CHAPTER IX._Notes on Noses

OF NATIONAL NOSES.

The reader will probably have been led from the nomenclature to inquire

whether the assertion that certain forms of Nose are justly named after

certain nations might not be extended further? and whether every nation

has not a characteristic Nose?

The reply to these questionings would be in the affirmative. Every

nation has a characteristic Nose; and the less advanced the nation is in

civilization, the more general and perceptible is the characteristic

form. While nations are in their infancy, and the mass of the people are

uninformed, the features receiving no impressions from within, take the

form impressed from without, and follow the national type. If one

uniform state of things—of government, climate, and habits—continue,

without education, generation may succeed generation, and the original

facial type of the race will remain. If, however, the national

circumstances alter (still without general education) the national

features follow the type impressed by those circumstances. We have

appealed to many instances of these simultaneous national changes when

describing the different forms of Noses prevalent at different periods

of English history.

The existence of such typical features has always been recognized, and

ethnologists have founded classifications of the Human Race on their

peculiarities.

It is an additional general proof of the truth of Nasology, that the

most highly-organized and intellectual races possess the highest forms

of Noses, and those which are more barbarous and uncivilized possess

Noses proportionately Snub and depressed, approaching the form of the

snouts of the lower animals, which seldom or ever project beyond the

jaws. Thus the Caucasian races, denominated by Dr. Prichard Oval-headed,

which comprise decidedly the most perfect specimens of the human race,

are characterized by a Nose Roman or Greek; while the lower divisions,

the Mongolian or Pyramidal-headed, and the Negro or Prognathous

(protruding-jawed)—than among which no lower and more debased specimens

of humanity subsist—have Noses Celestial or Snub, as in the Tartar and

Chinese, the Negro and Hottentot nations.

In the Caucasian, or Elliptical-headed, types of the Human Race, the

Nose averages one-third of the faces.

In the Mongolian, or Pyramidal-headed, the Nose averages from one-fourth

to one-fifth of the face.

In the Negro, or Prognathous-jawed, it is the same, and the nostrils are

conspicuous, as in brutes.

When hypotheses thus assist and strengthen each other, we gain an

assurance of their truth and accuracy which is wanting where they are

seemingly contradictory, and which would have been wanting to Nasology,

had it contradicted the observations of philosophers so careful and able

as Dr. Prichard and his fellow-labourers in the field of ethnology.

Happily this is not the case, and Nasology may claim to stand as the

handmaid of ethnologists striving to discover the characteristics of

nations.

Among the more highly-organized races more deviations from the original

typical patterns occur than among the lower-organized—because the minds

of civilized men are more impressible than those of savages. Travellers

have always observed that nothing struck them more on visiting a savage

nation than the great uniformity of feature, presenting so great a

contrast to the diversities among civilized nations; so that while a

superficial observer would suppose it to be impossible to characterize

the latter by any uniform description, he finds no difficulty in

expressing the characteristics of the former.

Various degrees of culture and occupation produce the greatest possible

variations among the individuals of civilized nations, while the uniform

absence of education and the uniformity of pursuits among savages

perpetuate, and perhaps confer, an uniform national physiognomy.

When education becomes general, nations lose their national typical

features; for the physiognomy becomes so variously impressed from

within, according to the different bias and affections of men’s minds,

that it ceases to receive those impressions from without, which generate

national types. At present, however, there is so little generally

diffused education that the typical features of most nations may yet be

defined.

These are not always the original types of the race. Numerous

circumstances have among the more civilized nations contributed to

produce changes of greater or less magnitude. The various Caucasian

nations, for instance, though all descended from one stock, have varied

from their original type in their divers migrations from the plains of

Asia, and received such typical form as varying circumstances have since

impressed. Hence the various Caucasian nations of Europe and Western

Asia differ considerably from each other in mental and bodily

organization.

These variations from the original type took place, however, at so early

a period, even in the ante-historical period, that historians are apt to

regard them as original and innate; and perhaps it is most convenient

for _them_ to do so. But this is not sufficient for the inquirer into

the Races of Men. He goes back to ages far beyond the historical, or

even the mythic, period; and, finding these nations are descended from

one family, perceives that the present variations must have taken place

after the dispersion of the family into distant localities under leaders

of very various temperament and views of social happiness.

It would lead us too far to inquire whether the tendency of Nature to

break up certain types into varieties, and form new races—perhaps even

new species and genera—was not originally greater than it has been at

any period within the knowledge of man. We see no changes take place

now, such as long before even the mythic period, produced from one stock

the wild urus, the domestic ox, and the hunched bull of India. Neither

do we see new races of men spring up; such as in the very earliest times

produced from one common ancestor the various diverse races of men;

white, black, yellow, and red.

It is a singular proof both of the tendency of the human race to break

into varieties at a very early period, and of the permanency of those

varieties in later ages—that the four races into which Blumenbach and

the best writers have agreed to divide the races of the old world are

distinctly recorded and separated in like manner on some of the most

ancient monuments of Egypt. On the tomb of Osirei, father of the Great

Rameses, are represented the “dwellers upon earth as well those of Egypt

as those of foreign countries.” Four figures are given in each group,

and are coloured to represent the Tawny, the Yellow, the Black, and the

White Races, respectively, with features corresponding to those of the

same races in the present day. Such facts should teach us that the laws

which regulate the generation and production of species and races are

very different from those which regulate reproduction and succession,

and that while we endeavour to explain the laws of origination by the

laws of reproduction, we shall never arrive at the true solution of the

origination of types.

It is no poetical fancy that Nature’s infancy was more active than its

later years; that “Nature wantoned in her prime,” and produced more

gigantic effects than now. Not that the powers of nature are weakened:

but the purpose having been accomplished, its workings are stayed by the

fiat of the Almighty God, and are employed in sustaining and

reproducing, instead of generating anew and creating. When those powers

are wanted again, they will spring into undecayed operation; let a new

continent rise from the deep and the new world have to be people, and

Nature will again resume the gigantic forces of its infancy, and become

young to fill with life and activity a young world.

But at whatever period impressed, certain it is that many nations have a

typical form of Nose, together with other peculiar distinctive features;

and it concerns us now rather to regard the fact as it exists than to

inquire how it happened.

The Roman, the Greek, and the Syrian forms of Nose have been already

descanted upon, as forming three bases of our nomenclature. The present

European nations are the Gothic, the Celtic, the Sclavonic, and the

Finnish.

The Gothic has been subjected to so many varying circumstances that it

is now perhaps impossible to assert, with confidence, its original

natural form. Where a uniform dull system of despotism, political and

religious, has for centuries bound down these nations in abject

servitude, the Nose is sharp, devoid of Cogitativeness, and Romano-Greek

in profile.

This is the case with the Spanish Goths and with those of France and

Italy. These nations were so long held in mental thraldom that they

ceased to cultivate cogitative powers which it was dangerous to use.

