INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES.
From time immemorial, common sense has enlightened mankind upon the
intellectual differences which make one nation differ from another,
and one race from another. Almost all nations, in admitting that they
are superior to their neighbours, acknowledge thereby a characteristic
difference between themselves and those whom they thus place below
their own level. An overweening sense of vanity may possibly cause
deception in this case; but this belief is, at least, based on a
veritable fact,--intellectual inequality. There are, indeed, sensible
and manifest differences, which no one will deny, especially those who
seek in the literary monuments of a race for the history of its ideas
and its tendencies, and those who have mingled with other nations, and
who have examined their manners, their customs and their religion. “It
is sufficient to have seen the blacks,” says their most enthusiastic
defender,[165] “to have lived some time with them, to feel that there
is in them a humanity quite different to that of the white man.”[166]
Some persons have wished to deceive themselves; they have wished to
raise the Negro race to our own level, in the name of some sort of
sentimental feeling, which, moreover, has always turned out to be a
mistake. Many persons have been engaged upon them. Not being able to
give them plastic equality, they had recourse to intelligence,--they
wished to deceive themselves, like Desdemona, when she said,--
“I saw Othello’s visage in his mind.”[167]
The Negro was declared to be our equal by the moral law, only with
certain shades of distinction depending on some particular and
transient circumstances which would soon disappear. It was announced
that, _in their turn_, they would advance ideas, and would work at what
is called _progress_, that is to say, “the increase of good on the
earth.”[168] “In proportion as work makes vital energy to predominate
in the head,” said M. Marcel de Serres in 1844, “these deeply coloured
men,[169] with crisped, woolly, or short hair, will tend in a manifest
manner towards the white race,--will march with them in the path
of progress.”[170] And farther on, “This experiment has scarcely
commenced, but it already shows sensible effects.” Unfortunately, the
twenty years which have passed since these words were written, have
not shown that they are true; and the challenge offered by an American
has never yet been accepted, “Let anyone quote to me one single line
written by a Negro which is worthy of being remembered.”[171] They are
not more advanced now than at the time when Mohammed refused them the
gift of prophecy.[172] And, as Dr. Hunt remarks, there is certainly no
means of civilising those who have been uncivilised for three thousand
years, during which time they have been connected with the Egyptians,
the Carthaginians, the Arabs, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the
English.[173] If it be objected that they have always been slaves, we
may say our Gallic and German ancestors were so also; but we ask, _Why
do they continue to be slaves?_
The merit of first endeavouring to distinguish races of men by
characteristics taken from without the physical world, by the quality
of the manifestations of their intelligence, is, perhaps, due to
Linnæus. With this spirit of laconism, which led him to group in one
simple and easy formula the characteristic facts which he desired to
impress on the mind of the reader as being important, he endeavoured to
determine, in a few words, the various tendencies of different races,
and it must be acknowledged that he has at times been happy in this
kind of synoptic classification.[174]
In proportion as modern knowledge has made us penetrate more deeply
into the minds of races,--since we are no longer contented with
studying them superficially in the ordinary manifestations of life,
which we may call “common-place,” and which belong to nearly all
countries,--we perceive that insuperable limits separate one set of
men from another with regard to intellectual affinity, so that here,
as in the case of physical characteristics, each race is almost to
be distinguished from its neighbours. “Profound and unchangeable
differences,” said M. Paul de Remusat,[175] in 1854, “which would,
perhaps, suffice of themselves to found definite and thoroughly limited
classifications.”
It was in order to point out a new branch of anthropology, a new and
fruitful branch,--that a work appeared which was destined to throw
a bright light on the subject. It was necessary to explain these
distinctions, and not merely to enunciate them. The merit in this
matter belongs to M. Renan, who, in his treatise on the languages
of the great Semitic family, has painted, from the most favourable
characteristics, this humanity which is, morally, so different from
our own, however like it may be in external form. The intellectual
disparity of races is henceforward an undeniable fact.
