Publications of the
Anthropological Society of London.
THE PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.
POUCHET.
THE PLURALITY
OF
THE HUMAN RACE:
BY
GEORGES POUCHET,
DOCTOR OF MEDICINE, LICENTIATE OF NATURAL SCIENCE, AIDE-NATURALISTE
IN THE MUSEUM OF ROUEN, MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PARIS,
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, ETC.
TRANSLATED AND EDITED,
(From the Second Edition),
BY
HUGH J. C. BEAVAN, F.R.G.S., F.A.S.L.,
OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED FOR THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY, BY
LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1864.
DEDICATED
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
SIR EDWARD G. E. L. BULWER-LYTTON, BART.,
M.P., D.C.L., ETC.
With all the respect
DUE TO A GREAT WRITER AND LEARNED MAN,
BY
HUGH J. C. BEAVAN.
EDITOR’S PREFACE.
A few words by way of preface to a book on the _Plurality of the Human
Race_ are necessary as well as advisable. They are especially so when
the Author and Editor differ considerably in their opinions, as in this
case; and although it is by no means a _sine quâ non_ that they should
always agree, there are certain points on which a few lines may be
required.
The Publishing Committee of the Anthropological Society of London
honoured me by committing the translation and editing of this book to
my care, and I set about the task with some diffidence, as this is
probably the first work of the kind which has ever been given to the
English literary world in a convenient and popular form. Such being the
case, there will sometimes be found expressions which may be thought
foreign; but I have preferred on these occasions giving the more
literal translation, instead of one which possibly might fail to convey
the Author’s real meaning. In books containing such very peculiar ideas
as those of M. Pouchet, it is requisite to be especially careful on
this head.
Of the clever nature and terse expression of the work there can
be little doubt, but I am sorry to find in it opinions with which
I cannot at all agree, and in order to prove which, or rather
endeavour to do so, science is strained in an unnatural manner. The
theory of spontaneous generation is by no means a new one; but M.
Pouchet can throw very little light on the subject, and leaves it as
before--entirely unproved. The extreme sceptical nature of his views is
much to be regretted, and in this especially the Author and Editor are
in entire disagreement. The former is inclined to go out of his way to
bring forward those views, when they were not required, and would have
been better left unsaid.
We have, however, a new and extremely interesting field of
investigation opened to us; but the more pains our author takes to
explain and illustrate the wonders of our physical and psychological
nature, the more he seems to disprove his own theory of spontaneous
generation. Blackmore said--
“Survey
Nature’s extended face, then, sceptics say,
In this wide field of wonders can you find
No art?”
But M. Pouchet _does_ find art in nature; he tells us that its ways are
intricate and manifold, but still that it all arises from some germ
spontaneously generated, he cannot say how.
With this exception, which some may think no fault at all, I recommend
this book heartily to the Fellows of the Society and the public
generally. The clearness and even brilliancy of M. Pouchet’s very
peculiar style are soon discoverable, and it is not astonishing that
his book has had a great success in France. That such will be the case
in its English form is my sincere wish. I must thank my friend Mr.
Carter Blake especially for many kind and valuable hints, and I need
scarcely say, in conclusion, that as much care as possible has been
taken with the translation and editing. I now commit this little work
to the kind consideration of the Society and the world. It is for them
to judge how my duties have been performed.
H. J. C. B.
_London, August 30th, 1864._
TO
PROFESSOR RICHARD OWEN.
Sir,--I begged to be allowed to dedicate to you the first edition of
this essay, in remembrance of the kind hospitality I formerly received
from you in the cottage at Mortlake, and of our long conversations, in
which you were so ready with good advice.
The debt of hospitality can never be repaid. I am happy to be able once
more to express my gratitude to you, and my admiration of your great
works.
GEORGES POUCHET.
_Muséum de Rouen, July 1st, 1864._
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
I now offer to the public the second edition of a book whose success
has far surpassed my expectations. Received with kindness by some, it
has been violently attacked by others. It was denounced to the highest
representatives of the university authority on which I depended, and
I owed my escape from the trouble which might have been drawn on
me,--because I brought forward a scientific opinion in disagreement
with the books attributed to the prophet Moses,--to the justice of one
of the most honoured members of the Institute. I owe a large debt of
gratitude to my illustrious protector. The mind has advanced during six
years, and the same troubles will not be met with again.
