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THE

RACES OF MEN.

Smut ﬂbitian, [nit]; Supplementary «Ebuptns.

[This edition diﬂers from the ﬁrst only in the supple—
mentary chapters, which may be had separately]

THE

RACES OF MEN:

A PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY

INTO THE

311mm: 11mm mm the gustinies nf gatians.

BY

ROBERT KNOX, M.D.,

LECTUBBB 0N ANATOMY, .
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE 121nm“. ACLDEKY or uRDchNR or
FRANCE,
HONORARY Hanna); 0)? THE nrnNOLoaxcu. socmn‘ or LONDON,
AND
RRxGN Assocurn 0F rm: ANTHROPOLOGICLL 300121! or PARIS,
mc. RIC.

SECOND EDITION, WITH SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTERS.

"IKE PROPER STUDY on MANKIND Is KAN.”—POPE.

LON DO N :
HENRY RENSHAW, 356, STRAND.
MDCCCLXII.

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PREFAC E.

THE work I here present to the world has cost me
much thought and anxiety, the views it contains being
wholly at variance with long-received doctrines, stereo-
typed prejudices, national delusions, and a physiology and
a cosmogony based on a fantastic mythas old at least as
the Hebrew record. .

That human character, individual and national, is trace-
able solely to the nature of that race to which the individual
or nation belongs, is a statement which I know must meet
with the sternest opposition. It runs counter to nearly
all the chronicles of events called histories : it overturns the
theories of statesmen, of theologians, of philanthropists of
all shades—from the dreamy Essayist, whose remedy for
every ill that ﬂesh is heir to, is summed up in “ the coming
man,” to the “ whitened sepulchres of England,” the hard-
handed, spatula-ﬁngered Saxon utilitarian, whose best
plea for religion and sound morals, and philanthropy, is
" the profitableness thereof "-—-imposters all ! to such the
truths in this little work must ever be most unpalatable.
Nevertheless, that race in human affairs is everything, is
simply a fact, the most remarkable, the most comprehensive,
which philosophy has ever announced. Race is every-
thing: literature, science, art—in a word, civilization, de-
pends on it.

Each race treated of in this little work will complain of
my not having done them justice; of all others they will
admit that I have spoken the truth. The placing the
Slavonian and Gothic races foremost amongst men, ﬁrst

and greatest in philosophy, will much, I believe, astonish‘

the men of other races ; the Saxon and Celt ; the Italian
and Sarmatian: the inordinate self-esteem of the Saxon

vi PREFACE.

will be especially shocked thereby, nor will he listen with
composure to a theory which tells him, proves to him, that
‘ his race cannot domineer over the earth—cannot even exist
permanently on any continent to which he is not indigenous
—cannot ever become native, true-born Americans—can-
not hold in permanency any portion of any continent but
the one on which he first originated. Physiologists will
dispute with me the great laws I have endeavoured to
substitute for the efl‘ete common-place of the schools;
geologists will think me hasty in declaring the aura. of
Cuvier at an end; theologians—but here I stop ; a.
reply shall not be wanting. As to the hack compilers,
their course is simple : they will ﬁrst deny the doctrine to
be true; when this becomes clearly untenable, they will
deny that it is new ; and they will ﬁnish by engrossing the
whole in their next compilations, omitting carefully the
name of the author. - .

Lest my readers feel surprise at the repetition of so
many of the woodcuts, I have to observe that this was
rendered necessary by the nature of the work. These
woodcuts are from drawings made expressly for this work
by my friend, Dr. ~VVestmacott, an accomplished artist, in
whose praise I need say nothing. They are much more
expressive of the true character of race than will at first
appear to the careless observer.
. R. K.
London, lat July, 1850.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

Tms new edition dill'ers from the ﬁrst only in having
attached to it a Supplement, in which many important
philosophical questions are treated of, allhaving reference,
more or less directly, to the great question of race.

London, Jun. 1862.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION

LEC‘I‘. I. History of the Saxon or Scandinavian Race
——Introduction of the Saxon element of
mind into human history—Its inﬂuence
on the civilization of mankind—Do races
amalgamate P—Does a hybrid race exist P

II. Physiological Laws regulating Human Life
-——Extinction of a race—Climate of no
inﬂuence over any raceof men—Antiquity

FAG!

39

of race inconsistent with the received in- ‘

terpretation of the Hebrew myth .
III. History of the Gipsy, Copt, and Jew
IV. Of the Coptic, J ewish,and Phoenician Races

—Mediterranean races connected with a
former geological mm or period

V. Same subject continued—Value of monu-
mental records—Theory of progressive
improvement . . . . . . . .

VI. 'lhe dark Races of men—Antagonism of
man to Nature’s works—Antipathy of
race to race . . .

VII. History of the Celtic Race—Geographical
position of the race-Their future destiny

VIII. Who are the Germans P—The modern Ger-
man not the classic—Mistake of N iebuhr
and of Arnold . . . . . .

76
146

178

188

339

viii CONTENTS.

LECTURE PAGE
IX. The Slavonian Race—Discovered the trans-
cendental philosophy— the greatest of

all discoveries . . 351

X. Of the Sarmatian Race—The Russ and f
Pruss; of the dominant races now on the ’

earth 362 :
XI. Question of Dominancy—England ; her :
constitution and colonies—Nationalities \

—the English people sustained and partly

recovered from the greatest calamity that

ever befel a race—viz., the Norman con-
quest 370 ‘4
XII. Some Remarks on Jewish Chronology. . 380 l
CONCLUDING LECTURE 395 i
APPENDIX . 447 i

SUPPLEMENT.

481i

CRAP. I. On Human Hybridité
II. On some Ancient Forms of Civilization . 5085

III. Africa: its Past, Present, and probable

Future . 532}
IV. On the Present Phasis of Ethnology . . 56332

RESUME 588i: .

INTRODUCTION.

‘ THE outlines of Lectures now presented to the
Public, I have designated “ A Fragment.” I dis-
claim all pretensions of attempting a complete
history of mankind, even from the single point of
view from which I contemplate Human history.
No materials exist for such a history. Of man’s
origin we know nothing correctly; we know not
when he ﬁrst appeared in space; his place in
time, then, is unknown. Still thought to have
been coeval with the existing order of things,
this theory will require revision, now that the dawn
of the present organic world, even as it now stands,
can be shown to have an antiquity agreeing ill
with human chronologies. In the meantime how
worthless are these chronologies! How replete
with error human history has been proved to be.
The basis of the view I take of man is his ,
Physical structure; if I may so say, his‘_Z_oo_logi- l
cal history. To know this must be the ﬁrst step
in all inquiries into man’s history: all abstrac-
tions, neglecting or despising this great element,
the physical character and constitution of man,
B

‘2 INTRODUCTION.

his mental and corporeal attributes must, of neces-
sity, be at the least Utopian, if not erroneous.
' Men are of various Races; call them Species.
if you will; call them permanent Varieties; it
' matters nOt. The fact, the simple fact, remains
i just as it was: men are of different races. Now
the object of these lectures is to show that in
human history race is everything.

Of the minute physical structure of most of the
races of men we know nothing, anatomical in»
quiries having as yet been conﬁned to the investi-
gation of a very few European races; I may almost
say, merely to the Saxon and Celtic. When.
some superﬁcial observer has made a few remarks:
on the skeleton of a race, he fancies he knows it ,
anatomy ! But from my own, I admit very limited.
observations, I feel disposed to afﬁrm, that tlr
races of men, when carefully examined, will be
found to show remarkable organic differences.
In a dark or coloured person, whose structure i'
had an opportunity of observing, the nerves of the
limbs were at least a third less than those of thr
Saxon man of the same height. M. Tiedemann,
of Heidelberg, informed me that he had every
reason to believe that the native Australian rac»
differed in an extraordinary manner from thu
European: that this is the case with the Hot-
tentot and Bosjeman race has been long known.

The mind of the race, instinctive and reasoning.

INTRODUCTION. 3

naturally differs in correspondence with the orga-
nization. What wild, Utopian theories have been
advanced—What misstatements, respecting civili-
zation! The most important of man’s intellectual
faculties, the surest, the best,—the instinctive,
namely,——has even been declared to be wanting
to human nature l \Vhat wild and fanciful theo-
ries of human progress, of human civilization!
Look at Europe ; at either bank of the Danube;
at Northern Africa; at Egypt; at the shores of
the Mediterranean, generally, and say what pro-
gress civilization has made in these countries
since the decline of the Roman Empire. Is Ire-
land civilized? In Cicero’s time the Island of
Rhodes presented a civilization which no part of
Britain can pretend to: what is its state at this
moment?

But, it may be said, Christianity has done much.
This I doubt; but admitting it to be the case, its
progress is not evident: to me it seems to lose
ground. It presents also a variety of forms
essentially distinct: with each race its character
is altered; Celtic, Saxon, Sarmatian, express in
so many words, the Greek, Roman, Lutheran
forms of worship. M. Daubigny has expended
many words in explaining the rejection of the
Reformation by certain nations, its adoption by
others; let him look to the map, and he will ﬁnd
that, with a slight exception, if it really be one,
the Celtig race universally rejected the Refor-

B 2

4 INTRODUCTION.

' mation of Luther; the Saxon race as certainly
adopted it. There need be no mystery in stating
so simple a fact.

The morale of a race has little or nothing to do
with its religion: I offer the English invasion
of Hindostan in proof—the invasion of Scinde
and Aﬂ'ghan, the plunder of China. A proﬁta-
ble war is a pleasant thing for a Saxon nation; ‘
and a crusade against the heathen has always
been declared praiseworthy.

The study of the races of men—the tracing, at
least, some of those great events, distinguishing
their national histories, to their physical and moral
natures—has ever been with me a favourite pur-
suit. I early examined the work of Blumenbach, of
which the laborious writings of Dr. Prichard were
an extension—an imperfect work, leading to no
results; teaching a physiology as old as Herodotus
and Hippocrates. More than thirty years ago,
observation taught me that the great question of
race—the most important, unquestionably, to man
—had been for the most part scrupulously, shall
we say purposely, avoided—by the statesman, the
historian, the theologian; by journalists of nearly
all countries. Unpalatable doctrines, no doubt, to
dynasties lording it over nations composed of
different races.

Empires, monarchies, nations, are human con--
trivances; often held together by fraud and via»
lence: Ireland, for example, and England; Prussia

INTRODUCTION. 5

and Posen; Austria and Hungary. Does an
emeute take place in Canada! See with what
anxiety it is attempted to be shown in Parliament
,that it is not a ﬁght of race against race! All in
vain ! The terrible question cannot be concealed
any longer. The savage rule of the Tedeschi will
no longer be endured in Italy ; the Saxon-German
detests the Slavonian, who repays his hatred
with deﬁance. Long-headed statesmen, like
Metternich and Guizot, who knew so well the
nature of the races they governed, would fain
mystify the question, ascribing the war of race to
a wild spirit of democracy—to peripatetic agita—
tors; in Ireland, to the smallness of the holdings;
and perhaps, in Canada, to the largeness of the
holdings! Profound observers, who could pass
their lives amongst a race of men without disco-
vering their nature! Let the Norman govern-
ment of England look to it. Its views and policy
are antagonistic to the Saxon race it governs;
1888 may complete what 1688 left imperfect,
and an Anglo-Saxon republic, looking again to-
wards Scandinavia, may found a European con-
' federacy, against which the dynasty-loving Celt
and the swinish, abject Cossaque, may strike in
vain. Then, and not till then, will terminate the
evil effects of the conquest of England by the
Normans “ "H
Human history cannot be a mere chapter of
accidents. The fate of nations cannot always be

6 INTRODUCTION.

regulated by chance; its literature, science, art,
wealth, religion, language, laws, and morals, can-
not surely be the result of merely accidental
circumstances. If any one insists with me that
a Negro or a Tasmanian accidentally born in
England becomes thereby an Englishman, I yield
the point; but should he further insist that he,
the said Negro or Tasmanian, may become also a
Saxon or Scandinavian, I must contend against
so ludicrous an error. And yet errors like this
are committed daily by well-educated and well—

informed persons. With me, race, or hereditary
, descent, is everything; it stamps the man. Set-

ting aside all theories, I have endeavoured to
view mankind as they now exist, divided as
they are, and seem always to have been, into
distinct races. As the origin of these races is
lost in the past, I trace them from the present
towards the past; from the partially known to
the totally unknown. Well-meaning, timid per-
sons dread the question of race; they wish it left
where Prichard did, that is, where Hippocrates
left it.‘ But this cannot be : the human mind is
free to think, if not on the Rhine or on the
Thames, at least on the Ohio and the Missouri.
The greatest difficulty I have experienced in
the drawing up these lectures, whether as
lectures delivered to public audiences, or writ-
ten, as they now are, for publication, has been,

INTRODUCTION. 7

to decide on the arrangement best calculated to
submit my views brieﬂy, yet intelligibly, to the
public. After various trials I have decided on
the following; it may not be the best: it is not
systematic; it is not methodical; but it seems to
me adapted to a very numerous class of readers,
who, though highly educated, are yet not scien-
tiﬁc. To place the great physiological principles
regulating human and other living beings before
them in an intelligible form, has been of course
my main difﬁculty. This, I trust, I have now
overcome.

The races of men as they now exist on the
globe constitute a fact which cannot be over-
looked. They differ from each other widely——
most widely :—but that such differences exist,
and important ones too, has not been denied; the
word, race, is of daily use, applied even to man:
since the war of race commenced in continental
Europe and in Ireland, no expression is of more
frequent occurrence than the term race. It is
not, then, a new phrase I use, but I use it in a
new sense; for whilst the statesman, the historian,
the theologian, the universalist, and the mere
scholar, either attached no special meaning to
the term, for reasons best known to themselves;
or refused to follow out the principle to its con-
sequences; or ascribed the moral difference in
the races of men to fanciful causes, such as edu-

8 INTRODUCTION.

cation, religion, climate, &c.-—and their physical
distinctions sometimes to the same hap-hazard in-
ﬂuences— sometimes to climate alone ——sometimes
to climate aided by a mysterious law—such as that
imagined-by Prichard, that the fair individuals
of any family separating themselves from the
darker branches would with each successive gene-v
ration become fairer, and the darker become
darker, forgetting that this theory was refuted by
the very ﬁrst fact from which he starts, and which
actually forms the basis of his Whole theory-—
namely, that individuals having a speciﬁc ten
dency towards different races are constantly being
born in every family ;—0r, lastly, ascribing tu
mere chance and hap-hazard, as in the story of
the short-legged American sheep, the productior
of the permanent varieties of man :——I, in oppo-v
sition to these views, am prepared to assert that race
is everything in human history; that the races-or
men are not the result of accident; that they are
not convertible into each other by any contriv-
ance whatever. The eternal laws of nature
must prevail over protocols and dynasties: fraud,
-—that is, the law; and brute force—that is, the
bayonet, may effect much; have eﬂ'ectedmuch;
but they cannot alter nature.

The reader, no doubt, will already have arr
idea of the plan I intend following in the pub»
lishing of these lectures: certain great physical

INTRODUCTION. 9

or physiological principles will be discussed
when speaking of each particular race; the prin-
ciple may apply, no doubt, to all, but I leave its
application to my readers: the chief applica-
tions will be made, in order to avoid repetition, to
the race whose history I at the moment discuss.

I have also very carefully considered the ques-
tion as to “the race” with which I should com-
mence the history of man. Here, again, great
difﬁculties presented themselves. We know not
the history of any one race on the earth. All is
conjecture, pretension, error, obscurity. The
most illustrious name applied to any race has
been the Roman, and yet it does not appear that
there ever was any distinct race to which this
name could be applied! This is human history!
Abstract terms have been invented to express
relations which do not exist: such, for example,
as the term Teuton, used by Dr. Arnold in a ‘
sense which all history, ancientranfmdern,
refutes.

But I need not further enlarge on the course
laid down, it will unfold itself as I proceed. Nor
even at this moment, whilst I write this Introduc-
tion, have I fully made up my mind as to the
race with whose history I shall commence this
work. No race interests us so much as the
Saxon, or as I prefer calling him, for reasons ‘
to be afterwards explained, the Scandinavian. He

“AK

10 INTRODUCTION.

is about to be the dominant race on the earth; a
section ofthe race, the Anglo-Saxon, has for nearly
a century been all-powerful onthe ocean; the grand
tyrants by sea, the British; as the Muscovite has
been the grand tyrant by land: so said Napoleon,
that mighty intellect, an over-match for the world.
I may probably, then, commence with the Phys
siological history of the Saxon, tracing the moral.
and physical characteristics which distinguisl.
him from all other races of men—his religious
formulas, his literature, his contempt for art, his
abhorrence for theory—that is, for science and
scientiﬁc men, his acquisitive and applicative
genius, tracing all to the eternal, unalterablr
qualities of race. It will be my endeavour to show
him in all climes, and under all circumstances;
how he modiﬁes for the time being his natural
but unalterable character to suit the existing
order of things; to prove to you how the Hippo-
cratic theory of man is, like most other medi~~
cal theories, wholly untrue; inapplicable to the
Saxon, and, indeed, to every other race. Forget

\
l
i
‘3
l
i

for a time the word nation, and ask yourselves
whence come the people composing any ancient
assemblage called a nation, a state, a republic, a
monarchy, an empire? Ask yourselves this plain
question, are they indigenous to the soil, or have.
they migrated from somewhere else? and if so,
have they altered in structure, in character?

INTRODUCTION. 11

How perfectly does the modern Scandinavian
or Saxon resemble the original tribes as they
started from the woods of Germany to meet
Caesar on the Rhine! Whether, under Pretorius,
in Southern Africa, he throws out a deﬁance to the
military despot, the irresponsible agent of a dy-
nasty, ruling a Saxon race by laws hateful to their
nature, antagonistic of their feelings ; or, demand-
ing in Upper Canada free institutions; or driving
that same dynasty, with its sham constitution,
from the mighty continent of America for ever;
establishing in the place of its hateful and paltry
thraldom, a republican empire, destined some
future day to rule the world; everywhere is he the
same; nature’s democrat—the respecter of law
when the law is made by himself; —but I anticipate
my ﬁrst lecture. Let me conclude, therefore,
without delay, an Introduction already too long.

As a living and material being, the history of
man is included in the history of the organic
world. He is of this world; he did not create
it, he creates nothing; you cannot separate his
history from the organic world. Apart no doubt
he stands; but all species stand apart from each
other quite as much as he does from them. He has
his speciﬁc laws regulating his form, but these are
in perfect accordance with all nature’s works. By
the unity of organization is he connected with all
life —past, present, and to come. Other animals

12 INTRODUCTION.

have but one history, their zoological; man has
two, the zoological and the intellectual. Tb,
latter must ever, to a certain extent, be regulate a
by the former. Like other animals, he is found
to occupy only a portion of space and a fraction
of time—that is, of the continuous succession of
events. It seems as if there was a period when
he existed not, and, to believe Geologists, a long
period too. I do not hold this to be quite proved
in any sense; but grant it at present, he holds in
this respect the identical relation to time and
space which we ﬁnd all other animals do. Th: ;
is their history. There was a period when they
existed not in space, or cannot now be discm
vered; they next appear to run their determine ..
course, they then cease to be. Judging by tins:
past, this must also be the fate of man. But now
my reader will readily perceive that I again
digress from the business in hand, which is to
bring this Introduction to a close; this I shall do
by a few remarks on the history of the lectures
themselves.

The obvious differences in the races of men
attracted my attention, as I have already ohm
served, from my earliest years. In my native
country, Britain, there have been, from the earlie 51
recorded times, at the least two distinct races of
men; I am disposed to think three. I do not
allude to the sprinkling of gipsy, Jew, and

INTRODUCTION. 13

Phoenician races, who still hold their ground in
various parts of the island, nor to some traces of
others, as of the Huns, visible amongst the hop-
gatherers of Kent; but to three large bodies
of men, of sufﬁcient numerical strength to main-
tain, if not political power and unity, at least
their integrity as a race distinct from others, in
sufﬁcient numbers to resist the aggressive action
of the admixture of race by intermarriage; to
neutralize, to a great extent, such intermarriages,
and to render that admixture comparatively un-
important. These races are the Celtic, Saxon,
and Belgian or Flemish. They inhabited, in't’he
remotest period, different parts of the country, as
they still do, from a period, in fact, beyond the
historical era. I cannot find any era in history
when the Celtic races occupied the lowlands of
England and of Scotland; I believe this theory
to be completely erroneous—a dream, a. fable.
The story of the arrival of the Saxons in England,
of the Jutes and Angles, Danes, Swedes, Hol-
steinians—let us say at once Saxons or Scandi-
navians—is a very pretty story, true enough as
regards that horde and that date, but altogether
false if it be pretended that this was the ﬁrst
advent of the Scandinavian into Britain. Again,
it was not the barbarous Celt whom Caesar met
in Kent; nor did he meet the Germans, whom he
knew well; he met the Flemings, deeply inter-

14 INTRODUCTION.

mingled with the Phuanicians. When had the
Celtic races war-chariots? Did the Dictator en-
counter any such in Gaul?

These and other reﬂections occurred to me
early in life; that is, so soon as, in 1814, I looked
attentively at the population of Southern Eng-
land. I have been ever anxious to get at ele-
mentary knowledge, knowing its vital importance;
by this I do not mean the sort of information
given to children, consisting Wholly of words,
without a meaning, but to the great elements
of knowledge on which human thoughts and
reﬂections are to be engaged. Now here is
one of these elementary, all-important facts,
which is either true or not; if true, its con-
sequences are without a limit ; if not true, it
ought to be distinctly refuted. To me the Cale—
donian Celt of Scotland appears a race as
distinct from the Lowland Saxon of the same
country, as any two races can possibly be: as
negro from American; Hottentot from Caﬂ're;
Esquimaux from Saxon. But statesmen, his-
torians, theologians, have not only refused to
acknowledge the importance of this fact; they
have gone further; they have denied its existence
and purposely falsiﬁed history: the fact has been
carefully excluded from the high educational
institutions of the country. An English clergy- .
man, an Oxonian, a gentleman, and a scholar,:‘

INTRODUCTION. 15

remarked to me, about two years ago, “So, then,
it really does appear that there are two distinct
races of men in Scotland!” I was confounded;
but allowing him to proceed, I found that he had
just made this notable discovery in the columns of
The Times! The journalist had also just dis-
covered the fact, and had actually had the courage
to hint that there might also be two races in
Ireland! The proprietors sent a reporter to
Ireland who made out this fact: nothing additional
that I am aware of, unless it be that he ascer-
tained that the middlemen and landlords were
mostly Celtic also! Profound observer! Why
did he pass St. Giles’s? Marylebone? White-
chapel? Yet, true to his trade, within a year the
editor throws this fact and all its consequences over-
board ; describes the Celtic rebellion of Scotland
as anational rebellion of Scotland against Eng-
gland; knowing at the same time that there was
iscarcely a Scottish man, properly speaking, in
lthe Stuart army. The Caledonian Celtic race,
! not Scotland, fell at Culloden, never more to rise;
the Boyne was the Waterloo of Celtic Ireland.
If the French Celt recovers from the terrible
disaster of 1815 it will cause me surprise. Na-
poleon, whom he betrayed, whom he sold to
I England and to Russia, is dead: the Celt now
Freaps the fruits of his treachery.

Whilst still young I readily perceived that the

l6 . INTRODUCTION. , I

philosophic formula of Blumenbach led to noi
results: explained nothing: N investigated no
causes. It was the external-character naturalist
trying “ his method ” on man. It left every great
physiological question unanswered; nor was it
until certain great philosophic and original minds
returned to the grand principles already sketched
for them by Leibnitz, Newton, and others, that
philosophy once more recovered its hold of phy-
siology. This movement I trace, not to the;
Scandinavian or North German, but to the Slavo-
nian, or to the south and middle German ; to Oken
and Goethe, Spix, Von Martins, and a host of".
others: but not to Berlin, nor to Heidelberg;
nor to any section of the Scandinavian or true‘
German race. In‘a word, transcendental ana-J
tomy, which alone, of all systems, aﬂ'ords us a
glimpse and a hope of a true “theory of nature,”_€
seems to me of Slavonian origin strictly; no
Saxon could ever have imagined it; scarcely,
comprehend it: the low t1anscendentalists of:
England are a diverting crew, who nibble at a
question they cannot refute, yet dare not adopt. 1

Whilst tracing the progress of events all over?
the world since the period I mention, I have seen‘
the question of race tested in a great variety of:
ways; its strength especially , its endurance;
The evidence in its favour, up to 1844, enabled:
me to piedict the coming war of 1ace against race,~

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION. 1 7

which has convulsed Europe during the last two
years. This I did in various courses of lectures
delivered in 1844—45-46 and 47, as I shall pre-
sently explain. So early as 1830,‘I asked the
per'sons who called themselves Germans to point
out Germany to me on the map; to tell me who
are the Germans ? I asked them if the Viennese
and the Bohemians were Germans ? If they
thought they would ever become so? If the inha—
bitants of Posen were Germans? If the Dutch,
Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, were Germans? To
these questions I could never get a rational reply.
The educated men to whom I spoke were quite

, a...“

aware that, strictly speaking, there was no such ‘

place as Germany, and no single race to which *

the word German could apply ? They knew that ,,

the countries which at various times have ﬁgured
on the map as the German Empire, Germany,
Prussia, Saxony, &c., contain within them various
races of men; the Saxon or classic German of
Roman writers; the Slavonian, the Sarmatian,
”anduanother race, not yet well described; they
were quite aware of this; they knew well that
such conﬂicting elements could never agree.
Accordingly, in 1845, I foretold the breaking
down of the iron despotisms of Hapsburg and
Brandenburg as a necessary result of a war of
race: it came in ’47. The gold of England, and
the sword of Russia, either thought invincible,
C

18 INTRODUCTION.

could not amalgamate the dark- haired Fleming
with the Saxon- Dutchman: 700 years of absolute
possession has not advanced by a single step the
amalgamation of the Irish Celt with the Saxon-
“English: the Cymbri of Wales remain as they
were: the Caledonian still lingers in diminished
numbers, but unaltered, on the wild shores of his
lochs and friths, scraping a miserable subsistence
from the narrow patch of soil left him by the
stern climate of his native land. Transplant him
to another climate, a brighter sky, a greater ﬁeld,
flee from the trammels of artiﬁcial life, the hal- "
nessed routine of European civilization; carry
him to Canada, he is still the same,- mysterious
fact. I beseech you, you great essayists, Utopians,
universalists, and shrewd fatalist statesmen, to
explain the facts if you can; if not, why not ad-
mit them to exist. The habitans, 1e has Canadian,
is a being of the age of Louis Quatorze. Seigno-
ries, monkeries, jesuits, grand domains; idle-
ness, indolence, slavery; a mental slavery, the
most dreadful of all human conditions. See him
cling to the banks of rivers, fearing to plunge into
the forest; without self-reliance ; without self-con-
fidence. If you seek an explanation, go back to
France ; go back to Ireland, and you will ﬁnd it
there: it is the race. Even in the states, the free
United States, where if a man remain a slave
in mind it is his own affair, the Celt is distinct

INTRODUCTION. 19

from the Saxon to this day. The progress of the
question of race cannot be for a moment mistaken :
the question will some day test the strength of the
“ Declaration of Independence ;” for the Celt does
not understand what we Saxons mean by inde-
pendence: a military leader he understands; a
faction-ﬁght; a fortiﬁed camp, for a Capital is
his delight. But I again forget that I am busy,
or ought to be, with the introduction to my lec-
tures, and not with the lectures themselYes.

As my opinions became more matured, strength-
ened by daily observation and research, I resolved
to submit them to the public in one form or other.
It is true that I should have greatly preferred ex-
amining still further into the history of the races
composing the heterogeneous empire of Austria,
and more especially the actual position of the
Slavonian race, using the term in its most exten-
sive signification.2 This journey across Europe
I could not, however, accomplish, and hence I
remained, with most others, I presume, but little
acquainted with the actual position of the Slavo-
nian race. But I at least avoided the errors
into which most of my countrymen have fallen;
I never mistook them for Germans; neither did
I suppose that they would be transformed into
Germans by merely living under a. German dy-
nasty and breathing German air: I never mis-
took the Florentines or Milanese for Tedeschi,

c 2

20 INTRODUCTION.

merely because they had‘been for some centuries
under the abhorred dominion of Austr.ia With.
me the Anglo- -Saxon in America 1s a Saxon, and
not a native: the Celt will prove a Celt wherever
‘ he is bOrn, wherever he is found. The possible
conversion of one race into another I hold to be
a statement contradicted by all history.

I In making my opinions known I resorted ﬁrst to
the method most familiar to me—namely, by public
lectures; and accordingly the sum and substance
of these lectures were delivered, about five years
ago, to many of the Philosophical and Popular
Educational Institutions of England; in New-
castle, Birmingham, Manchester, &c.

My ﬁrst course was delivered before the Philo-
sophical Society of Newcastle—an institution re-
markable for the number of distinguished men it
includes. The lectures were brieﬂy reported at
the time by the public press. They were soon after
repeated at Birmingham and Manchester, before
the members of the Royal Institution, and at the
Athenaeum. Here ample reports were made of my
lectures, and published in the newspaper press of
Manchester. This was fully two years before the
occurrence of any of the extraordinary events
which, during the last two years, have shaken the
stability of the artiﬁcial governmental arrange-
ments of men and families, dynasties and proto-
cols. At‘ that time I had the great question of race,

INTRODUCTION. 2]

the all-absorbing question of the day, wholly to
myself. Europe was tranquil ! 3 Highly—educated
men asked me if the French were Celts l—if there
were two races of men in Britain and in Ireland !
—and supposing there were two races, how
it was that they could not agree !—-who were the
Slavonians! and such other questions as satisﬁed
me that they and I viewed human history from
two different points; they, as a chapter of acci-
dents, and I, as tracing human character, indivi-
dual, social, national, to the all—pervading, unal-
terable, physical character of race.

Of the brief reports of my lectures thus made
known by the provincial press, the London press
took no notice. I scarcely at ﬁrst expected this.
The nations, it is true, were, according to their
views, tranquil, consolidated, happy, free, con-
tented, ﬂourishing, under the treaties of Vienna
and the Quadruple Alliance ! Still I expected to
have met with, on all hands, a stout denial of the
premises on which my conclusions were founded,
and an attempt, at least, at a refutation of the
conclusions themselves. Did the neglect to notice
my lectures arise from their having some doubts
themselves of the future tranquillity of Europe?
Or, seeing the matter perhaps in the same light
with myself, they had yet thought it prudent to
avoid all such dangerous topics, opinions, predic-
tions of events which might not occur for centuries P

22 INTRODUCTION.

I know not ; but such was the case. For two years
at least I had the Whole question of race to my—
self. In a kingdom composed of disunited races,
the press adopted, no doubt, the more prudent
course; and they were bound, moreover, to consult
the feelings of their contributors and readers—the
English people, strong in their nationality, despis-
ing alike all other nations and races; some for
their race, others for those very qualities of race
which they most prize in themselves. Then burst
forth the mighty convulsion of the Celtic race of
France; the Italian races rose against the barbarous
savage Tédeschi, who, under the assumed name of
Germans, to which they have not the most distant
claim, lorded it over Italy ; then arose the Saggn‘
element of the German race in Austria, demanding

Mna‘mf‘aﬁa‘ a division from“ the barbarous

‘ Slavonian ; then fell that miserable drum-head
monarchy of Prussia, and the grand duchy of
Posen furnished the ﬁeld of contest between the
German and Slavonian races.

The views I had so long adopted of human
nature, human history, and the future, had led me
long ago to foresee the approaching struggle of
race against race. The evidence appeared to me
so clear that I felt greatly disappointed on ﬁnding
so few disposed to acquiesce in the views I
had adopted. But now that the question can
be no longer concealed, the London press has

INTRODUCTION. 23

honoured me with a notice I did not, I confess,
aspire to. One leading journal, at least, has fairly
reprinted nearly all my views in the form of
leaders, to which, of course, no name was attached.
As these views had been delivered in public lec-
tures at least three years previously; as they had
been reprinted in the provincial press; and as
they were then reporting in the Medical Times
journal,-—-I scarcely expected in an English news-
paper so barefaced a piracy. My friends have
complained of it to me frequently ; they have
called on me to denounce and expose the parties.
I leave the matter in the hands of the public.

In presenting this ﬁrst complete edition of my
Lectures on the Races of Men to public criticism, I
have weighed most anxiously the form of the pub-
lication, and the order or method to be followed
in arranging the lectures. It has indeed been my
great difﬁculty. Materials for a systematic history
of the races of men are wholly wanting; the great
problem of human nature has scarcely been
touched on in any previous history of race.
The illustrious Prichard, with the best intentions
in the world, has succeeded in misdirecting the
English mind as to all the great questions of race.
This misdirection has told, as we have seen, even
on the scholar and on the scientiﬁc man. As a
consequence of its misdirection, on the mere men-
tion of the word race, the popular mind ﬂies oﬂ"

24 INTRODUCTION.

to Tasmania, the polar circle, or the land of the
Hottentot. Englishmen cannot be made to be-
lieve, can scarcely be made to comprehend, that
races of men, differing as widely from each other
as races can possibly do, inhabit, not merely con-
tinental Europe, but portions of Great Britain
and Ireland. And next to the diﬂiculty of getting
this great fact admitted to be one, has been an
unwillingness to admit the full importance of race,
militating as it does against the thousand-and-one
prejudices of the so-called civilized state of man;
opposed as it is to the Utopian views based on
education, religion, government. Two courses
were open to me; the ﬁrst, and that I should
have preferred, was to commence the history of
race by inquiring into the history of man as he
stands related to the organic world; thus attempt-
ing at once the solution of the great problem—
man’s existence on the earth. But the failure of
Alexander von Humboldt, in his Cosmos, and the
obscurity of the Slavonian transcendentalism of
Oken and his school, even admitting, as I do, that
its basis is in truth, ﬁnally deterred me from this
course, even after I had arranged my lectures in
accordance with it. i

A word or two more, and I have done with this
introductory matter. The timid, of all sects, as
well as the members of the primitive catholic
church, have thought my views of the Jewish race

INTRODUCTION. 25

open to doubt: some have thought them not or-
thodox. It is diﬂicult in the present day to ascer-
tain precisely What is orthodox and what is not.
Some of my views, and those the more important,
coincide strictly with those of some eminent di-
vines.* Of this I was not aware at the time I
published my lectures. On the other hand, I
have been assured that this does not avail, as the
same objection, heterodoxy, lies against their
opinions as against mine. Here I must leave the
matter in the hands of the theologian, upon whose
province I neither must nor mean to intrude.

2. Many have thought and said that the cha-
racter I have given the Celt was over-drawn and
exaggerated. I wish I could think with them.
For the Celtic race I have the highest regard and
esteem; but as an inquirer into truth, I have of
necessity been compelled to adhere to facts. In
my ﬁrst lecture, delivered ﬁve years ago, I said
that the Celtic race does not, and never could be
made to comprehend the meaning of the word
liberty. My readers will have the goodness to
recollect that the opinion I gave had no reference
. to recent events, but was deduced from past his-
, tory: the histories of ’92, of ’15, of ’32; add now
the events of ’48 and ’49, and say, have I erred in
the estimate 1 formed of this race? On four

9“ M‘Neile and others.

M“

26 INTRODUCTION.

eventful occasions the supreme power has re-
turned into the hands of the Celtic men of France:
never was the destruction of a dynasty more com-
plete. What use have they made of this power?
Have the'conscript laws been abolished? Have
the passport laws for Frenchmen ceased to exist?
Is the press free? Paris open, and unfortiﬁed?
The population peaceably armed? Or is it true
that they have turned their capital into a fortiﬁed
camp ?— elected as a military leader the nephew of
the greatest of men, whom they betrayed?-—con-
scription, paSSports, all in force. I appeal to the
Saxon men of all countries whether I am right
or not in my estimate of the Celtic character.

, Furious fanaticism; a love of war and disorder; a

hatred for order and patient industry; no accu-
mulative habits; restless, treacherous, uncertain:
lookatIreland. This is the dark side of the cha-
racter. But there is a bright and brilliant view
which my readers will ﬁnd I have not failed to
observe. What race has done such glorious
deeds? Still it is never to be forgotten that the
continental Celt deserted and betrayed the greatest
of men, Napoleon, thus losing the sovereignty
of the world: here the fatal blow was struck from
which the continental Celt cannot hope to recover.
Culloden decided the fate, not of Scotland, as the
Times has it, but of the Caledonian Celt: the
Lowland Saxon Scotch took part against them:

INTRODUCTION. 27

Celtic Ireland fell at the Boyne ; this was their
Waterloo. Sir Robert Peel’s Encumbered Estate
Bill aims simply at the quiet and gradual extinc-
tion of the Celtic race in Ireland: this is its sole
aim, and it will prove successful. A similar bill is
wanted for Caledonia, or may be required shortly:
the Celtic race cannot too soon escape from
under Saxon rule. ' As a Saxon, I abhor all
dynasties, monarchies and bayonet governments,
but this latter seems to be the only one» suitable
for the Celtic man.

A short time ago a pseudo-philos'ophical work
excited much conversation and prejudice against
the transcendental theories of the origin of man;
'the theory of development in time. It jumbled
up the theory of human progress with the theory
of development; its critics, the church and colleges,
compelled its anonymous compiler to seek a
refuge in the doctrine of ﬁnal cause; a doctrine
which the whole scope of the work repudiated.
The doctrines of Geoffroy were in this work*
misstated, to serve a purpose; those of Humboldt
and others withheld. But the public mind has
now been disabused in respect of this work, and
of its power to do mischief, so that further criti-
cism seems unnecessary.

I doubt all theories of human progress in time:

* Vestiges of Creation.

28 INTRODUCTION.

they are refuted by history: I question the theo-
ries of progress in time, if by progress be meant
improvement as regards all animals; some at
least of the extinct organic world were equal, if
not superior, to that now existing. Man was
probably there also; it is these and other such
questions which Jesuits of all denominations—for
they are not conﬁned to the Roman-catholic
world—declaim against. Hence, also, their dis-
like to the geologist and the anatomist.4 Science
has nothing to do with such persons; and but for
the frequency of their open and insidious attacks,
I should deem it lost time the giving to them
even a passing thought. The history of the ter-
restrial globe, and of all that it contains, perhaps‘
even of the universe, points to a past, a pre-
sent, and a future. “If we look into space with
a telescope, we may perceive a star so distant
that light from it would require a million of.
years to reach this globe; thus showing a past
as regards that star, of at least a million of
years.” How is it with the globe itself? “ If we
dissect and examine the strata. of this earth,
science shows the fossil remains of former organic
worlds imbedded in these strata; of countless
races of animals now extinct; but it shows us
more than this. It displays strata requiring for
their formation countless thousands of years.

INTRODUCTION. 29

\

The earth, then, is old, very old. Here there is a
past and a present, and a probable future. What
a mass of idle, wild, visionary speculation did
not Hutton overthrow! See what a single ana-
tomist did l—one shrewd truth-loving observer!
Before Hutton appeared, what were the theories
of the schools? Before the anatomist spoke out,
what was geology? He (Cuvier) showed the past
and the present. Lastly; and this discovery ex-
ceeds all others;——“ When we look into animal
structure, say the human embryo, or of any other
mammal, we discover a past and a present; and
we conjecture a physical future.” We discover
structures in the embryo not persistent but tran-
sitory, evanescent; we see that the individual is
in fact passing through a series of metamorphoses,
expressed brieﬂy by the term development; pass-
ing through forms which represent the permanent
forms of other adult beings belonging to the
organic world, not human, but bestial; of whom
some belong to the existing world, whilst others may
represent forms which once existed, but are now
extinct; or, ﬁnally, forms which may be destined
some day to appear, running their destined course,
then to perish as their predecessors. Thus in
the embryonic changes or metamorphoses of man
and other animals, are shadowed forth, more or
less completely, all other organic forms; the
fully developed, or grown~up brute forms of birds

30 INTRODUCTION.

and ﬁshes, of reptiles and mammals, are repre-
sented in the organic structures of the human
embryo; whilst this again, in its short and ﬂeet-
ing course from a simple vesicle or cell, as it
may be, to birth, represents in its ever-varying
types the history of all organic existences from
the beginning of time to the present day. Thus
is man linked by structure and by plan to all
that has lived or may yet live. One plan, one
grand scheme of nature; unity of organization;
unity in time and space; hence, here also we
see the past and the present, and we conjecture
a future. This discovery, the unity of the organi-
zation, the laws of development, the laws of
formation and deformation, we owe entirely to the
south German, or perhaps I should say, to the
Bohemian or Slavonian race. France contributed
a little towards its history ; England, not at all.
Even in philosophic Paris, where the transcen-
dental theory was ﬁrst mooted by Geoffroy, fol-
lowing in the steps of Oken and Spin, of Goethe
and Leibnitz, it was extinguished at once by the
sarcasms of Cuvier and his adherents. The
history of this affair merits a place in the annals
of science: we shall speak of it shortly: in the
meantime let me explain, by a few examples and
illustrations, the real nature of that transcendental
theory which ﬁrst gave thinking, reasoning man
a glimpse of the great system of nature. A few

INTRODUCTION. 31

illustrations must sufﬁce: this is a mere fragment
I write, and not a systematic work: time and
materials are wholly wanting to attempt so great
an undertaking as the zoological history of man.

Place yourself in the midst of any considerable
assemblage of people, and a little careful obser-
vation will convince you, that although a general
resemblance pervades all, provided they be of
one race, there is yet in each an individuality
not to be mistaken: or that, in short, he or she
differs in a hundred ways from all around. If
men of other races be present, the differences
are at once striking, and not to be overlooked.
In what these differences consist we shall after-
wards consider. They have been described with
a painfully fastidious detail of petty circumstances
by zoological formulists; the causes of these
differences have been as carefully avoided, as if
man, all-important man, were not a ﬁt object of
inquiry—man, the only really important animal
to man, was to be let alone ; Providence or chance
had been pleased to make men as they are; from
white she had turned some to black, others to
brown; some olive, others yellow; “ call it
climate,‘ormanything you like, but do not inquire
into the cause:” the inquiry, in fact, is not a
legitimate one.5 But why, in that case, inquire
into any science? What signiﬁes truth? Water
will not rise higher in a pump—well, whether we

32 INTRODUCTION.

know the philosophy of atmospheric pressure or
not. According to these persons it is sufﬁcient
for us to know that it will rise to a certain height
in a pump-well. It is to universities, colleges,
and schools that we owe the perpetuation of
error; of neatly-formuled untruths. I was taught
that the round head of the Turk depended on his
wearing a turban: it was repeated, on the authority
of Blumenbach, that the small hands of the Hot-
tentots as compared with the Caﬂ'res was caused
by a scarcity of food ! And but lately I read, in
one of those miserable, trashy, popular physiolo-
giesf that the Dutch owe their dulness and
milegm to their living amongst marshes? And
to this day, I verily believe, this is the physiology
of the schools. Eh? spindle form of the English
legs, so slender, ill made, dispropoftioned to the
torso,I have repeatedly heard ascribed, by Sir
Charles Bell, to the early use of heavy shoes or
clogs: the vigorous calf of the French woman’s
leg ascribed to there being no side pavements in
Paris: and in a country where, at any hour of
the day, you may meet with numbers of persons
of all ranks in whom the facial angle equals
the best of the antique, the same excellent
man not only persisted in overlooking the fact,
but denied its possibility.

* Combe.

E INTRODUCTION. 33
i
I.
l

p I return to my ﬁrst proposition. If the assem-
iblage observed be composed of different races,
ithe differences will be still more striking; ex-
éplained away they may be, but they cannot be
; overlooked. And now, should an opportunity
é occur, to look more narrowly into the differences
é characterizing the individuals forming this motley
3‘ group, other extraordinary circumstances will be
Ediscovered. It will be found, that some cannot
s extend their arms or limbs to the due degree or to
ifull extension: that some have two or more ﬁn-
ggers and toes webbed: that some have no arms,
1 but merely hands: others, no legs, but merely feet :
:or the thighs are too short: or the arms: and in
gsome the back is perfectly straight, instead of
jbeing arched and curved: some have the nails
”round, others have them pointed like claws: hare-
' lip with cleft palate may be seen among the crowd:
ion the ﬁnest necks of the adult man or woman

imay occasionally be seen some exceedingly small
openings, marking the vestiges of branchial
arches or gills, which all animals, man as well,
‘ have in their foetal state: these, and others’ to be
mentioned, are so many illustrations of one great
law—the law of unity of organization, as exhibited
pin the embryo : the existence of this unity proved
gby the various arrests of developments named
Eabove. For all, or nearly all, the varieties here
imentioned, are simply foetal or embryonic condi-
' n

 

34 INTRODUCTION.

tions, which ought to have been evanescent, had
the law of perfect formation or of species pre-
vailed; but from circumstances not rightly under-
stood, these embryonic forms had persisted in the
individual, and grown up with him to the adult
state. For every mammal embryo, human or
otherwise, in passing through the various deve-
lopments, part of the great scheme of nature, no
doubt, exhibits such forms as I have spoken of.
Cleft palate, webbed ﬁngers, absence of arms and
legs, straight spine ; at a later period, semi-ﬂexed
arms and legs, branchial openings in the neck,
leading to vessels arranged in tufts, a structure be-
longing to the adult state of ﬁshes; temporary in
man, permanent in the ﬁsh: one type then for both
—for all; not two types, but one. The mechanical
utilitarian cannot comprehend this—his mind is
so full of animal mechanics; the carpenter, the
watch and clock-maker, comes out on all occa-
sions. Socrates and his followers, from Philo
J udaeus and Galen, to Derham and Paley, knew
nothing of the great law of unity of the organi-
zation; they seemed to fancy every animal made
for itself, and on a separate type; by ﬁnal causes,
in which the uneducated mind sees the explanation
of every doubt. But why should there be two or
more types of organized beings ? Cuvier thought
that there must at least be two—the vertebrate
and the avertebrate. Newton seemed to think

INTRODUCTION. 35

that there existed but one kind of matter; he was
amongst the earliest to announce the doctrine of
unity of the organization. His vast mind foresaw
the truth, to be afterwards more fully brought out:
Divine mind! in advance of his age by a century
at least.

Certain varieties then, in human form, are pro-
duced by the law of unity of the organization;
for every individual living form grows up inﬂu-
enced, regulated by two contending principles.
The law of unity of organization, ever present,
ever active, ever ready to retain the embryonic
forms: the law, in fact, of deformation as we
naturally view it; for, as the human faculties are
constituted to look for and to admire the perfect
form, so every deviation from this perfect form,
the standard and type of which exists in every
rightly formed mind, is regarded with a certain
dislike. It is to this type that nature as con-
stantly leans in carrying out the development of
every individual ; the law in fact of individuality;
of species. Without it we should have no distinct
species of men or animals on the earth; the law
of deformation or unity would perpetually alter
every form. Nothing could be recognised. Hence,
as a part of the great scheme of Nature, arises
the law of speculization leading to the perfection
of the individual: in the human race, to the abso-
lutely perfect and the beautiful, as we naturally

D 2

36 INTRODUCTION.

esteem the human form—woman’s form, the only
absolutely beautiful object on earth.

To be brief, and so conclude—What is race,
and. what is species? These terms are easier un-
derstood than deﬁned. That the idea of distinct
species and of race is fast passing away from the

.m r r. pm “kn-huh)" J‘QEWﬁﬁmt-amm

human mind, may, or may not be true; the old

doctrine has been deeply shaken; still species
and race exist for us; for man, at least; in space,
though not in time. In time there is probably
no such thing as species: no absolutely new
creations ever took place; but, as viewed by the
limited mind of man, the question takes another

aspect. As regards his individual existence,
time is a short span; a few centuries, or a few 2

thousand years, more or less: this is all he can

grasp. Now, for that period at least, organic j
forms seem not to have changed. So far back .
as history goes, the species of animals as we f

call them have not changed; the races of men
have been absolutely the same. They were dis-
tinct then for that period as at present. Are
they commutable into each other? Are these
causes in constant operation, slowly yet surely
altering and changing everything? Or does this
happen by sudden cataclasms or geological epochs?
Of one thing we are certain, entire races of animals
have disappeared from the surface of the globe;
other seemingly new creations occupy their place.

 

INTRODUCTION. 37

But is it really a new creation? This question we
_ shall also discuss.

Look more narrowly into the races of men, and
you will ﬁnd them to be subject to diseases peculiar
to each; that the very essence of their language
is distinct; their civilization also, if they have any.
Trace the matter further, and you will ﬁnd that
, transcendental anatomy can alone explain these
mysterious circumstances: how all embryos should
resemble each other; how they should resemble the
primitive forms of life when the world was yet
young; how deviations in form or varieties, not
intended to be permanent, should repeat primitive
forms, as proved by fossil remains; or present
human or bestial forms; or take unknown shapes,
referring, no doubt, to the future: lastly, and that
is the most difﬁcult question, how specializations
should ever appear at all, and be, for a time at least,
permanent. Two questions remain, beyond, I fear,
human enquiryz—lst, The origin of life on the
globe; 2nd, The secondary laws, for they must
be so, and can be nothing else, which create out
of primitive forms, the past, the present, and the
future organic worlds, clothing them with beau-
teous scenery. Endless, but deﬁned variety of
forms, adorn the earth, the air, the waters; the
scheme of creation, in fact, in so far as man’s feeble
reason can judge; not the object of creation; not
the object of man’s creation, which, though won-

38 INTRODUCTION.

derful, is not more so than that of any other form;
not then the object of man’s creation as an intel— I
lectual being; this has been revealed to us by divine }
minds. But I must view this last question also _
as an anatomist and physiologist, conﬁning my ‘
remarks to man merely as a material being; the ,
most perfect, no doubt, that exists. In woman’s 5
form I see the perfection of Nature’s works: the ;
absolutely perfect; the beautiful, the highest ma- ’
nifestation of abstract life, clothed in a physical _
form, adapted to the corresponding minds of her f
. race and species.

 

 

LECTURES

ON

THE RACES OF MEN.

LECTURE I.

HISTORY OF THE SAXON 0R SCANDINAVIAN RACE!

IT was Columbus, I think, who said to F erdi-
nand and Isabella, “ The world is not so vast as
people suppose.” How full of meaning are these
expressions ! How comprehensive, how universal
the genius of the man who uttered them! To
grasp the universal is unquestionably the attribute
of ‘genius ; it is a god-like quality, even when it
leads to error. '

Columbus thought that the world is not so
large as most people suppose it to be. This limi-
tation of the globe’s extent to the mind’s eye
we owe to science —not, however, to modern
science. The words “ orbis terrarum,” used by
Horace, cannot well be misunderstood. But small
though it be, comparatively, it is yet large enough
to meet the wants of all organic beings which

4O SCANDINAVIAN

have hitherto ﬁgured on or in it. At no period
does the world seem ever to have been overloaded
with life, overpeopled with human beings. The
production of life is no doubt inconceivably great,
but so also is its destruction, or rather its restora-
tion to primitive forms, for it is questionable how
far life can be destroyed, in the strict sense of the
term. Why animals are made to prey on each
other—the devouring and the devoured—is a’
question I leave for a future section; at present
our business is with man. St. Cyril, who wrote,
I think, about the ﬁfth or sixth century of the
Christian aera, defends the institution of nunneries
and monasteries on this special ground, that, even
in his time, the world (meaning, I have no doubt,

    

[A Saxon House ; standing always apart, zfpossible,
from all oﬂzea'sj

OR SAXON RACE. 41

the town and district he lived in) was already too
densely populated ! Ingenious priest and Jesuit!
subtle casuist! In modern times, a descendant
of your craft* has proved to the faithful that the
over-production of life, the destruction of the
young, man himself included, by famine, pesti-
lence, and disease; the savage warfare of the de-
vourer against the devoured all over the world;
the multiplication of the ﬂesh-eating animals, and
of the grass-eating animals to feed them,—was a
grand stroke of nature’s polity, to increase plea-
sure by multiplying life. Diverting casuist! who
can extract any meaning from any text! You
undertook to ﬁx the aera of the Mosaic deluge,
and you wrote a quarto volume about troops of
antediluvian hyaenas, which never existed but in
your own imagination. \Vhere are your theories
now? Ignorant of Hebrew, you tamper with the
books of the Hebrews ! Had you not better leave
the Jews to themselves, it being but fair to suppose
that they best understand their own writings ?
Although man be antagonistic to the organic and
living world in all forms which serve not imme-
diately his own ends, he has not yet succeeded in
destroying all nature’s works, although he labours
hard to effect this. His existence seems to depend
on his success in the war of extinction he carries
on against the wilde. By superior cunning and

" Buckland, Dean of Westminster.

42 SCANDINAVIAN

powers of combination, he soon disposes of the
animal world. The vegetable world is more Oh-
durate, more difﬁcult to be overcome : the heath,
the bog, the forest, are ever ready to return upon
him, should his incessant labour cease but for an
instant. Hence it is that certain regions of the
earth are more desirable for human residence than
others. Unproﬁtable, untillable seas cover the
greater part of the globe’s surface; hence may
arise a struggle for certain regions in preference
to others. But, be this as it may, I cannot ﬁnd
that the earth was ever, as St. Cyril has it, over-
populated. When Babylon was, London was
not; the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris,
which were equal to the support of millions, are
no longer cultivated; the plains of Troy are de-
sert, Mongolia a wilderness. This is human his-
tory. Successive races of men appear on the
globe; the space they occupy is of course too
small for them, whether it be England or France,
New York or Calcutta, Moscow or Rome (I mean
ancient Rome)—they ﬁnd the space always too
narrow for them; from Point de Galle to the
Himalah, from the Bay of Bengal to the Persian
Gulf, it is always too conﬁned. At times the
plea is commerce, legitimate commerce; Hindo-
stan and China are grasped at ; it is quite legiti-
mate—we do not want their territory, we only
want to trade with them. At other times the pre-

on SAXON RACE. 43

meditated robbery is glossed over with a religious
pretence—the conversion of the heathen—a noble
theme for declamation. A national insult will
also serve the purpose, as at Algiers. A wish to
serve Africa forms the excuse for an expedition to
the Niger, the real object being the enslaving the
unhappy Negro, dispossessing him of his lands
and freedom. I prefer the manly robber to this
sneaking, canting hypocrisy, peculiar to modern
civilization and to Christian Europe.

Now, whether the earth be over-populated or not,
one thing is certain—the strong will always grasp
at the property and lands of the weak. I have been
assured that this conduct is not at all incompatible
With the highest moral and even Christian feeling.
I had fancied that it was, but I have been assured
of the contrary. The doctrine which teaches us
to love our neighbours as ourselves is admirable,
no doubt; but a. difﬁculty lies somehow or other
in the way. What is that difﬁculty, which all
seem to know and feel, yet do not like to avow P
It is the difference of race. Ask the Dutch Boor
whence comes his contempt and inward dislike to
the Hottentot, the Negro, the Caffre; ask him for
his warrant to reduce these unhappy races to
bondage and to slavery; to rob them of their
lands, and to enslave their children; to deny
them the inalienable right of man to a portion of
the earth on which he was born? If he be an

44 SCANDINAVIAN

honest and straightforward man, he will point to
the ﬁre-arms suspended over the mantelpiece—
“ There is my right !” The statesmen of modern
Europe manage such matters differently; they
arrive, it is true, at the same result—robbery,
plunder, seizure of the lands of others—but they
do it by treaties, protocols, alliances, and ﬁrst
principles.

 

[The modem Greek and the Mascom'te, or Sarma-
ticm; both of the Caucasian race .’ Marlo their
resemblance J]

When the word race, as applied to man, is
spoken of, the English mind wanders immediately
to distant countries; to Negroes and Hottentots,
' Red Indians and savages. He admits that there

are people who differ a good deal from us, but not
: in Europe; there, mankind are clearly of one
family. It is the Caucasian race, says One; it is
the primitive race, says another. But the object
'of this work is to show that the European races, so
called, differ from each other as widely as the
Negro does from the Bushman; the Caﬂ‘i‘e from

“‘1‘“ i main;

OR SAXON RACE. ' 45

the Hottentot; the Red Indian of America from
the Esquimaux; the Esquimaux from the Basque.
Blumenbach and Prichard have misled the public
mind so much in this respect, that a century may
elapse before it be disabused. I need not repeat
here the antiquated division of mankind by Blu-
menba'ch, nor its modiﬁcation by ‘Prichardi it
leads to no results. With the history of the
Saxon or Scandinavian race, 1 shall commence
V the physiological history of man.’

SAXON OR SCANDINAVIAN RACE.

Of the origin of the Saxon race we know just
as much as we do of the origin of man; that is,
nothing. History, such as it is, shows us that in
remote times a race of men, differing from all
others physically and mentally, dwelt iILSQLdi-
navi ——say, in Norway, Denmark Sweden, Hol-
stein— “:sz the shores of the Baltic, 1n fact ,by the
mouths of the Rhine, and on its northern and
eastern bank. Caesar met Ariovistus at the head
of a German army on the Rhine. The ”Germans,
as the Scandinavian and other transrherial races
were then called, had crossed the river, making
excursions into the territories of their Celtic
neighbours, inhabiting Old Gaul. The dictator
defeated them, compelling them to recross the
Rhine into their own territories. But he did not
follow them into their native woods: the Romans

46 SCANDINAVIAN

never had any real power beyond the Rhine. At
no period did they conquer the Saxon or true
German, that is, Scandinavian, race. ‘

What had induced the ancient Scandinavians
to cross the Rhine in Caesar’s time ? - What had
led them long before into Italy, where they en-
countered Marius? Ask the South-African Saxon
Boor what induces him to spread himself over
a land, one twentieth part of which could easily
maintain him in comfort and afﬂuence. What
urges him against Caffraria—against Natal? It has
been said, that the Scandinavian or Saxon tribes
were pressed for space ; that more numerous bar-
barous tribes pushed them on. The over-popu-
lousness of their woods and their retiring before
another force do not well agree; there is some
contradiction here. But the Cape Boor of Saxon
origin has no such excuse for spreading himself
in a few years over a vast region, which he leaves
uncultivated; neither has the Anglo—Saxon Ame- .
rican. To me it seems referrible simply to the
qualities of the race; to their inordinate self-
esteem; to their love of independence, which
makes them dislike the proximity of a neighbour;
to their hatred for dynasties and governments;
democrats by their nature, the only democrats on
' the earth, the only race which truly comprehends
the meaning of the word liberty.

The Scandinavian or Saxon (I avoid the wgds I:

0R SAXON RACE. 47

Ge1 man and Teuton, as liable to equivoque) was

early in Greece, say 3500 years ago. This race“
still exists in Switzerland, forming its p1otestant

portion, whilst In Greece, it contributed mainly,
L no doubt, to the formation of the noblest of all men
—the statesmen, poets, sculptors, mathematicians,
metaphysicians, historians of ancient Greece.
But from that land nearly all traces of it have
disappeared; so also from Italy. It is gradually
becoming extinct in France and Spain, returning
and conﬁned once more to those countries in
which it was originally found—namely, Holland,
W'est Prussia, Holstein, the northern states of the '
ancient Rhenish Confederation, Saxony Proper,
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The Saxon of
England is deemed a colonist from Jutland, Hol-
stein, and Denmark. I feel disposed to view the
question differently. He must have occupied
eastern Scotland and eastern England as far
south as the Humber, long prior to the historic
period, when the German Ocean was scarcely a
sea. The Saxons of these northern coasts of
Scotland and England, resemble very closely the
natives. of the opposite shores; but the Danes
and Angles who attacked South England, already
occupied by a Flemish race, did not make the
same impression on the population. They merely
mingled with it; the country, that is, South
England, remains in the hands of the original in-

48 SCAN DINAVIAN

habitants to this day. South England is mainly
occupied by a Belgian race, and were it not for the
centralization of London, it is by no means im-
probable that much of the true Saxon blood would
have disappeared from south Britain, by that u-
s1010g_cal law which extinguishes mixed races (a

people composed of two or more races) and causes
the originally more numerous one to predominate,

 

[Contrast the Cherokee head with that of the Apollo
(Frontispieoe), the noblest of all human heads;
and belonging to a Scandinavian race, with a
dash of oriental blood]

 

 

0R SAXON RACE. 49

unless supplies be continually drawn from the
primitive pure breeds. This important law we
shall consider presently. Following out the
geographical position of the Saxon race, we
ﬁnd him in Europe, intersected but not amalga-
mated mearmatian and Slavonian, in
eastern Europe; with the Celtic in Switzerland;
mg“ the Slavonian and Flaming in
Austria and on the Rhine; thinly sp1ead
Wt Wales , in possession, as occupants
of the mf northern and easteln Ireland;
lastly, carryinghwout the destinies of his race,
obeying his physical and moral nature, the
Anglo-Saxon, aided by his insular position, takes
\possession of the ocean, becomes the great
”tyrant"7at"§'ea'; Ships, colonies, commerce—these
Tare'hisdwealth, therefore his strength. A nation
iﬁf'Sh’oipréepers grasps at universal power; founds
1a. colony (the States of America) such as the
rworld never saw before; loses it, as a result of
Ithe principle of race. Nothing daunted, founds
Iothers, to lose them all in succession, and for
athe same reasons—race: a handful of large-
ghanded spatula ﬁngeled Saxon traders holds
military possession of India. Meantime, though 5
;-divided by nationalities, into different groupes,
Ejas English, Dutch, Gelman, United States man,
1; cord1a11y hating each other, the race still hopes
[gultimately to be masters of the world.
E

50 , SCANDINAVIAN

But I have not yet spoken of the physiqalagg
mental qualities of the Saxon race; these words
includmﬂ‘theﬁChronicle of Events” which
have happened to them, whether in England or
elsewhere, is a mere chapter of accidents, in-
ﬂuenced deeply by the qualities of the average
men of the race. So soon as I shall brieﬂy have
described these, it will be proper to consider the
import of two great physiological laws already
mooted—namely, Can a mixed race be produced
and supported by the intermingling of two races ?
Can any race occupy, colonize, and people a
region of the earth to which they are not indi-
genous ?

In all climes, and under all circumstances, the
Saxons are a tall, powerful, athletic race of men; ;
the strongest, as a race, on the face of the earth. i
They have fair hair, with blue eyes, and so ﬁne
a Complexion, that they may almost be coﬁmé‘a
the-“only absolutely fair race on the face of the
globe. Generally speaking, they are not a well
made or proportioned race, falling off most in 'i":
the limbs; the torso being large, vast, and dis- ‘
proportioned. They are so described by Livy,
and have never altered ; the mistake of Prichard,
and the difﬁculty experienced by the illustrious
Niebuhr, the greatest of all historians, respecting";
the complexion of the modern German differing

from the ancient, arises simply from this, their?
..,,_ ' I“ «x.

on SAXON RACE. 51

the middle and south German belong to another
racenbf: men. They a1e not Scandinavians or
Txons at all, and never were. The mistake
centres in the abuse of the word German , it has
been applied to two or three diﬂ'erent races: so also
has the wo1d Teuton; hence my objections to these
terms. The true Germansror Saxons of modern
times resemble, or rather are identical, with
those of antiquity; they follow the law of here-
ditary descent; climate exercises no inﬂuence over
them. Two hundred years of Java, three hundred
years of southern Africa, affect them not. Alter
their health it may, and does, withering up the
frame; rendering the body thin and juiceless;
wasting the adipose cellular tissue; relaxing the
muscles and injuring the complexion, by altering
the condition of the blood and secretions; all
this may be admitted, but they produce no per-
manent results.

Under the inﬂuence of climate, the Saxon
decays in northern America and in Australia,
and he rears his offspring with difﬁculty. He
has changed his continental locality; a physio-
logical law, I Shall shortly explain, is against his
naturalization there. Were the supplies from
Europe not incessant, he could not stand his
ground in these new continents. A real native per-
manentAmerican, or Australian race of pure Saxon
blood, is a dream which can never be realized.

E 2

SCANDINAVIAN

52

The Saxon is fair, not because he lives in a
. temperate or cold climate, but because he is a

The Esquimaux are nearly black, yet

2' Saxon.

 

 

 

the Ia‘gxganian

\M,

‘3!!!

he, ,

\ \ _
: , , x V
_ . , l, v ,.

___. _ , .H. x : x. /___ 3 . ‘ n g

Q: S t ,x . l . ,,

. \ a _ T L, L . \ r

i, l ,
. l . , ,

ﬂex
.‘\ x

\ News!

hag» \
Ryﬁxwvmw
\Qﬁuﬁ...‘ ‘

\

 

 

 

‘ they live amidst eternal snows;

[A Celtic gmujoe ; such may be seen at any time in
Marylebone, London]

0R SAXON RACE. 53

ignifypgssibleL darker than the negro, under a
climate as mild as England. Climate has no
‘inﬂuence‘invpermanently altering the varieties
‘beaEé'é‘b? men ; destroy them, it may and does,
Tutmitgibannotmconvert them into any other
race; nor can this be done even by act of
parliament, which, to a thorough-going English-
man, with all his amusing nationalities, will
appear as something amazing. It has been
tried in Wales, in Ireland, in Caledonia—
and failed. Explain it, ye Utopians, as you
choose; I merely mention the fact. When I
lectured in Liverpool, a gentleman, of the name
of Martineau, put forth a discourse, in which he
maintained, that we had forced Saxon laws upon
the Irish too hurriedly; that we had not given
them time enough to become good Saxons, into
which they would be metamorphosed at last. In
what time, Mr. Martineau, do you expect this
notable change? The experiment has been going
: on already for 700 years; I will concede you
, seven times 700 more, but this will not alter the
‘ Celt: no more will it change the Saxon, to whom
L I return.
Thoughtful, plodding, industrious beyond all
I other races, a lover of labour for labour’s sake;
l he cares not its amount if it be but proﬁtable;
llarge handed, mechanical, a lover of order, of
l punctuality in business, of neatness and clean-

54 SCANDINAVIAN

liness. In these qualities no race approaches
him; the wealthy with him is the sole respectable,
the respectable the sole good; the word comfort
is never out of his mouth—it is the beau ideal of
the Saxon.

His genius is wholly applicative, for he invents
nothing. In the ﬁne arts, and in music, taste
cannot go lower. The race in general has no
musical ear, and they mistake noise for music.
The marrow-bones and cleaver belong to them.
Prize ﬁghts, bull-baiting with dogs; sparring
matches; rowing, horse racing, gymnastics: the
Boor is peculiar to the Saxon race. When young
they cannot sit still an instant, so powerful is the
desire for work, labour, excitement, muscular
‘ exertion. The self-esteem is so great, the self- I
conﬁdence so matchless, that they cannot possibly
imagine any man or set of men to be superior to

themselves. Accumulative beyond all others, the
. wealth of the world collects in their hands.

Our good qualities when in excess become
foibles and even vices. I need not dwell on this:
my notes to this Lecture will supply the de-
ﬁciency. The social condition of the Saxon can
only be seen in the free States of America, which _
I have not yet visited. In Britain he was en-
slaved by a Norman dynasty, antagonistic of his
race. His efforts to throw it 011' have not yet 3
succeeded, though oft repeated. On the Con-. ‘

OR SAXON RACE. 55

tinent, the Saxon race, broken up into petty
monarchies, without wealth or power; miserably
enslaved and crushed down by the dynasties of
Hapsburgh, Brandenburgh, and a host of others,
presents a condition seemingly hopeless. In
their last struggle for liberty, or in other words
for institutions suited to their race, they were
not joined by the Scandinavian nations, the very
best of their blood. Holland, too, would have
risen, but she remembered the Celtic treachery;
the betrayal of the cause of liberty by the French
Celt in ’92; the plunder of Europe by a body of
disciplined savages under Napoleon; so she re-
sponded not to the Celt. The cap of liberty was
raised in vain in Paris; the cautious Hollander
was not again to be deceived. He knew also
that England, commercial England, was sure to
betray him into the hands of the brutal Pruss
and Russ. Thus the noblest blood of the race
is in abeyance: sunk into political insigniﬁcance.
Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Holstein, Holland,
commercial England, have overshadowed you. A
colony of your own (England), your ﬁrst, your
greatest colony, has exercised over your fortunes
that fatal inﬂuence which England’s ﬁrst and
greatest colony may some day exercise over hers:
we are to you, what America seems destined to be
to us. Of the same race, commercial, naval, the
only really good sailors in the world, our American

56 SCANDINAVIAN

colony already disputes with us the empire of the
seas; a future Paul Jones may yet repay Britain
the affair of Copenhagen; but it must come from
a Saxon race, for the Saxons alone are sailors.
The results of the physical and mental qualities
of a race are naturally manifested in its civiliza-
tion, for every race has its own form of civiliza-
tion. The historian, the talented statesman,
Guizot, for example, who failed in forty years to
learn the character of the race amongst Whom he
lived and ruled, he of all others, (always except-
ing the Prince of Bunglers, Metternich,) the most
outrageously mistaken, has written a work about
European civilization; about an abstraction which

 

[An Anglo-Saxon house ; it always, 7f possible,
stands detackedj

0R SAXON RACE. 57

does not exist. Each race has its own form of
civilization, as it has its own language and arts;
I would almost venture to say, science; for
although exact science, as being based on eternal
and indisputable truths, must ever be the same
under all circumstances and under all climes, it
does not follow that its truths should even be
formuled after the same fashion. Civilization, or
the social condition of man, is the result and
test of the qualities of every race; but it would
be unfair to judge the European Saxon by this
standard, seeing that the entire race, insular and
continental, is crushed down by dynasties an-
tagonistic of their race. What is effected at
Berlin and Vienna by the bayonet, is usually
accomplished in London by the law. Hence,
notwithstanding the wealth of the Anglo-Saxon,no
nation presents such a frightful mass of squalid
poverty and wretchedness, rendering it doubtful
whether such a form of civilization be a blessing
or a curse to humanity. I lean with Tacitus to
the latter opinion.

No race perhaps (for I must make allowances
for my Saxon deseent,) no race perhaps exceeds
them in an abstract sense of justice, and a love
of fair play; but only to Saxons. This of course
they do not extend to other races. Aware of his
strength of chest and arms, he uses them in self-
defenee: the Celt ﬂies uniformly to the sword.

58 SCANDINAVIAN

To-day and to-morrow is all the Saxon looks to;
yesterday he cares not for; it is past and gone.
He is the man of circumstances, of expediency
Without method; “try all things, but do not
theorize.” - Give me “ constants,” a book of con-
stants; this is his cry. Hence his contempt for
men of science: his hatred for genius arises from
another cause; he cannot endure the idea that
any man is really superior in anything to himself.
The absence of genius in his race he feels; he
dislikes to be told it: he attempts to crush it
wherever it appears. Men of genius he calls
humbugs, impostors. His literature is peculiar
to himself, and must not be confounded with
modern German literature: this latter is chieﬂy
of Slavonian origin, mingled with the race occu-
pying central Europe and stretching into Flanders.
Uncertain as to their nature, I have called this
race Flemish or Belgian; but the modern Bel-
gians do not well represent them. I believe
them peculiar; an off-set perhaps of the Slavonian
race; at all events not Saxon or Scandinavian.
The word German, and the equivoque it admits
of, has greatly confused a very simple matter. It
misled Arnold; it misled Niebuhr, and a host of
others: my countrymen have confounded the
literature of the middle, south German, and Sla-
vonian races with the Scandinavian or north Ger-
man; nothing was ever more distinct.

0R SAXON RACE. 59

All that is free in Saxon countries they, the
Saxons, owe to themselves ; their laws, manners, in-
stitutions, they brought with them from the woods
of Germany, and they have transferred them to the
woods of America. They owe nothing to any kings
or princes or chiefs: originally, they had neither
chief nor king; a general in war was elected when
required. In their ideas of “ property in land ”
they differ also from other races ; they do not admit
that any class or family, dynasty or individual, can
appropriate to himself and to his hereditary heirs,
any portion of the earth’s surface. Hence their
abhorrence for feudality, tenures, hereditary rights,
and laws of primogeniture. Soldiers and soldier-
ing they despise as being unworthy of free men:
the difﬁculty of teaching them military discipline
and tactics, arises from the awkwardness of their
forms and slowness of movement, and from their
inordinate self-esteem. But when disciplined,
their infantry, owing to the strength of the men,
becomes the ﬁrst in the world. In the chapter on
Germany, I shall examine more carefully into
some of these points, characteristic of the race;
concluding this section with some observations
on the present position and future prospects, that
is, destiny of the race. The failure of the Conti—
nental Saxon during the late struggle for liberty,
I ventured to foretel at the commencement. They
desired to be united, free; disenthralled from the

60 SCANDINAVIAN

hideous iron despotism which crushes them down:
in a German unity, a race mustering at least sixty
millions, they hoped to ﬁnd a counterpoise to
Celtic France, and Swinish Russia; that is, to the
two dominant races of Europe, the Celt and the
Sarmatian. But true to their selﬁsh nature, they
had not the soul to offer the same freedom to the
Slavonian, whom they neglected and despised.
They fought with the Slavonians in Posen; they
resisted them in Bohemia; they contended with
them in Austria; liberty for the German was the
war-cry; slavery for all the rest. They now reap
the fruits of their selﬁsh nature ; hopeless slavery
for centuries: the dynasties are in the ascendant:
they have alarmed the holders ofproperty, always
timid, always cowardly: as a class, the property
men are sure to back any dynasty if well sup-
ported by the bayonet. No sympathies can be
extended to a selﬁsh grasping race, without feel-
ings for others. To their eternal dishonour, they
suffered an infamous coward, the ﬁrst who ﬂed
from Potsdam to Windsor, to return and butcher
their brethren in Baden and Saxony. When the
imbecile House of Hapsburgh ﬂed from Vienna,
then was the time to have said to the Slavonian
race,—“ Arise, and form a nation.” But self pre-
vailed with the Saxon, and ruin followed. The
words of Napoleon have now been veriﬁed;
Europe is “ all Cossaque.” All fear of a Celtic Re-

OR SAXON RACE. 61

public has vanished: the character of the Celt is now
fully understood. Rome has settled the question
for a time. Celtic liberty is now well compre—
hended by all Europe. The world thought Celtic
France a great and free people; but the world was
wrong if they did, for the world forgot the element
of race in its calculation on the probable destinies
of the French Celt; that element, duly weighed,
would have shown them, that a race being com-
posed of individuals resembling each other must,
even in its greatest efforts, merely shadow forth
the character of the individual. When the French
Celt drove out the insupportable and paltry Or-
leans dynasty, they were merely a ﬁghting clan
without a chief; having no self-esteem, how could
they act without a leader? That leader had not
then, and has not yet, appeared.

The introduction of the Saxon element of mind
into civilized Europe is, no doubt, a remarkable
event in history: the literature and arts of the
Roman world had been already inﬂuenced by
the Celtic mind; the Gothic or Slavonian followed
next; then came the Saxon. Its ﬁrst result was
to produce the dark ages. What the race had
been doing since the beginning of time it is im-
possible to say, but being without inventive genius,
I see not how they could originate any but the
lowest forms of civilization, such as I have seen in
Southern Africa amongst the Dutch, that is, Saxon,

62 SCANDINAVIAN

Boors, and such as I have heard prevails in “ the!
far west.” Man sinks rapidly in the scale of civi-
lization when removed from the great stream.
They are wrong who fancy otherwise. At the
third generation the Saxon Boor, in a remote
land, sinks nearly to the barbarian; active and
energetic, no doubt: still a Saxon, but not the
less a boor and a vulgar barbarian.

The remarkable, and almost prophetic, saying
of Gibbon, seems about to be veriﬁed. As a.
statesman and a historian, a. chronicler of the
social and political histories of nations, he applies
.his remark to England; but it is strictly appli-
cable to the European Saxon, wherever found;
insular or continental; applicable to the descen-
dants of those free and bold men who originally
brought with them, in all their migrations from
Scandinavia, those free institutions under which
freemen alone can live, namely, that of trial by
jury, and equality before the law, protection of life
and property; a race who obeyed no king nor
chief; who resisted oppression in every shape, and
to whom the most abhorred of all despotisms, a
feudal nobility with laws of primogeniture, were
unknown: amongst whom all were equal; all
noble alike. Such were the ancient Scandinavian
-. or Saxon, called Germans occasionally by some
Roman writers-and confounded in later times,
even by the immortal Niebuhr, with the middle

on SAXON RACE. 63

German or Upper Danubian race: occasionally,
even with the Slavonians.

To all this race, now crushed down by the Sar-
matian and Celtic races of Europe: broken up,
dispersed, enslaved: their lives and properties
placed at the mercy of some ﬁve or six brutal
families or dynasties: the very best blood of all the
race, the Jutlander, the Saxon, the free man of
Baden and of Wirtemberg, lorded it over by a few
paltry families, unknown to fortune or renown; to
all this race Gibbon’s remarks apply; to Celtic
republican(!) France they now know they need
not look for aid in their next struggle for liberty;
let Rome be a lesson to them ; to all this race, and
not to England alone, does this prophetic passage
in Gibbon’s works apply.

“ Should it ever happen,” says the immortal
historian, whom I quote from recollection, “ that
in Europe brutal military despots should succeed
in extinguishing the liberties of men, threatening
with the same unhappy fate the inhabitants of
this island (England), they, mindful of their
Saxon origin, would doubtless escape across the
ocean, carrying to a new world their institutions,
religion, and laws.”

64 PHYSIOLOGICAL

PHYSIOLOGICAL QUESTION.

SECTION I.——D0 races ever amalgamate? What
are the obstacles to a race changing its original

locality .9

I have heard persons assert, a few years ago,
men of education tOO, and of Observation, that the
amalgamation of races into a third or new pro-
duct, partaking Of the qualities of the two primitive
ones from which they sprung, was not only pos-
sible, but that it was the best mode of improving
the breed. The whole of this theory has turned
out to be false :——lst. As regards the lower ani-
mals; 2nd. As regards man. Of the ﬁrst I shall
say but little: man is the great object of human
research; the philosophy of Zoology is not indeed
wrapt up in him; he is not the end, neither was
he the beginning: still, as he is, a knowledge of
man is to him all-important.

The theories put forth from time to time, of the
production of a new variety, permanent and self-
supporting, independent Of any draughts or sup-
plies from the pure breeds, have been distinctly
diSproved. It holds neither in sheep nor cattle:
and an author, whose name I cannot recollect,
has refuted the whole theory as to the pheasant
and to the domestic fowl. He has shown that

 

OI

PHYSIOLOGICAL QUESTION. 6

the artiﬁcial breeds so produced are never self-
supporting. Man can create nothing: no new
species have appeared, apparently, for some thou-
sand years; but this is another question I mean
not to discuss here, although it is obvious that if
a hybrid could be produced, self-supporting, the
elaborate works of Cuvier would fall to the ground.
The theory of Aristotle, who explained the variety
and strangeness of the animal forms in Africa, on
the grounds that a scarcity of water brought to
the wells and springs animals of various kinds
from Whose intercourse sprung the singularly
varied African Zoology, has been long known to
be a mere fable.

 

[Borgemam or Yellow African Race]

Nature produces no mules; no hybrids, neither

' in man nor animals. When they accidentally

appear they soon cease to be, for they are either

non-productive, or one or other of the pure breeds
F

66 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW.

speedily predominates, and the weaker disap-
pears. This weakness may either be numerical
or innate.

That this law applies strictly to man himself, all
history proves: I once said to a gentleman born
in Mexico,—\Vh0 are the Mexicans? I put the
same question to a gentleman from Peru, as I
had done before, to persons calling themselves
Germans—neither could give a distinct reply to
the question. The fact turns out to be, that there
really are no such persons; no such race.

When the best blood of Spain migrated to Ame-
rica, they killed as many of the natives, that is, the
copper-coloured Indians, indigenous to the soil, as
they could. But this could not go on, labourers to
till the soil being required. The old Spaniard
was found unequal to this; he could not colonize
the conquered country ; he required other aid, native
or imported. Then came the admixture with the
Indian blood and the Celt-Iberian blood ; the pro-
duce being the mulatto. But now that the supplies
of Spanish blood have ceased, the mulatto must
cease, too, for as a hybrid he becomes non-pro-
ductive after a time, if he intermarries only with
the mulatto: he can no longer go back to the
Spanish blood: that stock has ceased; of neces-
sity then he is forced upon the Indian breed.
Thus, year by year, the Spanish blood disappears,
and with it the mulatto, and the population re-

PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW. 67

trograding towards the indigenous inhabitants,
returns to that Indian population, the hereditary
descendants of those whom Cortes found there;
whom nature seemingly placed there; not aliens,
nor foreigners, but aboriginal. As it is with
Mexico, so it is with Peru.

When Mr. Canning made his celebrated boast
in Parliament, that he had created the republics
of Mexico and Peru, Columbia, Bolivia, and
Argentine, I made, to some friends, the remark,
that to create races of men was beyond his power,
and that the result of his measure would merely
be to precipitate that return, sure to come at last,
the return to the aboriginal Indian population,fr0m
whom no good could come, from whom nothing
could be expected; a race whose vital energies
were wound up; expiring: hastening onwards
also to ultimate extinction.

If we look to the period of Rome’s conquests,
we shall ﬁnd that no amalgamation of races ever
happened; in Greece it was the same. It would
seem, indeed, thatmhappen what will, no race,
'howeverﬂvi‘ctorio'us they may be, has ever suc-
ceeded in utterly "destroying a native population
and occupying their place. Two laws seem to
me the cause of this. Should the conquering

party be numerous there is still the climate against

H them; and if few, the native race, antagonistic of

the conquerors, again predominates; so that after
F 2

68 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW.

most conquests the country remains in the hands
of the original race.

Let us turn now to the ancient world, to
Europe, and Asia, and Africa, and inquire into
the history of the pretended amalgamation of
races; the extinction of one race and the substi-
tution of another; for these two questions may
be considered together.

[T/Le W'elslz, Celt, or Kymraig.]

 

There has been no amalgamation of the Celtic
and Saxon races in Ireland. They abhor each
other cordially. When I publicly asserted this

PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW. 69

some years ago, I was as publicly contradicted.
I call on those persons now to say whose opinion
was the correct one; the Irish Celt is as distinct
from the Saxon as he was seven hundred years ago.
There is no mistaking the question now. Mr.
Macaulay, in his Chronicles of the English People,
will have it that the pitiable state of the Irish is
owing to their religion; but the Caledonian Celt
is an Evangelical Protestant, and so also is the
Cymbrii, or \Velsh: now I ask this plain ques-
tion: Is the Caledonian Celt better off than the
Hibernian ? is he more industrious? more orderly,
cleanly, temperate? has he accumulated wealth?
does he look forward to to-morrow? Though a
seeming Protestant, can you compare his religious
formula with the Saxon? It is the race, then, and
not the religion; that elastic robe, modern Chris—
tianity, adapts itself with wonderful facility to all
races and nations. It has little or no inﬂuence
that I can perceive over human affairs, further
than a great state engine serving political pur-
poses; a tub for the whale. The great broad
principles of the morality of man have nothing to
do with any religion; The races of men still remain
distinct—the gipsies mingle not, neither do the
Jews. In Swedish and Russian Lapland, the
Lappes remain apart; the Fins are Slavonians,
they mingle not with the adjoining Saxon race;
the Saxons remain distinct from the Slavonians

70 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW.

in the Grand Duchy of Posen, and in all eastern
Prussia. An attempt was made by the Germans
to destroy the Slavonian race in Bohemia; it was
a thirty years war, conducted by the savage and
imbecile House of Hapsburgh against the Bohe-
mians. It utterly failed, and the inhabitants are
still Slavonian. The Muscovite has grasped all
northern Asia, yet he has not succeeded in
destroying any race, neither do they amalgamate
with the Russ. The French Celt has never yet
been able to live and thrive in Corsica; Algeria,
he can, I fear, hold only as a military possession:
a colonist, in the proper sense of the term, he
never can become. On the banks of the Nile
still wander in considerable numbers the de-
scendants of the men who built the pyramids, and
carved the Memnon and the Sphynx. Yet Egypt
is in other hands, as if the destinies of the Coptic
race had been decided. No one has yet clearly
explained to the world the precise nature of the
dominant race in Egypt; I mean here, the cha-
racter of the great bulk of the population. They
do not seem to increase in numbers; if this, then,
be the case, their ultimate possession of Egypt
may be doubted: the Coptic blood still lingers
in the land, waiting the return of an Amenoph,
a Sesostris, a Leader.

Let us attend now to the greatest of all experi-
ments ever made in respect of the transfer of a

PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW. 71

population indigenous to one continent, and at—
tempting by emigration to take possession of
another; to cultivate it with their own hands; to
colonize it; to persuade the world, in time, that
they are the natives of the newly occupied land.
Northern America and Australia furnished the
ﬁelds for this, the greatest of experiments; al-
ready has the horse, the sheep, the ox, become as
it were indigenous to these lands. Nature did
not place them there at ﬁrst, yet they seem to
thrive, and ﬂourish, and multiply exceedingly.
Yet, even as regards these domestic animals, we
cannot be quite certain; will they eventually be
self-supporting? will they supplant the llama, the
kangaroo, the buffalo, the deer? or, in order to
effect this, will they require to be constantly re-
novated from Europe? If this be the contin-
gency, then the acclimatation is not perfect. How
is it with man himself? The man planted there
by nature, the Red Indian, differs from all others
on the face of the earth; he gives way before the
European races, the Saxon and the Celtic: the
Celt-Iberian and Lusitanian in the south; the Celt
and Saxon in the north. Of the tropical regions
of the new world I need not speak; every one
knows that none but those whom Nature placed
there can live there: that no Europeans can
colonize a tropical country. But may there not
be some doubts of their self-support in milder

7-2 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW.

regions? take the Northern States themselves.
There the Saxon and the Celt seem to thrive beyond
all that is recorded in history. But are we quite
sure that this success is fated to be permanent?
Annually from Europe is poured a hundred thou-
sand men and women ofthe best blood ofthe Scan-
dinavian, and twice that number of the pure Celt;
and so long as this continues he is sure to thrive.

 

[Cherokee Head—that is, Native American. Bar-
ton Smith foretold that the United States men
would ultimately come to this. But it can never
be .- extinction is the word—4w?) conversionj

PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW. 73

But check it; arrest it suddenly, as in the case of
Mexico and Peru; throw the onus of reproduction
upon the population, no longer European, but
native, or born on the spot; then will come the
struggle between the European alien and his
adopted father-land. The climate; the forests; the
remains of the aborigines not yet extinct; last, not
least, that unknown and mysterious degradation of
life and energy which in ancient times seems to
have decided the fate of all the Phoenician, Grecian,
and Coptic colonies. Cut off from their original
stock they gradually withered and faded, and
ﬁnally died away. The Phcenician never became
acclimatized in Africa, nor in Cornwall, nor in
\Vales; vestiges of his race, it is true, still remain,
but they are mere vestiges. Peru and Mexico
are fast retrograding to their primitive condition ;
may not the Northern States, under similar cir-
cumstances, do the same? Already the United
States man differs in appearance from the Euro-
pean: the ladies early lose their teeth; in both
sexes the adipose cellular cushion interposed
between the skin and the aponeuroses and
muscles disappears, or, at least, loses its adipose
portion; the muscles become stringy, and show
themselves; the tendons appear on the surface;
symptoms of premature decay manifest them-
selves. Now what do these signs, added to the
uncertainty of infant life in the Southern States,

7 4 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW.

and the smallness of their families in the Northern,
indicate P Not the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon
into the Red Indian, but warnings, that the
climate has not been made for him, nor he for
the climate. See what even a small amount
of insulation has done for the French Celt in
Lower Canada. Look at the race there! small
men; small horses; small cattle; still smaller
carts; ideas smallest of all; he is not even the
Celt of modern France! He is the French Celt
of the Regency; the thing of Louis XIII. Sta-
tionary, absolutely stationary, his numbers, I
believe, depend on the occasional admixture of
fresh blood from Europe. He has increased to
about a million since his ﬁrst settlement in
Canada; but much of this has come from Bri-
tain, and not from France. Give us the statis-
tics of the original families who keep themselves
apart from the fresh blood imported into the
province; let us have the real and solid increase
of the original habitans, as they are pleased to
call themselves, and then we may calculate on
the result. Had the colony been left to itself,
out off from Europe for a century or two, it is my
belief that the forest, the buffalo, the wilde, and
the Red Indian, would have pushed him into the
St. Lawrence, from the banks of which he never
had the courage to wander far; amalgamating
readily with the Red Indian by intermarriage, (for

PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW. 75

the Celt has not that antipathy to the dark races
which so peculiarly characterize the Saxon);—
amalgamating with the Red Indian, the popula-
tion would speedily have assumed the appearance
it has in Mexico and Peru; to follow the same
fate, perish or return to the original Indian;
and ﬁnally, to terminate in the all but utter
destruction of the original race itself.

76 PHYSIOLOGIGAL LAWS

LECTURE II.

PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS REGULATING HUMAN
LIFE.