The religious or moral system of a people being the highest
manifestations of its intellectual tendencies, we see that the study
of religions enters quite naturally into anthropology; it is a part
of this comparable study of the human mind, unfortunately too much
neglected, but which begins to take a place worthy of its importance
in the world of science.[176] We do not wish to discuss theological
or religious questions, the anthropologist ought to leave them to
others. His duty is to endeavour to put himself outside the narrow
circle in which nature has placed him; to forget, as much as possible,
his inclinations and personal sentiments; to look around him; to put
the world in one view, and to endeavour to be the sole spectator of the
same. Then a curious phenomenon will strike his gaze,--the chains of
mountains and the rivers which separate the various races of mankind,
will also separate different religions. Like the sea which breaks on
the shore, every belief has seen its disciples, armed with the sword,
or with the pacific weapons of persuasion, stop at certain limits, over
which they are not permitted to pass. Of course, we only speak here of
true proselytism, of real progress in religion in its form and spirit.
Humboldt and Bonpland saw, one day, in the Cordilleras, a savage
crowd dancing and brandishing the war-hatchet round an altar where
a Franciscan was elevating the Host. Such neophytes are only called
Christians in the _Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_,--they are not
converts in the opinion of the anthropologist.
Pure monotheism seems always to have been the religion of the Semitic
race. Most European nations, on the contrary, have professed from
antiquity, a polytheism or a pantheism, more or less disguised, more
or less acknowledged. In fact, by the side of those nations of Asia
and Europe, where civilisation and religious ideas appear to have
simultaneously been developed, although in different directions, we
find other people who have neither religious ideas, nor gods, nor any
kind of worship.[177]
Three vast regions of the earth, inhabited by people still in a savage
state, appear to have remained, up to the present day, free from
religious beliefs; these are Central Africa, Australia, and the country
around the North Pole,--that is to say, the three parts of the world
which are most difficult to explore,--the only parts which have even
not yet been thoroughly examined. And this is one consequence of this
want of exploration; it supposes a sort of sequestration from the rest
of the world, which has not even succumbed to civilisation by this
contact and imitation of which we have already spoken. Let us admit
that relations were established by these people with their neighbours;
they would soon have imported from the foreigner conceptions which
would even then have never taken a form, on account of the small
portion of intellect which nature had given to them.
Referring to the inhabitants of Australia, Latham acknowledges that
the general opinion is, in fact, that they have not yet commenced to
shape the rudest elements of a _religion_,[178] “an opinion,” he says,
“which causes the idea that their intellects are too sluggish even
for the maintenance of superstition.” It is certainly true that, in
the American expedition under Captain Gray, it was thought that some
religious ideas could be perceived among them; but it appears from
the same account that the song which constituted all this apparent
religion, had been brought from far by strangers, and adopted by
the natives,--doubtless, by other Australians, who had already been
influenced by the Christian ideas of the white men, or the Buddhist
principles of the Malays.
To relate the history of the introduction of an idea among a people
is, in reality, to declare and prove that this idea did not exist
there before, which is sufficient for us if we can be assured of the
fact. The testimony of missionaries[179] is, besides, consonant with
that which we have just said; and we may remark on the importance of
assertions coming from men whose whole study is to discover, in the
people whom they desire to convert, ideas analogous to those which
they endeavour to propagate. “They have no idea of a Divine Being,”
says one of these men; “they appear to have no comprehension of the
things they commit to memory,--I mean especially as regards religious
subjects.” “What can we do,” says another, “with a nation whose
language possesses no terms corresponding to _justice_ or _sin_, and to
whose mind the ideas expressed by these words are completely strange
and inexplicable?”
As to Central Africa, we confine ourselves to relating a few facts
relative to this want of religious belief, gathered from different
points in the periphery of the vast triangle, almost unexplored
and unknown, which is described by lines joining together Senegal,
Zanzibar, and the Cape.
