in what part of the earth it may most probably be supposed to have
originated. One obvious mode of approximating to a solution of this
question is to trace backward the lines in which the principal tribes
appear to have migrated, and to see if these converge nearly to a point.
It is very remarkable that the lines do converge, and are concentrated
about the region of Hindostan. The language, religion, modes of
reckoning time, and some other peculiar ideas of the Americans, are now
believed to refer their origin to North-Eastern Asia. Trace them farther
back in the same direction, and we come to the north of India. The
history of the Celts and Teutones represents them as coming from the
east, the one after the other, successive waves of a tide of population
flowing towards the north-west of Europe: this line being also traced
back, rests finally at the same place. So does the line of Iranian
population, which has peopled the east and south shores of the
Mediterranean, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt. The Malay variety, again, rests
its limit in one direction on the borders of India. Standing on that
point, it is easy to see how the human family, originating there, might
spread out in different directions, passing into varieties of aspect and
of language as they spread, the Malay variety proceeding towards the
Oceanic region, the Mongolians to the east and north, and sending off the
red men as a sub-variety, the European population going off to the
north-westward, and the Syrian, Arabian, and Egyptian, towards the
countries which they are known to have so long occupied. The Negro alone
is here unaccounted for; and of that race it may fairly be said, that it
is the one most likely to have had an independent origin, seeing that it
is a type so peculiar in an inveterate black colour, and so mean in
development. But it is not necessary to presume such an origin for it,
as much good argument might be employed to shew that it is only a
deteriorated offshoot of the general stock. Our view of the probable
original seat of man agrees with the ancient traditions of the race.
There is one among the Hindoos which places the cradle of the human
family in Thibet; another makes Ceylon the residence of the first man.
Our view is also in harmony with the hypothesis detailed in the chapter
before the last. According to that theory, we should expect man to have
originated where the highest species of the quadrumana are to be found.
Now these are unquestionably found in the Indian Archipelago.
After all, it may be regarded as still an open question, whether mankind
is of one or many origins. The first human generation may have consisted
of many pairs, though situated at one place, and these may have been
considerably different from each other in external characters. And we
are equally bound to admit, though this does not as yet seem to have
occurred to any other speculator, that there may have been different
lines and sources of origination, geographically apart, but which all
resulted uniformly in the production of a being, one in species, although
variously marked.
It has of late years been a favourite notion with many, that the human
race was at first in a highly civilized state, and that barbarism was a
second condition. This idea probably took its origin in a wish to
support certain interpretations of the Mosaic record, and it has never
yet been propounded by any writer who seemed to have a due sense of the
value of science in this class of investigations. The principal argument
for it is, that we see many examples of nations falling away from
civilization into barbarism, while in some regions of the earth, the
history of which we do not clearly know, there are remains of works of
art far superior to any which the present unenlightened inhabitants could
have produced. It is to be readily admitted that such decadences are
common; but do they necessarily prove that there has been anything like a
regular and constant decline into the present state, from a state more
generally refined? May not these be only instances of local failures and
suppressions of the principle of civilization, where it had begun to take
root amongst a people generally barbarous? It is, at least, as
legitimate to draw this inference from the facts which are known. But it
is also alleged that we know of no such thing as civilization being ever
self-originated. It is always seen to be imparted from one people to
another. Hence, of course, we must infer that civilization at the first
could only have been of supernatural origin. This argument appears to be
founded on false premises, for civilization does sometimes rise in a
manner clearly independent amongst a horde of people generally barbarous.
A striking instance is described in the laborious work of Mr. Catlin on
the North-American tribes. Far placed among those which inhabit the vast
region of the north-west, and quite beyond the reach of any influence
from the whites, he found a small tribe living in a fortified village,
where they cultivated the arts of manufacture, realized comforts and
luxuries, and had attained to a remarkable refinement of manners,
insomuch as to be generally called the polite and friendly Mandans. They
were also more than usually elegant in their persons, and of every
variety of complexion between that of their compatriots and a pure white.