IN the rapid sketch of the dominant races. of
men I am about to submit to you (of the Saxon I
have already spoken), I have endeavoured to
comprise an outline of their history, viewed, as I
have long been in the habit of viewing them, not
as nations, but as races. I am well aware that
when these lectures were ﬁrst delivered, about
ﬁve years ago, the opinions they contained were
opposed to all the received opinions of the day.
The world was so national, and race had been so
utterly forgotten, that for at least two years after
delivering my ﬁrst course of lectures at Newcastle
I had the whole question to myself. But now
the press, even in insular England, has been,
most reluctantly I believe, forced to take it up ; to
make admissions which I never supposed could
have been wrung from them; to confess it to be
possible that man, after all, may be subject to
some physiological laws hitherto not well under—
stood; that race, as well as “democracy,”* or

* Guizot.

OF RACE. 77

socialismﬁ‘ or bands of peripatetic demagogues,1‘
or evil spirits,I may have had something to do with
the history of nations, and more especially with
the last revolutions in Europe. It is true that
Englishmen will not admit its application to Ireland
or to our colonies. “ Persons,” say they, “ situated
as the Irish, so favoured by Divine Providence
as to be permitted to live under our glorious in-
stitutions in church and state, should dismiss from
their minds all questions of race; such questions
may and do apply to the continental people, but
we happy islanders have nothing to do with
them.” Of the various ways in which, with a view
to suit the English palate, the great question of
the day, the question of race, has been touched on
by ponderous quarterlies and sprightly weeklies,
some admitting most of my views as already proven,
others qualifying them in a variety of ways, they
are yet unanimous, I think, on this one point, that
the physmlogwal laws proposed by me are not appli-
cable to the Irish nor to the J ews—tabooed r,aces
which must not be touched. BuE the quesEfon
with me is simply, What IS truth? Man, Celtic
or Judean, is either subject to physiological laws
or he is not. By a happy conceit, th,e_lew has
been withdrawn from the inﬂuence of these laws;

* English aristocracy. f Russell.
1 Metternich.

78 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS . "

and English statesmen and English men cherish
the fond belief that the Celtic natives of Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales, may yet be converted, into
good Saxons, by means of the “ Estatesﬁncum-
bered Bill,” aided by Divine Providence. The
latter, no doubt, is an all-powerful auxiliary, could
they but calculate on it; the former is also a
powerful measure, and may do much. The extent
of soil in Celtic Ireland to be converted from
Romanism (Paganism?) is limited, measured. It
is not a continent; it is an island. Sell the
island to Saxon men. It is a powerful measure.
It has succeeded seemingly against some of the
dark races of men, whom it has brought to the
verge of destruction. Caﬂ're and Hottentot, Tas—
manian and American: why not against a fair
race—the Celtic natives of Ireland, Wales, and
Caledonia, for they must be classed together?
They are one; the same fate, whatever it be,
awaits all. Placed front to front, antagonistic in
fact with a stronger race, our reason, aided, as it
would at ﬁrst appear, by past history, might
hastily decide in foretelling their extermination
and ruin. On the other hand, the more I in-
quire into the history of race, the more I doubt
all theorists who neglect or despise this grand
element; who speak of “European civilization
and a Caucasian race ;” of all nature’s works
being unalterable, excepting man, who is ever

OF RACE. 79

changing.* But man is also a part of nature;
he must obey certain laws. The object of the
present inquiry is to discover these laws. They
have never been honestly sought for, but conjec-
ture oﬂ'ered instead; from the climatic theory of
Hippocrates to the Caucasian dream of Blumen-
bach—wild hypotheses have been assumed as
truths. Instinctive, animal man, a part and parcel
of nature’s great scheme, has been lost sight of;
because he has built ships and cities, it has been
surmised that his nature changes with circum-
stances !—that under a wise and liberal govern-
ment his mind and frame expand! Look at
France; look at Ireland; look at Canada; at
Southern Africa. Ask Pretorius and his bold
Saxon boors how they like the mild and free
government of our “best light-cavalry ofﬁcer!”
Ask the United States men, who forces them
already to introduce an oppressive and cruel tariff
into their laws .9 A few years ago they were cla-
morous against England’s restrictive laws; they
blamed the English government. “See,” said
they, “the British, the selﬁsh British, refuse to
modify their navigation laws!” Knowing well
the race, I ventured, even then, to declare the whole
to be a false pretence, a delusion, and a mockery.
They were Saxons; that was enough—they

* Quarterly, Nov. 1849.

80 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

wanted no free tariff. A commercial war against
the world is what they aim and aimed at; but it
served their purpose to declaim against England ;
hypocrisy and unscrupulous selﬁshness are ble-
mishes, no doubt, in the Saxon element of mind;
they lead to sharp practices in manufactures,
which have, somehow or other, a strange con-
nexion with dishonesty ; they give to Saxon com-
merce a peculiar character, and to Saxon war a
vulgar, low, and mercenary spirit, cold and calcu-
lating; proﬁtable wars, keenly taken up, unscru-
pulously followed out. The plains of Hindostan
have been the grand ﬁeld for Saxon plunder: the
doings there are said to be without a parallel in
history.

 

[Tile C'Izerolcee Head. Men wit]; cram'a similarly
formed were said by Hippocrates to inhabit the
slwres of the Black Sea]

Scarcely ﬁve years have elapsed since I an-
nounced the general principle, that he who would

or RACE. 81

not or could not see, in the dominant races of
Europe, distinct elements of mind, could never
read aright the history of the past, understand the
present, nor rightly guess the future. And now
the truth of this principle, so stoutly denied by
the chronicler of the Times, is already fully ad-
mitted. There is still an unwillingness to admit
some other laws announced at the same time:
the physiological laws which regulate the desti-
nies of mankind and of race. Let me here con-
sider some of these laws.

PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS.

It was Hippocrates who wrote that pleasing
ﬁction, which, embodying the scattered notions of
his day (for he was a compiler, and a most exten-
sive one, too), gave to theories, based on no proofs,
a quasi philosophic character. He assumed
that external circumstances modiﬁed human
structure and human character. His actual ob-
servations were few, and made on a narrow ﬁeld
— Greece, I presume, and a portion of Asia
Minor. Like most medical men, he was a great
theorist, and has the credit of having ﬁrst sepa-
rated medicine from philosophy. And so I think
he did, much to its disadvantage. What it was
before this unlucky event can scarcely now be
known ; since then it has almost rivalled theology

G

8-2 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

in the wildness of its conjectures, its contradictory
views, its conﬂicting theories. Let us return to
Hippocrates.

That the minds and bodies of men are in-
ﬂuenced, to a certain extent, by external circum-
stances, I see no reason to deny. But this is not
the real question: the question is, to what extent?
Let us ﬁrst consider the effects of climate. Hip-
pocrates was enough of a philosopher to see that
it was not'merely to the atmosphere that was to
be assigned the supposed inﬂuence exercised by
external circumstances over man’s form and
mind. Accordingly, he entitles his work, Hep;
uBan-wv, asgov, m; TOWOV—Whlch may be thus trans-
lated, On the Inﬂuence of the Atmosphere, the
‘Vaters and the Locality, over Man. These
heads were meant to include all possible physical
elements affecting man. Man’s mind he traces
to his bodily frame; if he believed in a heaven
and a future state, he had no faith in Olympus,
nor in a thundering, material Jove, nor Styx, nor
Pluto. He was a sort of anatomist, and had pro-
bably seen the brain—a sight of which tends no
doubt to remove many prejudices.

That the hypotheses sanctioned by his great
name existed long before his period we need not
doubt; it is sufﬁcient for our present purpose to
trace them to him. In his writings we ﬁnd hypo-
theses— lst, That climate or external circum-

0F RACE. 83

stances make men brave or cowardly, freemen or
slaves; in other words, that man’s mind was the
result of climate. Endly, That to climate and to
other external circumstances, summed up in the
expression, “Air, Water, and Place,” (Hippo-
crates!) might be traced all differences in the
form, complexion, and mental qualiﬁcations of
men; the varieties, in short, observable everywhere
in their physical structure and mental disposi-
tions; that race, in short, depends on climate.
And 3rdly, That such alterations in form and
mind, the result of external inﬂuences, thus con-
stituting a race, become in time permanent, trans-
missible by hereditary descent, and so inde-
pendent of their original producing causes;
and lastly, that the head itself, the very brain, by
means of which we lay claim to the character and
title of intellectual beings, might be so altered

 

[The Cherokee cranium. Men with crania similarly
formed were said by IIzppocmtes to inﬁaln't t/Le
s/zores qf’ tke Black Sea.]

G2

84 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

by mechanical means, by external pressure, as
scarcely to be recognisable for a human head;
and that this most extraordinary of all forms,
once produced, becomes transmissible by here-
ditary descent, requiring no longer the inﬂuence
of the mechanical cause producing it. I
To Hippocrates was ascribed the honour of
having ﬁrst separated medicine from philosophy;
these are some of the results of this disunion—
hypothesis heaped on hypothesis, unsupported
by observation, based on no truths. To him, or
at least to those from whose works he compiled,
we owe some, at least, of these conjectures. He
is supposed (for in ancient history all is suppo-
sition) to have ﬂourished some 470, say 500 years
before the present aera, that is, at the least, 2300
years ago: he has been usually calledaphysician
——to me he seems to have been a surgeon, and his
success was probably equal to any of the present
day. The opinions he has collected are much older
than the period he lived in; medical theories and
theorists had been already tested and appreciated
by the philosophers of his times—Thucydides, the
historian, knew them well. But Hippocrates, at
all events, embodied some of these theories into a
sort of system, handing them down to posterity
in classic language, bestowing on error immor-
tality. That his mind was philosophic on the
whole, cannot be questioned ; but so was that of

or RACE. 85

Descartes, of Pythagoras, of Voltaire; all philo-
sophic minds, all impatient of the calm investi-
gation of physical truths. Like many great and
good men, some modern fanatics have accused
him of atheism; those, in fact, and they belong
to all denominations, who accuse of atheism all
who refuse joining their outrageously ridiculous
anthropomorphical notions of a First Cause. He
denied the discrepancy of divine and physical
causes, merging them in one; he treated all phe-
nomena as at once divine and scientiﬁcally deter-
minable. This doctrine he applied to disease:
my object is to apply it to all living nature—to
man, the most important of all—to man, the an-
tagonistic animal of nature’s works; to that ani-
mal who wages perpetual war with nature’s fairest
productions. It is in vain that theologians endea-
vour to divert the attention of men’s minds from
this great question, How are the races of men
produced? whence come they? whither tend
they? Already a learned divine* has stretched
the link between the 2nd and 3rd verses of the
Mosaic record to a coil so extended, so elastic,
as to leave on the part of the scientiﬁc nothing
to desire; and whilst I write this passage, a friend
has pointed out to me that a learned theologian,
if not an orthodox divinefl~ who writes on a sub-

* Buckland.
T British Quarterly, for N ov.—Edit0r, Rev. Dr. Vaughan.

86 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

ject of which I fear he does not know much,—
“ the Unity of Man”——cautions his readers not to
mistake the chronology of Bishop Usher for the
true chronology of man, which he candidly admits
has never yet been discovered: he prepares his
readers for a lengthening of the period to account
for the different races ! I knew it must come to
this—another version of the Mosaic record to the
hundreds already existing. For the present, I
leave the chronological part in their hands, pro-
ceeding With the inquiry into the physiological
laws regulating human life.

 

[Bog'eman playing on ﬁle gourd/ﬂ

That by mere climate, giving to the expression
its utmost range of meaning, a new race of men
can be established in perpetuity, is an assertion

OF RACE. 87

which for the present is contradicted by every
well-ascertained physiological law, and by all
authentic history. On the limited habitable ter-
ritory of the Cape of Good Hope, shut in by
deserts and by the sea, lived, when the Saxon
Hollander ﬁrst landed there, two races of men,
as distinct from each other as can be well i1na~
gined, the Hottentot, or Bosjeman, and the
Amakoso Caﬁ're. To these was added athird,
the Saxon Hollander. \Vhat time the Bosjeman
child of the desert had hunted these desert and
arid regions, for what period the Hottentot had
listlessly tended his ﬂocks of fat-tailed sheep,
how long the bold Caﬂ‘re had herded his droves
of cattle, cannot now be ascertained: the Saxon
Hollander found them there 300 years ago, as
they are now in respect of physical structure and
mental qualiﬁcations, inferior races, whom he
drove before him, exterminating and enslaving
the coloured man; destroying mercilessly the wilde
which nature had placed there; and with the wilde,
ultimately the coloured man, in harmony with all
around him—antagonistic, it is true, but still in
harmony to a certain extent; non-progressive;
races which mysteriously had run their course,
reaching the time appointed for their destruction.

To assert that a race like the Bosjeman, marked
by so many peculiarities, is convertible, by any
process, into an Amakoso Caﬂ're or Saxon Hol- .

88 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

lander, is at once to set all physical science at
deﬁance. If by time, I ask What time? The
inﬂuence of this element I mean to refute pre-
sently: the Dutch families Who settled in Southern
Africa three hundred years ago, are now as fair, and
as pure in Saxon blood, as the native Hollander;
the slightest change in structure or colour can at
once be traced to intermarriage. By intermarriage
an individual is produced, intermediate generally,
and partaking of each parent; but this mulatto
man or woman is a monstrosity of nature—there
is no place for such a family: no such race exists
on the earth, however closely afﬁliated the parents
may be. To maintain it would require a systematic
course of intermarriage, with constant draughts
from the pure races whence the miXed race derives
its origin. Now, such an arrangement is impos-
sible. Since the earliest recorded times, such

 

[Caﬁ're Skull]

OF RACE. 89

mixtures have been attempted and always failed;
with Celt and Saxon it is the same as with Hot-
tentot and Saxon, Caﬂ're and Hottentot. The
Slavonian race or races have been deeply inter-
calated for more than twice ten centuries with the
South German, the pure Scandinavian, the Sarma-
tian, and even somewhat with the Celt, and with
the Italian as conquerors: have they intermingled?
Do you know of any mixed race the result of such
admixture? Is it in Bohemia? 0r Saxony? or
Prussia? or Finland?

 

[Caﬁ‘re Roma]

This seems to be the law. By intermarriage a
new product arises, which cannot stand its ground;
1st, By reason of the innate dislike of race to race,
preventing a renewal of such intermarriages;
2nd, Because the descendants will of necessity
fall back upon the stronger race, and all traces, or
nearly so, of the weaker race must in time be

90 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

obliterated. In what time, we shall afterwards
consider. If a pure race has appeared to undergo
a permanent change when transferred to a climate
materially differing from their own, such changes
will be found, on a closer inquiry, to be delusive.
It has been asserted of the West-Indian Creole ;
of the Mexican, Peruvian, and Chilian Creole;
and of the North-American or Saxon Creole, now
called a United States man; but the pretended
changes we shall ﬁnd are either triﬂing, or not
permanent,'or do not exist. When speaking of
the races so located, that is, dislocated from the
climate and land of their origin, and from the
pure race which sent them forth, swarms of
living beings, in search of new lands, I shall
endeavour to apply those laws practically which
are here merely announced, discussing also, in
separate sections, some of the leading doctrines
applicable to all men. Of other animals I speak
not here, for this obvious reason—the species of
animals as they now exist, have their speciﬁc
laws regulating their existence. What is true of
one may or may not be true of another. Sheep
have their speciﬁc laws; so have cattle and horses,
pigs and elephants. Some of the laws regulating
their existence are applicable to man in a general
way—others, and the greater part, are not. When
I am told that there is a short-legged race of sheep
somewhere in America, the product of accident,

OF RACE. 91

my reply is simply—I do not believe it, even
although, to make the story look better, it has
been also added, that from among the few short-
legged sheep accidentally produced in the ﬂock,
the owner was careful to extrude the long-legged
ones, and so at last his whole ﬂock became short-
legged, and he had no more trouble with it. It is the
old fable of Hippocrates and the Macrocephali
reduced to something like a scientiﬁc formula;
transferred from sheep, it has been made the basis
of a theory of race, of mankind—reducing all to
accident. By accident, a child darker than the rest
of the family is born ; when this happens in the
present day, it is also, by courtesy, called an
accident, but its nature is well understood; not

 

[T/ic savage Boqjemen ;——Trogloolytes ; who build no
house or [mt ; cliilolren oft/1e desert]

92 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

so in former times. This dark child, a little
darker than the others, separates, with a few more,
from the rest of the family, and sojourns in a land
where a hot sun enbrowns them with a still deeper
hue. In time they become blacker and blacker,
or browner and browner. Should they travel
north instead of south, it is all the same, for ex-
treme cold produces the same effect as extreme
heat! This is ancient and modern physiology!
it is the old fable of Hippocrates revived. Men’s
minds seem to move in circles, ever reverting to
ancient errors; it is as the struggle of a small body
of men against the gloomy forest, the bog, the
spreading desert; lovers of truth vainly endea-
vouring to clear away the accumulated ignorance
of ﬁfty centuries.

For my own part, I do not think such theories
worthy a serious refutation. Man is not a rumi-
nant; he has his own physiological laws, which
ought long since to have been traced. But the
statement in question is not even true of sheep,
for by no effort, saving that of a constant never-
ceasing intermixture, or draught on the pure
breeds, can a mixed breed be maintained. Leave
it to itself, and it ceases to be. It is the same
with man ; with fowls; with cattle; with horses.
Distinct breeds, when not interfered with, mark
them all. Man can create nothing permanent;

0F RACE. 93

modify, he may for a time, but he can create no
new living element. It is said that the cattle fed
on the pampas of South America. have assumed
three distinct forms; be it so—the fact proves
nothing, for they are constantly interfered with
by man. I have been assured that our domestic
cattle, imported into New Zealand and New H01-
land, return after a generation or two to the
primitive breeds—nothing more likely, this, in
fact, being the physiological law. In Britain we
have a white breed of cattle, conﬁned within the
domains of two wealthy families; they remain
white, merely because all calves which show other
colours are destroyed. See how difﬁcult the
simplest physiological question becomes. We
talk freely of men’s destiny and races, and their
laws, as if we knew them, whilst as yet no one
has solved so simple a question as the origin of
the white cattle of Britain and of Wales. But to
return to man.

Add to the hypothesis of accidental origin of
a variety in family, its separation from its tribe,
yet even this explanation will fail; for the family
so separated, by the very law which produced
the variety, will be fertile in other varieties; they
therefore must also appear in numbers at least
equal to the others. In the history of the Jewish
and Gipsy races I shall consider this question at

94 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

greater length, and endeavour to show that the
application of the doctrines of transcendental
anatomy made in this direction is also false.
“Time and development change all things ;”
this is my own belief: but what is the time re-
quired? when was man diﬂ'erent from what we
ﬁnd him now? Development is positive: time
has no existence. The existing order of things
we see, though imperfectly; of the past, but little
has been preserved in human records—that little
is not understood. One thing, however, is cer-
tain—the Pyramids exist, and the ancient tombs
of Egypt; the ruins of Karnac; the paintings on
the walls of these tombs; some Etruscan remains;
the Egyptian mummies; the Cyclopean walls—

 

[Egyptian Pyramid]

or RACE. 95

these are nearly all the sure data which man has
to depend on whilst tracing back his history, and
the history of the existing order of life, towards
that unknown past from which he sprung. Now
what do these amount to? \Vhat do they prove?
They are but as yesterday, compared with the
period through which the globe has rolled in
space; through which life has undergone its ever
succeeding developments; yet they announce one
fact at least, that man, up to the earliest recorded
time, did not differ materially from what he is
now; that there were races then as now; that
they seemed to be identical (but of this we are
not quite certain) with those now existing, and
that neither over them, nor over the living world
around, has climate or external circumstances
effected any serious changes, produced any new
species, any new groups of animal or vegetable
life, any new varieties of mankind. To the im-
portant fact, if it really be one, thus made out,
the illustrious and cautious Cuvier ﬁrst drew
men’s attention; but his reserve, his position, his
habitual caution, induced him to omit all mention
of man. So long as he excluded him from his
line of observation, the Sorbonne, he was aware,
cared not what he did with the rest. It was his
practice to leave untouched whatever he thought
speculative, unsafe, transcendental—~Whatever he
fancied shocked too much the present feelings.

96 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

Satisﬁed with the refutation of St. Fond and the
geologists of his day, he desired to proceed no
further, “ He had formed an aera—he constituted
an aera:” to his positive opinions and well-ascer—

 

«.1.

[Bust of ﬁle young Memnon .- Britt's/z Museum.]

 

0F RACE. 97

tained facts were tacked theories by the theolo-
gico—geological school of England, which he never
acknowledged, which he never admitted, which
he never sanctioned by word or writing. \Ve
shall consider these matters in a future section;
in the meantime one thing remains certain, which
he either did not notice or avoided mentioning—
man has changed no more than other animals:
as they were in Egypt when the pyramids were
built, so are they now, men and animals: man
seems different, it is true: at ﬁrst it would appear
as if a race had become extinct; we shall ﬁnd it is
not so. The Coptic race is no more extinct than
is the ancient Mexican, and even now it is ques-
tionable whether the mixed barbarian and savage
race of slaves, now called Egyptians, will ulti-
mately stand their ground, fed though they be by
imports from Nubia and the White Nile—from
Greece and Asia Minor. They are not Arabs : a
motley crew, as I understand, destined to cease
when the imports are withdrawn, and to assume
a form traceable to the dominant blood now
circulating, be it Copt or Arab, Nubian or Negro.

But in claiming for the races of men an anti-
quity coeval with the historic period, and with
man’s earliest appearance on the earth, I venture
to caution you from accepting of this deduction
or that of M. Cuvier in respect of animals, as
being rigorously accurate. Neither men nor

H

98 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

animals seem to have changed; as regards the
latter, Cuvier asserted that they had not in the
slightest degree. Admitting the expression to be
sufﬁciently accurate for his and our purpose, yet
I think it strong, perhaps too strong. Data sufﬁ-
ciently accurate and extensive are wanting to
enable us to institute a very rigorous comparison.
I do not mean to cavil at the expression: the
changes undergone in ﬁve or six thousand years
are so small as to escape notice; but it does not
absolutely follow that no changes Whatever have
taken place. On the tombs of Egypt, the most
valuable of all existing records, there stands the

 

[A Persian Lady; from an original drawing,
presented to me by Dr. Charles Bell.]

0F RACE. 99

Negro, the Jew and Copt, the Persian, the Sar-
matian, nearly as we ﬁnd them now; this is
enough for our purpose: Herodotus says that
the Egyptians of his days were black men: very
possibly; but neither before nor since his period
has this remark been found to be true. The
paintings on the tombs and the mummies en-
tombed alike refute his assertion, if extended
beyond his period. He gossiped, I am afraid,
like some other travellers, and talked a good deal
about what he did not understand. Was he ever
in Egypt? I feel disposed to doubt it. His
story about the Persian skull reminds me of
the next assertion of ancient and modern phy-
siologists, of the supposed inﬂuence of external,
even mechanical, means over the human form.

It is to Hippocrates we owe the story of the
Macrocephali, inhabiting at that time the shores
of the Euxine. They were a race with narrow,
elongated, elevated heads and depressed fore-
heads, like the American Indians, or copper-
coloured race, and more especially like the Carib
and the Chenook. This variety in form the illus-
trious Greek explains in this way—for of the unity
of mankind he never doubted any more than any
other strictly scientiﬁc man: he fancied, for it
was mere fancy, that this extraordinary form of
head was at ﬁrst produced by pressure, but that
in time this pressure became unnecessary, the

H 2

100 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

malformation becoming permanent by hereditary
descent. Two hypotheses in a breath, both op-
posed to well-ascertained physiological laws.
That the Carib and Chenook, and the ancient
Macrocephali, fancied that by pressure they could
give to the human head what form they chose, is
certain enough; but does it follow that they could
do so? The form of the head I speak of is
peculiar to the race; it may be exaggerated some-
what by such means, but cannot be so produced:
neither will such deformation become hereditary.
For four thousand years have the Chinese been en-
deavouring to disﬁgure the feet of their women:
have they succeeded in making the deformation
permanent? Corsets have been worn time out of
mind: Galen complains of them; he ascribes to
them all sorts of bad results, deformities of spine
and chest. Have such become hereditary? All

 

[The Cherokee Skull]

0F RACE. 101

matrons still produce virgin daughters. For
how long have the Jews, with most African and
Eastern nations, practised circumcision? Has
the deformation become hereditary? Is there
any instance of such accidental or mechanical
deformities becoming transmissible by hereditary
descent?

 

[Foot qf or Chinese Woman ; from the Collection
in King’s College, London]

The varieties of form classed under the law of
deformation, and dependent on the operation of
the great law of unity of organization, belong to
a different category, as Will be explained in a
distinct chapter on that head; but even they are
kept in constant check by the laws of specializa-
tion, restoring man and animals to their speciﬁc

102 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

shapes, else what would life terminate in?
Varieties in form proceed only to a certain
length— they are constantly checked by two
laws, the laws maintaining species as they exist——
1, the tendency to reproduce the speciﬁc form
instead of the variety; 2, non-viability or non-
reproduction, that is, extinction. This it is
which checks deformations of all kinds, and I
even think I have observed varieties in form to
be more common in those who die young than
in those reaching adult years, as if the very
circumstance of these internal deformations or
varieties, however unimportant they may seem,
coincided at least, if they were not the eﬂ‘icient
cause of early decay of the vital powers and of
premature death. Had the heads of the Macro-
cephali of ancient times, and of the Carib and
Chenook and Peruvian of modern, owed their
forms to mechanical means, that form would and
must have ceased with their immediate descend-
ants, or the race would have perished. How
much more singular is the fact, that there should
exist naturally men with heads and brains so
singularly shaped; that it should be in their
nature; that the form should still persist—un-
alterable, dependent on no climate, Asiatic—
American; ancient and modern. This curious
question we shall discuss when speaking of the
American race; let us in the meantime bring

0F RACE. 103

this lecture to a close: the great laws announced
in it will fall to be examined again in their
application to race and to human history.

It was Herodotus who said, that on a ﬁeld of
battle it was easy to distinguish the Egyptian
from the Persian skull, the former being hard,
the latter soft. Herodotus must, I think, have
studied medicine; he gives a reason in such a
pleasant, off-hand way for all natural phenomena.
The reason he assigns for this difference is, that
the Persians covered the head—the Egyptians
used no headodress. Admitting both facts to be
true, and I doubt them both, the reason given
explains nothing; if there was a difference, it
depended on race. The Copt was African; the
Persian, Asiatic: they were different races of
men—that is all. The black Egyptians of Hero-
dotus have not been seen since his time.

The theories and the errors of Hippocrates
and Herodotus linger in the physiological schools
to this day. M. Foville, for example, ascribes to
mechanical pressure on the head of the infant,
the wide hollow groove occasionally traversing
it over the region of the vertex, and so frequently
persisting to the adult state—a deformation
wholly independent of such a cause, and oc-
curring in all countries. The late Mr. Key per-
sisted in blaming tight and short shoes for the
most common deformity of the feet; and Dr.

104 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

Combefk' still lingering on the gossip of Hero-
dotus, ﬁnds a Boeotia in Holland, with all its
presumed results—a marshy, foggy, wet, and
heavy land, giving rise to phlegm and dulness—
the grave and witless, plodding Dutchman. I
put these three observations, but not the writers,
under the same category; the last is refuted by
every observation, and is below notice. But to
return.

To Hippocrates, then, as representing the
entire class of physiologists, we owe most of the
medical, philosophical, and theo-philosophical
notions of the present day; the theories which
teach that cities looking to the west differ very
materially from cities looking to the east, as
also their inhabitants; the reason why Asiatics
differ from Europeans—not one word of which
is true; how in a country where the seasons and
climates differ much, the inhabitants also must
differ much, the reverse of which is nearer the
truth: to him we owe the theory, that people
living under a monarchy are servile and cowardly,
whilst republicans are bold and brave—a doctrine
which certainly has some little show of truth, and
which we may afterwards discuss. His theories
he transmitted to the scholars of Greece; they
affected even Aristotle, a master mind, who ought

* Combe on Digestion.

0F RACE. _ 105

to have known better; but it is difﬁcult to shake
off the prejudices of centuries and of education-
Aristotle assigns as a cause for the variety of
strange and fantastic forms of animal life with

Fg’: ::,_ 7-7“ —j\

',

w”

,. w/x/
at“; it

 

[The young Memnon ; representing the Coptic Rama]

106 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

which Africa abounds, and abounded also in his
time, the scarcity of water, which, bringing to the
same wells and springs all sorts of animals, gave
rise to an endless variety of offspring! And this
reminds me of a mysterious law in nature, not
yet fully investigated, to which I next beg to call
your attention. I know that I have little or no
occasion now to tell you, that climate in no way
inﬂuences man’s form or colour permanently;
some of the exceptions to this statement, which
will no doubt occur to you, fall to be explained
in the next section.

SECTION II. Can a race of men permanently change
their locality—say Continental, or rather T er-
restrial Zone? Can a Saxon become an Ameri-
can? or an African .9 Can an Asiatic become a
European ? Can any race live and thrive in all

climates ?

The earth was made for man, and man was
made for the earth. The one proposition is quite
as intelligible as the other. That it was not
always so we now know, thanks to anatomical
research and true science. The necessary con-
ditions of his existence were not always present;
his tenancy of the globe, according to the most
orthodox and best received doctrines, has been
but of short duration. This is not my opinion;

OF RACE. 107

but I promised to consider ﬁrst, in as far as I
could, man as he is now, tracing him back into
the unknown past as far as truth and science
enable us to go.

Can any race of men live and thrive in any
climate? Need I discuss this question seriously?
Will any one venture to aﬂirm it of man? Travel
to the Antilles, and see the European struggling
with existence, a prey to fever and dysentery,
unequal to all labour, wasted and wan, ﬁnally
perishing, and becoming rapidly extinct as a race,
but for the constant inﬂux of fresh European
blood. European inhabitants of Jamaica, of
Cuba, of Hispaniola, and of theWindward and Lee~
ward Isles, what progress have you made since
your ﬁrst establishment there ? Can you say you
are established? ' Cease importing fresh European
blood, and watch the results. Labour you can-
not, hence the necessity for a black population;
your pale, wan, arid sickly offspring would in half
a century he non-productive; face to face with
the energetic negro race, your colour must alter—
ﬁrst brown, then black; look at Hayti: with a
deepening colour vanishes civilization, the arts of
peace, science, literature, abstract justice; Chris«
tianity becomes a mere name, or puts on a feti-
chian robe—why not? The Roman robe was,
and is, Pagan; the Byzantine, misnamed Greek,
has an outrageous oriental look; the Protestant

108 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

is a calculating, sober, drab-coloured cloak; why
may not the fetiche be attached to the cloak as well
as the mitre and the incense-box? Is the one
superior to the other ? The European, then, cannot
colonize a tropical country; he cannot identify
himself with it; hold it he may, with the sword,
as we hold India, and as Spain once held Central
America, but inhabitants of it, in the strict sense
of the term, they cannot become. It never can
absolutelybecome theirs ; nature gave it not to
them as an inheritance; they seized it by fraud
and violence, holding it by deeds of blood and
infamy, as we hold India; still it may be for a
short tenure, nay, it may even be at any time
measured. Withdraw from a tropical country
the annual fresh inﬂux of European blood, and
in a century its European inhabitants cease to
exist.

Mr. Canning made his celebrated boast in
the English Parliament, that if he had lost the
inﬂuence and support of Old Spain, he had
created the South American Republics—free
states, whose trafﬁc (it is always trafﬁc with an
English statesman)—whose trafﬁc with England
would amply supply the loss of that inﬂuence!
But where are these free states now? Mr. Canning
was too high a statesman to take into calculation
the element of race. When the boast was made,
I put this plain question to myself and others-—

OF RACE. 109

Who are the Mexicans? the Peruvians? the
Chilians? the Argentines? the Brazilians?
Whence do they spring, and what are the vital
forces supplying their population? Applying the
physiological laws, which seemed to me sufﬁ-
ciently well ascertained, I had little difﬁculty in
arriving at the following results. Man has found
it difﬁcult to destroy a race of man, nor do I
think that he has yet succeeded even in this;
still it is a possible event apparently, but he
has not yet succeeded in effecting it. To create
a race of men or animals is entirely beyond his
power. A Mexican nation may be formed by a
protocol, a treaty, a victory; an illustrious robber
may found a nation; an iron despot may chain
together the free Saxon and the slavish Pruss;
another may yoke in common chains the Slavo-
nian and the German, the Italian and the Hun;
but will such things have a permanence? Con-
sult history, and you will ﬁnd that itcannot be.
Still less can any power create a Mexican or
Peruvian people, or race. Look at the elements
of Mr. Canning’s free states; analyse them; try
them by any of the physiological laws I have
spoken of, and observe the result. A Celt-Iberian
and Lusitanian population make a descent on
America; Old Spain and Portugal send forth
their emigrants—~men of a race already decaying,
men of a province of Rome, an off-set of Car-

110 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

thage—a combination of races themselves in
decay, and tottering to their fall. These, under
some bold leaders, seize on Southern and Central
America, consolidate their power as masters, and
enter on absolute possession of the soil; one-half
a vast continent becomes thus a mere province of
two paltry European states. During this period of
300 years, all things were favourable for an abso-
lute consolidation with Spain and Portugal—-
undisturbed possession, peace, continual emigra-
tion, wealth. Where are they now? When the
act of separation from the so-called mother
country took place, the population of Mexico and
Peru consisted of— 1, pure Spaniards, whether
European or Creole it matters not; ‘2, pure
Indians, that is, the original and only true Ame-
rican—the native; 3, a motley crew, composed
of a mixture of these, more or less tinged; 4, a
sprinkling of Negro blood, pure, or mixed with the
Indian and the European. By the act of dis-
union, the inﬂux of European blood, by which
alone the pure race could be maintained against
climate, and against the continual aggression of
the other more numerous races, was suddenly
withdrawn ; even now it rapidly disappears, and
in a century it will have become extinct, for in
these climates a European race cannot labour,
cannot appropriate the soil to themselves, cannot
multiply their offspring. But, secondly, with the

or RACE. 111

cessation of the supply of European blood, the
mulatto of all shades must also cease; he cannot
extend his race, for he is of no race ; there is no
placefor himin nature. So soon as he has no longer
the pure blood of some other race to intermingle
with, he ceases to be, receding towards the black,
or advancing to the white, as the case may be;
thus the population I speak of lost by Mr. Can-
ning’s act, or will lose in time, the main-spring
of their population, falling back on the native,
that is, the American Indian—the race implanted
there by nature—the race in unison with the
forest and the climate, the soil, the air, the place
——the race of whose origin man knows nothing,
any more than he does of the lama and the tapir,
the cavia and the condor—the vegetable and
animal world of that continent on which Co-
lumbus gazed with such delight. All these he
found distinct from the rest of the world; and so
was the American man from his fellow man, as
different as is the nandu from the ostrich, the
lama from the camel.

But this last element of population, on which
the Mexican and Peruvian and Chilian no doubt
were thus thrown back, had already mysteriously
run its course; they were on the decline when
Cortes landed; they had passed through their
determined eras and civilization; on the curved
line indicating their course they seemed to have

l 12 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

passed the zenith 5 their population then, as it is
now, was on the wane—was gradually becoming
extinct. This the motley group called Mexi-
cans and Peruvians now feel—they are instinc-
tively conscious that the period approaches when
all again must become desert or Indian—a moral
or a physical desert; absence of life or absence
of mind. But for the Saxon invasion from the
north, it might have happened in Mexico and
Peru, and in Chili, that the desolation of these

 

[ C/Lerolceej

0F RACE. 113

countries—say a hundred years hence—would
have burst on Europe as an astounding and inex-
plicable fact. The man of the United States, who
as yet delights in no name, might have walked
into the land Without any interruption or hindrance
from any race. Penetrating to the centre of the
so called Empire, he might have once more seen
the sacriﬁcial ﬁres kindled on the pyramids of
Cholula. A native population of nearly pure
Indian would once more have regained its as-
cendancy, to perish ultimately—to return to that
nothing out of which they came.

But now the Saxon, grasping at more wealth,
more land, comes in as a new element upon the
already eﬁ'ete creations of Canning. Will he fare
better? Will he be able to extinguish a race—
the Indian of South America—and put himself in
its place? I believe not, in that climate at least.
Will he succeed even in North America? Is the
boasted Union to be permanent? The pettifogging
politicians of the day say, seriously and gravely,
that in their opinions it must come to a monarchy
at last! Profound politicians! A half—dozen
monarchies at last—a king of New York, a Leo-
pold installed in Kentucky, an Otho in Michigan,
a liberal despotism under a prince of the noble
house of Brunswick or Brandenburg. But you
forget that these people are Saxons—democrats
by their nature. Look at the Dutch Saxon at

I

114 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

the Cape, a handful of Boors—yes, a mere hand-
ful of Boors—bearding your best cavalry ofﬁcer
at the head of six regiments. You have yet to dis-
cover the true nature of the Saxon; you will not
yet understand it, and yet you received a sharp
lesson at Boston and at New Orleans, losing
the mightiest colony ever founded by any race
or nation. Australia comes next; then South
Africa; your Norman government cannot proﬁt
by experience. But to return.

As the Southern States of America become
depopulated by the operation of the physiolo-
gical laws laid down, that vast land will fall an
easy prey to the Saxon and Celtic races now
occupying the northern States. That they will
ultimately seize on them there cannot be a
doubt, driving before them the expiring remains
of native and Lusitanian, Celt-Iberian and Mulatto
——a worthless race—eﬂ'ete, exhausted, before even
Hannibal and a handful of Carthaginians held
the country from which they sprung as a mere
appendage of Carthage. A single Roman legion
was enough for Old Spain; it could hold it yet.
The United States men, the descendants of Anglo-
Saxon, the Fleming and Celt, with a sprinkling of
South and Middle German, are now in possession
of Northern America—it seems to be absolutely
theirs: they form a union—they begin to talk of
natives and foreigners—they have forgotten who

0F RACE. 1 I 5

they are, and fancy themselves Americans because
they choose to call themselves so; just as our
\Vest India planters might have assumed the
name and title of native true-born Caribs. The
“ United States man” believes himself to be inde-
pendent of Europe, by which, if he means any-
thing, he must mean independent of the race or
races from which he sprung.

Now, before I apply this great question to the
present United States men, trace back with me the
narrative, the chronicle of events called history.
If history be philosophy (which I doubt) teaching
by examples, it should enlighten us somewhat on
such questions as these—the extinction of one race
by another, and the substitution of one race for
another. The world, with man on it, is said to be
not old; and yet the end of the world we are told
approaches; the millennium is at hand, the Jews
are becoming Christians; the Celtic Irish aban-
doning pagan Rome, and adopting the Saxon
ritual, as by law established! Do not believe
those who tell you so. Nature alters, no doubt;
but physical changes must precede the moral,
and I see no symptoms of such.

The chronicles called histories tell us that the
Roman empire extended from the Clyde and
Forth to the Tigris and Euphrates. Northern,
extra-tropical Africa was said to be thoroughly
Roman; Italy, of course, was Roman to the core.

I 2

116 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

Where are the Romans now ? What races have
they destroyed? What races have they sup-
planted? For fourteen centuries they lorded it
over the semi-civilized world; and now they are
of no more note than the ancient Scythians or
Mongols, Copts or Tartars. They established
themselves nowhere as Romans. Perhaps they
never were a race at all. But be this as it may,
they destroyed no other race, supplanted no other
race : andnow look over the map of their empire,
and tell me where you ﬁnd a physical vestige of
the race; on the Thames or Danube, Rhine or
Guadalquivir, Rhone or Nile. Italy itself seems
all but clear of them. Southern Italy was Graecia
Magna before they invaded it; and Sicily is even
now more Greek than Italian. Byzantium was a
Roman city, and so was York. And so it is with
other conquering races. Northern Africa never
was Phoenician, properly speaking, any more
than Algiers is Celtic now, or India English.
Even in Corsica the Celtic race of France have
failed to establish themselves, though, from its
proximity to France and presumed analogy of
climate, and, as has been erroneously asserted, of
races, there seems no reason why Corsica should
not become Celtic or French. But it is not'so.
The Corsicans are not Celts, they are not
Frenchmen; nor are the Sardinians Italians,
pr0perly speaking. It is not merely the empires

or RACE. 117

of Rome and Carthage which have become extinct
in Northern Africa; it is the races which founded
these empires that are no longer to be found
there. It may perhaps be urged, that Northern
Africa never really was either Carthaginian or
Roman; but this does not affect the question,
which is, Can one race supplant another on a soil
foreign to their nature; foreign to their origin P

The Greeks, who, under Alexander, marched
victorious to the Indus, supplanted no other race.
Rome and Carthage failed. Attila and his Huns
also failed; and so did the Mongol. The rem-
nant of Huns in Hungary now struggle for exist-
ence ; they are interlopers seemingly amongst the
Slavonian race, and will probably perish. But
neither have the Slavonians succeeded in sup-
planting the Italian, though masters, under the
name of Austrian and German, of Italy for nearly
ten centuries. For at least two thousand years
have the Scandinavian and South Germans made
war on the Celtic race in the west, and made
head against the Sarmatian and Slavonian races
in the east, without advancing a single step, in so
far as I can discover. These races hold the same
position to each other which they did in the re-
motest period of authentic history.

The whole force of the so-called German Empire,
headed by Austria,'could not dislodge the Slavo-
nian from Bohemia; the Norman, though he met

1 18 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

in South England a kindred race, could not de-
stroy the Saxon race of North England. To this
day the country seems to be divided between
them, notwithstanding the centralizing inﬂuence
of Flemish London. The Celts still hold the
western limits of Britain and Ireland, just as they
did before the period of authentic history.

 

[The Mongolian, travelling to this day on the
Steppes of Asia, with his tent on a cart; pre-
cisely as in the clays of Herodotus : the race has
never altered in any wag/J

But it may be said, England is a colony from

Scandinavia, from Holstein, and Jutland; Ireland
seemingly of Spain; the Celtic colony has not
been prosperous; nevertheless, numerically it has
thriven; the Saxon colony has succeeded to ad—
miration. The parent country of the Anglo-
Saxon, ancient Scandinavia, has withered in pre-
sence of the blighting inﬂuence of the abhorred
Sarmatian (Russ and Pruss) and Slavonian (Haps-

OF RACE. 119

burg—Gotho-Austrian) governments. Why may
not, then, the Celt prosper in Africa—the Saxon
in Australia, in Southern Africa, in Northern Ame-
rica? Do we not see how the Saxon thrives in
these countries? Look at the population of the
States I Mark its progress; and then admit the fact
that man was made to thrive everywhere.” Should
this argumentfail, the Utopian falls back on a
ﬁnal cause : “ Vast regions are deserted; why not
occupy them P Is it not clear that they were in-
tended to be occupied by man P” Lastly, they go
back on the humanities, and claim for a suffering,
over-stocked population, the sad privilege de-
signed them by a wise Providence, to quit the
land of their birth, and seize on the soil of any
other race who promise the richest spoils with
the least resistance. This is the UtOpian, the
man of ﬁnal causes, of necessities, humanities, and
expediencies. What has science to do with such
notions?

The question of the destruction of one race by
another—that is, by violence—is distinct from
that of natural causes, leading to the supplanting
one race by another; and, of consequence, the
successful transplanting of a race of men from one
continent to another, from one zone of the earth
to its opposite, or even to one seemingly analo-
gous, is one merely of fact, and has nothing what-
ever to do with moral, metaphysical, or theological

120 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

theories; it is an inquiry into the physical or phy-
siological laws regulating man’s existence on the
globe.

“ All nature is ﬁxed but man, who is for ever
changing.”* In this effective passage there are
more errors than words. For if by nature the writer
meant the living world, then we have the evidence
of Cuvier and all anatomists that it has not
changed since that period to which the writer
assigns “ the creation of all things ;” and 2ndly,
man never changes any more than other living
beings, belonging, as he evidently does, to the
same category with them. The existing order of
things did not always exist; this is now a fact
which the “ effective writers” just quoted resisted
to the very last. Nature changes, no doubt: the
aera of the Saurians is gone and past; and the
semi-barbarous modern Celt and money-loving
Saxon deems the descendants of ancient Rome
unworthy the treatment of men! Still I hold that
neither Celt nor Roman is essentially changed
from what he was, as time will show.

The isothermal lines of the northern and
southern hemispheres may be analogous, but they
are not identical. When ﬁrst discovered, each
continent and large island was found to have its
own zoology and botany—its fauna and its ﬂora.
What Britain was prior to the historic period we

' Quarterly for Nov. 1849.

0]“ RACE. 1‘21

know not; but there is no reason for viewing
it otherwise than a portion of continental
Europe, perhaps united to it, or separated by
shallow water‘basins, of muddy water, of brackish
pools, not affecting greatly the climate of the
country ; not more at least than Northern Holland
and large portions of Denmark are to be viewed
as distinct from the present continental atmo-
spheric constitution. Of Ireland and Wales it
may be said that their relation with Spain must
have been most direct; Cornwall also. But
the relations of South England must have been
with Flanders and Northern and Western France.
That colonies from the opposite shores, crossing
merely an inland sea, should succeed in esta-
blishing themselves on “its margins or coasts,
need not excite any surprise. But when the
same or other races attempt the colonization
of another and a different region—a zone of the
earth distinct from theirs, a group of land and

 

[Arm and Izand oft/wﬁssil Saum'an, w/clc/z Sir C.
Bell and the “ﬁnal cause” pkilosoplzers ima-
gine to be formed on a plan or scbeme distinct
from all existingfbrms of ll 6. But this opinion
is erroneous in the kigkest degree.]

122 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW'S

water on which originated a distinct group of life,
animal and vegetable—the case is widely different,
as all history proves. I have already alluded to
Corsica and to Sardinia. These countries seem
not to have belonged originally to the European
or African continents,butto aMediterranean group
distinct from all others. Hence the failure of the
Celt and Italian in Sardinia. The Maltese are
not Italians; and the races of the Spanish Isles
have yet tobe examined.

But be this as it may, the invasion of Africa by
the Celtic race, and their attempt on Algiers,
although a momentous question, is not a new one,
as modern journalists would have you to suppose:
it is a question older than Rome. Its solution
was tried by the Phoenician and the Roman; next
poured in the barbarous tribes of Gaul and Ger-
many ; they wrought with their Christianity,
St. Cyril and the “ humanities ;” yet all would
not do. Then followed other invasions of Africa,
European and Asiatic. Still the Levantine re-
mains; the man of the Mediterranean group,
who is neither Arab nor Turk, Roman nor Celt,
Goth nor Visigoth. So soon, indeed, as the emi-
grant supplies were withdrawn which fed the ori-
ginal colony, the race expired, orbecame so feeble
as scarcely to claim an existence. It must be the
same with Algiers: a Celtic population may be
supported there by a constant inﬂux of fresh

OF RACE. ]23

emigrants from old France; fresh Celtic blood
will supply the waste of life, maintain a Celtic
ascendancy in a seeming French civilization; or
prudence may suggest the transfer of negro
labourers to the soil, and France may then for
a few centuries govern Northern Africa, as we do
India and Ceylon. But in the absence of this
alternative, not likely to occur, the Celt, forced to
depend on histown resources, must fail in time;
the period may be long or short, but come it will.
A war on the Rhine might hasten it by a century;
for the continental Celt could not, single-handed,
maintain a war against a European race and an
African at the same time ; more especially as, in
the latter case, the war must of necessity be car-
ried on against climate and race.

Turn for a moment to the position of the
Turcoman in Europe; his decreasing inﬂuence
and population gradually expiring or going back
to the original races. Turn to Spain and Portu-
gal: their population does not exceed nor equal
what it did in the time of the Romans. Is it
luxury which destroys the population of Old
Spain? the luxury to live on chestnuts and
mouldy cheese? When was the Spaniard an in-
temperate and luxurious man? A week’s supplies
of our beef-loving army would have fed Madrid
for a month! Yet the population does not in-
crease. Of the Slavonian race I have already

1‘24 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

spoken; they occupy their original ground, nor
has any other race been able to supplant them.
Trodden down by the Sarmatian, the German,
the Roman, the Turcoman, the Hun, they occupy
still the same ground they did before all history.
Their eastern origin is a fable. Twice I think
did the Hun and the Turcoman penetrate to
Vienna, across and through the great mass of the
Slavonian race, and twice has the Crescent re-
turned from the Slavonian native land, leaving
no traces of their passage.

Now this great race, the most intellectual of
all, occupy, as 1 have said, as nearly as may be,
at the present day, the same countries as in the
remotest periods; at times advancing, at times
receding; assailed by Roman power; overrun by
the terrible Attila and his Cossaques; crushed
down by the Mongol; oppressed by the Turco-
man; cruelly butchered in Bohemia, and Posen,
and Prussia, by the Sarmatian and German races;
decimated by the Russ in Poland,——there they
still remain, aboriginal occupiers of the soil; no
change in features or form, but always recognis-
able by the surrounding races : Gothic, no doubt;
high-minded, original, inventive, mystical, tran-
scendental. The Turcoman left in Hungary a
portion of his race, the Magyars, but they can-
not hold their ground, noble though they be; nor
can there be a doubt that their existence depends

or RACE. 125

on the admixture by marriage with Slavonian
families.

Napoleon, at the head of his Celtic army, swept
over their land: what impressions remain? Could
a Celt thrive on the banks of the Theiss, even
had he retained their country? I do not believe
it; but even if he could, a Celtic colony on the
banks of the Danube or Theiss must in time be-
come extinct; its success would be merely indi-
vidual, or conﬁned to a few generations ; gradually
the race would lose its energies, “ the form ” its
distinctive element of youth; in the face of a
more numerous race, the less numerous must give
way, until nearly all traces would disappear.
Thus, happen what may, it would seem that a
race cannot be changed, cannot be extinguished;
or at least certain races; neither by metamor-
phosis, nor by conquest and the sword, nor by
intermarriage, so long as they occupy the soil on
which nature ﬁrst placed them.

That the southern hemisphere of this globe
should differ in many respects from the northern
in its fauna and its ﬂora, will cause no surprise to
men in quest of truth ; but that it differs so Widely
as it really does, is not generally known, and
still less believed. When I describe the Bosjeman
and Hottentot, the Australian and Tasmanian,
then will be the proper time to unfold this great
fact: that the races of everything living, from man

126 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

to the whale; from the Whale, to the zoophyte, to
the entomostraca, which serve as food to the so-
called herring of the Bay of Islands, differ from the
northern. And yet not always, if we trust fossil
geology. But it is sufﬁcient for us that it differs
now, and has differed for thousands of years : that
is enough for man. Of the exceptions, real or only
seeming, I shall speak hereafter; the most remark-
able being the asserted identity of the Red Indian

 

[T/ze aboriginal native QfAustralz'a .- from Per0n.]

OF RACE. 127

throughout the entire range of continental Ame-
rica: this I doubt, but avoid discussing the doubt
here. Sufﬁcient for our purpose is the fact, that
nature placed in the southern hemisphere another
form of life, not perhaps altogether dependent on
its being a southern hemisphere, but with other
geographical arrangements, of which we know but

 

[Australian Cranium ; from t/ze Collection in
King’s College, Londo7z.]

128 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAW’S

little. Now, it is into this southern hemisphere
that the European has penetrated at last; he
tried Northern Africa, but it would not do; next
he tried Central or Tropical Africa—the failure
here was disastrous and decided. Of India we
need say nothing; nobody, not even Lord Russell,
proposes colonizing India. In the Antilles the
Celtic race failed: Napoleon himself never ven-
tured to renew the hopeless struggle with climate
and the Negro race. Spanish America is at an
end; and the Canning’s Republics foresee their
fate. Our West Indian colonies are no colonies
—every one knows this now ; and if there be any
who believe that the European races now occupy-
ing Florida and the countries bordering on the
Gulf of Mexico can colonize and supplant the
coloured races, they will, I think, ﬁnd themselves
in error.

Hitherto I have spoken, for the most part, of
the transplanting of the European races to coun-
tries which, if not tropical, are at least unhealthy
or inimical to European life. It is something to
get this fact admitted. Let me now discuss with
you events of more recent occurrence—migrations
of modern times—testing the present delusions by
the history of the past.

Lower Canada was colonized by France; a.
Celtic race, a highly civilized people; the most
highly civilized people on the earth, transferred

OF RACE. 129

to a vast country, a boundless land, a portion of
their people. This was no helter-skelter, pell-
mell, go-ahead, Saxon rush ; no Californian rout;
it was an emigration of a portion of a Celtic race,
with all their household gods, their monkeries
and mummeries, their nunneries and seigniories,
feudality and primogeniture ; with every other law
and inﬂuence which feudalism and religion could
devise to enslave the souls and bodies of men. It
was to be old France on a small scale; and so it
became very speedily, with this difference, that,

 

[T/ze Cymrais, 07- %lsk Celt]
K

130 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

being withdrawn from the vast body of their race,
and being composed of men whose nature is of
the slowest progressive character, they remained
nearly agricultural, as France was when they
migrated, so that a traveller on landing might
fancy himself suddenly translated back in time to
the period of Louis Quatorze or even of the
Regency itself: little men with sky-blue coats,
like dreamy half—crazed ﬁddlers; little women;
little horses and cattle; little carts; still smaller
ideas. To clear them out of “New France,” le
bas Canada, all that was wanted was to repeal the
laws of primogeniture and entail; break up the
seigniories; and let in the large-armed, large-
handed Saxon race upon them.

There is a result of the most curious kind
ﬂowing from this great experiment; the transfer
of a portion of civilized France to America—
temperate America—and its total failure as a
colony. It would appear that, but for fresh sup-
plies of emigrants from the parent stock living on
the parent soil of France, the Canadian French-
man must gradually have become extinct. Had
they been placed face to face with a more ener-
getic race than the Red Indian, then rapid extinc-
tion was most certain. That several physiological
laws contribute to such a result is no doubt true,
but the word race embraces all. The race dege-
nerated; the habitans submitted to a mere handful

or RACE. 131

of English troops; they could not strike one blow
for their country. They had sunk so low that
when the glorious name of Liberty inscribed on
her colours enabled Old France, in a period so
brief as to appear incredible, to strike down, for a
time at least, the monstrous dynasties of Europe,
the Canadian Celt remained quiescent, with the
noblest republic for his next neighbour the world
ever saw. Race is everything. Seigniories and
monkeries, nunneries and feudality, do not form,
neither do they modify, the character of any
people ; they are an qﬂct, not a cause, let c/n'om'.
clers* say What they will. They indicate the
character of a race—they do not make that
character.

Thus it would seem that in 4000 years the
Celt, under no climate, has been able to substitute
himself for any other race : Syria, Egypt, Greece,
Corsica, Algiers, Canada, St. Domingo—all have
been tried and failed.

Let me conclude this section by an examination
of the pretensions of another race, of all others
the most outrageously boasting, arrogant, self-
suﬂicient beyond endurance, holding in utter
contempt all other races and all other men—the
Saxon.

In remote times the Scandinavian or Saxon

* Macaulay, and the “ effective” journalists of the day.
K ‘2

132 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

attempted Gaul, Sarmatia, and Slavonia. They
have been constantly defeated. The Austrian
empire is not Saxon—it is not even German.
They next attempted Italy and Greece, with no
better success. Malta is not English, any more
than Cephalonia. In western tropical Africa, the
“ season” generally reduces England’s efforts at
colonization to a dozen or two white men,
the result of a century’s exertions on the part
of England. Mighty England, with her fast-
growing race, cannot colonize a single acre of
a tropical African country; her ﬂag, however,
still waves over it, no African seemingly thinking
it worth while to pull it down. The experiments
on this head are not altogether before the public;
the springs and causes of action seldom reach
the surface so as to be visible. Two bold
attempts at least were made in my own time to
convert Central Africa into another India; to
discover in Central Africa a “ mine of patronage,”
but it would not do. The ﬁrst attempt, in my
own recollection, was to ﬁll the country with
troops; commerce would have answered better,
but our Norman government always prefers
the bayonet to any other form of progress.
They ﬁrst tried the bayonet; troops were sent in
large numbers, composed of men who, having
deserted, had commuted their sentence of punish- V, ,
ment into enlisting into what was called a con-

or RACE. 1:33

demned regiment——that is, a regiment serving
on the west coast of Africa. Condemned they
were, no doubt, for few escaped the effects of the
deadly climate. Nearly all perished, and the ex-
periment was a failure.

The second attempt was made by that profound
statesman, Lord Russell. The open bayonet
having failed, it was covered with bales of goods,
and sent up the Niger; the bayonet was still
there, but concealed. A central fort, high up the
Niger or Quorra, was wanted in the centre of
tropical Africa —— a Fort Vittoria— to enslave
countless nations, hitherto free. But the second
experiment failed, like the ﬁrst, to be repeated
again, no doubt, at some future period. This is
not the ﬁrst time the Saxon has attempted to
extend his race to Africa; he tried it during the
dark ages, but the natives beat him. With gun-
powder and wealth, the sinews of war, he made
his last attempt : climate defeated it. So at least
it seemed; but I partly doubt this. The affair
might have gone off better under able leaders.

Let us next examine the question from a point
of view, new, I believe, and it may be startling, to
most of my readers. Taught to believe that man,
and especially Saxon man, may live anywhere, he
has been taught that vast regions of the earth have
been depeopled by “the mysterious arrangements of
Providence, to facilitate the extension of the Saxon

134 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

race ;” that the coloured races die out before him
for the same reason—~wither at his mere approach,
and perish; that, peculiarly favoured by Providence
and its divine dispensations, aided by gunpowder
and the art of printing, the globe itself must ulti-
mately be his. He cannot imagine the bare pos-
sibility of the race being found unequal to the
colonizing a country enjoying a temperate climate.
He is the man of to-day; yesterday is nothing to
him ; he forgets, he despises, he denies its exist-
ence. He is the man of this day. Onward! is
the cry. The adage of Horace was written for
him. Here is a picture of the man.

Requested by a friend to revisit Paris, on mat-
ters important to him, I proceeded to F olkestone,
an ancient sea-side, ﬁshing, and smuggling town
on the southern coast of England, the nearest
point, I believe, to Boulogne-sur-Mer. We were
to embark for “ beautiful France” next morning.
A night perfectly calm, mild, clear, a moonlight
night, though cold, tempted me from the great
hotel complete with English comforts, to the
closely-adjoining beach, where wandering alone,
by the margin of the rippling tide, listening to its
hollow murmur, and gazing on the placid waters
trembling under the ineffectual beams of the
silvery orb, my mind reverted to times and events
long past. At no great distance from the shore
Where I stood, I had myself embarked for France,

or RACE. 135

when hopes and years were fresh and young:
along these shores had I brought to England the
ﬁrst of the wounded of Mont St. Jean. But the
scene shifted to the past. Memory, ever active,
ever restless, unfolded visions of historic recol-
lections. At a short distance, nay, perhaps on
this very spot, Harold surveyed his troops; at no
great distance, I knew, lay Hastings; that bloody
ﬁeld, surpassing far in its terrible results the un-
happy day of Waterloo. From this the Celt has
recovered, but not so the Saxon. To this day he
feels, and feels deeply, the most disastrous day
that ever befel his race; here he was trodden down
by the Norman—Whose iron-heel is on him yet.
Here William found a congenial race, driving
with them into northern England the Saxon
race; and here was all but annihilated the liber-
ties of mankind: the question which transcends
all others—whether man is to be a free man or a
slave—was nearly settled at Hastings. To this
day the Saxon race in England have never reco-
vered a tithe of their rights: and, probably, never
will.

As I thought over these great events, (great, not
from the handful of men, who boldly out each other’s
throats at Hastings, like stout yeomen and good
Christians; but great, beyond all expression, when
viewed as a contest of principle, of race; freedom
against slavery; the reign of the law against the

136 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

reign of the sword; whose most terrible evils still
subsist in England, untouched and unassailed,)
I bethought me of visiting the bee-hive looking
village, not altered, I believe, since Harold’s time,
clustered on the slope of those white cliffs so
celebrated in English song. A vulgar, ﬁlthy
mechanical wall and rail crossed the village, but
clearing its low, ill-shaped arch, the sea-beach
was once more before me, with ships high and dry
on the strand in no ways larger than what accom-
panied William on that grand voyage when, true
to his race, he singled out England as his anta-
gonist—Saxon England, freed at the time from
continental despotism; continental slavery; con-
tinental dynasties. Here, on this strand, I heard

 

OF RACE. 137

the sound of revelry, proceeding from a small inn
or ale-house, frequented, no doubt, by tradesmen
and ﬁshermen. Music it was not; it would be a
profanation of the term to call it so: a body of
jolly companions were roaring the ditty called
“ Rule Britannia5” and how Britons would never
be slaves—on that very spot where these Britons
were beaten to a stand-still by the single force of
an adventurer, and their country subjected to the
most abject slavery: an enduring slavery, never
to be overcome.

Now revert we to the primitive colony of the
Anglo-Saxon; the J utlander, the Dane, the H01-
steiner, the Swede, the Norwegian, the Saxon in
fact, who founded an Anglo-Saxon colony in
Britain, and tell me, have you yet succeeded in
substituting yourselves for another race? In south
England you overthrew the Fleming and the
Norman at ﬁrst; but William drove you back
again into northern and central England: your
government is strictly Norman; your dynasty
continental; your peasantry slaves. Had a bridge
connected Normandy with south England, your
race would then have been driven still further to
the north by an antagonistic race, numerically as
strong as you are. In Wales you have made no
progress; your very language being rejected by
the Cymri; in Ireland your existence seems to
me to depend on the Orange lodges, composed,

138 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

no doubt, mostly of Saxon men. Eastern and
Southern Scotland is no doubt yours, but the
Caledonian Celt still holds his country.

Thus it would appear that, after all, Britain is
not so thoroughly a Saxon colony as was thought;
a repetition of Hastings under Napoleon would
have closed its career as a Saxon country, and
free men of true Saxon blood must have sped
their way in ships and boats across the Atlantic,
there to make their last stand for civil and reli-
gious liberty. These you have not in Britain nor
in Ireland, but in their stead, a mighty sham
which suits the age and times.

Let us follow the Saxon across the Atlantic;
trace him to northern America, to the Cape, to
Australia; ﬁrst to northern America, where Celt
and Saxon, for both assisted, have, no doubt,
founded a colony to which the annals of man-
kind aﬂ'ord no parallel.

A mighty forest, extending from sea to sea, to
man seemingly boundless; a new vegetable and
animal world; another climate, another conti-
nent; another soil. These sufﬁce for the ex-
istence of the native red Indian, the man of the
woods ; the American, in fact; he perishes from
famine and wars, but seemingly not from disease;
yet, when the Saxon and Celt ﬁrst located them-
selves there, even then this race seemed to be on the
wane, following in the sad round of fate others who

OF RACE. 139

had preceded them. Beyond them all is mystery,
yet they seem tohave succeeded others,now mould-
ering into dust or long since become a portion of
that soil from which they drew their support—to
which they have returned—perishin g, and for ever
extinct, without a name, without a history. In this
land, the Celt and Saxon, with different fortunes
and different views, located themselves; the Celtic
colony (Canada) remained as it was; the Saxon-
Celtic, impelled by Saxon energy, rapidly pro-
gressed to an astounding magnitude, threatening
to overtop the world. Already the Saxon demo-
crat raises the cry—America is ours, from the
land of ﬁre to the icy shores, where Englishmen
have sought awestern passage; from the Arctic to
the Antarctic Circle. We are the natives, shout
the Saxon! Such was the language, no doubt,
of the Roman, when, calmly reposing on the banks
of the gently ﬂowing Ouse, he transmitted, by
post, letters to his friends at Rome or Antioch,
Rhodes or Carthage, Syracuse or Byzantium,
surer to reach him then than now; and such, no
doubt, was the language of Cortes when he un-
furled the Spanish ﬂag in Mexico; so thought
Attila, when, penetrating into Europe, he scarcely
saw an enemy worthy his arms. Sesostris (if there
was ever such a person) had dreams like these; and
Tamerlane, Zengis Khan, and Napoleon, at Mos-
cow. But all these reckoned without their host;

140 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

that is, Nature! whose laws are not human laws,
who consults no man: who bids you look on and
chronicle events, but predict not. The scheme of
nature was never revealed to them nor to you.

It was Barton Smith, I think, who foretold
that in time the European races located in
Northern America would gradually degenerate(?)
into the red Indian! This incredible nonsense
passed in my younger days for sound physiology
—sound orthodox philosophy. In deﬁance of

 

 

[The Esquimaux: representing the dream-polar races
of ﬁle American Continent]

or RACE. 141

all history, this nonsense was listened to. But
why did Barton Smith stop there? Why not
extend it to all animals and plants? Why should
man alone be the subject of such a metamor-
phosis? But we have already discussed this
point; let us keep to man himself.

The Saxon and Celt migrate to America; they
multiply, or seem to multiply, exceedingly, in
many parts of the territory; they are equal to
labour in the ﬁeld—that ﬁeld has, in consequence,
become theirs. In the Southern States, the
labourer is the negro—that ﬁeld therefore is not
theirs, and that they must lose in time. Hindoos
and Chinese will work as slaves for ten centuries
or more, but not negroes. In the Northern States,
the Saxon is a labourer; his health and strength
seem unimpaired; the statistics of population
seem to be in his favour as to the extension of
his race; but this is still doubtful: no sweeping
epidemic, such as formerly destroyed his set-
tlements, seem now to affect him—at least
not seriously; to avoid them, he migrates or
oscillates northward and southward, as the case
may be; ﬁnally, and that to any race is the
most important of all, he confronts no other
energetic or numerically stronger race in which
his race might and would merge, becoming anni—
hilated and lost even to the recollections of men.
And yet, with all this, I doubt the fact of his

142 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

ultimately making good his boast, of his ulti-
mately becoming a race of native true born
Americans. For, 1st, Spain thought so, and
where is she now? Where is the boasted Empire
of the Indies? 2. The native races are not yet
extinct; in the Southern States there is a negro
population, who may one day be masters—re-
member St. Domingo. 3. Year after year, day
almost by day, the best blood of England and
Ireland is poured into the great American colony,
from Nouvelle Orleans to Montreal; infused into
the mass to leaven and uphold it, not in a
niggard stream, as from Spain and Portugal, but
in a vast tide, equal annually to the founding a
mighty empire. Whilst this goes on, no statistics
of population in America are worthy a moment’s
consideration. But when this stream shall stop,
as stop it must, when the colony comes to be
thrown on its own resources, when fresh blood is
no longer infused into it, and that, too, from the
very sources whence they originally sprung;
when the separation of Celt, Saxon, and South
German shall have taken place in America itself
——-an event sure to happen—then will come the
time to calculate the probable result of this
great experiment on man. All previous ones of
this nature have failed; why should this succeed?
Already I imagine I can perceive in the early loss
of the subcutaneous adipose cushion which marks

0F RACE. 143

the Saxon and Celtic American—proofs of a
climate telling against the very principle of life—
against the very emblem of youth, and marking
with a premature appearance of age the race whose
sojourn in any land can never be eternal under
circumstances striking at the essence of life itself.
Symptoms of a premature decay, as the early
loss of teeth, have a similar signiﬁcation; the
notion that the races become taller in America I
have shown to be false ; statistics, sound statistics,
have yet to be found; we want the history of a
thousand families, and of their descendants, who
have been located in America 200 years ago, and
who have not intermingled with blood fresh from
Europe. The population returns offered us now
are worthless, on a question of this kind. The
colonization, then, of Northern America by Celt
and Saxon, and South or Middle German, is a
problem, whose success cannot be foretold, can-
not reasonably be believed. All such experi-
ments have hitherto failed.

The physiological laws just laid down, apply,
mutatis mutandis, to the Saxon colony of southern
Africa. The Dutch boer never laboured there.
He lived a wandering nomad life, the cruel op-
pressor of the native dark races, whom he nearly
extinguished. The Anglo—Saxon assisted him
bravely in the extermination of the Caffre: when
the Dutch boer could no longer lord it over the

144 PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS

dark races, he quitted the colony. Of all countries
known, the Cape of Good Hope and Australia,
that is, extra-tropical Africa and Australia, are
esteemed the healthiest, and if anywhere, it is
here that an European race might hope to live
and thrive; let us hope for the best. In Australia
it can scarcely be said that an antagonistic race
faces them, so miserably sunk is the native popu-
lation. A ready way too of extinguishing them
has been discovered; the Anglo-Saxon has al-

 

[T/ee Red Indian, or Native American.]

or RACE. 145

ready cleared out Tasmania. It was a cruel, cold-
blooded, heartless deed. Australia is too large
to attempt the same plan there; but by shooting
the natives as freely as we do crows in other
countries, the population must become thin and
scarce in time. But I touch the history of the dark
races of men which must not be entered on here.
The so-called ancient races ﬁrst merit our atten-
tion; some of these called white or fair, Caucasian
by courtesy, the Jew, the Gipsy, the Copt, the
Hindoo. These ﬁrst require our attention: in
brieﬂy describing these races we shall touch on
the physiological laws embraced in this question:
Have any races of men become extinct? Or any
races of animals? Have the doctrines ascribed to
Cuvier any foundation in truth? “ The elucida-
tion of the direct and indirect antagonism of man

to nature’s works” belongs to the chapter on the
Dark Races.

146 HISTORY OF THE

LECTURE III.

HISTORY OF THE GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW.

SECTION I.—In drawing up the following lectures,
embracing most of my views respecting the phy-
sical and psychological history of man, I have
never had in view the composing a systematic,
laboured treatise on man’s natural history. Those
who attempt this seem to me to have mistaken

 

[lee Egyptian Spkgnxj

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 147

man’s true nature, and to have further committed
this great error—namely, the attempting that for
which no correct data exist. The labours of man’s
mind are too vast to be embraced, compared, and
described in generalities; the “ average man,”* of
the illustrious Quetelet has led to no important
results. “ European civilization” seems a philo-
sophic enough term, but to me at least it conveys
no clear ideas; and when I am told that of two
nations closely adjoining each other, equally
civilized, equally favoured by climate and ex-
ternal circumstances, living under regular govern-
ments for many hundred years, the one uniformly
respects and advocates the law, the other as
uniformly despises and violates it; that the one
loves war, the other peace; that the one fences
in and fortiﬁes its towns, converting its metro-
polis into a vast fortress, bristling with cannon
and bayonets; the other runs the streets of its
wealthiest town quite into the open country,
ﬁlls up the fosse of its remaining bastile (the
Tower of London), converting the horrid excava-
tion into a pleasant garden; that the one nation
is Protestant and tolerant, the other Catholic,
fanatical, and persecuting; then I must not be
told that distinctions so wide as these, differences
seemingly insurmountable, are the mere effects

* “ Quetelet sur l’Homme,” French and English editions.
L 2

148 HISTORY or THE

of accidental circumstances; that these races may
be spoken of in the abstract'as the branches of
one great family; of some ideal Indo-Germanic
stock; of some fabulous Caucasian family, who
would never have differed had no seas divided
them. Views like these have no practical bear-
ing; and, moreover, they are substantially untrue;
they misdirect and mislead men’s minds. Many
years ago, when I ﬁrst asked who are the Ger-
mans? and where is Germany, their fatherland?
I was advised to look into history and at Vienna
It was to no purpose that I called attention to
the fact that the Slavonian races had not united
with the true German race, and that Austria was
essentially a Slavonian empire located in Europe;
that its paternal government was a frightful des-
potism, almost unequalled in history; it was even
urged repeatedly, as a proof against my views and
those of my esteemed friend, Dr. Edwards, who
held similar ones, that the Celtic and Saxon races
were so united in Great Britain and Ireland that
they now form but one united race!

Let the journalists and historians of the day, who
thus argued three years ago, come forth now; and
let us hear what they think of the amalgamation
of races, of which they boasted so much; let them
condescend to ﬁx the lapse of years required for
the amalgamation of two or more races. For more
than seven hundred years have the Slavonians

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 149

held imperial dominion over South Germany and
Northern Italy; have they fraternized with the
other races? If so, what means this Slavonian
confederation now sitting at Prague? Whence
the alarm of the Germans that they be driven from
Vienna and South Germany? Have we not been
told* that they are all the sons of Teutonia? of
the South-Germanic race? Nonsensical gene-
ralities and abstractions like these have contri-
buted largely to mystify the plainest truths.
SECTION II.—Systematic writers on the natural
history of man have composed treatises respect—
ing numerous races of men of whom little or
nothing is known; hence the meagreness and
dryness of their details—the poverty of their con-
clusions. Of man’s origin we know nothing, yet
the subject is unquestionably of the highest in—
terest; of the comparative antiquity of races we
can merely offer a conjecture; the extinction of a
race or races is a problem still unsolved; man’s
relation with the existing animal world and to
those Faunas which once lived, but which are
now no more, may be considered as well in speak-
ing of any one race as another; why should his
transcendental anatomy then precede all other
’1“ Letters of “ T. '1‘.” (a Jew), in the Manchester Examiner,
in reply to my observations on the Jews. This respectable
Hebrew person describes himself in these letters as an English-

man of the Jewish belief; and a son of Teutonia, having been
born in Hamburg? This deﬁes all reasoning.

150 HISTORY OF THE

topics ; or why should the history of man’s intel-
lectual capabilities, his amount of progress, his
position in art, science, and literature, which
merely means his civilization, be discussed as a
general question, instead of forming a part of the
history of that race—With whom seemingly origi-
nated all true civilization—the Greek? Why
invent terms such as Teutonic, South Germanic,
Caucasian, calculated only to mislead, to con-
found things diametrically opposed? Long reﬂec-
tion has taught me that misdirection is sure to
follow the adoption of such terms; and such
ideas have strengthened me in adhering to the
present form, in which I beg leave to present
these lectures to the scientiﬁc and general public.

History offers us no guide, no data, for the com-
position of a systematic work on man; chrono-
logies are mere fables. Let us examine man and
his races as they are now distributed over the
globe; inquire into the present and the past, and
so conjecture the future.

THE GIPSY RACE.

On the southern border of Scotland, not far
from the sources of the Beaumont Water, and in
a secluded valley communicating with that vast
range of mountain country, of which the Great
Cheviot may be considered the centre, there stands
a village inhabited by at least two distinct races

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 151

of men:—1. The common Saxon race of the
south of Scotland; 2. The race of gipsies. These,
the gipsy people, reside during the winter months
in this village, decamping, like the Arabs, I pre-
sume, as the summer advances, late in April or
early in May, like migratory birds or quadrupeds
seeking other lands, to return again with the ﬁrst
snows to their winter dormitory. They neither
toil nor think; theirs is the life of the wild animal,
unaltered and nnalterable; conﬁne them, limit
their range, and they perish. Their ancient his-
tory is utterly unknown: in the meantime, the cli—
mate of Britain has had much less effect on them
than on surrounding Cheviot; swarthy in com-
plexion, with dark long eyes, black hair, a some-
what oval face, an Eastern physiognomy, neither
Jewish, nor Coptic, nor Arab ; mouth larger than
in the European; nostrils somewhat expanded;
stature moderate. Their history is unknown;
they prefer the tent to the hut, and, but for our
climate, would probably never settle down any-
where; in England, I understand, they never do
so, even during winter. Their modern position
in Spain has been sketched by a vigorous but
somewhat romantic pen. Let me state to you
calmly the facts I have myself witnessed, the few
observations I have made on this race, which we
in ignorance call singular, merely because their
animal nature, their instincts, their whole views

152 HISTORY OF THE

of life and its objects, differ essentially and eter-
nally from ours. That they remain as they are in
physical form, is simply because climate and the
other external agencies to which Hippocrates
assigned such importance really have no perma-
nent effects on man nor on any other animal, so
long as the existing media and order of things
prevail. They do not intermarry with other races;
this is the grand secret. To Saxon and white
races they have the same horror that the Saxon
has for the Negro; the singularity, then, applies
as well to one as the other; in fact, there is
nothing singular in it, seeing that it merely
amounts to the dislike which one race bears to
another.

But if the gipsy woman will not intermarry
with the Saxon, the gipsy male has no such dis-
like to the Saxon fair, as is proved, I think, by
the following anecdote. Early in May, or late in
April, our academic seminary closes, and I pro-
mised a friend that we should, for the sake of
fresh air and relaxation, visit the gipsy country.
Town Yetholm is the name of a village occupied
in part as a winter habitation of the race, and to
this we repaired. Crossing the Tweed at Kelso,
and entering the valleys leading southwards to-
wards the border and to the Great Cheviot, we
were in h0pes that we should still be in time to
see the great gipsy family in their winter encamp-

GIPSY, COPT,AND JEW. 153

ment, and these hopes were increased by my
seeing on the roadside, about a mile from the
village, a young girl, some ten or twelve years of
age, tending cattle. I pointed her out to my
friend as a gipsy girl, but not a good specimen of
the race: there was a something in her colour
which made me doubtful; I offered nor attempted
any explanation of this, but assured -him we
should ﬁnd much better specimens of the race,
which, you perceive, I do not call singular any
longer, seeing that they are not more so than the
Saxon, Celt, or any other race of mankind. On
reaching the inn of Kirk Yetholm, our ﬁrst care
was to inquire for the gipsies, but the landlord
assured us that some three days ago, like a ﬂight
of cranes or storks, they had collected together,
and, taking their departure from the village, scat-
tered themselves over the country. He further
told us that, on such occasions, they never leave a
single individual of their race in the village. I now
informed him, that about a mile from the village
I met a young girl tending cattle, whose race on
oath, if required, I should have maintained to be
gipsy. He then related to me the following
curious history.

The girl we had seen was an illegitimate child,
and had given rise to an action against the reputed
father. The mother of the girl was a Saxon
woman, the presumed father‘was of the gipsy

154 HISTORY OF THE

race. He refused to acknowledge it as his; but
of this there could not be a shadow of doubt.
Saxon women do not carry gipsy children, nor
Jewish-looking sons and daughters, to Saxon
fathers; persons who believe in such things must
have a strength of belief in the doctrine of chances
which passes all comprehension.

Foiled in this endeavour to see the gipsies col-
lected, I returned, on a subsequent occasion, with
my brother. We were now more fortunate; the
gipsies were at home, if home it could be called;
but on walking through their street, scarcely any
showed themselves at the doors of their hovels.
Timid and sensitive, like wild animals, they shun
the contact of the Saxon. The expedient I fell
on, to see at least one of them, was this:——_Knock-
ing at the door of one of the gipsy hovels, a young
and extremely beautiful woman came out; she
might be about sixteen or seventeen; her features
admirably regular, eyes and hair dark, and her
whole form seemingly corresponding. She was,
I think, the ﬁnest of the race I ever saw; for
even in the best specimens the mouth is too
large, and the upper jaw, as in the J ewess, quite
disproportioned to the lower jaw, and to the rest
of the features. The lips also of the gipsy are
large, partaking, in fact, of the African character.
But in this young person age had not driven
away the beauty of youth, nor decomposed the

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 155

features and disturbed their proportions; nor had
the features as yet sympathized with the respi-
ratory, digestive, and reproductive systems.

To detain her at the door, I inquired our way
to the sources of the College Water; she raised
her ﬁne arm to point out the mountain path
which led to it, exposing the part above the
elbow. On the inner side of the arm there stood
a circular leprous spot, not to be mistaken. Quick
as thought she observed, by a look I gave my
friend, that the spot had been noticed by me, and
as suddenly withdrew her arm, retiring within the
hovel immediately.

To what extent the dreadful lepra aﬂlicts the
race I know not; the Jew is, I think, also subject
to it; races, no doubt, have their peculiar dis-
eases, which, although they may not afﬂict them
exclusively, are yet of more frequent occurrence
than in other races.

Strange to say, the leader of the gipsy tribe
here seemed to me not pure—I fancied him an
impostor as a gipsy. Their own feelings connect
them with the dark races, as is evident from the
following brief narrative :—

On the banks of the Yarrow, a mountain
stream much celebrated in Scottish song, at the
base of that bleak and desolate range of moun-
tain country called Minch Moor, there is a small
colony of mulattoes. This swarthy colony origi-

156 HISTORY or THE

nated in this way. A gentleman to Whom a por-
tion of this valley belonged, returning from India,
as I was informed, brought with him two servant-
men of a dark race; not Negroes, but of a meek
African look, and bronze colour. These men
settled in this valley, and they married two Saxon
women. Of these two, one only had a family,
who, marrying other Scotch Saxons, gave rise to
several families of mulattoes, more or less deeply
coloured. In one instance, two mulattoes had
married, and they also had a family; but I do
not believe that any mulatto race can be main-
tained beyond the third or fourth generation by
mulattoes merely; they must intermarry with the
pure races, or perish. Nature creates no mules,
nor will she tolerate them. This point we shall
illustrate when speaking of the Peruvians and
Mexicans.

Now, these persons informed me that when
gipsies came into the valley, they uniformly en-
camped near the dark colony, and spoke of them
as “ our people.”

But to return to the gipsies. They are found
all over Europe, or at least in France, in the
Peninsula, in Germany, and Russia. Their his-
tory and origin could, I think, he discovered,
were a few practical scholars and scientiﬁc men
to proceed eastward, tracing them from one
country to another. My own opinion is, that

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 157

they are of vast antiquity, and are dying out. I
never heard of their being considered any of the
ten lost tribes, who, no doubt, must have gone
into the interior of the globe by the opening which
Captain Symmes discovered near the Southern
Pole. There let them remain, whether gipsy or
Jew. Of races which cultivate not the earth,
which manufacture nothing, which progress not
in art nor in science, we have already enough
upon the surface: their absence or their presence
must in the history of man go for little. The in-
habitants, for example, of Central Africa, have no
history any more than if they had been so many
bales of cotton, or spinning-jennies, or spindles,
or spindle-drivers. “ Nati consumere fruges” was
the expressive phrase of Horace: it were vain to
attempt one more apt. Regret them not. Athens,
and Corinth, and Syracuse, and Rome, live within
our remembrance; their fame must endure whilst
men having pure reason inhabit the earth; but
were Central Africa, from the edge of the Sahara to
the Cape of Storms, sunk under the ocean wave,
and with it the gipsy race, what should we lose 3‘
—nothing which can or ever will adorn humanity;
no inventions nor discoveries, no ﬁne arts, n0
sublime thoughts, nothing to distinguish man
from the brute.

In the autumn of 1846, I resided for a consider-
able time in Derbyshire, which I found to be a

1-58 HISTORY or THE

county, I was about to say, occasionally, or rather
pretty frequently, infested with the gipsy gangs,
and with them other lawless gangs, composed of
persons evidently of Saxon and of Celtic origins.
'r-These gangs, or families, remain distinct in so
far as I could discover; and it was curious to
observe, independent of a difference in physical
structure, the different characters of the races;
the gipsy has made up his mind, like the Jews, to
do no work, but to live by the industry of others.
The tramping, vagabondizing Saxon makes a show
of work. The gipsies as a race, and seemingly from
instinctive feelings, have sworn as a race that
they never will do any work whatever; and that,
in so far as they are concerned, the great curse
on mankind is to be wholly inoperative. I do
most solemnly believe that, rather than labour,
they would willingly starve—a character not un-
common amongst the Celtic race; the money
they get by begging and telling fortunes they
seemingly conceal; back from their hands again
it never seems to return into society;———at least, I
never heard of an instance of their purchasing
anything. They have discovered the grand secret,
that they can live by the labour of others. ‘1
suppose they look on the Saxon as some Celts
do—the Saxon, to whom the soul-consuming,
body-wasting labour is a natural instinct; him
they look on as a mean-spirited, low-minded

GIPSY, copr, AND JEW. 159

scoundrel, who would work the soul out of him-
self for a few shillings, instead of acting as they
do—I mean the gipsy and the Celt—never doing
any labour which they can get another to do for
them; thus living a ﬁne, dashing, do-nothing life,
like a true-born gentleman. This is the gipsy—
a race without a redeeming quality. Their men
are well enough made, small and active; the
women look well for a short time, but they
have not the elements of beauty, or at least
very few of them; they will not bear a close in-
spection. Dirty and coarse in language beyond
belief, they are yet seemingly chaste; never well
dressed—they and their children are in rags; the
middle-aged men, on the contrary, are generally
well dressed, well shod, comfortably arranged in
all their apparel. During the day they (the men)
seemingly rest at full length in their tents, ever
ready for a start at a moment’s notice. They
steal, no doubt, at night, and at a great distance
from their then locality: the fox, it is said, has
this sagacity in common with the gipsy. One
thing is certain, they commit no depredations in
their immediate vicinity; but, as they must live,
they beg and steal. With unshaken faith in a
kind and over-ruling Providence, superior to
savings-banks, and stronger than the constable’s
baton, they trust to be fed and clothed like the
beasts and birds of the ﬁeld, taking no heed of

160 HISTORY or THE

to-morrow. In their language may be traced the
roots of many Hindostanee words, and they are
obviously an Eastern race; but this is all which
is known of them.

When the gipsies ﬁrst appeared in England is
not perhaps well ascertained; but one thing is
certain, they early attracted the attention of a
Legislature, half Saxon, half Norman: a race
with whom property had its rights; a race per-
petually called to perform duties and services to
the state; hence, no doubt, originated some of
the severe laws which have appeared from time
to time for the suppression of the gipsy race; but
all to no purpose, seeing that they are still in
Britain in considerable numbers.

A most respectable and kind-hearted English
clergyman told me that, during a whole winter,
he had much intercourse with a gipsy family who
had located themselves in his parish; he had
formed a favourable opinion of them, and, having
baptized a number of their children, had taken
up the strange notion that by doing so they had
become Christians: now, as circumcision does
not make a Jew, neither will baptism make a
Christian: an idea of this kind seems to me
merely a vestige of Romanism. He told me,
moreover, that they went occasionally to church,
and were a very quiet kind of persons. I have
no doubt that they are; the strength of the law

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 161

is well known to them now. The gang was called
Boswell, which must have been an assumed name;
St. Boswell’s Green, in Scotland, is a favourite
haunt of the border gipsies. But to these notions
of this well-meaning gentleman, I reply—will the
leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian change
his dye? When that happens, I shall then believe
that the gipsy may become a labouring, indus-
trious Christian man; supporting his family de-
cently and quietly; taking his share of trouble as
a parish constable, churchwarden, and vestryman;
paying his rates, general and local; duly attend-
ing divine worship, and clamorous in support of
high church or low church, free church or church
and state ! What mighty changes must have
passed over the globe before all this happens! I
will not pretend even to guess at it; but conclude
my remarks on the gipsy race by the brief discus-
sion of a philosophic question.

SECTION II.—Intermarrz'age oft/1e Gz'psg/ Woman
with the Saxon—The chastity of the gipsy woman
is well known, and her dislike to every other race
is, I believe, fully admitted. Nevertheless, as I
have already said, gipsy blood appears occa-
sionally amongst Saxon families, which may be
explained in this way. I attended a family com-
posed‘of the father, mother, one son, and two
daughters. The mother was an exceedingly
beautiful woman, not fair absolutely, but yet of

M

162 HISTORY OF THE

the Saxon race: her husband had all the features
of the gipsy race—dark eyes and hair, large
mouth and lips, oval face, nose prominent, eyes
full and long, root of the nose extremely narrow,
nostrils enlarged and full, colour of the skin
darker than in the European. Of the two
daughters of this most worthy family, the eldest
had all the gipsy features, but the skin was fair;
the youngest had also gipsy features, but less
marked—the skin was also fair; the son had well-
marked gipsy features, with a dark skin, much
darker than in the European.

The only facts I could ascertain were that the
husband’s mother was of the gipsy race; she was
remarkably dark-coloured when aged. When or
why she had quitted her tribe I could not ascer-
tain.

Queen Elizabeth passed some severe laws
against those above fourteen who consorted with
the gipsies—it compelled both to quit the king-
dom.

Amongst the gipsies I observed in Derbyshire
were some children with fair hair and blue eyes,
characteristics, no doubt, of the Saxon blood. 1
spoke of this to the mother of the children, who
took no offence at my remarks, but assured me,
ﬁrst, that the fair hair would ultimately darken;

GIPSY, cop'r, AND JEW. ' 163

and that those with blue eyes resembled her own
sister; who, though a true gipsy, had blue eyes;
and that such occurrences were not uncom-
mon. Let me here dispose of this physiological
question.

1. It is a fact admitted that children occa-
sionally do not at all resemble the parents, but
rather the aunt, uncle, grand-uncle, grandfather,
great-grandmother, &c.; this has been proved
over and over again. Thus the inﬂuence of one
parent extends to an unknown number of suc-
cessive generations, crossing from one branch of
the family to another, reappearing occasionally
after the lapse of a century:16 7

Thus, the dark or fair blood, as the case may
be, will extend for centuries, though no further
admixture may in the interval have occurred.
When mulattoes intermarry, they seem to die out
in two or three generations, whether as being in
direct violation of that speciﬁc law as yet so little
understood by us, which determined the species

4% In one of the noblest families in Britain there is an
admixture of dark blood, which reappears from time to time,
although there have been no misalliances of this sort since
the ﬁrst, which must have been about 120 years ago. Yet
even now the dark blood appears from time to time in one
shape or another; and occasionally with a fair complexion
Negro features may be distinctly observed. 1 have also met
with a family in Berwickshire in whom the dark blood shows
itself from time to time, after more than a hundred years.