An American missionary,[180] who lived four years amongst the Mpongwes,
one of the most important nations of Central Africa, the Mandingos,
and the Grebos, and who knew their language perfectly, declares that
they had neither religion, nor priests, nor idolatry, nor any religious
assemblies whatsoever. Dr. Livingstone says the same thing concerning
the Bechuanas.[181] The Austrian missionaries, established upon the
distant banks of the White Nile, have met with the same want of
religion, the same void[182] in the mind. In fact, among the Caffres,
the name which they give to the Divine Being, as among the Hottentots,
is undeniable evidence that they formerly had no idea of anything
similar. This name is _Tixo_, and its history is too curious not to
be related; it is composed of two words which, together, signify the
“wounded knee.” It was, they say, the name of a doctor or sorcerer,
well known among the Hottentots and Namaquas, on account of some
wound which he had received on his knee. Having been held in great
estimation for his extraordinary power during his life, the Wounded
Knee continued to be invoked even after his death, as being able to
comfort and protect; and consequently his name became the term which
best represented, to the minds of his countrymen, their confused idea
of the missionaries’ God!
As to the Esquimaux, since 1612, Whitebourne wrote that they had no
knowledge of God, and lived without any form of civil government.
And we can add to this distant testimony the following lines from
the journal of Sir John Ross, who lived for a long time in the midst
of them. “Did they comprehend anything of all that I attempted to
explain, explaining the simplest things in the simplest manner that I
could devise? I could not conjecture. Should I have gained more had I
better understood their language? I have _much reason_ to doubt. That
they have a moral law of some extent ‘written in the heart,’ I could
not doubt, as numerous traits of their conduct show, but beyond this,
I could satisfy myself of nothing; nor did these efforts, and many
more, enable me to conjecture aught worth recording. Respecting their
opinions on the essential points from which I might have presumed on a
religion, I was obliged at present to abandon the attempt, and I was
inclined to despair.”[183]
This extract is so much the more important for our thesis, since we
perceive in every word the chagrin of a man who did not find in the
hearts of others a fraternal echo to his dearest sentiments. It is, in
truth, a difficulty peculiar to the study of questions of this nature.
We must, therefore, be very careful in discussing the value of any
testimony which may be brought forward, and to distrust those minds
which begin by declaring _à priori_ the universality of beliefs, hopes,
and fears among mankind, as a natural consequence of the primitive
unity of the human species. We must always examine most minutely the
accounts of travellers to which we are obliged to refer. Thus, for
example, it is evident that the older the evidence, the better it is;
but at the same time, the farther it goes back, the less chance there
is that it emanates from an independent and impartial mind, free from
all prejudice.
Happily, the exaggeration of these ideas must often suffice to put us
on our guard against them, like the candid Jesuit, whose zealous but
hazy faith thought it had discovered traces of St. Thomas’s preaching
in Brazil.[184] In an otherwise good notice of the Esquimaux,[185]
Dr. King says, “that these people have preserved, like many other
uncivilised races, a vague remembrance of the creation and of the
deluge, and that they believe in future rewards and punishments.”
In his religious zeal, Dr. King forgets that if the Esquimaux had
been able to bring a confused tradition of even the deluge and the
creation from the valley of the Euphrates, it was impossible it could
have been the same with a belief in future rewards and punishments,
seeing that the Jews themselves never possessed this belief before
their contact with Assyrian civilisation. We may read in Dr. Brecher’s
excellent work[186] the whole history of the development of this
belief in the immortality of the soul. If the German doctor wishes
piously to prove that the Jews ought, morally, to have always believed
in this immortality, at all events, his zeal has been able to invent
real proofs, which in fact, are wanting. The famous _scheol_, which
is mentioned so often in old Hebrew books, appears to be merely
the kingdom of the _dead_, and not that of _souls_, like hell,
Tartarus, the Elysian fields, and Paradise; the _scheol_ is but an
ideal representation of the tomb. Even at the time when the Jews had
generally adopted the ideas of their neighbours, during the Talmudic
period, the belief in the immortality of the soul, if it existed, was
neither completely clear nor well reasoned, since they refused all
participation in a future life to those who denied the resurrection and
the last judgment, “which was equivalent to entire annihilation.”[187]
To believe this, is certainly not to believe in the immortality of the
soul, since they regarded eternal life not as a necessary consequence,
but as a recompense for _good principles_, and having faith in them.