A good many alterations will be discovered in this Second Edition; this
is always the case with science. In matters of imagination, when the
artist has finished his work, he can cast it on the world and follow
his fancy in some other way. If science were only composed of truths,
its conditions would almost be the same for its disciples; but the
seeker after truth is not a creator like an artist, he explains and
reflects upon a world of facts, variable at every hour, according as
hypotheses are changed into certainties, or certainties of yesterday
into doubtful cases of to-day. It is, then, an incessant work of
reparation and alteration, in order to maintain even the most modest
work in harmony with the daily progress of science; I have made this
work as perfect as was in my power. I have taken great care with the
list of authorities. I have also indicated by their titles all the
articles from periodicals, reviews, or academic collections, to which
I refer the reader. I am sure that those who know what an ungrateful
task it is to search such badly catalogued libraries as most of ours
are, will give me credit for this part of my work. We can only see the
expression of science at a given moment in _Mémoires_. Books are, after
all, merely a summary: they are behind-hand even on the day they are
published.
G. P.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
EDITOR’S DEDICATION v
EDITOR’S PREFACE vii
AUTHOR’S DEDICATION ix
AUTHOR’S PREFACE xi
CONTENTS xiii
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I.
THE HUMAN KINGDOM 10
CHAPTER II.
COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 24
CHAPTER III.
THE ORDER OF BIMANA 38
CHAPTER IV.
ANATOMICAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL, AND PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES 43
CHAPTER V.
INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES 62
CHAPTER VI.
THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE 80
CHAPTER VII.
THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY 95
CHAPTER VIII.
SPECIES 108
CHAPTER IX.
SYSTEM 134
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 153
INDEX OF AUTHORS 156
THE PLURALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.
INTRODUCTION.
For a long period, in mediæval days, science was to most people what
it was to Servetus, a simple paraphrase or glossary of a revealed
text. In this was the truth, and if observation itself seemed
sometimes contradictory, it was certain that there was some mistake;
it was necessary to re-examine the contested question, and by dint of
inquiring into the facts, they were altered so wisely, that in the end
they always were found to agree.
All over the East, among the Semitic race,[1] that which above all
other possesses respect for authority, science still lives. Without the
law there is no science, and the Korán is what the books of the sons of
Israel and the writings of the apostles were in the middle ages, the
great, the only authority, to which everything was referred.[2]
If science has shone with a bright light in the East, this was due
solely to the introduction of a more human philosophy, born among
another race, and conveyed there by the works of Aristotle and the
neo-Platonists. The East was inspired for an instant with these foreign
doctrines, which it would have been incapable of originating itself. It
revived for a century or two under their influence, but soon everything
reverted to a former state of order; having shone in the barbarism of a
pure theism, whence it would never have come out without the contact of
a world extrinsic and superior to certain considerations, without the
momentary education which it had thus received from it.
All the sciences are not in the same intimate relation with the
texts called revealed; the mathesiological order is that in which
the sciences have had, and could have, the least to suffer from
religious influence; in the first place, mathematics, which, from their
nature, would never have known how to yield; and, lastly, geology and
anthropology, allied by intimate relations to the Divine tradition of
the first chapter of Genesis. But see how geology, which we thought for
so long a time was in agreement with it, grows more distant every day
as new discoveries are multiplied. The pretended epochs see, day by
day, that their artificial limits are disappearing, now that one finds
reptiles in coal-fields and mammalia in Trias.
Anthropology in France seems, at last, to desire to free itself from
the shameful yoke which has for so long paralysed its flight. In its
turn it claims independence. But, we would declare this, that the
principle of authority, defeated on so many points, has concentrated
its highest efforts behind this last rampart, calling to its aid the
pretence of morality and propriety. The question of the unity or the
plurality of the human race, so far as relates to species, is only a
scientific one; but others make of it a question of principle, as in
the time of Galileo, when it was a matter of overturning the ideas of
the old world, supported by a testimony which was not allowed to be
doubted. So the struggle is a sharp one;[3] it is felt that it refers
almost to a dogma, and not merely to an accessory fact. Science clashes
there with religion, as is the case with geology, and as formerly with
astronomy; but in no way is the shock so violent, in no way can its
consequences be as great. Anthropology, more than any other science,
ought to produce immense results.[4] Who does not see that the abyss
becomes every day deeper under the belief of the past, and that
science, at a given moment, will become the foundation of more perfect
morality?
This antagonism is the first difficulty which we find at the threshold
of anthropology. We should have wished to have entered upon our subject
without being obliged, not absolutely to discuss it, but merely to
show the disputed point in the question. Unfortunately, the example
has been given us; we must follow it. Two schools are to be found
in anthropology; one called that of the Polygenists, the other that
of the Monogenists,[5] two words which came from America, and which
we receive because they have the great advantage of being clear and
precise, determining, by the opposing point of their doctrines, two
distinct schools, the one recognising but one family in the human
race, of which some members have alone preserved the primitive
type--altered everywhere else; the other school recognising no direct
relationship among the races of mankind. The Polygenistic school is
comparatively modern; the founders of anthropology--the Blumenbachs and
the Prichards--belonged to the other. Now, if they took their stand on
an entirely philosophic or experimental point of view, we should be
very badly received now-a-days if we were to reconsider the question
upon a burning soil. It has not been so, however. Most Monogenists[6]
have, up to the present time, done the universal wrong of invoking,
in proof of their ideas, an authority which it is not allowable to
discuss. Science is neither a special attribute of privileged castes,
nor given to certain times in preference to others; it has never been
obliged to wait for a revelation; it is universal, and all men, endowed
with the same faculties, have always been able, in all countries and at
all times, to carry it as far, when they have had the same means and
the same occasions of observation; it is thus that psychology, based
upon simple reflection, has not farther progressed in our days than
at Athens or at Alexandria; from Plato to Descartes there is only the
distance between one system and the other.