Where espionage and _Lettres de Cachet_, the Inquisition and Monachism

dog and punish men’s secret thoughts, and forbid the expression of any

sentiment breathing a spirit opposed to the powers that be, or

demonstrative of a disposition to inquire into the why and wherefore of

political and religious dogmas, the mind, by an instinct of

self-preservation, must cease to think. Where to think is a

death-warrant, where a look of reflection or an aspect of discontent may

be followed by the axe of the executioner, or the more fearful

incarceration by the gaoler, the mind has no alternative but to forget

itself and live in bestial oblivion, to “sit down to eat and drink and

rise up to play.” With the cessation of the Cogitative powers, the

Cogitativeness of the features will disappear, and the Nose will become

defective in breadth, thin and sharp. To this want of reflection

succeeds, in the naturally higher and more energetic nations, animal

passion; and if ever the pressure is removed from the national mind and

it obtain the upper hand of its keepers, fearful retribution and

sanguinary revenge inevitably ensue. They who lived the animal life of a

caged wild beast in apparent ease and quietude, well fed and perhaps,

sensually, better provided for than if left to their native freedom,

will, when let loose from confinement, fearfully vindicate the natural

law of liberty, and with an insane instinct tear in pieces the keepers

who have fed them for their own purposes and nurtured them for their own

pleasure and profit, reckless of the natural social rights of man.

It is for this reason that the sharp, thin unthinking Nose appears

symbolical likewise of cruelty; not so much because the natural

disposition is cruel, as because the mind, when unchained, acts from

animal impulse and not from sage reflection; and animal revenge is

always wild and cruel.

We say this of nations which, like the Gothic and other Caucasian races,

were originally well organized and endowed with higher capacities. This

higher organization exhibits itself—whatever the degrees of

Cogitativeness which incidental circumstances may have added, or

adeemed—in a profile, Roman, or Greek, or compounded of both; and which

may therefore be called nationally Romano-Greek. The profile not being

so subject to variation from the pressure of external circumstances as

the breadth, remains still pretty uniformly the same in all the

Caucasian races in Europe, which might be written I⁄II. Other races

there are which, either naturally of less penetrable stuff, and a lower

and more obtuse organization, or longer ground down beneath a more

crushing and uniform despotism, remain contented slaves and willing

bondmen. This degradation, as we shall see when we come to speak of the

Asiatic nations, appears also in their Noses.

France, Spain, and Italy have been depressed, not only beneath a

political despotism till within a very recent period, but under the

still more soul-crushing despotism of a gross superstition and corrupt

religion—the latter even more than the former has repressed

Cogitativeness in those nations. If there is one subject which more than

another interests the human mind and occupies the thoughts, it is its

religion—its eternal prospects—for Man is essentially a religious

animal. Debarred from exercising thought upon its most natural and

interesting topics—and all other subjects being dragged within the

jealous circle of a religious despotism—so stern a barrier is opposed to

thought that the mind rarely dare overleap it. While a political

despotism may be well pleased to see its subjects occupied in scientific

or metaphysical researches, in order to wean them from too critical an

examination of itself, a religious despotism forbids any such researches

unless made within the small circle it has prescribed. Death or

imprisonment awaits a Galileo or a Copernicus, as it would under a

similar rule, even now, await a Buckland or a Lyell.

At present, we lament that we can see nothing in the recent

revolutionary movements in France and Italy, to indicate the existence

of those Cogitative powers, the want of which has always hitherto

checked their advancement towards true liberty and self-government.

Now, as in 1793, there seems “equally a want of books and men; without

which, after a few years of bloodshed and anarchy, those countries must

again submit to a despotic form of government. No country can be

governed without intellect; and if that is not to be found in the many,

the few who possess it must become the ruler.

“By the SOUL

Only, the Nations shall be great and free.”

WORDSWORTH.

This country has never long needed such a despotism. Germany, too,

though hardly yet freed from a political despotism, has through a large

portion of its area long thrown off the despotism of Rome, and embraced

the more elevating and life-giving doctrines of the Reformation. In

those provinces where this blessed change has taken place, Germany is

starting rapidly into that career of intellectuality which England

commenced three hundred years ago. The Germans and the English are

preeminently deep-thinking nations; and in both of them is the Nose more

decidedly and more generally of a Cogitative form than in any other

Gothic nations.

The Cogitative may therefore, perhaps, be said to be one of the

characteristic forms of the Noses of those Gothic branches, and might be

expressed thus, (I + II)/III. Nevertheless, various degrees of education

and various pursuits, with (in England) free institutions, have so

diversified their features that they exhibit a much less uniform

character than the features of most other nations.

The Anglo-Americans afford a further corroborative proof that the

Cogitative Nose is dependent on the cultivation of a Cogitative mind.

They present a striking contrast to their puritan forefathers,—men who

abandoned home, country and friends for the sake of religious and

political opinions; men to whom conscience was dearer than life, and

freedom more precious than worldly advantage; men of the strictest

integrity, the most scrupulous honesty, and the sternest firmness,

sullied only by an excess of over-wrought feeling—fanaticism. All these

virtues, and this vice (itself a virtue gone mad) are wanting to the

American character. That there are happy exceptions, it is true; but a

nation which boasts _smartness_ as its most prominent virtue, must not

complain if it is accused of want of principle. The circumstances of

young America have contributed to render hers an unthinking people. The

wild life to which so large a portion have been subjected, cut off from

all neighbourhood, debarred from communication with cultivated minds,

thrown entirely on the active business of the day for mental food, they

have necessarily degenerated from the thinking men to whom they are

indebted for their origin.

So far from the American Nose inheriting the Cogitative form of their

ancestors’, it is thin and sharp; and, as a national nose, the most

unthinking of any of the Gothic stock. America is, however, a

fast-growing nation; it has had no infancy, but started at once into

life, a full-grown youth. There is hope, therefore—of which already some

assurance has been given—that it will yet furnish its quota of thinkers

to the history of the human mind.

Strange as the assertion may appear, it is susceptible of many proofs,

that the now degraded and dwindled Celts were originally the most

powerful and widely dispersed people of the earth, boasting

simultaneously a geographical extent and political importance, which

have been achieved only by successive generations of the Gothic branches

of the Indo-Germanic nations.

The Aborigines, Autochthones, Gigantes, Titanides (all which names

signify earth-born), Atlantides, Cyclopeans, Pelasgi, Umbri, Etrusci and

Sikeli, the Iotuns in Scandinavia, Pali in India, Kaous in Persia,

Hycsos in Egypt, may all equally, by plausible and unanswerable facts,

be surmised to have been Celts, with whom the immigrators of other races

waged continual wars for possession of the earth. All the myths—so

universal—of the wars of the gods and the giants, relate to wars between

the invading conquerors and the primitive inhabitants, who are

everywhere to be traced by their gigantic works of unhewn stone,

cromlechs, stone circles, &c., not referable to any historic period,

because the conquerors destroyed all records of their architects, and

then, in idiotic wonder at their vast dimensions, referred them to

gigantic first possessors of the earth.

Whether the original stature of the Celts was greater than that of the

Gothic nations, may be doubted; but it is a curious fact that nearly all

the modern European giants have been Celts, and immense stature was a

common property of the wild Irish of former generations.