Such an inconsistency is the clearest possible proof that, even at this
period, these ideas had not undergone the change which brought them
to the actual point of clearness. They were also not yet completely
freed from the ancient belief which the Sadducees, besides, had not
abandoned; they were the faithful preservers of the ancient faith, and
the pure tradition of the sons of Israel. “They have the theory that
the soul dies with the body,” wrote Josephus,[188] “and consider that
they ought to keep nothing but the law.”
We must be pardoned for insisting so much upon this point; but it is
of importance as regards our thesis to show that the belief in the
immortality of the soul, and in a divinity, is not universal on the
globe, that one general characteristic of humanity could not be formed
from it, and that we ought even less to rely upon the existence of
such ideas in order to establish a human kingdom. We have only spoken
of people who are either entirely savage, or of Jewish opinions, which
have long been lost in the past. Even in our own time, there are two
hundred million Buddhists on the earth, who have reached a marvellous
point of civilisation, who ignore, in the most absolute manner,
the notion of another life and that of a divinity. Eugène Burnouf,
whose ability no one will deny, has already said it; M. Barthélemy
Saint-Hilaire, after much hesitation, which will remain as the seal
of a firmly established conviction, has decided in the same way, in
the last edition of _Bouddha et sa Religion_.[189] We quote his own
words:--“There is not the slightest trace of a belief in God in all
Buddhism; and to suppose that it admits the absorption of the human
soul into a divine or infinite soul, is a gratuitous supposition which
cannot even enter into the ideas of the Buddhist. In order to believe
that man can lose himself in the God to which he is reunited, this God
must first be _believed in_ as a necessary commencement. But we can
scarcely say that the Buddhist does not believe in Him. He ignores God
in such a complete manner, that he does not even care about denying
His existence; he does not care about trying to abolish Him; he
neither mentions such a being in order to explain the origin or the
anterior existence of man, his present life, nor for the purpose of
conjecturing his future state, and his eventual freedom. The Buddhist
has no acquaintance whatsoever with a God, and, quite given up to his
own heroic sorrows and sympathies, he has never cast his eyes so far or
so high.” And the author adds the following lines, which have a direct
bearing on anthropology, and which are like the sum of all we have just
brought forward:--“The human mind has scarcely been observed but in the
races to which we ourselves belong. These races deserve, certainly, a
high place in our studies; but if they are the most important, they do
not stand alone. Ought not the others to be noticed, although they are
said to be so inferior? If they do not enter into the hastily drawn
outline, must they be disfigured by submitting them to over-strict
theories? Is it not a better plan to acknowledge that old systems are
faulty, and that they are not comprehensive enough in _everything_
which they undertake to explain?”[190]
The question of intellectual differences, like, indeed, all the other
points in anthropological study, has largely exercised the inventive
genius of monogenists, for it must be owned that all the efforts of
imagination proceed from them. It is not more difficult to admit the
development of one or twenty human species upon our planet, than the
development of a single moss or sea-weed; they are phenomena of the
same order, and equally beyond the actual limits of our knowledge; but
this first step taken, anthropology opens itself to the polygenist as
simple and easy; he follows, without any trouble, all phenomena, from
cause to effect,--everything enters into one general order,--everything
is marvellously simple, in spite of apparent complication. It is
not the same with the monogenist; ruled continually by his theory,
he goes on almost painfully, and at every step some new obstacle is
raised to impede his progress. If he thinks he has conquered physical
differences, psychological varieties start up; then will arise families
of different tongues, quite as radically distinct and as difficult to
explain; and yet it is in vain that the obstacle seems so great and
insurmountable, it _must_ be overcome, it _must_ be passed in the name
of an admitted principle, cost what it may so to do. Thus it is that
monogenists have sometimes arrived at the most curious, but at the same
time most unfortunate, results.
And if we wished to form sentiment from science, we should ask,
which is the most reasonable, the most worthy, and the most
consoling,--whether to believe that we alone are perfect, and that
nine-tenths of our brethren who cover the globe are disinherited;
or to consider all these varied existences which we see around
us as forming equal, if not similar, species, pursuing, each in
its own way, a destiny, different, indeed, but not degraded,--not
degenerated,--in certain points even better arranged than our own.
