refute my statement as we shall see
later. Many ethnologists have indeed classed the mixed types as
separate races, running the number of the sub-species of the genus
_homo_ up to thirty or forty. But this was hasty generalization.
I would impress upon you this fact, that since the intermingling of
two races _does not produce a third race_, it is not likely that any
of the existing races arose from a fusion of two others. The result of
observation shows that after two or three generations the tendency in
mixed breeds is to recur to one or the other of the original stocks,
not to establish a different variety.
Were it not for such constant crossings, we have reason to believe that
the race types would resist all environment and retain their traits
under all known conditions. It is only where the element of _métissage_
prominently enters that we are unable to assign individuals to one or
another race.
Such being the case, it is a fair comparison to set one race over
against another and deduce the
_Physical Criteria of Racial Superiority._--We are accustomed
familiarly to speak of “higher” and “lower” races, and we are justified
in this even from merely physical considerations. These indeed bear
intimate relations to mental capacity, and where the body presents many
points of arrested or retarded development, we may be sure that the
mind will also.
There are two explanations of the presence of the inferior physical
traits in certain races of men; the one, that of the evolutionists,
that they are reversions or perpetuations of the ape-like (simian,
pithecoid) features of the lower animal which was man’s immediate
ancestor; the other, that of the special creationists, that they are
instances of surviving fetal peculiarities, or else deficiency or
excess of development from unknown causes.
The following are the principal traits of the kind:
Simplicity and early union of cranial sutures.
Presence of the frontal process of the temporal bone.
Wide nasal aperture, with synostosis of the nasal bones.
Prominence of the jaws.
Recession of the chin.
Early appearance, size and permanence of the “wisdom” teeth.
Unusual length of the humerus.
Perforation of the humerus.
Continuation of the “heart” line across the hand.
Obliquity (narrowness) of the pelvis.
Deficiency of the calf of the leg.
Flattening of the tibia.
Elongation of the heel (os calcis).
When all or many of these traits are present, the individual approaches
physically the type of the anthropoid apes, and a race presenting many
of them is properly called a “lower” race. On the other hand, where
they are not present, the race is “higher,” as it maintains in their
integrity the special traits of the genus Man, and is true to the type
of the species.
The adult who retains the more numerous fetal, infantile or simian
traits, is unquestionably inferior to him whose development has
progressed beyond them, nearer to the ideal form of the species, as
revealed by a study of the symmetry of the parts of the body, and their
relation to the erect stature.
Measured by these criteria, the European or white race stands at the
head of the list, the African or negro at its foot.
The investigations of anthropologists extend much beyond the outlines
I have now presented you. All parts of the body have been minutely
scanned, measured and weighed, in order to erect a science of the
comparative anatomy of the races. Much of value has been discovered;
but nothing absolutely characteristic, nothing which enables us to
divide more sharply one race from another than the facts I have given
you. It is a question, indeed, whether not too much, but too exclusive
attention has not been devoted by many anthropologists to the purely
physical aspects of their science. They have multiplied useless
anatomical refinements and a pedantic nomenclature. The more valuable
general distinctions and their technical terms I present to you in the
following table:--
_Scheme of Principal Physical Elements._
{Dolichocephalic, long skulls.
Skull {Mesocephalic, medium skulls.
{Brachycephalic, broad skulls.
{Leptorhine, narrow noses.
Nose {Mesorhine, medium noses.
{Platyrhine, flat or broad noses.
{Megaseme, round eyes.
Eyes {Mesoseme, medium eyes.
{Microseme, narrow eyes.
{Orthognathic, straight or vertical jaws.
Jaws {Mesognathic, medium jaws.
{Prognathic, projecting jaws.
{Chamæprosopic, low or broad face.
Face {Mesoprosopic, medium face.
{Leptoprosopic, narrow or high face.
{Platypellic, broad pelvis.
Pelvis {Mesopellic, medium pelvis.
{Leptopellic, narrow pelvis.
{Leucochroic, white skin.
{Xanthochroic, yellow skin.
Color {Erythrochroic, reddish skin.
{Melanochroic, black or dark skin.