The existing Celtic races call for more extended observation. As an

un-Gothicized nation, the Irish is the only remnant of a people which

probably was at one time thinly spread over the whole of Europe. Nearly

related to, if not originally identical with, the Goths, yet naturally

of a less vigorous constitution and lower habit of mind, the Celts

rapidly gave way before, or irretrievably amalgamated themselves with,

their Pelasgian invaders in Greece and Italy, and their Gothic invaders

in Trans-Alpine Europe.

Thus, at one time losing themselves in the overwhelming flood of their

invaders, like the waters of a lake inundated by the sea; at another,

retreating westerly before the oncoming torrent, the Celtic nations have

gradually almost disappeared from continental Europe, and alone find a

miserable home and wretched abiding-place on the most eastern shores of

the Atlantic, and the most western corners of the Old World.

If the Atlantic could have afforded them a footing upon its turbulent

waters, they would long since have been driven into it by their

rapacious invaders. The complaint of the unhappy Celts has, ever since

they were hunted to the extreme west of Europe, been the same, “Our

enemies drive us into the sea; and the sea drives us back upon our

enemies.”

Saxon ingenuity has, however, at last endeavoured to circumvent the sea.

If it cannot receive _into_ its bosom the last wreck of the Celts, it

can carry them _upon_ it to lands still further west, there to pine, and

dwindle away and die; out of sight, and therefore out of the mind, of

the haughty invader, who turns with well-feigned horror and disgust from

the ruin and degradation which he has wrought.

To make room for himself, he expatriates the ancient owners of the soil,

not only without remorse or compunction, but with much self-laudation

and pharisaical pride that he has not extirpated them, and has not—only

because he could not—adopted the ingenious idea of temporarily sinking

an island to purify it for his own undisputed use and enjoyment.[44]

Naturally, however, the Celtic is not a low-class race. It may not have

been originally so highly organized, or so mentally gifted as the

Gothic; but in its infancy it had virtues which long thraldom has

exterminated.

It is no fiction that Cæsar found the Gaulish and British youth more apt

than the Goths at acquiring the arts and language of Rome, and that, in

a few years, Roman civilization, more efficient than Saxon, had

converted Britain into one of the most fertile and well-ordered

provinces of the empire. It is no fiction that Rome found in Britain one

of the most determined opposers of its claim to universal dominion, and

that if it were to be

“Asked, why from Britain Cæsar did retreat?

Cæsar himself might whisper—he was beat.”[45]

It is no fiction that after British Christianity had been driven by

Saxon Paganism from Britain into Ireland, the Irish Celts furnished the

best schools for literature, and the ablest scholars in Europe—and it is

no fiction that ever since the Saxon has set foot in Ireland it has

continued to droop and decay, until it is now a foul bog of iniquity; a

wretched irreclaimable sink of inhuman vice and monstrous infamy.

Its Cogitativeness has been repressed till it cannot reflect nor

appreciate any but physical modes of escape from thraldom. This is but

the caged wild beast gnawing at its chain, and snapping at its keeper,

whether his hand approaches to feed or to beat it.

It may be said, escape lies open to it in self-elevation, in moral

rectitude, and industrious exertion; but it is too late for it to see

and understand that. We might as well say to the broken leg, walk now,

you walked once; or to the encaged madman, calm yourself and be free,

you were calm and free once.

We need no better proof of the non-cogitativeness of Ireland than the

facile manner in which it throws itself beneath the Juggernautic car of

every demagogue, and sacrifices itself to his avaricious cruelty. We

need no better proof of the truth of our theory, than that the Nose of

the same nation is deficient in Cogitativeness, and is for the most part

thin and sharp. It has not, however, lost the Romano-Greek profile,

usual among the Caucasian races.

This is true in the main; but unhappily more recent information compels

us to modify it, and add another proof of Nasology from degradation of

physical structure simultaneously with mental degradation. “There are

certain districts in Leitrim, Sligo, and Mayo” (as pointed out by an

intelligent writer in the Dublin University Magazine, No. 48), chiefly

inhabited by descendants of the native Irish driven by the British from

Armagh and the south of Down, about two centuries ago. These people,

whose ancestors were well-grown, able-bodied, and comely, are now

reduced to an average stature of five feet two inches, are pot-bellied,

bow-legged, and abortively featured, and are especially remarkable for

“open projecting mouths, with prominent teeth, and exposed gums, (_i.

e._ prognathous-jawed—the Negro type), their advancing cheekbones, and

_depressed noses_, bearing barbarism on their very front.” In other

words, within so short a period, they seem to have acquired a

prognathous type of skull, like the savages of Australia, “thus giving

such an example of deterioration from known causes, as almost

compensates by its value to future ages, for the sufferings and

debasement which past generations have endured in perfecting its

appalling lesson.”[46]

The study of the British Legislature should be “How to get” Ireland a

Cogitative Nose; not by any surgical process, such as that of the

“Learned Taliacotius, who from

The brawny part of porter’s bum,

Cut supplemental Noses.”—HUDIBRAS.

for phlebotomizing is the worst mode of legislation—but by cultivating

in her people a Cogitative mind; well assured that whether or not the

attempt succeed in developing their probosces, it will be well repaid by

other and more important improvements in their condition. How this is to

be effected would afford matter for an interesting essay; but it would

be out of place here, though we have our nostrums on the subject like

every other political doctor, and cannot resist saying that it will

never be done by “Constitutional” Legislation, which is only fitted for

the Teutonic races. The Irish, like the cognate race, the French, must

be governed by an enlightened despotism; they must be gently pushed on

by their leaders to their own good, while the Teutonic races may be

safely left to push on their leaders—treading, not always too gently, on

their heels, by way of hint to get on. It is a most fatal error in

legislation to disregard the psychonomic differences in races, and under

a philanthropic pretence of the natural equality of man, to endeavour to

govern all by the same laws and institutions.

It was the sad misfortune of Ireland to be conquered after the downfall

of the feudal system, and to be at once inducted—with sanguinary and

therefore ineffective restrictions on their use—into free forms of

government. The feudal system, in its original integrity—without its

on-grafted abuses, as fines, heriots, &c. &c.—is almost the only system

on which a naturally high-class but barbarous race can be held down,

while they are being elevated in the scale of humanity; and if for three

or four generations Ireland could be subjected to pure and beneficent

feudality—whereby every man would be linked to a superior, and be

compelled to exert himself to retain his feud—together with the Alfredic

tithing-man system—to prevent or detect and punish crime—it might be

gradually placed on such an equality with England, as to enable it to be

safely governed on the same constitutional principles. Perhaps, however,

it is rather to be wished that this had been done in past times, than to

attempt it now: it might be dangerous to the liberties of England to

retrograde; for it must be admitted that a return to feudality is

retrogression, and the state of external peace to which it would bring

Ireland might afford an argument to future English Legislatures, to tie

down the turbulent liberties of England with the same bonds—which God

forbid! better live in a storm than rot in a calm.