M2

164 HISTORY OF THE

of all things—the law of specialization, the law of
hereditary descent; or that, having come within the
tide of the law of deformation, forms and structures
are produced by the marriage of mulattoes which
are not viable. The deaths, for example, of very
young children, whose structures present so many
varieties, even of the purest races, are extremely
numerous; one reason of which with others, no
doubt, may be that their structure, being within
the law of variety, may have rendered them non-
viable, or unequal to resist the bad effects of ex-
ternal inﬂuences. In a mulatto I examined, the
nerves of all the limbs were a good third less
than in a person of any pure race, fair or dark.
But, however this may be, the facts I have stated
to you are undeniable as facts, in whatever way
they may be hereafter explained. Now, apply
this to the gipsy family, some of whom had blue
eyes, and you will see that, in order to explain
the recurrence from time to time of fair hair and
blue eyes, it was not necessary that there existed
any late intermarriage or crossing, seeing that the
Saxon blood might show itself a hundred years
after its single introduction, and after all genea-
logical recollections had ceased.

The half-gipsy girl, for example, seen by me at
Kirk Yetholm, when grown up might, and pro-
bably would, associate with the gipsy tribe in
preference to the Saxon kindred of her mother.

GIPSY, copr, AND JEW. 165

In this case, though strictly gipsy in appearance,
and married to a gipsy man, there cannot be a
doubt that many of her children, grandchildren,
and great grandchildren, would show the Saxon
blood of her mother. On the same plan we en-
deavour to explain the occurrence from time to
time of Jewish features amongst other races; and
of the occurrence of other features amongst the
Jewish race.

But a totally different view of this matter has
been taken by some; and it is proper that you
hear both, or rather all, sides of the question;
a second view, and an extremely curious one, has
been suggested. It may be thus stated. As white
sheep are born from black, and white cattle from
black, and vice versd, and blue-eyed and dark-eyed
persons are born under circumstances such as I
have mentioned, without the slightest suspicion of
crossing or intermarriage, may it not be that such
is simply a law of nature? and that, in order to
render such a. variety a permanent one, all that is
required is, that they separate from their darker or
lighter parents, as the case may be, and live apart
—in a different quarter of the world, in fact?
Hence on this View has been explained the origin
of permanent varieties, as they are called, which
I fear is just another name for species. Thus all
sheep might spring from one pair and one species;
the black-faced horned sheep of our bleak and

166 HISTORY OF THE

barren mountains might accidentally (for the whole
is admitted to be accidental) produce a lamb or
two without horns; and these, by being separated
from their parents, would give rise to others, horn-
less also like themselves, and unlike their original
race. Apply this to the gipsy; these blue-eyed
gipsies were purely accidental; according to this
View, removed from their parents and settled in
another country, their children would be compa—
ra tively fair-haired and blue-eyed like themselves,
and unlike their race, and that this accident would
constitute a blue-eyed race of gipsies; but then
these would no longer be gipsies, but Saxons or
Celts; and thus it may have happened that Saxons
came from gipsies, and gipsies from Saxons; thus
were produced the permanent varieties of man-
kind, kept permanent, I presume, by insulation.
That such a theory has not a single well-ascer-
tained fact to rest on, is my most ﬁrm and solemn
belief; and it is incredible that so ﬂimsy a hypothe—
sis could ever have laid hold of philosophic minds.
It would, I believe, have been abandoned but for
the application of transcendental anatomy to ex-
plain the facts. When it was pointed out that,
from the remotest historic period, animals had not
deviated in form; that neither wolf nor jackal
ever become dogs; that the wild boar never
changes into the domestic, nor vice versd'; that v
although the species forming a genus do certainly,

GIPSY, cop'r, AND JEW. 167

when arranged as I shall presently show, exhibit
difference so slight as to be barely perceptible, still
they remained distinct throughout all times, the
answer was that the permanent varieties only were
contemplated, and not species; that permanent
varieties were the product of accidental birth, and
that the present varieties in the races of man and
domestic animals, though permanent, were the
product of accidental circumstances. Transcen-
dental anatomy was next called in to the aid of
the accidental variety theory—transcendental or
philosophic anatomy—by whose aid it has been
attempted to raise natural history and physiology
to the rank of a science; to remove them from
that prosing twaddler of detail, the professed
naturalist; to elevate geological research; to con-
nect the past with the present, and to push still
further from us the region of fable and romance.
This science ——whose object it is to explain in a
connected chain the phenomena of the living ma-
terial world; to connect the history of living plants
and animals with those which now lie entombed
in the strata of the crust of the globe; to explain
the mysterious metamorphoses which occur in the
growth of animals and plants from their embryonic
state to their maturity of growth and ﬁnal decay;
to trace a plan of creation, and to guess at that
plan— these are the objects of transcendental
anatomy—an appellation ﬁrst given to the doctrine

168 HISTORY OF THE

by my esteemed friend and teacher the illus-
trious De Blainville, but a doctrine invented,
no doubt, in Southern Germany, by Oken, and
Spix, Von Martius, and others. To the South
German, to the mixed race of Slavonian and
German origin, we owe this doctrine of tran-
scendental anatomy; to that imaginative race to

 

[The human vem‘ebra .- the type of all skeletonsj

 

[Tire ideal vertebra—itself real, bozcever; viewed
by Splat, 076%, and St. Hilaire, as ﬁle type of
all structures. ]

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 169

whom we owe all that is imaginative, romantic,
and transcendental in the so-called German lan-
guage and German people. To the true Saxon,
the classic German, the Swede, the Dutchman,
the thoroughbred Englishman; the Saxon, when
pure; the men of material interests; the men
abounding in common sense, and occupied with
the business of the day, what signiﬁes to such men
the metaphysics of Kant, the reveries of Schiller
and Schlegel, the music of Beethoven; the tran-
scendentalism of Oken and of Spix, of Goethe
and of Humboldt? In a vertebra the matter-of-
fact Saxon mind sees merely a vertebra; beyond
this it seldom proceeds—uninventive, unimagina—
tive. Nor is the Celtic mind very peculiarly gifted
in this respect: the doctrines of Goethe and of Spix,
of Oken and of Geofﬁ'oy, were resisted to the last
by Cuvier and by the academy over which he held
sway. Sir Charles Bell could never comprehend
the import of the transcendental doctrine; he stood
by the coarse utilitarianism of Paley, which with
him was the ne plus ultra. Thus it was that a
theory originating unquestionably with the mixed
Slavonian and German race,inhabiting South Ger-
many, made no progress with the would-be philo-
sophic heads of Paris and of London. But the eera
of Cuvier—the sie‘cle de Cuvier—is gone; it em-
braced spiritual France and imitative England. His
narrow, empirical view of the philosophy of animal

170 HISTORY or THE

beings was adopted as a matter of course by the
universities, who, dovetailing it with scraps from
Derhan and Paley, wrought it up into a body of
doctrine, which they trusted might serve them as
long as the Aristotelian philosophy had done;
save much thought, squabbling, and doubt; be-
come orthodox and established. A witty divine
furnished them with a new version of the Mosaic
Record, and all parties seemed happy and satis-
ﬁed. Cuvier and orthodoxy were triumphant;
when all at'once, in the bosom of that very scene
of Cuvier’s greatest triumphs, a colleague, M.
Geoffroy, called in question his determinations:
all Western Europe—~I speak of the philosophic
world—stood astonished; but being conﬁned to
the scientiﬁc world, the prudence, at all times
remarkable in the English geologist, suffered it
to pass unnoticed. At last a popular writer, an
adept at plagiarism and at arrangement, selected
from Humboldt, Geoffroy, Oken, and others, the
leading doctrines of the transcendental doctrine
or theory of progressive development in time and
space, thus enabling the unscientiﬁc portion of the
public to guess at the jar in the philosophic
worldﬁt Then burst out the ﬂame of disputation
and abuse—churchmen and geologists, botanists
and chemists, furious in support of orthodoxy and

5" “ Vestiges of Creation."

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 171

Cuvier. Times are said to change, but men do
not; it was the old war-cry of Aristotle and the
church. In a dispute unto which even the great
master of Trinity condescended to enlist his name,
it must be that the audience may also feel an in-
terest. Nor is that interest likely to cease. It is
the struggle which science and scientiﬁc men have
always held since the remotest times with those
men in ofﬁce who “in the law see justice and
equity, and in the diploma see science.”

BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE DOCTRINES 0F TRANSCEIV-
DENTAL ANATOMY.

SECTION IIl.—-All animals are formed upon one
great plan; this constitutes the doctrine of the
unity of organization; nor is there any reason to
suppose, in so far as research has gone, that since
the ﬁrst formation of the globe, millions of years
ago, that plan has ever been essentially altered,
or any new scheme or plan of creation substituted
for the ﬁrst.

The extinct races of animals and plants found
imbedded in the crust of the earth, in various

   

._ ‘1.
4;- :‘
b

I!

[Remains of the Fossil Sa'urianj

17-2 HISTORY or THE

strata, obviously of different ages, and in the
diluvial soil, seem to have appeared at certain
distant periods, more or less remote from each
other, and then to have perished—some slowly,
by apparently natural causes; others suddenly
and violently ; and others in a mysterious manner,
their place being occupied by a new formation of
strata, and by a new formation, or rather by the
appearance on the surface of the earth, of animals
and plants differing speciﬁcally and generically,
as the terms go, from all which preceded them.

In these successive changes, or formations, as
they have been termed, an order appears to have
been observed. That order was, that the most
ancient strata contain the simplest forms of life;
and the more recent strata, the more complex
forms of life; as if animals and plants, simple in
construction, had ﬁrst occupied the surface of the
globe, and, as they perished, others more highly
organized appeared; ﬁrst came animals lowest in
the scale, aquatic chieﬂy; then the mollusca and
shellﬁsh; then ﬁshes; next birds; then quadru—
peds, and, lastly, man. To this part of the theory
I do not attach much importance.

It was at ﬁrst supposed by the theoretical geo-
logists preceding Cuvier and his aera, that these
extinct animals were of the same species and
genera as those now existing. Bones of elephants
were exhibited in Germany as human bones;

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 173

fossil salamanders were mistaken for men drowned
at the deluge, &c. These miserably erroneous
notions were upset at once by a single anatomist,
by a lover of truth, a scientiﬁc man. This person
was Cuvier; he showed that the extinct fossil re-
mains belonged to animals speciﬁcally and gene-
rically distinct from those now existing on the
surface of the globe. The scientiﬁc world bowed
to his verdict, and his views became “ the law.”
But he also remarked that fossil man had not been
found, and he concluded, or rather he left others
to do so for him, that man appeared late on the
earth, after the extinction of all the other preced-
ing races of animals, and that his advent belonged
to the present aera, and to the now existing races
of animals. There must, in this view, have been
at least two creations, or rather there may have
been some hundred successive creations, since
the ﬁrst formation of the globe. The last spelling
of the Mosaic Record (by Dr. Buckland) offered
no obstacle to this view.

But scarcely had all these difﬁcult points been
agreed on when M. Geoffroy, availing himself of
the views of Herschel, Humboldt, Oken, and
others, adding thereto the history of the embryo,
brought forward another bold theory to the
French Academy : that theory was based on tran-
scendental anatomy.

When we look into the interior structure of the

174 HISTORY OF THE

grown-up animal, or man, it matters not, we per-
ceive structures which are of no use to him or to
them individually. These structures must have a
reference, then, to some other stage of his exist—
ence as an individual or as a race, or they must
have a reference to some great plan of creation
preceding and presiding at his formation, and so
connecting him with everything living—past, pre-
sent, or to come. Moreover, it not unfrequently
happens that man himself is born and grows up
with anomalous structures, as they are called,
such as webbed ﬁngers and toes, the deformity
called hare—lip, &c.; or the two sides of the heart
communicate with each other, giving rise to the
formidable complaint called the blue disease; or
the arms or limbs are wanting at birth ; or, ﬁnally,
he grows up with forms evidently not natural to
the well-formed, ﬁnely-proportioned, fully-deve-
loped person. How are these anomalies to be
explained—what, in short, is their signiﬁcation?
There was a period, and that almost within my
recollection, when all such phenomena were called
lusus nature—sports of nature—anomalies. It
was not deemed prudent to proceed further; but
Goethe, and Spix, and Oken, and Humboldt, and
Cams, and, lastly, Geoﬂ'roy, have decided this
question. They have shown the modern anatomist.
that mere details are not philosophy; that we
require laws, not details. They have proved that

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 175

in the embryo of man and of all the higher orga-
nized animals, elementary structures indicative of
one great plan exist; that the embryo even of
man himself, whilst growing from a mere point,
as he is at ﬁrst, passes through many metamor-
phoses, shadowed forth in the grand scale of the
animal creation, past and present; that at certain
periods he shows quadruped or even ichthyologi-
cal forms ; that his ﬁngers are, at one period of his
growth, webbed like aquatic animals; that when
he is born and grows up with them thus webbed
he merely exhibits a want of development—a per-
sistence, in fact, of an embryonic form ; and that
these embryonic forms are a counterpart of those
structures observed in some adult animal lower in
the scale, or, in other words, that anomalous
forms in adult man and animals represent merely
those forms which they pass through during their
embryonic life. Hence the law of the arrest of
development: hence the statement of the philo-
sophic anatomist, that whatever is irregular in
man is a regular structure in some lower animal,
and was in him a regular structure during his em-
bryonic life. This law, with certain modiﬁcations,
applies to everything living. It is the basis of the
law productive of irregular form in man—the law
of deformation; productive of all those varieties
in individuals, from the slightest change to the
most striking; connects man with all creation,

176 HISTORY OF THE

past, present, and to come; and it no doubt led
Geoffroy to oppose the Cuvierian doctrine of suc-
cessive creations. A few words will here sufﬁce
to state the outline of his great views. We shall
afterwards return to them in a separate lecture.
The transcendental doctrine of development or
progress endeavours to explain away our existing
notions of species and even of genus. We mis—
take, says Humboldt, or we may mistake amerely
historical event for a new organism. The animals
now existing on the surface of the globe may,
after all, be the direct descendants of the animal
and vegetable fossil world; the modern crocodile
may be the direct descendant by generation of the
ancient saurians; the modern elephant of the
mammoth; the horse of the anaplotherium. Nay,
more; what difﬁculty is there in imagining that
with time—to which may be added the unknown
law of progress and development, and a change
in the external media, the air, the waters, the
temperature—with time, the simple animals of the
early world (called old by mistake) may have pro-7
duced by continuous generation the more complex
animals of after ages; that the ﬁsh of the early
world may have produced reptiles, then again
birds and quadrupeds ; lastly, man himself? Give
us time, said the anatomist—the geologist could
not object to this—and with time and progress in
time, and a change of external circumstances, it

GIPSY, COPT, AND JEW. 177

will not be difﬁcult to show that there was only
one creation; that living matter is as eternal as
dead matter; and that all living matter is capable
of assuming every possible viable form of exist-
ence, that form varying merely in accordance with
the nature of the media it then inhabits——in short,
with the essential conditions of its existence.

To apply some of these theories to man himself
would greatly extend the purposed limits of this
lecture. I shall reserve the application, therefore,
until I come to speak of the positively dark races
of men—the Negro and the Tasmanian.

17 8 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

LECTURE IV.
OF THE COPTIC, JEWISH, AND PHCENICIAN RACES.

1. THE COPTIC OR ANCIENT AND MODERN
EGYPTIANS.

SECTION I.—Of a raceIhave not seen—of a people
scarcely ncticed by modern travellers; of a handful
of men forming, so far as I can understand, the
residue, the vestiges of a nation at once a race
and a nation,—I naturally speak with great
doubt—with hesitation—~and the utmost readi-

 

[The Egyptian Pyramid]

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 179

ness to be put right on any point whatever ; for of
the Copt, whether ancient or modern, I can ﬁnd
only conﬂicting statements. What race consti-
tutes the present labourers of Egypt? No one
that I know of has condescended to clear up this
question. They are not Arabs, nor Negroes, nor
Jews, nor Phoenicians; the Copt forms but a
handful of the population. Like the Mongol,
they are becoming extinct; they slowly and
gradually perish; they seem to know nothing
even of their own monuments; the Copts cer-
tainly are not precisely Jews, nevertheless they
resemble them strongly. In their palmy days of
power they caricatured the Jew, representing him
with ears displaced backwards, eyes and mouth
of great length, and an indescribable mixture of
hircine and human aspect.

The modern Copt, in so far as I can learn,
resembles the ancient Egyptian, judging of these
last by the busts still preserved; but even this
fact I cannot fully make out. English travellers
are so occupied with their personal adventures,
and French with political intrigue, that there is
no getting a. single new or valuable fact from
their silly books of travels. The modern Coptic
language corresponds, I think, with the ancient
Demotic. No one now thoroughly understands
the hieroglyphics, and I’doubt the accuracy of all
the interpretations. The profane history of Egypt

N 2

180 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

by the Egyptians cannot, so far as I can discover,
be identiﬁed with the Jewish record; the name
and times of Shisak alone having been discovered
in an oval of an Egyptian temple. Even the
presence of the Jews in Egypt cannot be made
out by Egyptian monumental history; and the
physiognomy of the labourers of ancient Egypt,
as represented on the tombs and temples, is not
of foreigners, but evidently Coptic. Different
races of men are sketched on the walls of the
tomb opened by Belzoni, showing that the cha-
racteristic distinctions of races were as well marked
three thousand years ago as now ; the Negro and
other races existed then precisely as they are at
present. ,

What has become of the grand Coptic race—
those builders unequalled in ancient or modern
times? We are told that foreigners and slaves
built these wonderful monuments which yet
astonish the world; I, for one, do not believe it.
The workmen employed were Egyptians. Their
disposition was to build; their innate instincts
were architectural, in this coinciding with the
Jew, the Greek, the Phoenician. Their past his-
tory is a perfect enigma to this day, nor do I
believe that a single leading fact has been well
made out. Who were the Hikshohs, the Shepherd
Kings, &c.? Did civilization travel up or down
the banks of the Nile? Did the Nile irrigate in

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 181

former times the Lybian Desert, and are the oases
proofs of such being its course 3‘ The sources of
the true Nile are unknown to this day. All is
mystery, problems unsolved. Herodotus says he
visited Egypt, but he could not have penetrated
far into the country ; and he asserts, moreover,
that the people were black, which is refuted by
every other observation, ancient and modern.

It was whilst examining the tomb, exhibited by
Belzoni in London, 1822 or 1823, in so far as I can
recollect, that I pointed out to my most esteemed
friends, Messrs. Hodgkin and Edwards, the un-
alterable characters of races. Neither time nor
climate seems to have any effect on a race.

Herodotus says that the priests showed him the
mode of formation of the Delta by the slow deposit
of mud brought by the river from the interior of
Africa. This most plausible and probable theory
is, after all, but a theory. Three thousand years
ago the waters of the Nile seem to have been just
where they are now, and the black stone of Rosetta
was found, as its name implies, at Rosetta, on the
very borders of the Mediterranean. If this be its
real locale it bestows an inconceivable antiquity
on Rosetta. But Homer describes Egypt as being
in the times of the Trojan war a highly civilized
country ; what an antiquity must we then assign
to it! The Homeric poem itself was suspected
to be Egyptian, and Cadmus brought letters into '

182 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

Greece from Egypt, happily leaving the hiero-
glyphics where he found them.

But, in whatever way the chronological diﬂi-
culties may be got over, there is a fact of curious
import connected with this pyramid-building,
mummy-making people or race. If we travel
westwards along the shores of the Mediterranean,
we discover that an offset of the race seems to
have existed in the Canary Isles, or Cape de Verds ;
and the extinct Guanches closely resembled Egyp-
tians in certain particulars. Now, cross the Atlan-
tic, and in a nearly parallel zone of the earth, or
at least in one not far removed, we stumble all at
once upon the ruined cities of Copan and Central
America. To our astonishment, notwithstanding
the breadth of the Atlantic, vestiges of a nature
not to be doubted, of a thoroughly Egyptian cha-
racter, reappear g—hieroglyphics, monolithic tem—
ples, pyramids. I confess myself wholly unequal
to the explaining any of these difﬁculties satis-
factorily. - Who erected these monuments on the
American continent? It could scarcely be the
native American Indians, as we call them; and
yet the carvings on the remains seem to portray
an American physiognomy. Still I have my doubts,
and would gladly take a view of these ﬁgures and
busts. Perhaps at some remote period the con-
tinents were not so far apart; they might have
even been united, thus forming a zone or circle of

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 183

the earth occupied by a pyramid-building people.
All the literary world must no doubt remember
the dispute of Byrne respecting the comparative
antiquity of the round towers and the Pyramids;
his mystiﬁcations, and the novelty and ingenuity
of his views. No doubt he was partly in the right.
The thnician physiognomy can easily be made
out in South Ireland and in Cornwall, but these
races were not Egyptians.

Thus of all races of men we, perhaps, know
least about that race whose records, could we
read them, would solve many of the most difﬁcult
problems of ancient history. Their relationship
to the Jews cannot be questioned, but they were
not precisely Jews. The uses of the Pyramids,
if they had any use, have never been discovered,
and the date of their erection was unknown even
in the days of Herodotus. It makes one smile
when they hear of Egyptian monuments being
carved and set up in Egypt in the time of Hadrian;
so early as the days of Augustus the Romans had
commenced plundering Egypt of her antiquities;
and so it has continued to the present day; from
Augustus to Louis Philippe, monuments have
been brought from Egypt, not erected there. I
cannot even ﬁnd that much was done during the
occupation of Egypt by the Greek dynasty.
Egypt had passed its grandeur, and had sunk
into insigniﬁcance, when Alexander, with a hand-

184 \ THE coprrc, JEWISH,

ful of troops, could seize and hold it, and transmit
its throne to a foreign family. The condition of
Syria, of the Phcenicians, and of that section
of Chaldeans called the Jews, may be judged of
by this, that the historians of Alexander do not
think it worth while noticing their existence.
Alexander, ﬁve hundred years before our Saviour,
marched through Syria and Palestine, taking pos-
session of the country, taking possession of J udea,
as if no such people existed as the Israelites.

I look on the history of Josephus as perhaps
the most monstrous historic exaggeration ever
penned, and I consider him as a person devoid of
all truth.

To the Saxon, the go-ahead Saxon, the man
who never looks back to retrace his steps,——that
race to whom “ to-day and to-morrow” are every-
thing, yesterday nothing,——to the English Saxon
especially, inquiries into past races can have little
or no interest; they are gone, says the man of com-
merce—the man of to-day; what signiﬁes their
past history, what are their monuments worth to
us, who care nothing for antiquarian remains?
The race which looks back, resting upon its
ancient deeds, reposing on its recollections,
dreaming on its ancient renown—the race or the
individual who does so is infallibly lost. Onwards
is the word 5 to look back is to invert the order of
nature, to wither, and to die: to perish from the

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 185

face of the earth, as the Copts have done, or are

about to do.

One of the most remarkable monuments of
Coptic antiquity is now in the British Museum:
I mean the head of the Young Memnon, 'as it is

g],

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[Bust of theyoung Memnon : British Museum]

   

186 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

called, although it really be the bust of Amenoph
11.: its antiquity is vast; it has survived thou-
sands and thousands of years; of this most
remarkable bust—~the highest work, perhaps, of
antique Egyptian sculpture—I shall speak in the
history of the Jewish race.

But the land of Egypt still abounds with its
ancient monuments ; the race was quite peculiar,
and was, I think, African, or at least allied to the
African races. The mouth and lips all but prove
this. Nevertheless, their identity with a great
section of the present Jewish race cannot be
doubted; the young Jew of London or Amster-
dam might readily sit for a likeness of the bust of
Amenoph. The resemblance, in fact, is most
extraordinary: and to me it is incomprehensible
how this had not been noticed by some one of
the thousands of sight-seers who frequent the
Museum.

Nothing is more wonderful than their reputed
knowledge of science and art; their astronomical
knowledge, their architectural. And yet, after
reaching a certain point, they stood still, retro-
graded, and ﬁnally all but disappeared.

Whence acquired they the high metaphysical
religious notions which characterized them ?——-the
metempsychosis, and the existence of a soul, of
a future life, and a day of judgment for the just
and the unjust? When the Jews left Egypt they

AND PHOENICIAN RACES 187

(the Jews) were profoundly ignorant of all these
doctrines, nor did Moses deem it necessary to
instruct his race in respect of them. These doc-
trines, then, are not of Jewish origin, for the law
was not even written, nor the lawgiver in exist-
ence. The barbarous and savage Turk and Arab
still lord it over Egypt; afrightful military despo-
tism crushes down the energies of the labourer.
But who are the Fellahs, or modern Egyptian
labourers 9 What is their history ? Let 11s hope
that the scientiﬁc commission headed by Lepsius
may solve some of these great questions, connect-
ing at least the history of other races with the
monumental history of Egypt.

188 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

LECTURE V.

SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.——VALUE OF MONUMEN-
TAL RECORDS.—THEORY OF PROGRESSIVE IM-
PROVEMENT.

THE origin of mankind, the source and origin
of life on the globe, is a problem which modern
science cannot solve. The only philosophic
attempt at- a solution of this great problem was
the hypothesis of Humboldt, Herschel, Oken, and
of M. Geoffroy, commonly called Geoﬂ'roy St.
Hilaire. But against this hypothesis there lie
formidable objections, for all historical evidence
by writings, sculpture, painting, and tradition,
shows that no transmutation whatever has taken
place in the species of organic beings since the
earliest recorded time, and that, therefore, if such
transmutations had ever been effected by time, it
was required to show a lapse of ages of so vast
an extent that the hypothesis of necessity assumed
a character of wildness and vagueness clearly
removing it from the bounds of correct science;
and, secondly, that when we attempt to apply the
theory in detail, assuming as an element of the
detail that the development and progression were
forward or in advance, ameliorating and improv-
ing, then did it become evident to the unprejudiced

AND PHOENICIAN RACES. 189

that the hypothesis was eminently faulty. For,
without going far into such details, it were easy
to show that the ﬁsh, and saurians, and mollusca,
and mammals, if they were mammals, which I
presume they were, of the ancient world, were at
least equal to those of the present day. If the
robe of the pristine carnivora corresponded to
their other qualities, they must far have excelled
in beauty the lions and tigers of modern times;
the furs of ancient bears must have been of a
quality at least equal to the existing ones—that
is, presuming that the external robe or covering
corresponded to their bulk. Now, there is not a
shadow of reason for imagining the contrary.
Again, monumental records, artistic remains,
architectural designs, and utilitarian plans, prove
beyond all question that the ancient races of men
were at least equal, if not superior, to the modern;
the Saxon and Celtic races did not invent the
sciences, nor the arts, nor literature, nor the
belles-lettres; they remained barbarians down to
within a few hundred years ago, and when left to
themselves, on the banks of the Ohio, in the far
west, and in Africa, their original barbaric nature
shows a strong tendency to return. If progression
and improvement be an essential element in the
Geoffroy theory of development, then the human
race does not show it absolutely; neither the
“ Iliad” nor “ Odyssey” were written by Saxons

190 , THE coprrc, JEWISH,

or Celts, nor “The Elements of Euclid ;” nor
did the Saxons as Saxons discover the theory
of eclipses, nor calculate the periodic returns of
comets, nor build bridges over the Danube and
Euphrates, nor plan and erect the Parthenon, nor
carve the Apollo and the Venus. One thing I
admit, and that only, that the later races which
threaten to, and which I think must, become the
dominant ones, show energies, and combination
for a purpose, and mechanical applications, and
diffusive efforts, which no race before them ever
showed; in every other quality they are evidently
inferior.

If, then, it be an essential element in the great
theory of development and progression, so cou-
rageously brought forward by M. Geoﬂ'roy at a
time when the overwhelming and overbearing
inﬂuence of Cuvier had closed all months, then
is it certain that such progression, in the sense
required, exists not; and here I venture to foretel
that the supporters of the hypothesis will, in their
next essay, abandon this part of the theory,
assuming simply the development of successive
eras of organic forms as a fact, disclaiming the
character of progression, excepting as to time.
The boast about the higher characters of the
present organic races* will be abandoned, and

‘1‘ “ Vestiges of Creation."

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 191

the law of development and progress simply
stated as it is, without a reference to successive
improvement; for successive improvement implies a
ﬁnal purpose; a ﬁnal purpose is a ﬁnal cause;
to state a ﬁnal cause is to guess at a purpose,
which in this case must be a purpose of the creative
power or force; but the popular supporters of
these doctrines of M. Geoﬂ‘roy have declared
themselves against all such conjectures—against
all ﬁnal causes as being mere effects, not causes;
they must give it up, or admit that they have
thrust themselves into the councils of the Great
First Cause.

The Mosaic cosmogony—or that, at least, which
goes by that name—cut the Gordian knot; dividing
that which it was not permitted to untie; it declares,
ﬁrst, that all things were created as we now see
them—animals in pairs; man also. Further was
not revealed; why should it be? But philosophy is
not opposed to the Hebrew cosmogony—at least,
this is my opinion. The subject is mysterious,
and of vast depth. When did reasoning man
appear on the earth P If he springs from a lower
stock, what was that stock ? What form had it?
How is this terrible difﬁculty to be got over P Is
it that the embryo is alike in all races, in point
of fact; that every embryo contains within itself
elements sufﬁcient to assume any other form, and
to retain it, provided it be insulated and put under

192 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

circumstances calculated to bring them forth; to
exaggerate certain qualities, and give them per-
manency? This is, of course, a mere hypothesis
in one sense, and I think untenable. Races, how-
ever originating, have not altered within the
historic period, excepting by intermarriage: in
proof of which I have offered youthe history of
the Copts, and the gipsy. Now, the Copt and
the Coptic section of the Jewish race, the Arab
probably also, are not Caucasian (if such a
phrase were of any value), but stand, as it were,
on the conﬁnes between races darker than them-
selves and others much fairer.

JEWISH RACE.

It was during that summer when the Dutch
and Belgians were carrying on a war after their
own fashion—marching and counter-marching,
advancing and retreating, but never ﬁghting—-
that, having a few weeks leisure from the routine
of a most laborious life, I resolved to visit per-
sonally two countries where I hoped to see two
distinct races of men, as distinct from each other
as possible, or, at least, as modern amalgama-
tions admit of 5 these countries were Holland and
IVales. 1 determined to witness for myself What
changes had been effected on the population of
these two countries by time and civilization; the
results, in as far as regards these races, shall be

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 193

submitted to you when describing the dominant
races of men; but ﬁrst let me speak to you of
another race I found in Holland, favourably
placed for observationwthe Jew. I had reached
London, that compound of all the earth, and I
had looked attentively at the Jewish physio-
gnomy on the streets, as he perambulates our
pavements, and with a hoarse, unmusical voice,
proclaims to you his willingness to purchase the
cast-off clothes of others: or, assuming the air
of a person of a different stamp, he saunters
about Cornhill in quest of business; or, losing
sight of his origin for a moment, he dresses him-
self up as the ﬂash man about town; but never

 

 

[The Jew]
0

194 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

to be mistaken for a moment—never to be con-
founded with any other race. The women, too,
were not forgotten; the beauties of Holywell-
street; there they are; the lineal descendants of
those who ﬂed from Egypt—spoiling the Egyp-
tians—forgetting to replace what they had bor-
rowed—but never returning to that land to which
one might suppose them attached, though it does
not really seem so—-the land of promise.

But where are the Jewish farmers, Jewish
mechanics, labourers? Can he not till the earth,
or settle anywhere? Why does he dislike handi-
craft labour? Has he no ingenuity, no inventive
power, no mechanical or scientiﬁc turn of mind?
no love for war, nor for the arts of peace? And
then I began to inquire into this, and I saw, or
thought I saw, that the Jews who followed any
calling were not really Hebrews, but sprung of a
Jewish father and a Saxon or Celtic mother; that
the real J ewess admits generally‘ of no inter-
marriage; that the real Jew had never altered
since the earliest recorded period; that two
hundred years at least before Christ they were
perambulating Italy and Europe precisely as
they do now, following the same occupations—
that is, no occupation at all; that the real Jew
has no ear for music as a race, no love of science
or literature ; that he invents nothing, pursues no
inquiry; that the theory of “Coningsby” is not

AND PHOENICIAN RACES. 195

merely a fable as applied to the real and un-
doubted Jew, but is absolutely refuted by all
history. '

The following critique by Arpetigny seems to
me harsh and unjust :—

“ Those which Poland rears form pretty nearly
two-thirds of the population of the towns.
They wear in summer a tight cassock made of a
bare and shining cloth; in winter a velvet cap
something like a thick turban, and a robe lined
with fur, ﬁtting closely about them, with a girdle
of red wool, which serves them for a pocket, com-
poSe all their dress. They allow their hair and
heard to grow long and ﬂow free; they have an
aquiline nose, oval countenance, and pale com.
plexion; they have long, dark eyes, full of lustre,
and which betoken cupidity; they are engaging
and polite in their manners; very emaciated, for
the most part; one would take them, at the
corners of the shops, where they station them-
selves generally motionless and erect, for black
cypress-trees, or pear-trees cut out like bedposts;
they throw around them I know not what reﬂec-
tion of Capernaum and Jericho, recalling the
impression produced by the engravings of old
copies of the Bible; they do not practise any
corporeal exercise, any ﬁne art, making trafﬁc
their sole occupation; to lie to secure a good
bargain, to lie to sell again at a high price, their

0 2

196 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

infamous life is spent between these two lies;
they give a preference to the calling of a courtier,
an old-clothesman, a go—between, a stock-jobber,
a broker, a publican, a banker, a tavern-keeper
—in a word, the callings where cunning of the
mind surpasses the gifts of science, the profound
knowledge of the arts, and the skill of the hands.
Against these the Jew contends by cunning alone.
They speculate openly on the luxury and drunk-
enness of others; but we owe them this justice——
that they lose nothing of their gravity, neither
under the thyrsus, nor under the caduceus.
Their hand is the same as that of the Normans,
with the palm altogether less developed, and the
ﬁngers, as it were, square.”

As I attentively surveyed the Jewish popula-
tion on the streets of London, I fancied I could
perceive three different casts of features: the ﬁrst,
Jewish, par excellence, and never to be mistaken ;
a second, such as Rembrandt drew; and a third,
possibly darker, of other races intermingled. It
seems to me, indeed, that almost every race
shows, as it were, three forms of race which run
into each other, connecting them possibly with
others, so that this is not peculiar to the Jewish
race. Of the ﬁrst form I need say little to you,
begging you merely to recollect that the contour
is convex; the eyes long and ﬁne, the outer
angles running towards the temples; the brow'

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 197

and nose apt to form a single convex' line; the
nose comparatively narrow at the base, the eyes
consequently approaching each other; lips very
full, mouth projecting, chin small, and the whole
physiognomy, when swarthy, as it often is, has
an African look. When ﬁne, that is in the young
person, with no exaggeration of any of the fea-
tures; when the complexion is delicate, and
neither passion nor age has stamped their traits
on the face; before the energies of the chest and
the abdomen, the stomach and the reproductive
systems, have told on the features; before the over-
development of the nose and mouth has indicated
their sympathies with other organs than the brain,
and dislocated by their larger development that
admirable balancement of head and face, of brow
and nose, eyes and mouth, cheeks and chin—
constituting beauty in any face wherein it exists;
before the eye of the observer is enabled to say
at once, these features want proportion; that is,
in a word, when youth prevails, then will you
occasionally ﬁnd in the Jewish face, male and
female, transcendant beauty, provided your view
be not prolonged. But why is it that you must
not prolong your view? Why is it that the female
Jewish face will not stand a long and searching
glance? The simple answer is, that then the
want of proportion becomes more apparent, and
this is enough; but there is more than this; and
I shall endeavour to explain it to you.

198 THE CUPTIC, JEWISH,

The living face cannot remain long unmoved;
the play of the mind is at work on every feature;
a passing thought kindles up the features, ex-
pands the nostrils, widens or contracts the mouth,
dimples or furrows the cheeks, enlarges or dimi-
nishes the apertures of those glorious orbs
through which the soul looks beamingly. Now
to stand those changes, and remain beautiful, the
proportions must be perfect so as to permit of
change; but the Jewish woman’s features do not
admit of this; the smile enlarges the mouth too
much, and' brings the angles towards the ears;
these are, perhaps, already somewhat too far
back; the external angles of the eyes extend in
the same direction, and the whole features
assume a hircine character, which the ancient
Copt, as I shall show afterwards, knew well how
to caricature. If to these be added, as happens
in the male face, that certain features display the
internal structure, the skeleton of the face, then
all beauty ﬂies. A brow marked with furrows or
prominent points of bone, or with both; high
cheek-bones; a sloping and disproportioned chin;
an elongated, projecting month, which at the
angles threatens every moment to reach the
temples; a large, massive, club-shaped, hooked
nose, three or four times larger than suits
the face—these are features which stamp the
African character of the Jew, his muzzle-shaped

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 199

mouth and face removing him from certain other
races, and bringing out strongly with age the two
grand deformative qualities—disproportion, and
a display of the anatomy. Thus it is that the
Jewish face never can, and never is, perfectly
beautiful. I of course include not those rare
exceptions which at times appear, nor those faces
composed of two races which at times approach
perfection. But, before I speak of this further,
let me pursue my history of inquiry.

I had looked attentively at the Jews of London,
but felt insecure as to my conclusions ; in London
we constantly meet with persons having Jewish
features and Christian names ; believed to be born
of a Jewish father and Saxon mother, or of a
Saxon father and half-Jewess, for no real J ewess
will intermarry with a Saxon, or accept him as a
lover, at least so I have been told; and, therefore,
the Jewish blood can never alter so long as the
real Jewish women, or a majority of them, are
of this mind. This fact I believe to be certain;
it is the same with the true gipsy, and, perhaps,
with the Copt, ancient and modern ; the mingling
of races, however, appeared to me considerable
in London. On my way to Chatham there sat
opposite to me a middle-aged man, whose features
reminded me strongly of a drawing by Rem-
brandt. His face, though swarthy, had not that
characteristic look which marks the Jew of Coptic

200 THE coprrc, JEWISH,

descent; but I could not ask him if he was of
Jewish origin; so when the carriage drew up in
Chatham, and the landlord informed us of that
on which we were to dine, I objected that some
of us might be Jews. Upon this the stranger
informed me that he was a Jew, and yet had no
objection to the use of pork.

Having heard that I should ﬁnd, in the Jew
quarter of Amsterdam, such- an assemblage of
Jews as would give me an opportunity of per-
fectly appreciating the J ewish face, I was about
to embark for Holland, when, willing to embrace
every opportunity of looking at those glorious
specimens of art in the British Museum, and
especially desirous of knowing the precise form
of the ancient Coptic head, and its distinctions
from the Grecian of ancient and modern times,
I repaired to the Museum, where, again contem-
plating the bust of the young Memnon, new light
broke at once on my view. It seemed to me that
I had, at one time or other, and that even lately,
seen persons who might have sat to a sculptor
for a likeness of the head of the Coptic prince;
that the precise features and form, even to the
most perfect resemblance of look, were to be
found to this day unaltered in Britain; that the
Coptic blood, or at least a race analogous, re-
mained unaltered and strongly afﬁliated even to
this day here in Britain; this fact, for such I felt

AND PHGENICIAN RACES. 201

convinced it was, excited in my mind the deepest
reﬂections. An examination of the works of Ros-
selini, and also of the grand ozwrage sur Z’Egypte,
led me almost to believe in the theory that the

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[Bust of the young Memnon .- British Museum.]

202 THE cop'rro, JEWISH,

Egyptian priests and aristocracy had succeeded
in crushing the national progress in art by com-
pelling the artist to repeat only certain forms,
unalterably and for ever—an attempt which has
been repeated in modern times, asfar as could
be ventured on in a ﬁrst attempt, lately here in
Britain in the decorations of the House of Lords;
but still I could not believe that the Coptic artist
would give to the reigning prince an ideal form;
he might nationalize it, but still it would be a
portrait or resemblance. So soon as I began to
suspect that 'I had seen persons in the streets of
London from whose face the sculptor might have
modelled the bust of the Memnon; so soon as,
on re-ldoking and re-examining, I felt sure of the
fact, I became more anxious to visit the Jew-
quarter of Amsterdam, where I was told I should
meet with ten thousand Israelites, male and
female, walking about, or in collected groups, apart,
to a certain extent, from the other race; that
other race, the Saxon, strongly contrasted with
the Jew: in groups assembled, kindling up deep
associations with Eastern regions, with Egypt,
and Jerusalem. To the result of this short visit
I now earnestly beg your attention.

What I saw on landing at Rotterdam apper—
taining to the Saxon race I shall afterwards ex-
plain to you; it is to the Jew I wish to direct
your attention. Having repaired to the quarter

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 203

of the city occupied by this race in Amsterdam, I
found the synagogue open and crowded; divine
worship was going on, the people standing in
crowds around the high altar; it was not proper
to take off the hat. Near me, almost within reach,
stood a youth about sixteen, and not far from him
others, the perfect likeness of the young Memnon.
I borrowed from him a Hebrew book he held
in his hand, that I might the better observe
his face. The whole congregation were singing,
but exceedingly noisy and unmusical, for the
Jews seem naturally to be without a musical
ear; and they have no national airs that I
can discover. The book was a Hebrew work,
beginning at the end, or what we call the end.
The women, seated in the gallery, were not
visible; but in the streets they could not be mis-
taken: unveiled and upright, a forward look, and
eyes ﬁxed on you as you passed; nor did the
eyes quit their glance until you had fairly passed
them. No one turned the head, but gazed at you
until you and they passed each other. In that
ﬁxed look nothing could be seen more than in
the statue.

Thus I learned that originally the ancient Copt
and a large section of the Jewish people were
one and the same race, with slight differences,
however, which the Egyptian sculptor knew how
to caricature. Of the modern Copt I can learn

204 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

but little; our British and American travellers
are so intensely occupied in describing their
culinary arrangements for crossing the Desert of
Suez, that they want time or capability to say a
word about the descendants of those who built
the Pyramids, and the Temple of Karnac; these
are triﬂes compared to the culinary matters; the
individual, the personnel. Thus what I have to
say of the Coptic and Jewish as afﬁliated races
must be brief. With their history I must not
touch—I mean, of course, their historic records;
but one thing, at least, is certain, that, according
to their own showing, they left Chaldea a small
family, and quitted Egypt a considerable people.
With the Egyptian, then, they had the closest
relations by intermarriage and otherwise; we
cannot say how—for all is mystery here, and a
mystery which must not be touched. They then
mingled with the Phaenicians extensively; for
the Jebusites (who were the Jebusites?) remained
quietly in possession of their city and property,
undisturbed apparently. Now, the city of J ebus
was simply Jerusalem; and, therefore, the very
capital of the kingdom was inhabited by and
occupied by strangers to the latest period of the
Jewish kingdom.

From the earliest recorded times the Jews had
commenced wandering over the earth, and seem
to have been trafﬁcking in cast-off garments in

AND PHOENICIAN RACES. 205

Italy before Rome itself was founded. VVander-
ers, then, by nature—unwarlike—they never could
acquire a ﬁxed home or abode. Literature,
science, and art they possess not. It is against
their nature—they never seem to have had a
country, nor have they any yet. Like the Copt,
they built temples, but not houses; they were,
like the Copt and the Phoenician, a building race.
The usual struggle exists amongst them as among
Christians regarding the value of tradition; but
as regards belief they present the most extra-
ordinary spectacle the earth ever presented.

Now, nothing like so vast a difference in the
matter of belief exists anywhere else, and it
convinces me, with other facts, that the present
Jewish race is composed of more than one: the
Coptic, the Chaldee, and the Phoenician—allied
races no doubt, but still distinct. With them
originated monkeries They never will, of course,
think with any other people. The greater num-
ber, I presume, do not believe in the existence
of a soul, of a future life, or after punishments.
Nothing of the sort is mentioned in the law
books of Moses—these are all seemingly Egyp-
tian ideas, derived no doubt from the East.
But it is not to be forgotten that, when they
resisted the power of Rome, our Saxon and
Celtic forefathers were mere barbarians. When
they penetrated into Britain it were impossible

206 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

to say; if they came with the Phoenicians it must
have been some four thousand years ago. But
here they are now unaltered and unalterable.
Shakspeare drew the character of the race, but
he added a feature, which I believe to be impos-
sible, namely, the elopement of a Jewish lady
with a Christian—such an event I do not believe
ever happened. The Christian divines translate
and comment on their sacred books. Gesenius
denied some important prophecies; Voltaire
launched on them the whole force of his terrible
satire; Buckland offers you half a dozen versions
of the sacred volumes in as many weeks. Mean-
time the Hebrews themselves pass over all these
with silent contempt—they give them not even a
passing notice. Societies are got up for their
conversion! Be it so. Nothing can be said
against them; but in one hundred years they will
not convert one hundred J ews—not even one real
Jew. This is my opinion and solemn conviction.
Nature alters not; remember I speak of the true,
unquestioned J ew— not of the spurious half-
breed, whom I notice here only for the sake of
a passing remark.

About two years ago a very beautiful woman
appeared as barmaid in a coffee-house on the
Boulevards of Paris: all the world, as the phrase
is, went to see her, so that night and day the
coffee-house was crowded. She was far from

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 207

being a perfect beauty, and quite inferior to the
antique Greek; but still she possessed sufﬁcient
beauty to attract the attention of the Celtic
capital. On looking attentively at her I felt
convinced that she was born of Jewish and Bel-
gian or English parents.

When the Jews left Egypt they were probably
about three-and-a-half or four millions in number.
At this moment there are not on the earth more
than four millions and a half, say six millions at
the most. My opinion is that they are becoming
extinct. There are not more than 35,000 or
40,000 in Britain and Ireland. Now, they were
much more numerous in Rome two thousand years
ago. Cicero, in his Oratz'o pro Flacco, particularly
alludes to the numbers of the Jews in Rome,
to their turbulence and their restlessness. They
were supposed to have been the chief supporters
of the Julian party against Pompey, and were
accused by Flaccus of collecting the gold of the
empire and conveying it to Judea. Which, then,
was the era of the Jewish dispersion? I have
failed in ascertaining' this point, which I had
once thought so simple. That they were wan-
dering over the earth, and settled, in so far as a
Jew can settle anywhere in Rome, in the time of
Cicero, and, therefore, long before the destruction
of Jerusalem, is a fact which admits of no sort of
doubt. As I had supposed their dispersion to

208 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

be simply a historical fact, and one admitting of
no dispute, I recommend the matter to theo-
logical scholars, who seem to me universally to
have overlooked Cicero’s observations on the
race, and the important deductions which may
be drawn from his remarks.

POSTSCRIPT.—JEWISH RACE.

A respect for scientiﬁc truth forbids me refuting
the romances of Disraeli; it is sufﬁcient merely
to observe here that, in the long list of names of
distinguished persons whom Mr. Disraeli has
described as of Jewish descent, I have not met
with a single Jewish trait in their countenance,
in so far as I can discover; and, therefore, they
are not Jews, nor of Jewish origin.

In my lectures some years ago in the Royal
Institution, Manchester, I stated that the Jewish
population in Britain was comparatively small;
it now appears that it amounts to about 35,000
or 40,000. This conﬁrms me more and more in
the belief I then stated, that, but for accidental
intermarriages, the race would have been all but
extinct. In France, with the most unlimited
liberty, they amount only to about 70,000.

My observations on the Jewish race were mis-
understood, and, indeed, misrepresented by an
anonymous writer in the Manchester newspapers.
\Vhen I denied to the Jews any claims to litera-

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 209

ture, science, or art, which might be called their
own, this writer insisted that I had denied
them talents and abilities. Now, this I never
contemplated. All races have produced men of
ability: Confucius is said to have been a Chinese.

I took notice in these lectures of the aversion
the Jews manifested everywhere to agriculture;
this also was denied; but at the time, the illus-
trious Humboldt, I ﬁnd, had made the same
observation—a fact of which I was not aware
and could not be, the second volume of the
“ Kosmos” having been translated into the
English language but a few months ago. His
observation is as follows :—

“They,” the writings of the Old Testament,
“ portray the variations of the climate of Pales-
tine, the succession of the seasons, the pastoral
manners of the people, and their innate disin-
clination to agriculture.”——Page 45, vol. ii.

One third of the Jews of the whole world are
said at present to reside in Poland, amounting to
about 2,150,000 Jews. It has been said, also,
that in Poland the Jews have become industrious,
laborious mechanics; but this is most distinctly
denied by Arpentigny, and refuted by what we see
takes place in Britain and in France. In ad-
dition to the authority of Arpentigny, who seems
to have been an eyewitness to the really astonish-
ing condition of the Polish Jews, or rather, I ought

P

210 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

to say, of the Jews settled in Poland, I might
quote the Russian ukase, published in 1847,
ordering the Jews to become members of muni-
cipal corporations, to follow trades, to cultivate
the ground, and to act and work like other people.
Any more remarks on these points must, I think,
be quite superﬂuous. Their skill in metallurgy
has not been made out satisfactorily.

011 the subject of the dispersion of the Jews
and their expulsion or emigration from J udea, I
observed in my lectures that the Jews seem to
have been-scattered over the then known world,
nearly as they are now, many years before the
capture and destruction of the city of Jebus by
Vespasian. I called them a wandering race, but
it appears that this expression is inexact, and
some of my most distinguished friends have ob-
jected to the term. My whole object being an
investigation into the true character Q)" the races of
men as they now exist and have existed on the earth,
I shall ever be most ready and willing to correct
any inaccuracy of expression. If the term a dis-
persed race seem a more suitable one, I willingly
substitute it for that already used. But I see not
how a change in term alters the facts. That the
Jews were a dispersed race in Cicero’s time, and
therefore dispersed some hundred years before
the taking and destruction of Jerusalem by Ves-
pasian, is simply a fact which cannot be refuted nor

AND PH(ENICIAN RACES. 211

explained away 5 for the question always returns,
why were they a dispersed race? and Why are
they now a dispersed race? No sane person
doubts their power to seize J udea if they thought
ﬁt. One of their capitalists might absolutely buy
it from the present Turkish Government. Some
25,000l., judiciously used by Lord Ponsonby, I
think, expelled the Egyptian armies and the
French party from all Syria. Now, why not use
the same means, and appeal to the all-powerful
effects of gold B

As I have been accused—in which accusation
Dr. Middleton is also included—of not clearly
comprehending the scope of Cicero’s observations
respecting the Jews in his (Cicero’s) times, I have
returned to “ Middleton’s Life of Cicero,” and to
Cicero’s, “ Oratio pro Flacco,” which on a former
occasion (at Manchester) I had quoted merely
from memory.

The passage as it stands in Valpy’s edition of
Cicero, relating to the Jews, referred to by Dr.
Middleton, occurs in Cicero’s defence of Flaccus
for misconduct during his praetorship of the pro-
vince of Asia. He was accused by the Greeks
and Jews. Cicero disposes of the Greek wit-
nesses by showing to the judges that the Greek
race totally disregarded the sanctity of an oath;
that the whole nation, in fact, looked upon an
oath as a mere jest. In respect of the Jews,

P 2

212 THE COPTIC, JEWISH,

Cicero observes,—“Sequitur auri illa invidia
Judaici. Hoc nimirum est illud, quod non longe
a gradibus Aureliis haee causa dicitur; ob hoc
crimen, hic locus ab ste Lceli, atque illa turba
quesita est. Scis quanta sit manus, quanta con-
cordia, quantum valeat in concionibus. Sub-
missa voce agam tantum ut Judices audiant;
neque enim desunt, qui istos in me, atque in
optimum quemque incitent; quos ego, quo id
facilius faciant, non adjuvabo. Cum aurum, J udae-
orum nomine, quotannis ex Italia et ex omnibus
provinciis Hierosolyma exportari solenet, Flaccus
sannit edicto, ne ex Asia exportari liceret. Quis
est judices qui hoc non vere tandare possit?
Exportari aurum non oportere, cum saepe antea
senatus, tum me consule gravissime judicavit.
Huic autem barbarae superstitioni resistere seve-
ritatis 5 multitudinem J udaeorum fragrantem non-
umquam in concionibus pro republica contemnera
gravitatis summa) fuit. A1. Cn. Pompeius, captis
Hierosolymis, victor ex i110 fano nihil attigit.
Imprimis hoc, ut multa alin sapienter, quod in
tum suspiciosa ac maledica civitate locum sermoni,
obtrectatorum non reliquit; non enim credo re—
ligionem et Judaeorum et hostium impedimento,
praestantissimo imperatori, sed pudorein fuisse.”
———p. 1519, vol. vi.

With the interpretation that Dr. Middleton has
put on these remarkable passages I entirely con-

AND PHCENICIAN RACES. 213

cur, although I admit that at ﬁrst sight his views
may appear overstrained. I leave it to others to
decide, but in the meantime remain in the opinion
that the “ quanta sit manus, quanta concordia,”
&c., have a reference mainly, if not solely, to
bodies of turbulent Jews with which Rome at that
time abounded.

I may now dispose of the last question—Are the
Jews a nation? This, I think, cannot be allowed
of them any more than of the present Germans,
who certainly are no nation as yet, otherwise why
this anxious search after “ vadcrland P” That
they are a race I admit, dispersed over the globe
since very remote times, without a country, a
home, a rallying point; but we might as well
say the Gipsies are a nation as the Jews. Such
difﬁculties arise from the abuse of language and
from the use of terms, which, though sanctioned
by ages, are yet merely conventional. Authors
still speak of the German empire as if there really
had ever existed an empire of Germans, which we
know was never the case. States and powers
made up of fragments of other states, of races
hating each other, as Prussia and Austria ( I trust
we may not have to add Great Britain,) &c., will
now be tried to their utmost by the war of races,
which, some ﬁfteen years ago, I foretold was sure
to happen sooner or later; but, being a new ele-
ment in human affairs, the principle will be

214 COPTIC, JEWISH, AND PHCENICIAN RACES.

opposed to the utmost by those who will not or
cannot understand it; and the threatening aspect
of a portion of the Celtic race in Ireland may ren—
der it inexpcdient, impolitic, and imprudent to
discuss at this particular moment the probable
stability of an empire composed of at least two
races who cordially hate each other, even although
that monarchy may be one of absolute perfection
in its own estimation, and of such extent that the
sun never sets on its vast possessions.

215

LECTURE VI.

THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

 

INTRODUCTION.

IN whatever way, by whatever means the races of
men as they now are, have been formed; made
to endure for centuries, preserving their speciﬁc
and seemingly unalterable forms, one thing is
certain; it is, the unity of the human family
as a group of animal life; speciﬁc; with
forms still human. That there exists no fact
favourable to the theory of the conversion of any
one species, or permanent variety of any animal
into another, during the historic period, may or
may not be true: the law, moreover, may be after
all neutralized in time. The physiological law
was ﬁrst pronounced by Cuvier, and so far as our
limited knowledge goes it would seem to be true.
That no alteration or change has taken place in
any animal form since the earliest historic period,
is the opinion I lean to, Without asserting that
the theory admits of any rigorous demonstration;
it was the opinion or theory which Cuvier, as I
shall afterwards show, undertook to prove, with

216 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

the view of refuting the geologists of his day, and
the popular opinions of all ages, based on a false
reading of the Mosaic record. And this he did
most triumphantly, overthrowing them and their
chronology; their diluvial and ante-diluvial pe-
riods; their one creation and all its consequences.
But in so doing, Cuvier, we shall ﬁnd, kept
steadily in view his main object; the current
English opinions of Cuvier’s views are not his;
his object was to disprove the all-but universal
belief, that fossil remains (ossemens fossiles) be—
longed to animals identical in genera and species
with those now existing on the earth, or at the
least differing but little from them. This View, sup-
ported and maintained obstinately by priests of all
denominations, he refuted. But he afﬁrmed also
that the remains of man had not yet been found
amongst the ossemens fossiles. Now, his refuta-
tion, as regards animals, strictly so called, was
most complete; he showed that countless species
of animals had ceased to exist; that they could
not have been destroyed by man, for man had no
place then in creation. How they died, or why,

 

[Fossil remains of tile Sauriazzsj

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. ‘217

he offers no conjecture: that vast, speculative
void he left for the English geological-theological
school. Cautious, mechanical, precise, a lover
of fact, be resisted all attempts to induce him
to commit himself: to the history of this singular
page in human history I may hereafter devote a
distinct chapter. My object at present is simply
to point out that Curier did not, or would not, ob-
serve that his argument of the permanency of the
existing species of animals now on the globe, since
the earliest historic period (for he went no further,
although in England he has been made to do so;)
extends also to man himself. On the causes of
the extinction of races of animals and plants, he
offers no theory of his own, beyond the mechanical
laws of submersion and elevation of continents
and islands: on the formation of progressive
animal forms in time and space he is silent. All
this was reserved for a higher philosophy, and for
minds of a more original cast: he neither ad-
mitted nor denied the unity of man; to me the
unity of man appears evident; but if so, whence
come the dark races? and why is it that destiny
seems to have marked them for destruction?
These questions I shall not fail to discuss more
fully in distinct sections; in the meantime let me
trace rapidly the history of the so-called coloured
races of men: we, of the present time, are most in-
terested in what is, not what is to be: creatures

218 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

of a day, the past, in one sense, affects us not ; to
the future we are equally indifferent. Thus it is
with the mass. But then comes in the ever rest-
less mind of the few; of those who inquire into
truth for truth’s sake: of those who, haunted with
the desire to discover the unknown in the past,
pursue earnestly that course; of those who,
haunted with a desire to know the unknown in
the future, seek the required knowledge accord-
ing to their gifts by signs and wonders, astrology,
science; and of those who, desiring perfection in
all things, compare the past, the present, and so
conjecture the future. Unquestionably had we a
sound knowledge of nature’s universal law or
laws, the future might be told as easily as the
past. Did we know the law which originated the
coloured races we should be able, no doubt, to
foretel their future destiny. Whether doomed to
destruction and extermination before the savage
energy of the Saxon and Celt, the Russ and
Slavonian, or protected by the unconquerable
forest—the tropical forest; by the desert; by the
jungle and fen, the bog and marsh; by the all-
powerful tropical sun and snow-clad icy barriers
of the arctic circle; or withering and so perishing
before the as yet undiscovered laws of population,
which unseen extinguishes the hopes of races and
of nations, Mongol and Copt, American and
Saxon, yet they may stand their ground during

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 219

the present order of the material world, feebly
contending against the stronger races for a corner
of that earth, which we have been told was given
to man as an inheritance. Did we know the law
of their origin we should know the law of their
extinction; but this we do not know. All is
conjecture, uncertainty. After some 4000 years of
historic period, all we have is a chronology full of
errors and falsehood; unintelligible, incomprehen-
sible; we ﬁnd the dark races still on the earth ; of
their ancient history absolutely nothing is known:
nor does it matter in what region of the globe we
ﬁrst view them. They are conﬁned to no particular
zone, but spread as it were from pole to pole;
from the arctic to the antarctic circle: if the Laps
be a dark race, then the dark races exist in Europe
as a race; Asia abounds with them; Africa has
always been considered their strong hold; and

 

[Esquimazw W0man.]

220 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

unquestionably from the Mediterranean shores
to Cape l’Agulhas the thick lipped, as Copt or
Bosjeman, of all shades but the fair, prevails
throughout; but it is in America, thelastdiscovered
by the civilized European, Where we ﬁnd the
strong hold of the coloured race: from the land
of ﬁre to the ice-bound polar sea, nature had
darkened every race unmistakably; nor had the
Esquimaux or Circum-polar races escaped the
coloration. Like their brethren in Asia, inhabit-
ing the same zone, though far removed from
tropical heats, they also are deeply coloured; a
dark race, with the indelible osseous and other
structural characteristics of the coloured races of
men. Hippocrates said, and modern physiolo-
gists have repeated his statement, that intense
cold darkens as well as great heat,- from which I
long ago drew, not the inference suggested by
the great physician, but what I think a more
obvious one—namely, that Hippocrates and his
followers, from Galen to Adelon, had disunited
physiology and philosophy; and that to this day
they remain distinct.

SECTION L—From the earliest recorded times
might has always constituted right. or been held to
do so. By this right the Slavonic race crushes down
Italy, withering and blasting the grandest section
of mankind. By this kind of right, that is, power

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 221

or might, we seized on North America, dispos-
sessing the native races, to whom America natu-
rally belonged; we drove them back into their
primitive forests, slaughtering them piteously; our
descendants, the United States men, drove us
out by the same right—that is, might. The same
tragedy was repeated in South America; the
mingled host of Celtiberian adventurers brought
against the feeble Mexican, Peruvian, and Bra—
zilian, the strength and knowledge and arms of
European men; the strength of a fair or, at
least, of a fairer race. The Popes of Rome sanc-
tiﬁed the atrocities; it was the old tragedy again,
the fair races of men against the dark races;
the strong against the feeble ; the united against

 

[The savage Bosjemen ;—-—Tr0glodytes ; who build no
house or hut ,- children of the desert]

222 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

those who knew not how to place even a sentinel;
the progressists against those who stood still-—
who could not or would not progress. Look all
over the globe, it is always the same; the dark
races stand still, the fair progress. See how a
company of London merchants lord it over a
hundred millions of coloured men in Hindostan
—I doubt the story of the hundred millions, how-
ever; the hot suns of India exalt, I have re-
marked, the brains of Europeans who sojourn
long there; but, be it as they say, the fact is
astounding; Whilst I now write, the Celtic race
is preparing to seize Northern Africa by the same
right as we seized Hindostan—that is, might,
physical force—~the only real right is physical
force; whilst we, not to be behind in the grasp
for more acres, annex New Zealand and all its
dependencies to the British dominions, to be
wrested from us by-and-by by our sons and
descendants as the United States were and
Canada will be, for no Saxon race can ever hold a
colony long. The coolness with which this act
of appropriation has been done is, I think, quite
unparalleled in the history of aggressions. A
slip of parchment signed ofﬁcially is issued from
that den of all abuses, the ofﬁce of the Colonial
Secretary, declaring New Zealand to be a colony
of Britain, with all its dependencies, lands, ﬁsh-
eries, mines, inhabitants. The aborigines are to

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 223

be protected! Now, if the Crown will let them
alone, they can protect themselves; but this
would not suit the wolf who took care of the
sheep. Still, mark the organized hypocrisy of
the ofﬁcial opener of the letters of others: the
aborigines are not declared Britons; they are
merely to be protected !

The Indian empire, as we call it, having turned
out so proﬁtable an investment for British capital,
although for obvious reasons it never can become
a permanent colony of England, suggested to “ the
Ofﬁce ” the idea of founding a similar empire in
the heart of Africa. Everything seemed favourable
for the enterprise; Southern Africa had long been
ours; the southern extra-tropical, part, partly
held nominally by the Portuguese—that is, as
good as not held at all—a wide desert separating
Central Africa from the Morocen, from the Celt
(in Alger) and from the present Egyptian ruler;
Central Africa, full of wealth, a productive soil,
and a feeble, black population! Nothing could
be more favourable, and I have not the smallest
doubt that the ofﬁcials at the Colonial-ofﬁce
already contemplated another India in Central
Africa; the wealth, the product of the labour
of many millions of Africans, in reality slaves, as
the natives of Hindostan, but held to be free by a
legal ﬁction, might be poured into the coffers of
the ofﬁce! But, alas for land-seeking colonial

224 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

secretaries! climate interfered; exterminated the
crews of their ships, and scattered the hopes of
the patriot lord at the head of the ofﬁce.

Since the earliest times, then, thewdark races
have been the slaves of their fairer brethren.
NOW, how is this? Mr. Gibbon solves the ques-
tion in his usual dogmatic way; he speaks of the
obvious physical inferiority of the Negro; he
means, no doubt, the dark races generally, for
the remark applies to all. But, notwithstanding
the contrary opinion professed by Dr. Tiedemann
respecting the great size of some African skulls,
which he found in my own museum, sent to
me from the western coast of Africa, I feel dis—
posed to think that there must be a physical and,
consequently, a psychological inferiority in the
dark races generally. This may not depend
altogether on deﬁciency in the size of the brain

 

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 2-25

en masse, nor on any partial defects; to which,
however, I shall advert presently; but rather, per-
haps, to speciﬁc characters in the quality of the
brain itself. It may, perhaps, be right to consider
ﬁrst the different obvious physical qualities of the
dark races, before we enter on the history of their
position as regards the mass of mankind, and
especially as regards those races which seem
destined, if not to destroy them altogether, at
least to limit their position to those regions of
the earth where the fair races can neither labour

 

/ ¢
//:/2 xix/4%

dial/'1

[Gunﬁre Race; from Bur-0726M]
Q

226 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

nor live—the equatorial regions and the regions
adjoining the tropics, usually termed by re-
mancists and travellers, and not unfairly, the
grave of Europeans.

First, as regards mere physical strength, the
dark races are generally much inferior to the
Saxon and Celt; the bracelets worn by the
Kaﬂirs, when placed on our own arms, prove this.
Secondly, in size of brain they seem also consi-
derably inferior to the above races, and no doubt
also to the Sarmatian and the Slavonic. Thirdly,
the form of the skull differs from ours, and is
placed differently 0n the neck; the texture of
the brain is I think generally darker, and the
White part more strongly ﬁbrous; but I speak
from extremely limited experience. Mr. Tiede-
mann, I think it is, who says that the convolu-
tions of the upper surface of the two hemispheres
of the brain are nearly symmetrical; in our brain
the reverse always happens. Lastly, the whole
shape of the skeleton differs from ours, and so
also I ﬁnd do the forms of almost every muscle of
the body. The upper jaw is uniformly of extra-
ordinary size, and this, together with a pecu-
liarity in the setting on of the face, I ﬁnd to
constitute the most striking differences. I at one
time thought that the bones of the nose were
peculiar in some races, as in the Bosjesman and
Hottentot. In these races, or race, for perhaps

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 227

they are but one, I fancied that, more frequently
at least than in others, the bones of the nose are
remarkably narrow, run together to form but one
bone, and show even an additional thin germ
mesially; perhaps mevely the anterior margin
of another bone, or an extension of the spine of
the frontal. Still the specimens are so few in
Europe, that I feel disinclined to attach much
importance to this sufﬁciently singular fact. I
think I have seen one of the nasal bones so short
and thin as not to reach the frontal.

In the Peruvian skull, at twelve years of age,
Von Tchudi thinks he has detected a new germ
of bone, an interparietal bone, in fact, peculiar
to the native American race; the physical differ-
ences in the structure of the Boschjiee women and
Hottentots are unmistakeable. Still be it remem-
bered that we have no accurate account of the
structural differences of the races of men on
which we can depend-mere scraps of observa-
tions scarcely worthy of notice. The Negro
muscles are differently shaped from ours; the
curly, corkscrew locks of the Hottentot bear no
resemblance to the lank, black hair of the
Esquimaux. The Tasmanian and Australian
races are said to show many peculiarities in
structure.

Let it be remembered, however, that, after all,
it is to the exterior we must look for the more

Q 2

228 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

remarkable characteristics of animals; it is it
alone which nature loves to decorate and to vary:
the interior organs of animals, not far removed
from each other, vary but little. To this fact I
shall advert more particularly in the lecture on
transcendental anatomy; the internal structures
of animals present details which we read imper-
fectly, connected as they are, on the one hand,
with mechanical arrangements, and on the other
with the primitive laws of creation.

There is one thing obvious in the history of the ,
dark races, that they all, more or less, exhibit
the outline of the interior more strongly marked
than in the fair races generally. Thus the face
of the adult Negro or Hottentot resembles, from

 

[Bosjeman playing on the goumlzj

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 2‘29

the want of ﬂesh, a skeleton, over which has been
drawn a blackened skin.

But who are the dark races of ancient and
modern times? It would not be easy to answer
this question. Were the Copts a‘ dark race E
Are the, Jews a dark race? The Gipsies? The
Chinese, &c.? Dark they are to a certain extent;
so are all the Mongol tribes—the American Indian
and Esquimaux—the inhabitants of nearly all
Africa—of the East—of Australia. What a ﬁeld
of extermination lies before the Saxon Celtic
and Sarmatian races ! The Saxon Will not mingle
with any dark race, nor will he allow him to hold
an acre of land in the country occupied by him;
this, at least, is the law of Anglo-Saxon America.
The fate, then, of the Mexicans, Peruvians, and
Chilians, is in no shape doubtful. Extinction

 

[Mongoh- from Clark’s Travelsj

230 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

of the race—sure extinction—it is not even
denied.

Already, in a few years, we have cleared Van
Diemen’s Land of every human aboriginal; Aus-
tralia, of course, follows, and New Zealand next;
there is no denying the fact, that the Saxon, call
him by what name you will, has a perfect horror
for his darker brethren. Hence the folly of the
war carried on by the philanthropists of Britain
against nature : of these persons some are honest,
some not. I venture to recommend the honest
ones—to try their strength in a practical measure.
Let them demand for the :natives of Hindostan,
of Ceylon, 01' even of the Cape or New Zealand,
the privileges and rights wholly and fairly of
Britons; I predict a refusal on the part of the
Colonial-ofﬁce. The ofﬁce will appoint you as
many aborigines protectors as you like—that is,
spies; but the extension of equal rights and
privileges to all colours is quite another ques-
tion.

But now, having considered the physical con-
stitution thus brieﬂy of some of these dark races,
and shown you that we really know but little of
them; that we have not data whereon to base a
physical history of mankind; let me now con-
sider the history of a few of them—of those, at
least, best known to me.

THE DARK RACES or MEN. 231

SECTION II.——— On the Dark Races qf Africa.

What the Portuguese thought and did when
they ﬁrst landed at the Cape of Storms has not
been recorded, in so far as I know. Records, no
doubt, exist somewhere, buried in the archives
of Lisbon or Coimbra. Camoens was a Lusitanian,
and there may have been other minds in the
Peninsula calculated by their labours, scientiﬁc
or literary, to prove the race to be somewhat
above the beasts of the ﬁeld in their objects and
pursuits. But the Portuguese who ﬁrst doubled
Cape l’Agulhas were in search of gold and of the
Indies. Southern Africa, with its parched soil,
strange-looking beasts, and still stranger men, did
not suit them; they landed, but soon abandoned
it, leaving the races it contained to the tender
mercies of the most selﬁsh, commercial, trading,
narrow-minded, unimproving of all the Saxon
race, the skippers of Rotterdam, of Amsterdam,
and their descendants. These men, of whom I
have spoken in my lecture on the Saxon, followed
in the wake of the Portuguese; they landed at
the Cape, probably in Table Bay, by the base of
that romantic Taﬂ'el Berg, and though they found
the country poor and generally “ sonder vater,”
they did not altogether despise it. The Cape was
on the highway to India; they found there some

232 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

long-legged, ill-shaped cattle, which the Dutch
boors maintain to this day, and sheep with wool
of a miserably poor quality; and so the Dutch-
man, who could neither invent nor improve,
adopted the sheep and the cattle of the Hottentot
as his own.

But what were the race or races of men and of
animals he found there? were they the same, or
did they resemble in any Way, the men and ani-
mals they had left in faderland—in beloved
Holland? Not in the least; neither men nor
animals bore any resemblance to those of Europe:
the races of men they ﬁrst encountered were the
Hottentots and Bosjemen, the yellow race or
races of Africa: the former word, of doubtful
origin, expresses the taller and stronger tribes—
tribes which were armed with the assagai, held
ﬂocks of sheep and cattle, but no horses; the
term Bosjeman simply means the man of the

    

W
////—¢;j

[Table Mountain, Cape of Good Hope. From Burcﬁell’s
Pravda]

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 233

bush; by Bosjeman,‘then, we further understand
that section of the yellow race, smaller in stature
than those called Hottentots, less civilized, if such
a term could possibly be so used or misapplied;
living without ﬂocks or herds, huts or tents ; em-
ploying the bow and poisoned arrow; children
of the desert. Our present business is with the
primitive race, the aborigines, as they are called,
of Southern Africa, called by the Dutch some
three hundred years ago Hottentots and Bosje—
1nen,—-names unknown in the language of the
race, for they call themselves Autniquas, Quoiquoes,
&c. Did the Dutch, the Christian Dutch, consider
these races to be men and women? I scarcely
think so. True, they held as a theory that all
men and women came from one pair, like all cows,
and pigs, and sheep ; but this was a mere theory;
in practice they held them to be a something
different. The coloured men the Dutch called boys,

  

' . - :\\ t '
[Bogemam or Yellow African Race]

234 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

and the coloured women they called maids; in
speaking of the persons composing a Commando,
for example, they would say that there were on
it thirty men, meaning Dutchmen, and ﬁfty boys,
meaning black men. De facto, then, the Dutch did
not hold these races to be the same as their own;
the fact is undeniable and incontestable. I care
not for theories; the Dutch practically denied the
ﬁrst canon of Scripture in a body, as the United
States men do now; there is no denying it. To
the strange, perfectly strange, animals around
them, every one differing generically and speci-
ﬁcally from those of Europe, they gave European
names: the beautiful antelope frequenting the
bushy ravines of the present colony they called
the bosje—bok, or bush-goat, although it be not
a goat; they found also the elk or eland, al-
though there are ,no elks in Africa; the very
oxen and miserable sheep of the wretched Hot-
tentot, the Saxon Dutchman adopted, cherished
and maintained unaltered, until an irruption from
Europe of Englishmen upset them and their soul-
destroying self-opiniativeness. But we must not
advert at present to these drawbacks on the Saxon
character; his onward principle diﬂiised and
spread him over the colony; the go-ahead prin-
ciple was at work; this, of course, led to the
seizure of land, the plunder and massacre, whole-
sale sometimes, of the simple aborigines. Wild

THE DARK RACES or MEN. 235

principles were let loose on both sides; the gun
and bayonet became the law; and whilst I now
write, the struggle is recommencing with a. dark
race (the Caﬂ‘re), to terminate, of course, in their
extinction.
I have said that when the Dutch ﬁrst landed
at the Cape of Good Hope they met with the race
/ called Hottentots—a simple, feeble race of men,
living in little groups, almost, indeed, in families,
tending their fat-tailed sheep and dreaming away
their lives. Of a dirty yellow colour, they slightly
resemble the Chinese, but are clearly of a different
blood. The face is set on like a baboon’s; cra-
nium small but good; jaws very large ; feet and
hands small ; eyes linear in form and of great power ;

 

Groupe of Bosjemen in the Desert.

236 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

forms generally handsome; hideous when old, and
never pretty; lazier than an Irishwoman, which is
saying much ; and of a blood different and totally
distinct from all the rest of the world. The women
are not made like other women. Tiedemann says
that the two hemispheres of the brain are nearly
symmetrical. Though small in stature, they are
taller than their cognate race, the Bosjeman ;
these I take to be nearly allied to the Hottentot,
though different in a good many respects. They
have the physical qualities of the Hottentot, but
exaggerated 5 they are still shorter in stature.
Having no measurements on which I can de-
pend, I oﬂ'er merely as a conjecture the aver-
age height of the male and female Bosjeman,—
say four feet six inches for the male, and four
feet for the female. Their power of sight is incre-
dible, and this, with all other peculiarities, dis-
appears with a single crossing of the breed.

The extent to which these singular races, if
they really be distinct, extend northwards through
Central Africa is altogether unknown. Dr. Andrew
Smith, so well known for his travels in Southern
Africa, informs me, that he saw them within the
tropic, and he thinks they extend much higher;
moreover, he is of opinion that they form but one
race ; in Harris’s “ Ethiopia,” mention is made of
a race, somewhat resembling the Bosjeman, in-
habiting a wild district in Southern Abyssinia, on

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. -37

the equator, deeply hidden amongst woods and
mountains. He did not see them, and nothing
positive can be gathered from his description.
Diodorus Siculus speaks of the Troglodytes of
Northern Africa, Who inhabited caves and moun-
tains, a pigmy race and of no courage ; whilst the
divine Homer places, I think, in Africa, his pigmy
men, against whom the cranes waged constant

war.

 

[The Australian Race]

238 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

What interesting. questions, geographical or
ethnological, are here to solve! What a ﬁeld
does Africa still present! Whence came these
Bosjemen and Hottentots ? They differ as much
from their fellow-men as the animals of Southern
Africa do from those of South America. They are
a dark race; but the sun has not darkened them.
Without arts,without religion, andwithout civiliza-
tion of any kind, for how many centuries had they
occupied their kraals, content to live, and to
perish like the beasts of the ﬁeld, leaving no
name behind them that such things were!

Before the go-ahead Dutchmen it was easy to
see that this puny, pigmy, miserable race must
retire; they did so chieﬂy, as it seems, towards
the northward, towards the Gariepine streams
and the Calihari Desert. They could not retire
eastward, for this reason, that they there met the
Amakosos (whom we call Caﬂ'res)——a race I was
the ﬁrst to describe to the scientiﬁc world of
Europe.

Have we done with the Hottentots and Bosje-
man race? I suppose so: theywill soon form merely
natural curiosities; already there is the skin of
one stuffed in England; another in Paris if I
mistake not. Their skeleton presents, of course,
peculiarities, such as the extreme narrowness of
the nasal bones, which run into one in early age
not unfrequently, as we ﬁnd in apes. But it is the

,1,

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 239

exterior which is the most striking; and this, no
doubt, is wonderful. No one can believe them to
be of the same race with ourselves; yet, unques-
tionably, they belong to the genus man. They
are shrewd, and show powers of mimicry—acquire
language readily, but never can be civilized. That
I think quite hopeless. The Dutch endeavoured
to make soldiers of them; and it is recorded that
they alone showed ﬁght at the battle of Blueberg,
when all the white men ran away—I state the
story as I heard it. We followed and imitated the
Dutch in this, as in most things, and got up a
Hottentot corps, or rather, perhaps, I ought to
say a Cape corps—for John Bull does not like
anything he ﬁnds useful called by an offensive
name. Well, call it Cape corps, or what you will,
it is a miserable pdﬁcy, unworthy the sanction of
any statesman.

In a word, they are fast disappearing from the
face of the earth ; meeting that fate a little earlier
from the Dutch which was surely awaiting them
on the part of the Caﬂ'res. Let us now speak of
the Caffre.

When the Hottentot and Bosjeman tribes ﬂed
before the warlike Dutch boors, they proceeded
almost due north towards the deserts, the Karoos,
the Gariepine country, and the Calihari. The
reason for this was soon discovered: in their
retreat eastward they encountered the Caﬂ're, a

‘240 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

warlike, bold, and active race of men, well armed
with the assagai, accustomed to war; though some
what feeble in their arms, yet strongly set upon
their limbs, exceedingly daring, and accustomed
to act in bodies; dark as Negroes nearly, yet not
Negroes; ﬁner made in the limbs, and with more
energy; the head, perhaps, a little better than
the Negro, or even as good as can be found in
any dark race. These Amakosos, or Caﬂ'res as we
call them, had advanced into the province, now
called Albany, when Le Vaillant was in the colony,
in 1794 or 1795; they approached or occupied
the eastern tract of the country, the seaboard, as
it may be called. But they had neither ships nor
boats, nor any human arts; properly speaking,
they were mere savages, but at that time mild
and, to a certain extent, trustworthy; now, by
coming into contact with Europeans, they have

 

[Caﬂi‘e SIMIL]

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 241

become treacherous, bloody, and thoroughly
savage. Yet they have great and good points
about them, which I shall endeavour presently
to explain. First let me point out, as I did to
Europe, that there is not the slightest foundation
for imagining them to be derived in any way
from Arabian blood. This is a mere fancy. They
are circumcised, eat no ﬁsh nor fowl, nor unclean
beasts, as they are called; live much on milk,
and seem to me capable of being educated and
partly civilized. Their extent northward and
eastward is unknown, but they join at last the
Negroes of the equatorial regions: how far they
have extended into the interior is not known.
Before I speak of the true Negro, let me endeavour
to place before you a brief sketch of the race
whose contest with the British, but just, as it were,
commencing, must end by bestowing on them an
unhappy immortality.

The Caﬂ‘res are closely allied to the Negro race,
and probably graduate, as it were, into them ; for,
as Nature has formed many races of white men
whose physical organization and mental dispo-
sition differ widely from each other, so also has she
formed the swarthy world. It is not necessary,
neither perhaps, is it at all correct, to call a Caffre
a Negro, or a Negro a Caﬂ're; neither are the
Caﬂ'res degenerated Bedouins, nor well-fed Hot-
tentots, nor Saxons turned black by the sun, nor

R

242 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

Arabs, nor Carthaginians. I would as soon say
they were the ten lost tribes. All these theories
are on a par, and are worthy of each other, but
not worthy of any notice. Their language is
soft and melodious, and they seem to have an ear
for simple melody. Since I ﬁrst saw them in 1817
they have acquired ﬁrearms and horses ; but they
want discipline—the ﬁrmness of discipline. In-
dividual acts of bravery they have often performed,
but combined they can never meet successfully
the European. We are now preparing to take
possession of their country, and this of course
leads to their enslavery and ﬁnal destruction, for
a people without land are most certainly mere
bondmen. Ascrz'ptz' glebaz——they would, but they
cannot, quit it. The old English yeomen and the
modern Dorsetshire labourer, the local tenant of
Sutherlandshire and the peasantry of Ireland, are
simply bondmen or slaves; there is no avoiding
the phrase. The fate of the Caﬂ're race, then, is
certain, but centuries may elapse before their ﬁnal
destruction ; in the meantime they may retire with-
in the tropic, Where in all probability the white man
may not be able to follow, as a conqueror at least.
There is the retreat for the Cadre—within the
tropics, whence he came—to that again must he
retire or perish. What travellers and others tell
you about tribes of mixed breed, races of mulat-
toes, has no real existence; I would as soon

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. Q43

expect to hear of a generation of mules. ‘Vhen the
Negro is crossed with the Hottentot race, the pro-
duct is a mild-tempered, industrious person; when
with the white race, the result is a scoundrel. But,
cross as you will, the mulatto cannot hold his
ground as a mulatto: back the breed will go to
one or other of the pure breeds, white or black.
I have already explained all this.

And now for the Negro and Negroland—Cen-
tral Africa, as yet untrodden and unknown. Look
at the Negro, so well known to you, and say, need
I describe him P Is he shaped like any white
person? Is the anatomy of his frame, of his
muscles, or organs like ours 9 Does he walk like
us, think like us, act like us P Not in the least.
What an innate hatred the Saxon has for him,
and how I have laughed at the mock philanthropy
of England ! But I have spoken of this already,
and it is a painful topic; and yet this despised
race drove the warlike French from St. Domingo,
and the issue of a struggle with them in Jamaica
might be doubtful. But come it will, and then
the courage of the Negro will be tried against
England. Already they defeated France ; but,
after all, was it not the climate? for that any body
of dark men in this world will ever ﬁght success-
fully a French army of twenty thousand men I
never shall believe. With one thousand white
men all the blacks of St. Domingo could be de-

R 2

244 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

feated in a single action. This is my opinion of
the dark races.

The Negro race occupies Central Africa, ex-
tending from the Kalihari to the conﬁnes of the
Sahara; other races of men occupy the remainder;
the Mauritanian or Moor, and the Kabyles—the
race probably which the Phcenicians found there
on their ﬁrst settlement. But the Moor is pro-
bably not indigenous, though of vast and unknown
antiquity; so, also, is the Copt. Who the Abys-
sinians and the Zoullahs are, it seems almost im—
possible to say, seeing that, from Bruce to Harris,
African travellers have either started mad, or
returned mad—the heat of the climate no doubt
affecting their brains.

Is the Negro race conﬁned to Central Africa?
It would seem not. Report describes their
presence in Madagascar, and even in Borneo,
Sumatra, and in some other Eastern isles. The
Australians are black, but they are not Negroes.

SECTION III.——The past history of the Negro,
of the Caffre, of the Hottentot, and of the Bosje-
man, is simply a blank—St. Domingo forming
but an episode. Can the black races become
civilized? I should say not: their future history,
then, must resemble the past. The Saxon race
will never tolerate them—never amalgamate—
never be at peace. The hottest actual war

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 245

ever carried on ——the bloodiest of Napoleon’s
campaigns —is not equal to that now waging
between our descendants in America and the
dark races; it is a war of extermination-—
inscribed on each banner is a death’s head and
no surrender; one or other must fall. But here
climate steps in, and says to the land-grasping
Saxon, “ I give you a choice of evils—cultivate
Central Africa or Central America with your own
hands, and you perish; employ the coloured man,
your brother, as a slave, and live under the con-
tinual fear of his terrible vengeance—terrible
when it comes, as come it will: unrelenting,
merciless.” A million of slave—holders cut off in
cold blood to-morrow would call forth no tear of
sympathy in Europe: “ Bravo l” we should say;
“the slave has risen and burst his chains—he
deserves to be free.”

lVild, visionary, and pitiable theories have been
offered respecting the colour of the black man, as
if he differed only in colour from the white races;
but he differs in everything as much as in colour.
He is no more awhite man than an ass is a horse
or a zebra: if the Israelite ﬁnds his ten tribes
amongst them I shall be happy. But what has
ﬂattened the nose so much—altered the shape of
the whole features, the body, the limbs? Some
idle, foolish, and, I might almost say, some Wicked
notions, have been spread about of their being

246 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

descended from Cain; such notions ought to be
discountenanced: they give a colour for oppres-
sion.

Of the true Negro I need not say much; he
seems to me to have qualities of a high order,
and might even reach a certain point of civiliza-
tion. His constitution is energetic, as proved
by the extension of his race; Africa is his real
country—Central Africa. It is here that climate
enables him to set the Celtic and Saxon races at
deﬁance. Often, often have they attempted its
subjugation, but have always hitherto failed; and
yet there seems to me ways to effect it, did they
but adopt the wiles and the modes of Saxon traders.
By ascending the Senegal cautiously and rapidly,
clearing the high country, dividing its sources from
those of the Niger, a thousand brave men on horse-
back might seize and hold Central Africa to the
north of the tropic; the Celtic race, will, no doubt,
attempt this some day. On the other hand, acci-
dent has prepared the way for a speedy occupation
of Africa to the south of the equator by the Saxon
race, the Anglo-Saxon.

SECTION IV.—0ther Dark Races.

Little is known of the dark races of Asia,
even of those of Indostan. It is a fact worthy
of the deepest reﬂection, that neither Northern
India nor Indostan Proper have altered since the
time of Alexander the Great; that is, for twenty-

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 247

three or twenty-four centuries of years they have
not progressed nor changed. This I am disposed
to think decides the character of the race or
races; for no doubt there must be many races
inhabiting these widely-extended and still, I pre~
sume, populous regions. Their extreme populous-
ness I am disposed to question; their possible
improvement is questionable. I saw two of these
young persons~Brahmins I think they were, or of
that race, who were educated lately in London by
the India Company at a heavy expense, merely
by way of experiment. The result will, simply,
I think, amount to nothing. If the Company
meant to ascertain whether a few of the natives
of Indostan can be taught so much of book
learning as is usually stuffed into the head of an
undergraduate or college student, then the experi-
ment, after all, amounts to nothing, for the same
may be done with the Negro, the Hottentot, and
the Bosjeman; it is one thing to cram a young
head with book learning, but quite another to
improve the natives of Indostan, who have stood
still in the face of European civilization so long,
unaltered and seemingly unalterable. But there
can be no harm in trying such experiments; they
form a little chit-chat for the coteries and clubs
of London. The two young men I saw, who
were natives of Indostan, were dark-coloured
persons, with heads peculiarly formed—hammer-

248 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

shaped, in fact—set on the neck differently from
the European. They wore, if I recollect right,
their native dress, showing that on their return
to India they would once more sink into the vast
gulf of non-progression.

In conclusion: researches sufﬁciently extensive
have not been made into the physical structure
and psychology of the dark races; even the
cranium or skeleton has not been very carefully
studied. Of the rest we know scarcely anythinox
Men go to India in search of rupees, and other
studs of that kind. They remain as short time
as possible, and are chieﬂy occupied with personal
cares; the unknown is studied chieﬂy in the
Company’s ofﬁcial Directory, where the anxious
inquirer learns how many require to “go out”
before his position on the list be quite satisfactory.

AMERICAN RACES.-—-—INTRODUCTION.

The discovery of a new world by Columbus
is the most remarkable event in human history;
with the leading features of that great event all
must, no doubt, be acquainted; my object is
merely to trace the progress of races on that vast
territory, and, after a single remark on the an-
cient history of the American continent, I shall
resume my discourse.