“Historians of that which is,” has said the illustrious chief of the
philosophical school of France, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, “we
cannot fail, except when we cease to relate the truth.”[7] Now, truth
in science cannot be governed except by two means, reasoning after the
manner of mathematics, and observation, of which experiment is but a
variety. Every idea _à priori_, every hypothesis is only good if we
accept it with a strong determination of abandoning it if the facts
are no longer explicable by its means. Without this, its influence is
disastrous, let the origin of this previous idea be in ourselves or in
others, whether it is our own or has been imposed upon us.[8]
In starting with a preconceived idea one arrives most often, in
science, at false allegations, always at uncertainties. It is upon
reasons of this sort that some have not feared to rest the theory of
the unity of the human race;[9] since this hypothesis being accepted,
they have caused, willingly or otherwise, their observed facts
to correspond with it. Were the generally-admitted principles of
classification irksome to them? They passed on; they shut their eyes
to the most profound, the most positive, the most evident differences.
Ought not, then, unity to triumph? What did it signify, besides,
whether the Negro descended from the white man, or the contrary--for
these two opinions have been defended; for some, a few generations have
been sufficient to transform the fine Greek blood, which gave models
to Phidias and Praxiteles, into an Australian aboriginal. For others,
the Negroes were the true representation of our first parents, that
perfect work which last of all left the hands of God. Lieut.-Colonel
H. Smith[10] would admit that in the beginning were created separately
certain groups of men, if revelation were not positive on this
point. We notice especially in Kaempfer a specimen of what we may
call _orthodox ethnology_, which is curious above all things; having
discovered that the Japanese have nothing in common with the Chinese,
he decides, with a marvellous assurance, that they are directly
descended from the men on the scaffoldings of the Tower of Babel. And
as their language resembles no other tongue, he draws the conclusion
that their ancestors must have travelled very fast, so as not to have
become acquainted with anybody else![11]
And let no one say that it is obsolete matter to treat of science.
Orthodox physics and chemistry are indeed no myths. M. Marcel de
Serres, who has also occupied himself with anthropology, speaking
of the discussions which have been raised between the partisans of
emission and those of luminous undulation, adds, that this latter
theory has more chances of being exact, “because the facts related by
the legislator of the Hebrews seem to him to be more favourable to
truth.”[12] The Congregation of the Index, judging Galileo, reasoned in
the same way.[13] We arrive thus at once at the proscription of certain
inquiries, and we ask ourselves, How two men, so eminent as Humboldt
and Bonpland, could have approved of such lines as the following? “The
general question of the first origin of the inhabitants of a continent
is beyond the limits prescribed to history, _perhaps it may not be
even a philosophical question_.”[14] It is true that the work in which
this singular declaration is to be found is dedicated to his Catholic
Majesty Charles IV.
Thanks to these fatal influences, thanks to the interdicts with which
some would have desired to stifle the natural history of mankind, as
if they were afraid of seeing the spark, which should accomplish the
ruin of the past, disappear with the full light; thanks to all these
obstacles, anthropology was for a long time thrown into the background.
It is in America where we behold it reinstated in its rank, in that
country of every kind of liberty. It is there that our old continent
ought to go in order to find masters who have known how to enter
into scientific pursuits with this free and independent mind which,
in old times, according to Epicurus, freed mankind from the yoke of
superstition, and gave to intelligence the sceptre of the world.
The eighteenth century, with all its scepticism, had not done little in
this way; its fault, indeed, was in this scepticism, in this doubting
_à priori_. It rejected without examination, therefore its work was not
lasting, and the few lines of Voltaire which his good sense had written
with a Polygenistic tendency, had no influence at all.[15]
At present France and England walk entirely in the scientific path
opened by the American school. It is some years since it was vainly
endeavoured to establish in these two countries learned societies for
the study of ethnology; that time has passed. Now Paris and London
maintain two prosperous anthropological societies.[16] We do not
hesitate in attributing the reason of this success to the profound
discredit in which the continued blending of matters of faith with
matters of science, has justly fallen.