It is the unhappy fate of Ireland that its evils are past remedy. Her

woes are the executioners of God’s judgments against England for the

latter’s crimes towards her. Ireland suffers that she may be a sharp

thorn in the side—perhaps a dagger in the heart—of England. No nation

sins without retribution from the quarter against which the crime has

been committed, and much more evil must England suffer from Ireland ere

an equivalent punishment has been inflicted. Nevertheless Ireland is not

wretched only because England must suffer; she is wretched for her own

crimes, and her wretchedness is over-ruled to be the punishment of her

oppressor likewise.

This is by no means an isolated instance of the duality of purposes in

the Divine judgments. The crimes of a nation have ofttimes been made the

punishment of itself and another; so likewise, among individuals, the

visitation of one man’s sins frequently extends to punish the faults, or

try the virtue, of his friends and relations.

The ambitious pride of Babylon punished the idolatry of the Israelites,

but at the same time brought down ruin on itself. The conquest of

America punished the gross vices and savage idolatries of the natives,

and at the same time retributed the cruelties and crimes of their

punishers by inundating Spain with the gold and silver which has wrought

her present degradation. May we not add that England’s punishment of the

revolutionary crimes of France, is now retributing her own commercial

jealousy, and wild interference in Continental politics, by clogging her

with debt, and raising a host of European rivals to her claim for

universal commerce.

The lowest organized race of any consequence in Europe is the Sclavonic.

The Sclavones came into contact with Roman civilization earlier than the

Goths; but, unlike the latter, they retired to their settlements without

carrying away any portion of the manners and habits of the people whom

they invaded. Even yet they are but little advanced, since that early

epoch. At least till within the present century, the Russian noble, as

well as his serf, led the life of a pig, eating, and drinking, and

sleeping. Wallowing in filth, insensate with brandy, and degraded by

lust, the Russians of various ranks differ only in the size and

splendour of their respective styes. To enter with minuteness into the

daily habits of all classes of both sexes would be to present a picture

which we should revolt from drawing, and the reader from beholding.

The Snubbo-Celestial form of the Sclavonic Nose stamps its character

irretrievably, and accords remarkably with the description of the

Sclavonic mind given by Kohl and other recent writers:—“Inconsistent and

unstable—wanting in the creative faculty; but we cannot deny them a

marvellous aptitude for all kinds of work, and an extreme facility of

imitation.”[47] This is just the description a farmer might give of his

horse, or a fine lady of her monkey. “The hope of Europe,” says the same

author, “from Russian power consists in its total want of vigorous

characters, mighty minds, and moral energy.” The pictures which the

lively writer Kohl gives of the Russians—their ‘small shrewdness and

fox-like common sense,’ their impudent acknowledgment of their shameless

cheating and pedlaring dishonesty—accord literally with the indications

which we have ascribed to the Celestial Nose; but we must refer the

reader to his work on Russia for endless confirmations of our assertion.

Russia may rise above its present animal degradation, but it will never

take a high place in the history of civilization. It may be doubted

whether it will ever take any station there at all, except when in some

future and long distant age, it is recorded, that, like Asia and Africa,

Europe fell from its palmy state, and became a heap of ruins before the

furious desolation of barbarous swarms from the north.

Napoleon said, with the prophetic vision of old experience, for

“Old experience doth attain

To somewhat of prophetic strain,”

that in fifty years Europe would be Republican or Cossack. He only erred

in using the disjunctive; for it does not require much penetration to

foresee that, at no very distant period, Europe will be both—first

Republican, and then, when thus prostrated at the foot of the first

powerful despot—Cossack.

For this purpose, it is probable the Sclavonian nations, with hordes of

Mongolian Calmucks, and Tartars—the σιμοὶ, or flat-nosed nations of

Herodotus—are gathering force and increasing in their vast plains and

desolate forests. The scourge of Europe—once the scourge of Asia—is

being prepared slowly but surely; and when civilization shall have taken

a firm hold of America and the new continents gradually being built up

in the Pacific, Europe, having fulfilled its part in the world’s

history, will be swept away, and become a byword and a scorn among the

nations—‘Ichabod’ will be written on its temples, and the bittern and

the owl shall inhabit it; the wild beast of the desert shall lie there,

and the dragons in its pleasant palaces.

The Finnish race presents a remarkable proof of the variation in

physiognomy attendant on variation in mental capacity, occasioned by

change of circumstances—as government, climate, and habits. The ancient

Huns, the modern Hungarians, and the northern Finns and Lapps of the

shores of the Bothnian Gulf and the White Sea, are all of the same race;

and yet differ widely from each other in physiognomy and psychonomy.

“Few races exhibit greater or more remarkable differences in mental

cultivation, and in the direction of their passions, according as they

have been determined by the degeneration of servitude, warlike ferocity,

or a continual striving for political freedom, than the Finns. In

evidence of this we need only refer to the now peaceful Finns of the

north, to the Huns, once celebrated for conquests that disturbed the

then existing order of things, and lastly, to a great and noble

people—the Magyars.”[48]

The differences between those races took place within the historic

period, and afford a striking instance of the effect of external

circumstances in modifying the mental and corporeal features.

The fierce and savage Huns, who overran a portion of the Roman Empire

under Attila in the fifth century, differed wholly from the Finns now

existing in Europe. So misshapen were their features, and so hideous

their aspect, so savage and demoniacal their warfare, that the terrified

Goths could not believe them to be born of woman, but asserted them to

be the unnatural offspring of demons and witches in the fearful

solitudes of the icy north. One of their distinctive features was a flat

depressed nose, plainly indicating their low organization.

Although the Finns and Lapps retain the flat nose—never having emerged

from barbarism—they are a mild, gentle, meek-spirited race, presenting

few features which seem capable of amelioration.

The Hungarians, on the other hand—in whom, however, we must suspect a

large infusion of Gothic blood—are a bold, independent, noble-minded,

and highly intellectual people; characteristics which exhibit themselves

in a noble Roman Nose, and a countenance bespeaking the independence of

their minds.

We may next advert to the characteristic features of a few of the

Asiatic nations.

Perhaps no nation displays a more universal dead level and general

sameness of feature than the Snub-nosed Chinese. Notwithstanding the

great varieties in climate and soil which prevail in that extensive

Empire, and the correspondent variations which must be made in domestic

habits and style of living, a remarkable identity of feature prevails

among all classes of every province. The faces may be said to be all

cast in the same mould; and one could wish that Nature, when she made

the first cast, had—as she is reported to have done when she made a

certain beautiful female, whose name we forget—broken the mould before

she produced any more casts from it. Perhaps, however, we belie the good

old dame in attributing the production of this, or any other equally

ugly countenance, to her. It is rather the degraded form into which a

despotism of unknown duration and unexampled soul-depressive powers has

converted the original type.

A form of government more admirably arranged to keep the people in a

state of childhood has never been modelled than that of China. The

wisdom of its arrangements for securing the permanent despotism of the

ruler is undeniably proved by its long and peaceable subsistence. To

rebel in China is the heinous crime of filial disobedience: it is not,

as in Europe, a political crime merely, it is also a moral crime of the

same class as murder or theft. Unless we can imagine a nation by

universal assent throwing off the bonds of morality, and living in

confessedly gross crime, we can form no conception of the Chinese

rebelling. It would present the unnatural and inconceivable state of a

nation of parricides and disobedient children.