Up to the time of Mr. Catlin’s visit, these people had been able to
defend themselves and their possessions against the roving bands which
surrounded them on all sides; but, soon after, they were attacked by
small-pox, which cut them all off except a small party, whom their
enemies rushed in upon and destroyed to a man. What is this but a
repetition on a small scale of phenomena with which ancient history
familiarizes us—a nation rising in arts and elegances amidst barbarous
neighbours, but at length overpowered by the rude majority, leaving only
a Tadmor or a Luxor as a monument of itself to beautify the waste? What
can we suppose the nation which built Palenque and Copan to have been but
only a Mandan tribe, which chanced to have made its way farther along the
path of civilization and the arts, before the barbarians broke in upon
it? The flame essayed to rise in many parts of the earth; but there were
always considerable chances against it, and down it accordingly went,
times without number; but there was always a vitality in it,
nevertheless, and a tendency to progress, and at length it seems to have
attained a strength against which the powers of barbarism can never more
prevail. The state of our knowledge of uncivilized nations is very apt
to make us fall into error on this subject. They are generally supposed
to be all at one point in barbarism, which is far from being the case,
for in the midst of every great region of uncivilized men, such as North
America, there are nations partially refined. The Jolofs, Mandingoes,
and Kafirs, are African examples, where a natural and independent origin
for the improvement which exists is as unavoidably to be presumed as in
the case of the Mandans.
The most conclusive argument against the original civilization of mankind
is to be found in the fact that we do not now see civilization existing
anywhere except in certain conditions altogether different from any we
can suppose to have existed at the commencement of our race. To have
civilization, it is necessary that a people should be numerous and
closely placed; that they should be fixed in their habitations, and safe
from violent external and internal disturbance; that a considerable
number of them should be exempt from the necessity of drudging for
immediate subsistence. Feeling themselves at ease about the first
necessities of their nature, including self-preservation, and daily
subjected to that intellectual excitement which society produces, men
begin to manifest what is called civilization; but never in rude and
shelterless circumstances, or when widely scattered. Even men who have
been civilized, when transferred to a wide wilderness, where each has to
work hard and isolatedly for the first requisites of life, soon shew a
retrogression to barbarism: witness the plains of Australia, as well as
the backwoods of Canada and the prairies of Texas. Fixity of residence
and thickening of population are perhaps the prime requisites for
civilization, and hence it will be found that all civilizations as yet
known have taken place in regions physically limited. That of Egypt
arose in a narrow valley hemmed in by deserts on both sides. That of
Greece took its rise in a small peninsula bounded on the only land side
by mountains. Etruria and Rome were naturally limited regions.
Civilizations have taken place at both the eastern and western
extremities of the elder continent—China and Japan, on the one hand;
Germany, Holland, Britain, France, on the other—while the great unmarked
tract between contains nations decidedly less advanced. Why is this, but
because the sea, in both cases, has imposed limits to further migration,
and caused the population to settle and condense—the conditions most
necessary for social improvement. {302} Even the simple case of the
Mandans affords an illustration of this principle, for Mr. Catlin
expressly, though without the least regard to theory, attributes their
improvement to the fact of their being a small tribe, obliged, by fear of
their more numerous enemies, to _settle in a permanent village_, so
fortified as to ensure their preservation. “By this means,” says he,
“they have advanced farther in the arts of manufacture, and have supplied
their lodges more abundantly with the comforts and even luxuries of life
than any Indian nation I know of. The consequence of this,” he adds, “is
that the tribe have taken many steps ahead of other tribes in _manners
and refinements_.” These conditions can only be regarded as natural laws
affecting civilization, and it might not be difficult, taking them into
account, to predict of any newly settled country its social destiny. An
island like Van Dieman’s land might fairly be expected to go on more
rapidly to good manners and sound institutions than a wide region like
Australia. The United States might be expected to make no great way in
civilization till they be fully peopled to the Pacific; and it might not
be unreasonable to expect that, when that even has occurred, the greatest
civilizations of that vast territory will be found in the peninsula of
California and the narrow stripe of country beyond the Rocky Mountains.
This, however, is a digression. To return: it is also necessary for a
civilization that at least a portion of the community should be placed
above mean and engrossing toils. Man’s mind becomes subdued, like the
dyer’s hand, to that it works in. In rude and difficult circumstances we
unavoidably become rude, because then only the inferior and harsher
faculties of our nature are called into existence. When, on the
contrary, there is leisure and abundance, the self-seeking and
self-preserving instincts are allowed to rest, the gentler and more
generous sentiments are evoked, and man becomes that courteous and
chivalric being which he is found to be amongst the upper classes of
almost all civilized countries. These, then, may be said to be the chief
natural laws concerned in the moral phenomenon of civilization. If I am
right in so considering them, it will of course be readily admitted that
the earliest families of the human race, although they might be simple
and innocent, could not have been in anything like a civilized state,
seeing that the conditions necessary for that state could not have then
existed. Let us only for a moment consider some of the things requisite
for their being civilized,—namely, a set of elegant homes ready furnished
for their reception, fields ready cultivated to yield them food without
labour, stores of luxurious appliances of all kinds, a complete social
enginery for the securing of life and property,—and we shall turn from
the whole conceit as one worthy only of the philosophers of Utopia.
Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families might be simple and
innocent, while at the same time unskilled and ignorant, and obliged to
live merely upon such substances as they could readily procure. The
traditions of all nations refer to such a state as that in which mankind
were at first: perhaps it is not so much a tradition as an idea which the
human mind naturally inclines to form respecting the fathers of the race;
but nothing that we see of mankind absolutely forbids our entertaining
this idea, while there are some considerations rather favourable to it.
A few families, in a state of nature, living near each other, in a
country supplying the means of livelihood abundantly, are generally
simple and innocent; their instinctive and perceptive faculties are also
apt to be very active, although the higher intellect may be dormant. If
we therefore presume India to have been the cradle of our race, they
might at first exemplify a sort of golden age; but it could not be of
long continuance. The very first movements from the primal seat would be
attended with degradation, nor could there be any tendency to true
civilization till groups had settled and thickened in particular seats
physically limited.
The probability may now be assumed that the human race sprung from one
stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity, if not barbarism. As
yet we have not seen very distinctly how the various branches of the
family, as they parted off, and took up separate ground, became marked by
external features so peculiar. Why are the Africans black, and generally
marked by coarse features and ungainly forms? Why are the Mongolians
generally yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians white? Why the flat
features of the Chinese, the small stature of the Laps, the soft round
forms of the English, the lank features of their descendants, the
Americans? All of these phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on
the ground of _development_. We have already seen that various leading
animal forms represent stages in the embryotic progress of the
highest—the human being. Our brain goes through the various stages of a
fish’s, a reptile’s, and a mammifer’s brain, and finally becomes human.
There is more than this, for, after completing the animal
transformations, it passes through the characters in which it appears, in
the Negro, Malay, American, and Mongolian nations, and finally is
Caucasian. The face partakes of these alterations. “One of the earliest
points in which ossification commences is the lower jaw. This bone is
consequently sooner completed than the other bones of the head, and
acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never loses in the
Negro. During the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull, the
oblong form which they naturally assume, approaches nearly the permanent
shape of the Americans. At birth, the flattened face, and broad smooth
forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes rather towards the side
of the head, and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian form;
while it is only as the child advances to maturity, that the oval face,
the arched forehead, and the marked features of the true Caucasian,
become perfectly developed.” {307a} _The leading characters_, _in
short_, _of the various races of mankind_, _are simply representations of
particular stages in the development of the highest or Caucasian type_.
The Negro exhibits permanently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw,
and slender bent limbs, of a Caucasian child, some considerable time
before the period of its birth. The aboriginal American represents the
same child nearer birth. The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born.
And so forth. All this is as respects form; {307b} but whence colour?
This might be supposed to have depended on climatal agencies only; but it
has been shewn by overpowering evidence to be independent of these. In
further considering the matter, we are met by the very remarkable fact
that colour is deepest in the least perfectly developed type, next in the
Malay, next in the American, next in the Mongolian, the very order in
which the degrees of development are ranged. _May not colour_, _then_,
_depend upon development also_? We do not, indeed, see that a Caucasian
fœtus at the stage which the African represents is anything like black;
neither is a Caucasian child yellow, like the Mongolian. There may,
nevertheless, be a character of skin at a certain stage of development
which is predisposed to a particular colour when it is presented as the
envelope of a mature being. Development being arrested at so immature a
stage in the case of the Negro, the skin may take on the colour as an
unavoidable consequence of its imperfect organization. It is favourable
to this view, that Negro infants are not deeply black at first, but only
acquire the full colour tint after exposure for some time to the
atmosphere. Another consideration in its favour is that there is a
likelihood of peculiarities of form and colour, since they are so
coincident, depending on one set of phenomena. If it be admitted as
true, there can be no difficulty in accounting for all the varieties of
mankind. They are simply the result of so many advances and
retrogressions in the developing power of the human mothers, these
advances and retrogressions being, as we have formerly seen, the
immediate effect of external conditions in nutrition, hardship, &c.,
{309} and also, perhaps, to some extent, of the suitableness and
unsuitableness of marriages, for it is found that parents too nearly
related tend to produce offspring of the Mongolian type,—that is, persons
who in maturity still are a kind of children. According to this view,
the greater part of the human race must be considered as having lapsed or
declined from the original type. In the Caucasian or Indo-European
family alone has the primitive organization been improved upon. The
Mongolian, Malay, American, and Negro, comprehending perhaps five-sixths
of mankind, are degenerate. Strange that the great plan should admit of
failures and aberrations of such portentous magnitude! But pause and
reflect; take time into consideration: the past history of mankind may
be, to what is to come, but as a day. Look at the progress even now
making over the barbaric parts of the earth by the best examples of the
Caucasian type, promising not only to fill up the waste places, but to
supersede the imperfect nations already existing. Who can tell what
progress may be made, even in a single century, towards reversing the
proportions of the perfect and imperfect types? and who can tell but that
the time during which the mean types have lasted, long as it appears, may
yet be thrown entirely into the shade by the time during which the best
types will remain predominant?