“God,” said Niebuhr, “has marked on each race of men their destination
with the characteristic which best suits them” and the philosopher had
already learnt by history that when civilisation has been suddenly
introduced from without among a savage nation,[191] the consequence
is an immediate physical degeneracy, that is to say, the destruction
of the people which has wandered from its usual mode of life. The
historian thus proclaimed a physiological law, which most monogenists
are glad to forget,--that all degeneracy ends necessarily in death;
it kills itself, and always at the tenth generation, if not at the
first. No group of human beings, after two or three generations of
unmixed existence, can be considered as degraded or degenerated, not
more than we should admit that a young girl, attacked with cretinism in
its greatest degree, had the characteristics of the Esquimaux or the
Mongolian race.[192]
We can see, even in a humanitarian point of view,--the point of view
in which we refuse to place ourselves,--that the polygenists have the
advantage. The mind is not offended, and cannot be so, to see certain
creatures possess some particular faculty to the exclusion of others.
Does not harmony obtain an absolute value from a necessary inequality
of parts, whilst she herself restores to each part an equal value, in
making them all co-operate towards the same end, the same _action_,
in which are distributed great and minor parts,--some brilliant, some
humble, some concealed?[193]
That fine North American race, which is so much admired by all who have
lived among them, will be no longer, according to Dr. Martius,[194]
the worthy descendant of the first murderer, a collection of maniacs
and insane folks, brought to that state by misery and the reprobation
of God. We only see in them men endowed like ourselves, but more in
harmony with the nature which animates them, having, of course, their
imperfections like ourselves, but giving us also an example of great
qualities, firmness, courage, patience, and an intense love of liberty.
Whites and blacks may be slaves, but the American has never served a
master.[195] The Negro himself has his advantages; and we could not,
perhaps, struggle with him about affective or hateful faculties. M. de
Gobineau seems to us to be strangely mistaken in the portrait which he
has attempted to draw of the black man; he has made his race hideous;
it is only inferior _in relation to ourselves_; it is equal to some,
and superior to others, not partaking, indeed, of all the advantages of
the Iranian or Semitic races, but able to display other qualities which
belong particularly to itself.
In the place of this spectacle, which is thus presented to our view,
of degraded beings covering half the earth, we simply see, for our
part, intelligence developing itself in each race, following certain
directions and tendencies at the expense of others. These special
tendencies are sometimes very remarkable. In his intercourse with
the Esquimaux, Sir John Ross, whose observing mind we have several
times had occasion to notice, found that they were nearly all good
geographers. He put into their hands a pencil and paper (of the use
of which they were certainly ignorant), and they drew with great
correctness the bays, rivers, islands, and lakes of their country,
as well as the exact spots where they had encamped at some former
emigration. This is a curious contrast with most of the African and
Arab peoples, who seem to have but a very vague idea of distance
or time; indeed, the difficulty of finding out routes among the
inhabitants of Soudan, which we have ourselves experienced, has
become almost proverbial.[196] Without going so far as all that, our
neighbours, the Semites, differ from ourselves in the manner and
quality of their mind to an extraordinary degree; on the one side is
the Aryan, an analyst, a pantheist, given to the plastic or perspective
reproduction of everything which surrounds him; on the other, the
Semite, a sensualist, a monotheist, an iconoclast. If it is radically
impossible for the Semite to follow us in the depths of metaphysics,
his language even being opposed to all philosophic demonstration;
in our turn, perhaps, we are less religious,--that is to say, less
solemnly struck by the universe. The thought of demonstrating God,
and proving this thought, will never come to the Semite as it did to
Bossuet, Fénélon, and Newton.[197] The Semite feels God, if we may
so express it; and, as if absorbed and astounded by this personified
creative force, whose shadow presses on him, he does not understand the
arts of reproduction, although among all the people who excel in it.