Every superior in China, from the Emperor to the military officer or

civil Mandarin, is “a father;” all under him are his “children,” and as

such must obey him without question or demur. “Filial disobedience,”

whether to parents or governors, is the highest crime. Filial

disobedience is thus defined:—“In our general conduct not to be orderly,

is to fail in filial duty; in a Magistrate not to be faithful, is to

fail in filial duty: among friends, not to be sincere, is to fail in

filial duty: in arms and war, not to be brave, is to fail in filial

duty.” A people thus treated as children, must ever remain in a state of

childhood; and though education is general among the Chinese, it is an

education which, like the bandages on their women’s feet, binds their

minds _from_ growing, and restricts them to the size and calibre of

infancy.

Education in China consists solely in social and political training for

the purposes of despotism. The studies are confined to one unvaried

routine, and no deviation from the prescribed track is permitted. Within

this circle all are, and must be, educated. Hence an uniformity of mind

prevails, and has prevailed for ages throughout China, and has extended

itself to the national features; betraying itself in Snub Noses and a

dull, stolid expression of countenance. So much for compulsory

education! It is impossible that it should be otherwise.

A nation whose minds are all reduced to the same level; whose thoughts

are prescribed; whose daily conduct is measured out; whose very

amusements are dictated by an imperial will, must necessarily soon

become uniform, both mentally and physically. This uniformity will be

the waveless level of the Dead Sea. Storms may agitate the upper sky,

winds may rage, and floods descend; but the waves are too heavy to rise

from their death-like repose. They sleep the calm sleep, not of peace,

but of death. The last trumpet alone can arouse their torpor. The

benignant mind of the Christian may nourish sweet hopes of evangelizing

a nation so sunk. but the hopes are vain. Christianity came not till the

human mind was fitted and prepared to receive and understand its divine

precepts. It came not to the infancy of the world, but to its old age

and matured judgment. A nation, therefore, steeped in the irreclaimable

dotage of a childhood which has endured throughout its whole life,

cannot receive it. Both the Hindoos and the Chinese have forfeited by

their long-lived puerility the blessed message.

The first and every subsequent step of Christianity, as of civilization,

has been Westward. Neither can they ever return to the East. The Apostle

of the Gentiles preached from Judea to Pamphylia and Galatia, but was

forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia;[49] and when he

assayed to go Eastward into Bithynia, the spirit suffered him not, but

compelled him westerly into Macedonia. From Macedonia to Rome; from Rome

to Gaul; from Gaul to Britain; from Britain to America and Polynesia,

the course has still ever been uniformly westward.[50] A few isolated

Christians may be made in Asia; but it will never be Christianized. Asia

has performed its part on the world’s stage. It is dead out, and cannot

be resuscitated. When Christianity is entertained by “all nations,” Asia

will be no more. It will not be reckonable among the nations, even as a

dead man is not among the living. This may seem a harsh judgment. But is

it harsher that nations whose own degradation unfits them for

Christianity, shall remain ignorant of it during the brief remainder of

the world, than that they have been ignorant of it for nearly two

thousand years?

It is not for man to judge God, and to say that his ways are unjust. We

must not deny the fact because we cannot comprehend it. We cannot tell

by what crimes Asia has forfeited her part in the New Covenant of Grace.

It may be because she rejected the first dispensation, and flagrantly

violated the Old Covenant of Works. To Asia, the mother of mankind, the

blissful seat of our first parents, the nurse of the renovated human

race, were given the first pure, simple precepts by which Man was taught

to obey his God as a child obeys his parent. How soon she flung off this

obedience and rejected her Great Teacher let history, both sacred and

profane, attest. Long ere Asia sent forth peoples and nations to

replenish other quarters of the earth, these original precepts had been

obscured and obliterated by idolatry and polytheism. A lesser crime,

therefore, attached to these mis-instructed offsprings than to the

misteaching mother. A second dispensation was therefore revealed to

them, but forbidden to her. So far man might think he comprehended the

divine purposes without impugning God’s wisdom and justice; yet he may

err, and his frail musings be but the cogitations of the flea which

reasons on the movements of the elephant, whose back is his universe.

This should be the humble reflection of all who strive to justify the

ways of God to man. We know but in part, and we see but in part, and

therefore cannot judge of Him who sees and knows the whole.

We have incidentally mentioned the Hindoos as partaking in the mental

degradation of the Chinese. But, nevertheless, they are not nearly so

degraded a race, nor have they so general an uniformity in their

features, nor so low a formation of their Noses. India has been

subjected to less uniformity of despotism than China. While to the

dominant system of the latter we can assign no limit, we find in that of

the former numerous epochs when important changes have taken place.

Fierce religious wars, frequent foreign invasions, domestic feuds and

intestine warfare have kept the Hindoo mind more on the alert than that

of China. Assyria, Egypt, Scythia, Greece, Persia, and Britain have at

different epochs overwhelmed India. Idolatrous Monotheism, Polytheism,

Mahometanism and Christianity have, in turn, violated its shrines, and

endeavoured to overwhelm both Buddha and Brahma. Buddha and Brahma,

Vishnu and Siva, have striven to overthrow each other; but while the

country has been desolated, the people have been saved from sinking into

the uniform degradation of the Chinese. Nevertheless, under each and

every system, despotism has prevailed in India; no free institution has

ever flourished on its plains; and, therefore, despite the stirring

events which have excited it, it has never risen again to that high

station which its people must have held among their contemporaries when

they sculptured the caves of Elephanta and Ellora, and raised the

pyramidal pagodas of Tanjore and Deogur.

These gigantic works sufficiently attest that the inhabitants of India

are not naturally of a low-class race. Forty thousand men labouring

incessantly for forty years would hardly suffice to excavate and

sculpture the cavern-temples of Salsette alone. Yet those form but a

small portion of similar gigantic works of the same age.

No mean-minded men raised fanes such as these to the Deity. Energy of

the most vigorous character, talent of the highest rank, and devotion of

the noblest nature, could alone have dictated and executed structures

which outvie in magnitude the boldest efforts of modern genius. In

comparing them with the latter, we should moreover recollect that they

were the first efforts of the human race; made without pattern, designed

without exemplar, and commenced and carried out without experience.

How different must those men have been from the soft and effeminate

Hindoo who has forgotten in the mist of ages these shrines of his

fathers, and abandoned them to ruin and decay; and who, conscious of his

own utter inability to achieve or conceive their equals, ascribes their

formation to giants and demigods. And they were different. The same

race, but different men, different in features as in minds. While the

profile of the modern Hindoo is soft and effeminate, and the Nose short

and rounded (parabolic), the ancient sculptures demonstrate that the

profile of their earliest progenitors was manly and decided, and

identical with that of their descendants, the Indo-Germanic nations, in

Europe. One well-known instance will suffice. The Trimurti or

three-headed deity in the caves of Elephanta.