We have seen that the traces of a common origin in all languages afford a
ground of presumption for the unity of the human race. They establish a
still stronger probability that mankind had not yet begun to disperse
before they were possessed of a means of communicating their ideas by
conventional sounds—in short, speech. This is a gift so peculiar to man,
and in itself so remarkable, that there is a great inclination to surmise
a miraculous origin for it, although there is no proper ground, or even
support, for such an idea in Scripture, while it is clearly opposed to
everything else that we know with regard to the providential arrangements
for the creation of our race. Here, as in many other cases, a little
observation of nature might have saved much vain discussion. The real
character of language itself has not been thoroughly understood.
Language, in its most comprehensive sense, is the communication of ideas
by whatever means. Ideas can be communicated by looks, gestures, and
signs of various other kinds, as well as by speech. The inferior animals
possess some of those means of communicating ideas, and they have
likewise a silent and unobservable mode of their own, the nature of which
is a complete mystery to us, though we are assured of its reality by its
effects. Now, as the inferior animals were all in being before man,
there was language upon earth long ere the history of our race commenced.
The only additional fact in the history of language, which was produced
by our creation, was the rise of a new mode of expression—namely, that by
_sound-signs_ produced by the vocal organs. In other words, speech was
the only novelty in this respect attending the creation of the human
race. No doubt it was an addition of great importance, for, in
comparison with it, the other natural modes of communicating ideas sink
into insignificance. Still, the main and fundamental phenomenon,
language, as the communication of ideas, was no new gift of the Creator
to man; and in speech itself, when we judge of it as a natural fact, we
see only a result of some of those superior endowments of which so many
others have fallen to our lot through the medium of an improved or
advanced organization.
The first and most obvious natural endowment concerned in speech is that
peculiar organization of the larynx, trachea, and mouth, which enables us
to produce the various sounds required in the case. Man started at first
with this organization ready for use, a constitution of the atmosphere
adapted for the sounds which that organization was calculated to produce,
and, lastly, but not leastly, as will afterwards be more particularly
shewn, a mental power within, prompting to, and giving directions for,
the expression of ideas. Such an arrangement of mutually adapted things
was as likely to produce sounds as an Eolian harp placed in a draught is
to produce tones. It was unavoidable that human beings so organized, and
in such a relation to external nature, should utter sounds, and also come
to attach to these conventional meanings, thus forming the elements of
spoken language. The great difficulty which has been felt was to account
for man going in this respect beyond the inferior animals. There could
have been no such difficulty if speculators in this class of subjects had
looked into physiology for an account of the superior vocal organization
of man, and had they possessed a true science of mind to shew man
possessing a faculty for the expression of ideas which is only rudimental
in the lower animals. Another difficulty has been in the consideration
that, if men were at first utterly untutored and barbarous, they could
scarcely be in a condition to form or employ language—an instrument which
it requires the fullest powers of thought to analyse and speculate upon.
But this difficulty also vanishes upon reflection—for, in the first
place, we are not bound to suppose the fathers of our race early
attaining to great proficiency in language, and, in the second, language
itself seems to be amongst the things least difficult to be acquired, if
we can form any judgment from what we see in children, most of whom have,
by three years of age, while their information and judgment are still as
nothing, mastered and familiarized themselves with a quantity of words,
infinitely exceeding in proportion what they acquire in the course of any
subsequent similar portion of time.