When Columbus and those who followed him
ﬁrst set foot on the islands and mainland of that

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 249

vast continent, destined to play so important a
part in the future destinies of mankind—that
land where the greatest of all experiments, to be
solved alone by time, is now progressing, namely,
the practicability of self-government, or democracy;
that land where liberty, driven from Europe, Asia,
and Africa, by whiskered dragoons and church mili-
tants, found that sure resting-place, that fulcrum
with which she may, perhaps, one day upturn the
strongholds of fanaticism and violence ; that land
which ﬁrst of all brought out the true character
of the Saxon race, of the Saxon mind, in fact—in
that land Columbus and his followers, most of
whom were men of great ability—though he alone
had genius—in that land these great men found
nothing to resemble strictly the countries they
had left; nor trees, nor shrubs, nor ﬁsh, nor fowl,
nothing which lived resembled what they had
previously seen; I had better say, nothing was
identical with the productions of the old world.
Man was there, no doubt, but he was not identical
with any other race; in his bodily and mental
qualities he differed widely from all others.
The horse was not there, nor sheep, nor cattle;
nor the beauteous wilde of Africa; lions and pan—
thcrs, giraffe and antelope; in the virgin forests
of America stalked no elephants; the river-horse
and the terrible rhinoceros were nowhere to be
found. But other equally strange forms presented

250 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

themselves, peopling the ﬁelds, and rivers, and
forests; all differing speciﬁcally and generically,
as we express this grand and solemn fact, in
technical language; I call it a solemn fact, seeing
that it gives rise to profound reﬂections. Whence
came this new race of men and animals? The
answer was easy upon the old Hippocratic
theory of the effects of climate; the men were
Europeans burned to a copper colour by the sun
and wind, and other things, including the smoke
of their wigwams; and the animals were just the
same as those of the old world. Careless ob-
servers ! Man had journeyed without the horse,
and sheep, and ox; he had also, I think, for-
gotten the cerealia; a theory was easily got up
to explain all this. Last, came men of science,
lovers of truth, enemies of romance and false—
hood. Their labours proved that everything
there that lived was speciﬁcally different from
living beings on any other land; that even the
apes differed speciﬁcally from the apes of the
old world, by having an additional tooth, and by
being without that central spot or hole in the
retina of the eye, found in man and in the apes
of the old world; that the new world was an
erroneous phrase, seeing that it was a very old
world in every sense of the word; that the
copper-coloured race of America—that race which
extended throughout the length and breadth of

'THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 251

the land—were neither metamorphosed Welsh-
men, nor Connaught men, nor Norwegians; nor
even Polynesians; the last hypothesis, I believe,
offered the credulous for the peopling of America,
always excepting that stand-by of the thorough-
bred theorist, namely, that the copper Indians,
that is, the true Americans, were the lost tribes of
Israel, who ﬂed there on rafts, headed, I suppose,
by Prester John. Let us leave such sickening,
silly follies to their inventors and to those who hate

 

[ZValive Americmz.]

252 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

truth—the romancists, the novelists, the tourists—
and proceed with our inquiry. Buﬂ'on concluded
that animal life was not so vigorous on the Ameri-
can soil as in the old world, comparing one ani-
mal with another; this simple fact, for it is one,
roused the wrath of an Anglo-Saxon, now settled
in that country, but calling himself an American;
I mean Mr. Cooper, the novelist. True to his
Saxon race, he was determined to make out, in
the face of all common sense and truth—despising
the one by his trade or calling, and being seem—
ingly without the other—that the American soil
nourished as big animals as ever were grown in
old France or England, or the whole world;
that the buffalo was as large as our oxen, and the
turkey larger than a barn-door fowl; what a pity
he had not also added, that geese and asses of all
kinds abound, and are at least as large, as pe-
dantic, and as stupidly solemn as any the Britishers
could ever boast of. This is the Mr. Cooper who
compared, through ten drawlishly-spun pages,
the Rhine with the immortal Hudsonvthe ever-
lasting Hudson—that large river which runs near
the ancient city of New York, so rich in the
association of great names and stirring events.
What solemn pedantry, what deplorable want of
taste and sense, to forget the passage of the Rhine
by Caesar and Napoleon! These are the names
which give immortality to the Rhine, not the

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 253

amount of water it contains, nor its length nor
breadth; it is not the size of the Nile which
makes it live in the recollections of nations. Do
you not see in this miserable comparison of Mr.
Cooper the egotism of the Saxon peep out in all
its true colours? Our rivers are bigger than yours
—-—prettier, deeper; our horses are faster than
yours—fatter and better; our oxen are larger
than yours—sleeker and ﬁner. You will excuse,
I trust, these critical remarks; folly and egotism
merit severe censure, whether individual or na-
tional—in fact, these terms are identical, nations
merely being aggregates of individuals. I
shall return to Mr. Cooper by-and—by, and to
his native Americans, as he calls the Anglo-Saxon
multitude who went over the Atlantic a few years
ago, and who, by settling there, as always hap-
pens with the Saxon, forgot their country, their
race, and all about it. To return a scientiﬁc in-
quiries have diSproved all these idle romances
and errors. Let us now look at the race as we
ﬁnd them.

Whilst I write this the Saxon race is at work
in America, clutching at empires. The go-ahead
principle (meaning want of all principle) is at
work; the Floridas, Texas, Oregon, California,
Mexico, all must reciprocate; the hypocrisy
called organized, but which means organic, no
doubt is at work. I blame them not; I pretend

254 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

not even to censure: man acts from his impulses,
his animal impulses, and he occasionally employs
his pure reason to mystify and conceal his motives
from others. But I have already explained all
this, let me, therefore, speak to you of the
original American races—the races found on the
American continent and its islands by Columbus,
Vespuccio, Pizarro, Cortes, and others; not for—
getting our countryman, Penn, and his troop of
saints. These races still exist; in a century 01'
two they may have ceased to be; the Ameri-
can human animal is one which seemingly cannot
be domesticated—cannot be civilized. When
brought within the Saxon house and pale, he
becomes consumptive, and perishes; he is the
man of the woods, diﬂ'ering from all other men,
as the apes of his continent differ essentially
from those of the old world, as we term the
European, African, and Asiatic continents. But
not to the same extent, for there exists, in so far
as I know, no remarkable or specific differences
between them and us ; for the apes of the new
continent have an additional tooth, distinguishing
them from the old world, and the structure of the
eye is essentially different. I allude more espe-
cially to the race known by the name of red or
copper-coloured Indians, extending, as it would
seem, from Nootka Sound and the borders of the
Arctic Circle to the rock—bound shores of the

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 255

Land of Fire, including, probably, all the West
India islands, the tribes of Brazil, and the Caribs.
At the extremities of this long and singularly-
shaped continent, it seems to me that two other
races, which may be termed polar or arctic,
exist: to the north, we are certain that the
Esquimaux differ essentially from the red In-
dian;at and in the south, it is probable that the
miserable dark-coloured population wandering
on the outskirts of the Land of Fire, are not
red Indians, but a race analogous to the Austra-
lian, and to the former inhabitants of Van Die-
men’s Land; polar or arctic races of men, dark
in colour, swarthy, peculiar; I speak particularly
of the Esquimaux: thus, in America, the races
darken as we approach the poles; the eternal
snows which ought to have whitened them, ac-
cording to the theorists, from Hippocrates to
Barton Smith, have failed to bleach them. Let
me speak ﬁrst of the red Indian, and nextof the
two other races, that is, if the southern one be a
distinct race, which has not yet been proved.
When the European races, within the well-
authenticated historic period, discovered America,
they found, in its tropical portions, organized
kingdoms or empires, arts tolerably advanced,
and an appearance of domesticity. In the dense

* For illustrative woodcut, see page 140.

256 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

woods of South America the Indian still roamed
about, a naked savage; and in the woods of
Northern America they still found the red man
a savage, though with somewhat peculiar in-
stitutions. They were, probably, all of one race
——the Botocudo and Patagonian; the Mexican,
Peruvian, and red Indian; the Carib and the ﬂat-
headed Indian of the Oregon. I say this, how-
ever, with hesitation, ready to be put right on
a point respecting which I have had so few
opportunities for observation. But, be it as it
may, I must decline entering into any contro-
versy with those who derive them from the Welsh,
01' Danes, or Mongols, or Asiatics, or Malays; or
even from the ten tribes headed by Prester John.
These are old women’s fables, not worth a mo-
ment’s consideration. For after Dr. Laing has
brought his men from the Malayan peninsula to
people all America, he must also bring over in
the same boats, camels, goats, and sheep, to be
converted into llamas, alpacas, &c. And then
the peculiar apes, and the two-toed sloth, and
ten thousand other American forms of life which
Dr. Laing has forgotten to allude to; and the
buffalo, which is peculiar to America. And then
he must explain to us how it was that, if the
Malays and Mongols came there, they did not
bring with them their sheep and oxen, and horses
and pigs; for nothing of the kind was found

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 257

there by Columbus, nor by anybody else: in
short, the hypothesis is a miserable One, and
merits no attention from anybody. The Jewish
Scriptures have only suffered by such attempts
at reconciliation.

A ﬂat or depressed forehead is the peculiar
characteristic of the American copper-coloured
race. It existed amongst the Caribs, who, I be-
lieve, are now extinct, and it is seen everywhere.
That it is produced artiﬁcially I totally disbelieve.
Persons seeing applications made to the head of
the child may fancy such to be capable of pro-
ducing it, but erroneously. In certain cases it
may increase it so as to amount to positive deo
formity—this I will admit, but no more; the
fable about the artiﬁcial production of a ﬂat-
headed people, is at least as old as Hippocrates,
but probably much older. He placed them on
the shores of the Euxine Sea, the America of
those days, and like all medical men, true to his
class and order, he offered a theory based on
very slight materials. But I shall discuss these
theories in a future lecture, and need not speak
further of them here. The great feature of the
red Indian, of the American race in fact, is the
ﬂattening of the forehead, more or less, in dif-
ferent tribes and nations. The Caribs were re-
markable for this; the Peruvians, on the other

S

258 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

hand, for irregularly formed crania, imperfect
ossiﬁcation, &c., as has been already shown.
When the Europeans ﬁrst landed,the American
was probably a race not on the ascending, but
descending, series, gradually becoming extinct.
They had probably passed through countless
periods of existence, and were merely living on
the crumbs of a past generation—the race who
built and inhabited Copan. How mysterious are
these ruined cities of Central America! Hiero-
glyphics, pyramids, mummies, columns like those
of Luxor, but on a smaller scale! Egypt redis-
covered as reproduced in Central America. Ye
theorists, what say you now? Were these re-
mains of former grandeur the work of the fore-
fathers of the present race of American aborigines?
or, as these have altered somewhat since the
days of the Incas and of Montezuma, were they
constructed by the former Mexicans and Pe-
ruvians? I should think not exactly. They
must have been constructed by, or copied from
others. Perhaps the continents were at one time
joined Where the Atlantic surge now rolls, and
architects from Egypt and North Africa, from
the land of the Guanches, in fact, assisted the
American aborigines in raising structures whose
meaning they possibly did not comprehend. Or,
had Coptic and Phaanician men, the great masons
of the earth, the true builders, who seem to have

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 259

taught all others, who built instinctively, as bees
construct hives, not houses, but temples—had
they ever overrun these countries, acted as in-
structors and masters, and held the soil ? or, was
there a race prior to all these? or, ﬁnally, had
the American race lived its period, gone to the
full extent of their instinctive civilization, and
were rapidly declining when Cortes marched on
Mexico, and Pizarro on Peru ? Did the European
find the race hastening on to a state of natural
extinction ?

To these and numerous questions like these no
satisfactory answer can be given ; all we know is,
but little ; we scarcely have a good idea of what
this race was at the commencement of their his-
toric period. But we do know that there are
mummies resembling the present Peruvian; that
the remains of vast buildings having an Egyptian
cast still exist; and ﬁnally, that, notwithstanding
the infusion of much European blood, the race
cannot stand its ground. Now this is the point
most worthy of our present notice.

Cast your eyes on this small spot, and see
what it portends ; it is the Falkland Isles. There
a small group of Saxons have located themselves.
They could not exactly land at once on the main-
land of Patagonia, and settle there; this does not
suit the organized hypocrisy which regulates the
Saxon; he settles on some out-of-the-way spot—

s 2

260 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

Aden, the Falkland Isles, Calcutta, Hong—Kong,
Borneo ; something unobtrusive. The French, a
Celtic race, try to imitate us, but they do it clumsily;
their hypocrisy is not so perfectly organized. The
group on the Falklands are looking towards the
mainland as a counterbalance to the loss of the
United States ﬁrst, and of Canada, which is sure
to follow. But direct your attention northwards,
and see the islands we hold; precariously, how-
ever, as being within the tropics, and therefore,
wholly inimical to the Saxon constitution. An
attempt was made on Buenos Ayres; we were
beaten shamefully—nothing scarcely equals it
in the history of defeats: the commander of that
expedition should have been hanged, and another
and another sent until we drove a plough over the
city, and blotted it from the maps. But not so;
still the ﬁght goes on, and we are endeavour-
ing to seize on these fertile plains where the
European can live. Across is Chili; northwards
Peru, and then Mexico. Now, the fate of all
these nations must be the same; it results from
the nature of their populations, and nothing can
arrest it. I select Mexico for the description,
but most of my remarks will apply with equal
truth, I believe, to the others, and especially to
Peru. The original population of Mexico was
Indian—the red Indian—a half-civilized barba-
rian. On this was engrafted the Spanish stock,

THE DARK RACES or MEN. 261

itself not pure, being composed of several races,
but still energetic, though likewise on the wane.
The product was a mulatto, or half breed, whom
nature never intended should exist as a race;
therefore, having ceased receiving supplies from
Old Spain, mulattoes could no longer be generated
from that stock; they themselves, the mulattoes,
die out and out, I think, in three or four genera-
tions, unless crossed and recrossed with some
pure blood, white or black ; they, therefore, would
have ceased to exist; the Indian blood, predo-
minating from the ﬁrst, would naturally gain the
ascendant; but, as that race was seemingly dying
out when Cortes seized the kingdom, there
existed no elements in Mexico to perpetuate the
race beyond a few centuries. Now, this is pre-
cisely what has happened: all but English statis-
ticians and statesmen knew that the Mexican
population materially decreased; and so it will
be with Peru and Chili : physiological causes are
at work which would have settled the rank these
nations were to hold in the world, independent
altogether of the Saxon sword; this being new
thrown into the balance, of course decides the
matter against the Indian. Had they held by
Old Spain, the Mexican Indian might have con-
tinued to receive supplies of fresh energy from
Europe: not good, I admit, but still superior to
their own; as it is, their fall is certain, for the

262 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

Saxon will not mingle with them; the Spaniard,
the Celt-Iberian, would, but not the Saxon; thus
they would have surely perished, even inde-
pendent of Saxon interference. The physio-
logical laws of reproduction were against them.
What are their numberSP—say ﬁve, or six, or
seven millions: why, they have received more
than that from Europe !—-seven millions in three
hundred years. They have not increased by a.
single soul in three hundred years. But neither
nations nor individuals stand still; onward they
must go, or retrograde: there is no middle course;
no ﬁxity, no ﬁnality, in that sense. I have often
read, years ago, in those popular things got up
to amuse the people, of the thriving state of the
population of these countries; a pretty tale,
dressed up for the three-halfpenny literature; a
smoothly-written phrenological thing about the
American republics, and the noble Mexicans,
Peruvians, Chilians, 810.; White lies, dressed up
with false statistics, to give them an air of truth ;
in the meantime no attempt at analysis—no
desire to look into principles—a ﬁne generalizing
tone, smoothing over enormous errors. Mr.
Canning boasted of having created the American
republics; but how are they to come off? He
thought, no doubt, that, being men, some few
amongst them might have some common sense;
but he forgot, or did not know, that he had with—

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 263

drawn from them, ﬁrst, fresh supplies of Euro-
pean blood; second, that by this he annihilated
the so-called half breed, who always die out;
third, that the Indian blood would ﬁnally pre-
dominate, which Indian race would never civilize,
but retrograde towards that point where Cortes
found them, and would also die out. These
elements were not understood by Mr. Canning,
if known to him, despised. In man the states-
man sees a machine bound to obey the existing
laws; the only power they understand to enforce
the law is the bayonet. Why Mexicans or Indians
(for that is really their true name) cannot unite
with Saxons to form one nation, they either
cannot or will not understand. But Nature’s
laws are stronger than bayonets—she made the
Saxon and she made the Indian; but no mixed
race called Mexican will she support. Already
we are told that the Indian blood predominates:
of course it will; but give the so-called nation
another century, and then let us consider what
must happen. The Castilian blood will then be
all but extinct, the Indian predominating; by
that time the Anglo-Saxon, true to his go—ahead
principles, seizes Mexico; but no Saxon will
mingle with dark blood; with him the dark races
must be slaves, or cease to exist. This principle,
so small in semblance, so unimportant, and so
{inconsequential in appearance, will yet be found

264 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

equal to the extinction of all Indian blood in
Mexico; the new canton or federated state, form-
ing part of the union, will then be colonized by
Anglo-Saxons. They will forget New York
and Florida, whence they came, and become
native true-born Mexicans; thus the phrase ban-
died about ﬁxes at last on a race originally from
Scandinavia, and still quite unaltered. But here
a difﬁculty awaits them: the Saxon race cannot
labour in a tropical country; they must have
slaves, or leave it; this seems the great law of
nature for the protection of the tropical races of
men; neither Celt nor Saxon can labour in a
tropical country; they may seize a country, as
we have done India, and hold it by the bayonet,
as we do that vast territory; but we cannot colo-
nize it; it is no part of Britain in any sense, and
never will be; the white race can never till the
ﬁelds of Hindostan.

Of the remaining original races of America I
need say but little. The southern race is but
imperfectly known to ,us; the northern, or Esqui-
maux, have been long before the public, yet their
real history is still to write; this is my opinion.

Let me conclude this portion of my discourse
with a few remarks on the insular portion of this
continent, and on those regions in the north
which still own the sovereignty of Britain. And,
ﬁrst of these, the great Celtic family of Gaul
colonized Canada; aportion of the race settled in

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 265

it, and they carried thither, I was about to say,
their religion, manners, laws, forms of holding
property, &c.; but why not rather say at once,
that a portion of a Celtic race from France seized
on a part of Canada ; that, being Celts, they car-
ried with them the Celtic character? Is not this
enough? What else could they do P They had,
and they have yet, their seigniories and their
laws of primogeniture; their natural indolence
and good taste; their habits of clinging to each
other and leaving the country desolate; they
huddled themselves in villages, seemingly terri-
ﬁed to locate in the open country; they had no
self-dependence, no go-ahead notions; and so
they all but stood still, waiting the arrival of the
latest fashions from Paris. Then poured in the
Saxon upon them; seized their territory, and
advised them to become English. With this
seemingly quite reasonable request they refused
compliance; hence the revolts—hence the at-
tempts to re-establish Celtic authority in Canada.
This struggle can only cease when the Saxon
has become the preponderating race in Lower
Canada, which can never happen until the laws
of entail and primogeniture are abolished. These
laws perpetuate the Celtic race, and with it all the

feuds of race.* They have the same effect pre-
cisely in Ireland: Canada is merely a western

Ireland and Wales; the inextinguishable hatred

* For illustrative woodcut, see page 52.

266 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

of races is in full play; unite they never will;
one must become extinct. Now it is easy to
see which goes ﬁrst to the wall; the laws of
entail, after a severe struggle, will be abolished
in both countries, and then the Saxon steps in
with his self-dependent, go-ahead principle; then
ﬂourish commerce, manufacture, agriculture, and
every useful speculation; then will Ireland be-
come Saxon, but not till then. So will “ Le has
Canada,” as it is called, soon, under such circum-
stances, ccase to be Celtic. In the meantime we
must not suppose that the Celtic struggle will end
here. Some ten years ago I ventured to hint
that Whenever the Celtic race became sufﬁciently
numerous in any part of the Union, the Saxon
would be disposed to notice them. I allowed
some half century, however, to elapse before the
war of race might show itself; but in this I was
wrong, for it has already appeared in one of the
northern states, the Saxons assembling tumultu-
ously, and burning a Roman-catholic church,
with other acts of violence towards the frequenters
of that church, who of course are Celtic. We
shall see: time unfolds all events; the war of
race will some day shake the Union to its founda-
tion. They never will mix—never commingle
and unite. Though using the same language,
they apply to some most important words totally
different meanings. The one loves war, the other
peace; the law and the constable’s baton are gene-

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 967

rally sufﬁcient for the rule of the one, and the
bayonet, on which, of course, all law ultimately
reposes, is kept out of view; but with the Celt
this, I think, can never be; he can be made to
respect the law only by means of the sword ever
drawn. It is not that he is more savage or more
brutal (the term in no shape applies to him) or
less a lover of justice than others; but his temper
is quicker, and he ﬂies to the sword, to arms, as
his natural instinct. Against this disposition the
state must ever be on its guard. Both races talk
of republican institutions, and the Saxon may
well boast that pure democracy prevails through-
out the Union; that it forms a large element in
Britain; that it is not quite extinct in Holland
and Norway, though ground to the dust in France
and throughout the rest of Europe. But the
Celt has not the most distant idea of true per-
sonal liberty. Look at him in France ! See him
rebuild the bastiles he once destroyed! See
forty millions of people, warlike and courageous,
submit to become the mere tools of a miserable
dynastyﬁ‘

3“ This was written as the lectures were delivered, ﬁve
years ago; and prior, of course, to the late revolution. The
journalists of France inform us, no doubt, of a republic which
is said to exist somewhere in France; be it so: in the mean-
time I beg leave to hint at the following facts. Paris is in a
state of siege; walled and fortiﬁed round about; the passport
system continues in full force. A soldier of the name of
Cavaignac stands in the place of the dynasty, &c. &c.

268 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

And now of the insular part of the new world.
One great section, Hayti, has shown the white
man that he cannot colonize a tropical country;
it must revert to those races on whom nature has
bestowed a constitution adapted to labour under
a tropical sun. Cuba and Jamaica will follow;
they will become black spots in the history of
civilization, for nothing in the history of mankind
permits us to believe in the perfect civilization of
the Negro race. The policy of European races
would be to expel the Negro and transplant the
Coolies, Hindoos, Chinese, or other feeble races,
as labourers and workmen,—bondmen, in fact.
W’hy not call everything by its right name 3"
Over these the Saxon and Celt might lord it,
as we do in India, with a few European bayonets,
levying taxes and land-rent; holding a monopoly
of trade; furnishing them with salt at ﬁfty times
its value; but we cannot do this with the true
Negro.

I am disposed to ascribe to the element of race
a circumstance which has occurred oftener than
once in the delivery of these lectures in various
institutions—literary, scientiﬁc, and popular. The
attention of the audience could not be so com-
pletely secured as when I spoke to them of the fair
races. It seemed to me again a question of race.
What signify these dark races to us ? Who cares
particularly for the Negro, or the Hottentot, or the

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 969

Kafﬁr? These latter have proved a very trouble-
some race, and the sooner they are put out of the
way the better. I will not say that this was ex-
pressed, but I think it was understood; it seemed
to be felt that black and coloured men differ very
much from fair men, like ourselves. This is the
world’s sympathy : they are good enough people,
but not of our kind. Practically, all men
believe in the element of race; it is denied only
theoretically; thus theory and practice seldom
coincide: profession is not conduct; fair words
do not always imply straightforward actions. Even
the daily press, so powerful an agent for the ex-
posure of such hypocrisy, must look to those who
support it; Negroes and Red Indians, Hottentots
and Kaﬂirs, neither read nor pay for daily jour-
nals.

 

[The Skull oft/ac Tasmanian]

270 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

SECTION V.——P/zysical Characteristics.

The anatomical structure of the dark races of
men is but imperfectly known ; I may venture to
say it is not known at all. The details have not
been observed and described by anatomists of
reputation: few anatomists go abroad to sojourn
in tropical countries, and opportunities for the
dissection of the dark races are comparatively
rare in the seats of learning and science in
Europe. The Hottentot Venus, who died in
Paris, was'examined there, and some most dis-
tinguished men took part in the examination.
But I can ﬁnd no detailed account of the struc-
tures deserving the name of a report. It is known
that the Hottentot and Bosjeman race have, in as
far as regards the female, the reproductive organs
singularly formed; but these singularities are
thought not to be peculiar to these races. I Speak
of them as somewhat different to each other,
though strongly aﬂiliated. In this respect I do not
quite agree with my most esteemed friend Dr.
Andrew Smith, the ﬁrst of all authorities, how-
ever, in respect of the natural history of extra-
tropical Southern Africa.

Were the examinations conducted on a more
extended scale, I have every reason to believe
that many other differences in structure would be

 

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 271

found to exist. The nasal bones are narrow
and short, they usually coalesce; the ascending
branches of the upper maxillary bones are broad,
and the breadth between the eyes correspondingly
remarkable. The power of vision is most admir-
able, but it is lost by a single cross with the white
race. So also are the elastic fatty cushions over
the glutci muscles and on the haunches generally,
so characteristically marked in the Hottentot
Venus. If my memory be correct, it was M. de
Blainville (my illustrious teacher, the ﬁrst com-
parative anatomist of the present age) who pointed
out the existence of similar elastic fatty cushions
over the deltoid muscles, which he no doubt
observed in the Hottentot Venus. I did not re-
mark them suﬂiciently when in South Africa, but
I do not question the fact of their occasional
presence. The truth is, that such peculiarities
are by no means universal amongst the race—at
least, so it appeared to me ; and the same remark
may be made, I think, in respect of the still more
striking peculiarities of the reproductive system.
Many other curious circumstances might here be
added, from my personal knowledge of this race,
the yellow, pigmy race of Southern Africa, but
they would not compensate for the absolute want
of scientiﬁc details, which no scientiﬁc man has
yet furnished. Neither literature nor science can
ﬂourish in the colonies, and the disposition of the

272 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

British government is opposed to the true culti-
vation of science. Its utility, which is indeed often
remote, is questioned by the utilitarian practical
government of a utilitarian practical race, looking
directly and intently at immediate results and
material interests. Accordingly, no attempt that
I know of has ever been made to ascertain the
extent of the Hottentot and Bosjeman race to-
wards the north, that is, into the interior of Africa;
a problem surely worthy a solution, for no more
singular race of men exist on the earth than the
.Hottentot race.

The ﬁrst Kafﬁr crania transmitted to Europe
were by myself, and I may claim, I believe, the
merit of having ﬁrst pointed out to the learned
of Europe the true nature of this ﬁne race. They
are not Negroes, but yet their skulls are not well
formed—~they are deﬁcient in elevation and in
breadth. They differ vastly from the Hottentot,
to whom, indeed, they bear no resemblance what-
ever, although it is quite possible that interme-
diate races between them may be found on the
Gariepine streams, or even in the Calihari Desert.
Everything is mystery here. Their limbs are of
great strength, but not their arms, and their
elongated, narrow foot, can at once be distin-
guished from all others. Let us hope that some
scientiﬁc man will favour mankind with a correct
history of the race before their ﬁnal extinction.

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 273

When Hanno the Carthaginian led his great
colony along the shores of Africa, on the west,
they met with beings so curiously made, and
covered with hair, that the Phoenician general
was anxious to carry specimens of this race
(of men?) to Carthage. Three were seized——
females; but they proved so troublesome to
the Carthaginians that they were forced to slay
them, and carry their stuffed skins to Carthage,
where no doubt they were looked on as great
curiosities. Let us hope, for the honour of
humanity, that these women, so named, by-
Hanno, were not women, but chimpanzees, which ..
still exist on that coast.

I have seen lately in England the stuffed skin
of a Hottentot woman, a great curiosity, no doubt.
Now, as the Kafﬁrs will in all probability soon
become extinct, it might be worth while to adopt
this method of preserving a few specimens of the

   

[Ckimyanzea]
T

 

274, THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

race. The stuffed skin of poor Hinsa, the noblest
of the KaﬂEir nation by birth and courage, who
was killed (Lord Glenelg, if I recollect right,
seemed to think murdered) on the Kei, might
have ﬁgured in the British Museum, forming an
exciting object of attention to the sight-seers of
London. But to return.

The scientiﬁc history of the Kafﬁr race is still
to write. I

2. A very general belief has prevailed from
the days of Hippocrates, and long prior, no
doubt, that by artiﬁcial means the form of various
parts of the human body, the general shape itself,
may be permanently altered. Stating the cir-
cumstances from recollection connected with this
subject, I would observe that it was Hippocrates
who said that the Macrocephali inhabiting the
shores of the Black Sea applied pressure to the
head, altering its form considerably, and pro-
ducing a deformation which continued with the
life of the individual. But Hippocrates, if my
memory be correct, went still further than this;
he allows that the practice of thus improving the
form of the head had been long discontinued in
his time, but that, from being originally an acci-
dental or artiﬁcial deformation, it had become
congenital, no longer requiring artiﬁcial means for
its production. Theories like these merit little
or no attention, whether invented by Hippocrates

THE DARK RACES or MEN. 275

or by a less skilful hand. The same story has
been told in modern times of the Carib of the
“'est Indies; also of the Chenook; but I have
seen crania from the isles of the Southern or
Paciﬁc Ocean, if possible still more depressed
even than those of the Chenook, or inhabitant of
the banks of the Oregon. The natives of these
countries imagine that by applying a bag of sand
to the forehead of the infant at or soon after
birth, and by maintaining it there with com-
presses, they may thereby increase to an extreme
degree the ﬂatness of the forehead natural to their
race. Now, it is just possible they may do so in
a slight degree, but even this is doubtful. The
American race has the forehead depressed natu-
rally; it was the same with the Caribs, a race of
men nearly extinct. When we speak of the
American tribes or nations being all of one race,
we merely state a probability; there may have
been several, though strongly afﬁliated races;
much information is still wanting on this point.
Accident placed in my hands, a few years ago,
a memoir of a distinguished French anatomist,
whose name I, at this moment, cannot recollect,
unless it be M. Foville. The object of the me-
moir was to prove that the practice, still it appears
prevailing in some parts of France, of swathing
the head of the infant immediately on birth, was
a pernicious one, calculated to give rise to mal-
T ’2

276 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

formation of the cranium, and consequently of
the brain, injurious to the health and intellects
of the sufferer. The kind of malformation ob—
served by him consisted in a remarkable depres-
sion, extending over the vertex, in the region of
the parietal bones, sometimes more than an inch
and a half or two inches in breadth, and obviously
corresponding to the place over which the nurse
or parent had placed a tight fold of the bandage.
But it is difﬁcult to imagine such results to ﬂow
from such a cause, for to it M. Foville traces
many cases of idiocy and dementia. This form
of head is by no means uncommon; I have de-
scribed it in my “Physiological Lectures” some
years ago; I have met with it frequently during
life, but never could observe the idiotic state of
the person as its accompaniment. This distin-
guished anatomist and observer must, I think, be
mistaken in his views respecting this form of the
head. It is the theory of Hippocrates, with some
additions. No deviations in form, even when
they can be produced, can ever- become con-
genital or hereditary. Let the Chinese foot bear
witness to this fact.* For thousands of years has
this non-progressive race been endeavouring to
destroy the form of the foot in Chinese women,
without any success further than the mutilation

* For illustrative woodcut, see page 101.

Ar

rm: DARK RACES or MEN. 917

of the individual: nor has the act of marriage
permanently altered the form of woman. Expellas
naturam furea, tamen usque recurrat, is the pithy
and true saying of Horace, veriﬁed from all
antiquity.

The fragments existing respecting the physical
structures are few, and in many cases not to be
depended on. Those which have been observed
are in most instances reducible to the laws of
imperfect development, as partly understood by
Harvey, and the anatomists of his day, but best
explained by the continental anatomists -—
Bojanus, Oken, Spix, and others. Thus, the fold
of integument we observe in many persons, and
particularly in the young, towards the inner angle
of the eye, I have thought to be much more
frequent and much larger in the Hottentot and
Bosjcman than in the European. It has been
also described as present universally, I think, by
a careful observer, Mr. Edwards, amongst the
Esquimaux, from whose interesting account of
the race I make the following quotation:—

“I may here remark, that there is in many
individuals a peculiarity about the eye amount-
ing, in some instances, to deformity, which I
have not noticed elsewhere. It consists in the
inner corner of the eye being entirely covered by
a duplication of the adjacent loose skin of the
eyelids and nose. This fold is lightly stretched

278 - THE DARK RACES or MEN.

over the edges of the eyelids, and forms, as it
were, a third palpebra of a crescentic shape. The
aperture is in consequence rendered somewhat
pyriform, the inner curvature being very obtuse,
and in some individuals distorted by an angle,
formed where the fold crosses the border of the
lower palpebra. This singularity depends upon
the variable form of the orbit during immature
age, and is very remarkable in childhood, less
so towards adult age, and then, it would seem,
frequently disappearing altogether; for the pro—
portion in which it exists among grown-up per-
sons bears but a small comparison with that
observed among the young.”

The deformity here described exists probably
in every human foetus, and its continuance in
after-life is, therefore, a mere persistence of a
foetal or embryonic form. The fold of integri—
ment does not correspond, however, is not the
analogue nor homologue of a palpebra or third
eyelid; the third eyelid exists in all animals,
being quite rudimentary, though sensibly present,
in man, whilst it attains its maximum of develop.
ment in the bird.

There are appearances in the reproductive
organs in some dark races indicative of a persist-
ence of foetal forms to the adult or mature age.

SECTION VI.—The Chinese, Mongol, Calmuck,

THE DARK RACES or MEN. 279

and Tartar, and all or most of those tribes and
races which either inhabit the vast Steppes of
Asia, extend over the Himalayan range, or
wander by the shores of the icy seas northward
from Siberia, from the north of the Obi to the
furthest land claimed in Asia by the Muscovite,
belong to the dark races of men; of these
races the Mongol was once the most powerful;
his reign was that of terror and desolation for
the rest of mankind. Twice, I think,he overran
a great portion of the then civilized world; pene-
trated into Europe, and then retired. What has
become of the vast races of the swarthy Mongol,
whose tented ﬁeld resembled a noble city? How
were they destroyed? Why have, they all but
ceased to be? A few hundred years ago they
once more threatened the liberties of mankind;
now, absorbed as a mere item in the Muscovite’s
territories, they claim no separate distinction as
a power. China, which is also occupied by a
Mongolian race, must one day follow; the con-
test for its possession will probably lie between
the Muscovite and the Australian, for by that
name no doubt will its Anglo-Saxon inhabitants
be soon known, when, like our sons and brothers
in the Western world, they throw off our alle-
giance and set up for themselves. As a great
and free and a democratic nation, as no doubt
they will be, they will dispute Japan, and even

.280 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

China itself, with the Muscovite. The fate of
the rest of the Mongol race is settled: Sarmatian
or Saxon, the Celestial Empire, and its sister of
Japan, must one day become. But it will not be
English: it will be Australian, and belong to the
Anglo-Saxon population of Australia. How
speedily does the Anglo-Saxon show his real
character when relieved-from the pressure of the
Three Estates. In America he will not allow a
black man to be a free man; in Australia he
deems him entirely below his notice; in Tas-
mania he swept him, and at once, entirely from

    

{Chinese Pagoda.]

THE DARK RACES or MEN. 281

the land of his birth. N o compunctious visitings
about the “fell swoop” which extinguished a
race.

A few years ago it was the fashion to speak
of the vast population of China—300,000,000 or
more; its armies, too, were described as immense;
its resources ample. Now mark what happened.
A Saxon nation of about twenty-two millions of
population, and having a disposable force of a
few thousand men at the most—never able to
bring into the ﬁeld, unaided by allies, a force
entitled to be called an army—quarrels with this
said Celestial Empire of three hundred millions,
having at its disposal, as was said, an army of
four or ﬁve millions of men. The result of this
pretty little quarrel between the smugglers
(English) and the inhabitants of the Celestial
Empire is, that the former send a handful of
European troops in ships some thousand miles
across the ocean. This handful of troops, which
could not have marched twenty miles inland
from Boulogne without destruction, meets with
no effectual resistance. It seizes the second city
'of their empire, and was prevented taking and
plundering the capital itself merely by a bribe
of six or seven millions of money—the silver we
had paid them for tea.

In the meantime the army of ﬁve millions never
appeared; with the greatest difﬁculty (as was

282 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

evident, seeing that their very capital city and
political existence was threatened) they scarcely
mustered thirty-ﬁve thousand men; this was
their largest army, and it was easily defeated
by half their numbers. Surely it is time for
geographical and other writers to leave off the
extravagancies they have been in the habit of
publishing in regard to China and Japan. In
a sheet just published here in London, called
“The World as it is in 1848,” the authors have
reduced the three hundred millions to one
hundred and ninety-eight millions. How able
statisticians are! They will undertake to prove
you almost anything. But it may be as well to
reduce their population of China by another odd
hundred millions or so; for assuredly either the
central provinces of China are deserts or the
central government is without strength. It is
impossible to come to any other conclusion but
one of these. That the most ancient nation on
the earth; the most populous; with a population
exceeding that of Europe; reported to have been
highly civilized for nearly three thousand years;
productive, rich, should yet not be able to muster
forty thousand men to defend its capital from the
invasion of a few thousand “ barbarians,” as they
are pleased to term us, is altogether incredible,
excepting on the suppositions I have made. But
now, having mentioned the term civilization as

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 283

applied to China, let us consider what it may
amount to amongst a Mongol race.

Long prior to the Christian era the race in-
habiting China, Nepaul, and many adjoining
territories, was acquainted with the magnet, the
art of printing, the making of gunpowder, and
with most useful domestic and mechanical arts,
yet they never could turn any of these inventions
to any great account. On the contrary, they re-
mained stationary, whilst the Greek and the
Roman, following the Coptic, and next the
modern European, successively arose, culminated,
and, with the exception of the last, terminated.
In the meantime, China appears to have been
completely stationary; she neither invented nor
discovered; their arts must have belonged to some
other race, from whom she borrowed without
rightly comprehending them. Their religion is
apuzzle; their morals of the lowest; of science
they can have none, nor is it clear that they com-
prehend the meaning of the term. A love for
science implies a love of truth: now truth they
despise and abhor. I do not believe there is an
individual Chinaman who could be made to com-
prehend a single fact-in physical geography. So
profound was their ignorance, their want of fore-
sight and of common sense, that they could not
send a single person to Europe so as to give any
information about the armament which ultimately

284 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

overthrew and plundered them. An English or
French engineer possesses more practical know-
ledge than the united savans of their empire.
Humboldt, the illustrious Humboldt, praises
them, and thinks highly of them. Whilst we in
Europe, he remarks, for so many centuries during
the dark ages were outraging every principle of
humanity and common sense, by auto-da-ﬁfs, and
by the torturing and slaying of human beings
as witches and dealers in evil arts, the Chinese
were recording eclipses. These are facts, no
doubt; they do not say much for the Saxons
and Celts of former times; the savage nature
of the elementary men of Northern Europe
had not been tamed down; even yet, brutality,
ferocity, frivolity, and a base and dreadful fana-
ticism are occasionally but too apt to surge up
from time to time, in these so called European
countries, telling us of the presence of those
elementary hands and minds which still abound
in all races; but the recording eclipses is, after
all, no great effort of the mind.

Schlegel thinks them highly civilized, and
instances their canals, bridges, &c.; but this is
a great error—the beaver, the bee, and the wasp
and ant would, in this case, be civilized; the
hillock of the African termites is a more remark-
able labour comparatively than the pyramids to

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 285

man; man builds, cuts canals, makes roads, in-
stinctively, exactly like an animal; these are no
proofs of intellect or pure reason; each race
builds after its own kind; the Saxon is not dis—
posed to build; the ancient Copts, Phuanicians,
and Greeks were, on the other hand, remarkably
so, and builders, par excellence.

Mere mechanical art is no proof of high intel-
ligence. The Romans had no genius whatever,
and yet they were remarkable as builders and
for their excellence in the mechanical arts.
Historians admit that the Chinese records fur-
nish few materials for history. It is admitted
on all hands that they are devoid of all principle,
and essentially a nation of liars. How then can
they progress? Without a military or naval force,
they resorted to tricks more worthy of children
than of grown men, in hopes of arresting the
progress of the British armament. They set up
an iron pipe on the deck of their vessels, kindling
a ﬁre inside the tube, in hopes that the smoke
which showed itself at the top would terrify the
barbarians! They mistook the big drum of the
18th Irish Foot for an unknown and dangerous
implement of war, and kept ﬁring at it during the
greater part of the action; they in consequence
~killed nobody. Such are the Chinese.

I have, in this brief sketch, scarcely alluded to

286 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

the AustraliaM6 and Tasmanian; to the cannibal
inhabitants of some portions of Oceania, if they
really be cannibals (which I greatly doubt); to
the Malay race; to the numerous dark tribes of
Hindostan; to the Arabs, many of whom are
very dark in their colour; to the natives of Ma-
dagascar; of Borneo, Sumatra, and the Eastern
Isles. The reason is simple. Scarcely anything
positive is known of them. The Tasmanians and
Australians have never been carefully described.
One thing seems to me certain, that in all the
dark races the bones composing the upper jaw
are much larger than in any fair race, with the
exception, perhaps, of the Jew.

The reproductive organs in the Tasmanian
are said to be quite peculiar in man and woman;
and it has been further reported of them that the
Australian woman ceases to be productive after
intermarriage with one of the fair races. These
would be curious facts if proved.

But the European has, in my opinion, erred in
despising the Negro, who seems to me of a race
of occasionally great energy. Amongst them
we ﬁnd the athlete as ﬁnely marked to the waist
as the Farnese Hercules. Such was the head
and bust of the prize-ﬁghter Molineux, of match-
less strength, could he have properly trained

* For illustrative woodcut, see page 237.

I

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 287

himself for the ﬁght. Below the waist the limbs
fell off, as they do in most Negroes. He was
reported to be a Congo black. Other races on
that coast show much intelligence and energy
in 'commercial transactions. Most dark races
are without any ear for music, yet the Negro
seems to have some sensibilities on this point.
He is certainly at least equal to the Dutchman,
and perhaps to the very best of the Saxon race.
But the grand qualities which distinguish man
from the animal—the generalizing powers of
pure reason—the love of perfectibility—the desire
to know the unknown—and, last and greatest, the
ability to observe new phenomena and new
relations; these mental faculties are deﬁcient, or
seem to be so, in all dark races. But, if it be
so, how can they become civilized B What hopes
for their progress? Like all other races, they
have a religion of their own: it is Fetichism.
Were they, the dark races of men, the original
inhabitants of the globe? Were they the races
which preceded ours, ﬁlling up the link in that
vast chain of life extending from the period when
ﬁrst the materials of the globe were called into
form to the present day .9 And have these races
seen their day—passed through their determined
course and period, hastening on towards that
ﬁnal exit when their remains must rank only as
the remains of beings that were, like the mam-

288 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

mals and birds of the past world, which now are
no longer to be found? Or will their stock be
replenished by the fair races, as Barton Smith
and others supposed—the Saxon being in pro-
Cess of time converted into the Red Indian; the
Anglo-Saxon into the Hindoo? the last descend-
ants of the European, nowlﬂoeking to Australia,
into the wretched, jet-black Tasmanian and Aus-
tralian? These theories we may discuss here-
after; in the meantime, let us brieﬂy consider an
important question—Can the fair races of man
become so acclimatized in tropical countries as
to resist the pestilential climate of such regions?
Can they become equal to labour; to till the
earth; to act as soldiers; as aborigines, in fact?
This important question will form the subject of
our next section.

COLONIZATION OF AFRICA.

SECTION VIL—Extinction of the slave trade; fu-
ture prospects of the African races. In the event of
the dark races of men being ultimately destroyed,
can the fair races cultivate or inhabit the tropical
regions of the earth .9 Can they occupy, as labourers
and citizens, the African and Syrian shores of the
Mediterranean .9

Long prior to the accurate researches of the
army statistician it was known to the well-informed

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 289

and educated in society, that the tropical regions
of the earth, generally speaking, were so inimical
to European life as to render it hopeless for any
European race to attempt the colonization of any
country, however valuable, however wealthy and
productive, if situated within the range of the
tract of the earth exposed to the inﬂuence of a
tropical sun. It was also known to them, not so
accurately, that other regions (as along the shores
of the Mediterranean, American, and African seas)
partook, sometimes largely, of this unhealthy
character, although not comprised within, but
adjoining, the tropical range; that tropical seas
were sufficiently healthy so long as the mariner
kept his vessel at a certain distance from the
shores; and, ﬁnally, that even in tropical coun-
tries, mountain tracts of great elevation were
healthy, and their climate compatible with Euro~
pean life. But, although these facts were gene-
rally known to the well-read and the educated,
it was not so with the great mass of the people,
whose ideas on this, as on most other points,
from want of a sound elementary and practical
education, are at all times miserably defective,
and not unfrequently totally erroneous: hence
originate such scenes as took place a few years
ago, when an adventurer induced a number of
persons to attempt a settlement in Poyais
(Central America), followed and preceded by
U

290 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

numerous other wretched occurrences, the fruits
of ignorance on the one hand, of deception on
the other. The Texas is still advertised as a
charming, healthy country. A very few years
ago it was attempted to cultivate Jamaica with
European or white labourers, in despite of all
previous experience! I need say nothing of the
result, nor analyze the nonsense and falsehoods
told of the white labourers of Cuba '. It is known
to the experienced and educated that the bold
and active men engaged in voyages of discovery
have been Unable, even sometimes for a few days,
to resist the deleterious effects of that perfectly
unknown and subtile agency which, like a plague,
so quickly destroys, that ships’ crews, regiments,
nay, armies, have been swept off with a rapidity
equalling the plague itself. The expedition to
the Congo, under Captain Tuckey, was one of
these; then followed that worst planned, worst
conducted of all voyages of discovery, the expe-
dition to the Niger; the fate of the Royal African
Regiment, as it was called, on the western coast
of Africa, whilst there, gave evidence on a larger
scale; and, if more he wanted, the reader will
ﬁnd in the “History of the Mortality of the
Troops in St. Domingo,” and in the admirable
reports of Major Tulloch, an unanswerable proof
against the possibility of colonizing a tropical
country with European men.

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 291

Is it, then, that there exists a vast region of
the earth, the richest in all respects, the most
productive, which the European cannot colonize,
cannot inhabit as a labourer of the earth, as a
workman, as a mechanic? From which should
he expel the coloured aboriginal races, he also
must quit or cease to live P—which he requires to
till with other bands? It would seem so; and
all history proves it. This zone is the last
refuge of the coloured man; like the primeval
forests of these very regions, the densely wooded
banks of the Amazon and the Oronoco, against
which it would seem as if human efforts were of
little or no avail, the swarthy Negro and kindred
races, driven back, subdued, or reduced to slavery,
continually recover their pristine vigour and
numbers, rolling back the white invasion, forcing
it into other channels, and compelling it to limit
its aggressions to those quarters of the earth
which Nature seems to have assigned it.

A limit, then, seems set to the aggressions of
the fair races. If we are to hold India, it can
only be as military masters lording it over a
slave population. It is the same with Jamaica,
Cuba, even Brazil, tropical Africa, Madagascar,
the northern coasts of Australia, and all the
islands of the Indian Ocean situated as Borneo,
Sumatra, &c. An important question falls next
to be discussed. Are there any regions adjoining

U ‘2

292 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

the tropical ones—like Morocco, Algiers, Tunis,
and Egypt, extra-tropical, at least in part—which
may be colonized by a European race? On this
question rests a circumstance of paramount im-
portance to mankind.

When Scandinavia and Northern Germany
overﬂowed, the Saxon race found an outlet in
Central Germany and in Britain; their progress
eastward was arrested by the Muscovite and the
defeat of Charles XII.; southward and eastward
they progressed to a certain extent against the
Slavonian races, but never amalgamating. The
German empire was the result of this mock
union, sure to be broken in the course of time—-
time which strengthens races, but breaks down
empires. Woe to the empire or nation composed
of divers elements, of different races, and dis-
cordant principles ! Let Ireland teach the incre-
dulous.

The Saxon race or races (for this point has not
yet been determined) nominally extended their
power into Italy and Slavonia, sure to be forced
back upon their original territory. They at-
tempted to seize on Bohemia, and to convert
it into a true Saxon territory, a “right Deutchs-
land,” by the massacre of its Slavonian inha-
bitants; the contest was renewed the other day,
and is sure to fall. France will interpose her
power.——But to return.

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 293

Towards the Rhine the Saxon early turned
his steps, hoping to dispossess the Celt; here
he failed altogether. Britain remained: that he
seized on, peopled and cultivated—the land, the
richest land the sun shines on. Too narrow for
the broad dissent which characterizes the Saxon
mind, the Western world offered an outlet, more
for his dissent than for his population, which
required at the time no such escape. At last, in
Northern America, relieved by his own exertions
from the bayonet of the furious Celt, and “ ﬁery
Hun,” and brutal Muscovite—relieved, also, from
the Norman government—~0f England, the pres~
sure of the Three Estates—the \Saxon found a
place where unfettered he might display his real
character—that is, the perfect democrat; the only
race, perhaps, in the world, absolutely and by
nature democratical. This is the destiny of the
Saxon race.

In the partition, then, of the globe, slowly
effected by the hand of time, America fell to
the lot of the Saxon: Asia must one day be
Sarmatian. Can Africa become Celtic? That is
now the question. To the Celtic race naturally
falls this fourth division of the globe. Europe
he cannot possess; that was tried by Napoleon——
the result is known. That the various plans
adopted by the Celtic race of France for the
colonization and annexation of Algeria to the

294 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

French republic are essentially vicious, there
cannot be a doubt. But with this I have nothing
to do. They encountered there a bold and deter-
mined race of men—the mountaineer, the Arab;
in courage and strength equalling any race on
the earth. They wanted but knowledge to have
again set at deﬁance, as they had often done
before, the most powerful European armies.
The journals who contrast our progress in India
with that of the Celts in Africa, drawing conclu-
sions unfavourable to them, do so in open viola-
tion of the plainest truths and facts. Their
object must be to mislead, else why so sys-
tematically and habitually pervert the truth?
Had India, or Australia, or Northern America,
been peopled by Arabs and Mauritanians, our
position in these countries might now have been
widely different.

Shortly after the seizure of Algeria by France,
it must have become evident that no amalgama-
tion of the races was practicable: was not even
desirable. It must have been evident that, to
make Algeria French, it must be peopled and
cultivated by Frenchmen, there being no slave
population; no Hindoo; no Negro; no labouring
class. It could not be held, then, as we do
Hindostan or Jamaica. Who was to people the
country? what race was to till the earth? This
question is now and has been for some time

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 295

before the French Government. It is called a
question of acclimatation; for it has been sup-
posed that in countries like Algeria, Lower
Egypt, Morocco, which are extra~tropical, the
fair races of men might with time become so
accustomed to the climate, or acclimatized, as
the phrase is, as thoroughly to occupy the ter-
ritory. In Holland, for example, at Flushing
and Walcheren, and on the shores of the Scheldt,
the summer and autumnal season destroyed a
ﬁne British army in a few months; the Bra-
banters in the meantime did not particularly
suffer. French troops stationed in these coun-
tries during the Empire suffered nearly as we
did; the natives themselves seemed to think the
country healthy enough, and were surprised at
our losses! Their immunity has been usually
ascribed to a long acclimatation ; our destruction,
to the want of it.

It is not my intention to discuss here generally
this great question of acclimatation: I disbelieve
partly in its power, at least for many generations.
Let us consider merely Northern Africa, for on
the decision of this question must depend the
extension of the Celtic race into Africa: it is the
safety-valve of Europe; a successful colonization
of Algeria, or a war on the Rhine. The conti-
nental and insular Saxons, Russ, and Slavonian
(the other three great races) have their choice.

296 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

Give Northern Africa to France, to the Celtic
race: there is no avoiding the question; it is an
act of mere justice due to the race; but, as might
is right, the question will no doubt be decided by
the sword. Another affair in Morocco, and one
or two at the base of the Pyramids, will decide
the matter for a few centuries.

SECTION VIIl.-—N0rthern Extra-tropical Africa.

The nationalities of mankind, the results merely
of accidental and extraneous circumstances, ofa
successful war under a great leader, of a geogra-
phical position, or of mere political intrigue,
have hitherto so masked the great question of
race, that to some of the most sagacious of
men its signiﬁcance and overruling importance in
human affairs has appeared either entirely ques-
tionable, or, at the least, extremely problematical.
The invasion of Algeria by France, and its at—
tempted occupation by that country as a colony
or a province, or an integral part of the empire,
was viewed in this country and throughout
Europe (I use the language of the press as inter-
preters of the feelings of the people and of the
wishes of their governments) as a wanton aggres-
sion on the part of the people called French, on
some of their peaceable neighbours, our allies,
the Dey of Algiers and Emperor of Morocco!

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 297

Their pretensions were declared extravagant and
unjust. Why not remain contented with France,
as we had been with England? What could they
want with colonies? \Vas ' not France large
enough? A few words in reply to these narrow
views of would-be statesmen.

In viewing France as a nation, it was forgotten
that she was peopled by a race of men, which, if
not identical throughout, was more nearly so
than, perhaps, any other on the globe. To the
principle of nationality, that is, of political inde-
pendence, she added the most glorious recollec-
tions of all times; from Brennus to Charles Martel,
from Martel to Napoleon, she had never been
beaten but by a world in arms. As a nation, then,
though a nation be a mere accidental political as-
semblage of people—a human contrivance based on
no assurance of perseverance, on no bond of nature,
but on protocols and treaties, on the mockery of
words called constitutions and laws of nations,
made to bind the weak, to be broken by the
strong—was it to be expected that France, all
powerful, was to remain “cribbed up, cabined,
and conﬁned” within that territory which chance
and the fate of war had assigned to her? Even
as a nation! But when we take a higher view,
when we remember that she represents a race
the most warlike on the globe; that this race is
not conﬁned to France, but includes a portion

298 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

of Spain, of the Sardinian states, and Northern
Italy, of three-fourths of Ireland, of all Wales,
and a large portion of Scotland, of Lower Canada,
and even of a portion, perhaps, of Southern
Germany, then the nationality sinks into insig-
niﬁcance; the element of race becomes para-
mount; Nature takes the place of parchment;
and the Celtic race of men demand for their
inheritance a portion of the globe equal to their
energies, their numbers, their civilization, and
their courage.

But Northern Asia had been seized on by the
Sarmatian race ; Southern Asia, or India, by the
Saxon-English, not, it is true, to hold as a colony,
but a mere military dependence; America, Aus-
tralia, and a hundred oceanic islands were also
in the hands of the “men of commerce and of
peace ;” the men of trafﬁc, of manufacture, and
of ships; Anglo’Saxon or Holland-Saxon had
extended his race nearly over the world, losing,
it is true, his colonies nearly as fast as he ac-
quired them, but peopling them with his race,
language, modes of thought, manner of civiliza-
tion. To the Celtic race of France there remained
but Northern Africa—Africa to the north of the
equator. They had no alternative. Colonize
Africa or march to the Rhine; extend the race
into Italy or Germany, or colonize Algeria:
these were the alternatives left to France in 1830.

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 299

She adopted the latter, and on its ultimate result
must depend the peace of Europe.

Let me now examine, then, with care, this
great question, for such I esteem it——not whether
Algeria can be made a mere colony of France,
that is not the question. Can the Celtic French-
man be acclimatized in Northern Africa, Algeria,
Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli, Barca, Syrene, and
Egypt, so that these countries may ultimately
form an integral portion of the French empire?
This is the question I mean here to discuss. Its
importance will, I trust, excuse the details into
which I shall be necessitated to enter.

The country of Algeria, as at ﬁrst viewed by
France, was deemed likely to prove an important
acquisition to the empire. Its proximity to Old
France; its Mediterranean coast line; its proxi-
mity to Morocco on one hand, and Tunis on
the other; moreover, its extra-tropical position,
seemed to combine in proving its political. im-
portance to France, and its capability of being
colonized by European men of the French or
Celtic race. But, after the lapse of some ﬁfteen
years or so,whilst the country of Algeria has been
held by France; after being visited and reported
on by scientiﬁc men of great eminence; after
being ruled over by a man of abilities surpassed
by few, Marshal Bugeaud, the great question
remains still unsolved, or rather, I should say,

300 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

seems likely to be decided against France—
namely, is the climate of Algeria ﬁtted or not
for the abode of the white races of men? En-
deavours, no doubt, have been and will continue
to be made to show that the destructive climate
of Northern Africa depends more on accidental
circumstances than on its geographical position;
that a want of culture has rendered the climate
pestilential, destructive to the European. 1 for
one do not believe in this doctrine. It would be
consolatory to France to believe in its truth—
advantageous to Europe were it really true; all
this I admit. Let me examine the opposing
circumstances, for a knowledge of which I am
mainly indebted to M. Baudin. This is not
merely a medical question: it involves the aban-
donment of Algeria, and, as a consequence,.1
think, the seizure of Italy, and a war on the
Rhine.

Abandon Algeria, says the political French
physician, obeying his own impulses or acting
on those which he conceives now inﬂuence his
employers; hold Algeria, and colonize it as soon
as possible, says the social physician, looking, no
doubt, as he thinks, towards the advancement of
his country. These terms are not mine: they
argue two conﬂicting parties, between whom truth
is sure to be sacriﬁced. To colonize Algeria by

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 301

Frenchmen, say some, is impossible ; the acclima-
tization of Europeans, or, at least, of the natives
of France in Algeria, so as to withstand labour,
‘ to become cultivators of the soil, labourers,
soldiers, and citizens, will never happen. To
effect all this perfectly, says another party, all
that is wanted is time.

Algeria is wholly extra-tropical; but a portion
of it is composed of plains, another part is moun-
tainous. Of these two sections the plains are
unquestionably the most important. Prior to
the advent of the French, the climate of Algeria
was greatly extolled; but it must be admitted
that the scattered notices of travellers offered
no data from which any serviceable deductions
might be made. The mortality of the civil Euro-
pean population rates as follows; the ﬁgures are
taken from ofﬁcial documents:—

In 1849. 44'28 for 1000 inhabitants.
1843 44‘20 do. do.
1844 44'60 do. do.
1845 45'50 do. do.
1846 4472 do. do.

But according to M. Baudin, who probably
more nearly approaches the truth, the statement
ought to stand thus :—

In France, the mortality per 1000 is 236

In Algeria, the mortality per 1000 is 625

302 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

This mortality approaches the desperate con-
dition of our ill-fated squadron on the western
coast of Africa.

On the other hand, the Jewish race in Algeria
Show different results. Mortality as races:—

1844.
Jews ................ 21'6 for 1000 inhabitants.
Mahometans . 324 do. do.
Europeans 4'2'9 do. do.
1845.
Jews ..... . ........... 361 for 1000 inhabitants.
Mahometans . 408 do. do.

Europeans 455 do. do.

From 1838 to 1847 the average mortality of the
Jewish race was 273 for every 1000 of the pOpu-
lation of their race.

The mortality of European children born in
Algeria, taking the period from birth to ﬁfteen,
is four times greater than in England.

The European population, then, of Algeria,
decreases annually by seventeen per thousand.
Let the statistician, then, add this seventeen to
4'9, the annual increase per 1000 in France, and
he may then have some idea of the present sacri-
ﬁce of human life in that prosperous colony; or,
as stated by M. Baudin, whilst Ireland doubles
her population in ﬁfty years, precisely in the
same period of time would the European popu-

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 30:3

lation be swept from Algeria, but for the inﬂux of
emigrants.

The open country is more unhealthy than the
towns, being the reverse of what happens in
Europe. In 1843, thirty-eight Trappistes (monks,
we presume, of the order of La Trappe) esta-
blished themselves at Staoneli: eight died in the
course of the year; and of 150 soldiers assigned
as labourers to them, as a commutation of pu-
nishment (deserters, we presume), thirty-seven
died; the remainder were attacked with the most
serious disorders.

Marshal Bugeaud, whose views respecting the
military colonization of Algeria formed the sub-
ject of much discussion in France, and even in
England, when called on to defend the measures
adopted by him, easily did so, by merely de-
scribing the deplorable condition of the civil
population of the territory. Families were con-
tinually being reduced to hopeless destitution by
the death of the father and of the sons equal to
labour; women became prematurely old ; orphans
abounded everywhere, demanding the immediate
interference of a Christian government! Such is
M. Bugeaud’s qﬁ‘icz'al statements, which none have
ventured to gainsay. On these grounds he re-
commends the establishment, rather, of military
colonies; and herein, no doubt, he was right.
But a man of his energy and originality became,

304 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

of course, troublesome to the rotten dynasty of
Orleans, and he, I think, resigned, or was recalled
from the government of Algeria: a prince of the
dynasty, with a host of courtiers, was thought a
safer government for the colony. Let us hope
that we have seen the end, at least, of this enor-
mity, as regards Algiers. But France has much
to do before Algeria can become a portion of
the French empire, inhabited by able, healthy
Frenchmen: Will this ever happen? Would it
not have been better to have imported a Negro
population as labourers? In India we have the
Coolies and the labouring servile population of
Hindostan. In Jamaica the Negroes. In the
southern states of America our Saxon descend-
ants employ the Negro; it is the same in Brazil,
Cuba, and all tropical countries. In Morocco
and Peru it was precisely the same: the coloured
population alone could labour 5 the European was
unequal to it.

Dr. Lesneur, a military surgeon in the French
service, reports (10th of April, 1847) that, after
having raised expensive barracks and other mili-
tary works at Foudouk, it was discovered that
man (Frenchmen) could not live there. It was
the same at the camp of E1 Arich. In 1844
every possible effort had been made to improve
the place; all that labour and genius could do
was done, without the smallest beneﬁt. In the

THE DARK RACES or MEN. 305

month of August two-thirds of the garrison were
in hospital. Of twenty-ﬁve births there was not
a child alive six months thereafter. The civilians
were in the most deplorable condition, and to
preserve a garrison there it seemed most advisable
not to attempt acclimatation, but to replace the
troops rapidly by others, so as to prevent the
deleterious inﬂuence of the climate taking full
effect. So much for the acclimatation of French
troops at El Arich.

“ At Mered, as at Mahelma,” says Marshal
Bugeaud, “ I was constrained to associate the
military colonists in pairs, in consequence of the
severity of the climate.”

Dr. Boudin has no faith Whatever in the theory
of acclimatation ; I was all my life, also, sceptical
on this point; but Holland furnishes some curious
facts in favour of the theory of acclimatation, to
which I may afterwards return.

Neglecting less important details, the following
table will tend, perhaps, to clear away the delu-
sion in respect of those charming countries, those
Mediterranean shores, around which centered the
civilization of the ancient world :—

ALGERIA.

ﬂIz’lz’tmy.—-1837. 100 deaths per 1000.
1841. 108 ,, ,,
1840. 140 ,, ,,
x

306 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

Civil.—184‘2. 44.28 deaths per 1000.
1843. 44.20
1844. 44.60 ,, ,,
1845. 44.50 ,,
1846. 44.72 ,, ,,

Although, for many reasons, I cannot venture
to consider this important question decided,
namely, the probability of the colonization of
Algeria by Frenchmen (its abandonment is quite
another question), I may yet venture to remark
that, although England has not colonized India,
and never can (she never even proposed so mad
a scheme), she thinks not of abandoning it.

It may here be worth while considering for
an instant if Algeria ever really was cultivated by
European hands,—by the white races of mén now
or formerly existing in Europe. M. Boudin
believes that it never in this sense was a colony
of any European race. The Carthaginians may
be said to have been in possession of Algeria as
colonists and agriculturists, but still this is doubt-
ful ; not that they did not hold possession of the
country, but that they were the bondﬁde cultivators
of its soil. Even as soldiers they never seemed to
me to have been numerous. The Carthaginian
armies were recruited in Gaul, that is, in France.
The victories of the Thrasmene Lake, of Cannes,
and a hundred others over the Romans were
decided chieﬂy by the Celtic men of ancient,

' )7 7’

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 307

France. When driven back to Carthage, Han-
nibal could not induce the warlike French to
follow him into Africa; and then the Carthagi-
nians were easily defeated at Zama, on their own
territory, when left to their own resources.

But admitting that the Carthaginians did exist
in Africa as cultivators of the soil, which is
extremely doubtful, we must not forget the
difference of race. The ancient Carthaginians,
of whom we know so little positively, were an
Asiatic people—Phoenician, no doubt—allied to
the Jews. Now the Jews stand their ground very
well in Algeria; in their race the births exceed
the deaths. But they do not labour.

General Cavaignac, whose name stands so pro- .
minently before the world at the present moment,
brought this question some years ago before his
Government :—

“ Avant tout, il faudroit savoir jusqu’a quel
point l’European pent se naturalizer en Algerie.
J usque ici l’expérience est douteuse.”—(General
Cavaignac, “De la Régence d’Alger,” p. 1-52.)
“ Above all, it is essential to know to what extent
the Eur0pean can become naturalized in Algeria.
Hitherto experience is doubtful.”

These important words, by a man of such
ability, should have roused France at once to a
sense of her position in respect of extra-tropical
Africa. Then was the time to have engaged the

x 2

308 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

Negro labourer; then was the time to have sent a
powerful armed force, accompanied by a large
trading community, up the Senegal, across the
mountain ridge, and seized on the valley of the
Niger and Central Africa; then was the time to
have invited the Saxon labourers from Northern
and Central Germany to have joined with them
in this great enterprise—the Saxon farmer, agri—
culturist, trader, manufacturer, each of whom
respectively is worth a hundred French Celts.
But France did not do this: she was cruelly
oppressed by a ﬁlthy dynasty, seeking merely
place and patronage for their ﬂunky partisans.
The result is known. But the question still re-
mains—Can extra-tropical Northern Africa be
colonized by the Celt; can he establish here an
African republic of Frenchmen ?

There exist no historic proofs that Northern
Africa was ever colonized by European hands,
as agriculturists. This is M. Boudin’s strong
expression, and I perfectly agree with him. The
researches of Messrs. Dureau, De Lamalle, and
Enfantin, seem equally to prove that the Roman
dominion over the cities of Northern Africa
amounted merely to a military occupation, much
as the French rule in Corsica ; or, in other words,
that these cities were to Rome what those of
Corsica are at present to France; that is, cities
and a country inhabited by a race of men called ,

THE DARK RACES or MEN. 309

French citizens, but who, in fact, are not of the
French or Celtic race. Verily, the history of the
races of men must be rewritten from the beginning.
Nothing is correctly known of the Corsican race;
still less of the Sardinian ; the remains, no doubt,
of primitive races once inhabiting the shores and
islands of a series of lakes now comprised in
the Mediterranean Sea; primitive races, like the
Basques, of whom so little is known, who yet
may, in remote ages, have played a conspicuous
ﬁgure on the globe, before Sahara was a desert,
or the Atlantic a sea.

Thus it would appear that the Corsicans are
called Frenchmen by law, as we call the Celtic
\Velsh, Irish, and Highland Scotch, Britons;
citizens of Britain; and sometimes, which is most
amusing, Englishmen! The same legal ﬁction
extends to India, and to Caffraria, and to New
Zealand. The Hindoos, then, are Englishmen,
as the Corsicans are Frenchmen, and the Mauri-
tanian inhabitants of Northern Africa were called
Roman citizens ! Human contrivances, to mystify,
to job, to rob, to plunder. It is a portion of the
organized hypocrisy which marks the statesman
wherever he exists. France has never colonized
Corsica, which remains in the hands of its primitive
inhabitants; England has never colonized Ireland,
three-fourths of which remains in the hands of its
original Celtic inhabitants.

310 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

The manufactory of Roman citizens was an
extremely proﬁtable business for Rome; it be-
came a trade, and a thriving one too. England
has done a good deal of business in this way; it
has a decided inﬂuence over the revenue. It is
mentioned by Plutarchﬁ6 that the three hundred
Roman citizens mentioned by Cato in Utica were
merchants.

I have been greatly surprised to observe a
statement by Messrs. Foley and Martin, in the
Gazette Médz'cale. They ascribe to pride the dis-
like of the European to labour in a tropical
country. Statements like these merit not the
slightest notice; they are opposed to the most
direct observation and experience. Admirable as
is the climate of extra-tropical Southern Africa, I
have some doubts as to the competency for severe
ﬁeld labour by the European, even there. I allude
more particularly to the country extending from
the Great Kei to the tropic. The country to the
west and north of Natal is not healthy, and the
banks of the rivers in and about Delagoa Bay are
sickly places for Europeans. It appears to be the
same in Northern Africa.

In England the mortality of children from birth
to ﬁfteen, is twenty-six per 1000. In Algeria it
stands thus :—

* Quoted by M. Boudiu.

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 311

In 1841 63 deaths to 1000
1842 45 ,, n
1843 79 ,, a:
1844 75 ,, 2)
1845 7S ,, 79
1846 . 97 ,, ,3

For every twenty-two births there is one still-
born, or dead birth.

France entertained, and perhaps still entertains,
hopes that her armies in Algeria might in time
become acclimatized; in these hopes the nation
is almost sure to be disappointed. It is still a
mere hypothesis, and the existing facts are all
against it. Suggestions have been made to send
thither the inhabitants of -the South of France,
which seems a reasonable enough proposal; but
there still remains the question of race, which has
its inﬂuence not merely in one climate but in
all.

In 1843 the Prussian Government directed sta-
tistics to be made in respect of the numbers and
condition of Posen, forming at this moment a
portion of the Prussian territory, and no doubt
considered in this country as a place inhabited
by the loyal subjects of his Majesty the King of
Prussia. But how stands the case? Posen is
occupied by at least three races, who have not,
nor ever will mingle with each other. These
races are—

312 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

The Slavonian,
The German,
The Jew.
Now, the tables of disease for the three races
give the following results :~

For 1000 Slaves 29 sick.
1000 Germans 18 ,,
1000 Jews 11 ,,

These are the leading facts, then, as to the
colonization of extra-tropical Northern Africa by
a European race of men, the Celtic race. Great
difficulties lie in the way, and none of them has
as yet been overcome. England, more fortunate
than France, holds India, lording it over a feeble
race; France encountered in Africa a deadly
climate and a brave and energetic race; Arabes
indompti—the unconquered Arab. Her proper
plan is to penetrate as fast as possible to the
mountainous districts of the country; her‘ armies
should avoid labour. But an agricultural class is
wanted for Algeria; we shall see presently how
this may be remedied.

I incline, then, to the opinion that the dark
races may for many ages hold the tropical
regions; that many countries now in the military
occupation of the fair races may and will revert
to the dark; that it would be a better policy, per-
haps, to teach them artiﬁcial wants and the habits
and usages of civilization. Commerce alone, 1

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 313

think, can reach Central Africa; the Negro must
be taught the value of his labour. When this
happens, the slave-trade will of necessity cease.
Of other admirable regions adjoining the tropical
ones to the north and south I have my doubts,—
doubts as to the possibility of acclimatation by
the Saxon and Celtic races. We have seen that
Algeria, so wide of the tropic, is about to prove a
failure as a colony; the Arab race will become
extinct or retire to the desert and to Central
Africa; no coloured population is there to succeed
them. The French would do well, perhaps, to
encourage the immigration of Coolies or Negroes
as we do to the West Indies. The trade (a modi-
ﬁed slave-trade) is free to all. Call them appren-
tices as we do ; there is much in a name: or by
sending a force up the Senegal sufﬁcient to
protect French commerce, the mountain range
dividing the sources of the Senegal from those of
the Niger, and shutting out the western territories
from Central Africa, the valley of the Niger and
the rich basin communicating, perhaps, by a port-
age of no great distance with the waters of the
White Nile, may thus be reached. A chain of
forts extending from the mouth of the Senegal to
the sources of the White Nile would put France,
and With her the Celtic race, in possession of a
country as rich as India; secure for her ultimately
the military possession of Algeria, Morocco, and

314 THE DARK RACES or MEN.

Tunis; enable the race to extend themselves, their
language, their commerce, and civilization over a
considerable portion of the globe; offer an escape,
or safety-valve, as it is called, to Europe, by the
employment of her restless, idle, warlike popula—
tion; relieve Europe from a portion of the ﬁve
hundred and forty thousand armed men who must
be employed some way or other; extinguish the
slave~trade, and secure for a season the peace of
the world.

I here conclude this brief and hasty and imper-
fect sketch of the dark races. No one seems much
to care for them. Their ultimate expulsion from
all lands which the fair races can colonize seems
almost certain. Within the trOpic, climate comes
to the rescue of those whom Nature made, and
whom the white man strives to destroy; each
race of white men after their own fashion: the
Celt, by the sword; the Saxon, by conventions,
treaties, parchment, law. The result is ever the
same—the robbing the coloured races of their
lands and liberty. Thirty years ago a military
rhazia, composed of English soldiers, Dutch boors,
and native Hottentots, devastated the beautiful
territory of the Amakoso Kafﬁrs. We reached the
banks of the Kei, and the country of the noble
Hinsa, where wandered the “ Wilde” of Nature’s
creation. All _must disappear shortly before the

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 315

rude civilization of the Saxon boor—antelope and
hippopotamus, giraffe and Kaﬂir.

I shall conclude with a single remark on the
position of the copper-coloured race or races of
Northern America, and on the progress the ques-
tion of race has made since the delivery of my
ﬁrst course of lectures on the races of men.

When, some ten or ﬁfteen years ago, I main-
tained publicly that neither the Saxon nor any
other fair race transplanted into the American
continent would during a historic period or era
exhibit any important modiﬁcations in physical
structure or psychological character, as a result
of climatic inﬂuences or governmental‘that is,
conventional human arrangements (for all govern-
ments in church and state are merely accidental
circumstances and human contrivances usually
arranged for particular purposes)—-my opinions
were met by such observations as the following.
I was told, for example, that the men of the United
States already differed from their Anglo-Saxon,
German-Saxon, and Celtic (for the Celtic race
abounds in America) forefathers and brethren,
physically and morally. My opinion then and
now was that these assertions are devoid of all
foundation, and are based on a surface View of
society. This opinion I developed more fully in
a course of lectures delivered before the Philoso-
phical Society of Newcastle about ﬁve years

316 THE DARK RACES OF MEN.

ago, in which I endeavoured to show that the
races had not altered by being transplanted to
another (the American) soil ; that the Celtic race
had carried with it all its characteristics unaltered
and unalterable ; that historians, journalists, and
mankind generally mistook the slight modiﬁca-
tions impressed on form and character for perma-
nent alterations in the organic forms of humanity,
fancying they saw in the civilized Celt or Saxon
a being totally different from the uncivilized one.
This is the delusion I have always combated;
and, although at ﬁrst the doctrine met with almost
universal opposition, it makes its way with most
unexpected rapidity; judging, at least, from some
articles which have appeared lately in the daily
press.

In the brief reports of my lectures, at various
philosophic institutions, it will be found that the
amalgamation of races, in America or elsewhere,
had been distinctly denied by me for a period of
more than thirty years; and in my first course of
lectures, carrying the doctrine to the American
shores, I ventured to point out that, after many
ages, the Saxon, Celtic, Sarmatian or Russ, and
aboriginal or copper-coloured Indian, would
remain, and be found to be quite distinct; that
these races, transplanted to the New World, would
endeavour to carry out their destinies as they had
done, and were now engaged with, in the Old ,

THE DARK RACES OF MEN. 317

‘Vorld; and that nationalities, however strong,
could never in the long run overcome the ten-
dencies of race. An article which appeared lately
in a leading London newspaper, on the future
destinies of the races in America, is, as nearly as
may be, areprint of my views and ideas on all
these great questions; but the editor has not
shown his usual candour; for the reprint does not
acknowledge the source whence the information
was derived; and there is in the reprint the usual
mystiﬁcation of the compiler. '

In my next lecture I proceed brieﬂy to examine
the history of the dominant races of men: the
Celtic, (the Saxon has been already described:)
the Slavonian, and the Sarmatian.

318 THE HISTORY OF

LECTURE VII.
HISTORY OF THE CELTIC RACE.

THE Lowlands of Scotland not offering me the
opportunity of observing the Caledonian Celt on
his native soil, I visited, in 1814, the mountainous
tract of Caledonia proper, the Grampians and
their valleys. It was here I ﬁrst saw the true
Celt: time nor circumstances have altered him
from the remotest period. Here I ﬁrst studied
that character which I now know to be common
to all the Celtic race, wherever found, give him
what name you will — Frenchman, Irishman,
Scottish Highlander, Welshman; under every
circumstance he is precisely the same, unaltered
and unalterable. Civilization but modiﬁes, edu-
cation effects little; his religious formula is the
result of his race; his morals, actions, feelings,
greatnesses, and littlenesses, ﬂow distinctly and
surely from his physical structure ; that structure
which seems not to have altered since the com-
mencement of recorded time. Why should it
alter? But this great and oft-debated question I
have discussed when considering the history of the
Coptic, Jewish, and Gipsy races. The fact is suf-
ﬁcient for us here, that climate, nor time, affect

THE CELTIC RACE. 319

man, physically—morally. Let the history of the
Gauls speak for itself.

From the remotest period of historical narrative
—usually called history the abode of the Celtic
race was Gaul on this side the Alps—the present
country called France. This was the country
which Caesar subdued and formed into a Roman

 

province. But long prior to his time, the Celtic
race had overﬂowed its barriers, crossing the
Alps, peopling the north, of Italy, and making
permanent settlements there— the Gallia Cisalpina
of Roman writers. They had sacked Rome; they
had burst into Greece, and plundered the temple
of Delphi. War and plunder, bloodshed and
violence, in which the race delights, was their
object. From Brennus to Napoleon, the war-cry
of the Celtic race was, “ To the Alps—to the
Rhine!” This game, which still engages their
whole attention, has now been played for nearly
four thousand years. I do not blame them: I
pretend not to censure any race: I merely state
facts, either quite obvious or borne out by history.
War is the game for which the Celt is made.
Herein is the forte of his physical and moral cha-
racter: in stature and weight, as a race, inferior to
the Saxon; limbs muscular and vigorous; torso
and arms seldom attaining any very large de-
velopment—hence the extreme rarity of athletse
amongst the race; hands, broad ; ﬁngers, squared

320 THE HISTORY OF

at the points; step, elastic and springy ; in mus-
cular energy and rapidity of action, surpassing
all other European races. Cceterz's paribus—that
is, weight for weight, age for age, stature for
stature—the strongest of men. His natural
weapon is the sword, which he ought never to
have abandoned for any other. Jealous on the
point of honour, his self-respect is extreme;
admitting of no practical jokes; an admirer of
beauty of colour, and beauty of form, and there-
fore a liberal patron of the ﬁne arts. Inventive,
imaginative, he leads the fashions all over the civi-
lized world. Most new inventions and discoveries
in the arts may be traced to him 3 they are then
appropriated by the Saxon race, who apply them
to useful purposes. His taste is excellent, though
in no way equal to the Italian, and inferior, in
some respects, to the Slavonian and peninsular
races. The musical ear of the raée is tole-
rably good; in literature and science, they follow
method and order, and go 11p uniformly to aprin-
ciple ; in the ordinary affairs of life, they despise
order, economy, cleanliness; of to-morrow they
take no thought; regular labour—unremitting,
steady, uniform, productive labour—they hold in
absolute horror and contempt. Irascible, warm-
hearted, full of deep sympathies, dreamers on the
past, uncertain, treacherous, gallant and brave.
They are not more courageous than other races,

THE CELTIC RACE. 321

but they are more warlike. Notwithstanding their
grievous defeat at Mont St. Jean, they are still the
dominant race of the earth. On two great occa-
sions they have saved Europe and the Saxon race
from overwhelming destruction and worse than ne-
gro slavery ; twice have they stemmed the tide of
savage Asiatic despotism as it pressed on Europe,
threatening the ﬁnal destruction of freedom :
Attila they defeated; Charles Martel forced the
Crescent to retire for ever from the West; the
time seems approaching when the Celtic race may
once more be called on to bring to the decision of
the sword the oft-renewed contest,the oft-debated
question; shall brute-force, represented by the
East, by Moscow, succeed in extinguishing in
Europe the political inﬂuence of the Celtic and
Saxon races? and will that inﬂuence blot out from
the map of the world all hopes of the future civili—
zation of mankind? A leading journal, whose
object seems of late to be the misrepresenting all
that is good in human motives and actions, speaks
of “the combination of Eastern against Western
Europe.” Why mystify the question? By the
selﬁsh conduct of the German population, the
apathy and timidity of the original Scandinavian
nations, the brutal, treacherous, and cowardly
Houses of Brandenburgh and Hapsburgh have been
allowed to butcher the noblest blood of ancient
Germany; the Slavonian race has been outraged
Y

322 THE HISTORY 0F

and insulted in Posen, Poland, and Bohemia, by
the selﬁsh, commercial, grasping Saxon ; and, as
a consequence, the entire race has been thrown
into the hands of the Sarmatian or Muscovite.
Why mystify questions so plain as these, foreseen
and foretold years ago? But to return to the
Celtic race.

A despiser of the peaceful arts, of labour, of
order, and of the law, it is fortunate for mankind
that the Celtic race is, like the Saxon, broken up
into fragments. The great and leading family of
the race is in consolidated, united, all-powerful
France. The Gallic Celt is, if we may so say, the
leading clan. Next, in point of numbers, is the
Hibernian Celt; then the Cymbric, or Welsh;
and lastly, the Caledonian. In the New World
there are the Canadians, the Habitans—Celtic to
the core, as when they ﬁrst left France. In the
free states of Northern America the Hibernian and
Scoto-Celt abound. Their numbers I do not know,
but their increase for a time is certain. Change of
government, change of climate, has not altered
them. Children of the mist, even in the clear
and broad sunshine of day, they dream of the
past: nature’s antiquaries. As looking on the
darkening future, which they cannot, try not, to
scan, by the banks of the noble Shannon, or
listening to the wild roar of the ocean surf as
it breaks on the Gizna Briggs, washing the,

THE CELTIC RACE. 323

Morochmore ; or listlessly wandering by the dark
and stormy coast of Dornoch, gaunt famine behind
them, no hopes of to-morrow, cast loose from the
miserable patch he held from his ancestry, the
dreamy Celt, the seer of second sight, still cling-
ing to the past, exclaims, at his parting moment
from the horrid land of his birth, “ We’ll maybe
return to Lochaber no more.”

And why should you return, miserable and
wretched man, to the dark and ﬁlthy hovel you '
never sought to purify? to the scanty patch of
ground on which you vegetated? Is this civiliza-
tion? Was it for this that man was created?
Chroniclers of events blame your religion :ale it is
your race. Why cling to the patch of ground
with such pertinacity ? I will tell you : you have
no self-conﬁdence, no innate courage, to meet the
forest or the desert; without a leader, you feel
that you are lost. It is not the land you value as
land, for you are the worst of agriculturists; but
on this spot you think you may rest and have
refuge. Now look at the self-conﬁdent Saxon;
the man of unbounded self-esteem; an enormous
boaster, but in a way different from your race.
Does he fear to quit the land of his birth? Not
in the least; he cares for it not one straw.
Landing in America, he becomes a real American

* Macaulay.

Y2

324 THE HISTORY OF

—a Kentuckian, a Virginian, a furious democrat.
In Oceanica he becomes a native Tasmanian,
Australian; in Southern Africa he calls himself an
Africaner. Holland and England are nothing
to him; he has forgot for ever the land of his
forefathers, and, for a consideration, will ﬁght to
the death with his own brethren. He has shaken off
the pressure of the Three Estates, the Church
and State incubus, and feels himself a free man.
Then comes out his real nature—his go-ahead
principles. See how he plunges into the forest;
boldly ventures on the prairie; fears no labour—
that is the point; loves that which you most abhor
~~proﬁtable labour. What is to him a patch of
ground? All the earth he is prepared to culti-
vate, and to sell to the highest bidder, so that it
suits his purpose. You cling together in towns
and hamlets; he, on the contrary, will not build
a house within sight of his neighbour’s, if he can
avoid doing so. With him all is order, wealth,
comfort; with you reign disorder, riot, destruction,
waste. How tender are the feelings of the Celtic
woman—how soft and gentle is her nature! Her
tears ﬂow at every tale of distress: her children
are in rags. '

On a subject so vast I must be extremely brief.
The Celtic race presents the two extremes of what
is called civilized man ; in Paris we ﬁnd the one;
in Ireland, at Skibbereen and Derrynane, the other. .

THE CELTIC RACE. 3'25

Civilized man cannot sink lower than at Derrynane,
but civilized man may, perhaps, proceed higher
even than in Paris. But of this I am not quite sure.
Beer-drinking, smoky London, with its vaults and
gin-shops, its Vauxhalls and Cremornes, its single
gay street, and splash of a short season, cannot
be compared with Paris. As a race, the Celt has
no literature, nor any printed books in his original
language. Celtic Wales, Ireland, and Scotland,
are profoundly ignorant. There never was any
Celtic literature, nor science, nor arts: these the
modern French Celt has borrowed from the Roman
and Greek.

Of French literature I need say little; it is of
the highest order, and, to a certain extent, peculiar
to, or rather deeply inﬂuenced by, the race. Of
their literature I may mention especially the
epopée, which, though not peculiar to them, cha-
racterizes the race. The “ Maid of Orleans,” by
Voltaire, “ Hudibras,” by Butler, “ Don Quixote,”
by Cervantes, describe the characters of their re—
spective races. The ﬁrst, reﬁned, witty, alarmingly
sacrilegious and licentious, is a type of the mind of
the race, when set free from the trammels and
usages of common life. The second, by Butler, no
less depicts the Saxon. Coarse, brutal, ﬁlthy, but
pithy; practical, utilitarian, abounding with com-
mon sense, and with that pleasant and comfortable
feeling which measures the worth of all things,

326 THE HISTORY or

from a bishop’s ofﬁce to a bale of cotton, by its
value in money :
“ For what's the worth of anything,
But as much money as ’twill bring.”

Paris is the centre of the fashionable, the
civilized world; always in advance, in litera-
ture, science, and the ﬁne arts. Their Aca-
demy has no equal anywhere, and never had.
Even in ship building they transcend all other
races; but they cannot man them; they are
no sailors. In taste they can never sink to
the low level of the Saxon race, Whom it is almost
impossible to maintain at even a respectable
standard. Hence the efforts in Britain and else—
where to educate, to found literary and philoso-
phic societies, Mechanics’ Institutes, Athenaeums,
Polytechnic Institutions. All these will gradually
sink and disappear, to be replaced by others, in
their time again to give place to others; for in
their very constitution such institutions display
in its highest perfection the besetting evil ten-
dency of the Saxon mind: division, disunion,
jobs. No dozen men can agree to form a liberal
institution. In London, forty distinct societies
do not supply the place of one Academy. There
is no Polytechnic School in any Saxon kingdom ;
in Britain it would not be tolerated for a day.
Court, gentry, clergy of all denominations, would
combine to suppress it. It is otherwise in Celtic

THE CELTIC RACE. 3‘27

countries,where centralization and high education
are not so much dreaded; yet even there the Poly-
technic School has frequently proved a source of
great anxiety to the government.

All over the world the Celtic race is, properly
speaking, Catholic, even when not Roman; for
France is thoroughly Roman Catholic; so is Ire-
land and Canada; in Wales and in Caledonia
they still hold their ground. The reformed Celts
have never joined the churches “ as by law esta-
blished.” It is the Saxon who accepts of his
religion from the lawyers; the Celt will not.
Accordingly, the Welsh and Caledonian Celt
are strictly evangelical. All this display of true
faith seems not to be inconsistent, or at least is
not incompatible, with a laxity of morals which
would astonish the world, if fairly described.

The Celtic race has had in its hands more than
any other its own destinies. Chance placed at
their head the greatest of men that ever appeared
on earth. Him they sold and betrayed. Still their
power is terrible, and quite an overmatch for
any other single race. Nothing could prevent them
again marching to Moscow and Petersburgh,
were the contest to be merely between the two
races. By such a contest mankind would be
greatly beneﬁted. Even as it is, France can no
longer be assailed by any foreign force. Paris is
fortiﬁed, and were the territory again polluted

,

328 THE HISTORY or

by a foreign foe, the true republican ﬂag would
be once more hoisted, sure to be pushed
forward to Berlin and Vienna, Moscow and
Petersburgh. The horrible degradation of the
Celtic population of Ireland may perhaps be best
judged of by this one fact: that they are not
aware of the existence of forty millions of the
same race within two days’ sail of their shores!
Ignorance is a dreadful thing.

It is amongst Celtic nations that terrible con-
vulsions of necessity arise in respect of the pro-
perty in land, arising from the erroneous nature
of the Celtic mind in respect of true liberty, free-
dom, equality; on all these points their ideas
are innately and inherently vicious.

No Saxon man admits, in his own mind, the
right of any individual on earth, be he who he
may, to appropriate to himself and to his family,
Whether to the eldest or any other son, any por-
tion of the earth’s surface to the exclusion in
perpetuo of the rest of mankind; but, sensible that
the earth must be cultivated by some one, which
cultivation never can give any further right in
the soil than the value imparted to it by the
labour of the ad vitam occupant; treating it, in
fact, as any other goods or chattels, he makes it
liable for the debts of the occupant, and further
ordains that at his death it shall be sold to the
highest bidder, for the behoof of widow, children,

THE CELTIC RACE. 329

and creditors, if any; the ultimate object being
to restore the land to the community at large.
If it be otherwise in many parts of England, it is
because the government is not Saxon but Nor-
man; that is, the government of a dynasty and
aristocracy antagonistic of the race. Were the
evil attaining any great magnitude it would revo-
lutionize England. But to revolutionize is Celtic ;
to reform, Saxon; and so, probably, with time,
feudality and primogeniture, the two greatest curses
that ever fell on man, may, at last, peaceably be
driven from this semi-Saxon country. Still, I have
some doubts of this. It is the last stronghold of
the Norman dynasty and their defenders; and
the question may yet, even in England, be
decided by the sword. It was introduced, no
doubt, into England chieﬂy by the Norman con-
quest, the greatest calamity that ever befel
England—perhaps, the human race.