Apart from religious influence, there is another which may make itself
felt as regards anthropology. We mean those very honourable sentiments
about equality and confraternity which an honest heart will feel
towards all men, whatever may be their origin, whatever the colour of
their skin, but of which the searcher[17] after truth must disembarrass
himself, cost what it may to him as a _man_. Such feelings honour those
who are animated by them, but when they interfere with science, they
can only injure it. How many years, how many centuries, have anatomy
and medicine been obliged to wait until they could take a lasting and
an upward flight! Respect for the dead is doubtless a human sentiment,
if any; but it used to paralyse these two branches of our knowledge;
they are only possible to be learnt by profaning mortal remains
reverenced by the religions of antiquity. Physiology, rendered so clear
by vivisection, knows no pity; mankind feels it, but the physiologist
shuts up all knowledge of it from himself; it is momentarily destroyed,
since it would injure any inquiry into the laws of life.
It must be owned that the science which engages our attention has not
been able entirely to disembarrass itself among us of that which we
may call _moral propriety_.[18] It has a powerful influence on certain
minds, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes of their free will.[19]
We have ourselves heard eminent professors make a noble appeal to the
fraternity which ought to exist among men,--plead in their chairs the
cause of inferior races, and proclaim the equality of the African
people with ourselves. Such noble theories were received as they ought
to be, with the most ardent applause. There remains only to inquire
if this is truly philosophical progress, and if kindness, pity, or
compassion, have any value in the great balance of facts.
It was time, indeed, that a new method--an independent one--should see
the light in anthropology, as it has already done in astronomy, as it
also has begun to do in geology. It was time to return to the human
mind its wings. Facts, reasonings supported by facts, are the sole
basis of every solid work--of every certainty in scientific matters;
it is the only method which can lead us--by a slow path, perhaps, but
a sure one--to the solution of the most difficult and the most obscure
problems. We do not except that of the origin of man.
We do not pretend to be first in the path which we here point out,
but we wish to express our regret at not having seen it openly enough
followed by all those who are worthy to enter it. As for ourselves,
what we have desired in this essay is, first, to hold ourselves apart
from all extra-scientific data--from all sentimental science; we have
desired to treat some anthropological questions as they would have done
at Athens, Rome, or at Alexandria--a task above our powers, doubtless,
but which we hold ourselves bound in honour to attempt.
We shall carefully, then, avoid entering into any controversy touching
the dogmas of one religion or the other; we shall not contest the
authority of the Scriptures, whatever they may be, Hebrew, Christian,
Arabic, or Buddhist; we have put them on one side, and that is all.[20]
Descartes has truly observed that every scientific question ought to be
examined, even those which are most superstitious and most false, “so
as to recognise their just value, and to guard against being deceived
by them.”[21] One may be free to consider this essay as an attempt of
that kind.
We shall be praised or blamed: we have been so already. We have, for
our comfort, the conscientious feeling of having no other object before
our eyes but an inquiry into truth,--the truth, the common end towards
which the power of every man who believes in progress should tend.
“Where truth reigns,” says M. Chevreul, “no disputes or discussions
are possible.”[22] The reign of truth is the reign of concord amongst
mankind. It is the golden age.
CHAPTER I.
THE HUMAN KINGDOM.
Above inorganic matter, plants, and animals, is placed Man.
Here, without any doubt, man is indeed the first of the organisms,
when one tries to place in linear series all those which move on our
planet. It is, also, not his _relative_ position in the living world
that it is difficult to discover; it is what we may call his _true
place_. What is, in other terms, the value of the differences which
separate man from other mammalia? and at what distance is he from
the animal that immediately follows him in this linear series which
we are supposing? To examine what man is with respect to the highest
orders of mammalia, and in a more general manner, to animals, is the
primordial question which presents itself in anthropology. It seems at
first sight that it would suffice, in order to settle it, to throw a
glance on this complete body, formed of the same anatomical elements,
absolutely submitted to the same exigences of development, nutrition,
and reproduction, as animals. Ought not all this to make us think
that we were not altogether made of so immaterial a substance as the
philosophers have generally been satisfied to believe? This has not
been the case.
Two systems--two theories, are before us. The one pretends that man is
but the first among animals, that he is _similar_ to them in the clear
and precise sense in which this term is taken in geometry, designing
qualities, which may differ _ad infinitum_, but which still may be
comparable.
Another system, supported by the most illustrious names, makes of man
a sort of special entity, differing from other organised beings by
the distinct and clear nature of his intelligence. It is an opinion
adopted and defended to the last by a learned man, to whose memory
we cannot, _en passant_, prevent ourselves from rendering the homage
which is his due, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. We find in the
second volume of his _Histoire Naturelle Générale_, almost a return to
Cartesian ideas. According to him animals do not think, they possess
only that sensibility that plants have not.[23] And the celebrated
naturalist agreed with the adoption of a human kingdom, appearing as
the crowning-point of the organic and inorganic kingdoms,[24] and as
distinct from the second as this is from the third.