{Euthycomic, straight hair.
{Euplocomic, wavy hair.
Hair {Eriocomic, wooly hair.
{Lophocomic, bushy hair.
LECTURE II.
THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENTS OF ETHNOGRAPHY.
CONTENTS.--The mental differences of races. Ethnic psychology.
Cause of psychical development.
I. THE ASSOCIATIVE ELEMENTS. 1. The Social Instincts; sexual
impulse; primitive marriage; conception of love; parental
affection; filial and fraternal affection; friendship; ancestral
worship; the gens or clan; the tribe; personal loyalty; the social
organization; systems of consanguinity; position of woman in the
state; ethical standards; modesty. 2. Language; universality
of; primeval speech; rise of linguistic stocks; their number;
grammatical structure; classes of languages; morphologic scheme;
relation of language to thought; significance of language in
ethnography. 3. Religion: universality of; early forms; family
and tribal religions; universal or world religions; ethnic study
of religions; comparison of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism;
material and ideal religions; associative influences of religions.
4. The Arts of Life: architecture; agriculture; domestication of
animals; inventions.
II. THE DISPERSIVE ELEMENTS: adaptability of man to surroundings.
1. The Migratory Instincts; love of roaming; early commerce;
lines of traffic and migration. 2. The Combative Instincts:
primitive condition of war; love of combat; its advantages; heroes;
development through conflict.
The mental differences of races and nations are real and profound.
Some of them are just as valuable for ethnic classification as any
of the physical elements I referred to in the last lecture, although
purely physical anthropologists are loath to admit this. No one can
deny, however, that it is the psychical endowment of a tribe or a
people which decides fatally its luck in the fight of the world. Those,
therefore, who would master the highest significance of ethnography in
its function as the key to history, will devote to this branch of it
their most earnest attention.
The study of the general mental peculiarities of a people is called
“ethnic psychology.” As a science, it may be treated by various
methods, applicable to the different aims of research. For our present
purpose, which is to study the growth, migrations and comminglings of
races and peoples, the most suggestive method will be to classify their
mental distinctions under the two main headings of Associative and
Dispersive Elements. The predominance of one or the other of these is
ever eminently formative in the character and history of a people, and
both must be constantly considered with reference to their bearings on
the progress of a nation toward civilization.
The psychical development of men and nations finds its chief
explanation, less in the natural surroundings, the climate, soil,
and water-currents, as is taught by some philosophers, than in
their relations and connections with each other, their friendships,
federations and enmities, their intercourse in commerce, love and war.
Around these must center the chief studies of ethnographic science, for
they contain and present the means for reaching its highest, almost its
only aim--the comprehension of the social and intellectual progress of
the species.
I. THE ASSOCIATIVE ELEMENTS.
The sense of fellowship, the gregarious instinct, was inherited by our
first fathers from their anthropoid ancestors. The “river drift” men,
who dwelt on the banks of the Thames and the Somme before the glacial
epoch, were gathered into small communities, as their remains testify.
The most savage tribes, Fuegians and Australians, roam about in
detached bands. They are not under the control of a chief, but are led
to such union by much the same motives as prompt buffaloes to gather in
a herd.
These fundamental mental elements which impel to association are:
_1. The Social Instincts._
Strongest of them all is _the sexual impulse_. The foundation of every
community is the bond of the man and woman, and the nature of this bond
is the surest test of a community’s position in the scale of culture.
It is not likely that miscellaneous cohabitation, or that slightly
modified form of it called “communal marriage,” ever existed. No
instance of it has been known to history.[24] In the most brutal tribes
the man asserts his right of ownership in the woman. The rare custom of
“polyandry,” where a woman has several husbands at once, gives her no
general license.
It is equally true that the tender sentiments of love appear to be
less known to the lowest savages than they are to beasts and birds. The
process of mating is by brute force, marriage is by robbery, and the
women are in a wretched slavery. Mutual affection has no existence.