This is a sculpture of the most remote antiquity, but the dress, the

beads, the sacred cord and other religious symbols declare it to be the

work of Hindoos. In anthropomorphising the Deity, men always adopt their

own typical countenance for that of their God. Hence their idols betray

the national features. Now, observe the profiles of Vishnu and Siva in

this Trimurti. The face of the former, the good and beneficent

“Preserver,” the friend and mediator for man, is a purely Greek face;

the Nose straight and well-defined. It has none of the air of the modern

Hindoo countenance. Much less has that of the energetic and terrible

Siva, “the Destroyer.” The Nose is of the most energetic form; it is a

fine Roman Nose, aquiline and rugose. If phrenologists are permitted

from similar facts to say that the Greeks—who were but children to these

Hindoo artists—were phrenologists, surely we may venture to say that

even at this very early period the Hindoos were Nasologists.

[Illustration:

THE HINDOO TRIMURTI.

]

But in the wide nostril of Brahma we also perceive the Cogitative form

of Nose, so necessary to indicate the wisdom of Brahma, “the Creator:”

who, though now he rests, having consigned the inferior office of

Preservation to Vishnu, was the first emanation from the supreme Brahmè,

and by whom and from whom all creation proceeded. With the exception of

the head in this Trimurti, Brahma has no idolatrous representations, for

it is said in the Vedas, “Of Him whose glory is so great, there is no

image. He is the incomprehensible Being which illumines all, delights

all, and whence all proceed.”

Sir William Jones mentions, in one of his discourses published in the

Asiatic Researches, the existence of a small nation in India which

appears distinct from the Hindoo race. The people comprising it he

describes as shrewd, clever tradesmen, enterprising merchants, acute

money-lenders, and notorious in India for their aptitude for commerce.

Their countenances, he adds, are what are called Jewish, and hence he

concludes that they constitute a portion of Jews, who either at the

dispersion of the Ten Tribes, or at some other very early period,

settled in India. It is surprising that the acute President should have

so hastily jumped to such a conclusion from the foregoing premises; for

he adds a fact which seems most decidedly to negative it. This people,

he tells us, have not the slightest trace of any Jewish traditions,

belief, or customs among them. Now it is a familiar fact that the Jews,

wherever dispersed, or however long separated from their brethren, have

invariably retained a very large proportion of the inspired precepts

revealed to regulate their religious, moral, and social conduct; and it

must demand the most precise and indisputable evidence to justify the

classing any people as Jews, who have lost all traces of the manners and

customs of that singular nation.

For these reasons we do not hesitate to say that the two facts on which

Sir W. Jones founded his hasty hypothesis, viz. the commercial character

and the Jewish physiognomy of this Asiatic tribe, afford by their

coincidence only a remarkable and curious confirmation of our

Nasological theory, and as such, we here gladly insert it.

We have said that the Jewish Nose should more properly be called the

Syrian Nose; but have reserved, until this place, some of the

corroborative illustrations.

The Syrian Arabs, as descendants of Abraham, through the wild son of

Hagar, inherit the physical, and many of the metaphysical, features of

the Hebrew nation.

Destined, by the promise of God, to become a great nation, the Arabs

founded one of the most extensive kingdoms of the earth, and for many

centuries swayed an empire more extensive than that of Rome in her

fullest prosperity. For twelve hundred years, a larger proportion of the

inhabitants of the earth have devoutly obeyed the precepts of the

Arabian prophet, than have knelt at the altar of any other individual

creed; and, though Mahometanism is perhaps doomed to fall before

Christianity, it cannot be regarded in any other light than as a minor

dispensation, and an inferior blessing conferred by Providence on a very

large proportion of His people.

Christians who yet recognize the finger of God in every sublunary

affair, would shrink with horror if asked to recognize in Mahometanism a

Providential dispensation; yet, whether we regard it as a religion which

annihilated the grossest idolatries, abolished human sacrifices,

exterminated the vilest obscenities, and substituted a nearly spiritual

worship of One God, over the largest and fairest portion of the

earth,—or as the religion of a nation, whose ancestor God blessed, and

promised to “make a great nation,” and “to multiply exceedingly, that it

should not be numbered for multitude;” and who, in token thereof,

received the seal of circumcision—to this day retained, as among the

Jews—it is difficult not to see in it the finger of God, or to deny that

the pseudo-prophet of the sons of Ishmael was an unconscious instrument

for good in His hands.

But this is a topic not needful for us here to enter fully upon. It is

more to our purpose to remark upon the psychonomic features of the

Arabs, while in the zenith of their promised glory as a nation;[51] when

the Caliphs of the East ruled as Priest and Potentate over more than

two-thirds of the known globe.

During this glorious period of their power, the Arab character shone out

uncontrolled in its true features, and exhibited itself as it had never

done before, nor since.

True to its parentage, but unshackled by the stringent laws and

anti-social ceremonies of its more favoured brother, it rioted in all

those tastes and pursuits which the latter delighted in, but was

restrained from; and became celebrated for a splendour which was

rivalled by that of Solomon alone, and a traffic which far outvied that

of all contemporaries or predecessors—except, perhaps, the cognate

nation—the Phœnicians.

Rich in barbaric pearls and gold, and boasting all the wealth of Ormuz

and of Ind, the court of the Caliphs verified the visions of the

“Arabian Nights;” which, if true, were true here only. All the gauds and

trinkets, the golden palaces, the jewelled walls, the glittering roofs,

in which the other branch[52] of the Hebrew nation displayed their

highest ideas of magnificence, shone resplendent in the halls of the

Caliphs.

But as to the boasted literature of the Arabs, it resolves itself into

an ardent pursuit of physical science—astronomy, chemistry, and the

mechanical arts, for nearly all the more important of which we are

indebted to the Arabs; not, however, as inventors, but as carriers, like

the Phœnicians. In the higher departments of literature, the Arabs made

no progress. Metaphysical disquisitions and intellectual pursuits were

repugnant to their tastes, which rather delighted in the physics of

Aristotle than the metaphysics of Plato.

Nor were they less true to their nasal development in their success and

skill in commercial pursuits. The commerce of Arabia, for several

centuries, encircled the whole known world. From the frigid shores of

Scandinavia, from the torrid sands of Africa, from silken Cathay, from

jewelled Ceylon, from vine-clad Europe, from spicy Araby, flowed the

rich streams of produce. The amber of the north was exchanged for the

gold of the south; the wines of Spain for the silks of China; the pearls

of Ceylon for the slaves and gold-dust of Africa; and a commerce now

excelled only by that of England, carried arts and literature from one

end of the Old World to the other, and was mainly instrumental in

raising the more highly-organized nations of Europe from barbarism to a

physical and intellectual splendour hitherto unknown.

But from this glorious reality, the Arab has sunk into a wretched,

irretrievable lethargy. Like the Jew, he has been weighed in the balance

and found wanting; the cup of promise has been held to his lips, and he

has refused, or polluted the blessed draught. They have been called, but

would not come, they would have been gathered together as tender

chickens under the wings of the hen, but they would not; and “behold,

their house is left unto them desolate.”

Neither Arab nor Jew shall ever again revive, till they join with the

whole earth in one universal cry, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name

of the Lord!”