Before proceeding further, we may be permitted to make one preliminary
remark. We may thus declare it:--
PROPOSITION.--_Man nearly approaches the Anthropomorphous Apes in his
Physical Organism._ Whether one is a partisan or not of the “Human
Kingdom,” this resemblance is a fact which it will be in no person’s
ideas to contest. And it is not merely in the external forms; we find
it even greater if, going to the foundation of the facts, we give our
attention to the essential parts composing the body,--to the anatomical
elements,--to those delicate particles visible only in the microscope,
and which always show, among animals of the same group, a marvellous
uniformity.
It is here where, if not an impossibility, at least a sort of
contradiction presents itself to the defenders of the “human kingdom;”
for there are two organisms, scarcely different, at the service of
two directing powers, of two intelligences absolutely and radically
dissimilar. Doubtless all the forces of organised matter are not known
to us, but does not this resemblance, though even a superficial one,
surprise us; and does it not seem that every organism constituted
directly by reason of the influences which it is qualified to receive
or to transmit, ought to vary like these influences, and in the same
proportion?
It is very easy to admit that there is more distance between the
intelligence of man and that of the anthropomorphous apes, than between
the intelligence of these last and that of the smooth-brained squirrel,
and that at the same time the immense distance is only marked in the
first case by very superficial variations of the organ of intellectual
manifestations, whilst, in the second case, this lesser distance is
explained by enormous differences.
To admit, with Bossuet,[25] that this superior intelligence, the
appanage of man, is not attached to the organs reserved for the
manifestations of this inferior intelligence common to man and
animals, is to return to Descartes, and this is to fall again into new
difficulties. Will this superior intelligence, thus detached from the
material world, be then inaccessible to physical violence?
Whilst the finger of the physiologist or the surgeon, pressing
the brain, extinguishes for a moment in the animal, the faculty
of thinking, will human intelligence, freed from this servitude,
remain, in the like case, undisturbed in a higher sphere? No, by the
compression of the brain man loses consciousness like the animal. It
is material substance, which, brought into contact with the anatomical
elements of the nervous centres, can excite,[26] trouble,[27] or
depress,[28] the intelligence of animals, and leave no part of the
human intellect untouched.
Let us reconsider these two systems: viz., that man is similar to
animals as much by his intelligence as by his bodily formation; or
that he differs from them entirely. And now we have two clearly stated
theories before us for our consideration. To embrace either one or
the other _à priori_, merely for the sake of propriety or sentiment,
would be an arbitrary proceeding, essentially faulty, and contrary
to all rule; as in natural science, no other assistance is required
except _facts_, in order to explain the origin of anything. However,
without prejudging the solution of this question, let us simply examine
the results to which, by its nature, it may lead us. That man is of
himself a special entity, a kingdom, a world of his own, a sort of
_microcosm_, a whole beyond the pale of universal life, may be perhaps
a flattering unction to our soul;[29] it does little or nothing for
science. Anthropology may have its special means of inquiry; perhaps
these means are still to be found, but she will stand alone--without
profit to the other branches of human knowledge, a dead branch which
will not grow, casting all its leaves. If not--if man enters into the
common course of life--if he is merely a part of one grand organic
whole, necessarily allied to others by a thousand points of contact and
intimate relations, then anthropology, fertilised by the principle of
universality, becomes a science by which we may profit; it gives to her
sisters, the other natural sciences, that assistance which she herself
receives from them; the paths widen; the science of organisation
becomes easier, more certain, and more enlarged; _synthesis_,
displaying its powerful energies, opens to us the path of the unknown;
the mind, overleaping this obstacle, pointed out by Montaigne, “of not
understanding” animals, will study their intelligence, and will search
their inmost thoughts. As for ourselves, we are learning to know them,
like Galen the inspired, who obtained a knowledge of human anatomy by
dissecting a monkey.
Let us endeavour to obtain an exact idea of this barrier, apparently
impossible to be overcome, which separates man from the brute creation.
Whether we compare him to the highest order of primates living on
trees--this genius which is the glory of humanity, which has raised
to such a height both science and art--or only to the last from among
us, members of the great family rejoicing in a white skin, _then_ the
transition is brutish, and it seems that an abyss separates us from the
famous _wild man of the woods_, so celebrated in the travels of the
last century. It is thus that the human kingdom has been established,
comparing the two extremes, without taking account of the intermediate
terms.