Such is the state of affairs among the Australians, the western
Eskimos, the Athapascas, the Mosquitos, and many other tribes.[25]
But it is gratifying to find that we have to mount but a step higher
in the scale to find the germs of a nobler understanding of the sex
relation. In many tribes of but moderate culture, their languages
supply us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among
them, and this is corroborated by the incidents we learn of their
domestic life. This I have shown in considerable detail by an analysis
of the words for love and affection in the languages of the Algonkins,
Nahuas, Mayas, Qquichuas, Tupis and Guaranis, all prominent tribes of
the American Indians.[26]
Some of the songs and stories of this race seem to reveal even a
capability for romantic love, such as would do credit to a modern
novel. This is the more astonishing, as in the African and Mongolian
races this ethereal sentiment is practically absent, the idealism of
passion being something foreign to those varieties of man.
The sequel of the sexual impulse is the formation of the family through
the development of _parental affection_. This instinct is as strong in
many of the lower animals as in human beings. In primitive conditions
it is largely confined to the female parent, the father paying but
slight attention to the welfare of his offspring. To this, rather than
to a doubt of paternity, should we attribute the very common habit in
such communities, of reckoning ancestry in the female line only.
Akin to this is _filial_ and _fraternal_ affection, leading to a
preservation of the family bond through generations, and in spite of
local separation. It is surprising how strong is this sentiment even in
conditions of low culture. The Polynesians preserved their genealogies
through twenty generations; the Haidah Indians of Vancouver’s Island
boast of fifteen or eighteen.
The sentiment of _friendship_ has been supposed by some to be an
acquisition of higher culture. Nothing is more erroneous. Dr. Carl
Lumholtz tells me he has seen touching examples of it among Australian
cannibals, and the records of travelers are full of instances of
devoted affection in members of savage tribes, both toward each other
and toward persons of other races. There are established rites in
early social conditions, by which a stranger is received into the
bond of fellowship and the sanctity of friendship.[27] This is often
by a transfer of the blood of the one to the body of the other,
or a symbolic ceremony to that effect, the meaning being that the
stranger is thus admitted to the rights of kinship in the gens or clan.
Springing from this clannish affection is the custom of _ancestral
worship_, which adds a link to the bond of the family. It is so widely
spread that Herbert Spencer has endeavored to derive from it all other
forms of religion. But this is a hasty generalization. The religious
sentiment had many other primitive forms of expression.
Through these various personal affections we reach the development of
the family into the _gens_, the clan or _totem_, all of whose members,
whether by consanguinity or adoption, are held to represent one
interest.
The union of several gentes under one control constitutes the _tribe_,
which is the first step toward what is properly a _state_. The tribe
passes beyond the ties of affinity by embracing in certain common
interests persons who are not recognized as allied in blood. Yet it
is curious to note that the tribal sentiments are among the very
strongest mankind ever exhibits, surpassing those of family affection.
Brutus felt no hesitation in sacrificing his son for the common weal.
Classical antiquity is full of admonitions and examples to the same
effect. So powerful is the devotion of the Polynesians that they have
been known when a canoe was capsized where sharks abounded, to form a
ring around their chief, and sacrifice themselves one by one to the
ravenous fish, that he might escape.
This sentiment of _personal loyalty_ has been in history the main
strength of many a government, and has in it something chivalric and
noble, which challenges our admiration; yet it is quite opposed to the
principles of republicanism and the equal rights of individuals, and we
must condemn it as belonging to a lower stage of evolution than that to
which we have arrived.
The result of these gregarious instincts is the formation of the
_social organization_, the bond under which first the primitive
horde and later the members of the developed commonwealth consented
to live. From first to last, wherever found, communities of men are
bound together by ties of consanguinity and affection rather than mere
self-interest. Those writers who pretend that society once existed
without the idea of kinship, with promiscuity in the sexual relation,
and without some recognized controlling power, have failed to produce
such an example from actual life.
