DR. ZERFFI, F. R. Hist. S., recently delivered the first of the
inaugural lectures in connection with the opening of the Crystal
Palace Company's School of Art, on "The Racial Characteristics of Man
Scientifically Traced in General History." He complained that the study
of man from a scientific point of view, especially in history as enacted
by him, was mostly neglected, although it ought to be--nay, would and
must more and more become--our most important subject, as forming the
only real basis of all our higher culture. History was undoubtedly a
deductive science, but it could be verified and put to the best uses by
the purely inductive study of facts. Any change, whether progressive or
retrospective, in the social, political, or religious condition of men,
would be a fact. The acting forces were men, of whom there were on the
globe more than a thousand millions, all endowed with three principal
faculties--of receiving impressions, which produced sensations, and were
reflected in their intellectual consciousness. But neither in comparing
individuals with one another, nor race with race, were these faculties
equally developed. They varied with a race's average facial angles and
lines, its amount of brain, the color of its skin, and its general
organization. The facial angle of the black races might be taken at 85°,
and the number of cubic inches of brain might range between 75 and 80.
In an ethnological chart hung behind the lecturer, the main body of the
Nigritian races, which was made up of the Asiatic and African negroes,
was credited with 83 cubic inches of brain as a general statement. It
was remarked however, that the brain was very small relatively to the
body, while the cerebellum formed a very large portion of the organ.
The statical and dynamical forces of the intellect were said to be
undeveloped, the animal propensities predominating. The long extinct
American Toltecs, ranking as one section of a subdivision under this
head, figured for 79 cubic inches of brain. In both directions the
intellectual forces were marked as undeveloped, but the Toltecs were
credited with great imitative powers. The other section, comprising
the Hottentots and Australian black fellows, were allowed but 75 cubic
inches of brain, or not more than 10 above the highest anthropoid apes,
and in neither did the statical or dynamical intellect pass beyond a
transitory stage of the lowest degree. The typical facial angle of the
yellow or Turanian races--the bulk being Chinese, Mongols, Finns, Turks,
with Malay, Gangetic, Lohitic, Tamulic, and American tribes--was given
as 87½ degrees. In cubic inches, the brain ranged between 82 and 95.
In the chart the figure given was 83½. Here, too, the statical or
conservative energy of the intellect was made the great characteristic,
the dynamical or progressive developing for the most part in technical
products only. The tendency was to become herdsmen, farmers, and
traders. As a division were classed the aborigines of India and
of Egypt, with an average 80 cubic inches of brain, a very large
cerebellum, and a cerebrum comparatively small. Their intellect was
as characteristically statical as that of the other yellow races, the
dynamic impulse manifesting itself only in symbolism, mysticism, and
the like. At the head of all stood the white races, Aryans for the
most part, but with the Semites--Chaldeans, Phoeniceans, Hebrews,
Carthaginians, Arabs--as a subdivision. Ideally, their facial angle was
90°--the right angle--and their cubic inches of brain ranged from 92 to
120, rising in individual instances--the lecturer named Byron--as high
as 150. The number in the chart for the Aryans--Sanskrit-speaking
Indians, the Greeks and Romans, the Goths, Kelts, Slavs, and their
progeny--was 92, and for the Semitic peoples 88. The Aryans were
credited with a due balance between the dynamical and statical energy of
their intellect, to which they owed nearly all the great inventions and
discoveries, and with all the systematic development of science. They
brought forth the philosophers, moralists, engineers, sculptors,
musicians. The Semitic intellect was predominantly statical, being but
little developed in the creative or dynamical direction, and then mostly
in theological thought. They produced, however, musicians, traders, and
conquerors.
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