Let us put on one side, for an instant, the question of origin. A race,
or a family, endowed with a characteristic and united activity, by the
form of mind peculiar to itself, with a prepossession for reuniting in
a cluster the work of every individual intelligence, forms out of it
a sort of thought common to all, and transmits this inheritance from
generation to generation. One can understand that, as time goes on,
this family, or this race, will arrive at a degree of civilisation
very different to that which it showed at the time of its origin. The
concurrence of so many intelligent modes of action will gently, but
naturally, lead it to purely metaphysical ideas--to the intricate idea
of a divinity, etc. But, in such an arrangement, each one is, after
all, but the representative of a secular intellectual work, accustomed
since the cradle, without any self-knowledge of the fact, to natural
habits and language. We ask if it is right to compare a being thus
raised and exalted by his own means with an animal which has no more
remote past than its own birth?[30] Let us take, then, for the sake
of comparing them with animals, those people in whom life is in some
sort individual, among whom no person adds anything to transmitted
inheritance,--among whom even this inheritance has originally come from
outside, and who, we know not why, having arrived at the lowest ebb of
civilisation, have not been able to improve or perfect it.
Some may say that they simply copy everything. Some may say that the
huge weapons used by the inhabitants of Central Africa and Australia
have only become known by importation; that the savage is civilised
at a given moment by contact with some foreign nation--by imitation, a
faculty which is possessed, within well marked limits, by the highest
order of apes; and then, that progress has been stopped when these
people return to their own homes. How can we explain otherwise, for
example, that the Northern Esquimaux, living on the ice by the borders
of creeks and bays, can make dresses and arms, and have never been able
to construct a machine capable of bearing them upon the waters?[31]
If we break up one continuous series, and compare together the two
first terms with two of the fragments of the series, they will in
reality appear entirely distinct; in fact, almost impossible to be
connected with one common type. But, if we compare the last term of
one of these partial series with the first term of the following, then
the differences are blended, because the transformations do not happen
to hide the parts so much that one cannot recognise their fundamental
unity. We discover, for example, that in the animal series, such a
crustacean is almost a mollusk, such a reptile, such a mammal, almost a
bird.[32] Differences are extinguished; those beings which were said to
be most distant have become almost allied one to the other. We can only
perceive one continuous series; so much so, indeed, that even where
there are any unfilled spaces, or missing links, we consider ourselves
almost justified in declaring the past existence (or the future one?)
of some intermediate animal.
As for ourselves, the series of beings given by Bonnet and Leibnitz, so
far as regards any ulterior phenomenon, resulting from the observation
of beings who have not been of necessity created in this order, is true
not only of the physical, but also of the intellectual world. Shall we
desire to know what man has in common with the ape--what distance there
is between the one and the other,--let us no longer put _ourselves_ on
the stage, we who are privileged so to do; let us descend boldly the
steps of the human ladder, and let us see what we shall find as we do
so.
Examples are not wanting of races placed so low, that they have quite
naturally appeared to resemble the ape tribe. These people, much
nearer than ourselves to a state of nature, deserve on that account
every attention on the part of the anthropologist and the linguist,
who may both discover, by their means, problems otherwise difficult
or impossible to be solved. It is because we have not studied the
psychological characters of these races, that we have fallen into
such strange mistakes. What will become of all those superb theories
concerning this superior intelligence of man, so entirely independent
and disengaged from the world, on which so much praise is conferred?
What will become of the unity of the human species, if we can prove
that certain races are not a whit more intelligent than certain
animals, and have no more idea of a moral world or of religion than
they themselves have?
The most commonly quoted example is that of the aborigines of
Australia. “They have always shown complete ignorance,” say both Lesson
and Garnot,[33] “a sort of _moral brutality_.... A kind of highly
developed instinct for discovering the food which is always difficult
for them to obtain _seems, among them, to have taken the place of most
of the moral faculties of mankind_.” If the English police did not
watch very strictly, they would set at defiance every day, at least in
the towns of their colonies, all the laws of public decency without any
more thought than the monkeys in a menagerie.
In the account given of the American Expedition in 1838, Mr. Hale
writes that they almost possess the stupidity of the brute, that they
can only count up to _four_, and some tribes only so far as _three_.
“The power of reasoning,” he says, “seems but imperfectly developed
among them. The arguments used by the colonists to convince or persuade
them are often such as they would use towards children or persons who
are almost idiotic.”[34] MM. Quoy and Gaimard, whom no one will accuse
of polygenist tendencies, give the following account of their interview
with these miserable people. “Our presence seemed to cause them a sort
of pleasure; and they endeavoured to explain their sensations on the
subject with a loquacity to which we could not respond, seeing we did
not understand their language. After this meeting they used to come
to us, gesticulating and talking rapidly; they gave shrill screams,
and if we answered in the same way, their delight was immense. Soon
there was a change, and they did not hesitate to ask for something to
eat, by the simple mode of _hitting themselves on the belly_.”[35] The
spectacle these travellers had before them is so sad and touching that
they afterwards add, as if to satisfy their own consciences, “however,
they are not stupid.” Doubtless, they are not; but they do not seem to
deserve the epithet which the world gives to these beings, who appear
so completely inferior to others. “Malicious as a monkey.” _They are
not stupid_, and that is all.[36] The Australians are not exceptional
in this; Bory de Saint Vincent has drawn for us a picture of the
inhabitants of South Africa, a beautiful and fertile land, which is
almost as sad. At the other end of the world, upon that ice-continent
which surrounds the north pole, we find the same abjection.