Now, contrast these Saxon ideas with the
Celtic. From time immemorial the land belonged
to the chief; the clan was entitled to live on it,
it is true, but it did not in any shape belong to
them. By degrees, nearly all the soil of France
came into the possession of the crown and court,
the clergy, the high aristocracy. A nation with-
out land, became, of course, a nation of slaves.
Then burst forth that mighty revolution which
shook the world, whose effects must endure for

330 THE HISTORY or

ever. Court, clergy, and gentry, were swept into
the ocean. But did the Celt thereby put the land
question on a right footing? Not in the least.
He created merely another class of landed pro—
prietors; an immense body of men of matchless
ignorance and indolence, mostly sunk in hopeless
poverty. He abolished the law of primogeniture,
it is true, but he had not the soul to rise up to
the principle of abstract justice. Restore the
land to the community ! Put it up for sale to the
highest bidder! Divide the amount raised amongst
your heirs! You have no more right to appro-
priate this piece of land to your family, to the
exclusion of the rest of the nation, than had the
ancient noblesse of France! But you have no
individual self-reliance, and so you divide and
sub-divide, in the Irish cotter style, the bit patch
of land left you by your forefathers, until your
condition be scarcely superior to the hog who
shares it with you: to sell the land; to divide
the proceeds amongst the family; to accept of
your share, and plunge boldly into the great
game of life, is a step you dare not take. It is
not that you are deﬁcient in courage : no braver
race exists on the earth; but you have no industry,
no self-esteem, no conﬁdence in your individual
exertions.

THE CELTIC RACE. 331

ON THE PARIAH RACES OF FRANCE.

Scarcely any nation, certainly no great nation,
can boast of such unity of race as France. She
is, in fact, all but wholly Celtic : hence her
strength and her weakness; her dangerous cha-
racter in war; her helplessness in peace.

Yet even France has her outcasts—not to speak
of Jews and Gipsies—outcast tribes of unknown
races, scattered here and there throughout her vast
territory.

In a work lately published, abounding with
details, there is a full account of these races or
remains of races, for they are now but vestiges: yet
despite the centralizing power of Louis XIV., the
irresistible edicts of Napoleon in their favour, and
the spread, to a certain extent, of liberal notions,
lurking prejudices still exist against even these
vestiges, which time itself may fail to eﬂ‘ace.*

Physiologists and historians, statesmen and
philanthropists, ecclesiastics of all denominations,
generalizers of every shade, delight in speaking
of the various EurOpean races of men as forming
one great family. Like other great families, these
races cannot be made to agree with each other.
The closer, in fact, the pretended relationship
may be, all the more are they disposed to quarrel

5“ Histoire des Races Mundites de la France et de
l’Espagne. Par Francisque Michel. Paris: 1847.

332 THE HISTORY or

and ﬁght; to add to the confusion in this happy
family, they speak totally different languages,
which never approximate, but rather diverge;
they happen also to differ in religion, customs,
laws, manners, literature, art, science. Nor is this
difference conﬁned to the moral—it extends also
to their physical structure ; for countless centuries
has the bold, erect, bulky, fair-haired, blue-eyed
Scandinavian occupied the identical regions giving
shelter and place to the dark, black-haired,
diminutive Finn, the Lapp—the smallest of men
—the Esthonian, the Livonian, the Slavonian, the
yellow-bearded Muscovite; yet all these races
remain to the full as distinct as they were long
prior to the appearance of Caesar on the Rhine.
To these self-obvious,but not the less curious facts,
the author, the title of whose work we have quoted
above, adds others no less singular, no less worthy
of inquiry. He shows that nationality, a thing
conventional no doubt in itself, but of great im-
portance in human aﬂ'airs—nationality, so doated
on by most men, so easily understood, the war-cry
of crafty politicians, dynasties, and serfs—Michel
shows that even nationality, though wielded by
the most gigantic grasp the world ever wit-
nessed, failed to extinguish in compact, national
France, the hatred, the antipathies, the dislike of
race to race. There is, there can be, nothing
more wonderful in human history than this dislike

THE CELTIC RACE. 333

of race to race: always known and admitted to
exist, it has only of late assumed a threatening
shape. Analyze the late revolutions of Europe,
and you will ﬁnd that in the ﬁrst of the great
struggles which must successively arise before the
ﬁnal emancipation of Europe from the tyrannic
dynasties which now oppress, crush, and destroy
the fairest portion of mankind, the question of
race saved the dynasties for a time; the old war-
cry of nationality was raised by the two contend—
ing powers, sure to terminate in favour of the
dynasty.

In this war of race against race, France stands
pre-eminent; whilst shouting “Egalité, Frater-
nit’!” he violently extruded from his land a few
hard-working English labourers: this was his
ﬁrst act, his ﬁrst practical demonstration of his
notions of egalité and fraternité: his common
sense, his sense of common justice to men, his
education, his religion, all, all are arrayed in vain
against the innate dislike of race to race.

It appears that, for at least ten centuries, there
have lived in various parts of France and Spain,
a few families, called by a variety of names, but
most generally Cagots, detested and despised by
the surrounding population. To ascertain the origin
of this name—the race of people to whom it has
been applied—if to one or to several—and the
reasons of their exclusion from the pale of society,

334 THE HISTORY OF

whether by reason of physical or moral leprosy-—
forms the subject of M. Michel’s inquiries. It has
become one of considerable difﬁculty, for, in course
of time, documents become scarce and rare; rare
as to the Cagots of the south of France, and to the
Caqueux of Brittany; still rarer as to the Cagots
or Colliberti, of Annis and of Bas-Poitou. The
notices are conﬁned, indeed, to two valuable but
very short passages in Pierre de Maillezais—that
is, until the time of M. Dufon. Maillezais’
notice dates as far back as the eleventh century.
He says that the Cagots of Maillezais were the
remains of a body of Scythians, who entered
France with the king of the Alani.

As usual, there are twenty other opinions con-
cerning these Colliberti.

To what race of men was the term C'ollibert
applied P—this is precisely the question. Plautus
uses the term, meaning by it an enfranchised
slave set at liberty with another. But in Celtic,
col means ‘to serve,’ and bar means ‘man :’ so, in
Celtic, Collibertus might mean a slave. So much
for the derivations of words.

At this period the natives of France were the
most abject of slaves, bought and sold precisely
as cattle. The same was the case in Merry
England.

And thus, although it be not improbable that
the Colliberti now spoken of may be after all but

THE CELTIC RACE. 335

the refugees who ﬂed with Charlemagne from
Spain after the affair of Roncesvalles, still nothing
of all this has been proved. They live still
amongst the waters in barges; they are ﬁshermen,
and keep aloof, and are still somewhat distinct
from the adjoining population.

The antiquarian speaks more conﬁdently of the
Chretins of Majorca. They were simply Jews;
and, although they professed Catholicism, their
scuﬂles with the Inquisition were annual. Their
history, whilst in the hands of the Inquisition,
makes the blood run cold, and shows clearly that
certain races possess demoniacal feelings, which
they will always exhibit when they can.

By a decree of Charles III., in 1789., they were
emancipated; but the tyranny of the mob pre-
vailed in shutting them out of all ofﬁces and
honours, even so late as the close of the century.
It was an Irish affair: English justice to Ire-
land.

Of the origin of the Cagots, or Vaqueros, of the
Asturias, nothing is known for certain. They are
shepherds, inhabiting the slopes of the mountains
of the Asturias. By the Asturians they are
despised; the Vaqueros repay this with deﬁance
and hatred. Intermarriages, therefore, seldom
occur, and hence the Vaqueros are thrown on
their own population. Rome proﬁts by this, and
dispensations are frequent. A portion of the

336 THE HISTORY or

village church is still railed off to separate them
from the Asturians—the orthodox and legal faith-
full

The Marons of Auvergne are a repudiated
caste —- pariahs. Our great dramatist says,
“ VVhat’s in a name .9” Buta name is everything.
“ Give a dog—” we need not add. the rest;
Marons they are called—come from where it will:
the negroes at Jamaica, who revolted to secure
their liberty, were called Maroons; so were the
rayahs of A uvergne.

The Moors are said to have escaped from Spain
during the terrible time of Philip III. : but if this
were so, nothing can be so easy as to determine
the point; for if the Marons of Auvergne are of
the Moorish race, the blood will show itself for
ever; it is curious to see the historian, the anti-
quary, the statesman, beat about the bush in a
matter of this kind.

The Spanish monarch—not imbecile, but wholly
wrong—resolved that Spain should be of one race.
The excuse set forth was that she should be of one
religion, but the real question was that they
should be of one race : this was the whole affair.
Hence came the expulsion of the Moors—their
escape into France during 'the reign of Henri
Quatre, and then to Africa. France behaved
nobly ; but it was Henry alone.

But for the clergy of France, the southern

THE CELTIC RACE. 337

regions of that country would have possessed at
this moment a vast Moorish population, superior
in all respects to the lazy, worthless Celt; an
active, energetic, industrious body of artizans.
But the clergy would not listen to it; and so the
noble and gallant king was compelled to send the
refugees from Spain across to Tunis, and to Africa
generally.

Yet many must have remained—even some of
those whom Charles Martel defeated. There can-
not be a doubt but that Moorish blood must
abound in Southern France. Hence the term
Marons applied, in all probability, to small
colonies of these Sarrazins. If still existing, they
will show the Moorish blood in their countenances,
their forms, their organization, their mental dis-
position. These never alter. Modiﬁed theymay
be by time and circumstances, but they alter
not.

The imperfect inquiries, leading to scarcely
any solid result, on the preceding races, are
followed in the work I allude to, by others
equally unsuccessful, into the history of the Or-
seliens of the duchy of Bouillon; the Harel-
ponnais and Lyzelards; the inhabitants of Cour-
tisois and of Ricey; the Cacons of Paray; the
Jews of Gevandan; the Saracen colony on the
banks of the Saone ; a small people on the banks
of the Loire; the Thierachies; and the Celots of

z

338 HISTORY OF THE CELTIC RACE.

Poictou,——all more or less hated and despised by
their Christian neighbour, the Catholic Celt.
Superior to the Celt in most points, (a cause, cer-
tainly, for the Celtic dislike,) they yet form a class
apartweven yet, so relentless is the implacable
hatred of the brutal mass, when stimulated, as in
most of the cases above, by a fanatical clergy, the
accursed instruments of debasing tyranny. In a
word, of all these peculiar castes, their origin,
their history, scarcely anything is known for
certain.

It is generally admitted that the songs and
poems of a country are calculated to throw light
on all inquiries into race; accordingly this has
not been neglected by M. Michel. He collates
and translates (for the patoz's of these songs of the
canaz'lle require this) the popular songs and
poems in Bearnais, Gascon, Basque, Breton, com—
posed by and against the Cagots. But whether
from a want of original material, or that such
never existed, the collection is scanty and unpro-
ductive of any results. France generally seems
early to have lost its Celtic language, Celtic
music, Celtic dress. All this seems to have hap-
pened long prior to Caesar’s time. Her music she
has never replaced; for it can scarcely be said
that at this moment she has a good national air,
song, or poem-fa circumstance at once curious
and inexplicable.

339

LECTURE VIII.
WHO ARE THE GERMANs?

THIS question I put to myself many years ago,
and I have since put it to many others, Germans
as well as countrymen. It is not a question of
mere curiosity; nor vast as is its political im-
port and inﬂuence over the future destinies of
Europe and of mankind, does this include all:
even these, great as they are, yield in some
measure to another bearing on European civili-
zation. Whence comes the element of mind
which created the so-called German literature;
German science; German art; German meta-
physics, and modes of thought? None of these
are Scandinavian or Saxon; no one can imagine
them to be of Saxon or Scandinavian growth: I
should as soon expect to hear of a Dutch poet; a
Swedish opera: a Platonist addressing the prac-
tical men of England and of Holland, and secur-
ing their attention to his address.

Five years ago, when I ﬁrst delivered these
lectures, I again put the question to the public,
Who are the Germans? and, Where is Germany?
By many of my audience the question was Wholly
misunderstood; by others it was thought para-

2 2

340 WHO ARE THE GERMANSE

doxical; some thought it a pity to stir such ques-
tions. But soon the question could not be
blinked; could not be concealed. Within a
couple of years of the time I ﬁrst placed the
question before the public, there suddenly arose
a cry of millions in central Europe; a cry of
liberty; liberty to the German race! Now who
is this race? Are they Scandinavians? that is,
Saxons. Are they composed of two races com-
mingled—namely, Slavonian and Saxon? or are
they a third race, not yet described; not yet
understood; not even yet named? One thing is
certain; for fully a hundred years have some forty
millions of people been in quest of a spot which
they might call Germany; a central spot; a unity
of race; a common ﬂag; a political union; but
above all have they sought the solution of this
question—VVho are the Germans, and where is
Germany ? And these forty millions have utterly
failed in making this out, unless we accept their
last solution, by means of a national song: that
“all are Germans who speak the German tongue,
and that Germany, Fatherland, is wherever the
and now I ask of

7

German tongue is spoken :’
those who thought my views paradoxical, to an-
swer the question in a straightforward way;
politically, geographically, ethnographically.
Before entering on a description of the two
great eastern races of Europe, the Slavonian and g

WHO ARE THE GERMANS? 341

Sarmatian, it seems right that at least an attempt
should be made to analyze the word German .- to
ascertain to what race it of right belongs; and
whether or not we are to include in the same
category the thick-headed,pipe-clayed, and drilled
automatons of “Mon maitre 1e Roi de Prush;”
the bold and free Holsteiner and Saxon; the
grasping accumulative Hollander; the versatile
and puerile Austrian; the manly Norwegian; the
Swede, inferior to none of his race; who, at
Lutzen, stood between the continental Saxon and
destruction, who saved Europe from the abhorred
despotism of Austria, heading the Slavonian race;
these are indeed the progenitors, not of all
Englishmen, but of the men of England who are
of Saxon blood. It was unquestionably a great
error in Dr. Arnold to confound under the com-
mon name of Teutonic, races so diverse as those
of whom I am now about to speak; no minds are
more distinct than the Saxon and the Celtic; the
Slavonian and the Sarmatian: they cannot be
classed together under the name of Teuton.
Does the German of South and Middle Germany,
the German properly so called, belong to any of
these races‘? are they a mixed race ? or are they
a distinct race not yet described?

Mind is everything: the history of man is the
history of his mind. What is the quality of
mind which most distinguishes one race from

342 WHO ARE THE GERMANS?

another; one individual from another; man from
woman; the dark from the fair portion of man-
kind? It is the power of generalization; of ab-
stract thought; of rising from detail to general
laws. There is a small knob of bone growing
upon the inner side of the arm-bone of man, in
most persons scarcely apparent. All the Saxon
nations 011 earth could not, in twenty centuries,
have explained the nature, the meaning of this
nodule of bone; perhaps might never even have
observed its presence. But from a race of men
in Central and Southern Germany, as the coun-
tries on the Upper Rhine and Danube are some-
times called, this, and a thousand other pheno-
mena, inexplicable by the men of material
interests; the matter-of-fact men; the men of
detail; the Saxon men; these met with a full
and complete elucidation. They, the men of
South Germany, discovered, in fact, the transcen-
dental theory of organic bodies-the greatest
discovery which has ever been made; not even
excepting that law of gravitation—that theory of
ﬂuxions, a discovery shared with Newton by the
German, Leibnitz.

As early, then, as 1820-21, I became convinced
that the element of mind to which the German
owes his vast reputation as the most philosophical
of all men; the most abstract in reasoning; the
most metaphysical; the most original; and, in a k

WHO ARE THE GERMANSP 343

word, the most transcendental; the element of
mind which produced Kant, and Goethe, and Gall,
Leibnitz and Oken, Carus and Spix, and a thou-
sand others whom I could easily name, is not,
cannot be Saxon—cannot be Scandinavian. The
antique and primitive races who inhabited the
marshy forests of ancient Germany, the Lettes,
Esthonians, &c., are, it is said, still to be found
by the shores of the Baltic, and extensively scat-
tered through Prussia; but from such races no-
thing is to be expected. I have been assured by
observers, on whom I could depend, that whilst
travelling through a portion of the Black Forest,
there are still to be met with villages, whose
population exceed in coarseness and ugliness all
that can be imagined; with enormous hands and
feet, and an expression indicative of the lowest
intellectual qualities. To these primitive people,
who, no doubt, occupied all the so-called German
territory before the advent of the Northern Scan-
dinavian and the Southern and Eastern Slavo-
nian, who plundered them of their lands, driving
them before them into desert and woody marshes,
and who still exist in the peasantry of some
portions of Flanders, no one, I imagine, will con-
jecture that modern Germany owes any of its
genius, any of its intelligence. But the Northern
German or Scandinavian is not inventive; has no
genius for the abstract ; no love for metaphysical

344 WHO ARE THE GERMANS?

speculation; cares not one straw for the tran-
scendental ; is the sceptic of nature’s own making
—a reasoning man, who tests all things, even
his religious faith, by his reason: to such a
person, and to such a race, who will pretend to
trace the diablerie of Germany? the craniology
of Gall? the homaaopathy, the hydropathy of
the same country? It is not, then, to the classic
German of Livy and of Tacitus, that we can trace
this element of mind? the fair-haired, large-
bodied, blue-eyed classic German, is now exactly
what he was two thousand years ago; he is the
Saxon or North German, and occupies nearly
the same ground he did when, crossing the Rhine,
he was routed by Caesar, who chased the Saxon
Boor with his Vaans and Parde Vaans back again
across the Rhine : there they are to this day, no
doubt, unaltered and unalterable. But Central
Germany furnishes another race 5 a darker, and a
differently shaped race. Whence come they?
To them, and to the pure Slavonians, belong
German literature, science, and art. Two hypo-
theses oﬂ‘er an explanation—the ﬁrst, perhaps,
the true one.

1st. Intercalated between the true Northern
German or Saxon and the Slavonian race of the
Danube, intermingling deeply in Prussia with
the Pruss, the Sarmatian and the Slavonian, and
especially the Saxon, a seemingly distinct race

WHO ARE THE GERMANS? 345

extends itself towards Flanders, mingling with the
F lamand; to the South and East it encountered
very early the Slavonian, who seized Bohemia, the
Grand Duchy of Posen, and Poland, advanced into
Finland, driving back, on one hand, the Sarmatian,
on the other, the Saxon. This race called them-
selves Germans, and came in time to be mistaken
for the classic German of Livy and Tacitus. That
the greater part of this German race, so called,
are not Saxon, may easily be shown from their
physical and moral nature. They assisted the
Houses of Hapsburgh and Brandenburgh in all
their efforts to crush the liberties of the true
German: they are Catholic, which no Saxon, no
true German, ever is; they opposed Gustavus
and his bold Swedes; they fought under Walles-
tein ; Austrians is their proper name, not Ger-
mans. The literary world cannot, I think, but
soon be disabused as to the true nature of the
Middle and South German; that is, if he be a
pure and original race, which I long doubted,
giving a preference to the next hypothesis.

2nd. As the modern German bears no resem-
blance in mind or body to the pure Saxon
German of Northern Europe, differing in features,
in feelings, in thoughts, and actions, it has been
surmised that such differences may be explained
on the hypothesis of his being a mixed race;
composed partly of Saxons, partly of Slavonians,

346 WHO ARE THE GERMANSE

in as it might be nearly equal proportions; at the
sources of the Danube and adjoining countries, the
Elbe included, or on the banks of the Rhine and
its tributary streams from the east and north, the
two races met : the result was the modern German,
unlike either, but most unlike the Saxon. I have
just been favoured with a third hypothesis by a
distinguished German scholar, himself a good
specimen of this contested race. The modern
Germans, always meaning the Germans of Middle
and South Germany, are, according to his View,
a mixed race, composed of Celts and Saxons.
Now, of all the hypotheses offered, this is the
least tenable, for the race I Speak of have none
of the qualities of their supposed parentage. If
we must view them as a mixed race, it is clearly
to the Slavonian and Saxon we must look; or to
the Slavonian, mingled with an unknown and
undescribed race. But against such theories,
admitting the strong admixture of Slavonian
blood with the Austrians, and all the so-called
South Germans, great physiological laws are
opposed. No mixed races can, or ever did,
exist for any length of time. The race seems to
me an original race; the people whom the
Romans called Goths; who overthrew the Roman
empire; who lived in Austria, and in the Da-
nubian provinces, before Rome was founded, and
who live there still; who have for four or ﬁve

WHO ARE THE GERMANs? 347

centuries been endeavouring to persuade the
world that they are of Saxon origin; Scandi-
navians, in fact; who dislike their Slavonian
afﬁliations; who stand, and always have stood,
on middle ground between two races, of greater
energies and larger numbers: the race to Whom
I shall feel disposed to think Germany owes all its
intellectual superiority over the rest of mankind.
But, be this as it may, the architecture called
Gothic belongs to them; to them and to the
Slavonians belong the waltz and the polka, and,
perhaps, the Mazourka; the music of Bohemia,
soft and enchanting: they produced the Mozarts
and Beethovens, and many others. They divide
with the Slavonians the taste and genius of
Germany. No native Pruss has ever been found
ﬁt for anything. They were described by Vol-
taire. But when the prince of critics lived—the
founder of philosophic history—the modern
German race had scarcely shown themselves.
The brutalizing wars of the Imperialists and
Pruss seem to have crushed the intellects of both
races, Slavonian and South German. The philo-
sophic mind shrank from contact with Spandau
and Schoenbrunn, Potsdam and Ulm. Over Italy
the leaden sceptre of Hapsburgh, the lineal and
literal descendant of the Danubian Goth, waved
ominously for man. Thus were crushed for cen-
turies the most gifted of mankind. Then came

348 WHO ARE THE GERMANs?

the career of the mighty Napoleon, who ﬁrst
struck down these abhorred dynasties, showing
their intrinsic weakness and rottenness. That
they ever recovered was simply due to England.
Next came the war of race, which must continue
Whilst race exists, and war conﬁned to no parti-
cular region, but extended over the earth. It has
been sometimes called a war for conscience’ sake
———a religious war; at other times it blushes not to
own its commercial character and origin ; and at
times the cross has been raised, and the exter-
mination of the heathen loudly demanded. But
after all, the basis is difference in race, that
key-stone to all human actions and human des-
tinies.

It seems to me, that in claiming for the German
so many works of merit, the illustrious Quetelet
has not drawn a clear distinction,—I had almost
said, has failed to observe, that Scandinavian
or true German, that is, the classic German of
antiquity, has no pretensions whatever to the
literature he has assigned to the people he calls
German; that the whole of it is either South Ger-
man or Slavonian. The same error runs through
most modern writers, such as Morrell. The
Scandinavian German who rallied around Gus-
tavus at Lutzen, is a noble race; aprotestant;
Nature’s democrat: the only free race in the world,
as proved by the greatest colony ever founded—

WHO ARE THE GERMANS? 349

the United States of America; but he is not philo-
sophic nor is he transcendental. There is the less
occasion then for ascribing to them qualities they
never possessed. That much of these high qua-
lities of mind, the appanage of the Middle and
South German, is derived from their contact, and
possibly, admixture, with the Slavonian, I am
willing to concede; at one time I felt inclined to
ascribe it wholly to the Slavonian, and did so in
several courses of lectures. But a matured reﬂec-
tion compels me to leave the question still open.
Defeated in their last great effort, extending
from Baden to Vienna, the fate of the German
people or race I now speak of is uncertain.
In their last struggle, the best Scandinavian
blo'od stood aloof; no Gustavus appeared to lead
them to victory; no such person, perhaps, ever
belonged to their race. They sing songs when
they should ﬁght; these pretended Germans are
not Saxons. Saxons, no doubt, abound amongst
them, but the mass is not of that race. To the hy-
pothesis, that the modern German is a hybrid be-
tween the Celt and Saxon, I reply, ﬁrst, that there
are no hybrid races ; and, secondly, the accidental
mixture of Celt and Saxon produces, for a time,
a body of people of uncertain character, inde-
ﬁnable; they are occasionally to be met with on
the eastern coasts of Scotland and of Ireland, and
they may be found, no doubt, in great abundance

350 WHO ARE THE GERMANS?

in the great manufacturing‘towns of England,
Scotland, and Ireland. They die out of course,
or return to the pure races; but this I will say,
that in no instance have I ever observed them to
bear any resemblance to the modern Middle and
South German.

351

LECTURE IX.
THE SLAVONIAN RACE.

HISTORIANS, the chroniclers of occurrences and
events, of the ups and downs, the rise and fall of the
political unions called nations, have not failed to
record and to present to mankind as “ philosophy
teaching by examples,” how the kingdom of Poland
was once a kingdom of some consideration; how
the monarchy was elective; how there was also
a kingdom of Bohemia, forming a part of the
German (l) empire; how, somehow or other, the
German empire quarrelled with those Bohemians,
and although both people were thoroughly Chris-
tian, orthodox, and up to the mark ; Bohemia
forming also a part and parcel of the great and
united empire of Germany, the said German em-
peror not only quarrelled with these Germans (I)
born in Bohemia, but ﬁlled the country with human
cut-throats, utterly to exterminate these Bohe-
mians; how they failed, notwithstanding, in doing
so, Bohemia being still in the hands of these same
Bohemians; how the said German empire changed
its name, acquiring that of Austrian; at ﬁrst Gothic,
then holy Roman, then German,then Austrian: but

352 THE SLAVONIAN RACE.

they have not told you that the whole of this was
a fraud, and an imposture; they have omitted or
misunderstood the essential facts of the history.
They have not told you that the true Germans
always rejected the head of this empire, refusing
to acknowledge him or it as their head; that the
political union was a jumble of heterogeneous
materials, ready to fall to pieces before an invad-
ing force; and that like every fraud on sense and
nature, the artiﬁcial and unnatural power would
cease to be. Accordingly, the Austrian empire
fell before-a mere handful of men, who would no
longer submit to be the most wretched of all slaves;
the emperor ﬂed from his palace 5 the sagacious and
far-seeing Metternich had no advice to give, no aid
to offer. He was the ﬁrst to run: he, who for thirty
years had enjoyed the plunder of a most rich and
fertile territory, inhabited by more than thirty mil-
lions of industrious and most intelligent people ;
be, when the hour of danger came, had not a friend
to strike a blow in his defence. Recovering from
their panic they were next overthrown by a hand~
fill of Hungarians : all but beaten out of Italy, and
ﬁnally rescued by the gold and bayonets of another
race ; to endure, or be endured, for a short time
longer, and then to cease for ever.

I have for many years been observing with much
interest, and not without some admiration, the
skill with which the British press contrives to

THE SLAVONIAN RACE. 353

elude the question, which, during the last two
years, has shook the world. When I predicted
some years ago the certain downfal of the Houses
of Hapsburgh and Brandenburgh, and the ap—
proaching conﬂict between dynasties and races,
I was told that the kingdom of Prussia was a
strong and united kingdom—consolidated: that
all distinction of race had long disappeared: that
it was the same with Austria: that these drum-
head governments were the very best in the world;
the people educated and happy; models, in short,
for the British people. But this profound igno-
rance of the actual state of Europe would now
seem to have been conﬁned to Britain, and per-
haps to France: the Slavonian and German
questions were perfectly well understood and
7 acted on by the various dynasties; especially
was it essential for the Houses of Hapsburgh
and Brandenburgh, to prevent the agitation of
these two questions—to break up these two, or,
rather as they may now be viewed, three races,
the Saxon or Northern German, the Southern
German, and the Slavonian: it served the views
of a fourth race—above all, the Sarmatian—a race
grasping at the possession of the ancient world.
In Britain, to suit the taste of the public, the
press, from the Quarterly to the ephemeral
daily journal, affected to wonder, how two or
three different races could not live peaceably
A A

354 THE SLAVONIAN RACE.

under the same government; they forgot Ireland
and Canada—but it did not matter; and they
reversed, in as far as regarded the Continental
nations, that term which they are fond of claiming
for themselves—namely, that a government is
intended to serve the people, and not the people
the government.

Whilst looking at-the map of Europe, some
twelve or ﬁfteen years ago, and recalling, in as
far as I could, the narrative of a few centuries;
the causes assigned for triple and quadruple alli-
ances, and their probable real causes—the osten-
sible reasons for wars and partitions of states,
the thought occurred to me, May not the question
of race explain some of these, to me otherwise
inexplicable, historical events? I said to myself,
who are the Slavonians, the Tzeks, the Huns?
What race occupies South Germany? What
occasioned the thirty years’ war in Bohemia?
What led Gustavus Adolphus into the centre of
Europe to head one portion of Germans against
the other? It was in the course of this inquiry,
that I ascertained that a race of men, whose
history is still to write, of whom we know neither
their physical structure nor mental qualities, ex-
tends from the mouth of the Danube, occupying
both banks, but chieﬂy the southern, to the con-
ﬁnes of Austria; that from thence, proceeding
northwards and eastwards, the same race, occa-

THE SLAVONIAN RACE. 355

sionally modiﬁed by unknown causes, occupy the
Whole of Bohemia, Poland, the wide plains of
Cracovia, the grand Duchy of Posen, a portion
of Lithuania, and of the southern shores of the
Baltic—and lastly, extending still further to the
north, they stretch into Scandinavia, peopling
Finland with a race whose origin, no doubt,
must be looked for in southern and eastern
Europe; a Danubian race—in western Europe
as in Prussia, mingling, but not uniting with the
Saxons and Southern German; in northern
Europe with the Sarmatian; in Hungary with
the Huns; in Turkey with the Greek and Tartar;
mingling, but never uniting; distinct from all
these races before history began—distinct now.
There are some who stickle for the fusion of races,
placing them in a Utopian theory of progress:
let them try the question by the Slavonian race.
The Tzelks occupied, beyond all question, the
same countries they do now, long before Rome
was founded—they are there now: assuming the

' modern South German to be the Goths of Roman
' writers, the Slavonians joined them in the over-

throw of the Roman power: with some of the

5' Scandinavian tribes they formed the great mass

of barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire ;

.' they gave rise to the dark ages, and it is not the
. fault of the House of Hapsburgh that these happy

ages, the paradise of churchmen and barons, were
A A 2

356 THE SLAVONIAN RACE.

not made permanent. “I want good men, not
great men,” was the reply of Ferdinand to Scarpa,
when the gifted Italian had shown this imbecile
Goth how the reign of the Goths in Italy had
destroyed the intellectual character of the Italian
Peninsula, reducing all to miserable mediocrity
or coarse brutality. The sticklers for the amal—
gamation of races had better try the question in
Posen, or Finland, or Prussia, or Austria; in
what number of centuries do they look for such
an event? The position of the Slavonian has
been known for ﬁfteen centuries, and may be
guessed at for ﬁfteen more, yet we have no visible
signs of amalgamation, nor any explanation of the
fact, unless by the falsifying of historic facts.
Little seems to me to be known of this noble
race, the most intellectual, probably, of all. They
are said to be remarkably deﬁcient in elegance of
form; external beauty does not belong to them,
according to some ; they are short in stature, with
dark hair and complexion— cheerful in disposition
and fond of pleasure. Superior to the Saxon and
Celtic races in their taste for music, architecture,
and the ﬁne arts, generally—above all gifted with
high feelings, leading them to view N ature’s laws
abstractedly, and to see in her operations prin-
ciples imperceptible to others. The element of
mind which leads to transcendentalism is distinctly
Slavonian—at least, so it seems to me. Call it

THE SLAVONIAN RACE. 357

also German if you will, it is not Saxon—not
Scandinavian. The rationalism of Strauss belongs
to no Scandinavian ; Oken was not a Saxon; nor
Spix; nor Von Martins: Bath yani and Kossuth are
not Germans: De Haen was a court physician in
Vienna about a century ago; he wrote on magic !
the author of the Philosophy of History, published
but lately, sees evil agencies everywhere at work;
the Diablerie of Faust is evidently of Slavonian
origin, or at least South German, whose relation to
the Slavonian is close and intimate—afﬁliated races
not yet understood. In the desire to get at ﬁrst
principles, they overlook nzang'fiestatz'ons; these with
their external forms, whether organic or not, are of
but little moment: it is the essence, the principle,
they aim at. With them originated the transcen-
dental philosophy, claimed in part I believe, by
the South German. I pretend not to dispute this
claim, having no data to guide my opinion. In
my younger days I was taught, as most have
been, no doubt, that the Caucasian family was
one—the Caucasian nations, of one race, of one
mind therefore; this, I think, is a fair deduction
from the premises. Now try this simple state-
'ment by an appeal to fact; explain the transcen-
dental theory of organic life, the metaphysics of
Fichte, Schelling, Hagel, to a Saxon audience;
English, Dutch, North German, Swede—show them
the nodule of bone I spoke of to you, found on the

358 THE SLAVONIAN RACE.

arm bone of man, and ask them the meaning, the
signiﬁcation of it—ask them the signiﬁcation of
the limbs—the meaning, that is the reason, why
two small additional bones are found occasionally
attached to the upper part of the breast bone ; the
signiﬁcation of two small folds of membrane tra-
versing loosely the knee joint in man, and be
assured that the mechanical race who will have a
mechanical reason for all things, an intelligible
utility, that is a utility intelligible to them—be
assured that the race will reply, as has been done
for them‘from Derham to Paley, from Paley to
Charles Bell, “all these structures have a refe-
rence to animal mechanics—their mechanical
utility is obvious, and for that were they created.”
Confounding the pure high-minded spiritual doc-
trine of the Slavonian with their Celtic modiﬁ-
cations: mistaking their parentage, and fancying
them French, a cry is raised that the doctrines
are material(!) and sceptical, being French; but
this great question, the results on philosophy
by the introduction of the Slavonian element of
mind into civilized Europe, I must not discuss
here, although appropriate, until I shall have com-
pleted this brief sketch of the Slavonian race,
together with a still briefer one of the Sarma—
tian.

The future destiny of the Slavonian race is, if
possible, more problematical than any other. Like

THE SLAVONIAN RACE. 359

the continental Saxon, they want a leader. About
eighty millions in number, they groan under the
despotisms of three dynasties or families—Haps-
burgh, Brandenburgh, and the Muscovite. Part
belong to the Mahomedan of Turkey, with whom
it would seem that honour and humanity, and
common sense, driven from civilized (l) Europe,
are about to make their last stand. They want a
leader. It would seem that the Ban Jellachich
is their hereditary chief, but he let the golden
opportunity slip through his ﬁngers—betrayed, no
doubt, by the court of Vienna. Still the Slavo-
nians demand a political unity—the South Ger
man does the same; the North German or
Scandinavian despises them both, but he also
would fain be free. For union he cares nothing:
it is liberty the Saxon aims at, that liberty which
originally belonged to him, and to him only.
They desire to shake off dynasties, which, of all
races, they most abhor—to establish republics—
united states, peopled not by slaves, but by free
men. Liberty of conscience and of action——
equality before the law—the reign of the law
instead of the reign of a. dynasty. The North
German or Scandinavian race, then, may some
day be free as they once were, but still it is
doubtful. The Pruss, so admirably described by
Voltaire, extinguished freedom but lately in
Saxony and on the Rhine; the war of 1815

360 THE SLAVONIAN RACE.

blotted the republic of Holland from the map of
Europe; the best blood of the race, that is, the
Swede and the Dane, and Norwegian, is over-
awed by Russia ; the Western Saxons of Prussia,
and the smaller states of the Rhine, could not
resist for a day the combined attack of Sarmatian
and Slavonian, led on by their respective dynasties.
England, half Saxon, wholly commercial England,
fancies she has a direct interest in the perpetua-
tion of these iron dynasties of Europe. But, of
the Slavonian race, it would be difﬁcult to con-
jecture the future. Not so, I think, of the people
called German, that is, South German, Austrian,
&c.; surrounded by those purer races, their chance
of independence is small; they may, assisted by the
Slavonian, have founded the Gothic empire—this
I pretend not to question—but neither they nor
the Goths, whom J ornandes traced from, instead
of to Scandinavia, ever were Saxons. Thus, I
reply to Arnold and to Prichard ; to the amal-
gamation theorists; to the progressists, the edu-
cationalists of all denominations. I ask them to
look again at Central Europe, its state in 1815,
its condition now. The Slavonian wants a leader;
so does the South German; so does the true
Saxon or North German. They are quite sen-
sible that at present, though broken into fragments,
the day may come when nature must again assert

THE SLAVONIAN RACE. 361

her rights in despite of treaties and protocols, par-
titions and adjustments. The balance of power
in Europe must ultimately rest, not With families,
but with races: the question of European civiliza-
tion must repose on the same basis.

362

LECTURE X.
OF THE SARMATIAN RACE.

THE Muscovite power, which at this moment
threatens the destruction of human liberty in
Europe and in Asia, is, as it were, of yesterday.
To the dominant race of this political dynasty,
for it rules numerous other races, to be described
hereafter, I have ventured to give the name of
Sarmatian, instead of Russ or Muscovite ; by this
I mean not to trace their history to the ancient
Sarmates, but merely to designate thereby a race of
men clearly distinct from all others, in physical
structure and moral character. Whether they
are, or are not, the lineal descendants of those

 

[Modern Greek and Russian Prqﬁles contrasted wit/L '
each other.]

THE SARMATIAN RACE. 363

who, crossing the Euxine, attempted to seize
on Byzantium during the decline of the Eastern
Empire, I leave to others to determine. One
thing is certain, I think, the element of mind
peculiar to them did not show itself in EurOpe
until very lately. Christianity they modelled like
the other races, to suit their physical and moral
nature; the Greek formula of religion was that
they adopted: as the Celt and Slavonian adhered
to Romanism, and the Saxon nations, so soon as
they dared do so, threw off the yoke of Romanism
with its hideous mummeries, reducing their re-
ligion to a formula sanctioned by their reason ; a
protesting utilitarian race, averse to extremes, and
fond of common sense; so the plastic robe was
easily moulded into these three great forms, or
adaptations, suited to the moral and physical
structure of the European races.

We know nothing of the origin of the Sarma-
tians, nor of any other race. Aided by the course
of events, and the gradual extinction of the Men-
gol, (a race evidently becoming decayed, and
ultimately, perhaps, extinct,) they hold the great
Steppes of Asia—a large portion of Europe. The
Mongol held them in cruel slavery for nearly two
hundred and ﬁfty years, traces of which may
still be seen in their institutions ; they have now
enslaved the Mongol; China and Thibet are at
their mercy when they choose to subjugate them;

364 THE SARMATIAN RACE.

a single rail-road will do it; and with that rail,
our power in Indostan ceases.

The struggle between the Muscovite and Saxon
was soon over; it was decided at Pultowa; the
contest with the Pruss may be said to have ended
also in his favour, the dynasty of Brandenburgh
being merely a tenant-at-will of the Muscovite.
If you desire to see his power over the Northern
Saxons or Scandinavians, attempt a constitutional
monarchy or republic in Sweden or Denmark, and
watch the result; he now aims at the Slavonian
—this is his best game—it leads to the gates of
Constantinople, and the possession of Greece.

Before Dr. Edward Clarke, of Cambridge, pub-
lished his travels through some parts of Russia,
the real character of the Muscovite seems to have
been wholly misunderstood. He is the true

 

[Ca lmuck W'om (m .]

THE SARMATIAN RACE. 365

Zanthous race, the dark skinned, yellow bearded
man: the homo duri frontis ; hollowed out face,
square shaped orbits, projecting brow and chin;
apathetic; torso without shape; tall, yet not
robust; strong, yet without energy. They are
described by Dr. Clarke as a nation without
principle; liars all. But Clarke had a heated
imagination and a diseased brain, of- which he
died, and so great allowances must be made for
him, and all his ideas must be viewed as over—
wrought; his colouring too high, his perception
of the frail side of the Sarmatian morbidly acute.

Retzius says, that the crania of the Russ and
Slavonian races are shorter than those of the
Saxon and Celtic: but this most distinguished
observer made but a few measurements. One
thing seems certain, they are admirable linguists,
profound dissemblers, and, as a consequence, good
statesmen and politicians. They have a language
peculiarly their own, a music also superior to
Celt or Saxon; without inventive genius they
are yet admirable imitators; that is, living auto-
matic machines; in progress of time they will
probably have an architecture and ﬁne arts of
their own: for the present, they no doubt bor-
row these things from others. Stubborn, without
bravery, their quality as “food for powder” was
tested at Borodino; but they ran away from Napo-
leon and a handful of young conscripts at Lutzen

366 THE SARMATIAN RACE.

and Batzen~their emperor and staff being the
ﬁrst to run. But for the gold of the Ural and
Georgey, the Hungarians would have given Europe
a good account of Paschievitch and his savages.
Of the literature and science of a race to Whom
free thought is denied, what can be said? If
neither exists, it surely is not their fault. Their
government has even attempted to falsify history,
imitating the Stuarts in this respect. N 0 fair race,
perhaps, were ever sunk so low in the scale of
humanity, and the morals often correspond to this
physical degradation. Asia is their ﬁeld into
which they should be driven. The Turks are a
highly civilized race compared with the Russ—in
morale they cannot be compared. A Turk’s word
is sacred as his oath; of the value of that of
the Sarmatian and modern Greek I need not say

 

[Russian Soldier, in the time of Paul: from
Clarke’s Travels]

THE SARMATIAN RACE. 367

one word. They are Christians it is true, and he
is Mahommedan, follower of a false light ; what a
pity it is that even Christianity, the everlasting
truth, cannot alter humanity cannot alter race.
It was remarked to me by Dr. Roussell of Fin-
land, that the Russ being the latest race to appear,
bade fair to become, in his turn, the dominant race:
that most races have had their day, and that the
tide was now with the Sarmatian. What will the
progressists say to this .9 More than four thousand
years ago, men were born of a race who carved
the Venus and the Apollo, wrote the Homeric
ballad—built the Parthenon. Demosthenes dis-

 

 

 

368 THE SARMATIAN RACE.

coursed in Athens; Thucydides, Euclid, Aristotle,
were persons who lived a very long time ago.
The people who listened to them understood them
perfectly; they were not, therefore, prodigies. If
the Russ be the last development, human course
cannot be forward, but retrograde; it is a progress
backwards, tending towards some unknown goal.
Why not? we know nothing of Nature’s plan;
the Russ maybe her BEAU IDEAL—her highest

 

[Apollo ,- the Greek Proﬁle cont-rusted with the other
extreme of the fair races—the Russ.]

THE SARMATIAN RACE. 369

and last development. The world, for countless
thousands of years, was inhabited only by ﬁshes ;
could they have spoken, and left us records, we
should have found, no doubt, that they considered
themselves as the most perfect of all Nature’s
works, and the beings for Whom the seas, at least,
if not the dry land, had been made. Then came
bears and hyaenas, called antediluvian without the
shadow of proof—and they, no doubt, could they
have reasoned, would clearly have demonstrated,
not only their right to the earth, but that the
globe was made for them, and all that it con-
tained, whether they made use of it or not.
Then came man, and he finds everything made
for his use—serpents, crocodiles, and hyaenas
—very useful things in their way, and, beyond
all question, made exclusively and solely for
his proﬁt and advantage: without serpents in
certain countries, mice would be troublesome;
and crocodiles and hyaenas occasionally save
man the trouble and expense of funerals. The
Russ, after all, may be the highest developed as
he is the last. If obedience to “ the powers that
be,” truly form the greatest quality of the human ‘
mind, then does the Russ stand as high as the
Saxon is low. I leave the question to the states-
man and theologian.

LECTURE XI.

QUESTION OF DOMINANCY.—-ENGLAND2 HER CON-
STITUTION AND COLONIES.—NATIONALITIES.

I WAS, I think, the ﬁrst, or amongst the ﬁrst, to
point out to the reading world the antagonism of
the present Norman government of England to
her presumed Saxon population. From “ the
element of race,” advocated by me as a leading
feature—the leading feature in human thoughts and
actions, the deduction was direct. N o right-think-
ing person could avoid coming to the conclusion,
that, in the present dynasty and aristocracy of
Britain, the descendants of William and his N or-
man robbers had a perfect representative. What
the sword enabled him to do, the sham constitution
of England qualiﬁes the present dynasty to attempt.
England is perfectly feudal: the results are not
quite so apparent, it is true, in a Saxon country, in
consequence of the energy of the race; but in
Celtic Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, “ the system”
has produced its full results. I was amongst the
ﬁrst to point out that the land of Ireland, and of
Caledonian Scotland, was in the hands of the
hereditary descendants of the Norman; and that

QUESTION OF DOMINANCY. 371

broad England itself was daily following in the
same steps: patronage, and corrupt inﬂuence,
and enormous wealth, effecting now what brute
violence and its armed followers accomplished in
former times.

I was in Shefﬁeld when an agitation was at»
tempted to be got up in favour of “ ﬁnancial re—
form.” Some most esteemed friends advocated
this unprincz’pled (I do not use the word in the
common acceptation,) —-unprz'ncz'pled measure,
hoping great things from it. The opinions I gave
them were the same then as now; the same as I
held when the ludicrous Reform Bill came in
under “ our Sailor King ,” you “ are entirely in
the hands of a Norman government—united,
wealthy, all-powerful; your Church is rampant,
Norman, and bloated with wealth—corrupt be-
yond imagination ; your population priest-ridden.
The land of England is not in your hands. G0 at
the land in preference to every other measure."

And now it appears that these great and vital
truths, based on the simple fact—namely, the ex-
istence of a feudal Norman government, in semi-
Saxon England, antagonistic to the majority of
its inhabitants—is beginning to be understood by
all ranks; the expressions then used spread, and
are coming into daily use.

M. Guizot has written a work on the Causes
of the Success of the English Revolution; he

B B 2

372 QUESTION OF DOMINANCY.

must mean “ the failure :” for never was a failure
more complete. Church and State remain as they
were; nay, they are worse than prior to 1688.
The military force at the disposal of the govern-
ment for the crushing down and intimidating the
freemen of England is more effective, more insu-
lated from the people, than in the most despotic
European state. The wealth, patronage, and
power of the country, are concentrated in the
dynasty and its supporters.

In the so-called colonies, matters are still
worse: ‘the sham is greater: the ofﬁcials more in-
solent; occasionally imbecile, at others insane.
The Smiths, the Wards, the Torringtons, the
O’Ferrals, carry out the views of the Norman
government of England in distant lands.

Had a statesman of Rome been told that a
small nation would one day arise on the conﬁnes
of Europe, secured by its insular position from
the rude grasp of continental tyrannies; that
this nation, after founding the greatest colony
(North-American Union) the world ever saw,
should, through the folly and tyranny of its go-
vernment, antagonistic of its race, aided by the
brutal ignorance and intolerable selﬁshness of its
own people, lose that colony for ever; be driven
from it with ignominy, leaving in the minds of a
growing population of millions and millions a

rancorous and eternal hatred for the parent king- .

QUESTION OF DOMINANCY. 373

dom; an abhorrence of her, and her rotten insti-
tutions ; that statesman would have declared at
once, that no country could survive the shock of
such an event. Yet England has stood it.

All men love liberty, in one sense or another;
but all do not attach to the term the same ideas.
Each race interprets the expression differ-
ently. Four times, I think, within the memory of
man, has the Celtic race of men in France
achieved their absolute freedom — their entire
liberty to form whatever government they might
choose. Four times they have betrayed the hopes
of mankind. No trust can any longer be put in
them. Look at the Celtic man in Canada, Wales,
Scotland, United States, Paris—~it is always the
same : he does not know the meaning of rational
liberty. Look at Paris, after a revolution the
most complete, the most successful, the most
daring the world ever beheld: the dynasties of
Europe, from St. James’s to Moscow, struck
dumb; aware of their extreme danger, but afraid
to move; the very “ Times” itself shrinking into
nothing with alarm and fear. Now visit Paris!
A fortiﬁed camp, espionage, police, gens-d’armes,
passports, all in full force: the reign of Napoleon
was a farce to this terrible mockery.

A rumour prevails at this moment that it is
intended to abate one of these alarming nuisances,
by abolishing the passport system. It may be so,

374 I QUESTION OF DOMINANCY.

but I for one do not believe it. Come when it
will, it will take the whole race as much by sur-
prise as it will do me. Even then, let it be
remembered, that it is not the act of the Celtic
French themselves, but of a foreigner. A Celtic
man, even the most furious democrat, cannot be
made to understand how the system of passports
is incompatible with human liberty.

Each race has its own ideas of liberty. There
is but one race whose ideas on this point are sound;
that race is the Saxon. He is the only real demo-
crat on the earth, who combines obedience to the
law with liberty. But the law must be made by
himself, and not forced on him by another; hence
the successive revolutions in England to overturn
the Norman law and the Norman government;
hence the struggle now approaching, which will
not be the last.

If we now inquire into the history of the Anglo-
Saxon colonies, keeping in view the element of
race, we shall ﬁnd that on quitting his native soil
the Saxon loses all respect for it. He is totally
devoid of the weakness called patriotism. His
adopted land becomes his fatherland. With the
ﬁrst opportunity he shakes off the despotism of
England and sets up for himself: hence, in time,
England must lose all her colonies. It is a
singular event in history that she has not lost
Ireland; but that is no colony as yet: it is a

QUESTION OF DOMINANCY. 375

conquered country, where the Norman is in full
force, where he rules with the sword, and into
which Saxon laws were never introduced. The
occupant race is Celtic. Under a bold military
leader they might have driven out the Norman
ruler and recovered their freedom, for the English
are quite aware that Ireland is not a colony, but
merely a country held by force of arms, like
India; a country inhabited by another race.
They are aware, too, that, in point of fact, it is
merely a fief of the reigning dynasty and a few
of the noblesse; they would not, for them, support
a long and unprofitable war; so that Celtic Ireland
might have recovered her nationality by a single
well-fought action. But she could not have re-
covered her liberty : Rome was there, and O’Con-
nell, and a thousand inﬂuential haters of true
liberty. Allowing, which was probable enough,
that, carrying out the destinies of their race, after
driving the Norman oppressor from their soil,
young Ireland had risen, and, imitating their
brethren in France, they had pushed at the point
of the bayonet from out the soil of Ireland the
abhorred demagogue and his ﬁend-like church,
still, as a Celtic race, they must either have fallen
into the hands of a military leader, or relapsed
into a state of barbarism similar to the Caledonian
Celt prior to 1745.

All races of men equal to a social condition,

376 QUESTION or DOMINANCY.

which in courtesy we may call civilization, will,
I think, obey the law, if made by themselves; law
and government are identical and nearly syno-
nymous terms. If in accordance with their race,
the law is obeyed cheerfully; the ruﬂian populace,
who do not constitute the people in any country,
but a turbulent section, were mercilessly shot
down on the streets by the mayor of New York,
and a handful of citizens, armed merely for the
occasion; it was an ominous event for the Nor-
man and other dynasties of Europe, showing them
what the‘Saxon becomes when the law is of his own
making: a Saxon republic: unconquerable Hol-
land, as a republic, might, with the aid of England,
have deﬁed Europe, but for Napoleon; as a king-
dom! even the Belgians beat her on her own
frontier.

If there be one feature more remarkable than
another in the history of the existing dynasties of
Europe, it is their general imbecility; the Norman
government of England is no exception to this.
Let us look at its policy with regard to her
colonies.

That Saxon men will on leaving England be-
come furious democrats, I admit; nothing will
ever satisfy them but self-government. Adopting,
moreover, the land of selection for their own, the
English become Canadians, Americans, &c., as
the case may be; the Dutch assume the name of g

QUESTION or DOMINANCY. 377

Africaniers ; the English, Australians : always
Saxon, they view nationality as a thing of no
moment, unless it refer to the community of
which at the moment they happen to form a part.
Hence no government can long hold a Saxon
colony, do what it will, because their insolence
and demands will always rise with their numbers
and wealth.

But this great lesson, taught the Norman
government of England by the American revo-
lution, was lost on the dynasty; and they pursue,
true to their nature, the same course with respect
to the few real colonies England yet has : Canada,
the Cape, Australia, Tasmania; the rest scarcely
merit notice, as yet: India is merely a conquered
territory. The system followed out leads almost
uniformly to the employment of ofﬁcials, whose
rise in life were impossible, under any other circum-
stances, but in the atmosphere of a court. Owing
everything to patronage, they despise every other
human qualiﬁcation. All places of trust and proﬁt
thus, in time, become ﬁlled with placemen ; of the
character of these persons I need not here speak.
The results show themselves most strongly abroad:
Malta, Corfu, New Zealand, Tasmania, Canada,
the Cape. A mere handful of Saxons, disunited
on most points, scattered, unarmed, poor, have
beaten our ﬂunky oﬂicial, with six regiments at
his back, to the wall. It is a lesson not merely

378 QUESTION OF DOMINANCY.

for England, but for the world: a subject of
amusement and ridicule to those who know the
country, its resources in able hands, and the ease
with which an able man could have set the Boor
at deﬁance. I have examined this question in a
note, to which I beg leave to refer the reader.

The really momentous question for England,
as a nation, is the presence of three sections of
the Celtic race still on her soil: the Caledonian,
or Gael; the Cymbri, or Welsh; and the Irish,
or Erse; and how to dispose of them. The
Caledonian Celt touches the end of his career:
they are reduced to about one hundred and ﬁfty
thousand; the Welsh Celts are not troublesome,
but might easily become so; the Irish Celt is
the most to be dreaded.

It was natural for an amiable man, of a vigorous
understanding, great energy and courage (I allude
to Mr. John Bright), to ascribe Irish misery to
the misrule of her race; and to trace this misrule
not to the English people, but to the imbecile,
treacherous, and disastrous government of her
Norman dynasty and Norman nobility: of a cor-
porate body of foreigners, who would still fain
look on England as theirs by right of conquest, and
on the soil of Ireland as a mere hunting-ground
for the recreation and proﬁt of the mighty barons.
But Mr. Bright is, in the main, in error. The
Norman government of England has, it is true,

QUESTION OF DOM (NANCY. 379

done its best and its worst in Ireland. If you
wish to see what such a dynasty can do, go to
Ireland; still, the source of all evil lies in the race,
the Celtic race of Ireland. There is no getting
over historical facts. Look at Wales, look at
Caledonia; it is ever the same. The race must
be forced from the soil; by fair means, if possible;
still they must leave. England’s safety requires
it. I speak not of the justice of the cause; nations
must ever act as Machiavelli advised: look to
yourself. The Orange club of Ireland is a Saxon
confederation for the clearing the land of all
papists and jacobites; this means Celts. If left to
themselves, they would clear them out, as Crom-
well proposed, by the sword; it would not require
six weeks to accomplish the work. But the
Encumbered Estates Relief Bill will do it better.

Then will come, a hundred years hence, a more
momentous question for England: a Saxon popu-
lation in Ireland will assuredly forget that they
ever came from England; at all events, they will
be born in Ireland, and their property is there,
and that will be enough for them. Then will
come the struggle of self; the Saxon against
Saxon. A Saxon colony in Ireland! But long
before that, the tri-colour ﬂag may wave over the
United States of Great Britain and Ireland. This
is the march of the Saxon onwards to democracy;
self-government, self-rule: with him, self is every—
thing.

380 REMARKS ON THE

LECTURE XII.

SOME REMARKS 0N JEWISH CHRONOLOGY.

SECTION I.—In drawing up this brief sketch
of the history of these three remarkable races
of men, the Copt, Jew, and Gipsies, my attention
has been forcibly attracted to two points; ﬁrst, to
the absence of sound historical data in respect of
all three; secondly, to the extraordinary proofs
they offer of the incorreetness of that view which
would assign to an ideal family of men, called
Caucasian, not merely those elements of mind
which belong to other races, and which no one of
these three seem ever to have possessed, but by a
still grosser error, would ascribe to this ideal
Caucasian race mental qualiﬁcations and physical
structure excelling all others; superior to all; not
to be surpassed. From these abstractions of
Blumenbach, Prichard, and the English school,
although they scarcely merit the name, have ﬂowed
other serious mistakes and incongruities, depriving
the View of all title to the term philosophic; the
singular spectacle of a wandering race living in
the midst of civilization, of conventionalism, of
restraint, yet refusing for centuries to recognise

JEWISH AND COPTIC CHRONOLOGY. 381

these adjuncts to humanity, preferring the life of
the beasts of the ﬁeld, has never been fairly met.
Yet this, the Gipsy, is called a Caucasian race,
and by some thought to be beautiful and of
the highest order. Another dispersed race, for.
it would seem I must not call them wanderers,
remain dispersed for some thousand years: till
not, fabricate nothing, create nothing, live in a
seeming vision of the past, ahost without aleader.
Adopting in part the civilization of the surround-
ing races, they yet themselves have neither litera-
ture, science, nor art; nor wish to create them,
nor power to invent them, nor ability to perform.
Yet here is another of the said Caucasian family
of Prichard; the oldest, as is said—the best——
beaten by the rough energy of the rude Scandi-
navian. Loftiest of the Caucasian family! show
me your doings, your labours. In energy and in-
dustry you are inferior to the Negro; in muscular
frame, mechanical skill, and accumulative power,
overmatched by the Saxon; in taste and elegance,
in war and peace, the Celt leaves you immeasur-
ably behind; last and greatest, the Slavonian
and South German, or Goth, transcend you in
that very philosophy called transcendental, con-
sidered by many as the great peculiarity of your
race. Yet Blumenbach, Prichard, and their fol-
lowers, call you Caucasian!

A third race, also called Caucasian, erect

38-2 REMARKS ON THE

monuments of surpassing grandeur; attain seem-
ingly the highest civilization at a period when the
Scandinavian, Celtic, and Slavonian lay grove]-
ling, and but little raised above the beasts of the
ﬁeld. Yet where are they now, these companions
of Sesostris? Your Coptic civilization has passed
away seemingly with the race; and so has the
Arabic or Saracenic also with the races. A
rufﬁanly mixed population of blacks and browns
occupy your ﬁelds, to become extinct in time, as
all mixed races must. But are your Copts of
antiquity-extinct? Here is a question for the
physiologist; and if so, how came it to pass?
Do races of men become extinct, like the beasts
of the ﬁeld? ’

To this question I shall soon turn; but before
discussing it, let me direct your attention to the
present position and past history of the Jew.

SECTION I. The Jewish and Coptic Chronology.

The chronicle of the events which have hap-
pened to races, nations, and remarkable indivi-
duals, has been, with few exceptions, so imperfectly
written as to render human chronology nearly
worthless. It solves no great questions in a com-
plete manner. The monumental records them-
selves of Egypt, the most valuable and probably
the most ancient, explain but little ; each
successive discovery adding mnigma to eenigma,

JEWISH AND COPTIC CHRONOLOGY. 383

doubt to doubt, merely. I have always, therefore,
avoided, without, however, overlooking or de-
spising, discussions on chronological questions,
generally speaking, and excepting in a very few
instances, I attach no importance to them:
human history, whether recorded or monumental,
I esteem but a drop in the ocean of time and of
events. The greatest of all questions, in one
sense, is no doubt a chronological one. Its ad—
justment would form a new aera in human history.
Give us the precise date of the building of the
Great Pyramid—the name of the dynasty of the
period—the relation of the Egyptians of that
period to the surrounding nations. Show us the
exact condition of the Esquimaux, or yellow races
of Africa, 3000 years ago. Nay, inform us rigo-
rously of the nature of the race inhabiting South
Britain when Caesar landed. Give us any ﬁxed
starting point in history. But there is no such
point; all is surmise and conjecture, contradiction
and aenigma. No one could have felt this more
than the celebrated historian Niebuhr. It was
incomprehensible to him how “ the Germans,” as
he called the middle and South Germans of his
day, were dark-complexioned men, with dark hair
and eyes; whilst in the time of Marius, of Livy,
and of Tacitus, the Germans were a fair-haired,
blue-eyed race. Niebuhr neglected the element
of race, and hence his difﬁculty. The present or

384 REMARKS ON THE

modern South German does not belong to the
race described in classic Roman history ; they
are not Scandinavians or true Germans, and never
were a fair race.

Long prior to the appearance in an English
dress of the immortal historian’s works, I had
arrived, after much anxious thought, at the con-
clusion that Jewish chronology was worthless;
that Coptic written history could not be trusted;
and that Coptic monumental history—the most
valuable, I admit, existing—with its inexhaustible
but mysterious hieroglyphics, had added hitherto
no substantial, no decisive fact to human history,
saving one, that civilization, and arts, and man-
kind generally, were of a much more ancient date
than was generally supposed. I

These opinions I have always expressed
cautiously before public audiences, knowing the
deep prejudices existing throughout Europe gene-
rally on all these questions, and the determination
of the mass, not merely of theologians, but of the
world generally, to assign a historic character to
the Mosaic record, and to take for a chronological
history of mankind that history, which, if complete
and understood, would no doubt have explained
all things, but which, as it now stands, is no more
a history than it is a work of science.

My present remarks will be very brief. Lite-
rary men and theologians dispute for victory: I

JEWISH AND COPTIC CHRONOLOGY. 385

aim merely at truth. To me it is a matter of the
most perfect indifference whether the Jews ever
were in the land we call Egypt, or not. The
Rev. Mr. Beke, who, I believe, is an orthodox
divine, says that they never lived in'the land we
call Egypt, but in the now wild and desolate
region between the River of Egypt (which I need
not say is not the Nile) and Syria. Be it so; I
leave this matter entirely to theologians. Let me
return to the history of the Jew and the Copt,
adhering strictly to what has a reference to the
element of race.

Niebnhr observes, in a note to the ﬁrst edition
of his great work, that the chronology of the Jews
of the Mosaic record is beneath all notice, and
merits merely contempt. These too strong expres
sions theologians have generally and prudently
overlooked, contenting themselves, I think, with
expunging the exceptionable passages from subse-
quent editions. Dr. Arnold, whose works are a
mere copy of Niebuhr’s, takes no notice, I think,
of these and similar passages. Bishop Usher’s
views on chronology have been stereotyped in
England by clergy and laity. In Catholic
countries there is no occasion to reconcile any
contradictions, however monstrous: the Church
is infallible. To minds so constituted, a difference
amounting to a triﬂing 1600 years or so is no-
thing. To such minds, truth in history is of no

0 C

386 REMARKS ON THE

value; science they detest; all scientiﬁc men
they place in one category.

I may hereafter discuss the inﬂuence which dis-
coveries in physical science have exercised over
chronology. ' My present object is with the veriﬁ~
cation of certain events connected with Jewish and
Coptic history, keeping ever in View the question
of race.

It is and always has been the practice of every
race and nation, whose intellectual faculties were
sufﬁciently elevated, to connect their history with
the origin'of all time, and, under one denomina-
tion or another, to identify themselves With the
great creative Power. This practice seems not to
have been conﬁned to the fair races exclusively;
for the Chinese, Mongolians by race, Japanese,
Hindoo, Copt, are all more or less dark—coloured
races, have, notwithstanding this, traced their
origin to the gods, and their priests made “ com-
mon cause” with the Creator of all things. This
practice prevailed to such an extent, becoming
so deep-rooted in human minds, that to this
day stealing from a building called a church is
termed sacrilege, as if any one building made by
human hands could be more sacred than any
other; and millions of educated and superior
men still think it necessary that some mummery
be repeated over a portion of the earth’s surface
before that earth can be ﬁt to receive those frail

JEWISH AND COPTIC CHRONOLOGY. 387

and rotten remains, which mythology and philo-
sophy alike inform us, sprung originally from it.

Whilst the human mind remains in this de-
graded condition, truth is not wanted, Millions
and millions of brave men, Romans, believed that
a priest did divide a Whetstone with a razor.
The same race (Italian) have superstitions still
more numerous, offensive, and degrading to huma-
nity. They believe in the liquefaction of the
blood of St. Januarius, and in the efﬁcacy of “the
red tunic.” We hear kind-hearted men speak of
the progress of mankind! What progress do
they mean ?

The Jews are said to be descended from one
family, one man: I speak of the so-called historic
period. This expression is really devoid of any
meaning; for his descendants returned on all and
every occasion to Chaldea, if he was really a
Chaldean, for wives from other families of the race.
Lot, not aremarkably over—scrupulous or tight—laced
man, was his kinsman—I think his brother. His
heir-male of entail lived in Damascus. Nineteen
hundred years, then, before our aera, there was a
town, a city at Damascus; the Syrian plains were
fully occupied—so also, no doubt, was Lebanon.
Thus mingling with a section of the Chaldean or
Babylonish race, the Jews progressed in numbers
and wealth: the Abrahamidae were a section of a
wandering race who had already wandered into

c c ‘2

388 REMARKS ON THE

Syria before the appearance of Abraham in that
country—wanderers over the earth from their ear-
liest records to the present day; a scattered race
by the nature of their instincts.

The race whence the Abrahamidae sprung was
left somewhere in Chaldea: travellers ought to
ﬁnd them there to this day. They are the origin
of the race of Israel—the original stock; the purest
blood must be there, and also the most numerous
tribe; for the offset which wandered into Egypt
was a branch, sure to perish but for fusion with
other races. This accordingly happened; and in
Egypt the race assumed that Coptic physiognomy
and form, unalterably stamped on the family,
now visible everywhere, under all climates, under
all circumstances. As the modern Jew, then, is
chieﬂy Egyptian, a question arises as to the real
character of the primitive race, their physiognomy,
and form, and mental disposition. This, I think,
must be sought for in Chaldea, from whence we
are told they came. It is a subject worthy the
inquiry of a Lepsius or a Humboldt.

The race, now remodelled, leave Egypt with a
view to the extermination of the Syrian inhabi-
tants of the country, the utter extermination of
the race or races of Palestine, and the substitution
of themselves for all others. Their utter failure
was complete ; but still not more so than that of
all other races under similar circumstances. That

JEWISH AND COPTIC CHRONOLOGY. 389

they should fail in the extermination of another
race; that, after the lapse of many centuries, they
should ﬁnd themselves in their ﬁrst position,
scattered over the earth, few in number, without
a rallying point, has nothing in it wonderful.
Equally so is their distinctness from all other
races: I have shown the fusion of race, or amal-
gamation of races, to be a theory refuted by all
history.

In brieﬂy reviewing these two great facts, let
me supply the physical evidence deduced from
the theory of race to which I venture to lay
claim. 1st, By his nature, the Jew, or Chaldee,
is a wanderer over the earth; like the Gipsy,
whom he greatly resembles, he has no settled
home; the restoration of Palestine to the Jew
would not in the least degree render the Jew
less a wanderer. From Chaldea he wandered
into Egypt; from Egypt again to Palestine.
Famine could not have been the sole cause of
this ; a pastoral people, as they are stated to have
been at the time, could suffer nothing by a scarcity
of grain. If all the wheat in South Africa were
destroyed for seven years, the people would
suffer not in the least, so long as pasture re-
mained sufﬁcient for their ﬂocks and herds. The
inhabitants of South America live on animal food,
caring nothing for grain. 2nd, Originally Chaldee,
they acquired the Coptic cast of features in

390 REMARKS ON THE

Egypt; this was quite natural. In Persia they
got Persian blood; in other countries they re-
ceived from time to time accessions of foreign
blood; hence their numbers, which would other-~
wise dwindle away to a mere handful, are partly
maintained. But the leading part of the Jewish
physiognomy naturally remains. That physio-
gnomy was probably Chaldee; it differed some—
what from the'Copt, who caricatured it on his
monuments. 3rd, Phcenician or Syrian blood
mingled largely with the original race; even their
capital, Jerusalem, remained in the hands of the
Jebusites. David’s conquest was merely nominal,
or at least a compromise with the original inhabi-
tants of the city of Jebus.

That they should have failed in exterminating
the Syrian race or races, and taking their place,
is simply what has happened to all other races.
The Turkish empire withers and declines, as I
have shown elsewhere, from the same causes: its
population is becoming extinct; the country will
return into the possession of its original inhabi-
tants, whoever they were. Ireland, Caledonia,
are even yet in the hands of the Celtic race—
hence their terrible condition. Charlemagne
and his bold Franks have ceased to live—France
is Celtic to the core. It is the same all over the
world. Why should the Jews form an exception
to nature’s great law? South England is far fromv

JEWISH AND COP’I‘IC CHRONOLOGY. 391

being Saxon; neither Holland nor Flanders show
much Spanish blood; the South German has
made little or no progress against the Slavonian
and Hunnish races; and a mere accident prevented
these two races from again crushing the German,
as they had done before. Their want of union
saved the dynasty of H apsburgh.

I ﬁnd it difﬁcult to obtain from the literary
man, theological or otherwise, a clear statement
as to his views on another point of Jewish history;
some maintaining the doctrine, 1st, That, under
all climates the Jew continues the same ; or 2ndly,
That he differs under every climate, but remains
steady to his race. Both opinions cannot be true;
nevertheless they are alternately maintained by
the same class of writers. The relation of the
Arab to the Jew is not merely doubtful, but it does
not exist: I speak of them as races.

In the successive devastations of Syria by
various conquering people, from the Persian to
the Turk, the Jews were not the only race who
suffered; all must have suffered equally. But
these races, being aboriginal, recovered their
population : the Jew, a foreigner, did not.

The story of the Jew, as told by himself, is a
plain and simple story enough: in the hands of
the writers of other races it becomes a rhapsody.
That of the Copt is really wonderful; their monu-
mental history surpasses all on earth besides

392 REMARKS ON THE

The Jew has no monumental history. He never
had any literature, science, or art: he has none
yet. “ Their completeness and wonderfully pre-
served individuality”* has nothing in it in the
slightest degree curious. All other races are in
precisely the same position; and, in this respect,
also, the Gipsy is superior to them.

It is admitted that the Jews have no rural
population at present in Judea: it seems to me
that they never had a rural population anywhere.
In all Syria they are supposed to amount to
30,000.

But I admit it to be singular enough that they
should still maintain their handful of a population
on the earth; explieable only on the ground of
the race receiving occasionally supplies of fresh
blood from other sources. A recent travellerwL
informs us that the Jews do not multiply “in the
capital of their race ;” the writer should have
said, “in the city of J ebus,” which was not their
native city, but one which they had long occupied
in common with the aboriginal inhabitants.
This correction of an otherwise important passage
is essential to truth and science. “ Jew children,”
it is added, “ seldom attain to puberty; and
the mortality is altogether so great that the
constant reinforcements from Europe scarcely

* The Cross and the Crescent, 187.
is Warburton.

JEWISH AND coprrc CHRONOLOGY. 393

maintain the average population.”* I submit
these curious facts without comment to the scien-
tiﬁc reader.

“7 hen I ﬁrst delivered these lectures, orally,
to the public, the investigations of Bunsen and
Lepsius had not appeared. Nor yet have I had
an opportunity of perusing their works. But,
from various scattered notices, I believe that
nothing has been made out to invalidate my ﬁrst
impressions in regard to Coptic history. The
opinion I had formed was unfavourable to the
accuracy of Herodotus; and this view is now, I
believe, admitted to be the correct one. It was
from the Coptic monumental history that Cuvier
drew the result, that no animal had sensibly
altered its character; that no ancient species had
been metamorphosed; no new species had arisen
since the historic period—that period being as yet
undetermined, but marked by records respecting
which there could be no mistake. The illustrious
anatomist forgot to mention man—forgot to include
him in the list of unchanged and seemingly un-
changeable species of animals: I add him now;
requesting my reader to remember that the term
“historic period” denotes a mere speck in the
ocean of time. The persistence of species can be
admitted now as extending merely through limited

* \Varburton, p. 196.

394 JEWISH AND COPTIC CHRONOLOGY.

periods of time; the discoveries of De Blainville
seem likely to settle this great question. There
has been, there can only be, “ one creation 5” all
successive forms must proceed from others pre-
ceding them. Life on the globe is but one, not
many. Forms vary agreeably to the eternal laws
of development regulating these forms. They
appear in succession, but they are still one. To
living forms there can be no limit, saving “the
essential conditions of their existence.”

Coptic chronology is still to write; the hiero-
glyphics have taught little or nothing—the expla-
nations hitherto offered are extremely doubtful.

CONCLUDING LECTURE.

ANCIENT GREECE‘THE FINE ARTS-THE PERFECT AND THE
BEAUTIFUL—RELATION OF PHILOSOPHY T0 “ THE PERFECT
AND THE BEAUTIFUL”—THEORY 0F SPECIES, 0R INDIVI-
DUALISM—THEORY OF UNITY, OR UNIVERSALISM—AI’I’LI-
CATION OF THE LAWS OF TRANSCENDENTAL ANATOMY TO
THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE OF TIIE ORGANIC
\VORLD—UNITY AND VARIETY.

WHEN the world was yet, as it were, in its
infancy, a race of men appeared in the stream
of human history, with intellects and frames
so glorious, that no parallel to them was ever
found in history. That race was the ancient
Greek. The precise period of their appearance
on the earth is, of course, not known; I say of
course; for if there be one fact better made out
in all history than another, it is this—that human
chronology, as it now stands, is all but worthless.
Of Homer and Troy we know nothing; the pre-
cise date when the noblest of all statues were
carved is equally a mystery. One thing is cer-
tain—the statues remain ; the ruins of the Parthe-
non may yet be found; the Homeric ballad, the
grandest of all human works, is still extant; and
Plato and Socrates, Iskander and Aristotle,

396 ANCIENT GREECE.

Euclid and Herodotus, are names as familiar to
the men now living as household words.
Wonderful and most mysterious race ! divinest
chapter in human history! unparalleled, un-
equalled, whence came ye? Whither have ye
gone, fading away into the mists of the past?
What is Parthian, or Mongolian, or Roman, or
Germanic glory, compared with yours? And
even now, whilst I write, reducing to some sort of
order the thoughts and reﬂections of many years,
a trafﬁcking, commercial, strong-armed, buy-and-

 

 

 

[T/ze Part/1672072.]

THE FINE ARTS. 397

sell race beset your Piraeus ; a coarse, barbarous,
vulgar crew, point their artillery at Athens. It is a
money question seemingly—a commercial question
really; the savage Russ claims you for his bre-
thren on the score of the gross and idolatrous
worship which disgraces you as men, and renders
you contemptible in the'eyes of the rest of the
world; the “ grande nation,” whose claims to the
term “ great” repose mainly on the merit of having
plundered the Romans of those monuments they
stole from you, affect to sympathize with you. But
you are not the descendants of the ancient Greek;
and this is the point I mean ﬁrst to moot.

It is a fact, in as far as so ancient a historic
recollection may be esteemed a fact, that the
northern nations as they are called, the Scandi<
navian, the Celtic, Germanic (South German or
Goth), Slavonian, and Sarmatian, existed not
merely as they now are, physically and morally,
from the most ancient times; but that they were
ever formidable and troublesome to the Penin-~
sulas of Italy and Greece before the real historic
period. Unequal to originate within themselves
any form of civilization; deﬁcient in originality or
genius; strong-armed, common-sense barbarians,
many of them, they knew that in the south were
sunny climes, and rich wines, and wealth. In the
time of Marius, some 2,200 years ago, they plun-
dered Italy and Greece; but they had been there as’

398 ANCIENT GREECE.

victors athousand years before that; masses of bar-
barians, a moving nation, a swarm in search of a
new habitat. Devastating Greece and Italy and
Asia Minor, they still founded no new states, but
mingling with the existing population of a land,
and a clime, and a centre of life which was not their
focus of origin, and in which, therefore, they could
not continue to exist, they merged in the original
population, ﬁnally to disappear as a race; leaving
vestiges of their being, of their qualities, good
and bad—thus modifying for centuries the des-
tinies of these lands. In the meantime, cut off
from the parent line, these northern aborigines
fail to continue their own race. Confronted with
a more numerous one, the aboriginal inhabitants
of Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, they naturally
yield and disappear; their blood is merged in a
wider stream; it mingles, and is lost. The purest
stock, left in Northern Europe and Asia, remains
barbarous as it was; unequal to the invention of
any literature, science, or art, beyond the common
household wants, the exigencies of war, the inﬂic-
tions of climate, the northern hives remain as they
were—wonderful spectacles of barbarism, to which
Kentucky, Canada, Florida, would soon return,
were they cut off for two or three generations
from the rest of mankind; to which England
itself would return; to which the greater part of
Ireland has returned, and from which, to this day,

THE FINE ARTS. 399

the Sarmatian or Russ has never emerged. Look
at the condition of the Saxon boor as he herds
his ﬂocks on the vast plains of Southern Africa;
read the history of those Englishmen, who have
re-peopled Tasmania and Australia; of the Celt-
Iberian and Lusitanian, hunting as guanches the
pampas of South America. A professing Chris-
tian is not necessarily a civilized man. Civiliza-
tion and Christianity are identical, it is true; but
then it must be real, and not sham Christianity—
the actual, not the shadow.

And thus did the northern hives, as they are
called, pour masses of men and women from their
woods towards the south, Without, however, really
founding any new states. Even in Caesar’s time,
Gallia Cisalpina had lost its sympathies with
Gallia Transalpina. Separated from each other
by the great central chain of the Alps, the Celtic
colony which had seized on Northern Italy had
already lost a portion, and a great one too, of its
Celtic character. That race, the Celtic, if I mistake
not, is now nearly extinct in Northern Italy, the
population having, no doubt, returned to that race
which preceded the Gallic invasion: that inva-
sion also, be it remembered, is much beyond all
human history. As it was with Italy, so it was
with Greece, using the term in its widest sense,
and therefore including a great part of Asia
Minor. Three, or more likely four thousand years

400 ANCIENT GREECE.

ago, the Celtic and Scandinavian, and Gothic
or Germanic blood, perhaps even the Slavonian,
was mingled deeply with the aboriginal inha-
bitants of Greece and Macedonia; the peninsula
and its isles; with their colonies everywhere;
with the original race, which I shall venture to
call Pclasgic; they mingled, not by thousands,
but by hundreds of thousands. Hence arose a
new race of men, destined to cease at a given
period; a race which could not stand their
ground against Nature’s laws; a mixed race, an
anomaly on earth; a thing repudiated by the
organic laws of man and animals; a race of men,
if it merits the name, whose possible existence
depended on an annual inﬂux into Greece ,of
Scandinavian and Celtic hordes; that is, of an order
of things which never yet happened to mankind.
This, then, is the theory I offer. There never
existed a race of men and women formed like the
Apollo, the Venus, the Dian, the Hercules, the
Niobe, the Bacchus; but there existed a combi-
nation of circumstances in the Peninsulas of Italy
(Southern), Greece and her Isles, and Asia Minor,
which gave rise to the production of numerOus
persons, of whom some equalled, still more ap-
proached these glorious ﬁgures I speak of.
Matchless and perfectly beautiful, they had only
to be seen to be immediately understood; genius
—lofty genius abounded everywhere. The robust’

THE FINE ARTS. 401

energy, the vivacity and vigour of the Scandi-
navian and Celtic races, came to be mingled with
an Oriental race or races, of which we know
nothing, but of whose sublimity of mind the
Cyclopean walls leave unmistakable indications.
Oriental minds, allied to Copt and Chaldee;
monuments analogous, but not identical, with
Egyptian Thebes and Asiatic Nimroud and
Babylon; with men who lived beyond the Baby-
lonish and Coptic period. The Italian Peninsula
no doubt was once also theirs, as well as Greece,
and, it may be, the Lusitanian. These ﬁne and

 

[Bust of the Venus]
D D

402 ANCIENT GREECE.

classic regions, the northern, that is, Saxon,
Celtic, and Gothic barbarians, have constantly
invaded, hoping to make them their own; they
have as constantly failed; for no race can per-
manently locate itself in a continent in which it
had not been placed by Nature. And now, the
populations of Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor,
haVing returned pretty nearly to their aboriginal
condition in respect of race, are as they were
before, timid, cowardly, unwarlike ; serfs by nature;
slaves of the horrible and brutal superstitions of
the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches. An idiot,
vulgar Goth reigns in Greece : the imbecile House
of Hapsburgh lords it in Italy; the savage Turko-
man scourges Asia Minor. From the people them-
selves all traces of the men who form the glory of
this world have disappeared, leaving behind them,
in their nearly aboriginal condition, that population
on which the Scandinavian and Celtic and Gothic
blood being once engrafted, originated all that
was great and glorious; but now, left to itself,
exhibits to the world a spectacle most lamentable
and deplorable.

In the circumstances of which I have spoken,
the union of different races, and its result on the
physical structure and moral qualities of the
descendants or progeny, originated the classic
days and age of Greece. To the Scandinavian
blood the aboriginal Pelasgic hordes, whether

THE FINE ARTS. 403

European or Asiatic, Greek or Italian, owed the
occasional beauty of their complexion; that match—
less hue which Homer compares to the colour of
“ the elephantine bone, fresh from the hands of
the turner.” The Maid of Athens had blue eyes,
a divine and matchless colour, bestowing on
woman’s looks an expression above all earthly
passions; fair and ﬂowing locks, full bosomed,
ﬂeshy, and large-limbed, seem to have been
the character of Grecian women: look at the
Niobe, the Venus of Gnidos, and a hundred
others. All these show Scandinavian blood, for
no such persons are to be found anywhere else.
It was Sir Charles Bell, I think, who said that the
grand facial line or angle of the antique Greek
cannot now be found! Never, I think, was so
great an error of observation committed, for the
streets of London abound with persons having
this identical facial angle; and it is in England
and in other countries inhabited by the Saxon or
Scandinavian race that women resembling the
Niobe, and men the Hercules and Mars, are
chieﬂy to be found. I shall speak shortly of the
differences unquestionably existing between the
ancient Greek or classic head and the modern
Scandinavian; the Niobe and the Saxon matron.
These differences reside chieﬂy in the form and
position of the eyes, for in the antique head the
eyes are deeply set; but they are not conﬁned to
D I) 2

404 ANCIENT GREECE.

these organs, as we shall afterwards ﬁnd. To the
Scandinavian, then, Greece owed her grandeur
of forms, especially in woman; her disunions,
obstinacy of character, common sense, mecha-
nical genius, large-limbed men, athletae, matchless
perseverance. To the admixture of Celtic blood
may be traced her warlike disposition, energy,
vivacity, wit; and to Slavonian and Gothic we
must trace, I think, the transcendental qualities
of her philosophy and morals; the substratum
was an Oriental mind, not Coptic, least of all
Jewish; but these latter elements now prevail, I
believe. The grand classic face has all but dis-
appeared, and in its place comes out a people
with a rounded proﬁle; the nose large and
running into the cheeks, like the Jew; the chin
receding; the eyebrows arched. Anti-classic in
all things, how Greece has fallen ! Yet this was
the country which produced the men who fought

 

[Proﬁle of Negro, European, and Oran 0utom.]

THE FINE ARI‘S. 405

at Marathon and conquered on the banks of the
Granicus; Pyrrhus belonged to them and Peri-
cles; Aristotle and Plato ; Socrates, Demosthe-
nes; Iskander, equal to Napoleon; Archimedes,
Euclid, Thucydides, Herodotus, Homer, Pindar,
Anacreon, Phidias, and they who carved the
immortal and transcendant Venus and Niobe!
\Vhere shall we commence, or where end? If
many brave and good men lived before Aga-
memnon and Achilles, when did classic Greece
commence? Homer was not, could not be the
ﬁrst: before Homer there were others. Homer
could not invent a civilization which did not
exist; Shakespeare described Nature as he saw
her. He invented nothing. Great minds see
truth, and truth only; they have no fancies;
legends and miracles are out of their sphere; St.
George and the Dragon; mountains skipping like
lambs ; Bel and the Dragon; the eleven thousand
virgins drowned at Cologne; armies of martyrs
ﬁghting in the clouds; St. Jago charging the
Paynim on a white horse; these inventions belong
to other minds and other races. They exist still,
but under other names; a volcanic ﬁre kindled
in Snowdon; the subsidence of the centre of
Britain would reduce the English mind to the
imbecility of the tenth or twelfth centuries. No
greater error was ever committed than that of
supposing that the mass of men change or pro-

406 ANCIENT GREECE.

gress: Le peuple n’est rim, was the expressive
but satirical expression of Voltaire. No greater
truth was ever uttered. How was it, then, with
the Grecian people in the classic days I speak
of? Just as now; they were nobody; they
merited no particular notice, further than that
they produced men, such as have never been
seen since. A higher taste also than is common
they must have had; yet philosophy in Athens
was of course conﬁned to the schools, and the
council or senate of Athens, the working, state-
corporatibn of Athens, gave it as their opinion
that Aristophanes, the poet and comic writer, was
wrong in taking so much notice in one of his
comedies of an unknown person like Socrates. But
they, the people, knew enough of him as the
representative of philosophy and of truth to
dislike him mortally; their animal instincts told
them that he and they were of different natures.
Truth and science, which is, or ought to be
truth, are ever disliked by the mass.

In Galen’s time, if I mistake not, gladiatorial
scenes were of almost daily occurrence. Hundreds
and thousands of human beings were butchered
in cold blood in presence of Roman audiences;
of a people abandoned in vice below imagination;
but Galen dared not allow it to be known that
he had examined for the purposes of science
some human bones, which he did by stealth, _

THE FINE ARTS. 407

and secretly. This is man. But to return to
Greece. .

Against her schools of philosophy and science
Greece ever waged war. Yet art and science stood
their ground. The civilization of mankind is based
on what it received from Greece ; whilst in respect
of the ﬁne arts, more especially the modelling and
drawing the human ﬁgure, which forms the only
basis of all art, it is not possible to imagine what
might now have been the actual state of the ﬁne
arts but for the discovery of those wonderful re-
mains, the antique marbles. These revealed to the
world wonders at least as great as the telescopes
of Galileo; they revealed the beautiful, the per-
fect, the matchless, the highest and noblest phy-
sical manifestation of nature; consequently, the
only being corresponding to the highest gift of
the mind; in these, then, the moral or metaphy-
sical world, the world of mind, found at last that
which it must ever aim at—“ the perfect.”

How they rose and fell, as a nation, belongs
to the chroniclers of events. I have traced their
progress as a race; a race which is gone, which
cannot re-appear; climate aided them. They
never, properly speaking, formed a distinct race of
men, and hence could not stand their ground,
any more than the Romans. The physiological
laws of the species were against them. But I
pretend not to trace their history. Some curious

408 ANCIENT GREECE.

points of resemblance between the women of
classic Greece and the thorough-bred Saxon
women of England, or Holland, or Sweden,
might here be pointed out; but this I must leave,
for the present, at least, to some “Historian of
Manners,”* not forgetful of the element of race,
like Guizot and the Thiers school. There are
curious points of resemblance, independent of the
Amazons; bacchanals and festivals, not altogether
unlike scenes at VVapping and Portsmouth Point
in the glorious old times, the good old times of
George the Third. A hint, I presume, is enough.
It was Hippocrates who said that the Greek
women could drink deeper than the men; and
that they were somewhat liberal of their charms
all history, I think, maintains. The whole reminds
me much of Holland and of the Saxon generally;
beautiful women who sold their favours for money
were much esteemed in Athens; the same class
meets with all respect in most Saxon countries.
In republican Holland they were not merely
tolerated, they were protected, the state deriving
an income from them.

But we now return to consider the Greek mind
solely under one point of view—its relation to
art. It is to this relation I mean now to direct your
attention, for it is in this that we purpose tracing

* Histoire des Moeurs.

THE FINE ARTS. 409

the germs of all that is great, because all that is
human in the human mind. All nature’s works,
we have seen, are wonderful; but it is man alone
who can reason about them; understand them, at
least to a certain extent; view them in relation
to himself, and himself in relation to them: man
is the problem to solve; his presence here, his
origin, his purpose or end. I do not mean that
the Greeks were the ﬁrst to moot these great
questions; neither did they, perhaps, solve them;
but their arts showed that amongst them existed
minds which understood and comprehended the
universal, the transcendental, which can alone be
truth.

THEORY OF “THE BEAUTIFUL,”~ AS DEVELOPED IN
THE ANTIQUE STATUES OF GREECE.

As I stood by the banks of the Koonap, gazing
eastward over the grassy plains which lay between
me and the Indian Ocean, alone, unattended, a
stranger in the land on which I stood—an alien by
my race to all that was around me—I sought in vain
to connect myself with that landscape,b_y theory, yet
I felt myself identiﬁed with it; I said to myself, this
park-like scenery, resembling beautiful England,
but still more beautiful; grander, more vast, more
romantic, more perfect; that transparent and deep
blue sky—glorious light and shade; deep gloomy

410 ANCIENT GREECE.

ravines of the Anatolo and Winter Bergen; bul-
bous ﬂowers of all hues and fragrance; delicate
mimosa and fantastic aloe; these are not Euro-
pean—these belong not to the land of my birth-—
to the continent from which I sprung, yet the
wilde (for man had done nothing here since man
was on the earth) was beautiful, tender, melan—
choly, romantic: Why then, if the landscape
before me be beautiful and perfect, do I gaze at
these Anatolo mountains, scanning with a strong
glass each ravine and bushy dell? Is not the
scenery exquisite? What more can be desired?
Why look beyond it? I will tell you.

Man alone is beautiful; the human form alone
satisﬁes the human mind. Other objects have their
attractions——we admire them and are pleased, but
they do not solve the problem of “ the beautiful,”
which must be sought for in man alone.

Whilst meditating on these abstract yet pleas-
ing topics for thought, I naturally asked myself
the source of pleasure derived in the contem-
plation of the landscape before me. The term‘
picturesque rose on my memory, and all but startled
me from my reverie—deep-felt reverie, absorbing
my Whole soul with thoughts and meditations for
which language had no expression. The word
picturesque all but banished from my mind the
solemn scene before me; it recalled to me the
nonsense I had read about the ﬁne arts: it placed

THE FINE ARTS. ‘411

before me the artiﬁcial mam—the Cit, the Cockney,
the model man, “ trying the pittoresque,”—“ com-
ing the picturesque” near London or Amsterdam ;
the artiﬁcial man—the would-be civilized man—
cribbed, trammelled, and conﬁned; the thing in
harness—the state ﬂunkey; the biped in harness;
the clock-regulated animal; the creature with a
soul composed of associations of ideasﬁ6

But before I consider why even then so young
I rejected the ﬂimsy theories of the civilized hack,
be he churchman+ or layman,I orthodox,§ or
sceptic,“ all tending as they do in one direction, let
me ﬁrst submit to you a brief analysis of “the
beautiful;” the To Kalon of the Greeks; “ the
sought-after” of all high minds, of every age and
race.