In fact, history itself will teach us that these tendencies are so much
accused and so general, that they are found everywhere; in one place
rising even above conquest, in another, modifying itself to imported
religions. When a religion, in accordance with the genius of the men to
whom it has been addressed from the cradle, passes from this race to
another, it is necessarily modified. Pure monotheism, born in the east,
has only conquered the west and the Iranian race by transforming itself
to their pleasure. The Persians accepted Islam; but they have not been
able to renounce this necessity for plastic reproduction, which is one
of the characteristics of the Iranian family: a schism became formed,
which authorised all the arts, and left in entire freedom that natural
tendency which could not be smothered. Far more than the monsters in
Isaiah’s dream, the lions of the Alhambra were a terrible prophesy.
Those who see them may read in their huge figures the vitality of a
conquered nation, whose love of the living form invaded even the palace
of the conquerors, and which were soon to make them fly. The race which
flourished at Athens and at Rome only accepted Christianity, which
also came from the east, by despoiling it of its original character;
and this religion would, at the present day, be incapable of making
proselytes in that east where it first took its rise. The preaching
of Mohammed was, as M. Renan has remarked, but a reaction of pure
monotheism against degenerated Christianity, concealing but badly its
polytheistic tendencies.
In truth, the psychological study of the human race is a new science,
which has been examined into on some points, but not in all. To desire
to sketch it would be to fall into the alternative either of doing what
others have done perfectly, or to fall into error for want of necessary
materials. We can only quote, as having been well studied,--first,
the Iranian race, by all our moralists and philosophers; secondly, the
Semitic race, by M. Renan; and thirdly, the American race, by Humboldt
and Bonpland,[198] by d’Orbigny,[199] Morton,[200] and Coombe.[201]
II. The study of languages is connected, on the one hand, to the
physiology of the human race, but more immediately still to the study
of the varieties of the human mind, of which they are in some measure
the organ. They can by this means assist also in classifying mankind
into natural groups. But where the study of languages affects more
especially the anthropologist,[202] is when it touches on the origin
of the varieties of language, and of the primitive state (either
intellectual or social) of the speaking man: when it endeavours
to fathom the past each day farther back,--each day nearer to the
_origin_. Thus bound together, the two sciences ought to have the same
destiny; philology has had its monogenists and its polygenists. The
first have been obliged to give way, overpowered by the number and
the superiority of their opponents. They are done for; and the field
remains free to the latter, who affirm, through their studies, the
multiplied origin of human language, leaving the consequences to be
deduced, or deducing them themselves.[203]
One sole declaration will suffice us, that of the history of Semitic
idioms. “If the planets, whose physical nature seems to be analogous
to that of the earth,” says M. Renan,[204] “are peopled with beings
organised like ourselves, we may presume that the history and the
language of those planets does not differ more from our own than
does the history and language of the Chinese.” It is impossible to
establish by a clearer and more striking image the individuality of the
different families of language, not one of which owes its origin to
its neighbours, and which have, probably, never been in one another’s
presence, except when they had already been formed, bringing with them
their own characteristics, their fundamental and profound type, as
unalterable by contact as is the physical type of the men who spoke
them. These, in presence of others, may have been able to alter their
traditions, their remembrances, their words, but these were never more
than simple _loans_; we may be certain that these men were strangers
one to the other on the day when they uttered their first words in
their cradles.
We must limit ourselves merely to recording the result, which is, that
each system of language is absolutely irreducible to others, both by
its basis and its form; all born in human thought, it is true, but this
thought following at each point a particular path, so that each of
these systems, as M. Renan has said, only abuts on the others by the
community of the aim it is intended to reach.
Certain families of languages do not differ solely by their
constitution, they show special phonetic or physiological
qualities;[205] that is to say, we can observe, in two different
languages, varieties of the same order which is explained among
animals, by the words barking, braying, cooing, etc. This is
particularly the case with the strange language spoken by the
clear-complexioned race of South Africa, probably much more widely
diffused in former times than at present. It resembles no other known
language, and consists in a _clucking_ which has, they say, nothing
analogous to it among any other nation on the earth. The English have
characterised it by the names of _sighing_, or _clucking_, and also
especially _click language_.[206] Here is a new difference,--a radical
difference in relation to so many others, which decidedly forms, from
these Bosjesmans, a people whom it is impossible to ally, it does not
signify how, or under what aspect, to any other of the divisions of the
great human family.