Sir John Ross, lost among the ice, found himself among a race of
people who had never seen an European; this English sailor, a strictly
religious man, was peculiarly adapted to behold with indulgence the
only beings who were near him, but although he was an attentive and
scrupulous observer, and above all, a truly sincere man, he seemed to
despair of finding in their minds the living spark for which he was
searching. “The Esquimaux,” he says, “is an animal of prey, with no
other enjoyment than eating: and, guided by no principle and no reason,
he devours as long as he can, and all that he can procure, like the
vulture and the tiger.”[37] And, farther on, “The Esquimaux eats but
to sleep, and sleeps but to eat again as soon as he can.”[38] We shall
descend still lower, in order to find out men who are so degraded, that
those who have seen them have stated, that if they were in thick bushes
or the shadows of the forest, they would hardly have known whether
they were apes or men. And, let attention be paid to this,--these
wretched beings, almost deprived of human form, do not inhabit a poor
or secluded country, but the continent of Asia, to the south of the
Himalaya chain, in the centre of Hindoostan, in those regions which
have been the cradle of several huge species of apes, at that epoch,
doubtless, when the islands of the Indian Archipelago were joined to
Asia, and formed one immense continent,--the land of the Malay race.[39]
In 1824, an English colonist, Mr. Piddington, a settler in the centre
of Hindoostan (towards Palmow, Subhulpore, and the upper basin of
the Nerbudda), relates[40] that he saw amongst a party of Dhangour
workmen,--who came every year to work on his plantation,--a man and a
woman who were extremely strange and uncouth, and whom the Dhangours
themselves called _monkey-people_. They had a language of their own.
From so much as could be understood by signs, it was discovered that
they lived far beyond the country of the Dhangours, in the forests and
in the mountains, and possessed few villages. It would seem that the
man had fled with the woman in consequence of some misfortune, perhaps
a murder. But at all events, they were found by the Dhangours lost in
the woods, exhausted, and almost dead from hunger. They disappeared
suddenly one night, just as Mr. Piddington had made arrangements to
send them to Calcutta. It would seem from other information that a
Mr. Trail, for many years Commissioner at Kuman, had also seen these
extraordinary beings, and had even been so fortunate as to procure
one of them, whose appearance fully justified the traditional name
given to them by the natives. In fact, other evidence--some of it
historical--may be added to this in order to prove the existence of
such an inferior race in different parts of the Indian peninsula.
Mr. Piddington thus describes him:--“He was short, flat-nosed, had
pouch-like wrinkles in semicircles round the corners of the mouth and
cheeks; his arms were disproportionately long, and there was a portion
of reddish hair to be seen on the rusty-black skin. Altogether, if
crouched in a dark corner or on a tree, he might have been mistaken
for a large orang-utan.” It must be noticed that Mr. Piddington had
travelled a great deal, and that he had acquired, even without his
own knowledge, some experience in anthropology. He takes care to tell
us that he had seen in their turn the Bosjesmen, the Hottentots, the
Papous, the Alfourous, the aborigines of Australia, New Zealand, and
the Sandwich Islands, which, indeed, gives great authority to the
facts which he relates.[41] What, we may indeed exclaim, are these
really men? After journeying over the beaten track, see how far we
are from that Aryan family, the mistress of arts and science; how
much we approach the brute, even if we have not already reached that
point? We have descended; let us now raise the other mammalia to man,
and in the highest degree to which we can attain, let us endeavour to
measure the distance to the point we have just left. Let it be well
understood, we shall only consider in this place the highest mammalia;
for the question becomes more complicated on every side as soon as
the difference in the organisms becomes more apparent. In regard to
this, facts have often spoken for a long time, and the _savant_, whose
testimony in such a case possesses most value, Professor R. Owen,
has not feared to say, that the distinction between man and certain
primates is the great difficulty felt by all anatomists.[42] Let us
pass on to intellect.
All animals feel, understand, and think (M. Flourens and M. de
Quatrefages), they dream, are capable of feeling distrust, fear,
joy,[43] sorrow, jealousy, etc.; in fact, the entire list of human
passions.[44] All this is amply proved by a thousand examples; who does
not remember the accounts of seals, elephants, dogs, which have become
celebrated, and which men who have lived a short time with animals
may see repeated every day? Only read the admirable account given by
Buffon of the intelligence of the dog; again, the detailed and valuable
history which F. Cuvier has left us concerning the orang-outang in the
Museum, without forgetting that this history could be neither complete
nor perfect on account of the various circumstances in which the animal
was placed, far from his own country, and under an ungenial sky.