The human form alone is beautiful; woman
presents the perfection of that form, and, therefore,
alone constitutes “the perfect.” It is not youth,
nor intellect, nor moral worth, nor associations of
any sort, which constitute the beautiful and the
perfect; nor is life required, nor complexion, nor
motion; it is form alone which is the essential.

Let 11s consider this proposition carefully; it
has been since I ﬁrst announced it much con-
tested, and will continue to be so, no doubt. It
strikes at innumerable prejudices, feelings, pas-

7‘ Alison, Jeffrey. 1- Alison. I Jeffrey.
§ Paley. || Voltaire.

412 ANCIENT GREECE.

sions—above all, it limits and deﬁnes the term
beauty, that happy ﬁeld for interminable dispute
since Socrates to the present day. From a. race,
the Saxon, to whom utility is as a deity; who
admire in general, as a race, only what is useful,
I naturally expect every opposition. It will not
be easy to persuade a race of utilitarians that any-
thing can be beautiful but in the ratio of its ﬁtness,
its utility; then, why may not a wheelbarrow lay
claim to the title of beautiful? or a pigsty? or a pair
of J ack-boots? and as the large, ﬁrm, hard, spatu-
lar-ﬁngere‘d hand must clearly be the most useful,
so a preference ought to be given to it over the
slender, taper-ﬁngered, jointless looking hand of
the Venus.

But what say men of taste? What say those
who love form for the sake of the form itself?
Do you select a person devoid of a musical ear to
sit in judgment over Mozart’s thrilling notes.F
‘Vould you give a preference in the matter of

\-. r.
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5 .

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[From Nature.]

THE FINE ARTS. 413

colours to those who think any one colour as
good as another? who paint landscapes all blue
or all green, or all red or brick-dust colour, as the
case may be? Why then take the opinion in re-
spect of form of those to whom all forms are nearly
indifferent? But perhaps I debate a matter which
will be conceded me even by a utilitarian race;
grant that all forms are not of equal beauty; that
some are confessedly beautiful, others not; that
when divested of prejudices of education, and of
prejudices of ignorance, all the world admits cer-
tain forms to be at the least much more beautiful
than others ; let us consider then,—1st. What
are these incontestably beautiful forms? 2nd.
Why are they beautiful? in other words, What
is your theory of high art—of the beautiful—of
the perfect ?

 

[Oran Outcm.]

Place before you an antique statue of Venus—
the youngest daughter of Niobenthe Venus of

414 ANCIENT GREECE.

Gnidos; look carefully at the proportions and
forms—if you have the least doubt, compare
them with the living, or with modern sculptures;
do this repeatedly, and I think you will be in-
clined to arrive at the following conclusions :—
lst. That the ﬁgure before you is perfect, trans-
cending all other material objects; that its forms
and proportions are perfect, since the slightest
alteration of them by the substitution of others,
deranges the effect and destroys the beauty ofthe
part—that the ﬁgure satisﬁes the eye for form, and
by so doing the highest and deepest of all human
feelings; for on form depends the living world in
as far as we are concerned. The material world
itself—~the stellar universe itself—all is form;
without it, Nature can have no existence to us.
This is the ﬁrst link, the ﬁrst sympathetic cord
which ties man to the material world or to ma-
terial manifestations—to none else whilst mortal
can he be linked. What exists not materially is
to him as non-existing. Finally, through this
human form he sees perfection, thus satisfying
the deep craving of his mind for the perfect; it
is, moreover, in the ancient Greek, and in no other
race, that he sees the perfection of form, and this
links him to eternity.

End. If you now examine this ﬁgure still
more carefully, you will discover a mysterious and
wonderful secret, hitherto, I think, unobserved;
or if observed, not fully appreciated. A living '

THE FINE ARTS. 415

being is composed of an interior and an exterior:
the latter alone is visible, and intended to be so;
the former, Nature carefully conceals when she
aims at the perfect and the beautiful. In the
exterior, beauty resides—that alone she deco-
rates—all within is frightful and appalling to
human sense—never beautiful, but the reverse;
always horrible. In proportion as any ﬁgure,
whether human or bestial, displays through the
exterior, that unseemly interior, which has no
form that sense comprehends, or desires, so in the
same proportion is that ﬁgure beautiful or the
opposite. IVhy are the forms of age displeasing?
‘Vhy of extreme youth? IVhy do we place under
the same category those whom disease or penury
have withered and deformed? It is this—it is
not age, nor extreme youth (new-born children;)
nor disease, nor poverty, which bring out the feel-
ing I now speak of—it is the exposure of the
interior; that dreaded interior, sure emblem of
dissolution and death. It is the feeling of dis-
solution, of annihilation, which instantly seizes
unconsciously on the mind of the spectator: an
unknown dread of a something which must happen
to him, although he were never told it—a dread
of dissolution, that most dreaded of all events.
Thus, already do we see what Nature has done
for the beautiful ﬁgure, it being her highest ma~
terial manifestation in the existing order of things.
She has ﬁtted it to satisfy the craving for perfec-

416 ANCIENT GREECE.

tion and for form, thus calling forth two of the
grandest and deepest sympathies of our nature:
she has concealed beyond all possibility of detec-
tion or even suspicion, the emblems of mortality"
-—that is, the interior, thus carrying the mind
furthest away from the most dreaded of all events,
dissolution: nay, more—by this concealment of
the interior, and those beautiful and perfect forms,
she has called forth in the human mind that other
grand feeling of the soul—the contemplation of
eternal ever-reviving, ever-returning youthwthe
youth of the universe; the bright gleam of hope;
of a. to-morrow and a future; of a nature that will
never die.

The object of art is to call forth the grand sen-
timents, feelings, and passions of the soul—the
tender, the pathetic. When it fails in this, it is
no art. The works of ingenious industry, of
luxury, must not be confounded with the ﬁne arts.
All the diamonds in the Tower are not worthy a
moment’s gaze, when compared with the hand or
foot of a beautiful woman. I speak not of the
head or of the torso—nature’s masterpiece.

But this is not a work on art, nor intended to
be so ; and I shall therefore bring these remarks
to a conclusion.

The beauty of children is proverbial—of their

* See drawing of Human Skull, p. 427.

THE FINE ARTS. 417

hands and feet especially— yet they are deﬁcient
in proportions and forms; the torso is shapeless;
and the statuary should know this, and avoid as
much as possible carving the nude child. What,
then, is it we admire so much in children; and
why is their company so sought after in pre-
ference to the aged; the young ever courted,

 

[The Infantile Form, loved not fbr itsform, but as
an emblem nyouth

EE

418 ANCIENT GREECE.

ever admired? Is it their ingenuity, their com-
plaisance, their simplicity, their innocent curio-
sity, even their listlessness, their complaints, their
tears? All these add, no doubt, to the deep
attraction man feels for them, but they do not ex-
plain it. To him they present those emblems (3)"
youth which call forth in his mind the hopes that
nature will never die; that all things will not
wither and decay, but be for ever young, for
ever at least restored to youth—eternal youth.
Nature never dies; she always was, and for ever
will be. - Compare the bright green leaf of May
to the yellow sear of autumn; the lambkin to the
aged ewe; the coming summer to the past; the
child to withered, hoary, stricken age; one cate-
gory, one principle, one theory, embraces all. It
is not merely youth, then, as \Vinckelman sup-
posed, which is beautiful. Youth never attains
the perfect and the beautiful, whilst disease, or
penury, or vice, can transform the child into an
object of pity or disgust, by taking away the cha-
racteristic emblems of his youthful condition.
Age, time, years, are nothing; they have no exist-
ence; what to us looks young is young; what
looks aged, is aged.

And now this were the appropriate place to
trace the history of the Fine Arts, properly so
called, which no doubt emanated from Greece;
to show how all races—I mean all civilizable

THE FINE ARTS. 419

races—have their ﬁne arts peculiar to themselves;
to trace the source of pleasure we derive from the
ﬁne arts, and their utility to a nation; but this I
must not think of here. In speaking of the various
races, I have already glanced at these topics; and
in my notes appended to these lectures, I may
again return to this subject in a more practical
manner; but the introduction of the disquisition
into a theory of the beautiful was forced upon me
here by the necessity of connecting the history
of race with the perfect; to trace to it the laws of
formation, leading to the perfect; and from it the
laws of deformation, leading to the imperfect; or,
in other words, to explain the origin of race, or
at least to connect the history of race with the
great laws regulating the living organic world-—
the laws of unity of organization, another expres-
sion for the law of variety, or of imperfect forma-
tion; and, ﬁnally, with the law of perfect forma-
tion—that is, of specialization—towards which
nature aims and tends; which is, in fact, her
ultimatum. We have seen what the law of specia-
lization has done for the human form—it has
produced the Venus, a real, not an ideal form.
The correct mind rejects everything which is
ideal, or what never had an existence. The
monstrous creations of the disordered Hindoo,
Chinese, and Saxon minds; these are ideal, ﬁc~
titious, false; the Venus is real. Let us now
E E 2

420 ANCIENT GREECE.

attend to the universal law of nature, the law of
unity of the organization 3 that universal principle
——identity of life, identity of structure, identity of
result for all living things, at their origin, in space
and in time. For all individuals are connected,
as we shall ﬁnd, with space and time 5 specializa-
tions have only their day; they form a part, no
doubt, of nature’s great plan; they are, in fact,
the result. It is the laws of development we are
now to trace—the history of the gradual and suc-
cessive development of living beings—of progress
also, as it may be, although I doubt the theory of
progress as now offered. It smacks of utilitarian-
ism—of the Paley school—of ﬁnal causes, which
are no causes, but eﬁ‘ects. It is presumptuous and
anti-philosophic, and, as applied to the great mass
of the organic world, positively untrue. All that
can be said in its favour is, that man appeared last
on the surface of this world. But even this has
not been proved. He may have come ﬁrst. Let
us attend ﬁrst to the facts, and next to the argu-
ments.

We have seen that the exterior alone was deco-
rated by nature ; in it resides chieﬂy her speciali-
zations; species, distinct races and kinds, for-
bidding all error or mistake, all confusion. But
rightly to understand this exterior, we must also
examine the interior, seeking for truth with the
torch of science.

THE FINE ARTS. 421

What does that interior reveal to the scientiﬁc
inquirer, to him whose temper leads to the search
after the unknown, in the present, in the past, in
the future? it reveals to him that man and all the
organic world is linked to the past, seemingly
without break or interruption; that the organic
world, of which he forms a part, has obeyed for
ever two great laws (like the inorganic), the law of
specialization, or of perfect formation; the law of
unity, or of imperfect formation : Formation and
Deformation. Between these two laws is balanced
the living world since the earth was, since, as a
sphere of various dimensions, it has rolled through
space.

This great fact is proved, then, 1st, from an exa-
mination of animal bodies—of animal bodies, as
they now exist, and compared with each other;
2nd, from an examination of the embryo, or young
of man or of any of the higher animals. This in-
spection tells us, that, from the moment of concep-
tion or of independence, that living point, that
embryo, passes through a succession of forms,
shadowing forth the organic world as it now
exists, from the highest to the lowest; shadow-
ing forth the organic world as it has existed
from the dawn of creation to the present day—
this is proved by geology; and shadowing forth
the organic world, or worlds, no doubt, which are
yet to come. For there was but one creation—

422 ANCIENT GREECE.

there could not be two, or three, or twenty, as
Cuvier has it, or rather his followers, for he him-
self never maintained such opinions. Unity of
idea, unity of result—life once created, once called
into play, could never cease: it appeared, no
doubt, with the globe itself—contemporaneous,
coeval. Its primitive form, that is, the form it
ﬁrst assumes, is conjectured to be a cell—a
sphere or globe—minute, microscopic. This at
least seems probable; but it must always be re—
membered that we merely see the material mani-
festation of life, and not life itself; not the living
particle, the living essence, which must also be
material.

It has been ﬁnely remarked by Humboldt, that
when we look at the stars through the telescope,
we discover a past and a present, and we conjec-
ture a future; and when we look into the structure
of the globe, the solid strata of its surface, the
fossil world which lies imbedded reveals to us also
a distinct past and a probable future. So we
have seen it with the embryo of man; it also re-
veals a past, the present is before us 5 a probable
future may be surmised. \Vhat is the result of
these three observations, seemingly distinct? It
is, that unity pervades all living things—the past,
the present, and the future—unity of structure,
unity of life, unity of purpose. What that pur-
pose is we know not. Some will have it that it is

THE FINE ARTS. 423

progress. Progress towards what? The idea has
been thrown out by a utilitarian mind,* an uncon-
scious disciple of Paley ; a nibbler at philosophy,
who scarcely understood the thing. He wished
to give a reason for everything: a Saxon, no
doubt, and so he thrusts himself unwittingly into
the councils of the Great First Cause. And so it
ever is with the half-educated; the utterly ignorant,
the canaz'lle, ﬂee at once in all arguments to a
ﬁrst cause. They know no other, and can under—
stand no other. With them all is mystery, alusus
naturce, a visitation of Providence, a direct inter-
ference; with them the Deity is ever present; he
has no power to bestow secondary laws on matter;
with them attraction has no real meaning; every
animal required a distinct creation. A material
Jove still thunders.

That all animals are formed on one great plan,
that a unity of plan at least exists, is supposed to
have been ﬁrst announced by Newton. This is
not the place to inquire into a historic point like
this; such also, no doubt, was the view of Leib-
nitz, and of many others before their time. But
unity of plan scarcely implies unity of structure,
as M. Geoﬁ'roy (St. Hilaire) seems to have
thought. That unity of structure also existed,
was most probable ; but what was the structure E

* Vestiges of Creation.

424 ANCIENT GREECE.

Independent of all other considerations, it had
been made evident, even to the “ mere formulist,”
“the external character” man, that in the animal
kingdom two distinct forms of structure prevailed,
or, in other words, that life clothed itself with two
great forms, seemingly distinct, and Widely apart
from each other; and fossil remains of previously
existing worlds proved that these two forms had
existed from the remotest of periods. The names
of vertebrate and invertebrate had been given by
the philosophic Lamark to these two kingdoms of
nature, as they were called; animals with, and
animals without a vertebral column (back-bone).
But waving, for an instant, the question, after all
but a secondary one, though much dwelt on by
Cuvier, that in reality two distinct forms of life
exist, let us consider, ﬁrst, what is meant by
Unity of Structure in any class of animals.

By dissection, the dead are analyzed or re-
duced to certain assemblages of organs, holding
relations, often mechanical, to each other. They
all perform certain functions, some of which have
been imperfectly guessed at; made out in a coarse
way: organs of locomotion exist——bones, liga-
ments, joints, muscles, or ﬂesh; organs of sensa-
tion, and thought, and will; the brain and Spinal
marrow; the nerves; organs of digestion and
assimilation, the stomach and digestive tube, and
their appendages; lastly, organs of breathing,

THE FINE ARTS. 425

essential to life; the lungs, by which we draw
from the air the breath of life. Blood-vessels
acted on by a heart carry the blood through the
frame. Out of this vital ﬂuid the body is con-
structed, repaired, formed. N ow if we select any
one of these organs, or sets of organs, we shall
ﬁnd that, in one shape or another, it extends
through the Whole range of vertebrate animals,
most probably through the entire range of animal
life, but under a shape or form no longer reco-
gnisable by our senses. A few instances Will
sufﬁce to explain this to my audience. There is
no occasion for any minute or technical expo-
sition of facts, which are, as it were, on the
surface. Let us ﬁrst turn our attention to the
skeleton. Not that this assemblage of levers
proves better than any other set of organs the
unity of structure, the unity of organization
sought to be superadded by the German (and
Slavonian) philosophy, to the unity of plan laid
down by Newton; I do not even think so well;
but it presents materials easier to be handled,
easier to be inspected, obtained, and under-
stood.

The basis of the skeleton before you, whether
mere animal or man, is a series of bones jointed
or articulated with each other. In common
language it is called the back bone. You see
how violently inaccurate such a term is, when

426 ANCIENT GREECE.

applied to a series of bones perfectly distinct
from each other, possessing most of them a dis-
tinct mobility. These bones we call vertebrae;
here is one of them. When studied by the sur-
geon or medical man, it is viewed by him merely
as a portion of the skeleton; to the philosophic
anatomist it becomes the type of all vertebrate
animals, of the entire skeleton, limbs and head
included; of the organic world, vertebrate and
invertebrate. Carried further, it possesses the
form of the primitive cell; of the sphere; of the
universe:

 

[T/zc Iaumcm vertebra]

Now look at this bone in man—it appears
simple, but it is not so. Originally, that is, in
the young, composed of many distinct portions,
which afterwards unite with each other, but which
remaining distinct in many animals, as in ﬁshes,
proves to us, that throughout the whole range of
animals so formed, the vertebrae do not really
differ so much from each other as might at ﬁrst

THE FINE ARTS. 427

appear: that, in fact, the elements forming them
seem the same almost numerically, giving rise to
the well grounded belief, that, in the embryo,
the elements of the skeleton may be, after all, the
same in every animal. From man to the whale,
all is alike; one theory explains all; one idea or
plan pervades all.

Let us trace this chain of bones upwards and
downwards; see how downwards (coccygeal
vertebrae) certain elements cease to be developed,
or do not grow: still the plan is the same; iden-
tical; analogous, as regards the individual, thatis,
repeated; homologous or identical, as regards
one animal compared with another. Look to this
section of the skeleton, called the head; the
bones seem widely different from the vertebrae;
but it is not so. They are merely vertebrae, re-
peated, upon a larger scale as may be required: a
chain of vertebrae form, then, the head or cranium.

 

[Cram ium.]

4‘28 ANCIENT GREECE.

These great truths we owe exclusively to the illus-
trious South German and Slavonian schools of
transcendental anatomy; to Oken and Spix, Au~
tenrieth, Frank, Goethe, and a host of others.
Resisted to the last by Cuvier, they were looked
on with strong feelings of alarm in England; to
this day rejected by most, a garbled View is now
admitted by some, merely to save appearances,
and to make it appear that a something is known
of these doctrines on this side the channel. A
school of low transcendentalists has arisen (I use
their own' phrase), who think that a portion of
Goethe’s and Oken’s views may be admitted with-
out causing scandal, or risking their positions with
orthodoxy and Oxford. Others, and they are by
far the most numerous, stand out for the good old
Galenic nonsense, that every animal has its own
plan, and every part was formed for itself. That
ribs are ribs, and nothing else; that the hyoid
bones of man were made expressly for him, and
that they are neither the homologues nor the ana-
logues of the branchial arches of ﬁshes. When
my brother discovered that the knee-joint of the
ornithorynchus and echidna was divided into two
distinct cavities, by a completing of the alar liga-
ments, I asked Sir Charles Bell what purpose it
might serve? Merely to strengthen, was the reply
of my esteemed friend; an orthodox answer, quite
safe, and entirely mechanical.

THE FINE ARTS. 429

But to return.

A vertebra must have a type; that is, a plan,
sufﬁciently comprehensive to include all forms of
vertebra. Now where is this to be found? Is
it an ideal type not yet discovered? Or is it to
be found in any extinct or living animal? I
apprehend that it may or it may not have been
found, but this in no way interferes with the prin-
ciple that there must be a type laid down by
nature; eternal; equal to all manifestations of
form, extinct or living, or to come.

But the discovery of such a type could only be
made were the anatomy of all animals that ever
lived known to us; perhaps not even then; for
the future must be wrapt up in the past; and
what seems to us now a mere speck of bone, a
nucleus, a point unimportant, nay, scarcely dis-
cernible, may, in a future order of things, become
an all-important element. As thus :—

If birds did not exist, we could scarcely con-
ceive the high organization to which the third
eyelid, in man a mere rudiment, attains in them.
Not wanted in man, the organ sinks to its rudi-
mentary and scarcely perceptible condition. Of
essential service in birds, it suddenly acquires its
seemingly highest development. Yet the organ
was always present, rudimentary in one, deve-
loped in the other. Let us take another instance.

The adult, or grown-up man, has, as you all

430 ANCIENT GREECE

no doubt know, three bones to each toe, with the
exception of the first; these three bones are con-
nected to each other, and to the metatarsal hone,
their supporters, by three joints. In the feet of
birds you meet with four or ﬁve bones in certain
of the toes; and it might seem to you that the
feet of birds were formed on a different numerical
plan, at least; but it is not so: for in man, as in
birds, each digital bone is formed of two elements,
or distinct bones, at ﬁrst, that is, in the young of
each : as the bird grows up, they remain distinct
———in man, on the contrary, they unite—that is all.
The arrangement is not only analogous, but
homologous or identical, in the strictest sense of
the terms.

Again, remember that a thousand similar in-
stances might be given: I merely select a. few of
the easiest understood.

 

[The European foot]

THE FINE ARTS. 431

In man there is a little cartilage, scarcely per-
ceptible, connected to one of those bones occu-
pying the nostrils, called turbinated bones. It
may or it may not in him serve any purpose; that
is a matter of pure indifference. It is a rudi-
mentary and a useless organ seemingly. Now,
mark the extension and development of this car-
tilage or organ in the horse—still more in the
whale. In the horse, where it most admirably
serves to shut off the great cavities of the nostrils
from the vestibular cavities in front—thus pro-
tecting them from foreign bodies: in the whale,
acquiring their presumed highest development,
these living cartilages, now grown to the size of
bolsters, return after breathing into the vast nos-
trils of the whale from which they had been
momentarily withdrawn, ﬁlling them up, sealing
them hermetically against the pressure of a thou-
sand fathoms deep of water, which they sustain
with ease, when, plunging into the vast abyss of
the ocean, the giant of nature seeks to avoid his
enemies.

Let us now brieﬂy review the progress we have
made in this the highest of all analyses: deepest
of all theories: most important to man. Man,
we have seen, stands not alone, he is one of many;
a part and parcel of the organic world, from all
eternity. That organic world is the product of
secondarycauses. During his growth he undergoes

432 ANCIENT GREECE.

numerous metamorphoses, too numerous even for
the human imagination. These have a relation to
the organic world. They embrace the entire range
of organic life, from the beginning to the end of time.
Nature can have no double systems; no amend-
ments or second thoughts; no exceptional laws.
Eternal and unchanging, the orbs move in their
spheres precisely as they did millions of years ago.
Proceeding, as it were, from an invisible point en-
dowed with life, he passes rapidly, at ﬁrst, through
many forms, all resembling, more or less, either
different races of men from his own, or animals
lower in the scale of being; or beings which do
not now exist, though they probably once did, or
may at some future time. When his development
is imperfect, it represents then some form, resem-
bling the inferior races of men, or animals still
lower in the scale of being. Moreover, what is
irregular in him is the regular structure in some
other class of animals. Take for example the
webbed hand or foot occasionally found in man,
constant in certain animals,~—as in the Otter and
Beaver; constant also in the human fmtus, that
is, the child before birth. Take for example the
cuticular fold at the inner angle of the eye, so
common with the Esquimaux and Bosjeman or
Hottentot, (the corresponding yellow races of the
northern and southern hemispheres,) so rare in
the European,but existing in every foetus of every

TIIE FINE ARTS. 433

race. Nor let it be forgotten that forms exist in
the human faztus which have nothing human in
them in the strictest sense of the term; that the
. foetus of the Negro does not, as has been stated,
resemble the faatus of the European, but that the
latter resembles the former, all the more resembling
the nearer they are to the embryonic condition.
Unity of structure, unity of organization, unity
of life, at the commencement of time, whether
measured by the organic world or by the duration
of individual life. Lastly:—

VVhence then arise those varied forms of man
and beasts, plants, and living things, which now
clothe the earth, giving to it the sole interest we
possess in its existence; without which it were,
in our conceptions, a barren waste, an immeasur-
able wilderness, a world without an object what
sympathies could we have with it, though its strata
were gold and silver, alternating with rubies and
emeralds? What signiﬁes to us the stellaruniverse?
The earth we inhabit is the ﬁeld for the imme-
diate inquiry of man. That inquiry, stiﬂed for
thousands of years, reopens from time to time;
checked by fraud and force, it cannot be put
down. A chapter on its history ought to form
my concluding lecture.

 

l

434 ANCIENT GREECE.

SECTION 1.

WHAT a pitiful thing is human history! Up to
the period of my own existence it was a current
matter of belief with all nations, all creeds, the
learned and the unlearned,that the earth, as it now
exists, was some 5641 years or so old; some felt
disposed, though with great caution, to venture,
in a humble and beseeching way, to add 1600
to these 5641, making a good round total of 7200
years since man and plants, birds and beasts, ap-
peared on the earth; since the orb commenced
its wild path through space. By this it was hoped
to “ reconcile” all things sacred and profane; to
give a concordance to the writings of a race, to
whom truth in chronology was a farceft a race
without science, literature, or art; a race who
never originated a single discovery calculated
to beneﬁt mankind—to advance civilization, to
humanize the animal part of the human kind.
One discovery upset this quiet dream; one man
taking up the views of others, and carrying
them out to their legitimate length, upset all existing
ideas as to the history of the earth and its
organic inhabitants. That man was George ‘
Cuvier; his biography is well worth writing, that J
is, his true biography; what has been done in i

a: Prideaux’s Concordance.

 

THE FINE ARTS. 435

this way is below criticism—I mean to glance
at it here merely in a scientiﬁc point of View,
with a reference to the aid and to the resistance
he offered to the progress of science; the solid
aid he gave in disabusing the mind of a system of
the grossest delusion and falsehood which had
prevailed for at least four thousand years; the re-
sistance he offered to the spread of those doctrines
which, not appertaining to him, nor to his era,
not French, not Celtic, nor Saxon, but Slavonian
and South German, he dreamed as calculated
to terminate his own era before his own extinction;
the opposition, in fact, he offered to the extension
into the schools of France of the doctrines of tran—
scendental anatomy. Of the English schools I
speak not—they took no part in the struggle at
first; to these followers of Paley, nearly to a man,
the philosophy of nature, as expounded by the
laws of transcendentalism, could have no meaning.
Within these two or three years, a few persons,
for the credit of the country, have ventured to
attempt the formation of a school of low tran-
scendentalists, (I use their own phrase,) nibbling,
but with great and becoming caution, at the tran-
scendental doctrines. The school, if it can be
so called, is beneath all notice in the history of
science.

SECTION IL—Discovery of the real antiquity of

436 ANCIENT GREECE.

the earth and of the organic kingdom—era of C uvier.
The publication of the “ Ossemens Fossiles” by
M. George Cuvier forms an era in the history of the
human mind. It set aside for ever all existing
chronologies of the organic and inorganic world,
its duration and formation. It revealed in a way
not to be called in question any more, the astound-
ing fact, that for millions of years the earth had
been inhabited by plants and animals of races
now (seemingly) extinct. He declared them to be
extinct, and so in one sense they are. He showed,
what others had indeed done before his day, but
neither so fully nor so clearly as he did, that
the existing continents had been under water, not
for forty days, but for ten times forty thousand
years. That they had risen and been immersed
repeatedly; life, in the meantime, varying with
each elevation and submersion; that the now living
forms do not resemble the ancient forms: that
they could not be their direct descendants; that a
new Fauna and a new Flora had appeared and re-
appeared repeatedly on the earth’s surface. There
ended the dreams of all previous scientiﬁc (l) men,
geologists, historians, theologians. And had
the remains of man been found coeval with some
of these fossil remains, the human mind would
have been set free at once, and by one mighty
effort from a chronological incubus which still
oppresses it. Scientiﬁc men all over the world _

THE FINE ARTS. 437

saw this; the pseudo-scientiﬁc, whose chief
habitat is England, availed themselves to the
full of the curious anomaly: man, they observed,
came last, late, but yesterday; Cuvier supported
this view himself, in an elaborate preliminary dis-
course, in which he wandered far from the matter
in hand. He showed that human fossil bones
could nowhere be found; that the most ancient
of human labours dated but a few years back;
that the Pyramids themselves were but of yester-
day, compared with the antiquity of the Anaplo-
therian and Plethiosaurian remains; that the homo
dilixvz'z' testis of Schultzer was merely a fossil sala-
mander; that the bones of the giants preserved
in Germany belonged to the fossil mammoth.
What a mass of hideous ignorance has not ana-
tomy removed from the human mind; anatomy
and a geology based upon it; twin brothers, which
cannot and ought not to be disunited.

Reﬂecting on the wonderful step in advance of
preceding ages, our wonder ceases that Rome and
Oxford should have felt alarmed; but the ﬂood
could not be arrested, and each took its own way
to meet it. The former, truculent to the last,
never ceased its hostility. Ever-watchful, it in-
structed the greatest of all Irish impostors, and
that is saying much, to offer an uncompromising
resistance to the establishment of colleges in that
happy and enlightened country, in which colleges

438 ANCIENT GREECE.

or schools Anatomy and Geology should be taught
by any one not appointed by the Roman See! By the
hierarchy drawing its inspirations from the Catho-
lic unity of Rome! This failed, no doubt, but they
will try again. The object of the Romish Church
was to teach falsehoods instead of truths; to sup-
press the facts of anatomy and geology; to explain
away, to expound, to twist and contort; to jesuitize
all human knowledge.

Of the tactics “ of the Great Dissent”* I mean
to say little here. Finding the stream too strong
to be resisted, they threw themselves into it
with the utmost energy and vehemence; stereo-
typed Cuvier’s imperfect researches; made them
orthodox, and, as is their wont, prohibited all
further inquiry. Cuvier was to be to them in the
place of Aristotle, and to endure for as many
centuries.

In the meantime, the stream of science could
not be arrested. A bold attempt was made to
stereotype Paley’s coarse, mechanical views upon
the schools of philosophy ,1- it also must fail ;
ﬁnal causes are not causes, but qfects; all philo-
sophers]: admit this. Let us return to Cuvier and
to his aera.

Prior to the publication of the “ Ossemens Fos-
siles,” the instinctive desire for accurate anatomical

* English Church. 1‘ Bridgewater Treatises. 3: Fontana.

THE FINE ARTS. 439

knowledge had led Cuvier to undertake the most
extended researches into the anatomy of the actual
existing order of living animals. His beautiful
work on this subject is classical, and cannot be
excelled. Such researches he mistook for philoso-
phical anatomy; these comparative examinations
of the special anatomy of various natural families
and species of animals he mistook for comparative
anatomy; the results, for comparative physiology.
His subsequent inquiries into the fossil remains
of previous worlds should have taught him other-
wise. But he had established a reputation, an
aera, and that was enough. Accordingly, he
watched, evidently with gloomy apprehensions,
all attempts to alter or extend his views. He had
proved, as he thought satisfactorily, the existing,
living races of animals to be totally, and speciﬁ-
cally, and generically, distinct from their prede-
cessors; his views warranted the doctrine of
successive generations of plants and animals,
although I am not sure that he ever said so; but
if he did not, it was said for him, in England and
in France. He had proved, moreover, as he
thought, that the existing order of animal life had
not changed since its appearance on the earth;
that neither plants nor animals had changed their
forms, at least since the building of Carnac and
the Pyramids; but he avoided speaking of man.
Cautious to an extreme, he failed to remark that

440 ANCIENT GREECE.

the same observation applied strictly to man him-
self ; that he, also, had not changed during the
lapse of time alluded to. Thus he was using a
double-edged weapon without being, perhaps,
aware of it.

I ﬁrst saw Cuvier and his illustrious opponent,
Geoffrey, in 1821 ; Oken was in Paris, and many
others. It was easy for me, intimate with both,
in almost daily conference with Geoﬂ‘roy—aware
of the views of my illustrious friend, De Blain-
ville, the ﬁrst of all living anatomists—it was easy
for me, so situated, to foresee a coming storm. “ It
is to be regretted,” said Cuvier to me, “ that our
friend Geoffroy is not an anatomist.” Now, that
was no doubt strictly true : he was no anatomist,
in any sense, but he was an observer of nature,
of lofty transcendental views; a man of genius
and original powers of thought, beyond the logical
mind of the celebrated author of the “ Ossemens
Fossiles.” The result was brieﬂy this. Strongly
impressed with the ideas of the unity of the
organization, unity of structure, unity of plan in
nature’s works, a portion of the great tran-
scendentalism taught him and Europe, by the
master minds of Slavonia and South Germany,
he made an effort to introduce them into France,
and even into the bosom of that Academy where
Cuvier reigned triumphant. A failure was the
certain result. Cuvier easily withstood the attack,

THE FINE ARTS. 441

and returned it with great advantage; ridiculed, as
they deserved, the illogical views of my esteemed
friend in respect of analogous and homologous
structures, and succeeded, for a time, in sup-
pressing the transcendental doctrines in France.
So early as 1821, I had pointed out to my most
esteemed friend Geoffrey, that he must not play
fast and loose with analogy and homology 5 that
organs were not convertible, as he thought; that
the branchial cartilages could not be converted
into ribs, nor ribs into branchial cartilages; that
nature had laid down certain types or plans which
it was our business to investigate and, if possible,
to discover, but not to determine Li prion". I could
easily see that my illustrious friends were both
partly in the wrong; Cuvier most. The event
has proved it. Let us consider how this was
brought about.

The immortal discoveries of the South German
and Slavonian Schools in respect of Embryology,
the doctrine of the skeleton, of unity of the orga-
nization, and of a universal type or plan, had by
this time, in despite of Cuvier and his school,
made a progress scarcely to be resisted. It is
true that Geoffrey’s loose views, based on ana-
logies and homologies alternately, could not be
sustained; no more could the formula of Meckel
and the North German school be admitted as
true theories; they had discovered the source of

442 ANCIENT GREECE.

all human aberrations of form to consist in an
arrest of development; this I showed could not
be true of all; not, for example, of that most
remarkable perhaps of all deviations in human
structure, which I had the good fortune to dis-
cover—the structure of the arm of the tiger found
in man. I had shown, moreover, with others,
although few took the same views, that lungs
and gills were not convertible into each other
in the vertebrata; that every vertebrate animal
seemed to possess both, whilst in the embryonic
state, andthat this extended to man himself; that
the same doctrine applied to the generative sys-
tem; and that Meckel’s views and formula were
wholly untenable. Still, this did not affect, in
the main, the soundness of the transcendental
theories; it merely showed that false applications
had been made of them. As early as 1827, I
proposed a modiﬁcation of the views, substituting
the doctrine of type for the then existing theories.
But, foreseeing the differences certain to arise
between my illustrious friends, and sure of being
referred to as witness of Geoffroy’s earliest re-
searches; satisﬁed that in the coming struggle
there was one anatomist at least*—011e, too, of the
highest reputation, who could, as a right-hand
friend, have preserved M. Geoﬂ'roy from all

* M. Serres.

THE FINE ARTS. 443

serious anatomical errors, I ceased all corre-
spondence with these illustrious men for many
years. But I have promised the result as regards
this dispute ; it may be stated in a few words.

In his place in the Academylof Sciences, M.
Geoffroy, at last made the following bold pro-
position; long had he meditated it, but had not
' the moral courage to do so; he foresaw that it
must disunite him with Cuvier, and, in some mea-
sure, with the Academy. The proposition maybe
thus summed up:—“ The existing animals and
plants—the Fauna and Flora of the present world
——are connected with the past by direct descent;
generation following generation uninterruptedly.
There never was butone creation. Time, the
laws of development, changes in the external and
circumambient atmosphere of the globe, in the
frame of the globe itself, effected all the rest.
In the structure of one animal all the forms are
included; the embryo proves this; so also do the
phenomena which fossil anatomy has already un-
folded. There is then, after all, but one living
principle, one animal, one eternal law. Forms of
animal life, forms of vegetable life are, to a
certain extent, unimportant. Matter assumes, no
doubt, certain deﬁnite forms; naturally, nothing
exists by chance, all is in harmony with the
great First Cause—the end or object no man can
foresee, no man can foretel. Meantime, let us

444 ANCIENT GREECE.

investigate truth; the opposite course has led to
tragedies of an appalling nature.”

Thus did Geoffrey, foremost in France, but last
in Germanyf bring forward and advocate the
views of the illustrious Oken and Goethe, Leib-
nitz, and a host of others; applying the doctrines
of transcendental anatomy to the past and present
and to the future. Much requires to be done to
give to these doctrines all the accuracy of a
ﬁnished inquiry; the whole subject is but yet in
its infancy.

“ There is but one animal,” said Geoﬂ'roy, “ not
many,” and to this vast and philosophic view, the
mind of Cuvier himself, towards the close of life,
gradually approached. It is, no doubt, the cor-
rect one. Applied to man, the doctrine amounts
to this,—Mankind is of one family, one origin.
In every embryo is the type ofall the races ofmen;
the circumstances determining these various races
of men, as they now, and have existed, are as yet
unknown; but they exist, no doubt, and must be
physical; regulated by secondary laws, changing,
slowly or suddenly, the existing order of things.
The idea of new creations, or of any creation
saving that of living matter, is wholly inadmis-
sible. The world is composed of matter, not
of mind. The circumstances giving rise, then,

* See note on the views of Spix and Von Martins—the
human skeleton.

THE FINE ARTS. 445

to the specializations of animal and vegetable
forms, giving them a permanency of some thou—
sand years, are as yet unknown to us, and may
for ever remain so; but that is no reason why
they should not be inquired into. Some specu-
lations into this, the most important of all human
inquiries, will be found in the notes appended
to this lecture.

In conclusion: the permanent varieties of men,
permanent at least seemingly during the historic
period, originate in laws elucidated in part by
embryology, by the laws of unity of the organ-
ization, in a word, by the great laws of transcen—
dental anatomy. Variety is deformity; deviation
from one grand type towards which Nature, by her
laws of specialization, constantly aims: those
laws which, once established, terminated the reign
of chaos. To every living thing they give a spe-
ciﬁc character, enduring at least for a time ; man
also has his speciﬁc character to endure for a
time. Certain forms, certain deviations, in obe-
dience to the great and universal law of unity,
are not viable in the existing order of things;
but they may become\so. If the deformity, that is,
a return more or less to unity, be too great, too
antagonistic of her speciﬁc laws, the individual,
whether man or mere animal or plant, ceases to
be, and thus the extension of variety of forms,
which we call “deformations,” ceases.

446 ANCIENT GREECE.

The perfect type of man was discovered by
the ancient sculptors of Greece: it cannot be
surpassed; all attempts to improve on it have
failed. Towards this, nature constantly tends.
Certain races seem to be approaching the condi-
tion of non-viable races; it would seem as if
their course was run: they hold the same posi-
tion to mankind as the individual or family in
whom the laws of unity, superseding in part the
laws of specialization, have given rise to defor-
mations, monstrosities, incompatible with repr0~
duction, _or with individual life. These races
may then probably disappear, and this may be
the fate of man himself under every form, his
intellectual nature notwithstanding. For millions
and millions of years the world rolled through
spacewithout him; his absence was not felt; he
hopes his presence to be now eterne: Creature of
yesterday ! Such would have been the language
of the ancient saurians, could they have spoken
—-“ Look at our might, our strength ; look at the
glorious world around; the vast and beauteous
forms which everywhere decorate the earth. This
can never come to a close.” But it did, and that
frequently too: from the past, judge of the future.

APPENDIX.

SECTION I.—-—0rz'gin, Civilization, Extinction Q)“
the Dar/a Races of Men.

IN the history of the Jewish, Coptic, and Gipsy
races, the great question of the extinction of race
has been considered. These races, placed by theo-
rists with the so-called Caucasian race, and at the
head of the Caucasian family, I consider as be-
longing to the dark races of men. They are
African and Asiatic, not European. The purest
of the Jewish race is a dark tawny, yellow-
coloured person, with jet-black hair and eyes
seemingly coloured: there is no mistaking the
race when pure:ale it is Egyptian—that is, African.
The same remarks apply to the gipsy, who is of
Asiatic origin. A series of incorrect observations,
commencing with Blumenbach, but not terminat-
ing with Prichard, led to errors which no doubt
will hold their ground for centuries. For this
reason I have, in a preceding lecture, reviewed

the history of these three races, the Copt, the

* See Engraving, p. 193.

448 ORIGIN, CIVILIZATION, ETC.

Gipsy,‘ and the Jew, and in so doing, brieﬂy
examined the question of the extinction of race, as .
applicable to all. Of the destiny of the dark races
it is not my intention to say much. Originating
from the same stock with their fellow men of all
colours; formed into distinct groups by the laws
of development, obeying geological aeras; these
groups or natural families preserve, as in the case
of all other animals, their speciﬁc forms and mental
qualities, for at least a term of years which history
does not yet enable us to determine, but of sufﬁ-
cient duration to convey to the limited mind of
man the idea of eternal. Thus it was that Cuvier,
assuming the brief span of man’s written history,
and of man’s pictorial history, as shown on the
monuments of Egypt, to be the beginning and
end of man’s history, leaped to the conclusion
that animals (he avoided speaking of man on this
p02'72t,) had not altered their forms in the slightest
degree since the historic period commenced; as if
that historic period were anything but a day in
the history of the globe, and of life. Thus it was
that his followers, denying the slightest change
to any other animal for thousands of years, though
exposed in every possible way to climatic in-
ﬂuences, claimed for man the privilege of ever-
lasting change, though protected from these
inﬂuences by his inventive genius, mental facul-
ties, and powers of combination; of changes in

OF THE DARK RACES. 449

form and exterior, so great that in any other
animal they would of necessity form groups which
science could not permit to be confounded with
each otherﬁ“

And now, inquiry shows us, that these groups
of the darker races of men I have just spoken of,
touch, by diverging rings, all other races; showing
the deep afﬁliations depending on the unity of
human life—0f all life: of the great laws of unity
of organization, suspended merely for a time by
those speciﬁc laws which give to life its forms and
order in space and time. By the Central American—[—
they seemed to have touched the ancient Euxine
race described by Hippocrates; by the Hottentot
and Bosjeman they touch the Mongol and Tartar;
by the Nubian and Abyssinian they approached
the Copt and Jew; and through them, Asiatic,
Greek, Syrian, Armenians. Furthest removed by
nature from the Saxon race, the antipathy between
these races is greater than between any other: in
each other they perceive their direct antagonists.
The wild and savage South African; the Tas-
manian, the uncultivated Negro, merely feel the
instinct; the semi-civilized Chinaman, Malay,
Negro, Afghan, both feel and understand the
results. The mandarin sees, in the contest with
a Saxon race, the extinction of his own; he acts

* See Engraving, p. 224.
1' See Drawing of Cherokee, p. 246.
G G

450 ORIGIN, CIVILIZATION, ETC.

accordingly. Could he be taught; could he read
and understand the rise and progress of the Anglo-
Saxon in America, then war to the knife would be
the ﬁrst and last words of a Chinaman, a Kaﬂ‘re,
a Red Indian, a New Zealander. But they cannot
be taught: history has no examples for them.
Animals of to-day, they look not for a to-morrow;
the present is theirs. Destined by the nature of
their race to run, like all other animals, a certain
limited course of existence, it matters little how
their extinction is brought about. Starting from
a stronger stock at ﬁrst; fresh and energetic, like
the young oak, their forms of civilization, peculiar,
of course, to themselves, preceded that of their
fairer brethren. This is at least my present opi-
nion, from historic data, I admit, of doubtful autho-
rity. In their progress, each group showed its own
tendencies towards the civilized, or rather towards
the human condition; towards a show, at least, of
humanity, and the decencies and order of human
existence. The Central Asiatic race, the Mongol,
the Tartar, when pure, revelled in tents and arms;
plunder and the pomp of war was their whole
aim. The other group, the Chinaman, proceeded
somewhat further; his tendencies were domestic
and trading: his taste for pagodas and lanterns is
characteristic; his notions of beauty of form pe—
culiar; in all things peculiar; in architecture,
literature, ﬁne (P) arts, peculiar; and having car-

OF THE DARK RACES. 451

ried out his destiny, attained the maximum of his
civilization, and being unequal to the full adoption
of any other, he progresses not, standing on the
verge of that destruction awaiting him, when
Saxon and Sarmatian will contend with each
other for the plunder of Nangasaki and Pekin,
with high hopes, no doubt, of supplanting the
Asiatic race, or at the least, of converting China
and Japan into another Hindostan. This I doubt;
not the attempt, but the result. But to this, also,
I have already devoted a few remarks.

On the American continent, the central group
of the aboriginal coloured races was running their
narrow course when the Celtiberian and Lusi-
tanian races burst in upon them; upsetting their
idols and temples; their pyramids and obelisks;
as the semi-barbarous Saxon and Celt and Goth
burst on Rome; with the same results; the sub-
stitution of one form of civilization for another;
of one race for another; none to hold their ground,
but all to dwindle into a mere shadow. Look at
modern Rome and modern Mexico; Jerusalem as
it is, and as it was; Babylon as it is, and as it was ;
Karnac; Egyptian Thebes with its hundred gates;
immortal.

The Southern Asiatic also had his day; his rise
and fall. In ancient times he built structures
in Hindostan, which his pitiful descendants look
at with awe and wonder, but attempt neither to

c G 2

452 ORIGIN, CIVILIZATION, ETC.

repair nor renew. In Central Africa the true
black or negro race seems to have attained his
ultimatum centuries ago. He has his own form of
civilization, but, unfortunately, it includes neither
literature, art, nor science. Yet he is industrious,
good tempered, energetic, accumulatiVe, a lover of
order and of ﬁnery; a fatalist and a worshipper of
Fetisches. The stronger-headed men of his race
dispense With their respect for the Fetisch as Aris-
tides and Caesar did with the heathen gods of
Rome, leaving all such frivolities to the “rascal
multitude.”* Yet from that mass they spring,
and to it they return. When the race attempts
the civilization of another, Celtic 0r Saxon, for
example, the Whole affair becomes a ludicrous
farce, and even grave men laugh at it. The after-
piece is being played in St. Domingo, Where they
have elected a black emperor! In Liberia they
will elect a sham president. It can come to
nothing in either case. Each race must act for
itself, and work out its own destiny; display its
own tendencies; be the maker of its own fortunes,
be they good or evil. A foreign civilization they
cannot adopt; borrow they may, and cunningly
adapt, calling it national, native; but the im-
posture, like all impostures, becomes manifest in
time, Whether practised by the negro or the Saxon.

3“ The appellation usually applied to “the million” by my
great ancestor, John Knox.

OF THE DARK RACES. 453

They elect a president in Hayti; in recollection of
Napoleon; he declares himself emperor; standing
in the same relation to that name which the oran-
outan does to the Apollo. He even sets an example
to the President of the backward republic of Celtic-
Gaul; See, he says, how forward we are. He founds
a dynasty; black Thiers and swarthy Guizots
cluster around to establish the dynasty and main-
tain the “ juste milieu5” they spout philosophy,
and praise the virtues of the reigning dynasty;
the majesty of the law; the divine rights of kings
and emperors; the sacred rights of property
and privilege, however acquired. The whole is
a farce when acted in Hayti; a melo-drame with
tragic episodes when Gaul is the stage; and so it
is ever with the most skilful and able of impos-
tors, that is, of imitators; sooner or later the trick
comes out. A noble mind builds St. Paul’s! a
copy, it is true, and an imitation of a greater; but
a noble imitation, satisfying all minds. The thing
is vaunted as national! native! straightway, as if
to unmask the imposture, a certain building ap-
pears in Trafalgar-square; a hideous bronze or
two show themselves about Hyde-park; natives,
no doubt; quite original. But I forget that my
present chapter is on the dark races, or rather
the darker groups of the dark or coloured
races. I have already spoken of their aﬂiliated
races, the Gipsy, Copt, and Jew; and of that

454 ORIGIN, CIVILIZATION, ETC.

race which far excelled all others,——the ancient
Greek.

I have sometimes thought, that even the yellow
race of Africa, the degraded Hottentot and Bos-
jeman, the Quaquoes and the Antniquas,must have
had their aera; their attempt at civilization and
its failure; instead of being a recent oppressed
race, they are perhaps a most ancient and fallen
race; fallen, never to rise again, not merely by
having come into contact with more powerful
races, but simply as a result of the history of
development and progress. In ancient times the
race seems to have extended throughout all Africa;
I have alluded to this in my history of the Tro-
glodytes of Homer ; the desert or dry places of the
earth seem always to have been their dwelling-
place. Where placed near stronger races, they
would imitate their civilization in as far as their
physical organization admitted; just as the Hot-
tentot of the Cape does, or would do if left to
himself. The towns he would build would not
be strictly European towns, but clusters of mud
closets, raised on each other, should necessity,
that is, a want of room or a common danger, com-
pel them to live huddled together in groups. They
would occupy, in a half civilized condition, some
insulated hill or rock, driving their ﬂocks and
herds to the plains during the day-time, and re-
tiring to their fastnesses on the approach of

OF THE DARK RACES. 4.35

night or of an enemy, thus leading a dreamy,
dreary, life, “ ﬂat, stale, and unproﬁtable.” The
history of a day is the history of their lives. Such
were the Namaquas when ﬁrst visited and de-
scribed by Kolben and Le Vaillant, hating the
fastnesses and densely populated hill town, to
which no necessity had ever given rise. Gradu-
ally diminishing and fading away, prior even to
the advent of the Saxon-Boor in Southern Africa,
they seem to have never attained any higher con-
dition of civilization there; but could we suppose
for an instant, that the peculiar and almost inde-
scribable race of men whom Mr. St. John found
in the Oases of Northern Africa, and especially in
that of Jupiter Ammon, are the descendants of
the Troglodytes of H emer, then we have a solution
of the question as regards the yellow race or races
of Africa. In Northern Africa they had attained
their highest element of civilization possibly even
before Egyptian Thebes was built; or wandering
over the deserts, they imitated, in their own
fashion, the doings of stronger races; built their
hovels on a hill, and for self-defence lived to-
gether. But they had run their course before
Carthage appeared; then came the Roman, dis-
possessing, as to power, Juba and Masanissa;
then the Saracen and the Moor; they too, sink
before the climate and the returning dark races;
returning to the land from which they were often

456 THE ANTAGONISM OF MAN

expelled; themselves gradually fading away, to
be replaced by the wilde and the desert, perhaps
the ocean. The Arab and the Turkoman sup-
planted the Copt in Egypt; but will they hold
their ground? observing travellers seem to think
that they cannot; the Coptic face is still to be
seen on the banks of the Nile; the Negro gives
ground; the desert also progresses; and thus may
the motley population of Egypt perish, failing
to represent its ancient inhabitants.

If there be a dark race destined to contend
with the fair races of men for a portion of the
earth, given to man as an inheritance, it is the
Negro. The tropical regions of the earth seem
peculiarly to belong to him; his energy is con-
siderable: aided by a tropical sun, he repels the
white invader. From St. Domingo he drove out
the Celt; from Jamaica he will expel the Saxon;
and the expulsion of the Lusitanian from Brazil,
by the Negro, is merely an affair of time.

SECTION lI.—-— The Antagonism of Man to Nature’s
Works.

The citizen—the man of to-day—the formulist
é—the being Whose mind has been clept and
fashioned from its earliest dawn, as his garments;
forced to adopt the “ spirit of his times,” taught
to talk largely of the rapid progress of man—of

T0 NATURE’S WORKS. 457

his civilization, meaning the form which society
has assumed in the warren-looking row of dwell-
ings, in No. 4, or 6, of which he is for a brief
space located; to this trammelled and harnessed
animal, “ the Wilde” is a mere plaything, an un-
intelligible freak of creation. Having no occasion
for thought, it occupies no part of his attention;
and should so idle a question arise in his mind
as “ the object of its creation,” his remaining
special and speciﬁc instincts which the artiﬁcial
existence he chooses to call “ civilization” has
failed quite to extinguish, teach him that to it”
his nature is antagonistic. Thus be he savage
or boor, citizen or man, coloured or fair, war to
the knife is the cry with Nature’s Fauna and
Nature’s Flora; destroy and live, spare and
perish, is the stern law of man’s destiny. Whence
this antagonism? and why? To the profound
philosophers of the Bridgewater school, to the
sturdy Utilitarian, the dogmatic Jew, to the man
of happy self-conceit, Who in all things sees two
sides of a question, of which the one of his adop-
tion must be the best, who thinks that two and
two make four, or ﬁve, or one, according as the
matter is viewed; who sees in the enormous de-
struction and seeming waste of life—of early
infant life—innocent, pale-faced, sweet and beau-
teous youth, struck at by stern, remorseless, piti-
less death, “ a wise dispensation of Providence

458 THE ANTAGONISM or MAN,

for the multiplying of pleasure?”6 to him, or to
them, for they are a school, I leave the jesuitical
task of discovering in physical and moral suffer-
ing a beneﬁt and a pleasure, and proceed, dis-
claiming all knowledge of “ the why” and “ the
wherefore,” pretending not to an initiation into
the mysterious ways of the Creative Power—its
intentions, its plans, its views, its theory—but
merely to inquire into the reality of the fact
and its consequences.

That animal and vegetable life is produced in
an abundance exceeding all belief; that a half,
at least, of everything born, perishes from un—
known causes when young; that another section
or division afterwards perish, being destined as
food for others; that man himself, an animal
mortal and frail like others, is included to the
full in this stern category; that there would even
seem for him a worse fate than for the others,
is simply a fact undeniable, explain it as you
may. Mental and bodily diseases of all hues,
harassing pestilence and famine ; wars of opinion!
war to the knife! promising utter destruction and
ﬁnal extermination to those who prefer the evi-
dence of sense to the erring reason of man,
stupidly maintaining that bread is not ﬂesh, and
that wine cannot be turned into blood until

*3 Buckland, Bridgewater Treatise.

T0 NATURE’S WORKS. 409

digested and assimilated. Man’s fate, then, is
severer than that of the lower animals; they have
no aristocracy, no priests, no kings; they are
spared this triple curse; nor can a dark and fear-
ful future be depicted on their brains, in terms so
strong as to make them believe that millions of
invisible beings walk the lower regions of the
atmosphere, wholly occupied in leading him to
destruction.*

Whatever, then, be the cause, life is produced
on the globe in extravagant and unintelligible
abundance—life clothed in forms, some simple,
others more complex. To this life, as produced
by nature, clothed with the forms necessitated by
development in time, or by time (for this has not
yet been fully resolved) man, also a part of
Nature’s plan, else he could not be present, is
the perpetual antagonist. Against the ﬂoral and
faunal wilde he carries on perpetual war; if
civilized, even the natural herbage does not
escape him; for it he substitutes an artiﬁcial
crop. His domestic animals, as he calls them,
seem never to have been really wild. They are
not, nor ever were, found in a natural state; it is
the same with vegetable productions; his destiny
is, multiply sheep and oxen, and wheat and cab-
bages, until the earth be filled therewith; to ex-
trude and destroy, if he can, all that is wonderful

* Modern Theology.

460 THE ANTAGONISM OF MAN

and beautiful on the globe as it came from Nature’s
hands. In dealing with this astounding, yet cer-
tain truth, let us be cautious how we apply the
word man. Are all the races of men antagonistic
of Nature’s work? Probably they are, but differ
in this antagonistic power immeasurably from
each other; nor is it improbable that, with cer-
tain races, the amount of antagonism would in
no conceivable period of time have reached
the point of extermination. But for the riﬂe,
the American bison might for thousands of
years have maintained his ground against the
feebly armed Indian; the grizzly bear might
have become in time the assailant; the wolf
have forced the copper—coloured Indian to fortify
his camp against a midnight attack; and the
jaguar and alligator and boa reigned masters
of the wooded banks of the Maranon and Ori-
noco. I know not of any means possessed by
the Circumpolar races for the extermination of
the seal and walrus, the polar bear, the whale;
no powers of combination, no powers of inven-
tion equal to the task. For how many ages to
come might not the ponderous elephant and un-
wieldy hippopotamus have grazed by the banks
of the remote Kei, or harmlessly gambolled in
the Keis Kamma or Gariepine streams? For how
many centuries yet to come, but for the interpo-
sition of the Saxon and the riﬂe, might not the

T0 NATURE’S WORKS. 461

stately giraffe, with the gazelle eye, have adorned
the southern edge of the Calihari, by your
beauteous reaches, clear and crystal Gariep?
\Vho shall say? The wild man was obviously
unequal to their destruction; even the baboon he
dared not attack in troops; the buffalo and the
rhinoceros he could scarcely encounter under any
circumstances; and, in despite of Bosjeman and
Hottentot, and Kaﬂir, the lion stalked at mid-day
on the open plains. This have I seen whilst
wandering in South Africa, traversing slowly the
Bosjeman land, or wistfully gazing over that
beauteous ﬁeld, looking from the Koonap east-
ward, then calm and peaceful, now marked by
scenes of pillage, plunder, and relentless massacre.
On this ﬁeld the naked savage met the disciplined
savage, the semi-barbarian met nature’s man.

In my early days, and whilst still a youth,
a friend placed in my hands ﬁve enchanting
volumes, full of nature and of truth, “ The
Adventures of Le Vaillant.” Ten years after-
wards I stood on the spot where, crossing the
Groote Visch Riviere, he ascended the slope
leading to the undulating Table-land, through
which the Koonap and the Chumie, the Keis
Kamma, and many other streams make their
way, directly or indirectly, to join the Indian
Ocean. \Vandering alone on the afternoon of a
bright sunshiny day, such a day as can be seen

462 THE ANTAGONISM or MAN

only in Southern Africa, and ascending the long
and gentle slope, thus reaching the level of the
grassy plains stretching eastward towards the
Koonap, the neutral ground lay before me. To
the north and east might be traced the wooded
range of the Kaha and Anattola mountain range,
part and parcel of the lofty Winterbergen; and
as I stood musing on the scene before me, the
past and the future rose on my imagination like
a dream. What was the living scene before me?
Nature in all her wondrous beauty and variety;
the dark-eyed antelope, of nearly all varieties,
covered the plain; in the distance, stalked slowly
the majestic ostrich; over head soared, silent and
sad, the vulture; bustards of all sizes; harmless,
peaceful, grain and insect-loving animals; the
zebra and the quagga ; the acacia, the strelitzia,
the evergreens, the pasture and the bush, planted
by nature; the ﬁeld which plough or spade had
never turned up, on Which the cerealia had never
been grown. And what is this scene to me, I
said? Beautiful though it be, where is man? It
seemed, in my sight, a vast stage, decorated, pic-
turesque, lovely, but the actors were wanting; it
was a panorama, a picture—a living picture, yet
desert and without that life to which man ever
looks. But now the glass discovers on the wooded
slopes of the Chumie mountains the curling smoke,
telling of the presence of man. Now who is the

T0 NATURE’S WORKS. 463

man who watches that ﬁre? It is the savage Bos-
jeman, or still ﬁercer Kafﬁr; the race looked for
by Le Vaillant many years before, from the same
spot on which I now stood. Nature, then, had
stood its ground in that lapse of time; she had
remained seemingly unaltered for countless ages
up to the moment I then noted her; Why should
not this continue? I will tell you: a new element
had appeared, the Dutch-Saxon and the Anglo-
Saxon were now hanging on the skirts of the old
African world. A new element of mind had ap-
peared about to create a new South African aera:
the Saxon or Celtic element, bringing with it the
semi-civilized notions of Europe—the power of
combination, ﬁre-arms, discipline, laws. Before
this new element, antagonistic of nature, her
works are doomed to destruction, in as far as man
can destroy. The wild acacia he wastes as ﬁre~
wood; the Chumie forests he utterly destroys,
converting the timbers thereof into rafters for
barracks and other hovels, for men to congregate
in like pigs. Over nature’s pastures, over the
iris, bulbous plants of surpassing beauty, over the
strelitzia, and a thousand other wild ﬂowers, he
passes the ruthless plough. The antelope is
exterminated or disappears; the zebra, the gnoo,
the ostrich, the bustard, escape from the land, or
are shot down; the mighty onslaught of an anta-
gonistic element, seemingly too strong for nature,

464 THE ANTAGONISM OF MAN

defeats even the rhinoceros, the elephant, the lion,
so that their skins are become rare, so rare as
to be prized for European museums. Last comes
man himself—the coloured man—the man placed
there by nature; he also must of necessity give
way; his destiny apparently is sealed, and ex-
tinction in presence of a stronger race seems
inevitable. The yellow race, the feebler, will
naturally yield ﬁrst; then the Kaﬂ‘ir—he also
must yield to the Saxon Boor, on whose side is
right, that is, might ; for, humanly speaking, might
is the sole right. Retiring northwards towards
the Calihari, and perhaps crossing it, he and the
wilde with him may gain Central Africa, and so
escape for a time the destruction threatening
them. But is this destruction certain? In
front of the Saxon Boor stands the desert;
that he cannot conquer. As he advances
northward and eastward, he encounters the
tropical line, within which generally he can-
not live. Thus, after all, his dominion may be
limited to Southern extra-tropical Africa; nor
is it quite certain that he may always stand his
ground in that healthiest of all countries. He
has not yet laboured there as a cultivator; he has
not yet been left to his own resources. But this
question I have already discussed— I mean the
destruction of one race by another, and the sub-
stitution of one race by another. Man’s gift is to

TO NATURE’S WORKS. 465

destroy, not to create; he cannot even produce
and maintain a new and permanent variety of a
barn-door fowl, of a pheasant, of a sheep or horse.
This, then, is the antagonism of man, of certain
races of men, to nature’s works—of those races,
at least, in whose minds civilization forms a
natural element—natural or acquired; of men
educable and progressive, at least to a certain
point. With other races it seems different. That
the Saxon and Celtic races may maintain their
ground in Southern Africa is possible, but not
proved. The history of man, as I have already
shown, is against the theory, which indeed is
mainly maintained by the arrogance and self-suf-
ﬁciency of the race. But this great question I
have already discussed : let me therefore conclude
by rapidly surveying the opposing obstacles to the
identiﬁcation of the Saxon and Celtic races with
the soil of Southern Africa.

There is ﬁrst the Kalihari or Southern Sahara;
the Karroo, not yet cultivated; the labour question
he has not yet met; to the northward, the tropic
he dare not enter as a cultivator; the dark and
more numerous races he must there encounter.
To these the Saxon bears an eternal, deep-rooted
hatred; but not so other races—the Celt, for
example, and the Celtiberian. As he proceeds
towards Central and Eastern Africa, he will en-
counter the Arab and the Moor: by these he has

H H

466 THE ANTAGONISM OF MAN

hitherto been kept in check. But it is the tropic
which must protect the dark races ultimately
against the antagonism of the fair. With the
wilde it is otherwise. There man may destroy——
this is, indeed, his aim—progressing onwards, as
he thinks, when the earth shall support only oxen
and sheep, and cabbages and manﬁ'6 and Saxons,
of course; adopting the theory that the Saxon
race is the highest development. Pleasant theory!
So would have reasoned the saurians, could they
have reasoned—the sivatherium and the dinothe-
rium! Contemplating their gigantic, and, it may
be, splendid forms, with the great and sublime
around him: tortoises that might sustain an ele-
phant on their backs; bears the size of horses;
tigers and oxen of gigantic stature, and robes at
least as beautiful as those of the present day;
was it not natural for the man of that day, as no
doubt there was such a man, to have said to him—
self, “This is the last development, the highest
effort of nature! She can produce nothing more
sublime than the world now before me I” But now
the aim of the Saxon man is the extermination of
the dark races of men—the aborigines—the men
of the desert and of the forest. I have shown you
the obstacles to his progress—the forest, the
growing desert, the overwhelming sands of the

9* Mulder, the chemist.

TO NATURE’S WORKS. 467

sea-shore ; the terrible results of earthquakes and
of volcanoes; the subsidence of land under the
ocean; the advance of the hog and the heath.
These affect all races, more or less; so does
climate—more powerful than all—the present
climate of the earth as it is known to us. Extend
the phrase climate to times past, and to times to
come; ask yourselves what climatic changes de-
stroyed the mammoth, the aneplotherium, the
dinotherium, the sivatherium? the ﬁshes of the
ancient world? the saurians? Man destroyed
them not; yet their race is run. Why dies out,
almost before our eyes, the apteryx? The Irish
elk, the gigantic fossil ox, the dodo, have not
long ceased to exist. The destroying angel
walks abroad unseen, striking even at the races
of men. But nature dies not; ever young; ever
returning; ever reviving; she is eternal. The
form is immaterial; the essence is the same; ﬁrst
and last. V

HHQ

 

 

NOTES.

NOTE 1.

NATIONALITY 116729168 RACE.

IN despite of the lesson taught the Saxon race by the
United States of America, a lesson without a parallel in
the world, the Norman government of England persists in
the same colonial policy which caused her the loss of
America. Whilst I now write there is a scheme to found
a British colony, with true British feelings, in New Zea-
land. It is to be called New Canterbury. Nothing can
teach certain men. The promoters fancy that they can
alter human nature; the Saxon nature: that British
feelings or nationality is to prevail over the eternal qua-
lities of race. So little do they seem to know of human
nature, that they fancy it possible to extend British na-
tionality to the descendants of a race, coming from England
no doubt, but born and brought up in New Zealand.
They actually deny to the Saxon his greatest quality, self-
esteem, self-dependence. Scarcely will» these New Zea-
landers have seen the fourth or ﬁfth generation, before
they Will set Britain, with all its mock institutions, at
deﬁance. They are Saxon men; that is, democrats, by
their nature; and they will throw off the Norman rule
the instant they can. They did this in the United States;
the Cape will follow next; then Australia. Looking at
the present condition of Britain, it were grievous to think
otherwise.

470 NOTES.

NOTE 2.

About ﬁfteen years ago, the Prussian system of educa-
tion, as it was called, came into notice in England. Inte-
rested greatly in everything pertaining to the education
of man, I carefully weighed its probable results on any
people who unhappily might adopt it. The conclusions I
then formed, and of which I made no secret, were, 1st,
that the Prussian system was not intended to educate, but
to destroy the human mind. 2nd, that as nothing good
could come from the House of Brandenburg and its drum-
head government, it ought to be at once refused admit-
tance into Britain. At that time I could get none to agree
with me on these points: to-day, however, I ﬁnd that
even in the House of Commons, where truth penetrates
latest, theexecrable scheme has been exposed. This really
infamous plan to destroy by misdirected State education
the mind of the rising generation, was not conﬁned to
Prussia; it extended all over Austria.

NOTE 3.

I have introduced into the text a woodcut of the head
of one of those races supposed to have cannibal propen-
sities: but I have always doubted the fact of cannibalism
having ever existed. A patient inquiry into the history of
the American race satisﬁed me that the cannibalism of the
New World was the pure invention of the Catholic mis-
sionaries: the cannibalism of the East may, I think, be
traced to a similar source. I never met with any one who
had been present at such a banquet. In Africa no such
practice exists. The whole affair is, I think, a romance,
but it has served its purpose with those who think that
the end vindicates the means.

NOTE 4.

N 0 mixed race can stand their ground for any long
period of years. The Danish (Scandinavian or Saxon)
blood, which must have existed in sufﬁcient abundance in

NOTES. 471

South England during and subsequent to Canute’s time,
has given way before the Flemish races, which preceded the
Saxon, and now prevails everywhere. All traces of the
Scandinavian and Celtic seem to have left Greece. The
mingled Italian races, the product of so many others, seem
fast reverting to a primitive race, which occupied Italy
before Rome was founded. A mixed race may then be
produced, but it cannot be supported by its own resources,
but by continual draughts from the two pure races which
originally gave origin to it.

The character of such a race may be judged of by what
ancient historians say of the Sybarites, even before the
time of Pyrrhus, and by the accounts which some modern
travellers give us of the present Neapolitans and South
Italians, including the Sicilian. For the sake of humanity
I should hope that these accounts are exaggerated; it has
been said, that after thirty years of age all the characters of
the vilest passions appear strongly on the South Italian
countenance, in an unmistakable way. There must still
be a good deal of Pelasgic blood in Campania and Sicily.

NOTE 5.

N 0 existing race is equal to the colonization of the
whole earth. They cannot even extend themselves from
one continent to another. Already the Anglo-Saxon
rears with difﬁculty his offspring in Australia: it is the
same in most parts of America. But for the supplies they
receive from Europe the race would perish, even in these
most healthy climates. We have the authority of Mr.
Warburton for a fact I long suspectedxbut could not fully
ascertain. Jewish children cannot live in Jerusalem ; and
the whole race would die out in a few years in the pro-
mised land, but for the inﬂux of stranger Jews from other
countries. A great section of the Jewish race was pro-
bably Chaldean; for on the Nimrod monuments the
Jewish cast of features is quite discernible. Another
great section was Coptic. A Syrian section must have
existed or grown up by intermarriage. N o Jew lived in

472 - NOTES.

Jerusalem until after David’s time, and even thenthe
original inhabitants, the Jebusites (Syrians), continued
peaceably to occupy the city. It is probable, then, that
in time the race may return to the original Chaldean ; but
in England the Coptic features show remarkably in some
families.

NOTE 6.

The Saxon race, as a race, is the tallest in the world,
but, caeteris paribus, they are not the strongest. The
Celt is stronger, and so, probably, is the Arab : the Congo
black, Molyneux, was much stronger than any English-
man of' his day. But in this climate, tall men frequently
die early, of pulmonary consumption; and hence the
greater mortality of the Foot-guards, and the difﬁculty of
maintaining the standard of recruitment. They enter the
service, moreover, too young. When sent to ﬁne climates,
as the Cape and Australia, such persons live readily; they
escape consumption. The descendants also of the Saxon
race seem to become a taller race in these latter countries;
but this arises merely from the circumstance that the tall
children, who would die in Europe, survive at the Cape,
and in Australia. '

The Saxon despises soldiering, so that his armies gene-
rally are heavy, cumbrous, and expensive. He is trained
or disciplined with great difﬁculty. The pure English
peasantry make wretched soldiers : they have neither the
shape nor the qualities ﬁtting them for war. The proper
ﬁeld for action of the Saxon is the ocean.

The Saxon, then, is not warlike, and he hates unpro-
ﬁtable wars; but he is as brave as any man, and his
strength and obstinacy make him a formidable enemy.
As the Saxon by becoming a soldier loses the esteem of
his fellow Saxons, so the status of the English soldier in
society can never be raised; the meanest independent
labourer despises him; he has sold his independence, the
natural birthright of the Saxon. The Celtic race, destitute
of all self-esteem, does not understand this : the Celt makes
the best of soldiers: at sea he is all but worthless.

NOTES. 473

NOTE 7.

Homer must have seen a Scandinavian woman, else he
could not so have described Penelope. The complexion
he assigns to her exists in no other race.

Climate alters not complexion permanently: individual
alterations never become hereditary. My esteemed friend,
Dr. Andrew Smith, informs me, that, curious to know the
truth on this point, he attentively looked at a family de-
scended from forefathers who came to South Africa with
the ﬁrst settlers. Three hundred years, then, had elapsed
since their ﬁrst arrival. Their descendants at this mo-
ment are as fair as the fairest of Europeans.

The Dutch at the Cape (Saxons) have a perfect horror
for the coloured races ; it extends to the Mulatto, whom
they absolutely despise. The placing a coloured man in
an important ofﬁcial situation in South Africa, has caused
to Britain the loss of some millions, and laid the basis for
the ultimate separation of that colony from Britain.

NOTE 8.

Nationalities are always odious. Of all nations the
English, in consequence of their nationalities, are the most
disliked by the rest of mankind. They owe this in a great
measure to the large admixture of Saxon blood which pre-
vails throughout England. The Saxon portion of the
United States men carry these bad qualities to the utmost
extent; the press must, of necessity, support the nation-
alities, however odious and disgusting they may be. A
most amusing paragraph in an American newspaper was
shown to me lately, written, I think, at a place called
Buﬁ‘alo—a beautiful name for a city. The writer, like
modern Saxons, tries his hand at statistics. “ Sixty years
ago, there were only six— millions of Saxons in America;
now there are twenty-six. In another century they will
be sixty millions ; and they will spread over the earth until
the globe be theirs!” Admirable statistician! Effective
writer of common-place ! How coolly and softly you dis-

474 NOTES.

pose of the other races of men! But perhaps I do wrong
in noticing such nonsense.

NOTE 9.

Many are disposed to think that England is becoming
everyday more and more Saxon; I am not of this opinion
since residing in the South of England, where the popula-
tion is mostly Flemish. Dynastic inﬂuence—Church and
State—and an executive backed wholly by a strong mili-
tary force, never were more rampant in Britain than at
the present moment.

NOTE 10.

Since this work has gone to the press, I have been in-
formed by a military friend, an excellent observer, that
the Saxon-Dutch at the Cape have seldom numerous fami-
lies. I entertained myself at one time the opposite Opinion,
but I feel now convinced of the correctness of my friend’s
remarks. This explains the slow increase of population in
Southern Africa, and is another conﬁrmation of the great
physiological law I have been the ﬁrst to propose—namely,
that no race, be they who they may, can appropriate to
themselves any other continent than the one to which they
are indigenous. The ultimate extension, then, of the Saxon,
or of any other race, to other continents than their own, is
a dream or vision, opposed to all previous history. “’hat
Providence may do for that, or for any other race, I do not
pretend to know. Under Providence we were driven
shamefully out of Aﬁ'ghanistan; and at Buenos Ayres, and x
at Rosetta ; dispossessed of the United States ; Walcheren
tells a sad tale ; and always under Providence the amount
of juvenile delinquency and crime exceeds in England pro-
bably all that at present exists on the globe. I leave the
matter in the hands of the theologian, who, whether he be
Lutheran or Catholic, Greek or Mahometan, will, no
doubt, reconcile all contradictions. I pretend to nothing,
but, simply inquire.

The Huns are interlopers from Asia; their fate seems

NOTES. 475

certain. It is the same with the Tureoman. The Jew
never could make good his ground in Syria, nor the true
Arab in Africa. The Celts of England, Ireland, and Scot-
land, are just where they were a thousand years before
Caesar landed. So are the Normans or F lemings of South
England before William landed ‘: so are the Saxons Of
Eastern England and Scotland. Spain seems returning to
a single primitive race, existing there long before the
Phoenicians landed in the Peninsula. Italy seems to be
undergoing the same process.

NOTE 11.

It was, I think,in the spring of 1821, that I met the cele-
brated French traveller, Le Vaillant, in Paris. He was no
traveller, nor was he a scientiﬁc man in any sense of the term.
But he was a good naturalist, a collector of specimens, and
a simple, honest, public-minded man. His description of
South Africa was most accurate, so far as he went; but
he forgot to say that the country was in the hands of the
Dutch Boors. To have said so would have destroyed all
the delightful romance of his inimitable work. Barrow
hints that the Abbe Phillipon wrote Le Vaillant’s works ;
now this is absolutely impossible. Retouched they may
have been in Paris I admit, but that is all. Every word
bears the impress of the mind of the man I met in Paris.
Not one word of What Barrow said against Le Vaillant is
strictly correct. N 0 two men diﬁ'ered more widely than
Barrow and Le Vaillant: the latter, a simple-minded na-
turalist, a lover of truth, a good observer, with some genius
or originality: the former, destitute of all powers of ori-
ginal observation; a hard, cast-metal, cold-blooded, hack
oiﬁcial, a model clerk of a model board; the mouth-piece
of a Bureaux, the English Admiralty, in which it would be
difﬁcult to say whether incapacity or dishonesty most pre-
vail.

NOTE 12.

Humboldt remarks in his “ Kosmos,” that the ancient
mind (Greek and Roman) differed from the modern or that

476 NOTES.

now existing, in nothing more remarkably than in the view
each took of external nature ; the landscape; the forest; the
ocean; the solemn grandeur of mountain groups, touching
by.their granitic pinnacles the clouds themselves. Of all
these the ancient mind took little or no notice ; the modern
dwells on them even to nausea. This is not the place to
explain theicause of so wide a difference : this work already
exceeds greatly the extent which I promised my publisher.
I may therefore merely observe, that in contemplating the
external world and its material manifestations, man and
his instinctive and intellectual results; his physical struc-
ture and his mind are really the only objects in this world
which touch the human feelings deeply. All else is desert:
all else is surface: there exists no corresponding sympathies
but with one, primitive and elementary; it is the aspect of
the earth in a state of nature (South Africa), or in a state
resembling nature (South England), which speaks directly
to the soul, reminding us of our condition as man, our real
relation to the globe as opposed to conventionalities of
civilization. But a glance at the Parthenon, at the Venus,
at the smooth brow and sparkling eye of beauteous
woman, when just entering womanhood; a few moments
passed in presence of the frescos of Angelo and of Raffaelle,
or of the ruins of Karnac, will, I feel assured, convince
any correct mind, that these are the objects calculated to
bring out our noblest sympathies ; to elevate the mind,
and to raise us immeasurably above the rest of the animal
creation. With these, that is, with man and his works,
the elevated sympathizes ; not with the unseen powers of
nature; not with the secondary laws, as they are called,
which destroy and reconstruct planets. With these we
have no sympathies, and cannot have ; their manifesta-
tions have forms, but not our forms; to us they must ever
appear as abstractions, though real.

NOTE 13.

There are persons who must for ever, and on all occa.
sions, thrust themselves into the counsels of the Creative

NOTES. 477

Power; guessing at its plans and schemes—the grand
scheme of nature.

They are generally persons who, not having received a
regular education in science, employ the same terms some-
times literally, sometimes metaphorically. Some fossil re-
mains of a former organic world, they call “ F oot-prints of
the Creator,” as if the creative Power had feet and hands.
With them all is miracle; all is ﬁnal cause, though pro-
foundlyignorant of what that cause (which is an eﬁ'ect, and
nota cause) mayprove tobe. Theuniversal system of nature
must have been formed by ﬁxed, unaltcrable, eternal laws;
it is still regulated by them. The globe we inhabit, and
all that it contains, forms no exception to this : in it rather
we ﬁnd the proofs that such laws have always existed. Nor
does the creation and maintenance of the organic or living
world form any exception to this statement; the organic
and inorganic worlds have coexisted, no doubt, from all
eternity. Perhaps they form but one. But be this as it
may, of one thing we are sure—the antiquity of the or-
ganic world is immeasurable. The Hindoo theory, then,
on this point is more minute in its details, if not more
philosophic than the Hebrew. The latter has the advan-
tage in simplicity and grandeur, the former in scientiﬁc
truths.

The creation of the organic world by ﬁxed laws, was the
discovery of the South German and Slavonian schools ; it
is due mainly to Oken, Humboldt, Spix, and Von Martius,
with some others. St. Hilaire was also explicit enough
many years ago. “There is but one animal, not many,”
was the remarkable expression of Geoﬁ‘roy; it contains
the whole question. What was, now is, under other forms;
but the essence is still the same. So long as this great
truth was announced in merely scientiﬁc language, the
schools of Britain took no notice of it; when clothed by a
plagiarist in plain language, it burst on the English uti-
litarians like a thunderbolt.

In some minor points the theory of Oken differs from
Geoffrey’s; but they are not of great importance. That
nothing was created as it is, is the common theory of both;

478 NOTES.

all is development from a microscopic point. But Geoﬁ'roy
endeavouring to become intelligible in France, where the
development theory was never well understood, added the
further statement, that one genus or species of animal
might produce another; “that the present saurians are
the direct descendants of the ancient or extinct saurians.”
He went further; he said that, in time, by the force of
external circumstances, an animal of a totally different
group of life, might assume a new form: his views were
based on the unity of life. The difference, if any exist,
and this I doubt, simply amounts to this : 1. From the
ﬁrstfthe germs of life differed speciﬁcally from each other;
or, 2nd. At ﬁrst, they were precisely the same, the subse-
quent specializations being the result of external circum-
stances. In either case, nothing was ever formed or created
as it is.

Out of elemental bodies all living forms arise. Their
course and existence are ﬁxed and determined. In time
they are developed, having special forms which endure for
a time. The law of this progression has not been disco-
vered; but man plays a part in it. What that part is
cannot even be guessed at, in consequence of the failure of
civilization to better man’s condition on the globe.

Those who look for intermediate forms of life being pro-
duced, as it were, under our own eye, or rather during the
present geological period, err, I think,—1st. In their esti-
mation of the antiquity of the globe ; 2nd. In their estimate
of the characteristic differences marking all external cir-
cumstances during successive geological periods. The
developing powers are not the same. The salmo estu-
arius (estuary trout) diﬁ‘ers speciﬁcally from the fresh-
water trout, and from the sea trout; but this specializa-
tion was not caused by his living in brackish waters. He
forms part and parcel of the existing order of things formed
at the last geological aera. The dark, circumpolar races of
men were not darkened by the snows of the Arctic circle :
they belong to an anterior geological period. Some writers
have confounded the theory of development with the theory
of progress. They are quite distinct.

NOTES. 479

NOTE 14.

The origin of man is a myth, which each race interprets
in its own way, formules after the fashion of its own intel-
lectual bearing; retouches as it makes progress in arts,
literature, and science; that is, in civilization.

I mean not here to discuss these myths. The Jewish
myth seems to have been a purely material one; philo-
sophic, and sublimely simple, it offers no details. The
Coptic and Hindoo was spiritual and lofty, but debased
by shocking Obscenities ; the minds of the races were not
equal to the perception of the perfect and the beautiful.
The Scandinavian myth was coarse and brutal; material
in its essence: the hideous representations of the Deity in
India, China, Mongolia, and Polynesia, indicate the sad
character of the minds of these races.

The precise geological period when man appeared on the
earth, has not been determined; nor what race appeared
ﬁrst; nor under What form. But it is evident, that
man has survived several geological aeras. On these
points all is at present conjecture; but as man merely
forms a portion of the material world, he must of necessity
be subject to all the physiological and physical laws affect-
ing life on the globe. His pretensions to place himself
above nature’s laws, assume a variety of shapes: some-
times he aﬁ'ects mystery; at other times he is grandly
mechanical. N 0w, all is to be done through the workshop;
in a little While, the ultimatum (What is the ultimatum
aimed at P) is to be gained through religion : and thus man
frets his hour upon the stage of life, fancying himself some-
thing whilst he is absolutely nothing. For him worlds were
made millions of years ago, and yet according to his own
account he appeared, as it were, but yesterday. Let us
leave human chronology to the chronicler of events; it
turned the brain of Newton.

THE END.

’ IQNDQN; . .
‘ nix-rub! SAW"AND ‘nnwums,’ 4. Cmim'oé mm,

00““ GARDEN. '

 

AN INQUIRY

INTO THE

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE.

 

CHAPTER 1.
PART I.

THERE is scarcely a physiological inquiry which presents
greater dilﬁculties than the one I now attempt. Hitherto
it has been mixed up with animal hybridité in general.
What was held to be true of one species of animal was
presumed to be applicable to others; hence many errors,
for every ‘species has its own laws and peculiarities,
and the very terms species and speciﬁc imply this. All
analogies are doubtful, and the greater number wholly
fallacious. In this respect modern inquirers have not
advanced beyond the strictly logical reasoning of the time
of the historian Livy, or rather of the Consul Manlius,
who lived some hundred years before the celebrated Roman
historian. The arguments used by the consul to persuade
his army that the Gauls settled in Asia were not to be
held in the ,same esteem as warriors as their ancestors
who overthrew the Roman army at the Allia and sacked
Rome, are based on the effects of climate on living beings.
“Climate,” he says, “has done its work. The Gauls
settled in Asia as an exotic race, and, like all exotics, have
degenerated." Had the consul been educated at Oxford or
Cambridge, he could not more logically and skilfully have
handled the question of climatology and its eﬂ‘ects on
plants and animals, and, by inference, on man himself. “ It
I I

482 AN INQUIRY m'ro THE

is not unknown to me that, of all the nations inhabiting
Asia, the Gauls have the highest reputation as soldiers.
A ﬁerce nation, overrunning the face of the earth with its
arms, has ﬁxed its abode in the midst of a race of men
the gentlest in the world. These tall persons, their long
red hairﬁ‘ their vast shields, and swords ot'enormons length;
their songs, also, when they are advancing to action, their
yells and dances, and the horrid clashing of their armour
while they brandish their shields in a peculiar manner, praeo
tised in their original country; allthese are circumstances
calculated to strike terror. But let Greeks and I’hrygians
and Carians, who are unaccustomed to, and unacquainted
with, these things, be frightened by such; the Romans,
long acquainted with Gallic tumults, have learnt the
emptiness of their parade. Once, indeed, in an early
period, they defeated our ancestors on the Allia. Ever
since that time, for now two hundred years, the Romans
drive them before them in dismay, and kill them like
cattle ; there have, indeed, been more triumphs celebrated
over the Gauls than over almoat all the rest of the world.

“ It is now well known by experience, that if you sustain
their ﬁrst onset, which they make with ﬁery eagerness and
blind fury, their limbs are unnerved with sweat and
fatigue; their arms ﬂag; and though you should not
employ a weapon on them, the sun, dust, and thirst sink
their enervated bodies and their no less encrvated minds.

“We have tried. them, not only with our legions against
theirs, but in single combat, man to man. Titus Munlius
'and Marcus Valerius have demonstrated how far Roman
valour surpasses Gallic fury. Marcus Maulius, singly,
thrust back the Gauls who were mounting the Capitol in a
body. Our forefathers had to deal with genuine native
Gauls ; but they are now degenerate, a mongrel race, and,
in reality, what they are named, G'allogrwcians. J net as
is the case with vegetables; the seeds not being so cllica~
cious for preserving their original constitution, as the pro-
perties of the soil and climate in which they may be reared,
when changed, are towards altering it.

‘ They could not have been Ganls, but Teutous or Scandinavians.

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 483

“ The Macedonians who settled at Alexandria in Egypt,
or in Seleucia or Babylonia, or in any other of their colo-
nies scattered over the world, have sunk into Syrians,
Parthians, or Egyptians. Marseilles, by being situated in
the midst of Gauls, has contracted somewhat of the dis-
position of its adjoining neighbours. What trace do the
Tarentines retain of the hardy, rugged discipline of Sparta?
Everything that grows in its own natural soil attains the
greater perfection; whatever is planted in a foreign land,
by a gradual change in its nature, degenerates into a simi-
litude to that which ali'ords it nurture. You will, there-
fore, ﬁght with men of the like description as those Whom
you have already vanquished and cut to pieces ; those Phry-
gians, encumbered with Gallic armour, in the battle with
Antiochus. I fear that they will not oppose us sulﬁciently
so that we may acquire honour from our victory. King
Attilus often routed them and put them to ﬂight. Brutes
retain for a time, when taken, their natural ferocity ; but

after being long fed by the hands of men, they grow tame.

“ Think ye, then, that nature does not act in the same
manner in softening the savage natures of men P Do you
believe these to be of the same kind that their forefathers
and fathers were? Driven from home by want of land, they
marched along the craggy coast of Illyricum ; then fought
their way, against the ﬁercest nations, through the whole
length of Poeonia and Thrace, and took possession of these
countries. After being hardened, yet soured, by so great
hardships, they gained admittance here ; a territory capable
of glutting them with an abundance of everything desirable.
By the very great fertility of the soil, the very great mild-
ness of the climate, and the gentle dispositions of the
neighbouring nations, all that barbarous ﬁerceness which
they brought with them has been quite mollified.

“As for you, who are sons of Mars, believe me, you
ought from the very beginning to guard against and shun,
above all things, the enticing delights of Asia; so great is
the power of those foreign pleasures in extinguishing the
vigour of the mind, so strong the contagion from the
relaxed discipline and manners of the people about you.

1 1 2

484 AN INQUIRY INTO THE

One thing has happened fortunately, that though they will
not bring against you a degree of strength equal to what
they formerly possessed, yet they still retain a character
among the Greeks equal to what they had at their ﬁrst
coming ; consequently you will acquire, by subduing them,
as high renown among the allies for military prowess as if
they had kept up to their ancient standard of courage.”*

It has been generally taken for granted that all mankind
are of one species, thus assuming as a fact the very matter
in question. The parties who commence the inquiry after
this fashion are the same who ascribe the obvious varieties
in mankind to climate or to the accidental mixture of races
or varieties accidentally produced; and, ﬁnally, they are
the same persons who deny the inﬂuence of race over the
destinies of' nations, and compel by fraud and violence the
assent of nations to a chronology of mankind notoriously
in contradiction with unquestioned and unquestionable
historic evidence. Their chief support they ﬁnd in modern
logic, borrowed from the sophists of Athens, whose aim is-
not truth, but the fulﬁlment of “ the logical necessities of
the case.”