It has been said that Christian intolerance has driven the Jew into the

mart, and sunk his soul in barter. But this is not true—Commerce and

money-getting are the psychonomic features of both the Hebrew races. The

Israelitish branch is vehemently charged with its usury and extortion,

by all its prophets. The severe laws which Moses made against usury shew

the character of the people for whom they were necessary; yet those laws

were ineffectual to check this inherent vice. Ezekiel (ch. xxii. 12)

exclaims, “Thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily

gained of thy neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the

Lord God;” so all the prophets.

The Arab and the Jew are both now equally sunk in the same degradation,

(_Heu! quantum mutati!_) and both exhibit, through this degradation,

their love of gold, though in a different manner. The Arab still

haunting his native soil, from which legitimate commerce is almost

excluded, betrays his ruling passion in extortion from travellers, in

skilful chicanery in horse-dealing—the only commerce left to him—or in

impudent incessant demands on strangers for _bacsheesh_.

All travellers agree, that when the Arab, degraded as he is, has an

opportunity, there is no shrewder or more skilful bargain-maker, nor any

one more competent to extract by ingenious chaffering, the full

equivalent for his services. He has been designated by fleeced and angry

travellers—little thinking how near the mark they were—the Jew of the

desert. The modern Jew, driven from the land of his birth into a wider

sphere, exercises his commercial propensities in similar pursuits, and

under every clime; and amidst every race, out-manœuvres and surpasses

his less shrewd antagonist.

Other Asiatic nations might seem to call for observation; but so little

is known of their mental characteristics, that it would be improper to

endeavour to substantiate our cause by them.

It is unnecessary to do more than remind the reader of the low

development of the Negro mind and his miserable nasal conformation—they

are worthy of each other. However humane may be the attempts to elevate

the Negro, it can never be done till his Nose is more elongated; but as

its present form has subsisted without alteration for three or four

thousand years, there does not seem much hope of its being improved now.

The Negro race, as old as the earliest Egyptian sculptures, has never

risen to an equality with any of the other races; and, though we would

not willingly condemn any nation to hopeless degradation, yet the

history of the Past _will_ reveal somewhat of the secrets of the Future,

and he is a fool who cannot, and a coward who dare not, read them.

As among individuals, so among nations there are orders and degrees of

mind, and it is only the blind who cannot see that the equality of the

one is as wild a dream as the equality of the other.

No well-informed writer, however warm his sympathies towards the Negro

race as his relation by the same “blood of which God made all the

dwellers upon earth,” has anticipated a destiny for it equal to that of

the Caucasian or elliptical-headed and aquiline-nosed races. Channing,

the most enthusiastic friend of the blacks, in all the fervour of his

ardent mind and vivid imagination, attributes to them a capacity only

for the milder graces of Christianity, and accords to them a destiny

precisely such as is indicated by their nasal formation when elevated

and sanctified by religion. “I should expect,” he says, “from the

African race, if civilized, less energy, less courage, less intellectual

originality, than in ours; but more amiableness, tranquillity,

gentleness, and content. They might not rise to an equality in outward

condition, but would probably be a much happier race.” Essentially a

feminine character is that which he assigns the negro; a character very

loveable, notwithstanding the deformity of its facial indicator.

In the new Islands of the Pacific, we behold a constant succession of

new worlds emerging from the deep by means of the same process which, in

the pre-Adamite world, formed and elevated the islands and continents of

the northern hemisphere. Minute polypi are secreting from the waters,

and fixing on the summits of submarine volcanoes the solid and durable

limestone which now forms their protection from the waves, and which

will hereafter form the foundations on which accumulated detritus will

heap up fertile soils and habitable lands.[53] Earthquakes are

continually pushing up these horizontal surfaces, and breaking them up

into mountains which, arresting the clouds in their progress, draw down

into the valleys and plains the fertilizing rain. This smooths down the

asperities of the earthquake-broken surface, and softens and harmonizes

into that sweet variety which gives birth to

“The pleasure situate in hill and dale.”

To people these new lands, Nature has branched off from the old stock,

new races of men of various degrees of physical development and mental

endowments. While those nearest the old continent of Asia, and therefore

nearest to the old blood, are of the lowest possible mental and physical

organization, little elevated above the low-class animals—the kangaroo

and the ornithorynchus[54]—of the Australian plains, those at a greater

distance—the New Zealander and the Otaheitan—exhibit a development which

may vie with that of the Caucasian nations: and which has proved its

equality by not sinking before them, but maintaining against Saxon

invaders equal rights and equal privileges.

We have a striking instance of this before us at the present time. The

British Legislature having, in ignorance of the determined character and

clever good sense of the New Zealanders, endeavoured to force upon them

a Constitution which deprived them of legislative privileges equal with

those of the colonists, and which gave to the latter the power of taxing

the former without their consent, the natives have resisted the

injustice so firmly, but hitherto peaceably, that the Governor, Sir

George Grey, has been compelled to suspend this so-called Constitution,

lest it should foment a war of the most deadly character. It is worthy

of observation that the injustice attempted to be done this shrewd and

spirited people, is not one of an evident physical character, such as

any savage can appreciate, but one of a purely theoretical and political

nature, the importance of which is even yet hardly sufficiently

understood and appreciated in any country besides England. Sir George

Grey writes to the Home Government as follows:

“By the introduction of the proposed Constitution into the provinces of

New Zealand, her Majesty’s Ministers would not confer, as it was

intended, upon her subjects the blessings of self-government, but would

be giving power to a small minority (the colonists). She would not be

giving to her subjects the right to manage their affairs as they might

think proper, but would be giving to a small _minority a power to raise

taxes from the great majority_ (the aborigines). There was no reason to

think that the majority of the aboriginal inhabitants would be satisfied

with the rule of the minority; while there are many reasons for

believing that they would resist to the uttermost. They were people of

_strong natural sense and ability_, but by nature jealous and

suspicious. Many of them were owners of vessels, horses, and cattle, and

had considerable sums of money at their disposal, _and there was no

people he was acquainted with less likely to sit down quietly under what

they might regard as an injustice_.”

“For these and other reasons, the Governor announced that he should not

proclaim the constitution before receiving fresh instructions from the

Colonial Office.

“The tone of the most trustworthy correspondence from New Zealand,

proves that this exercise of independent authority on the part of

Governor Grey has saved the colony from disastrous consequences.

Ministers acknowledge his superior competency to judge in a matter of

this kind, and a bill has accordingly been introduced into the House of

Commons by Mr. Labouchere, ‘for suspending, during a limited time (viz.,

for five years), the operation of part of the Act for making further

provision for the government of the New Zealand Islands.’”[55]

Thus has this noble people, with a strong natural sense and ability not

hitherto supposed to belong innately to “savages,” opposed more

successfully the first step in tyranny—the power of unrepresented

taxation—than any other nation (except the Saxon), which has ever

existed, civilized or uncivilized.