Dr. Yvan, attached to the expedition which the French government sent
to China in 1843,[45] has given us an account of an orang-outang at
Borneo, which is, perhaps, the best plea in favour of the connexion
between primates and mankind. Tuân, as this animal was called, began
to dress himself directly a bit of any stuff, or cloth, got in his
way.[46] On one occasion, when his master had taken a mangrove from
him, “he uttered plaintive cries like a child when it is sulky. This
conduct not having been so successful as he expected, he threw himself
on his face upon the ground, struck the earth with his fist, screamed,
cried, and howled, for more than half-an-hour.” When the mangrove was
given back to him, he threw it at the head of his master.[47] It is
a curious fact, but the particular friend of Tuân was a negro from
Manilla. At Manilla, he accustomed himself to Tagal[48] manners, and
played with the children. “One day, when Tuân was rolling on some
matting with a little girl, about four or five years old, he stopped
all of a sudden, and examined the child in a most minute and anatomical
manner. The results of his investigations seemed to astonish him
profoundly; he retired on one side, and repeated upon himself the same
examination which he had made on his little playmate.” We may all
remember the eloquent pages in Buffon, where, admitting the Adamic
legend, he recounts the impressions of our first parents. Has not
nature been here, we ask, a better historian than our naturalist, even
with all his genius?
Over and above these facts, as their crowning-point, we must invoke as
a witness the man who has carried farthest the spirit of philosophy
in the natural sciences in France, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. A
cautious and profound observer, he mingled with the crowd which the
orang drew to the Museum in 1836. Mistrusting his own judgment, he
gathered the opinions of all those who surrounded him,--of all the
visitors who, as he said, “came to observe as unprejudiced spectators,
without any preconceived ideas, and without being hindered by those
deplorable trammels which we call our rules of classification.”[49]
The result surprised even Etienne Geoffroy himself. These visitors,
so different one from the other, all united in this idea, “that the
animal from Sumatra was neither a man nor an ape: _neither one nor the
other_, that was what the mind of each person at once acknowledged.”
We might quote whole pages from this naturalist philosopher in which
the elevation of his style strives with the grandeur of his ideas. “I
never used my self-love,” he says, “in bringing forward other opinions
against those of the visitors to the orang-outang ... I never drove
back the torrent of information which I had the happiness of receiving
from each separate mind.... I have faith in the soundness of popular
opinions, the masses rejoicing in an instinctive good sense which
makes them clear-headed, and renders them peculiarly able to seize
the salient point of any question.” This was an excellent method, and
showed the power of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
It is curious to compare with him another writer who, from within
his study, invoked upon these questions, at least, that which we may
call _universal acquiescence_,--it is Maupertuis. Speaking of the
characteristics which make man different from animals, he says, “Simple
good sense seizes these differences; they have always been felt, and
there we behold one of those convictions which the _universality and
uniformity of all men_ characterise as the truth.”[50]
Maupertuis did not certainly know that the orang-outang,--a word which
means _wild-man_,--is no metaphor for the inhabitants of the Indian
Archipelago, and that in the country inhabited by the “long-nosed”
Guenon,[51] the popular belief is that, being sharper than the others,
he only keeps silent in order to preserve his liberty. Nothing can
be more fallacious than these pretended truths, sustained merely by
_universal acquiescence_. At first it was invoked as a proof, at a
time when scarcely one-tenth of the inhabited world was known:[52] but
let us proceed. In our own day, we know a little better what to make
of this kind of proof, which science has abandoned to theologians.
Experience has proved, day by day, what will become of this pretended
universality among mankind, of certain thoughts, certain sentiments,
and certain aspirations.[53]
We shall see, farther on, that the _community_ of some of those
intellectual manifestations, which many have wished to regard as
general, is often restricted to one race alone amongst mankind, and
limited in space by the boundaries of the continent occupied by this
race. And now we see how anthropology in her turn, can, in all these
points, assist even philosophy itself. For example, do we not feel
that, from henceforward, the words _beautiful_ and _right_ can mean
nothing absolute; since whatever is _beautiful_ and _right_ upon a
hemisphere, for any given intelligence, cannot be so in an opposite
hemisphere,--_cannot possibly be so_ in a mind otherwise formed and
belonging to another race. To these two words we must, by means of
anthropology, restore an exclusively relative value.[54] The _True_
alone is absolute, unchangeable in both time and space. That alone
reigns universally, and let us not forget this, it flourishes in
science alone,--it is only to be found there.[55]