“ A hybrid is a living being, the product of a mixture of
two species more or less remote"? When such an indi-
vidual is produced from the admixture of two species lower
in the scale than man, the being is called a mule; but as
this word is more generally applied to the product of a
cross between the horse and ass, I shall use the term
hybrid as more appropriate and liable to no equivoque.
To assert that these human hybrids are unproliﬁc like the
mule, without further inquiry, would be to commit the
error I have just criticised—namely, the assuming as a
fact, proved and demonstrated, that men are of diﬁ'erent
species ; whereas, like the antagonistic theory, the opinion
rests on mere conjecture. Is it necessary, in order to
arrive at the truth, to go back to the origin of things—of
life and species on the globe? Button thought so, and

9* Titi Livii, Histor. Roman.
1' So deﬁned by an author, M. Paul Broca, who has given to this
great question more attention tlianany other inquirer of modern times. ‘

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 4H5

after him Goethe, Lamarck, Oken, and Geoﬂ'roy (St.
Hilaire). I feel disposed to doubt this, for the following
reasons. It is a question deeply mingled up with the
theological opinions of many races and nations, as is that'of
the antiquity of life on the globe. In my younger days the
belief that life appeared ﬁrst on the globe a few thousand
years ago was all but universal, and now such a theory is
scouted by all scientiﬁc men. Let us wait, then, but a short
time, and in all probability the fact may become demon-
strable that man’s antiquity on the globe (for this is the
real question) is coeval with life itself. I wait patiently ;
the facts are sure to come. If life on the globe originated
in the development of germs, conversion of inert into
living matter, or in the existing from all eternity, there
can be no necessity for inquiring into its origin. To the
fact that man forms a part of the animal creation, as proved
by his organic structure, may now be added that other fact,
no less certain, that in the development of his organs from
the embryo to the adult and aged, there exist proofs of a
consanguinity with all that lives, demonstrable by anatomy,
supported also by the structure of' the adult existing gene-
ration of animals, and, as far as can be discovered, from the
osseous remains of the species and genera now extinct—a
discovery we owe to De Blainville. Thus the ﬁeld of inquiry
becomes narrowed ; mysticism and miraculous interposi-
tions are set aside ; the unseen principle—that is, the trans-
cendental—becomes known to man by its visible interpreta-
tions or realities. Let us adhere to these. If, by the
mixture of two different races or species, a third new to
history can be produced, then the question of the origin of
new species may be considered as definitely settled. But
the facts must be drawn from observations made directly
on man, none other being applicable to the case.

The distinguished ethnologist 3“ to whose remarkable
work I have already alluded, is disposed to think that dis-
tinct species, not necessarily nearly allied to each other
(espéces whines), may be crossed and mingled so as to
produce durable results ; that is, I presume, mules or

4“ M. Paul Broca.

486 AN INQUIRY INTO THE

hybrids, which being self-supporting, constitute, in fact,
new species. The solution of this question is deeply inter-
mingled with human history.

I. That species have not altered since the earliest historic
times was the opinion of Buff'on, and was adOpted by the
immortal Cuvier. It was also that of Voltaire. To this
opinion, which admitted of' demonstration, and was, in
fact, true, Cuvier added the hypothesis, that species had
never altered, and never did alter, or assume any other but
their original forms. This was hypothesis ﬁrst. The
second was forced upon him, and he never very clearly
assented to it; it amounted to this, that the extinct or
fossil animals had no consanguinite’ with the existing ; that
they perished en totalité, giving room for another creation ;
that these distinct acts of creation formed epochs in the
history of ‘life on the globe; and that, consequently, each
new creation argued a new interposition of a First Cause.
Such interpositions exclude at once all science and all
philosophy. These opinions still hold their ground, and
are not conﬁned to any particular school. Cuvier never
altogether assented to them. But he was an anatomist,
and although by his race a German, he despised the Teu-
tonic philosophy; in his opinion such men as Goethe,
Chen, and Geoﬁ'roy were mere dreamers, and I have heard
him say so at least ﬁfty times. He saw instinctively in
these theories an indirect attack on his great work, “ Sur
les Ossemens F ossiles,” on which his vast reputation wholly
rested. The outer world, composed of men whose minds
are unﬁtted by education to weigh any scientiﬁc questions
of this kind, adopted the hypotheses of Cuvier; to doubt
them was to cease to be orthodox, and to be put to the ban
by all the governments and governmental institutions of
Europe. With inﬁnite tact Cuvier avoided all these
difﬁcult and dangerous questions; in short, man formed
no part of his animal kingdom. To the question of the
unity of the human race as one species, he gave little or no
attention. To derive all the varieties of men from a prim-
ordial pair is a pure hypothesis, but not more so than the
theory which derives them from several primitive pairs. ‘

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 487-

Of' the two hypotheses, the latter is the more improbable.
In fact, neither rests on any scientiﬁc inquiry 5 they are
mere assertions unsupported by any proof.

In the course of the inquiry it became necessary to!
deﬁne species. Naturalists have generally admitted that . _
animals of the same species are fertile, reproducing their i
kind for ever; whilst, on the contrary, ,if an animal be the
product of two distinct species, the hybrid, more or less,
was sure to perish or to become extinct, unless its continu-
ance Were insured by the infusion of new blood drawn
from a pure race; in other words, that the products of
such amixture are not fertile. In this way species are
unalterable and eternal, or, at least, permanent. Those
who hold this hypothesis reject all opinions, such as those
of Aristotle, and of those who fancy they can see in climate
the efﬁcient cause of the origin of species. They deny by
inference the animal series, all existing relations between
the past and the present, the present and the future. They
deny by inference the doctrine of a chain of creation ; the
mystery of mysteries, the extinction of the fossil animals,
and the appearance of new species on the earth, they»
solve by an appeal to a First Causeﬁ“

II. I have promised to conﬁne my attention mainly, if 7
not solely, to human hybridité. Is it true that all the
races of mankind intermingle freely with each other, giving
rise to a fertile progeny? Look over the world as it now
exists, and say where such a hybrid race exists; for to 2'
prove that all races mingle freely with each other, it must (r
be shown, not only that this is so, but that there results
a self-supporting progeny, characterized by all its newly
acquired moral and physical properties; without recourse
being had to either of the primitive races. N ow this has
never happened either in respect of dogs or men-the
two genera which have been chieﬂy appealed to in this in-
quiry. But I wish it to be understood that I refer only
to the historic period. When Goethe, many years ago,
and long before any of these discussions commenced as to
the origin qf’ species, remarked, that in a Sicilian valley

* Cuvier, Broun, 8w.

488 AN INQUIRY INTO THE

he saw a herd or drove of most beautiful cattle all re-
_ sembling each other, g‘entle, quiet, and wholly unlike the
wild of the bovine family, he said to himself, “ this is not
a new species of ox, and yet in one sense it is ; it is a
breed formed out of the primitive, savage, suspicious,
timid, and ferocious bos, by a domestication of a million
of years.” This bold conjecture or hypothesis of Goethe,
made many years ago, is the source of all the modern
philosophies as to the origin of species with which
the public has been amused and startled during the last
thirty years.* It is an ingenious hypothesis, and has great
claims on our attention as a new philosophic reading of
the phenomena of life, but—it is not science. Let us re-
turn to man, the aim and object of all useful inquiry.

I have already proved, many years ago—and was, I
believe, the ﬁrst to do so—that Erom the earliest historic
times, mankind were already divided into a certain number
of races, perfectly distinct; and I called on those who
maintained that the distinctness in the races of men was
the product of climate, to say in what time such a change
could be effected. To those who, like Goethe, conjectured
man to have been on the earth a million of years ago, I
said, “your hypothesis is a probable one—the most pro-
bable—and that in time, and by the inﬂuence of external
causes, new species appeared, the direct descendants of
the old, but new to the world.” This view did not origi-
nate with M. Geoffroy (St. Hilaire), but he was the ﬁrst
to announce it in France. The Academy rejected it at
once; it touched a reputation (that of Cuvier) of which
France and the Academy were justly proud. It was
loudly objected to in England by all geologists and
zoologi‘sts, most of' whom are still alive, but who now
adopt it to the full, or are prepared to do so. One of the
great objections to the view was, that paleontology did not
reveal to us the intermediate forms of life between the
past and the present. It was reserved for De Blainville
to prove that it did. Transcendental anatomy, also,

* Oken, Geoﬁ‘roy, “ Vestiges of Creation," Darwin on the “ Origin of
Species,” &c. &c. '

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 489

supported this view, based on paleontology, embryo-
logy, and the history of zoological individual development.
If in the young of a species of a genus embracing many
species, we ﬁnd all the external characters of all the
species included in that genus, then to comprehend
when certain species disappear from the earth and others
previously unknown take their place, we have only to note
in the history of the natural family in question the regular
progress of all that lives to decay and dissolution, and the
as constant renovation, under other forms of life, on the
globe. In other words, as the embryo of every individual
of any species belonging to the natural family contains
Within itself the characters of the adults of all the species,
it is then but a question of time and circumstances which
species is to die out, and which to take its place.

But this theory of Goethe’s requires, if it is to be
applied to man, a time almost inﬁnite, or at least in-
deﬁnite. The theologian holds that two or three hundred
years are sufﬁcient to give rise, under the inﬂuence of
climate, to all the varieties of man. His view is untenable,
and his chronology is ﬂatly contradicted by evidence of an
unanswerable character. All this I pointed out in my ﬁrst
lecture on the Races of Men. M. Broca has taken the trouble
to go over the ground again, and even condescended to
correct the theologian in his translation of certain passages
of the Hebrew writings, showing that he (the theologian)
has no grounds whatever from that book for his theory as
to the origin of the Negro race. M. Broca’s clear refu-
tation will not put a stop to the infamous hypothesis which
has been engrafted on the Book of Genesis by modern
divines. 3“

Our ﬁrst knowledge of species and of genus, or natural
family, is not derived from science, and, indeed, has nothing
to do with it. In a knowledge of species the savage
is often much more expert than the highly civilized and
learned:man. But when men are called on to prove that

* To understand the full import of this atrocious calumny on the
Negro and Coloured races geneially, see Livingstone’s “ Travels in
South Africa.”

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490 AN INQUIRY INTO THE

certain animals which more or less resemble each other
externally and internally, are yet perfectly distinct species,
they very naturally appeal to the method by experiment,
basing the inquiry on facts derived from daily observations.
These facts show, then, that many animals closely allied
to each other never naturally seek each other’s company,
so as to give rise to hybrids—that is cross-breeds. Secondly;
by experimental science they learn that these animals
may, however, be made to produce hybrids or cross-breeds,

which, when left to themselvesI they neigndpg and that
6Tth'ﬁi6s3‘breedr’t’6“produced, some are fertile for

several generations, others not at all. Zoologists, availing
themselves of these facts, brought out by experimental

cience, base a doctrine thereon which seems to me
scarcely scientiﬁc ; it is this :—If the hybrid produced be
proliﬁc and self-supporting, the parents must be of the
same species, however different they may seem in their ex-
ternal and internal characters ; if the hybrid be not fertile,
then the parents, how greatly soever they may have re-
sembled each other, were of different species. I am not
indisposed to admit this View, although to me it seems
not founded on a scientiﬁc basis. But if facts are in its
favour—that is, if there are certain hybrids produced
by species hitherto held to be distinct, which hybrids
prove fertile without any limit—then I am still dis-
posed to think, in opposition to M. Broca, that the
species, after all, were not distinct. Let it be borne in
mind that the doctrine leads directly to an explanation of
the origin of species, for such a hybrid would be a new
form of animal life not heretofore on the earth. For
whether its parents were of different species or of the same,
the observation opens up a field of inquiry touching the
very essence of the origin of the varied forms oflil'e. If we
admit the unbounded fertility of a hybrid, the product of
two individuals hitherto recognised by all men as of dis-
tinct species, we destroy the last test of species which man
possesses; the others—that is, a difference in anatomical
structure and in external characters, in the morale and the
physique of the species—sink into insigniﬁcance so soon as

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 491

it becomes known and proved that these species, seemingly
so distinct, are yet the same. But, I repeat, such is not
my opinion. With time the hybrid breed will gradually
lose its peculiar moral and physical nature, compounded
of those of its primitive parents, some of the offspring re-
verting to one species, others to the other. Ancient
monuments do not seem to show that such hybrids ever
existed. But this is no reason why they should not appear.
Be it und Lspeak of self- supporting hybrids,

requiring the infusion of no fresh blood from the parent
w on “this other hand, tl‘ié hybrid be
’ self~suppor g, have we a right to conclude from this that

the original parents were of the same species? With
the utmost respect for the matured opinions of so dis-
tinguished an ethnologist as M. Broca, I think we have ;
but I quite agree with him that here, as in most zoological
questions, experimental Science alone, and not any apriori
reasoning, can decide, until at last, the hybrid qualities
entirely disappear, and the product reverts to one or other
of the primitive races. Time must be allowed for this
great depravation of species. By the cross of a white man
with a mulatto woman of no very deep die, dark blood has
been observed to hold its ground in the descendants for a
hundred and ﬁfty years, although all the subsequent inter-
marriages were with one race—the fair.

PART II.

THIS great ethnological and physiological question early
attracted my attention. It was brought forward in my
work on “The Races of Men,” but I had already exa-
mined the theory of human hybridization in many public
lectures, long prior to the publication of that work. Whilst
collecting materials for these lectures, it was impossible
for me to overlook numerous important facts, or at least
phenomena and reﬂections, open to all who have the courage
to embark in the inquiry. Like most ethnological ques-

492 . AN INQUIRY INTO THE

tions, it intercalated with, or involved, several others not
less important, and to these I shall allude in the course of
the present chapter.

At the period of my commencing the inquiry, certain
physiological ideas prevailed almost universally. To get
at the source of certain of these ideas, we must go up to
the instinctive thoughts of unscientiﬁc men. It is the
most natural thing in the world for scientiﬁc men to
imagine that mankind owes to them all exact knowledge
as to the nature of things, but no idea is more erroneous.
The learned mathematician imagines that he invented
mathematics, simply because by his reasoning powers he
demonstrates their truth; but the most untutored of men
understand their practical application quite as well as he
does, whilst all the great mathematical principles of natural
philosophy .were perfectly well understood before science
appeared. In assigning to reason its full inﬂuence over
man’s progress on the earth, let us not forget the univer-
sality of another mental power—instinct, which, combined
with simple observation and the experimental test resorted
to by the savage as well as by the followers of Bacon,
seldom misleads. Let us apply this to zoology.

The idea included in thezword “species” is as clear,
precise, and positive in the mind of the merest savage as
in that of the most highly educated zoologist. It has
nothing to do with science, and was not the invention of
scientiﬁc men. The speciﬁcally distinct characters which
constitute species are as well known, and have ever been
so, to the merest savage as to the most highly educated of
men. On conversing with the wild Bosjiemen and savage
Caﬁ‘res of Eastern Africa, I have sometimes fancied that,
in respect of a knowledge of the speciﬁc characters of
animals and plants, they excelled the civilized man. That
these characters were what we call external in a great
measure may be admitted ; but the teeth and feet do not
come under this head altogether, and to these the savage
and the uneducated carefully attend. Generally, also, these
simple-minded men are free from the prejudices which
beset civilized man, and which he acquires by means of

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 493

that other form of ignorance called erudition. Their ideas
of species being thus clear and precise, as derived, partly
from instinct, which so seldom errs, partly from daily
observation, lead almost directly and unconsciously to this
conclusion—namely, that as all these species are thus
distinct from each other, avoid each other, and never
intermingle, they must be, and are, wholly distinct from
each other, and have ever been so, lonmzereit otherwise,
the ﬁeld of observation, thezﬂological and vegetableswoi‘ld?
W presented thousands and thousands
of limits iiu emname, 1mposs1ble to. compre-
0hend. To this natural conclusion, the savage, the unedu-
mof all countries, of all races, and of all times, arrive.
He learns from the aged around him that it was precisely
so in their younger days and in those of their forefathers,
and instinctively he arrives at the same results attained by
the elaborate researches of the immortal Cuvier, the dis-
coverer of the fossil world and the inventor of true descrip-
tive comparative anatomy (a discovery not inferior to the
ﬁrst, and leading directly to it)~—name_ly, that the various
swam—annals, man included, have ﬁver varled are
immutableLunchangeable, if not eternal, that as they are
now, so were they when man ﬁrst commenced to engrave
on stone or record on parchment what he saw in the
external world. Q law of living beings was obviously
thatievergnllvig being__ should bring forth after its own
kind,“ and this law, based on daily observation through
countless centuries, assumed the form of a truth, to doubt
Wﬂes an aberration of intellect amounting to a 1
condition of mind closely approximating that of the sceptic 1
who calls in question the truth of a geometrical problem. ‘
This law or laws (for there are more than one) handled by
the scientiﬁc zoologist, assume an imposing form, although
in reality they are not based on science nor on any inquiry.
Species became, in the hands of the illustrious—and, I think,
we may say immortal—Button, the eternal moulds of nature,
unalterable, unchangeable. A demonstration of the unal-
terable character of species/ was attempted with\ great
success by one whose ‘cTamrt—o the title of immortal cannot

 

494 AN INQUIRY INTO THE

be questioned, and thus the immutability of species and

theweternity of. species assumed at last the form of a

scientiﬁc dogma. Let us return to the simple observation

of the savage—the uneducated.

It was known that, although species remained thus
distinct, it occasionally happened that two species inter-

I mingled (as the horse and ass), and that the result was a
ibeing partaking of the character of both parents, yet
1 ’1 distinct from both. How did it happen, then, that mules
had not spread over the earth, thus giving rise to a new

species of horse? The answer was obvious and at hand;
‘ mules are sterile. .0r unproliﬁc, proving, as Buﬁ'on would
have remarked, that Nature had resolved to preserve her
primitive moulds from all- change, whether that lead to
improvement or to degradation. Experimental science now
steps forward and shows v arious degrees in this infecundity
or sterility of hybrids, some proving unfruitful at the ﬁrst
generation, as the mule properly so called; others only
after two or more generations; lastly, the experiments of
M. Roux, as detailed in the admirable memoir of M.
Broca, tending to show that two distinct species may pro-
duce amule breed, a new species, fruitful to the end of
time; thus originating a new species, unknown heretofore
to man ; unknown in the past ; appertaining, therefore, to
the future, and, to a certain extent, giving to the philo-
sophical romance of Aristotle a distinctly scientiﬁc cha-
racter. For he ﬁrst launched the theory or hypothesis,
as it really was, that the variety and extraordinary cha-
racters of “the Wilde” of Africa was owing to the for-
tuitous crossings of species as they met in vast numbers
by the margins of lakes or the pools of partly dried-up
rivers, in that land which still merits the name bestowed
on it by Rome’s great lyric poet, “ the parched nurse of

lions.”*

It is easy to see in what direction the scientiﬁc must of
necessity follow these questions. Sharing with the savage,
from whom the idea spiings, the “theory that“ two distinct

Jecies cannot produce a fruitful mule, they assmvtid—this

1
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“ Arida nutrix Ieonum. ”——Hor.

LAWS or HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 495
I fact asa proof of what ought to have been proved expe-

held to be of the same species; if unfertile, they were of
different species.” This 1s precisely the theory or opinion
of the savage and of the uneducated; it partakes of the
nature of an instinctive feeling, supported by the past
history of the animal creation. Recent experiments, how-
ever, have shown that the mule produced by the hare and
rabbit is productive or fruitful, if not for centuries, at least
for several years. Time alone can try this question of the
self-supporting character of the Ieporides, the hybrid pro-
duct of the hare and rabbit ; in the meantime I remain of
the opinion that the hare and rabbit are distinct species
and have1 been so for countless ages, and that the Igzqorioles

rimentally. “ If the product was fertile, the parents were /

which tlie 3 ran If We admit the fecundity of the
we have a key, no doubt, to the orirrin of
new species, and their appearance from time to time on the
earth. Extend the theory a little, and it will explain the
disappearance of species which once existed merely by
assigning to them a limited vital force. Lastly, to admit
the theory to its full extent is to do away, in a philosophic
sense, with the idea of species, and to substitute for exact
science the philosophic romance of Goethe, of De Mallet,
and of Lamarck, so often reproduced since their time, and
more especially by Oken and Spix, Geoﬁ'roy (St. Hilaire),
by the author of the “ Vestiges of Creation,” and by Mr.
Darwin- ; a theory which may be thus expressed :—All

ma s ring from all, every form of life is possiblc;H1e ‘

ideas of species and genera are fast leaving men’s minds,
beingmnieife‘ly conventional terms invented by man to
uress distinctions 1n living beings, which, by their long
" continuance, he fancies to be eternal, a word of which he
is very fond, and greatly pleased to apply to himself and
to his works. Thus, to the theory of the inﬂuence of
climate in so altering species as to cause them to assume
the form of new species (a theory Wholly unsupported by
facts), and to the inﬂuence of domesticity (a principle
which could only be applied to a few species, such as the

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496 AN INQUIRY INTO THE

0x, sheep, goat, dog, horse, ass, camel, elephant, lama, and
of a few domestic fowls, and which over most of these has
never exercised any inﬂuence whateverﬂ‘ and in which the
varieties so produced require for their maintenance the
constant attention of the breeder) came now to be added a
third hypothesis, the principle, namely, of crossing of
species, giving origin to a fertile, self-supporting hybrid.
In part third of this chapter, I shall examine more
fully this question as it regards the lower animals; a few
remarks, therefore, may sufﬁce here. lst. As regards
climate ; a European species transferred to another climate
either stands its ground or becomes extinct. 1f crossed
with species of the same natural family peculiar to their
adopted country, they produce a hybrid breed, which
maintains its ground only so long as the crossing continues.
Left to itself, it speedily resolves itself into its primitive
races. 2nd. As regards domesticity, its inﬂuence on some
species is suﬁiciently remarkable, although even this may
be fairly questioned. On others it exercises no inﬂuence
whatever. The ass, lama, elephant, camel, and several
others, seem to me to come within this category. Goethe
thought the Sicilian ox to be the gift to man of domesti-
cation through a million of years. This is not science.
How stands this question as regards man? Certaifi of
the various races of men seem to form distinct species;
they differ from each other by their external characters
and internal anatomy quite as much as most of the species
held to be distinct by zoologists ; what applies to them
,may fairly enough be applied to man. In my former
:5 works, I endeavoured to add to the zoological characters
others drawn from the morale of the races, showing that in
this, as well as in the physique, the differences were unmis-
takeable, and that in reality they were speciﬁc. But it
was objected to my view, that as all the races of men breed
freely with each other, and that the product (which in this
case we can scarcely call a hybrid) was in all cases uni-
formly fruitful, it was evident that all must be of one
species, since in no instance was the true hybrid product

* Ass, elephant, camel, buﬂ‘alo, lama, 8w.

 

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 497

of two species known to be so. To this my reply was, the
the statement as to the fruitfulness of the human hybrid
rested on no sure data; that history disproved the asser-
tion by showing that the human hybrid in time became
extinct; further:k thatjhe hybrid was a degradatmn of

humanity and was rejected by nature. In support of this \ ;

“HEW, I “instaimed Mexico, Peru, and the Central ‘ ‘
States of America, foretelling results which none attempt
now to deny; to this I added the history of the hybrid
population of South Western Africa, of Portuguese India,
&c. ; lastly, the history of race as exhibited during twenty
centuries in Northern Africa. A distinguished physiologist
and anatomistﬁt who shares with me the opinion that the
races of men constitute distinct species, yet doubts the
theory of the absolute sterility of the human hybrid, and
does not think such a fact at all necessary to prove the
theory that men are of distinct species. Fertility or non-
fertility of a hybrid, he thinks, in no way proves or dis-
I still cling,r to the theory, almost instinctive, and common,
1/1;11eve,£3 to fnearly all men, that the non- fertility of a
hybndp proves beyond cavil that the parents were of dis-
t’inEfLSpecies, whilst the converse shows, at least, that if

’ they are not of absolutely the same species, they partake
of a nature so afﬁliated, so nearly related to each other“,
that the fecundity of the hybrid need not be wondered at.
It is quite possible, then, that the human hybrid—the pro-
duct of two strongly aﬁiliated races—may be fertile and
self-supporting , but I do not ﬁnd this view to be supported
by history. The hybrid produced between the male

Euro and__the female Australian seems to be alto-
gether sterile from the ﬁrst. Hybrids between other races
seem to be less sterile, if I may so say, but I think it only
/a’mﬁoﬁ'o’fgtﬁﬁéf“?roofs of hybridism may remain for
centuries, but history and common observation show that
they become extinct at last. But should it be proved, as
it is not yet, that individuals descended from parents here-
tofore held to be distinct species, not only by the vulgar,
* M. Broca.
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498 AN INQUIRY INTO THE

but by the scientiﬁc, may give rise to a hybrid race par-
taking of the characteristics of both parents, yet distinct
from each—self-supporting and enduring, then I confess
that the term speciﬁcally distinct cannot well be applied to
the parents. For on what shall we ground the proofs of
distinction of speCIes, but on the sterility of the hybrid?
Buth‘On was the ﬁrst, perhaps, to give ”Kite theory a scien-
tiﬁc formula, and to eliminate from the absolute fact itself
the various objections which might be raised against it on
the ground that certain species produce, by intermingling,
hybrid products which continue fertile and self-supporting
for a time. NOW this fact I do not dispute, and never did ;
the natural consanguinité which’connects members of the
same genus or natural family sufﬁciently explains the fact ;
to what extent this may proceed can only be determined
by experimental science, in the prosecution of which in
this direction let us never forget that we attempt a task
which nature has declined for the last six or seven thousand
years at least.

The obvious physical degradation of the European

raceslong settled in the United States, I do not ascribe
‘to the intermmglingvoir memopean races on that con-
tinent, but to the inﬂuence of climate, which sooner or
amalgamation of all the 153% one‘nwoii'the earth would
lead to theextermmation of mankind, * for each race would
separate, andafter the lapse of centuries revert to its
originalt _ype. 1‘ The tribe of Griquas, on the Orange River,
‘Has been often cited as proof of the existence of a self-
supporting hybrid race. Now the Griquas whom I have
seen seemed to me a bastard Hottentot race, in no way
self-supporting, but constantly maintained by primitive
races in contact with the tribe. Hasty observations have
greatly injured ethnology, as they have done science in
general. The Griquas return rapidly to the African blood.
M. Broca has taken the trouble to refute Dr. Prichard

1* M. Nott. “ Types of Mankind.” 1857.
1- The theory that no human hybrid race was to be found 011 the
earth was adopted in 1858 by M. Pouchat.

LAWS or HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 499

and his adherents in respect of the existence of certain
Eastern self-supporting hybrid races. I never had the
smallest belief in such theories, which, indeed, I knew to
rest on no scientiﬁc inquiry. But the distinguished French
ethnologist thinks that it was not necessary to go to Poly-
nesia or to the desert banks of the Orange River in order
to ﬁnd a self-supporting hybrid race. He bids us look
nearer home, and we shall ﬁnd the race we inquire for in
modern France and in other European countries. In other
terms, if I rightly comprehend the meaning of the distin-
guished author, he bids us apply the test of experimental
science rigorously; by this test he has made it extremely
probable that, as in many species of animals experiment
has proved that the hybrid of remote species is unfruitful,
whilst the offspring of naturally afﬁliated may prove fruit-
ful and self-supporting to all time, so it may be with the
races of men : the hybrid of a Papuan Negro or Bosjiemen
with a European race may be unfruitful ; the hybrid of a.
Teuton or Celt with a Scandinavian or Italian, a Sclave 0r
Goth, may lead to the establishment of a self-supporting
hybrid race permanent and enduring.

The consanguinité between different species of the same
natural family is proved by the resemblance of the young of
all the species to each other ; the young, in fact, are generic
animals for a time, and only become speciﬁc as they grow
up. I have demonstrated these facts’“= respecting the con-
sanguiniié and its obvious effects on the young of all the
species of a natural family, and shall return to the question
in a future chapter.

The two great nations raised by accident to be at the
present moment arbiters of all human affairs, are supposed
by those who support this View to be composed each of a.
hybrid race, distinct, self-supporting, and possessed of
mixed moral and physical characters, distinct from those of
the primitive race from which they spring. To me, on
the contrary, it appears that modern Gaul, after having

centurieswat‘ed‘itiel‘ifrom all exotic elements. Teu-

* See “ Trans. Lin. Society” and Lancet for 1857.
K K 2

been overthrown by several races, has in the course of , i,

500 AN INQUIRY INTO THE

tonic blood no longer exists there, but that Gaulish race
which the immortal Dictator described in terms as true
then as now. He admits that “the Belgians, Aquitaine,
and Celts differ from each other in their language, customs,
and laws; but they are all Gauls, and have all a Gaulish
look.” The “Commentaries” seem to me to have been
written long after the conquest of Gaul, and not hurriedly,
but from notes taken at the time of the occurrence of the
events. He does not mention the Cimbri, known to him
probably by the name of Belgians. The immortal Dictator
speaks of “ the levity of the Gauls, who are very changeable
in their counsels and fond of novelties ;” and, if I rightly
remember, speaks of their “religion as of a gloomy and
ferocious character.”* Caesar takes no notice of Cisalpine
Gaul, nor of the distinct race of the Basques. The Cisal-
pine Gauls have become extinct, and the character of the
natives of Savoy is anything but Gaulish. The Dictator
describes the Gauls as being extremely superstitious; the
Germans, on the contrary, “ acknowledge no gods but
those that are objects of sight.” The distinction remains
to this day. There exists no hybrid race in Holland, the
people being either Scandinavian or German; whilst the
Kymri, a Gaulish race, have remained distinct from the
Celt to the present day.

Of Britain the Dictator’s description is equally clear.
The people he met on the shores were Belgians, and in
their nature are so now. “ The inland parts of Britain are
inhabited by those whom fame reports to be the natives
of the soil.” Of these he says nothing. They were pro-
bably the Kymrai, a Gaulish race, dispersed and broken
up before his time. With this Belgian and Kymraig races
the race or races we call Saxons largely intermingled.
These so-called Saxons were in reality the J utes, Angles,
and old Saxons from North Germany, composed mostly
of Germans or Teutons. The true Scandinavian, or Dane,
appeared afterwards. N 0w these races, to which may be
added the Norman, gave rise to no new or hybrid race,
but the mixed population amongst whom all these elements

* I quote from memory; the observation may belong to Tacitus.

 

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 501

and several others—such as the Phenician and Celt, Iberian
or Spanish—are distinctly recognisable.

This extremely plausible and even probable theory is
therefore not supported by history. In the chapter on the 1/
Past, Present, and probable Future of Africa, I shall en-i
deavour to show that the attempts made on a large scale in i
that continent to produce a hybrid race, have entirely 2,
failed ; for the present, I shall conﬁne myself to a few ob« L
servations which no doubt have often occurred to others.

1st. How is it that no trace of the Visigoths is to be
found in Spain? Were the two races (the Teutonic and
Celtiberian) so distinct as to render the formation of a
hybrid race impossible? The Arab was expelled from
Spain, but not the Goth.

2nd. The Gauls who invaded Asia Minor are said to
have been a fair—haired race, and therefore were not pure
Celts, but a mixed race, as the Kymri of Wales have dark
hair. It is probable that with the Gaulish force there
proceeded into Asia many Teuton or Germanic tribes;
but be this as it may, it is generally admitted that all
traces of these Europeans have disappeared from Asia
Minor.

3rd. Gallica Cisalpina—that is, Northern Italy—was in
Caesar’s time and long after, a Gaulish territory, entirely
occupied by the Gauls. They built Milan. What has
become of these Gauls, call them by whatever name you
will? Did the conquerors at Magenta and Solferino ﬁnd
any sympathy in the native population? Did the victors
at Marengo ﬁnd in the aborigines the descendants of
their Gaulish progenitors, even the remotest trace that
the ground on which they stood had once been as essen-
tially Gaul in respect of its population as the banks of the
Loire and the Seine?

4th. In Caesar’s time there were in Gaul three distinct
populations—the Celt, the Belgae, and the Aquitanians.
The immortal Dictator does not say that they were of‘one
race, but he ascribes to all “ a Gaulish aspect.” How full of
truth are these observations! From the observations of
others I learn that these three populations, with “ a Gaulish

502‘ AN INQUIRY INTO THE

look,” are there now. He makes no mention of the Kymri,
the people we now ﬁnd in Wales, Ireland, and Caledonia ;
they are to be found generally mingled with the Celts.
Both races migrate in great numbers to the United States
of America, but they mingle not with the Anglo-Saxon
nor with the Teuton; true to their nature, they await the
advent of a leader—a sultan whom they will be sure to
follow.

5th. The Teutonic Franks conquered France, and gave

a name to the country; but this Teuton blood has alto-
gether disappeared. I can ﬁnd no Roman colonies any-
where. An ingenious writer in the pay of Russia,* and
evidently a Sclavonian, endeavours to show that the pre-
sent population of France is formed out of three distinct
elements z—lst, Celtic ; 2nd, Roman ; 3rd, Teuton. I
have no faith in such a theory, which, moreover, is at
variance with all the well-ascertained facts bearing on the
question. Climate,no doubt, exercises amysterious inﬂuence
over the continuance of non-indigenous races, as has been
all but proved in the case of the Mamlooks in Egypt.
They have become extinct, and the same fate awaits the
Turcoman. Where, in the meantime, are the hybrid races
which ought to be found in that country?

The physical, and possibly the moral, degradation of the
‘Italian race, or races, constantly followed the successive
L irruptions of other races into the Peninsula. In England

and the Lowlands of Scotland we have two races—the
Teuton and Scandinavian combined, and the Belgian.
They are not much mingled yet, and certainly there exists
no hybrid race properly so called. The morale of these
two races is quite distinct, and requires but a social or
political question to bring it prominently out. The three
races in Prussia (German, Pruss and Sclave) have never
been intermingled, and to this day are held together by
the sword. As regards remotely afﬁliated races, M. Broca
alloWs my view to be correct—namely, that by their admix-
ture hybrids are produced which are not fruitful or self-
supporting. There exists, then, scarcely any real difference
between M. Broca’s views and mine. He thinks that some
* Times, Jan. 1861.

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 503.

strongly aﬂiliated races produce fertile hybrids, and I con-
fess that I lean strongly to his opinion, but feel bound to
await the proofs. Other races, he frankly admits with me,
produce hybrids which are not fertile. If this be so, we
have the best proof required to constitute these races into
distinct species. Bulfon himself, were he alive, would
accept the theory. Cuvier excluded man from the history
of zoology.

The races of men differ from each other, and have done 1/
so from the earliest historic period, as proved— g

1st. By their external characters, which have neveri
altered during the last six thousand years.

2nd. By anatomical differences in structure.

3rd. By the infertility of the hybrid product, originating *
in the intermingling of two races.

4th. By historic evidence, which shows that no distinct
hybrid race can be shown to exist anywhere. Thus the =
infertility of the hybrid probably extends to most, if not
to all, the races of man. These distinctions in race cannot
be traced to the inﬂuence of climate, nor to any physical
causes known at present to exist. This immutability of
species during the so-called historic period was proved in
respect of the lower animals by Cuvier. Buffon was also
of the same opinion; but it does not disprove, as Cuvicr
thought it did, the descent by direct generation of the
present living world from the past. Paleontology daily
brings to light the absent links connecting the past with
the present, whilst in embryology we have the proofs that
the forms of many species are included in each and all.
The realization or speciﬁcation of these forms does not
require the interposition of a new creative impulse—that is,
of a First Cause—as Mr. Broun thinks, but merely an
alteration of the physical circumstances in which the
young may be placed. Though of distinct species, all
the races of men belong to the same natural family, the
embryo of each species containing within itself the rudie
ments of all the others. The human family stands pro-
foundly apart from all others, implying that in the
great chain of beings constituting nature’s plan, some
natural family ﬁlling up the link has disappeared.

I

504 . AN INQUIRY INTO THE

- Future paleontological inquiry may solve the difﬁculty,
which however I do not look on in the light of a difﬁculty.
When human fossil remains shall have been discovered,
their general resemblance to the osseous remains of the
races of men now on the earth will not furnish adequate
proof that they were of the same race ; for distinctions in
race or species are mainly connected with the exterior,
which has naturally perished in the course of ages. Cuvier
himself admitted that in the anatomy of the Equidae we
do not ﬁnd the distinctive characters of species which
must be sought for in the exterior. So it is with man;
the skeleton differs, no doubt, in the various races as in the
Equidae, but not so strongly as to furnish at once a sure
characteristic. A glance at the exterior removes all
doubts.

In 1821-22, I pointed out to Dr. Edwards, at that time
on a visit to London, that the drawings in the Egyptian
Tomb, arranged for exhibition by Belzoni, represented
several races of men precisely as we ﬁnd them now. This
distinction in race, then, has existed for at least 4360
years; but according to Lepsius and Bunsen, who have
investigated carefully Egyptian history, for a much longer
period. By leaving man out of his zoological view, the
immortal Cuvier avoided discussing these troublesome
questions. Climate seems, then, contrary to the opinions
of Hippocrates, to be unequal to the transmutation of one
race into another, or to the formation of a new race ; but
it has always appeared to me that intrusive or heteroch-
tonous races perished, or became extinct in time in the
land of their adoption. The presence of an indigenous
race may contribute, no doubt, to this result, but it is not
the sole cause. The Mongol, who at one time extended so
far into Europe, has all but disappeared; the Turcoman'

”follows, and the same remark is applicable to the Arab.
j Flushed with success, and fed by the annual importation
of half-a- million of Europeans into Northern America, the
men of the United States, as is the custom of that race to
i: mtheygnainly belong, talk loudly omommo in a

short time masters of the earth! Already symptoms of »

LAWS or HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 505

decay appear in the race, who, deprived for a short time of
their European supplies, would soon become extinct, fol-
lowing the fate of the Spanish and Portuguese races on
the same continent. To the history of the Hispano-
hybrid races of Mexico, Guatemala, Chili, Peru, &c., I beg
again to refer the reader. They are a disgrace to human
nature. I foretold their carmrtyawmemr’a been:
Wm, the cause which led to it, and their certain
destruction.

To Buﬂ‘on we owe the idea of “ centres of creation.” As
regards the zoological world, these centres remain even
now distinct. The centres were not always continents,
although as regards man and most animals and plants, the
observation was undoubtedly correct.

The distinguished ethnologist* to whose unanswerable
memoir I have so frequently referred in the course of this
chapter, admits that even were it proved that there exist
races of menwhose progeny when intermingled is not sterile,
the doctrine that men are of the same species receives from
this no support. With this question I commenced my
ethnological inquiries at least forty years ago; the sterility
of certain hybrids, the product of the intermingling of two
distinct races of men, seemed to me even then to admit of
no doubt. M. Broca, and many others who strongly op-
posedimy views at ﬁrst, now admit the correctness, or at
least the great probability, of the theory. In this case we
have the proof which Buffon required as to the distinct-
ness of species, and are at liberty to apply it to the natural
family of mankind. On the other hand, M. Broca thinks
that this test of species is not the only one, and that it is
not conclusive, since there are distinct species (as the hare
and rabbit) whose hybrid product is perfectly fruitful and
self-supporting. I confess I have my doubts, and instinc-
tively, as it were, adhere to the opinions of Buffon, that
sterility of the hybrid is the only certain character of dis-
tinctness of species in which all men will agree. Never-
theless, I quite agree with this distinguished observer that

* M. Broca.

x.

506 . AN INQUIRY INTO THE

the hybrids of certain species, both of animals and man,
are more fruitful than others—that is, for a time ; and that
absolute sterility does not invariably happen. As in all
that regards life, such questions cannot be decided by any
a priori reasoning, but by direct experiment Men speak
of the historical unity of the races of men, as they did 1n
my younger days of the creation of the zoological and
geological world some four thousand years ago; this latter
theological hypothes1s has been unanswerably refuted, and

the other must speedily follow. In the meantime, political,
I religious, and social questions have arisen and mingled
with the scientiﬁc, but they are wholly foreign to science.
Truth is not their object. To these questions I shall
return in the sections of this work which treat of the
future of the races now located on the African and Ame-
rican soils.- In the same sections suitable occasions may
be found for discussing the question as to the superiority
of one race to another, a problem already attempted as
regards literature by the illustrious Quetelet ;* but lite-
rature is only one item—the most important one, no doubt,
in civilization. In the sections to which I refer, all the
elements of civilization will be kept in view. In Europe,
between the more or less fair races it is merely a question
of national interest, and, instead of causingr or aggravating
natural antipathies, might be turned to good account by
inciting the various races and nations to strive for supe-
riority, not by the invention of steel-plated ships of war
and Armstrong guns, but by the advancement of true
civilization—literature, science, and art. In America it is
otherwise,——there an intrusive European race condemns to
the most horrid bondage the feeble Negro, who he is told
by the Book he worships is his brother.+

The mingled races of Europe are not hybrids; the Basque
remains distinct from the population of old Gaul, and the
Sclaves retain everywhere the peculiarities of their race.

a“ “ Sur l’Homme.” Translated by R. Knox. Chambers.

* I have read with horror the ravings of Mr. John Bachman, a

slave-holding parson. The expression " whited sepulchre” must have

been invented for the class to which he belongs They are very numerous
in England.

 

LAWS OF HUMAN HYBRIDITE. 507

The “ ﬂat-nosed Frank ” is not to be found in any numbers
in France, although M. Arago mistook them for the pro-
genitors of the present French. “ The old Pruss ” is still
distinct from the Scandinavians, Sclavonians, and Teutons,
who groan under his abhorred rule. Molder of Bonn is
the worthy descendant of Freytag of Frankfort, immor-
talized by Voltaire ; and since Jena and Fleurus, Aus-
terlitz and J emmappes failed to cure the race of its self-
eonceit, we must look upon the disease as hopeless. But
they are not German, nor ever were, neither is there any
hybrid race in Prussia. The original Moorish or Kabyle
blood is said to prevail in the island of Sardinia, whilst
Gallia Cisalpina contains no Celtic blood. Of all countries
Italy is the one which ought to have proved, by its popu-
lation, the substitution of a hybrid for a pure race. Nothing
of the kind exists.

The sterility of hybrids is the check which nature em- ~_
ploys for the preservation of her primitive forms of life. .
There is a. consanguinété, no doubt, in all that lives; for f
life, being a property inherent in matter, must at its 7
origin have been one, but this consanguinité does not ex- 3
tend to or exclude specialities. It goes no farther than their '2

genera, and most commonly not so far. Hence the study
of generic differences is in the main an abstraction,
not bearing on the practical world but on the philo-
sophic. In these men obtain occasionally a hurried
glimpse of nature’s scheme of development. The young of
all animals display generic forms at ﬁrst; these gradually
give way as the speciﬁc forms are being developed.

7

i

508

CHAPTER II.

ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS OF CIVILIZATION.

PART I.

THE term civilization is a conventional term, admitting of
no precise deﬁnition. If we limit it to the invention of
those social arts essential to the existence of a nation or
race, under the circumstances in which, for the time, it
happens to be placed, then the deﬁnition must include all
mankind, all being equal to such inventions. There are
conditions of humanity, nevertheless, so low as scarcely to
merit the name of civilized, whilst there are others so
lofty as to embrace to a certain extent all that man is
capable of in science, literature, and art; these combined
constitute civilization in its highest form.

It must always interest man to know how ancient races
stood in respect of civilization—the ultimate and highest
aim of humanity. An inquiry extending through many
years, has convinced me that much may be learned on this
subject by a careful examination of the remains of art still
subsisting, added to what has been written by the races
or nations themselves. Of these ancient races, some, as
the Chinese, Japanese, and Mongol, generally have per-
petuated to the present day the form of civilization in-
vented by themselves and peculiar to their race. The
Hindoo may also be included in this class. Others, as the
Kopts and Assyrians, have left us only the remains of art
and some linguistic or literary records, which hitherto
have been very imperfectly deciphered; whilst others, as
the ancient Aztecs and Peruvians, have only left artistic
records, which we must endeavour to read and compre-

n A_.._._.~.;..rm;gr.wn~sum ......

ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS OF CIVILIZATION. 509

hend without the aid of written documents. One thing
seems to me certain; all these races invented their own
forms of civilization, borrowing little or nothing from
others. To make this clear, I shall preface my inquiry
into the remains of those races by discussing, as brieﬂy as
I can, the nature of art, its origin and progress, and
the inﬂuence which race exercises, not only over all
human inventions, but over the view each race takes of
nature. This sketch of the orign of the arts, and the in-
ﬂuence of race over their development, will be extremely
brief, as it is my intention to reconsider the whole subject
at greater length in a subsequent memoir.

The arrival in France and England of the Assyrian
marbles, discovered by Messrs. Botta, Layard, Rawlinson,
and others, strengthened me in the opinion I had already
formed of the real origin of art, and its intimate relation
to race. Like the Coptic remains, they offer to mankind a
view of the social history and physical aspect of arace
which, though not extinct, has long ceased to exist as a
nation ; of a nation whose history was interwoven with
the annals of another race in whom the Christian world
takes a deep and enduring interest. N 0 one could fail to
regard them with as deep a feeling as it is possible to
bestow on the past. The story of Nineveh and Babylon,
taught us in our earliest years, is impressed in a thousand
ways on the memory, and we are instructed by every edu-
cational device to accept the story as related to us by an
Oriental race, the Jewish, to whom philosophy and science,
the art of criticism, and a desire to discover the truth, were
absolutely unknown. And now artistic records of this
Assyrian and Babylonish race reach ‘Europe, to be read
by each according to his prejudices. If they fail to give
us conﬁrmation of any existing history, if they are found to
be equally at variance with the chronology of Herodotus
and of Josephus, one thing at least is certain, they repre-
sent the physical aspect of a nation which does not now
exist as a nation, but traceable as a race still wandering by
the banks of the Tigris and of the Euphrates; and they
further prove that, when the race ﬁgured as a nation, they

510 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

were equal to the formation of a civilization peculiarly their
own. As a nation they ran their course, leaving monu~
ments attesting their power, their physical character, the
nature of their religious belief or folly, their social con-
dition, and the view they took of the external world. The
meaning of the phrase “the external world,” I shall ﬁrst
endeavour to explain.

ORIGIN OF ART.

The external world, or globe, we inhabit, may be looked
on as composed of two classes of objects ; one great class,
invented by man—the social arts, as they are called ; of a
second great class of objects, formed, created, or developed
bynature.* The objects made and invented byman constitute
a large portion of human civilization, and, indeed, without
them civilization does not exist. As wealth and the civili-
zation mainly Occupied with the invention of the social
arts advance, the nation and race recede further and further
from nature, according to the disposition of the race; for
nature’s objects they substitute the artiﬁcial, their own
inventions ; and this may go on, as in China, until nature
be all but put out of court. A race strongly disposed to
admire their own inventions are generally despisers of
nature and of truth, which resides only in those objects
which nature forms. Thus, in estimating the character
of a race, we have only to discover from what point of
view they contemplate the material or external world;
what value they attach to their own inventions, and what
to nature’s creations. The arts which man inventsd’ and
which so many races, and individuals of all races, admire
and esteem beautiful, are constructed on principles
addressed to certain faculties and instincts of the human
mind which man values highly. They are addressed to
his love for parade and magniﬁcence, order, symmetry,
grandeur, nicety of workmanship, difﬁculty of execution.
When the obj ects thus invented and carried to perfection

*6 I exclude from this view the mineral crystallized masses, of whose

origin we know nothing. The organic is never crystallized.
t I exclude the ﬁne arts from those of man‘s inventions.

OF CIVILIZATION. 511

are presented to him, he calls them beautiful, esteeming
them highly as the perfection of human handiwork. But
he never imagines that there can be any truth in them
excepting the mechanical, and he does not look for truth,
knowing that utility is their aim; as regards all such in-
ventions there is no standard of taste, each generation de-
spising the inventions of the past, and more especially of the
labours of the immediately preceding age. The reason
why each generation when in its prime and vigour despises
the inventions, thoughts, ideas, actions of the immediately
preceding generation more than any more ancient one,
is this : the generation about to depart is before them in
a senile, feeble, decaying, and decrepit form, and the
thoughts of the young and vigorous naturally class together
the declining race and their inventions. In the presence
of the aged and enfeebled everything connected with them,
mentally or physically, seems redolent of antiquity—dress,
thoughts, inventions. It is not so with the generations
which have passed away, of Whom we are more likely to
remember whatever was vigorous, youthful, and great.
But in contemplating nature’s creations, and the imitations
of such objects by the true artist, whether in marble or on
canvas, the highly organized mind sees in the object the
truth of nature, and demands in the imitation by the artist
the presence of beauty and of truth. He is sensible that man
cannot alter, cannot improve, although he may disﬁgure,
nature’s creations. A garden, to be perfect in man’s eyes,
must be laid down on mathematical principles ; now these
are peculiarly of human invention. The grass must be
smoothly cut, the shrubs kept in order, trees disposed sym-
metrically and in rows ; there must be no wild ﬂowers seen
anywhere, and, least of all, any appearance of sloth or neg-
lect. The object aimed at here, is to show how perfectly man
has carried through, regardless of time, labour, and expense,
the object held in view. How different is the natural
landscape. Both are admired, the garden and the land-
scape; but let us never forget that the one is invented, as
it were, by man, the other created by nature; that the
one addresses itself to qualities which are strictly human ;

512 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

the other strikes at our deepest sympathies—our sympa-
thies with what lives, with that wherein resides the
mysterious principle of life. With the one class there is
a deep consanguinilé which language in vain endeavours
to express ; in this class, that is, in nature’s creations, we
ﬁnd the absolutely beautiful—that is, woman’s form; to
this must be added our profound ignorance as to why or
wherefore these objects were so created, while all that man
makes and fashions can be traced at once by human reason
to the baser qualities of human nature, to utility and
necessity which rule the world.

I exclude from these considerations true, or ﬁne art, as
it is usually called, as not being a human invention. It
originates in no necessity, aims not at utility ; it is strictly
an imitative art, by which man expresses his capability of
perceiving _in nature the absolutely true, the perfect, and
the beautiful ; in other words, the view man takes of
the external world. To represent nature’s creations in
marble or canvas is, perhaps, the highest gift which has
been bestowed on man; and in proportion as man can
execute and nations admire such works, so it will be found
that the race or nation so gifted excels all others in those
intellectual endowments which form the greatest ornament
of humanity.

Food, clothing, and a dwelling form the object of all the
social arts; necessity is their parent, utility their object.
The existing generationit in possession of the earth despises
the labours of past generations, more especially of its im-
mediate predecessor. It is gone and passed, never to be
revived. Not so living nature ; for ever renovated, the
youth of life is being constantly placed before us; with
nothing else are we entirely pleased or satisﬁed. In all the
objects of nature we admire, we demand the presence of the
emblems of youth and the absence of those of decrepitude,
decay, and dissolution. Together with their inventions
the aged pass away. In the eyes of the existing generation
all the inventions of the generation passing away seem
antiquated—furniture, dress, equipages, gardens, mansions,

* Men and women between 20 and 45.

OF CIVILIZATION. 513

instruments of war, ships, roads, ideas—all share the same
fate. In common language they are said to be out of
fashion, but this does not express the feeling which lies at
the bottom of all this. They belong to a generation no
longer in possession of the earth. Another, ayounger and
a stronger, ﬁerce in its youth and strength, feels the
necessity of thinking and acting for itself, and refuses to
accept the past as its rule of conduct. Thus it is, and
ever must be, with all the inventions of man. They origi-
nate chieﬂy in human necessities, and pass away with the
circumstances that created them. Each succeeding gene-
ration is aware of this, and looks only to its own era.
‘Vithout this contempt for the past, human progress
would cease ; and as works of social art must of necessity
address themselves to the wants, views, and feelings of
“the race in possession of the earth,” so must they ever
represent the existing order of things. Quite otherwise
is it with nature’s works, and with the imitations made
of them by the true artist. They are never old; never old
fashioned ; never represent an order of things with which
man has lost all sympathy ,- they belong to all ages.

The Assyrian marbles, to which it is my intention pre-
sently to request the attention of the reader, are pictures
in stone, representing the ideas of the artists, and, to a
certain extent, of the race to whom they belonged. By
applying to them the principles just laid down, we may
arrive at an approximation of their place in history and in
art. In the Coptic, Indian, Chinese, Mexican, and Peru-
vian remains, we have, I think, materials for such an
inquiry into the history of those races. Certain Oriental
races still exist as nations, others merely as races; in
either case it is interesting to inquire into their past
history, even although we should fail to discover the causes
of their rise and fall. They stand in strong contrast with
the Greek and with the western European nations. The
true and the beautiful in nature they could not perceive.
They viewed man simply from a social and domestic point
of view, which they mistook for the highest civilization;
and by thus thrusting out nature from their view of the

L L

‘514: ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

external world, the otherwise highly gifted races of men
from the Euphrates and Nile to the borders of the Yellow
Sea and the still more distant isles of Japan, have excluded
from their history as nations and races those grand ele-
ments of truth ﬁrst discovered and only rightly understood
by the antique Greek. To reduce any nation or race to
the condition of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, or of
modern China, they have only to blot from their recollec-
tions all remembrance of Greece and her productions, and
raising a great altar to “ utility,” sacriﬁce on it, as an offering
to the goddess they worship, the eternal works of nature.
As it might be said of the Assyrian, ancient Coptic,
Chinese, and Indian, that they never came in contact with
Greece nor with the European races or Western world,
and were thus deprived of those advantageous opportu-
nities aﬁ'orded by the imitation of the works, labours, and
ideas of other races more highly gifted by nature, I shall,
before entering on the consideration of the antique races
I have just alluded to, brieﬂy sketch the history of the
rise and fall of the Arab race. In their history, authentic
beyond doubt, we have the history of an Oriental race who
not only came into contact with the western races of Greece
and Rome, but did their best to imitate and follow them in
their progress towards a higher civilization.’ The result
was a total failure, proving that no race can successfully
adopt a civilization foreign to its nature, or, in other terms,
that each race must invent for itself and adopt the view of
the external world bestowed on it by its instinctive nature.
I am anxious that the principles I am about to apply in
the appreciation of ancient forms of civilization be clearly
understood. A knowledge of many useful arts is essential
to the existence of man, nor is it easy to imagine the pos-
sible existence of any race, or even tribe, totally ignorant
of the useful arts. On the other hand, to perceive the
absolute truth and to represent ﬂais in marble or on
canvas, to place before the eyes of men correct imitations
of what nature has created, is the highest of gifts. In pro-
portion as the individual or race gives a preference to the
objects invented by mankind over nature’s creations, so »

OF CIVILIZATION. 515

will the taste of that individual or race be low, unintel-
lectual, and remote from truth; his sympathies with the
living world have been thrust into the background by the
mathematical and logical inventions of human nature; he
traces all to utility, the goddess he worships, and boldly
proclaims that Nature herself in her inventions had
utility in view. Without being aware of it, he worships
human reason, and denies that anything exists beyond it.
By carefully noting the artistic eﬂ’orts of a race, we may
arrive at a tolerably clear idea of the view that race took
of the external world; now in that view are included the
character and nature of the civilization of the race.

When so highly gifted a race as the Arab failed in
adapting their nature to a civilization foreign to their race,
we need express no surprise on ﬁnding that other less-
gif'ted races should also fail.

THE ARAB RACE.

In the time of Augustus, the Arabs were unconquered ;
they are so now. The mighty conquerors reported to have
ruled Egypt and Persia never subdued the Arab. Nineveh
and Babylon rose and fell, leaving the Arab race free in
their deserts. Alexander, the all-powerful, shunned Arabia,
and so did J engis .Khan and Tamerlane ; Rome civilized
and ruled many races and nations, but ventured not to
carry her arms into the land of the Arab. The great king
they held in contempt. What progress the race had made
in the meantime must be gathered from the writings of the
age of Mahomet. A part of the race settled in towns had
invented many useful arts ; their religious faith could
scarcely be called folly, as it was of the ‘purest. But dis-
united and at war, tribe against tribe, their united strength
for good or for evil had never been tested ; in other words,
they formed a race, but not a nation. Thus their capa-
bilities for the higher forms of civilization had not been
ascertained, and could not be guessed at, the opportunity
for progress not having occurred. At last, one great man
appeared—Mahomet. He polluted their otherwise simple
faith by the usual trick of impostors, that is, by claiming

L L 2

516 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

a divine mission and the powers of inspiration. Thus an
impostor obtruded himself upon the Arab race, and the
imposture was readily perpetuated, like every other, by
the mixture of fraud and violence usually called education
and the law. Thus prepared, the Arab race arose in their
might ; they had found a leader and they overran the world.
The history of the race brings out the questions of the
future of intrusive races into continents of which they are
not the aboriginals ; the inﬂuence exercised over the invad-
ing race by coming in contact with those of a higher or a
lower civilization ; the value of the hypothesis which speaks
of the ancients as our precursors, as if an intelligent race
required, in the discovery of the arts of social life, any pre-
cursors, any stimulus but that of necessity and oppor-
tunity ; lastly, the causes of the rise and fall of every race.
The object of the inquiry might almost be summed up in
a single phrase :——What was the view which the Arab race
took of the external world? By the results we shall know
if the Oriental mind was equal to the perception of the
truth, or whether they substituted for moral and physical
truths, an artiﬁcial, conventional, unreal world of their own
invention. The results will show themselves in the cha-
racter of the literature, science, and art of the race.

When the Arab race at last found a leader worthy of the
name, they rapidly conquered the civilized world. Within
a few years, they overran and settled in, as colonists and
conquerors, Syria, Africa, Sicily, Asia Minor, Persia, India,
Spain. A mere accident prevented the conquest of France,
Germany, and Britain. But although confronting many
forms of civilization, and inventing themselves many arts,
their Oriental character never changed. They ventured
even on the cultivation of science and philosophy, the only
cure hitherto discovered for fanaticism and folly; but even
this bold attempt did not succeed in deeply modifying the
Oriental mind. A stern and pure republican, like Thomas
J eﬁ'erson, might be disposed to ascribe this unchangeable
character of the race to their religion (the Koran), “which
forbids the admission of science and philosOphy among the
people ;” but this may be said of all religious codes.

Had the victorious career of the Arab not been arrested

OF CIVILIZATION. 517

by Charles Martel, the Koran might now have been taught
at Oxford and Cambridge as “the Book” which must
supersede all others. As it was, the Arab race ﬁnally suc-
ceeded in establishing themselves in Spain, amongst a race
which may be called European, although mingled with
others of undoubted African and Syriac origin. Let us
now observe the result. In possession of wealth, of peace,
and power, the opportunity had arrived for the full deve-
lopment of the genius of the race, Whatever that might
be. Accordingly, we ﬁnd them introduce into Spain an
architecture of a grand and noble character peculiar to the
Saracenic race, and which by a mistake easily explicable
has been called Gothic; all the arts of peace ﬂourished ;
luxury prevailed everywhere ; but the arts were Oriental,
and so was the character of the luxury they had adopted;
what they could not invent they borrowed from the race
amongst whom they dwelt, adapting all they borrowed to
their own nature. And now came the attempt to test the
Oriental mind as to the progress of which it was capable
in respect of literature, science, and art—that is, ﬁne art,
for by these three the genius of every race must ultimately
be tested, its progress deﬁned and settled, its relation to
the eternal truths of nature be ﬁnally set at rest.

Now, history informs us that, despite the Koran, the
Arabs of Spain attempted the acquisition of science, and
turning their attention to literature, created a form of
literature peculiar to themselves. With the works of
Greece and Rome before them, they were not beneﬁted
by them; they could not alter the nature of their race.
The city, palace, and gardens of Zebra, the Alhambra,
and numerous other noble ediﬁces, attested the splendid
imagination of the Orientalist; but with him it was for
ever decoration—pearls, gold, and precious stones. All
they admired was merely of human invention, the labour
of skilful mechanics; a single Greek statue was of more
value than all the barbaric pomp of Saracenic Spain. But
this great truth the race could not see, could not com-
prehend. In their eyes nothing was of value but human
inventions. As wealth increased, they added the pursuits
of profane science to the study of the Koran. The works

518 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

0f the Grecian masters were translated into Arabic; colleges
were founded and amply endowed; an Arabian literature
appeared, which continued for nearly ﬁve hundred years,
until extinguished by the great irruption of the Mongols.
This literature, though confronted with the Greek and
Roman, and in some measure based on them, was distinctly
Oriental; experimental science did not exist, and as the
study of anatomy was unknown, the philosophy of the
living creation was equally so. Greek and Roman history
they declined to read, or could not comprehend ; their
knowledge of man prior to their own age was a tissue of
fables ; and however we may hesitate in criticising the
literary labours of a race we perhaps do not well under-
stand, their deviation from truth is so palpable as to furnish
materials sufﬁcient for their condemnation.

Conclusion—Placed under the most favourable circum-
stances with one exception—the existence of the Koran——
the Arab race made no progress, never in reality improved.
The existence of the Koran may have been the cause of
thisﬂ‘ but I doubt it. There were others, amongst which
the most powerful was race.

1. They never suspected that their caliph was a tyrant
and their prophet an impostor. This was effected by the
education of the youth, and so perpetuated. The instinct
of superstition took alarm even at the introduction of the
abstract sciences.

2. Their colleges taught no truths ; their writers and
lecturers were engaged in theological discussions, polemics,
mystics, scholastics, and morals.

3. Their works of art were got up to please and gratify
the minds of a race wholly incapable of admiring the
beautiful and the true. Fine art did not exist, and what
was mistaken for it were the works of the architect, the
gardener, the mechanic—the labours, In fact, of ingenious
artiﬁcers. 1“ What the race admired were the inventions and

it The works of Calvin extinguished science and literature in Scot-
land for more than 200 years.

1‘ Decorathe art is based simply, as I have proved long ago, on the
mechanical plinciples of natural philosophy, or mathematics. Squares,

arches, triangles, straight and curved lines constitute its elements . its
aim is to gratify our love of order, symmetry, proportions, &c.

OF CIVILIZATION. 519~

handiwork of skilled workmen in apparel, gardens, armour,
palaces, decorations, marble columns, pearls, and gold.
Each generation, as was natural, setting aside the inventions
of its predecessor, substituted for them others more costly,
more highly ﬁnished. In their palaces they raised trees of
gold and silver, birds made of the same metal sat on the
boughs warbling their natural harmony by the aid of ma-
chinery. In a. word, true to their race in their view of “ the
world to be admired,” no place was left for beauty or
trutli.

Thus the Arab race rose and fell, nothing remaining of
them worthy of notice but their architecture, which we
call Gothic. Vestiges of the race may still, it is said, be
found in Sicily, but this is doubtful. They muster strong
in Northern Africa. Though mingling freely with many
other races, nowhere have they given origin to a hybrid
race, which could not indeed exist beyond a few genera-
tions. They have all but returned to their original limits,
the peninsula of Arabia, from which they started to con-
quer the world.

What question does the history of the Arab bring to an
issue ?

1. Brought into contact with many races, they adopted
the inventions of none ; they accepted of fables for truths ;
science and philosophy they arrested by a perpetual refer-
ence to a First Cause. The Koran was the tomb of truth
in science, literature, and art.

2. Though brought into contact as conquerors with
many races, they gave origin to no hybrid race. The
civilization of Greece and Rome affected them not.

3. They never altered their View of the external world :
full of inventive mathematical genius and a lofty imagina-
tion, cultivators of the purest faith, they could under no
circumstances perceive the beauty and the truth inherent
in nature’s works, substituting for them the inventions of

man.
4. They attempted settlements or colonies on three con-

tinents, and failed. Nature gave them desert Arabia as
their home, and there only do they thrive.

520 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

PART II.

As the principles I have laid down in this section apply to
all the races of men, I shall be as brief as possible in re-
spect of the ancient Assyrian form of civilization. They
were an Oriental race, devoid of all love of nature or of
truth.

THE ASSYRIAN MABBLES, THEIR PLACE IN HISTORY
AND IN ART.

The Father of History, Herodotus, says that the Assy-
rians, who built Nineveh, and perhaps Babylon, were
formerly a leading power in Asia. They formed the
eastern riverine population of the Tigris and Euphrates.
To Messrs. Betta, Layard, Rawlinson, and Loftus we owe
the discovery and transference to Europe of the marbles
called Assyrian, now in the Louvre and in the British
Museum.

Many of these marbles are covered with a writing which
cannot now be read. This at least is my opinion, in which
howeverI differ from many learned men and distinguished
scholars. The architecture of the race or races to whom
these monuments belonged has not been discovered. These
marbles are pictures in stone of the Assyrian race, and
give us an idea of the view they took of the external
world; their ideas of domestic and ﬁne art; their religious
folly; their mode of warfare, 850.; above all, the phy-
sical character of the race; in this they resemble the
Coptic. The marbles were discovered and dug up at
Mossul, a modern town, presumed, on tolerably good
authority, to be the site of ancient Nineveh. We have, it
is true, no historical evidence for this ; Nineveh had dis-
appeared before the times of‘ Herodotus and Xenophon.
Five hundred years before Herodotus—that is, about 960,
B.c.—the Assyrians were a leading power in Asia, and he
says that their capital was Nineveh ; but Diodorus points
to a much higher antiquity, and this would carry us back

 

OF CIVILIZATION. 5‘21

to a. civilization as ancient as that of China, Indostan, or
Egypt.

The arrow-headed characters forming the written cha-
racters of the nation and race are not peculiar to the
race; they are found in Persia and in Babylon. The hie-
roglyphics of Egypt were conﬁned to the valley of the
Nile.

The marbles represent a peculiar race differing from all
others, but most resembling, if not identical, with the pre-
sent Armenian. Modern travellers are not agreed as to
the race which may be considered as directly descended
from the ancient Assyrians. By some the Yzidis* are
supposed to be the race in question; others give a pre-
ference to the N estorians and Chaldees ; but I have always
understood that these terms do not characterize races, but
merely religious differences in tribes.

The war scenes represented on these marbles are com-
bats with men of the same race, who lived in towns on the
banks of rivers. To this there are two exceptions. Mounted
on horses and camels, certain persons escape from the
battle-ﬁeld. They may have been Arabians. Defiling from
a. captured town is a string of prisoners of a dark race——
not Negroes, but dark men ; probably some of the degraded
races who then, as now, lived by the shores of the Persian
Gulf. In all other instances the marbles represent but
one race; the Jew is not there, nor the Copt, nor any
European or Mongol race.

On the black obelisk (supposed by some to represent
prisoners and spoils taken in Syria and. Egypt), the ele-
phants are of the Indian species, and the camels are
Bactrian. The translation of the inscription must then be
incorrect. In as far, then, as we may infer from these
marbles, the Assyrians, like the Copts, made no distant
conquests. The ancient Copts seem to have been wholly
unacquainted with the elephant and with the camel.
History offers no satisfactory reply to such extraordinary
facts. If the artists represented facts, it is useless to at-
tempt connecting these marbles with the history of J udaea,

* Ainsworth.

522 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

or with any events mentioned in authentic history. They
represent battles, such as Homer has described them. The
forces employed on both sides were infantry and war-
chariots; cavalry was not in use. The religious folly of
the Assyrians was also peculiar to the race ; not borrowed
from any other race, nor shared in common with any other
people. Of Bramah or Budha, Jupiter and Juno, Isis and
Osiris, these people knew nothing. Their worship seems
to have been Zoroasterian; but be this as it may, they
stood alone, borrowing no great features of their civiliza-
tion from any other race. We must not measure their
power by the value or extent of their artistic remains.
Be their antiquity greater or less—whether they were a
nation and a power when the Pharaohs ruled Egypt, and
built the Pyramids; when Bramah and Guadama lived,
and China invented all the domestic arts, does not in the
least signify; neither the Persian nor the Assyrian bor-
rowed from these races.

The marbles we now consider instruct us as to the mode
of warfare of the race; they lived in walled towns, and
so did their enemies, who were of the same race, with the
exception mentioned, if the artist who carved the marbles
adhered to the truth. That race is now represented by
the modern Armenian: They knew nothing of the ele-
phant, Asiatic or African, and as an arm of war they never
encountered them. Of cavalry they made no use. In
these respects they resembled the ancient Copts.*

The artistic products of a race—I mean the labours of
the true artist (not the skilled workman or artiﬁcer, so
often mistaken for an artist)—ought, to a certain extent, to
instruct us as to the view of the external world taken by
the race or nation to whom he belongs. Generally the
artist must of necessity be inﬂuenced by the race for whom
he works, even although by force of genius he may rise
above and despise them. In so far as he is competent to

* The Asiatic elephant is carved on the black marble obelisk now
in the Museum, but it is not harnessed ; it is being led along with some
captives. The Bactrian camel is carved on the same obelisk. It repre-
sents, therefore, some razzia in the direction of Bactria and India, and
not, as Sir H. Rawlinson thinks, towards Egypt and Syria.

OF CIVILIZATION. 523

observe the truth in the external world, and is permitted
and encouraged to express it in his works, to imitate the
objects of the external world with truth and ﬁdelity, and
last and greatest, to place on canvas or represent in
marble man, his thoughts, actions, and the grand ex-
pressions of the inmost workings of human sentiment and
passion, and those sublime forms which nature (the great
artist) at times displays for the admiration of mankind;
so will art in his hands reach perfection, and the approv-
ing race he placed highest in the scale of humanity. The
aim of all artists is, or ought to be, to reach the heart.
Homer, Horace, Burns, Shakespeare, and Pindar, by a few
words ; the skilled mechanic aims at a baser principle, but
strictly human 9“ he cares not for the heart but the reason,
conscious that he addresses principles equally potent in
human affairs ; he asks us to turn from nature’s landscape
to the Italian garden; from the oak and cedar to his
neatly trimmed alcove ; from the Medicean Venus to the
court lady of the reign of Louis Quatorze, or of any other
court, where the milliner and the modiste have succeeded
in withdrawing your attention from nature’s grand out-
lines to the costly silks and velvets, the trimmings of
gold and silver, the pearl necklace, and coronet studded
with diamonds of unknown value. It answers for a time,
and the artiﬁcer’s labours are declared to be beautiful—by
the present generation. By and by a new race appears,
and the ﬁnished works of the artiﬁcers of the past age are
pronounced to be antiquated, wretched, intolerable, and
out of date. But why out of date? Is the virgin forest
ever out of date? the Medicean Venus, or the Apollo?
The paintings of Angelo, Raphael, Leonardo, Rubens,
T eniers ; the descriptions of Homer, Shakespeare, Horace,
and Burns? Never! They are the works of men who
saw the beautiful and the true in nature, and represented
it as it is. They worked for all generations.

Fine art, like a lofty literature, is the test of the cha-

* Mechanical, mathematical, numerical principles instinctively in-

herent in human nature, and common to all the races of men, and
requiring neither science nor taste to develope or invent.

524 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

racter of every race. They reveal to us the view the race
or nation takes of the external world, its regard for truth,
in literature, philosophy, and science. Without this
innate feeling there never can be any lofty civilization;
for the race which substitutes utility for truth and beauty,
which worships only the useful, can never be made to
comprehend the truth. They create a world of their own,
and admire and worship it; and as they work only for the
present generation, that which follows holds them in con-
tempt. The goddess such races worship is utility.

If we try the Assyrian marbles by this scale, we shall
discover in them all the defects of the Oriental mind. The
colossal human-headed and winged bulls imply a vivid
and powerful fancy on the part of the artists; but fancy is
not imagination, any more than romance is history. The
inscriptions on these ﬁgures have never been explained
satisfactorily; one thing we must not forget; the most
ancient bricks of Babylon are uniformly marked with
similar inscriptions in arrow-headed letters or characters.
All this is mysterious, and implies some very ancient form
of civilization of which we know nothing. Homer him-
self points to the era of Troy and its destruction as
belonging to an age—

Whereof the faint report alone

Has reached our ears, remote and ill-informed.*
In Homer’s time, whatever that be, the Grecian mytho-
logy had assumed a perfect character. Let us ﬁx the era
at 900 years 13.0. But it had not penetrated into Assyria,
the proof of which we have in these marbles. On the
other hand, the primitive Parsees were ﬁre worshippers.
Thus the religious folly of the Assyrian was not borrowed
from Persia; whilst, as regards the character of true or
imitative art, no two races were ever more opposed than ‘
the Greek and the Assyrian. According to the con-
jectures of the celebrated travellers, Messrs. Layard and
Rawlinson, the winged human-headed lions with human-
shaped ears, and the winged bulls with ears of the brute

9* Nos vere famam solum audimus;
N ecque quicquam scimus.—C'larkc’s Translation.

or CIVILIZATION. 525

skilfully diminished so as not to offend the eye, and now
in the Museum, formed part of the decorations of a
temple of the god of war, and were erected by Ashurakbul
or Sardanapalus, about the year 721, 13.0.; that is, about
250 years before Herodotus visited Babylon, at which
time Nineveh had ceased to be. This is not trustworthy
chronology, neither is it history.

The features of the human heads of these colossal ﬁgures
represent the race; it was the same with the Copt and the
Greek, Brahmin, Chinese, and modern Italian; to their
idols they gave the head and features of their race. To
the human-headed colossal bulls the Assyrian artists gave
the ears of the brute, but smaller and proportioned to the
human physiognomy ; to the man-headed lion he gave the
human ears, with earrings and pendants, as was the
fashion of the race. These ﬁgures, invented by the race,
spoke to its feelings, instincts, and prejudices ; they were
emblems of ideas long departed. We know not so much
of them as we do of the Hindoo and Chinese idols, the
literature of these races being still extant. Herodotus
says that the Greeks borrowed their mythology from the
Copts, but the “ Iliad ” and “ Odyssey,” and the Egyptian
monuments still more forcibly, refute this idea. The so-
called Dagon, or Fish God, represented on the Assyrian
marbles, is merely a human ﬁgure with the skin of a ﬁsh
drawn over it. The Assyrian sculptures represent one
race ; and the artist being an Oriental, and unequal to the
perception of beauty and of truth, represents all ﬁgures
and every age, male and female, king and priest, lord and
servant, on the same model, from which he never varies.
This model is the adult male ﬁgure of the then existing
Assyrian, and of the modern Armenian, coarse, abounding
in impossible attitudes, and with such a display of' the
interior, or of the naked anatomy, as to banish from the
whole group the slightest pretensions to beauty and truth.
The limbs are coarse, muscular, and large, with the inter-
muscular lines or partitions deeply chiselled, as we now
see them in the Modern Assyrian and Turcoman generally.
There is not a correctly formed hand or foot to be seen,

526 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

nor woman’s form anywhere; even the beauty of youth
and childhood, which with the beauty of form and propor-
tion constitutes the absolutely beautiful—the To may
of the Greeks—they could not perceive, though it must
have been constantly before them.

We learn from these slabs that the zoology of these
regions was similar to that described by Xenophon (B.C.
401). They hunted the lion and wild ox, the antelope and
wild ass or horse, and the ostrich, perhaps no longer to be
found in Mesopotamia. Ot' camels and elephants there
were none ; the Asiatic elephant was unknown to the
Persians in the time of Xenophon, and was not seen by
any European until the time of Alexander (3.0. 331).
In the representation of some of these animals, the
Assyrian artist, escaping from the fetters imposed on
him by his race, displays much tact and genius ; the truth
is ﬁnely told, and shows us that, but for the race and the
nation, the artist was, perhaps, not unequal to look nature
in the face. The truth with which they have represented
the chase of the lion, the wild ass, and the pursuing
dogs is unquestionable. The ostrich is not to be found
on these slabs, nor the buffalo, but the deer, the antelope,
and the ibex. Thus, in what regarded merely animal life,
the Assyrian artist was equal to the perception of truth;
but in attempting to portray man, he encountered the
prejudices of Oriental civilization, which forced him into
the most common of all errors, the mistaking for truth and
beauty the artiﬁcial, the fashionable, the conventional, the
national, the studied, fanciful, and extravagant; in a word,
the theatrical—the ﬁgures he found on the world’s stage
in Nineveh and in Babylon. Thus beauty and truth escaped
them, as it has done so many other races and artists—all
indeed but the antique Greek, and a few inspired artists— ,
to be found probably amongst most races. Fine forms
they did not comprehend; the beauty of youth was unin-
telligible to them ; its emblems exercised no inﬂuence
over their minds, and they were equally indifferent to the
emblems of decay and dissolution. Thus skeleton and

 

or CIVILIZATION. 527

muscular forms appear on the surface, forms which
nature never intended should be seen, and which in the
beautiful ﬁgure she does her best to conceali"= The same
result happened here, with nature before them, as we have
seen occur in the history of Arab civilization. The grand
models of Greece and Rome were before the Arabs, but
they could not beneﬁt by them. Nature was before the
Assyrian artist, but he could not, or was not permitted, to
imitate what he saw. Yet even then, the true theory of
high art was perfectly known to the Greeks, as may be
gathered from the works of Homer!“

* A theory has been offered by M. Bonomi to explain away some of
these deep errors of the Assyrian artist, but it is not satisfactory. He
suggests that the deep intcrmuscular grooves were chiselled inten-
tionally by the Assyrian artist to bring out more forcibly the outline of
the ﬁgures placed in the gloomy darkened chambers of the palace of
Nineveh. To this plausible and ingenious theory numerous objections
might be made. Even admitting the theory to be partly true, it does
not explain the total contempt for ﬁne forms.

f The theory of the highest art of which man is capable—sculpture,
was perfectly known to Homer, who is thought to have written the
“ Iliad” about 200 years before the period assigned to these sculptures.
He unfolds the whole theory of painting in his description of the shield
of Achilles. The essence of the beautiful and the true is wrapt up
in his narrative of the means by which Venus decorates Penelope when
about to meet Ulysses, and the converse when it is her intention that
Ulysses should remain not only unknown, but be mistaken for an
object of pity and contempt. To effect this, Minerva

“ Touched him with a wand,
At once o'er all his agile limbs she parched
The polished skin; she withered to the roots
His hoary locks, and clothed him with the hide
Deformed of wrinkled age; she charged with rheums
His eyes, before so vivid, and a cloak
And kertch she gave him, tattered both and foul,
And smutched with smoke; then casting over all
A huge old hairless deer-skin, with a staff
She ﬁlled his shrivelled hand, and gave him last
A wallet patched all over, and that
lVith twisted buckle, dangled at his side.”

Neither poet nor artist has ever placed before human sight in so
matchless a way the emblems of decay and dissolution; it extends to
the dress and equipment; nothing is omitted, and it is easy to see that
in Homer alone could we ﬁnd such a picture.

If in our western and European world there be many educated and
superior-minded men who cannot be made to comprehend this theory
and its results, it may be consolatory to them to know, that Cicero
himself, educated in Athens, never could comprehend it. The Europeans

528 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

Thus, excepting as regards composition, the artists of
the race had no other artistic qualities. They knew not
the value of emblems, and how deeply they inﬂuence the
human mind. That the feet and hands of the race were
generally skeleton-formed in the adult, as in the modern
North American Indian, Caﬁ‘re, 850., may be true, but
this does not prove that no model of beauty could be found
in the Assyrian race. The Copt committed the same error.

Conclusion—Fine art was as low with the ancient As-
syrians as with the Chinese, the Indian, and the Copt ; their
extended conquests were mere fables, aswith the Egyptians.
The Babylonians and. Chaldmans were probably of the
same race as the Assyrians, or at least strongly afﬁliated.
No Jews are represented on these sculptures, nor any
other race but a few prisoners, seemingly of a dark race,
deﬁling from a walled town with other prisoners of the
Assyrian race. The Arabian was then in the ﬁeld, just as
he is now.

Over the desert plains of Mesopotamia the Emperor
Julian led an army, many centuries after Xenophon had
described them. Another race, the Persian, held then the
supreme power of Asia, but the leading features of the
Orientals had not changed. Ancient Babylon and Nineveh
had long ceased to be, and Julian marched on Ctesiphon,
ﬁnding on all sides the characters and circumstances of the
ancient Assyrians.

Of their architecture I can say nothing: the Orientals
excelled in this art all other races, perhaps even the Greek.
But architecture is merely a domestic or useful art, it is

are the descendants of the strong-armed barbarians, who never, in so
far as I know, invented anything. Settled down at last into nationali-
ties, they have acquired, some of them, a language and a literature
which, though not of the highest order, is yet equal to the expression of
human thoughts and actions. Mechanical science they have greatly
advanced, and the principles of commerce seem to be better understood
than they were even a century ago ; out of the remains of Coptic, Indian,
Mongol, Assyrian. Greek, and Saracenic architecture and ﬁne art, they
endeavour to identify something with the national feelings, and call the
oddity thus produced national architecture and national art! But it is
impossible to overlook the fact, that a nation merely as a nation can
never originate a form of art or literature; this natural gift belongs to
a race, whether formed into a political power or not.

0F CIVILIZATION. 529

not a ﬁne art; it therefore furnishes no proof in favour of
the artistic abilities of any race. Races low in true art aim
at effect, in literature vulgarly called clap-trap. Neither
the Copt nor the Assyrian could have ever made any pro-
gress in high art, the character of the races being opposed
to such progress. Thus it is that in the domestic arts,
man continually changes and sometimes improves ; of
these he is the sole inventor. They spring from his
wants, necessities, circumstances, and the progress or
change is caused by the advent of another generation on
the stage of life. As regards imitative or high art, the
object of the Coptic and Assyrian artist was effect—not
truth.

The remains of art, proving the existence of very ancient
forms of civilization, instruct us as to some curious facts
in the history of mankind. Had not the Coptic monu-
ments survived the havoc of time and the destroying
hands of other races, no man could have been persuaded
that such arace as the Coptic ever existed. The same
may be said of the ancient Aztecs, without giving credit to
more than a half of What the gifted Prescott has written
concerning them. N o fact of any value can be gathered
from the Jewish records respecting the condition of ancient
Egypt or Syria; whilst but for the remains of art, the world
would call in question, and has repeatedly done so, the
marvellous history of ancient Greece.

These fragments of ancient history deeply affect the
human race, for man is interested solely in what concerns
man. The fossil remains of other animals disinterred from
the ancient strata of the globe, and ﬁrst interpreted by the
immortal Cuvier, took men by surprise, inasmuch as they
overthrew all existing cosmogonies and chronologies; but
as man was not included in these discoveries, the surprise
gradually subsided and ceased to interest. Not so with
what regards man. Disinter a fragment of human bone
from an ancient stratum of the globe, discover in such a
stratum an object of human industry, and you startle the
Christian world. As we have no proofs that the Assyrian
marbles are of very remote antiquity, I need not here

MM

530 ON SOME ANCIENT FORMS

discuss the all-important question of the antiquity of man
on the globe.

Conclusion—At the period, whatever it might be, when
these marbles were sculptured, civilization had culminated
to its highest point in Assyria; the race had wrought out
its destiny, nor would the invention of a thousand objects
of domestic art have altered the character of the race or
inﬂuenced its view of the external world. The same had
Occurred in Egypt, Hindostan, and in China, in Mexico
and Peru. There the Indo-American race carried out to
the utmost the peculiar form of their civilization. \Vhen
swept off by the Spanish conquests, the race relapsed to
its primitive barbarism, unequal to adopt the civilization
of another race.

It was the same with the Babylonians and Assyrians,
Copts and'Syrians. Though brought face to face with the
Greek and Italian races, they could not adapt themselves
to the new forms of civilization offered them; that is,they
could not look on the external world otherwise than the
instincts of their race prompted them to do. Then arrived
in these ﬁne countries other barbarous races——the Arab,
the Mongol, the Turcoman, and all civilization fell at once,
to re-appear under another form created by the conquering
races.

The great error of modern times is to undervalue the
character of ancient forms of civilization, 3. sure corrective
of which will be found in comparing the progress of Alex-
ander and Caesar with modern European heroes and kings,
and in a careful study of the letters of Cicero. Of these
ancient races the Chinese still survive as a nation; and in
Hindostan we have the direct descendants of many races.
Copts strongly resembling their ancestral drawings still
wander by the banks of the Nile. The modern Armenian
retains all the Assyrian features. The Jew is not to he
found upon any Coptic or Assyrian monuments; and the
conquests of the ancient Egyptians must unquestionably
be mere fables. They were ignorant of the use of cavalry
and of the elephant as an instrument of war, though
limitrophic with Elephantina, the country of elephants. -

0F CIVILIZATION. 531

The Arab at all times deﬁed all these races. Of their
literature we know nothing ; but if it resembled their pic-
torial and sculptural arts, it must have been inﬂated, false,
theatrical—in a word, Oriental. They originated their own
social arts, borrowing from none. Their ﬁne arts display
the View they took of the external world ; in this View the
beautiful and the true held no place.

CHAPTER III.

AFRICA,

ITS PAST, PRESENT, AND PROBABLE FUTURE.

CHANCE, which regulates the fate of all that lives—chance,
which the divine Homer called fate—led me a good many
years ago to Southern Africa, a portion of that enigmatic
continent so well designated by the Roman poet as the
“ parched nurse of lions,” and as a land Which ever offers
something new to the traveller. Of this vast continent
the Greeks and Romans knew but little; its interior is
still, to a great extent, unknown to the European world.
A climate the most deadly excludes the white man from
its tropical portions ; no great navigable rivers give access
to its central regions, Whilst vast deserts all but insulate
the northern extra-tropical from the tropical sections of
the continent. Thus, although abounding in gold, in
animal and vegetable life profusely lavished on it by all-
bounteous nature, and further, although the cradle of a
race of men who, from an inferiority of intellect or natural
fecbleness of' character, have suffered, and still suffer, at
the hands of European races all the cruelties and horrors
of transportation into hopeless bondage, the continent of
Africa has hitherto escaped, to a great extent, the desolat-
ing conquests which have everywhere characterized the
progress over the earth of the European races of later
times. Before attempting an explanation of this sufﬁciently
curious fact in the history of Africa, I shall make a few
remarks in illustration of the main object of this lectureﬁ‘
which is intended brieﬂy to introduce to the notice of my
audience the great question of modern times, the moral
and physical characteristics of the various races of men now
occupying the earth, with a reference more especially to

* The substance of this chapter was delivered as a lecture about
three years ago in the PhiIOsophical Institution of Hendon.

 

‘

AFRICA. 5.33

those aboriginal and intrusive races soon to meet on the
African continent. The contest between those who openly
maintain might to be right, who quit their native homes in
order to appropriate to themselves, on various pretexts,
the land of others, has already commenced on the African
coast. The nations representing the Saxon, and Scandi-
navian, and Celtic races, precipitate themselves into Africa.
Their object is plunder, conquest, annexation, if possible ;
these are the ends they seek in the invasion of the African
continent. They invade from the north and from the
south, from the east and from the west. Political and
other circumstances rendering the exportation of the Negro
from his aboriginal soil no longer practicable, or at least
attended with unpleasant political complications, they
follow him to the cradle of his origin, the land of his birth,
trusting to repeat on that land the sad tragedies which
followed the invasion of America by the Saxon and Iberian
races; of India by the Saxon and Gaul. Man, some main-
tain, is progressive, but history does not support this view.
In What is he progressive? Is it in practical Christianity?
Is it in the humanizing arts of civilization? Look at India,
Africa, Mexico, and Australia; think of the history of
North and South America. Does the progress consist in
the simple fact of a greater accumulation of what may be
called the social arts? Then proceed with me to N orth-
ern Africa, and let us see what we have on that soil,
encumbered with the vestiges of ﬁve successive forms of
ruined civilization, to compensate for the past; what exists
to mark the progress of humanity, Pagan, Christian, or
Saracen. I am no stickler for the superiority of the
ancient forms of civilization—of which, by the bye, we after
all know but little ; I am not an admirer of the institutions
of heathen Rome, any more than the most distinguished
orator of the day fl“ but I love truth. NOW, I do not ﬁnd
in the history of the conquests of the ancient Greeks and
Romans that peculiar savagery, ferocity, hypocrisy, and
licentiousness u hich mark the progress of modern Chris-
tian races and nations over the earth. The bulk of the
African continent has hitherto escaped, to a great extent,
* Mr. J. Bright.

534 AFRICA.

the grand humanizing and 01v1l1z1ng progress of the Anglo
WW Dutch Saxon and Celtiberian races in America and
and which, unhappily, instead of elevating, as the Romans
did, the rude aborigines, depress and enslave, hopelessly
and seemingly for ever, the native races. This is the
ﬁrst question I mean to consider. The second, naturally
ﬂowing from the ﬁrst, will be, “ the probable future
of Africa,” which may, I think, be conjectured from the
past. The elements for the solution of this problem, the
future of Africa, are, the character of its aborigines and of
the European races who now anxiously desire to intrude
themselves into that vast and comparatively unknown
land.

If the races of men here in Europe are so distinct from
each other, why, you may perhaps say, go to Africa in
order to explain their characters and differences? If the
Gaul, the Scandinavian, and the German, or true Frank,
whom M. Kossuth mistakes for mere nations, confounding
the German with the Scandinavian (although he must
know that the true ﬁermanw never, pTopﬁEr’spéEtFing,
formed a dis ation), be so absolutely distinct, why go
to Africa to establish the importance of this natural his-
tory c/zaracter? My answer is this :—The story of the
' conﬂict between the intrusive and the aboriginal races on
the American continent belongs to history ; the events are
past and gone; they no longer interest humanity. It is
the same with India. Olive and Pizarro, Cortes and Albu-
querque, have long passed away to render their last account;
even the atrocities of Rosas are already forgotten. Africa,
on the other hand, is now present; here the conﬂict is
about to be resumed—nay, has already commenced; the
enormities which Bourmont and Pelissier practised in
Northern Africa, Pretorius and his Dutch Boers have
already rivalled in the South. It is Olive and Pizarro,
Cortes and Albuquerque again, without the pomp and cir-
cumstances which shed a horrid and unearthly glare around
the progress of these strong-headed savage ﬁlibusters.
The struggle now carried on by the Celtic race of France ‘

AFRICA. 535,

in Northern Africa is with petty sheiks and wild chiefs of
two barbarous races. In the south, the intrusive Saxon
ﬁghts with Caﬂ're kings at least as savage as the Bedouins
and Tibboo of the north ; Ma the feeble
Lusitanian r‘age maintains a contesm still ~iieehler
o, w ich it enslaves, Vbrutalizes, and sells as he would
6 e «ﬁeld. Now, the aim of'aIl metastases
‘ is t e same,—namely, plunder and conquest; and, although
the Lusitanian race rapidly becomes extinct in these
regions, as must ever happen to Europeans in tropical
countries when not fed by a continual immigration from
their native land, still, by means of the mulatto, they for
a time may stand their ground against a race so inferior _
in intellect as the Negro But the Mulatto will also in
t1me 1sappear, and all will return to the gloomy shades of
the aboriginal stock, and thus extinction unde1 both forms
threatens the Lusitanian race in Africa.