This has been done within twenty years after their actual beneficial

contact with civilization; but it was more than six hundred years after

the Norman conquest, before the Saxon roused himself to enforce the same

right of self-taxation. There could be but one better evidence than this

of the high-class mind of this people; and it has furnished this one

better, and best, evidence—its speedy and conscientious reception of

Christianity; for “in no country, similarly circumstanced, has the

Gospel made such rapid progress, since the days of the Apostles.”[56]

While for several centuries missionaries of every denomination have

laboured in Asia in vain, no sooner was Christianity efficiently made

known to the New Zealanders, than, catching at once with a remarkable

aptitude its leading characteristics, and appreciating immediately its

beneficent doctrines, they accepted it; and now, together with other

Polynesian islands, New Zealand affords the proudest conquest and the

richest harvest of the soldier of Christ.

Yet, apparently, for no nation could Christianity be less adapted, and

no nation could be expected to afford less hope of speedy conversion.

The pagan New Zealander was a fierce, blood-thirsty monster, spending

his whole life, and finding all his pleasures, in the most savage

warfare. Not content with slaying his enemies in combat, he sat down

afterwards, with a joyous enthusiasm worthy of a fiend, to make a feast

on their carcasses. Human sacrifices stained his altars, and hideously

deformed images pourtrayed his debased notions of a God.

On the other hand, the peaceable and mild Hindoos, whose religion

forbids bloody sacrifices of any kind, and enjoins the careful

preservation of the spirit of life, even in the meanest forms; whose

singular traditions of the incarnate Chreeshna seem to point distinctly

to a Messiah, and whose remarkable Trimurti, “three in one, and one in

three,” seems to open a way to the facile reception of the mysterious

doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, have never, as a nation, a province, or

even a small village, embraced Christianity.[57] China, which has its

similar traditions, whose sages have taught that “The true Holy One is

to be found in the West,” and that “Eternal reason (λόγος) produced One,

One produced Two, Two produced Three, and THREE produced all things,”

and whose calm stoicism and severe morality are so accordant with the

external symptoms of a Christian mind, has hardly furnished a single

convert, and apparently feels no curiosity about the religion of the

Fanqui (white devils).

If history is the past teaching lessons to the future, surely our

Missionary Societies might take a lesson from these facts, and withdraw

their exertions from so hopeless a field as Asia, and expend them on the

hopeful soil of Polynesia. Surely if the great Apostle of the Gentiles,

who was specially appointed to bring into the fold of Christ “all

nations,” was forbidden to preach the Word to the effete nations of

Asia, it is not given to his successors to contravene the inspired

mandate.

Other injunctions of Scripture to the apostolic Church are rightly

interpreted as applicable, and to be obeyed by the Church in all future

ages; and it is a strange inconsistency, arising from a too warm and

enthusiastic desire to promote the kingdom of Christ, fruitlessly to

strive, in this instance, against the mandate of the Holy Spirit.

Thus much have we said, to contrast the New Zealand mind with the Hindoo

and the Chinese, because the same contrast is manifest in their

respective physiognomies.

[Illustration:

NEW ZEALANDER.

]

Compare the bold energetic Roman Nose, the manly and commanding profile

of the New Zealander, with the soft and rounded features of the Hindoo,

and the flat monotonous surface of the Chinese visage. You perceive at a

glance that the first is the face of a man of strong, straight-forward,

common sense, and intense energy. He may not be an acute and subtle

reasoner; but he catches at once the leading points of a subject,

instantly decides, and instantly acts upon his decision.

While the two latter remain in imperturbable absorption, and while the

subtle “Greek” would be thinking too precisely on the event,

“A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom,

And ever three parts coward,”

the “Roman” has been, and seen, and conquered. He is come back, at home,

resting after his successful toil; while the “Snub” is thinking about

getting out of bed, and the “Greek” is making up his mind whether it is

“worth while” to go out.

Thus we have, from divers sources, brought together, briefly and

succinctly, a few of the universal proofs which establish Nasology as a

science. From individuals and from nations we have gathered the basis of

our nasological laws; and we trust we have produced conviction in some

minds that “the Nose is an index to Character;” if not, we shall not say

to the reader, as phrenologists do to their incredulous auditors, that

it arises from his defective organization, but rather attribute it to

our own defective mode of argumentation; for we shall not willingly

admit the erroneousness of a system which has been built up upon many

years of personal observation both among the dead and among the living.

THE END.

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Footnote 1:

It would be rather amusing, if it were not a melancholy sign of human

perverseness, to sum up all the hypotheses which have been at their

first promulgation pronounced impious and heretical. The denial of the

approaching End of the World in any century after Christ; the

Copernican System; Inoculation and Vaccination for the Small-pox; the

change of the Style of the year; Pecuniary Usufruct; Geology;

Phrenology; Railways; Aërostation; the Census; Mesmerism, &c. &c.,

would be included in the list of either existing or defunct heresies.

Footnote 2:

We shall endeavour to speak of Mind in popular phraseology, instead of

in the obscure terms in which metaphysicians envelope their ignorance

of mental phenomena.

Footnote 3:

See Combe’s Phrenology; _passim_.

Footnote 4:

See the woodcut (after a gem in the Florentine Museum) on the

Title-page.

Footnote 5:

The Platonic theory that beauty of form generally indicates beauty of

mind, is finely condensed by Spenser into a single line:

“All that is good is beautiful and fair.”

A HYMN OF HEAVENLY BEAUTY.

And again

“All that fair is, is by nature good;

That is a sign to know the gentle blood.”—IBID.

Wordsworth would also appear to be a Platonist:

“For passions linked to forms so fair

And stately, needs must have their share

Of noble sentiment.”—RUTH.

Footnote 6:

A Nose should never be judged of in profile only; but should be

examined also in front to see whether it partakes of Class III.

Footnote 7:

Thus Phrenologists rightly urge that negative qualities require no

organ. Hate is only the absence of Benevolence; dislike to children, a

defective Philoprogenitiveness.

Footnote 8:

Hooke’s Rom. Hist. b. vi, c. i.

Footnote 9:

We write thus reservedly, because there are some well-attested recent

instances of cannibalism in Ireland. The following anecdote is

likewise narrated by Leyden. “Reiterated complaints having been made

to James I. of Scotland, of the cruelties of the Sheriff of Mearns,

James exclaimed, ‘Sorra’ gin the Shirra’ were sodden, an’ supp’d in

broo’.’ Thereupon four Lairds decoyed the Sheriff to the top of the

hill of Garrock, and having prepared a fire and a boiling cauldron,

they plunged the unlucky man into the latter. After he was _sodden_

for a sufficient time, the savages fulfilled to the letter the King’s

hasty exclamation by _supping the shirra’-broo_!” If the subject were

more agreeable to dwell upon, it would be easy to furnish many other

well-attested instances of the slaking of hunger and the thirst of

revenge by a repast of human flesh.

Footnote 10:

Pict. Hist. of England.

Footnote 11:

The indications of I being so decidedly opposed to those of V and VI

it seems almost impossible for them to be associated.

Footnote 12:

The class placed first in these compounds is that which predominates.

Footnote 13:

Gibbon.

Footnote 14:

Roscoe’s Life of L. de’ Medici, chap. ix.

Footnote 15:

See Hone’s description of one performed in 1815 before several crowned

heads of Europe for three successive days; _Hone on the Mysteries_.