These ties led to the systems of “consanguinity and affinity” which
recur with singular sameness at a certain stage of culture the world
over. They give rise to what is called the totemic or gentile phase of
society, in which its members are organized into “gentes” or clans,
“phratries” or associations of clans, and the tribe, which embraces
several such phratries. This theory affected the disposition of
property, which belonged to the clan and not to the individual, and the
form of government, which was usually by a council appointed from the
various clans. The recognition of the wide prevalence of these ideas
in the ancient world has led to profound modifications of our views
respecting its institutions, and a better understanding of many of the
events of history.[28]
In social organizations one of the criteria of excellence is the
_position of woman_. Upon this depends the life of the family and
the development of morality. Those nations which have gained the
most enduring conquests in power and culture have conceded to woman
a prominent place in social life. In ancient Egypt, in Etruria, in
republican Rome, women owned property, and enjoyed equal rights
under the law. Where woman is enslaved, as among the Australian
tribes, progress is scarcely possible; where she is imprisoned, as in
Mohammedan countries, progress may be rapid for a time, but is not
permanent. Unusual mental ability in a man is generally inherited from
his mother, and a nation which studies to prevent women from acquiring
an education and from taking an active part in affairs, is preparing
the way to engender citizens of inferior minds.
Among other ethnic traits, the appreciation of the _ethical_ standard
differs notably. Long ago the observant Montaigne commented on the
conflicting views of morals in nations, and remarked rather cynically
that what was good on one side of a river was deemed wicked on the
other. This is especially noticeable in the sense of justice, the
rights of property, and the regard for truth. No Asiatic nation
respects truth telling, or can be made to see that it is abstractly
desirable when it conflicts with their immediate interests. The rights
of property are generally construed entirely differently to ourselves
among nations in the lower grades of culture, because the idea of
independent personal ownership does not exist among them. What they
have belongs to the clan or the horde, and they merely have the use of
it.
The basis of ethics in all undeveloped conditions is not general but
special; it relates to the tribe and the family, and is in direct
conflict with the philosopher Kant’s famous “categorical imperative,”
which makes the basis the welfare of the whole species. Hence, in
primitive culture and survivals there is a dual system of morals, the
one of kindness, love, help and peace, applicable to the members of
our own clan, tribe or community; the other of robbery, hatred, enmity
and murder, to be practiced against all the rest of the world; and the
latter is regarded as quite as much a sacred duty as the former.[29]
Ethics, therefore, while a powerfully associative element in the one
direction, becomes dispersive or segregating in others, unless the
sense of duty is taught as a universal and not as a class or national
conception.
The sentiment of _modesty_ is developed by man in society, and he
alone among animals possesses it. Whatever has been said to the
contrary, it is never absent. Frequently, indeed, its manifestation
is not according to our usages, and is thus overlooked. Women with us
expose their faces, which a Moorish lady would think most indelicate.
The Bedawin women consider it immodest to have the back of the head
uncovered; the Siamese think nothing of displaying nude limbs, but
on no account would show the uncovered sole of the foot. In certain
African courts, the men wear long robes while the women appear
nude. The necessary functions of the body are everywhere veiled by
retirement, and in the most savage tribes, a regard for decency is
constantly noted.
The second chief associative principle is
_2. Language._
Unlike the elements of affection which I have been tracing, language
is not a legacy from a brute ancestor. It is the peculiar property of
the genus Man, and no tribe has ever been known without a developed
grammatical articulate speech, with abundance of expressions for
all its ideas. The stories of savages so rude that they were forced
to eke out their words with gestures, and could not make themselves
intelligible in the dark, are fables. The languages of the most
barbarous communities are always ample in forms, and often surprisingly
flexible, rich and sonorous.
We must indeed suppose a time when the speech of primeval man had
a feeble, imperfect beginning. “The origin of language” has been a
favorite theme for philologists to speculate about, with sparse fruit
for their readers. We can, indeed, picture to ourselves something
like what it must have been in its very early stages, by studying a
number of very simple languages, and noting what parts of the grammar
and dictionary they dispense with. Following this plan, I once
undertook to show what might have been the language of man far back
in palæolithic times. It probably had no “parts of speech,” such as
nouns, pronouns, prepositions or adjectives; it had no gender, number
nor case, no numerals and no conjugations. The different sounds, vowels
or consonants, conveyed specific significations, and each phrase was
summed up in a single word.[30]