N ow it is this circumstance, the actuality of the contest,
which renders the African continent so interesting: it is
its present relation to the races and nations of men, and
especially to the European brigands of the present day,
which has induced me to select it as the chief topic of my
discourse. There 1s a question I have often deeply medi-
tated, but to which I shall merely allude here: why, for ex-
ample, the rapacious, intrusive, and unprincipled European
races of comparatively modern times avoided Africa to a
great extent, selecting the Asiatic and American continents
and their islands as the grand ﬁelds for their ﬁlibustering
expeditions : why, for example, the Scandinavian and Saxon
Hollander and English (the Anglo and Dutch Saxons as
they are called) preferred America as their ﬁeld for plunder
and violence to Africa; why the Lusitanian, Celtiberian,
and Celtic races also sought those continents in preference
to Africa, though so much nearer their own shores; and
how it was that even the ancient Roman, Greek, and
Persian, in their ﬁlibustering career over the earth, con-
ﬁned their exploits in Africa to a comparatively narrow
territory embracing not a tenth of Africa’s great continent.
The solution of this question might be found, I think, in

536 AFRICA.

the character of' the African soil and its population. With
a view to the elucidation of this question. I shall make a
few brief remarks on the early history of Northern Africa.
The earliest race which can be discovered in Africa north
of the Sahara, is the Libyan, Kabyle, or Berber. They
seem to have occupied the entire tract of country from
the borders of Egypt to the Atlantic, and from the Medi-
terranean to the southern border of' the Sahara, or the
land of the Negro. On some linguistic grounds the race
has been traced to the East (India), but this has not been
provedﬂ‘= We may view them, then, as primitives or abo-
rigines until other facts refute this view. The Negro race

never penetrated into Northern Africa, and—it—is‘asserted,
t at even now the true N egro cannot extend his race in

iN‘or thern Africa. The ﬁrstw'intruswe race who entered

mgion of Africa was the Phcenician, to whose history
I have alluded in the chapter on the Assyrian Marbles.
One circumstance only I may mention here. The Phoe-
nicians who emigrated to Africa are said to have been a
motley crew made up of men of various races"? If this
were proved, it would of itself explain the extinction of
the Phoenician race in North Africa; for the motley or
hybrid race was sure to die out in time, if not fed by some
pure race. The Berbers or Kabyles now occupy the
country under the name of Moors, having survived the
Phoenician intrusion; and, secondly, the Greek.

The ﬁrst Greek intrusion took place 651 years 13.0. It
was on a small scale. The fugitives came from Thera
and founded Cyrene. But Cyrene after all was never more
than a Greek oasis in the midst of a desert. Alexander
ﬁrst thought of Egypt which he took from the Persian, also
an intrusive race into Egypt; but his destiny led him to
Asia, and thus the Phoenicians escaped. Subsequently an
adventurer of the name of Agathocles invaded Northern
Africa with an army of Greeks, but failed; and thus the
Greeks as an intrusive race make no ﬁgure in the history
of' Northern Africa.

Another raceiﬂuusupally held to be Asiatichhutot" FEEL

* Sallustii Hist. t Ferrier.

AFRICA. 537

many seem to me to be descended from the Copt, also pene-

WE- erma These were the Jews. Long
Wigwction of their natiomirwrthe taking of
We race had w andered into every country of the
t en know nysprld. At one time they abounded 1n Cyrene“ ,
they now ﬂee f1 om Morocco as they formerly did from Spain,
taking refuge in Algiers. M. Duprat thinks that the Jews
cannot be traced into Spain earlier than the destruction of
their nationality by Titus. It may be so ; but I have shown
in my work on the “ Races of Men” that they were extremely
numerous in Rome in the time of Cicero; that they were
numerous, wealthy, and, consequently, inﬂuential—a fact
which historians seem to have overlooked. They ﬂed
from Spain in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella to the
number of 300,000, most of whom sought refuge in Mauri-
tania. The remains of the race, reduced to 26,000
people, now ﬂee before the Moors to seek a refuge in
Algiers.

The next intrusive race was the Romans, who civilized
all Northern Africa; but their race as a race made no pro-
gress, and we now know that they have been long extinct.
In 429 the Vandals appeared, amounting probably to more
than half a million of people; they also have been long
extinct. The destruction of their power in Africa was
effected by Belisarius and his motley crew of Byzantines;
but their occupation of the country was merely a military
one, so that we must look to their successors, the Arabs,
for the intrusive race which most deeply affected the
character of the population of Northern Africa. There
are some grounds for supposing that colonies of Arabs had
settled in Northern Africa long prior to the rise of the
Mahometan power; but they were in no strength, and
could not inﬂuence the population. It was quite otherwise
with their invasion in 632, which led to the complete
conquest of Northern Africa, and to the establishment of
the Arab race upon its soil; some centuries afterwards
they were followed by the Osmanlis or Turks, who now
give place to the Celtic race of France. None of these
intrusive races have displaced the primitive Berber; they

538 AFRICA.

have been more or less mingled with them, but such
mingling never ends in the production of a hybrid race.

Conclusion—As respects Northern Africa, when the
Celtic race of France took possession of Algeria, they ﬁrst
met the remains of the Turk or Turco-man, and the Turee—
Arab or Coulouglis, ahybrid population sure to terminate
in extinction. These people occupied the towns. They next
encountered the Arab of the plains, the descendants of
those who ﬁrst overran Northern Africa, and founded
the Mahometan sovereignties. These the French mistook
for a united people, although in reality they form but a
collection of tribes. Lastly, they encountered towards the
mountains the ancient Numidian race, the Berbers or
Kabyles, a race distinct from all the others. This race,
driven towards the mountains and the Sahara by all the
invading and intrusive races, has yet survived them all.
They are in great force in Morocco. They have never
been civilized. The Atlas seems to be their cradle or
home, yet they are said to have founded Morocco and even
Algiers. In remote antiquity they were called Lib :ans.
Into this land of Northern Africa the Negro elem‘Emt

3, never penetrated, and it is said that he cannot live there
'«even now.

The character of the Berber, such as it is now, was
drawn by Sallust. They seem to adopt with facility the
forms of life of a conquering race, adapting themselves to
the new order of things, but relapsing instantly into their
primitive life so soon as the dominant race loses the power
of coercion. Thus the empire of the Moghreb may pass
into the hands of France, but will never become an in-
tegral portion of a French empire. The climate, the
antipathies of' race, the character of the intrusive and
aboriginal race, are opposed to such a union, even under
the name of the “departments of Alger and of the
Bloghreb,” unless there should appear another Alexander
or Caesar, or Napoleon the Great, who, forewarned by the
errors of his great predecessor, may clearly comprehend
the distinction between a paltry monarchy and a true
empire—a model kingdom after the fashion of a. Louis

AFRICA. 539

Quatorze, and an imperial power wielded by a Trajan or
an Antonine, extending to men of all races if not the
unspeakable blessings of true liberty, at least protection
of life and property, and the freedom to follow whatever
form of religious folly they may prefer.
In the viewltakeof man, race is everything in human
Mnﬁfttdtheir natural course.‘ The moral and
physical charactgtisticsofmations, as well as of individuals,
‘ch. _H ad the illustrious Hungarian Kossuth
”We nature of the Anglo-Saxon race amongst whom
it was his unhappy fate to be cast in his exile, he might
have saved himself many sufferings and grievous insults;
if he had deeply studied the history of race, he would
never have visited the United States. The friendly re-
ception of Nicholas of Russia, and of all successful, or at
least wealthy tyrants by the Saxon everywhere, ought to
have instructed him as to the character of the Anglo-Saxon
race wherever located, and have warned him of the danger
he incurred in leaving behind him the public treasures of
Hungary, and the crown jewels of the kingdom, when he
ﬂed from his native land. Had he read my work on the
“Races of Man,” he would have found therein an outline of
those moral and physical characteristics which he seems
still disposed to ascribe to national inﬂuences. Even now
some distinguished men, who I think ought to know better,
persist in tracing to the present government of France
those events which, in an especial and most remarkable
manner, depend on the chapacter’ofﬂthe Gaulish race, by
whatever name youaare pleased to call“"£héh1”;Fi‘é‘ﬁch’,'
__ elsh, Caledonian, Irish (forriallithese are Gaulish); fa
\m'as i‘prét‘éa‘ibﬁ’g ago, has. never altered its
character since the earliest recorded times. On three
great occasions the centre clan of the race, constituting
the French people, have had its destinies and those of
Europe in its hands, and on every occasion have they
chosen as their form of government a pure unmitigated
despotism, a despotism incompatible with the progress of
the human intellect. M. de Saulcy (to whom I have
already referred), who travelled into Syria during the

540 AFRICA.

short-lived republic of 1848, conversing with an Arab
chief, or sheik, on the nature of that government which
then prevailed in France, and endeavouring to explain to
the Arab the peculiarities of a republic, under which form
of government he then lived, was met and silenced at once
by the simple-minded Bedouin, who made to him this
pithy and too true remark, “ You cannot go on under such
a form of government; you must have a sultan.” The
Bedouin could not have read my work on the “Races of
Man,”and yet how true and‘how prophetic were his words ;
scarcely was the republic constituted when the nation de-
manded a sultan. No Gaulish man comprehends, as I
proved in that work published many years ago, the mean-
ing of Scandinavian and German institutions. It is in
vain that you endeavour to explain such things to them ;
they have never, under any form of government, been
without passports and battlements, fortiﬁed towns, garri-
sons, military shows, pomp and national glory; it is their
nature. Why abuse them for it? We Anglo-Saxons and
Dutch-Saxons have each our oddities also dependant on
our race, furnishing to foreigners and to the matchless pen
of the writers of the “London Charivari ” abundant matter
for pleasant abuse. If the French empire be as/Lam, as
many esteem it to be, it is at least as respectable a sham as
the English constitution—an acknowledged sham, even by
ourselves; and could we believe a portion of the English
press——the boasted American constitution, an Anglo-Saxon
emanation, is something worse. Would it not be better
to accept of the races of men as nature made them ; study
their history, trace their social history when congregated
into nations, and the modiﬁcations it undergoes by civili-
zation; show them, by good example, the advantages of
modern European civilization, and leave them to govern
themselves ?‘ But all history shows that such an event is
Ut'opian—a millennium no more to be looked forward to
than that foretold by the Presbyterian rant and pro-
phetic folly, so much the fashion of the times in which
we live ; opposed to its accomplishment stand the antago-
nism of race to race, the love of brigandage, the staple

AFRICA. 541

trade of all nations and races, and the existence in most
WM three great classes o‘f‘rtrenL—kiﬁgEnobles”
and priests—those three grand curses of humanity. ' ‘
Wrand the past of Africa; as we have just seen,
regard must be had to its physical geography and to its
relations to other continents. A long strip of compara-
tively fertile land, interrupted by one or two deserts, ex-
tends from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. In the southern
portions of this elongated territory runs the Atlas or
Atlaic range of mountains, separating its western portion
from the Sahara, whilst the highlands of Abyssinia in a
similar manner insulate, as it were, Egypt from the more
southern portion of Eastern Africa.

Avast desert—the Sahara—separates to the west and
south these fertile regions from tropical or Central Africa,
cutting oﬂ“, as it were, the habitable parts of Africa from
the uninhabitable, by Europeans at least. To the east no
such desert as this exists; and thus Egypt communicates
directly with Central Africa by means of the Abyssinian
Mountains and the White Nile. Through this land, in
all probability, the Negro ﬁrst penetrated into Egypt, and
became known not only to the ancient Egyptians, but to
EurOpe and the East. On the ancient Egyptian tombs
and monuments to which the illustrious and learned
Lepsius has assigned an antiquity of 4600 years before the
Christian era, or 6400 years to the present day, we ﬁnd
the Negro race depicted precisely as it now exists, un-
altered physicalﬁr morally—a fact demonstrable by the
sure testimony of the pictorial and sculptural arts.

To the south of the Sahara and of Egypt is tropical Africa,
the land of the gorilla and of the Negro, of a superabun-
dance of animal and vegetable life. This is the region which
has justly perhaps merited the name of' “ the white man’s
grave,” and the statistics presented to the world by the
ablest of all English statisticians, Colonel Tulloch, support
this view. It is a portion of this territory which these
three intrusive European races have oft invaded, but “ith
no success. The A ng -Saxon or English, and the Holland-

Saxon or Dutch, redouble their eﬁ‘orts at this moment to
M

w”. -..

542 AFRICA.

penetrate into the land of the Negro. The Dane or pure
Scandinavian tried it long ago, but failed. We shall return
to this subject presently; in the meantime, it may be re-
marked that a large portion at least of the central portion
of' this intratropical land seems to be composed of vast
lakes and inland freshwater seas, the sources perhaps of
rivers, which, ﬂowing from them, make their way to the
ocean in all directions. The mountains enclosing this vast
basin or succession of basins are not in general lofty; on
the other hand, a parched land of vast desert tracts, inter-
cepted by somewhat lofty mountains, with rivers of no
magnitude, and a few large forests fringed towards the
southern and eastern ocean by a moderately fertile tract,
and separated as it were by the great extent of the Calihari,
or Southern Sahara, from tropical central Africa, constitute
the southern portion of the continent. This is the cradle
l’seemingly of the Hottentot, or yellow race of Southern
5 Africa, and of the Caffre nations, much maligned races of
‘ men, who now ﬁght theirlast battle for existence. 0 osed
:to them are the strong-armed Anglo-Saxon and'BTEﬁLaIE
Saxon,the‘inost‘Celebrated ofall ﬁlibuSters, who proclaim!
"‘ﬁ1"g‘th'é‘rﬁselv’es to be Christian Mensch, and as Saxons the
' 'only‘ true Christian Me'nSch in the world, now go forth
'u't’t‘e'rl'y’ to exterminate the heathen, and to extirpate the
‘ \c‘olouredraces from the face of the earth. In this extra-
‘"ﬁ‘6pical portionof Siouthelrh'Africa I travelled and resided
for a long period; the character of the natives and of the
intrusive races is well known to me ; the earliest scientiﬁc
account of the Caﬁ‘re race was communicated to the
European world by myself.* N 0 land abounds more in
animal life than this southern land. Here roam the ﬂeet
ostrich, the terrible rhinoceros, the stately giraffe, the
gigantic elephant; antelopes of countless varieties adorn the
karoo and parched lands of these desert countries; the
majestic black-maned lion stalks the desert in the full
blaze of noon. Here it was on the slopes of the Anatolo
and Winterbergcn that I ﬁrst saw, face to face, unmodi-
ﬁed by man, nature’s landscape—that landscape so different
* Trans. of the Wcrncrian $00., 1821.

 

AFRICA. 543

in all respects from the cultivated regions of civilized
countries—those trimly-weeded ﬁelds which civilized man
mistakes, in the oddest way imaginable, for nature’s land-
scapes and nature’s works. The citizen retiring to his
‘ suburban villa, neatly-trimmed garden, Italian terrace,
symmetrical rows of trees, geometrically laid-out walks
and plots of ﬂowers, wherein you may trace all or most of
the ﬁgures to be found in the “Elements of Euclid”—talks
of the pleasure of looking at a bit of nature! Could his
gardener explain matters to him, he would soon show him
that there is not a bit of nature in the whole landscape,
and that he never intended there should be; his whole
object being to exclude nature, and to show his master
how perfectly he had done so. On this success depends
the pleasure his employer has in contemplating his work.
The farmer also, when he looks at his well-cultivated
ﬁelds, his close even fences, the ripening ﬁeld of wheat, in
which there is nothing to be seen but wheat, admiring the
perfection of man’s handiwork, must, if he reﬂects on it,
be often amused at the observations of those who mistake
his farm for a natural landscape. To see such go to Africa,
to the wilds of America, and there admire the landscape
fresh from the great Painter’s hands. To enjoy this, the
penates you worship (utility and the social arts) must be
left at home: you are in the presence of mysterious nature ;
you may guess at her object, but cannot discover it;
admire and worship, but pretend not to unfold her grand
scheme ; for of this you must be instinctively aware, that her
plans cannot be yours. Be content with the reflection that
you belong to that mysterious consanguinity, for a time at --
least, that ever-renovating, ever-renewed principle which
converted this globe from a lifeless desert into a sphere
teeming with all that is beautiful.

By the banks of the Swarte and White Kei there lay
outstretched before me a portion of the primitive world.
Of human handiwork no vestiges were present. Myriads
of gnoos, hartebeests, bonteboks, zebras, and elands
browsed the plains; the lion was abroad at midday in
troops or single; elephants might be seen in the distance ;

544 AFRICA.

also the rhinoceros; nor was the hyena absent, nor the
jackal, so soon as the bright orb of day had descended
behind the distant Sneuwbergen; the wild Bushmen,
children of the desert, peered on us from their rocky
home in the distant mountains—if home it may be called——
as we slowly traversed these plains, hoping by a circuitous
route to circumvent the Calfre nations; whilst overhead
soared the vulture, scanning from his unapproachable
heights the lower world. Into that ﬁeld civilized man, the
grand antagonist of nature’s works, had not then pene-
trated. To trace his advent and its results forms aleading
part of the lecture; and ﬁrst of the arrival and progress
in Northern Africa of the intrusive races.

If the Egyptians were an intrusive race, it is not known
for certain whence they came. They seem to have been
the eldest of. civilized men. Lepsius assigns to certain of
their architectural monuments an antiquity of about 6400
years. Bunsen hints at a much higher antiquity, whilst
the late researches of M. T. Leonard Horner point to an
antiquity of 11,600 years; such he thinks being the age of
certain indications leading to the belief that at that remote
period a race, possessing some at least of the arts of
civilized life, inhabited the Delta of the Nile. However
this may be—and this is hot the place nor the occasion to
weigh the value of these conflicting estimates—we know
from the still existing Egyptian monuments that three
distinct races of men were then in existence in or near
Egypt—the Copt, the Negro, and a. fair race of a. nature
unknown. '

The subsequent conquests of the Egyptians over many
savage nations are mere fables. They knew nothing of
the elephant, though living in close contiguity to Ele—
phantina, the country of the elephants; the camel—and
this is almost incredible—seems to have been equally
unknown to them as to the Greeks or Trojans during the
age of Homer, and, like the same Greeks and Trojans, the
Copt was ignorant of the use of cavalry as an intrument
of war. Their conquests were probably mere fables and

- 1-1::in

. e an. 47;;me_: ”shanghai ' "

AFRICA. I 545‘

romances, but their monuments remain the wonder of the
world.

If we follow the African land westward from Egypt,
we ﬁnd the Libyan desert and the oasis interposed between
the Valley of the Nile and that comparatively fertile tract
to which I have already alluded as extending from the
margin of this desert to the shores of the Atlantic, and
from the Mediterranean to that ocean of sand, the great
and terrible Sahara. Here on this tract ﬂourished in rapid
succession the Carthaginian, Roman of both empires,
V andahc, Saracen, Ottoman forms of civilization; where

am“ the races which gave origin to

them P Alwbut extinct. The barbarous Moor, the Tibboo, '

the Bedouin alone remain. They were there before the

aMn Dido, they are there now; being the

aboriginal race, they survive, whilst all intrusive races have ' "

su orts this viewfﬁitlfih—trusive races, after. ﬂourishing
i'oLaiimeaﬂleydegenerate and become extinct.

This fact, which I was the ﬁrst to announce,‘was much
doubted and strongly denied at ﬁrst, but many able writers
have now given in their adhesion to the View. * The United
States men themselves would perish and soon become
extinct, were the race not continually fed and sustained

fres rom Europe. Thebistory of the intrusive
ﬂ‘ﬁéfnijﬁma tells the same tale; all have
become—extiaet in time. And now, after centuries of a ter-
rible barba1ism spread over these ﬁne lands by the abhorred
Turcoman, an Asiatic race still suffered to occupy some of
the richest provinces of Europe, another European race,
the Gaulish, once more intrudes itself into Northern
Africa. Judging from the past, it seems not difﬁcult to
foretel its future extinction. But this is not the question
at present. What I propose considering is the comparative
progress of _the two races who now invade Africa, the
Gaulish, namely, and the Saxon and Scandinavian; and
to understand the full import of this contest—a question

become extinct. Thus it ever seems to happen {and history

* Gervinus, in his latest works.
N N

546 ' AFRICA.

Wholly misunderstood by the writers in the Revue des Dezzx
Mondes—we must proceed to Southern Africa, the field
selected by the Anglo-Saxon and the Dutch-Saxon for the
exercise of all that practical energy which stamps him as
the prince of ﬁlibusters ; the race who look on all dark men
as mere “ niggers,” and apply this name to them; the race
destined, as they themselves declare, utterly to root out
and exterminate the heathen—that is, the “Diggers,” —
from the face of the earth, or, what In the meantime may
be more proﬁtable to them, by reducing them to hopeless
slavery, so debase the coloured races as to deprive them
for ever of all chance of recovering that inestimable
treasure beyond all price or value, freedom of speech,
gthought, and action; in a word, the rights of man. HOW
walways existed, but it never appeared in its terrible form
until the Saxon race began to migrate over the earth, to
establish free colonies, as they are called—free t0 the white
man and their own race—dens of horror and of cruelty to
the coloured. Look at India; look at the United States
of America, and see the antagonism of race to race, carried
to the utmost point of virulence. But we need not go
, beyond Southern Africa to ﬁnd the characteristic of the
Anglo- Saxon and the Holland- saxon‘a‘or‘they are identical)
Wd 1n WTll perfection. Watch the proceedings in
Australia, and the antipathy of' the white race to the
coloured, and say, is not this the old antipathy of race to
race? During the grandest periods of the Roman empire
this antagonism was not suffered to show itself in any
great degree; but long prior to that epoch Alexander and
all subsequent conquerors, Greek and Roman, were aware
of its existence. During the entire period of Roman
power, the Romans never came in contact with any
.nation or race with whom they could not amalgamate or
admit into the fellowship of the Roman world. Central
Africa, the true Negro land, was as unknown to them as
America, and so were the coloured races of Asia, nor was
it until the time of Justinian that this great quest1on

which now agitates the world was mooted by the Roman

AFRICA. 547

citizen—namely, “Whether it was proper to admit into
the bosom of civilized society a race of savage N egroes."
Here, then, under a Christian emperor was the question
ﬁrst raised and entertained, whether or not there existed
on the face of the earth a race or races of men who were
not entitled to “ the rights of men.” Since then, the
European, and more especially the Anglo-Saxon, has ex-
tended this objection to all or nearly all coloured races of
men; it has become the question of the day, and for a
time will agitate the civilized world, for everywhere do
we ﬁnd the grand and seemingly the natural enemy of the
coloured races victorious in the colonizing strife—the
contest for new lands. Spreading over the earth, the'race
has seized on Northern America, and now aims at the
Southern half of that continent. India, Australia, Southern
and Central Africa, China, J apan—all are threatened. So
far it is consolatory to think that it is the overﬂowing of a
race who, when rescued from the ancient despotisms and
the so-called constitutional monarchies of Europe, esta-
blish free states, and proclaim the natural rights of man;
the one great drawback is, that they refuse to other races
the rights they claim for themselves.

Into Northern Africa the Romans carried a civilization
seemingly superior to any form that now exists on the
earth: were the same lands to fall under the dominion of
the Anglo-Saxon or Dutch-Saxon, they would become a
den of slavery and wretchedness for the coloured races—a
land of servitude and horrors. What its future may be
under the Celtic sway I may consider towards the close of
the lecture. But it must never be forgotten that the Celt
always and under all circumstances will have “a sultan ;"
on the individual character of that sultan will depend the
fortunes of the race. When the Saxon throws off the
serfdom inherited from his ancestors, and repudiates the
sham and imposture of a. constitutional monarchy, he
claims for himself " the rights of man." The laws he
proposes to obey, he himself makes; pity it is he cannot
permit to all the human race the enjoyment of those
sacred rights which, after a terrible struggle withthe

N N 2

548. AFRICA.

most dangerous of all despotisms (the English), because
the best masked, he ﬁnally established for himself in
Washington. I

Let us now turn our attention to South Africa, and,
more properly speaking, to its extra-tropical portion. The
history of the ﬁrst appearance of the intrusive races of
men into South Africa, long known as the Cape of Good
Hope, must now be familiar to all who read. The land
was ﬁrst discovered by the Portuguese or Lusitanian race
—a race long since in a state of decadence and decrepitude.
Theydiscovered the Cape. and attempted a settlement at
the mouth of the Rio d'Infante, better known as the Great
Fish River, whose bushy banks have of late years acquired
an unhappy and melancholy notoriety as the scene of so
many sharp conﬂicts between the European and Caﬁi-e, a.
bold and noble race of men, ﬁghting for their lives and
property, and for all that men hold dear. But the Portu-
guese soon abandoned the territory, on ﬁnding that it
aﬂ‘orded neither gold nor Negroes, the two commodities
they were in search of, and the abandoned territory fell
into the hands of Van Riebeck and the Dutch. True
to their nature, that is, to the character of their race, they
massacred and enslaved the feeble Quaiquze, whom we
call Hottentots, plundering them of their lands and cattle,
wives and children, and shooting them down like wild
beasts; the sad tale may be read in the pages of Barrow
and Phillips, of Burchell and Livingstone, and of nearly
all travellers who have visited that interesting land. As
they, the Dutch, progressed (the Saxons are always pro-
gressing at the expense of their neighbours,) eastward and
northward, they soon encountered the dark Caﬂ're nations,
Whom they very naturally and as became white Christian
menu-Ir, treated as wild beasts they were bound to exter-
minate. This laudable enterprise they are still engaged in.
After the Cape fell into the hands of the English, the
Dutch policy, somehow or other, did not much change;
the Cattle wars continued, and they still go on. They are
proﬁtable wars to the colonists, as Dr. Livingstone has
well hinted at. Chief after chief falls, and being tried for ‘

.AFRICA. 549

some misdemeanour, is of course found guilty, and trans-
ferred to a jail: It is the old Tarquin policy : cut off the
heads of all the tall poppies, the rest are harmless and
may be spared. To comprehend the late doings in respect
of this noble race of men, the Cafi're race, you must read
Livingstone, and reﬂect on What you read; no race ever
possessed nobler qualities than the Caﬂ’re, whose degrada-
tion, if he be really degraded, is due to his contact with
the intrusive European race. Colonel Graham, who founded
Grahamstown, assured me that when he ﬁrst came in con-
tact with the Caffre race, they were a mild, amiable, gentle,
and most hospitable race, but that the Europeans had con-
verted them into tigers. For my own part, I found them
to be such as he describes them to have been, and withal
intelligent and disposed to industry. I do not believe
them tohbe equal to any Europeanrace, but they are much
«supeﬁc‘fr to the Negro. The story of their Arabian origin

Empty/a fable. Inn’this primitive land, where I ﬁrst»,

saw nature’s landscape and the unsophisticated aborigines
of the soil, an opportunity also occurred of remarking the
rapidity with which a highly intellectual and energetic

9...... .

race of Europeans, when long settled in a country remote ;
from the great stream of European civilization, may {
descend in the scale of intelligence. The ignorance of the ’
Dutch Boers—that is, of the descendants of Europeans ‘.

long settled in the country—can scarcely be imagined ; but
climate has not modiﬁed the race to any great extent, and
instead of becoming shorter in stature, so as to approach
the pigmy Bosjieman in that peculiarity, they, on the con-
trary, are a tall and still vigorous race. But it is said, on
good authority, that their families are not numerous, and
that, notwithstanding the extraordinary salubrity of the
climate, andthe absence of such diseases as fever, dysentery,
and pulmonary consumption, the race would ﬁnally, even
in this delightful climate, become extinct, were it not
maintained by fresh imports from Europe.

The primitive races of this land are or were two, the
Hottentot, namely, or yellow race of men, and the Caﬂ're.
N 0 two races differ more from each other than these two

550 AFRICA.

limitrophic races. French travellers speak of other races ofa.
lower stature even than the pigmy Bushmen and Hottentot,
but their reports have not been confirmed by others. In
front of the strong-armed, rapacious, unprincipled Euro-
pean intrusive race, these two primitive aboriginal races
rapidly disappear. Driven from their native lands, the
Europeans now follow them to the tropics, where both meet
the helpless Negro, doomed, as it would seem, to be a slave
to “the rest of man End“ In the meantlme, the antagonism
Imto nature is exempliﬁed on its largest
scale, and the landscape of nature fast disappears before
civilization. The aboriginal Fauna and Flora, including
the aboriginal man, will in time become extinct, or nearly
so, and civilized man, with his domestic animals, gardens,
and ﬁelds, will, for a season, take their place. The intrusive
race here is the Scandinavian and the German, composed
chieﬂy of the Anglo and Dutch Saxons, the race supposed
by many to possess the highest Qualifications for colonists.
i These qualiﬁcations, 1niwl1atiever light they may be viewed,
do not, as M. Montalembert imagines, depend upon their
political institutions, but on their race. On leaving the
monarchy-oppressed atmosphere of Europe, where men
are not acknowledged to have any rights as men, but are
merely permitted to live as the subjects of a hereditary
robber, the bold Saxon emigrant, whether Dutch or
English, declares himself a freeman; his cry is onward ;
he recognises no chief, no king, nor governor, as the
Celtic man ever does, but the law: that is his sultan.
The country of his adoptione be comes his ow;n he ceases

“1.. ~~~~~~

throws off his alleglance to his parent country, and sets up
for himself This the Celt never does, but clings instinc-
tively to those institutions which suit his nature; with
him it is always the age of Louis Quatorze, or the grand
epoch of the Empire. He looks constantly backwards“
to the past ; the Saxon ever forwards. To this is due his
superiority as a colonist, and not to any great amount of
freedom permitted him by the oligarchical institutions
of his parent state. N ow if we apply the doctrine of the

n

AFRlCA. 551

inﬂuence of race over the destinies of nations to the present
condition of Africa, we may discover, I think, the elements
for solving the problem as to the probable future of Africa.
The Lusitanian race gradually dies out in tropical Africa
and will disappear; the Celtic race occupying Algiers with
an army of 80,000 men, has not as yet reached the Sahara ;
Morocco and Tunis are still in the hands of the savage
Moor, the Arab, and the Turcoman. In the south, on
the contrary, the Anglo- Saxon, preced‘d‘by‘the—Butc’rr—

axon, as a rea yr reached the tropic; before them the
M? vanish. The“ discovery having been made
Wu of the country on or near the equator
decides the fate of nearly all that is valuable in Africa,
missionaries and travellers are boldly pushed into Central
Africa as pioneers, to be followed by bales of cotton goods.
These of course require protection ; chief after chief,
nation after nation, fall before the strong-armed race;
their aim is the possession of Central Africa, the land of
gold and of the Negro, the master-key to the entire con-
tinent. For such an enterprise, Pretorius, with a few
hundred Saxon Boers, is worth a whole army of Celtic
men, though led by the bold soldier who stormed and took
the Malakoﬁiit The Scandinavian and old Saxon, when

* When I ﬁrst learned, more than two years ago, that the Govern-
ment of France had once more turned its attention to the lamentable
failure of Algeria as a colony, and was about to establish, in hopes of
bettering its condition. a system of railways in the province, I was
curious to know in what direction these railways were to run. To my
surprise, I learned that they were to be “ coast lines." Happening to
be in communication with a French oﬂicer, an ancient friend and most.
estimable man, I took the liberty of calling his attention to the re-
markable differences in the colonization plans of the two races now
aiming at the conquest of Africa, pointing out to him that in the hands
of a Saxon race three lines of rails would have long since been laid
down, of which one would lead directly to Fez, another to Tunis, and a
third towards Central Africa. I took occasion also to recommend him
to inquire of the colonial minister for France, if there be such a person,
by what peculiar Celtic management the ﬁne colony of Senegal had
remained in abeyance for nearly two hundred years, profoundly asleep.
In the hands of a few Saxon Boers of the Pretorius’ cast, a line of com-
mercial stations would long since have been established between the
River of Senegal and the Niger, and the French ﬂag would now have
ﬂoated on Lake ’l‘chad and in Timbuctoo, and the key to the possession
of Africa would long ere this have belonged to France. No notice of
my communication was taken. In the same communication I pointed

.e- ,4

1‘

552 AFRICA.

they emigrate to a foreign land, unlike the Celts, are sure

I to take possession of it, and to identify themselves with it ;

5' in a word, they forget their fatherland and assume a new
name.

TWAmemcans who are only Americans by

accident of birth: Tasmamans, Australians, Africaners,

all intrus1ve_raees of one stock into foreign lands—men '
MW ,

who have forgotten, or who will soon forget, their father- '
land? so it will be with Africa, unless climate inter-
’fere ; the Saxon, having now discovered the great strate-
gical point for the subjugation of the continent, pushing
northwards, will take possession of the entire continent,
ousting the Celtic and the other races as they did in
America and India; future Clives, Wellesleys, and Dal-
,housies will conquer and annex, until, becoming sufﬁciently
strong, the colonists may repeat the scenes of Boston and
Bunker’s Hill, sending forth a “ Declaration of Indepen-
dence. ” PﬁThe rights of men is phrasea_ [for ever in their

months; by men we now hnow they mean white men.
IVWhen the day arrives for the ﬂag of independence to be
', unfurled on the Zambesi, or the banks of Lake Tchad, or
{011 the equator as it crosses Central Africa, then woe to
l the dark races whom nature placed there. It were better

out to my friend that even their best political writers, such as the
reviewers in the Revue des Deux Alondes, seemed to be wholly ignorant
of the geographical relations of Central Africa to the surrounding terri-
tory, and thus misunderstood all political, commercial, and strategical
questions connected with that continent. It probably proved oﬂ‘ensive
to the bureau. Since then, however, I ﬁnd that some one must have
thought the advice worth attending to, for an expedition is announced
as about to penetrate from the Senegal to Timbuctoo. It will consist,
no doubt, of soldiers, according to the old-established rule of Celtic
colonization, at the sight of whom the industrious become pale, and
hide themselves; fear seizes the trader, the capitalist escapes from the
land. All this I pointed out to my friend in Paris, but as race never
alters, so I do not for a moment imagine that any system but the one
employed in Algeria will be resorted to in the attempt on Central
Africa from the Senegal. In the meantime, the missionary and the
trader from South Africa are on their march from the Cape, and
will reach Lake Tchad and the southern border of the Sahara long
before the ﬁghting column of Celtic dragoons will have reached the
Niger. Since this was written, my prediction has been veriﬁed:
Marshal Pelissier has been named Governoi of Algelia to whom the
task has been assigned of decentralizing the colony and bringing forward
the civil powerll

AFRICA. 553

for them that the feeble Lusitanian or the dreamy Celt,
with his everlasting age of Louis Quatorze, his gloire
nationavle, his passports, his forts and redoubts, had pre-
vailed. A noble-minded man* has just said to three
European races of men, whom he mistakes for nationalities,
-—“ Cannot you respect each other, and live at peace?” but
I would rather say, why not embrace within this grand
and truly Christian proposition all the races of men?
Why not say to them, “As nature seems to have made
you antagonists of each other, why not labour by educa-
tion, by commerce, by mutual forbearance, by respect for
each other’s gifts, to overcome the eternal and mysterious
fiat, which stamped on each race moral and physical
qualities admired by their possessors, despised by the
rest of mankind P” But will a Celtic empire—or rather
monarchy (for it is no empire), supposing the Celtic race
to be successful, or a Saxon republic, in the event of
Africa falling into the hands of a Saxon race, continue to
hold Africa? That is a question for time and nature to
solve. If we look to past history, I feel disposed to say,
that such a power can endure only for a limited time, to
become extinct after certain generations, and disappear, as
did the Carthaginian and Roman, Greek and Vandal,
leaving, perhaps, to nature the restoration of her aboriginal
productions; to nature, a never‘ceasing force, which,
however bent, will surely return the instant the compress-
ing power is relaxed. That compressing and antagonistic
force is civilization, which, ceasing to act but for an instant,
permits the wild man, and beast, and plant to re-occupy
the land from which they had been driven. But all may
not return, for some species may in the meantime have
become extinct. The wild Bosjieman, like the Gipsy, if
extinguished as a race, will cease to occupy a place in the
ethnological history of mankind, unless represented picto-
rially or otherwise in the scientiﬁc works of the learned;
for from his skeleton remains could never be conjectured
the singular peculiarities of his external forms whilst a
living race. Thus, whatever fate destines for Africa, it

*5 Kossuth.

554 AFRICA.

seems not dilﬁcult to predict its probable future for a
period of time. Should it pass into the hands of the noble
and chivalrous race who now invade it from the North (an
event, to say the least, extremely improbable), and who,
unfortunately for the rest of mankind and for‘the progress
of humanity, cannot be made to comprehend the meaning
of the term “the rights of man ”—in a word, who do not
admit men to have any natural rights at all, but only those
which the bayonet gives and maintains, then Africa, unhap-
pily, will become the dependency of, or colony of, a grand
monarchy, to be ruled, as now, by sabreurs, pure and ,
simple.

But the Celtic race, composing the population of France,

ideals, it must be admitted, mildly with their darker

brethren, and in this respect Africa might gain by passing
from the hands of the Turconian, the Saracen, and the

;savage Saxon Boer, into the hands of a race and a govern-

ment to whom the very principles on which an empire

,must ever be based seem to be wholly unknown; whose

minds are wrapt up in the model monarchy of Louis

- Quatorze; who cannot live without a sultan.

klfLQn the contrary, the Anglo-Saxon race prevail, and
it now, after its usual quiet and seemingly inoffensive way,

‘marchestly on Central Africa ’(for this is the land

aifiiéfat) ; sending here a missionary and there a captain
of dragoons, now a German doctor, anon a troop of mer-
chants with a government agent and a missionary, merely
to look after the'interest of the natives in a manner well
understood in England, and well explained by Dr. Living-
stone, also well known in India and in Australia, but
nowhere better than in Caﬂ’raria—then woe to the coloured

races of men. ' Their ancient and most implacable enemy

is at last on their soil in force, and the United States of _
ltr'rca may one day achieve for that continent what the"
race has all but eﬁected 1n America—the extinction of the

“ abor1g1nal races of the land Long ere this, the revolting

trafﬁc in slaves would have exhausted Africa also of its
native race, but commercial and selﬁsh England, having
in the interim lost America and gained India with two

AFRICA. 555

hundred millions of ready-made slaves, and no longer re-
quiring the services of the unhappy Negro, proclaims to
the world that she will not tolerate the African slave
trade. But should Africa come into the possession of the
Saxon race, England’s sham humanity will be of no advan-
tage to that continent, so long as the colonizing, conquer-
ing, intrusive race continue to hold for the Negro race that
unconquerable antipathy or antagonism which marks their
intercourse with all the coloured races of men. For Africa
there is but one hope—the establishment of an empire, or
at least of an imperial government, founded, not on the
Napoleonic idea—an aggregation, namely, of petty mo-
narchies, subordinate to a central one—but on the principles
by which Augustus, Trajan, and the Antonines ruled the
then known world. Such empires have long ceased to
exist, and it is questionable if such governments be now
possible; they existed before the antagonism of race had
assumed its present exaggerated character; they existed
before the spread of Christianity and of Mahometanism.
Under an Augustus or an Antonine, man was free to
worship the Deity of his choice or of his belief, to practise
whatever religious folly he preferred ; throughout Europe,
at the present time, to cease to be orthodox, to cease to
conform, is to forfeit all, or most of, the privileges of
citizenship.

The future of Africa is, to a certain extent, wrapt up in
the destinies of the two invading or intrusive races,—the
Gaulish, namely, and the descendants of the J utes, Angles,
and old Saxons. Celtic France may remain stationary in
Algeria, or even retrace her steps without dishonour, aban-
doning her trans-Mediterranean conquests; for England
there is no such alternative, nor, if there were, would
commercial, energetic England accept of it; she must go ,
on. In advance of her colonists and armies, rush on the
Saxon-Dutch Boer, committing cruel devastation on the ,
coloured races of men, and it were as disgraceful as im-
politic for England to suffer this much longer. Thus,
she must of necessity advance, such being, as is often said,
“ the; destiny of the race.” If the end resemble her course

556 .AFRICA.

l ,in America, India, and Australia, the future of the coloured

races of Africa may easily be foretold.
Conclusion.—Thus ascribing to race those events which
. others ascribe to chance or destiny, I could not but arrive
at the conclusion that, as regards progress, the Ganlish race
are ill adapted for colonists; and I naturally took a deep
interest in the latest attempt of the great Gaulish family
to found a colony in Africa. I was curious to know if the
race had altered in any way; the hurricane of the ﬁrst
great revolution ostensibly swept oﬂ" the three grand in-
cubuses, the three destructive and obstructive inﬂuences
weighing down society, but it had not, and could not be-
stow new qualities on the race; could not bestow on them
the boldnfgs, avarice, practical ability essential to a suc-

_ cessiiir colonist, whilst under the regime of the sword, a
re’gime they so much prefer, the term citizen can have
no meaning. In the absence of that intense labour, stimu-
lated by a desire for accumulation—for gain, I “felt con-
vinced that, whether in Africa or America, the Gaul could
make no real progress as an intrusive race. Accordingly,
after the lapse of thirty years in the case of Algeria, and
of three hundred years in that of Surinam, there has not
been a single symptom indicative of vitality in the race.
In the meantime, writers, journalists of the highest ability,
have written about Africa and Algeria—and written well,
as they always do.* But in these writings I cannot discover
any proof’s that the great questions I now consider are
even suspected to exist. I am naturally ﬁlled with sur-
prise on ﬁnding political writers of the ﬁrst abilities speak
of Africa as if it were a hundred years ago, who fail to
observe the vastly different relations that continent now
bears to the European races to what it did but a very few
years ago; who see nothing worthy of note, and draw no
inferences respecting the present and the probable future
from the discoveries of Galston and Burton, of Speke and
Livingstone; who seem to look on these active political
partisans as if they were “mere African travellers,” and
who are evidently wholly unconscious of the true nature of

* The reviewers in the Revue des Demo Mondes.

AFRICA. 5.57

that small and distant cloud, which, scarcely visible from
a European point of View, is about to burst on the African
soil. Is it that owing to their nature, the Gaul cannot be
made to comprehend the possibility of any peaceful con-
quest? Must he always look to massive battalions and to
the sword ? Where does he ﬁnd in history that any true
progress was ever made by the mere sabrezw .7 What
conquest—what advance in civilization, unless the man
of peace follow or precede the battalion? What single
WTE‘WESS of civilization can be tiaced to the
(- ass militaire 7 Arethey not merely the consumers of the

v"Iiib'ciui‘ﬁofothers‘i’ It must be owing to race, that such

Wances escape the notice of otherwise highly
talented men .* And now mark the difference in the mode
of action of the two races. On one side battalion after bat--
talion are poured into Africa ; on the other, meeting after
meeting of shrewd, quiet, political men is held in London
and Manchester, Oxford and Cambridge ; the Guildhall
and the hall of Trinity College are in perfect unison ;
nobody mistakes the object—no one speaks of it: the aim
is Africa. The key giving possession to Central Africa
and of all the continent has been discovered, and is now
in the possession of England. Political agents, under the
form of missionaries, merchants, travellers, boers, cap.
tains of dragoons, &c., are marching forward to enter on
possession. The commercial man at war with all nations
is there ; the soldier is at hand, but kept out of view.

On this continent the two great leading European
nations now display the essential differences of their race ;
it is the ﬁcld-marshal—the sabreur pure and simple—who
ﬁghts not to enrich his nation, but himself, against the
halo of cotton and the man of peace ; aggressive, ﬁerce—
not warlike, but obstinate and courageous in the defence
of what he considers to be his right. These two races
fought the same battle in America, and are about to try it '
once more in Africa.

What in the meantime will be the move of the indi-
genous races? To endeavour to hide themselves, and seek

* The reviewers in the Revue des Deuac Mondes.

(N.

x. \ é
. v;

558 AFRICA.

a shelter until the storm blows over. But the intrusive
races now follow them up to the cradle of their origin:
the savage Dutch Boer is on their spear in Southern Africa;
the Anglo-Saxon shoots beyond, and appears on the Zam-
besi, to be shortly heard of on Lake Tchad and on the
Niger. It is the same race Which destroyed the Red
\Indian of America,:aiid who now hold 1n bondage four
millions ot' Negroes on the American soil. Already the
colonists of' Natal have petitioned the governor for an
jenactment, legalizing enforced labour on Me blacks. ' Will
it end in the scenes lately witnessed in India, or in a repe-
2tition of What now exists in the Southern States of the
American Union? I lean to this latter opinion for reasons
drawn from the history of the United States of America.
In the meantime this new crusade against the heathen,
the black man, the Fetiche Worshipper, the accursed
ot‘ Ham, the descendant of the Canaanites, and who,
Wﬁ‘g’éma‘ , were Woes as they ought to have
been, thrives, and is popular with all classes. It pro-
[inises new sources of trade, and proﬁtable investment
for several inﬂuential classes —— the military class, the
i priestly class, the ruling class, the commercial class. The
i Gaulish race move after their old fashion: to the cry for
progress, Government sends them a ﬁeld- marshal, already
well known for his feats of arms in Africa; but it kindly
promises a supply of slaves- from China, it having been
ascertained that to the north of the Sahara the Negro does
not thrive.

The name of Albert de Broglie is attached to a well-
Written article in the Revue des Deux Mondes on “ Admi-
nistrative Reform in Africa,” meaning, in sober terms, the
proper management of the colony of Algeria, Which the
Gaulish race of France—Whether as a monarchy, or a re-
public, or an empire—have failed to discover. To a man
of a Saxon temperament, such a failure at ﬁrst sight seems
almost incredible; and yet it is admitted as a fact by the
whole of the French press. The second part of the review,
concluding with the author’s theories, alone occupies thirty-
ﬁve closely printed lirge octavo pages, the essence of

AFRICA. 559

which, with its refutation, it would not be difﬁcult to sum
up in three lines. Wish\ race, by their nature, can.
not be made to believe in the stabUiFf or durability of any
gowmh is not _pur lmy ilitary—that is, con-
noted by a class cf men of all men the most hostile to
progress in human affairs—a class which never yet effected
anything for humanity; at the sight of whom men of
peace—the trader, the manufacturer, the agriculturist, the 5'
man of science, philosophy, and art—depart. Thus it isf
in Algeria. We have seen the class increase in F rancei
during the reign of Napoleon the Great, until science, '
literature, and art became all but extinct. Had that tre-

mendous reign continued but a few years more, all the

genius produced by the glorious revolution of ’92 would
have naturally expired, to be replaced by those who have
lived from their earliest years with the naked sabre

at their throats, and to whom all free thought was for- ,

bidden.
Under such a re’gime you can only have drill-serjeants

and an armed police. It is a pure absurdity to talk of 5
citizens, active, intelligent, and enterprising. As this i.

re’gime has now returned in France, and recovered all its
pristine Napoleonic vigour, M. Broglie thinks,and no doubt
thinks justly, that from amongst a people so educated,
leaders fit to rule a colony—to forward its interest—to
raise it to the. position of a ﬂourishing province, or even a
state equal to its own protection, cannot possibly be found.
The prosperity of English colonies, as compared with those
of France, he ascribes, with much seeming truth, to the
circumstance that 1n the free parliamentary institution of
England there exists an education calculated to produce a
great many men of expanded ideas—civilians ﬁt to rule
colonies and states. But the whole truth does not lie here;
English colonies thrive, not because they have public-
minded, liberal civilians, statesmen, and gifted men as
governors and secretaries (for it is notorious that the con-
trary is the truth), but because the colonists are of a labo-
rious, industrious, independent race, who submit for a time,
and most reluctantly, to the ancient military and naval

560 AFRICA.

ofﬁcers sent to rule them, but are ever ready to throw
them off and to set up for themselves. The cause of failure
in respect of French colonists is the race. But I am free
to admit that with a Clive or Dalhousie as governors,
Algeria must have made some progress, and not proved, as
it has done, a failure. I pointed out to a French ofﬁcer of
distinction, about three years ago, some of these circum-
stances,ale recommending him to call the attention of the
central government to them, and pointing out the necessity
of doing what Saxon colonists would have done long ago,
namely, of connecting the colony of Senegal with the
Niger and Central Africa, and this latter by direct tram-
ways with Algiers and its southern frontier, sketching to
him all the advantages likely to accrue to France from
such a measure. I learn now, through the public journals,
that the views submitted to my friend have been adopted,
and are about to be acted on. But the scheme will require
to be carried out by other men than mere sabreurs, who
simply attend to their own aggrandizement, who measure
the power and status of a nation by the strength of its
army, and who holdin utter contempt the labourer, the
‘ agriculturist, the tradesman, the manufacturer, the man of
peace. I cannot'ﬁnd in the various works on Algiers and
Northern Africa generally any proofs that any of the
writers have correctly understood and appreciated the
great value of modern discoveries in Central Africa, and
seem generally to be wholly unaware that the key to the
possession of Northern and Central Africa lies in the
country stretching from the Senegal to Lake Tchad, and
the sources of the White Nile.

The intruding European race which ﬁrst gets possession
of this line of country becomes master of the future des-
tinies of Africa. Here exists a Negro population cut 011'
from the rest of mankind, under governments almost as
odious as the drum-head sovereignties of Europe. In
one respect the unhappy Negro of Central Africa has the
advantage over the European slave, crushed to the earth
by the late Neapolitan, Austrian, Russian, and Spanish

5* See note at page 551.

AFRICA. 561-

despots. If their bodies are enslaved, their minds are
free: The double tyranny is peculiar to Europe.

 

PORTUGUESE IN AFRICA.

After the lapse of about three hundred years the Lusi-
tanian intrusion into Africa approaches a termination. In
St. Paul de Loando, the centre of their power, there was,
when Dr. Livingstone visited it, one resident Englishman,
an ofﬁcial of the English Government ; it further contained
12,000 inhabitants, of whom there were ‘

. 670 males.
Whlteﬁ - - - ' ' 830{160 females.

In Angola there were not more than 1000 whites; in
Bengo, 11 whites. The Portuguese never showed any
energy in Africa. The elephant abounded, but they could
not domesticate it; in fact, they were merely a party of
slave-hunting adventurers. Did the race produce no
statesman—no man of ability? The Portuguese of Brazil
are described by a recent traveller in that country as a
race profoundly ignorant, and worthless for any enterprise.
W European race could meet for any length of
tame the rain upon its population which the maintenance
Wu a tropical country necessitates. A European
force of 80, 000 soldiers is said to be required to maintain
British supremacy in India, but it is doubtful if Britain
could meet the exigencies of such a force in that country.
There is a curious passage in Macaulay's “ History of
England” respecting the eﬂ'ects on the Celtic race of Ire-
land when, by the withdrawal of Tyrconnel and the
“ United Irish,” Ireland was drained of its noblest blood.
N ow they amounted to only 14,000 men, and yet Macaulay
thinks that the race never recovered from this loss.

The Celtic, a much more energetic race than the Portu-
guese, have not been more successful in tropical Africa.
The ﬁnest position on the western coast of that continent
unquestionably is Senegal. It came into the possession of

o o

562 AFRICA.

the French in 1637; it possesses a noble river navigable
towards the interior for several hundred miles. After
more than two centuries of possession, here are the results
in 1844.

Population, 18,753.
Europeans—Men, 138; women, 27:165.
Indigene’s, 652l.——Men, 3198; women, 3323.
Engagées, 801.
Slaves (here called captives), 10,196.
Functionaries and Military, 868.

In Jamaica, captured by Cromwell in 1655, the popula-
tion in 1844 consisted of—

Whites . . . . . . 15,776
Mixed (mulattoes) . . . 68,529
Blacks . . . . . 293,128

 

Total . . . . 377,433

Jamaica since its conquest has cost England in troops
alone 75,000. The death rate is 120 per 1000, instead of 16
as in England. To maintain an armed European effective
force (say 5000 men) for the protection of this one colony,
would drain of its surplus youth a European population in
the mother country of 2,500,000. I speak not of colonizing
the island with white blood ; such an effort might prove too
much even for England, if the death rate of all ages were
found to correspond with that at the military age. Thus to
maintain 80,000 men in India ﬁt for military service, would
require the surplus youth of a population at least twice
as much as that of England, and there arises the momentous
political question for the industrious of England, whether
or not they ﬁnd in the military possession of India an
adequate return for the loss of so much life and treasure.

563

CONCLUDING CHAPTER.
THE PRESENT PHASIS OF ETHNOLOGY.

THERE are many, no doubt, who think that Ethnology
originated with Blumenbach, and who fondly hope that it
terminated with Pritchard. Why so many cling to a
delusion of this kind admits of an easy explanation. To
most men ethnology is a tabooed subject, forbidden, inter-
dicted, and not to be thought of by the profane. Even
scientiﬁc men* have blamed me for applying to man the
physiological principle regulating all that lives, or that has
lived on the globe.

When my “ Lectures on the Races of Man” ﬁrst ap-
peared, it was objected by many that I had introduced
into ethnology many questions foreign to it, and amongst
these they included man’s moral and intellectual nature.
But from the very commencement of my inquiries into
the history of nature up to the present moment, it had
always appeared to me that such questions form of
necessity the most important matter of all such inquiries.
These qualities I considered to be as unalterable as the
more obvious physical ones which, before my time, had
exclusively engaged the attention of all ethnologists, and
I had but to look at the map of the world at any time in
the stream of history to perceive that in all great questions.
of civilization, religion, national power,~or greatness, the
element which chieﬂy inﬂuenced these was in reality the
element of race. Why go back to ancient times for proofs
of the truth of this proposition? Look at Ireland and
Austria; America, North and South ; at Africa; at India.
I was blamed for having ﬁrst brought forward this dan-
gerous topic, and for placing it so prominently before the
reading public; but why conceal the truth? The real

" M, Serves: “ Mém. de l’Acade’mie."
o o 2

564 THE PRESENT PHASIS or ETHNOLOGY.

question for the man of science is, simply truth; whilst I
now write,* the Saxon Government of England refuses to
admit into the medical service of the English army a
native of India, on the ground of his being, to a certain
extent, a coloured man. The Under Secretary of State
denies that the ground of refusal is colour; but I know
that it is simply colour—that is, race. The hypocrisy of
the Anglo-Saxon tries everywhere to avoid this question,
which meets him in one form or another in every part of
his heterogeneous dominions. He tries to make it appear
that medical men being employed in all climates, a native
of India is not a suitable person to enter the service!
Profound hypocrisy ! Dastardly and mean! An insult to
common sense!

N 0 good reason exists for regarding man as a distinct
creation from the living world, whilst as regards the history
and origin of ethnology, I learn from the classic authors
of antiquity, and more especially from the writings of
Hippocrates, that most ethnological questions had been
deeply considered by Greek and Roman writers. The
brilliant sketch ofBlumenbach, “ .De Varietatibus Humani
Generis,” glanced at, and was indeed based on, an idea
which perhaps originated with Buﬁ'on; namely, that the
great continents of the world being centres of creation,
gave origin to those varieties of men which the learned
German declined to call species. But even this idea, that
continents were centres of organic creations, was not new ;
neither did it require much philosophy to invent. All
history, as well as the progress of geographical discovery,
showed that, as new continents became known to mankind,
races of men and animals hitherto unknown were found
to occupy these recently-discovered onrediscovered lands ;
races which were not to be found on other continents. Of
this fact Buffon happily availed himself, and Blumenbach,
with the tact of a profound naturalist as he was, bestOwed
on some of the races of men names derived simply from
their geographical position.

* Case of Dr. Thompson, a native of India, at this moment before
the House of Commons.

THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOGY. 565

Having from my earliest years devoted much attention
to the natural history of man, and as the results of my
inquiries were opposed to the more generally received
opinions, I resolved on the ﬁrst ﬁtting opportunity to sub-
mit these views to the public. Accordingly, as a prelude
to a more carefully prepared publication, I delivered
several courses of lectures in a considerable number of
philosophic institutions, and in most of them with great
success. * These lectures were afterwards published
in a medical journald‘ and finally collected in a single
volume, under the title of “ The Races of Men: a Frag-
ment.” These lectures preceded nearly'all the Works on
modern ethnology. We are so habituated to View man-y
kind as composed of nations, that when I proposed inquir-i
ing into their history from this novel point of view, I found
but few who could distinctly follow me. The ignorance
on this question of race was, as I have proved in the work
on the “Races of Men,” most profound. The celebrated Dr.
Samuel Johnson travelled through Scotland without per-
ceiving that he had come in contact with another race of
men, of whom he knew nothing, and the Times, a few
years ago, sent a special commissioucr to Ireland to verify
a question of race which could have been decided by a
visit to Marylebone and St. Giles’. Thus, for some years
I had the whole question to myself, nor was it until the
revolutionary epoch of 1848, that the press condescended
to admit that rare had anything to do with human affairs.
Since then many brilliant but erroneous articles have ap-
peared in various journals'l‘ on this question of race, as was
.to be expected from those who, ﬁnding a new and popular
subject of inquiry started by another, proceed in the race
much faster than any scientific man‘can be expected to
followl§ VVi'thout alluding to this further, I may be per-

‘ " In Manchester, Newcastle Liverpool, Colchester, Sheiﬁeld’, Chelms-
for‘d, Wan mgton about ﬁfteen years ago.

1’ The Medical I’imes

1 Especially in the Times, whose editor has been in the constant
habit of plagiarizing all my ideas without acknowledgment.
_ § As journalists write for the noncc, they do not stand on scientiﬁc
triﬂes.

566 THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOG'Y.

mitted to remark, that all accustomed to view man as
composed of nations, and to look at his history only from
a national point of View, objected strongly to my theories,
as they were pleased to term them. They could not see
ethnological questions in the present sad condition of
Mexico and the so-called republics of Central and South
America, the past and present attitude of the Gaulish
race in Ireland and in France, the limitation of Pro-
testantism in Europe to the Saxon and Teutonic'races
nearly. Day by day the opposition weakens; the great
questions of race are discussed in a calmer and more
philosophic tone, and there is every danger of their
running into the other extreme, and undervaluing those
acquired and artiﬁcial qualities strictly the result of
national inﬂuences. However this may be, I have the
satisfaction-of knowing that these contributions to the
natural theory of man will be much more readily under-
stood than my preceding ones, and that I shall experience
less difﬁculty in explaining to my readers than formerly to
my audiences, how it is that race inﬂuences the civilization
and destinies of nations. Day by day events, sometimes
of a terrible character, occur, proving the correctness of
the view. Whilst I now write, it is admitted that the long-
cherished scheme of amalgamating all the races composing
the Austrian Empire has completelybroken down; the Ger-
man population of Schleswig Holstein refuses to unite with
Scandinavian Denmark; Italy aspires to eject from her
soil all traces of the Goths and Vandals who have so long
misruled her classic land; for hundreds of years every
trace of that numerous and civilized Celtic population,
who built Milan and gave to Northern Italy the name of
Gallia- Cisalpina, has long since disappeared, to the great
regret, no doubt, of the gallant armies who won the
battles of Marengo, Magenta, and Solferino. The
hybrids of South America, with the low vitality of all
hybrids, proceed rapidly to the destruction I was the ﬁrst,
many years ago, to foretel ; whilst in Northern America, the
European races, forgetting the land of their origin, have
given themselves new names. But nature disclaims the

THE PRESENT PHASIS OF ETHNOLOGY. 567

deception, and says to them, “ You brought with you from
Europe all the characters of race—some Celtic—some
Saxon—some Scandinavian-some German or Teuton—
as such, go where you will, you must for ever remain a
part of the race to which you originally belonged. You
are an intrusive race or races, you and your oxen, horses
and sheep. By avoiding all intermarriage with the abori-
ginal races of the soil, and with the black race imported
from Africa, you may for a time escape the annihilation of
your races; but a-head of you stands the grand difﬁculty
—climate and an uncongenial soil—certain in time to
exhaust the vitality of your race, as it has ever done with
all the intrusive.” This is one of the checks nature adopts
to preserve her species of living forms, against the univer-
sality of one form of life ; against man himself; for, inas-
much as bm’gandage, or a desire to plunder other nations
and races, to rob them of their territories, and to reduce
them to a. sort of bondage or slavery, is the great aim of all
the nations and races of men, so, long ere this, one strong-
handed, unscrupulous, intellectual race, led by men of
genius, a Caesar, an Alexander, or a Napoleon, would have
overspread and peopled the earth. But nature’s checks ever
and anon upset their policy, arrest their brigandage, and
restore the world to what it was. Certain events in
history which seem incomprehensible, admit of a ready
explanation on the theory of race I now advocate. Apply
it, for example, to the Gaulish or Celtic race, whose chief
clan now occupies France; by a singular misnomer the
race are mistaken for Franks or Teutons. Their true name
is Velshes, and their character has never altered since
the remotest historical period, any more than that of any
other race tolerably pure. The Arab chief who, inquiring
of M. De Saulcy the name of the sultan of his nation, was
told by the learned Frenchman that “France was a Re-
public, and had no sultan,” made this reply, “ Impossible!
you cannot go on without a sultan.” This happened
during the short-lived Republic of 1848. How speedily
was the remark of the Arab chief veriﬁed!

Each race, probably from national vanity, the eternal

568' THE PRESENT PHASIS or ETHNOLOGYI

enemy of all truth, undervalues the gifts of other races.'
Lowest of all, in the estimation of the other races, stand
the Negro and the Bosjieman. But the Negro is equal
to feats of arms ; and, on obtaining their liberty, the blacks
of Hispaniola elected a sultan. This we Saxons esteem as
a great blunder, but we must not think the worse of them'
for committing so sad at political error. Some highly civi-
lized races have done the same, or have submitted to be
ruled by maniacs and imbecile dynasties, despicable and
abhorred by other nations ; we must not think so meanly
of the Negro. When the Celtic race of France became
once more a republic in 1848, and once more acquired the
natural rights of men, many, not looking to the inﬂuence
of race, foretold a sublime future for that great country.
I doubted it; nay, I was sure of the contrary. I
rested my doubts on the character of the race, and none
will now venture to say that, in this instance at least, my
theory proved at fault. Races never alter. The war which
the Saxon carried on against the black races some hundred
years ago, he now pursues in Southern Africa. You will
be told the contrary by the interested ; I recommend you
to read attentively the travels of the truth-speaking mis-
sionary Livingstone ; not his speeches at the Guildhall, at
Oxford, and Cambridge, but the words of the traveller
himself, and judge for yourselves.

. Ethnology is not a new science, but it starts from a
new basis; and, since the publication of my work on the
“Races of Men," it has entered on a new phasis. Hitherto,
we have been taught to look on mankind merely as
composed of nations ; I ask you now, and was the ﬁrst to
do so, to look on them as composed of races. M. Agassiz
says, that nature made nations ,- he‘ must mean races.
Nations are artiﬁcial combinations of men, who may either
be of one race or of several. A moment’s reﬂection on the
history of mankind ought to have proved this to the illus-
trious Swiss naturalist. Thus, the Germans, or Teutons,
are a. race of men, and a most distinguished race too, but
they never formed a nation; the Jews are a race, not a
nation ; and- so are the Parsees, the Bosjiemen, and the

THE PRESENT‘PHA‘SIS or ETHNOLOGY. 569

Gipsies. The Celtic Caledonian and the Kymraig of Wales
are a portion of the great Celtic and Kymraig races, but
they never formed nations, properly so called. But I
admit frankly and at once, that a race, to be entitled to a
page in the history of mankind, must form a nation, and
become, to a certain extent, civilized. Their civilized con—
dition will be deeply inﬂuenced by the qualities of race,
hence the peculiarities of the civilization of Pekin and of
Paris, which are generally admitted to differ from each
other in some triﬂing matters; of London and of Madrid ;
of Moscow and Naples ; of Cairo and Milan. I have been
blamed for asserting that mankind can make no solid pro-
gress, more especially under the government of dynasties;
This question I discussed when reviewing the position of
the great American Republic, as compared with the
thoroughly rotten condition of the European populations,
ruled over by dynasties where heredite' and feudalite”,
nobles, priests, and kings, have done their best, or their
worst, to degrade mankind, and to say to the millions of
each nati011,——“‘ In the great game of life you can take no
part; you have no stake, belong to no class ; to a chosen
few belongs the privilege of playing the game with loaded
dice ; you have no chance. Nature may have bestowed on
you the highest genius and the greatest practical ability
to make good your position in the nation of which you
form one, but nothing of all this can avail you against
feudalite’ and heredite’, against the classes to whom the
patronage of the earth by right belongs.”

Under suc'h a dispensation shall I call it. 'P‘ or inﬂiction,
the European races must ever remain nearly as they are.
All dynasties are essentially obstructive, their very existf
ence depends on the successful obstruction they offer to
the progress of intellectual man.

The correctness of my views on the fate of hybrids and
on hybridism has been called 1n question by some, but
many able inquirers have given their verdict in their
favour, whilst the theory respecting the extinction of' 1n-‘
trusive races has met with almost universal support. Some
of my views as to the origin of species or races have been

570 THE PRESENT PHASIS OF ETHNOLOGY.

in part already published.* I am now engaged in a more
extended inquiry into that subject. Ancient cosmogonies
are now on their trial in England; they have been long
set aside in Germany, and even in France, by the thought-
ful and the scientiﬁcally educated. Zoology has assumed
a. new phasis even in this country, or rather zoologists
begin to adopt, cautiously and furtively as it were, the
Views of Button and Goethe, Oken and Geoﬂ'roy St.
Hilaire, Cuvier and De Blainvilled’ Nevertheless, the
reception so lately given by the Academy of France to
the Memoir of M. Broun, shows signiﬁcantly that much
remains to be done before the new philosophy of zoology
can fairly be admitted into the temple of science. It was
the observation of Mr. Emerson, I think, and of M.
Guizot, that in no country in the world could they ﬁnd
such instances of the endurance of' customs as in England,
and Mr. Emerson instanced the charity bestowed on all
travellers at the Holy Cross of Winchester in proof—a
charity which had endured for many hundred years. I
could suggest to Mr. Emerson a suﬁicient reason for the
observance of certain customs in England and'elscwhere,
and I feel surprised that the same did not occur to him.
The persistence of' customs and beliefs stands on precisely
the same footing,—namely, “the numbers, wealth, and
power of those interested in opposing all and every
change”: The permanency of any system depends on the
interest taken by a powerful class to resist all change;
remove the interest, and the system ceases. “ If you will
secure to me the Bishopric of Rome,” said a liberal and
philosophic Pagan, prefect of the city, to a friendly and
urgent Christian, “ I shall to-morrow become a Christian.”
The metaphysicians of all ages (I do not include Mr.

* In the Lancet and Zoologtst.

t As popularly explained in “ The Vestiges of Creation” and in Mr.
Darwin’s late work on “ The Origin of Species.”

1' Universities and colleges originally founded by papal Rome with
a view to the perpetuation of Roman Catholicism naturally retain, as
an essential character of their constitution, their obstructive nature, re-
sisting to the utmost of their power the real progress of the human
mind. In the place of truth and the laws of evidence they teach logical
formulae—words for facts.

THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOGY. 571

Hume) have assigned to man a complex intellectual con-
dition, which they have analysed each after his own
fashion. But history. which is, or ought to be, an expo-
sition of the practical working of the minds of nations,
races, and individuals, when carefully read, disproves this
view of humanity, reducingall human actions to a few
great and simple principles common to all mankind.
Such seems to have been the opinion of Tacitus, Voltaire,
Gibbon, Hume, and N iebuhr ; I have never seen any
grounds for doubting the correctness of their View.

As it is science alone which opposes the spread of fana-
ticism and human degradation over the earth, scientiﬁc
men are apt to set too high a value on the inﬂuence of
science and genius. Arago was one of these persons ; yet,
even in his own time, Chateaubriand wrote as if no such
persons as Cuvier, Laplace, Goethe, and Newton had ever
lived. His writings, though opposed to authentic history
and to all the truths of science, are in great request in
France. [Fortunately for science, the demonstrations of
Cuvier cannot be classed by any sane mind with the reveries
of philosophers ; they upset all the ancient cosmogonies;
greater than the discoveries of Newton, they reduce all
ancient history to a mere fable—a myth. True, he framed
many hypotheses, some of which were refuted by De Blain-
ville ; but the “ Ossemens Fossiles ” admit of no refutation.
He meddled but little with human history, which yet is
the great object of all inquiry. Antagonistic of all nature’s
works, man creates for himself a world of his own ; he is
nature’s last and most fatal gift to the earth. But he will
never succeed in extinguishing all the forms of life she has
placed on the globe, although this hasbeen predicated of
him. He moves in circles which he mistakes for progress;
the arts he invents are looked on by the next genera-
tion as mere rubbish; the thoughts and ideas of one gene-
ration are laughed at by the succeeding one, and looked
on with contempt. The great object of dynasties and
dynastic institutions is to arrest, to a certain extent, this
grand law of renovated life surging up with each genera-
tion. In the attempts to stop nature’s laws, lies the great

572 THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOGY;

secret of' the downfall of nations, education, the great
arm of the tyrant, being the means employed to paralyse
in the rising generation the inﬂuence of renovated life.
In the consolidation and perpetuity of national institutions,
I fancy I see the grave of human intellect, the tombs of
the hopes and progress of the mind of countless genera-
tions. Education, the grand arm of the tyrant, stereotypes
certain forms of thought, dwarﬁng the national mind on
all subjects of importancef’l< To this, no doubt, may be
traced the degradation of many great empires and races:
h—China, India, Egypt, ancient Mexico, bear witness to
the truth of the theory. Hence the alarm at all changes
exhibited by all dynasties and dynastic institutions.

One of the elements which chieﬂy modify man’s history
is the element of race. This natural antagonism of race to
race was ﬁrst mooted by the subjects of Justinian, who ob—
jected to the reception of savage Negro nations into fel~
lowship and union with civilized men. Yet the Abyssinians,
to whom they applied theSe terms, were not Negroes. And
now the question agitates the entire world; from New
Zealand to the shores of the Baltic, it1is a ﬁght of races.
Ireland, Austria, Italy, America,‘North and South Africa,
India, Syria, are prepared or preparing to ﬁght once more
the battle of race, and to prove of how little avail are moral
and religious codes in modifying the moral and physical
qualities which nature has stamped on the various races
of men. Thus, races of men have their histories as well as
nations—histories lost in the abyss of time; they have
an individualism, and form a family which may be de-'
stroyed, but not sensibly modiﬁed, by climate. It is this
question of race, and the possible reconstruction of the
map of Europe on the principles of race, which startleand
alarm the gigantic robbers who dismembered Poland and
Sweden, crushed the energies of the Scandinavian race,
and, by maintaining a perpetual conﬂict in Germany and
Italy, hope to destroy for ever the hopes of the Teuton

‘5 When Napoleon the Great became emperor, he' engaged the ,
venal press of France to write down and calumniate the memory of
Voltaire. ' - ' " ' ' ' '

THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOGY'. 573

and the Italian, to take their place amongst the great
nations of the earth.

Of the various questions connected with inquiries into
race, the capability of civilization under one form or
another is clearly the most important, civilization being in
fact the great aim of all mankind. Could it be shown
that there exists a race incapable, under any circumstances,
of becoming civilized, who cannot be taught “the laws
that guard the social rights of human kind,” then such a
race would unquestionably belong to the untameable
“ wilde,” and must of necessity be put to the ban of the
world. But on that point the humane may, I think,
take comfort, for no such race exists, or perhaps ever
did exist.

The question next in importance to that of civilization
is the capability of the geographical extension of a race.
On this depends ultimately in some measure the power of
the various races to form communities, nations, empires,
republics, hives derived from the original stock; and we
have seen that this quality is much more limited than is
generally supposed to be. Various races have at different
times overrun the then civilized world; the Arab, for
example; the Mongol; the Turcoman or Tatar; the Greek,
and the Roman—where are they now? Brigandage, or
the attempt to take possession of the lands and property
of foreign nations, is the staple trade of all the races of
men. Hence the importance of tracing these intrusive
outbursts of races and nations into foreign lands, and as
these attempts have been unceasing since the commence-
ment of authentic history, a suﬁiciency of materials perhaps
exists to trace the effects of this grand system of brigandage
on the destinies of mankind. But these intrusive races are
of necessity exotic; now, exotics seldom thrive, hybrids-
never. 0f the delusions Which beset most races when
formed into powerful nations, one is, the notion that the
earth was made for them alone; another, that all the races
of men may ultimately amalgamate, and so become one; a
third (a very natural delusion) is, that the existing genera-
tion is inﬁnitely superior to all that preceded it, conceding

574 THE PRESENT PHASIS or ETHNOLOGY.

at the same time that, by a continual progress and constant
improvement in the physique as well as in the morale, the
human race fast approaches that happy condition called
“ the perfect.”* The solid progress which mankind seems
to have made since the commencement of history, is re-
ducible to very narrow limits. A Remand” who had himself
seen and formed a part of the highest civilization to which
man can attain, expressed in a few words the history of
the progress of humanity; and if Macaulay, adopting and
adapting the idea of Sulpicius to modern times, has ex-
pressed in more inﬂated language the same idea, he has
coupled with it certain misconceptions and scientiﬁc errors
which the Roman by a higher generalization avoided. For
if, by future New Zealander, Macaulay means a pure and
unmixed race, descended from the present savage indi-
genous race, then all history shows that no such race ever
attained any high civilization; if, by future New Zealander,

* There is one race which, having already attained perfection in all
things, cannot, to be consistent, admit both theories. That race is the
mixed population now occupying England. In proof, I cite the cha-
racter of the nation as drawn by one of themselves, a popular metro-
politan priest, trained no doubt in Oxford or Cambridge, and deeply

read in the history of the world. It formed part of a discourse delivered
on the 4th of May. 1856, in the church of St. Stephen, Walbrook, by

I the Reverend Dr. Croly. He is excusing the horrible butcheries com-
mitted by the English in India: “ England had succeeded to Israel,

and had possessed unexampled prosperity as the depository of the
true religion. England had the freest constitution in the world; by
the gift of God she had the most extensive empire, she had the most
exhaustless opulence. she had the most substantial, vigorous, and com-
prehensive commerce; she had the most productive agriculture; she had
the most active manufactures, with the most intelligent artizans, and
the wealthiest, best-clothed, best-fed, and manliest peasantry in Europe ;
she had been gifted with the two great inventions of the age—the
steam-engine and the railroad, the greatest inventions in the world;
she was the only country in the world where loyalty was a principle.
secure while every other throne had been shaken within memory, and
the continent was revolutionary at this time; and those exclusive grounds
of superiority she acknowledged to be the sole bounty of God as His
gifts to the professor of the true faith of the Scriptures." “ (The collec-
tions for the church to be. erected at Constantinople, morning and
evening, amounted to 381. 113. 7%.)"

It must, I think, he conceded that nothing more can be said on this
subject, and that Condorcet’s theory of the advance of mankind towards
perfection is wholly inapplicable to the nation spoken of by Dr. Croly,
they being already perfect.

1* Sulpicius.

 

 

THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOGY. 575

he meant a hybrid race, descended from the intrusive
European and autochthonous natives, such a race would
share the fate of all hybrid races—that is, become extinct;
and if, by future New Zealander, he meant a race of pure
European blood, standing their ground for many centuries
in the land of their adoption, then he speculates on what is
most problematical and still to be proved. Incomparably
superior to the ideas of the hired partisan of a class of
men leagued together for the plunder of Britain and her
colonies, were the views of Gibbon, expressed in sublime
language, worthy the ﬁrst of historians. In contrasting
the opposite extremes of savage and civilized life in the
present and past condition of Scotland, in a land in which,
according to St. Jerome, some of the tribes at least in his
days were cannibals, the historian observes : “ Such
reﬂections—the conversion, namely, of the cannibal Scots
into a noble and highly civilized race of men—tend to en-
large the circle of our ideas, and to encourage the pleasing
hope that New Zealand may produce, in some future age,
the Hume of the Southern Hemisphere.”* Equally just
in my mind was his View of the progress of humanity,
which in point of fact accords with that of Sulpicius, who
moralized on the fallen cities of Greece and Asia nearly
twenty centuries before the time of Gibbon. “ Since the
ﬁrst discovery of the arts, wars, commerce, and religious
zeal have diffused among the savages of the old and new
world these inestimable gifts, namely, the use of ﬁre and of
metals; the propagation and service of domestic animals ;
the methods of hunting and ﬁshing; the rudiments of navi-
gation; the imperfect cultivation of corn or other nutritive
grain; and the simple practice of the‘mechanical trades;
these arts can never be lost. We may, therefore, ac-
quiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the
world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth,
the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue of the
human race.” Admitting to the full the correctness of the
great historian’s View of human nature, and the extreme

* Of this sublime reﬂection, Lord Macaulay's celebrated passage is
simply a caricature.

576. THE PRESENT PHASISVOF ETHNQLOGYr

modesty of his claims in favour of the steady progress of
humanity, I still feel disposed to think that there are races
which advance not in civilization ; for the arts enumerated
by him do not constitute civilization, and if lost, would
speedily be rediscovered. Otherswhich,after having worked
out their own civilization—as all races must do and have
ever done—have receded in presence of an intrusive race,
and reverted to a condition unmistakeably barbarous. In
the history of the Arab and the Kabyle, the Jew and Gipsy,
the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, and in the present
condition of Asia Minor and of the Persian states, we
still ﬁnd proofs that true civilization is a delicate and
sensitive plant of long and artiﬁcial growth, quick to
perish—no matter what the race may be—under the rude
grasp of governments, whose sole objects are spoliation
and robbery of the people. France tells a sad tale, so
also does the history of modern India; it is about to be
repeated beyond a doubtin Central Africa, for man moves
in circles, of which the last- is sometimes the most con-
tracted. A race is a family with strong family likenesses,
moral and physical. What the most Christian people in
the world—indeed, according to their own belief, the only
true Christians on earth—what this wonderful people did
in America and India, they must repeat in Africa, which
they now invade at all points. A new crusade has been
formed, the banners of which are the cross surmounting
a bale of cotton; Oxford and Manchester combine to push
forward the good work, which, aided by the Armstrong
gun, cannot fail to reduce Africa to the condition we now
so much admire in the United States of America, Australia,
India, etc.——-the native races exterminated, or ground to
the earth in the most abject condition humanity can
assume. All this endures for a time. At last nature
resumes her course, and the intrusive race disappears.
But, although this question of the fate of intrusive races
be, after all, the most important in the history of nations,
and even of races, since upon its solution must ever depend
all calculations as to their extension over the earth, their
progress in wealth, in political power, and in the kind of

THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOGY. 5’77.

renown which most men prefer, it yields in certain re-‘
spects to another, namely, the capability for a high civiliza-
tion. Hence the history of the civilization of a race, and
the progress it has made in the social and ﬁne arts, in
literature and science, ought naturally to engage our
attention more strongly than mere feats of arms. There'
is a delusion, which as it ﬂatters the vanity of each suc-
cessively existing generation, will probably hold its ground
for ever. Each generation feels conﬁdent that, as being
the latest, it must be foremost in all the arts which orna-
ment humanity. They have had the beneﬁt, so they say,
of all preceding generations, and of necessity they must
be superior. This great delusion probably pervades all the
races of men; with the Saxon it is a stereotyped belief;
it is organic. Yet there never was a greater delusion nor a
deeper misconception of the facts of history. Ihave called
it elsewhere the pioneer theory, as based on the idea that
the Copts, Assyrians, Hindoo, and Mongols were our
pioneers, and as if perfection in art, literature, and science
depended on the attempts of successive generations to
improve on the practice of their predecessors. But if this
were so, how are we to explain the state of Europe during
the Middle Ages, occurring so long after the absolutely
perfect in art and literature was attained by a race of
whom we really know nothing (the antique Greek). For
thousands of years after their asra not only did art, lite-
rature, and science decline, but even to this day, with
the remains of antiquity before us, we cannot approach
the ideas of that wonderful race; nor is it going too far to
say that many powerful, civilized nations now on the
earth cannot even comprehend the meaning of such terms
as the absolutely perfect, the true, and the beautiful, in
the right conception of which all art, literature, and, per-
haps, even science are included. Of the social or mechanical
arts I speak not here; they originate in necessity, and
after all merit but little consideration in the history of
mankind.

The idea of supporting ethnological propositions by the
testimony of ancient monuments, originated, I think, with

1’ P

578 THE PRESENT PHASIS OF ETHNOLOGY.

myself :* in proof I may refer to M. Edwards’ letter to
Thierry the historian. The proofs derived from such
monuments are open, I am aware, to many objections.
Some of these I have stated in the observations on the
Coptic race and on other forms of ancient civilization.
Seeing the phasis ethnology has now assumed, its practical
application to human history may be safely left to the
journalists of Europe. In the chapter on the Past, Present,
and Future of Africa, I think I have proved that the element
of race cannot be omitted in solving the great questions
affecting humanity.“l‘

The destinies of civilized nations depend no doubt, to a
certain extent, on the policy of the ruling powers of each ;
but this policy, mainly made up of family connexions
amongst the despots, is being constantly checked and
modiﬁed by the element of race. The successors of
Charlemagne divided central Europe amongst them in 843.
Then France became distinct from Germany, and to this
separation and period, historians trace the hatred subsist-
ing between the French and the Germans: But when we
reflect how distinct the Gauls (now called French) have ever
been from the Germans, Scandinavians, Sclavonians and
Italians, it is impossible to refer to a mere political event a
natural antipathy. The true Frankish blood has long dis-
appeared from Gaul and from Italy. For a thousand years
the families in possession of all power have met and re-
modelled the map of Europe to suit their purposes. In
this remodelling, of which a remarkable one is now in pro-
gress, the last thing thought of is the interests of the
people, of the nations. They are no more considered now
than they were in 1815 and in 855. The congresses of

* M. Pulsky ascribes the idea to Messrs. Nott and Gliddon, but their
observations were made long subsequent to mine.

f I was surprised to observe lately, in a number of the Times, that
“Mr. Macaulay had startled the world by ascribing religious differences
to ethnological causes. In no part of Macaulay’s works can I ﬁnd any
reference to such a view, which is indeed contrary to all his theories of
history. It was ﬁrst proposed in my work on The Races of Men.

I Voltaire, “ Espr. et Moeurs,” vol. ii. p. 15 .—“ Thus was Germany
lost to France.” Voltaire ought rather to have said,—“ Thus was Gaul
lost to Germany.”

~

THE PRESENT PHASIS or ETHNOLOGY. 519

the descendants of Charlemagne ended in Europe falling
into the hands of a number of petty despots, or barons, and
bishops, whose struggles for power and wealth reduced
Europe to a state of complete barbarism.

We have seen the Roman or Italian power rise and fall,
leaving scarcely a trace of the race in any of the countries
it had subdued. If we now trace the barbarous trans-
Rhenish and trans-Danubian races over the same grounds
we shall ﬁnd similar results. Vandals and Saxons, Suevi,
Alcmanni, Goths, in brief, the races whom Rome had not
overcome, poured into France, Spain, Africa, Asia Minor,
Italy, and held for a time these countries. Nearly every
trace of these barbarians has now disappeared, and the
primitive races again occupy the land. The Arab, too, arose
in his might, and thought to have conquered the earth;
they are at present nearly reduced to what they were in
the time of Xenophon. The last of the Goths in Spain
has been long dead and gone. and the olive races of the
Peninsula are now in all probability what they were
when Hannibal traversed it on his way to Italy. These
Arabs were a superior race to the natives, and but for their
.book were capable of the highest civilization to which an
Oriental race is equal.

About the year 842 a race new to Europe appeared on
the conﬁnes of the Byzantine empire. I allude to the
Russ or Muscovite, who now play so important a. part in
European history. Their great political ruse is to make
it appear that in reality they form a portion of the Slavo4
nian race; whilst the Pruss, the ﬁrst cousin of the Mus-
eovite, strongly desires to be thought aGerman.

Amongst the European races, as well as amongst others,
physical force is the great power which effects everything.
As each race poured into civilized Europe, it established
its rights by force. In this originated the kingdom of
Hungary, peopled by an eastern race; a Tartar race, the
same, in fact, who afterwards, under the name of Turks, de-
stroyed the last remains of the Roman Empire in the East.

If we calmly survey the present position of the Euro.
pean races, we may, I think, arrive at the conclusion that

P P 2

580 THE PRESENT PHASIS OF ETHNOLOGY.

little or no improvement can be hoped for so long as they
are governed by the present dynasties or families, and
educated by the now existing priesthood. It is the interest
of these two classes to deny to men their natural rights as
men; to perpetuate the rotten institutions of the past, by
giving them a new coating of varnish, and so pass them
off on mankind as if they were new and in accordance
with what they call the spirit of the age. When Malthus,
in his anxiety to establish his own theories and refute
Condorcet, denied to the human race that principle of pro-
gress which the theoretical and ardent mind of the modern
Celt desired to bestow on it, arguing, that to the increase
of food nature had set certain limits beyond which she
could not be compelled to go, and that this limitation in
respect to food rendered hopeless and visionary all such
theories as that of' Condorcet, he might, as I think, have
found a better reason for the slow progress in the im-
provement of mankind, in the institution within whose
walls he composed his work on population. Two grand
obstacles prevail in Europe, as they have ever done in most
countries, to the improvement of the human mind; these
are the organized faction or class who enjoy hereditarily
the monopoly of the government of a nation and the
plunder of the millions; the second is the priesthood, by
whose aid have been formed those corporate bodies called
Universities, whose aim it is to stereotype for centuries
the errors, mistakes, and follies of a bygone age. By
these means the progress of the human mind is reduced
to its minimum, and so maintained.

It may be asked—410w is it that each generation on
attaining the force and dignity of manhood, does not shake
off these antiquated rottennesses and demand free scope
for the human mind? The answer is easy. In each
nation there exists a vast conspiracy against the people,
united, combined, vigorous, watchful, suspicious. Scarcely
any nation can break down such a union. It has been
attempted in almost every country, but with little or no
success. Whilst it endures, human progress is impossible.

Amongst the various races of Europe it is easy, I think,

 

THE PRESENT PHASIS OF ETHNOLOGY. 581
to perceive traces of some pre-historic races, of whom we
have no account whatever. The Boors, so well represented
by 0stade and Teniers, and still to be found in Flanders,
seem to me to be the remains of a primitive race spread
all over the Low Countries, and extending eastward towards
the Black Forest and westward into England. I have
been assured that the race still exists in the Black Forest.
The Kymri, or Cimbri, still exist in Wales ; a few, mingled
with the Celts, are to be found in Ireland and Caledonia.

Most writers seem to think that the Belgians are the
direct descendants of the Kymri, and the present Welsh
(a distinct race of men) have the advantage of being in
possession of the namef’“

* I subjoin a well-written letter on the subject of the primitive Kymri,
written by one who has evidently studied the history of race :—

“ Bristol, Dec. 12th, 1859.

“ SIR.-——I am glad you are going to republish your lectures. I hope
you will have each race illustrated with a woodcut; there can be no
difficulty in ﬁnding individual portraits which would do for types of the
several races. W'ith great respect and deference, I also hope you will,
more in detail, describe the differences of the subdivisions ; forinstance,
the ‘ Celtic’ is described in your last as one race with general charac-
teristics. whilst in reality there are included in that race subdivisions
with the most opposite characteristics ; for instance, the Gaelic or Erse
is described as having a common character with the K ymric or Welsh,
two people differing in blood, language, and religion as much as the
true Celt and Saxon; for instance,—

The K ymrz'c
Is never witty, always humour-
ous;
Is always cautious;
Always makes a good sailor;

Has broad shoulders, high and
awkward. waddles as he walks ;

Has a receding mouth and pro-
minent chin;

Has a broad, rather a low head,
great Width between the parietal
bones;

Is metaphysical and disputa-
tive in religion ; acknowledges no
authority except approved of by
his own reasoning;

I he Erse or Gaelic
Is always witty;

Never cautious ;

Never makes a good sailor,
always a good soldier;

Has narrow shoulders, springs
as he walks;
Has a prominent pouting
mouth, no chin ;

Has a high, narrow head;

Never reasons on religion, but
likes the showy and sensuous; is
by nature made for being priest-
ridden;

582 THE PRESENT PHASIS OF ETHNOLOGY.

No facts exist favouring the idea of a Caucasian stock of
men, originally appearing in that region, and spreading
afterwards over the earth. Wagner, who visited the
Caucasus, speaks of the idea as repugnant to history and
to common sense. It is sufﬁciently curious, no doubt,
that many distinct races of men have been found to in-
habit the Caucasus, but the ancient history of Asia might
almost aﬁbrd an explanation of the circumstance without
ascribing it to physical causes. To such a mountainous
region, tribes and races would ﬂee from their enemies.
As usual. limitrophic races bear no afﬁnity or resemblance
to each other, a fact to which I have already called the
attention of my readers. The Nogays, for example,
show a striking contrast to their nearest neighbour the
Circassian, whose nose is aquiline and features noble.
The Nogays, on the contrary, have the true Mongol type;
small sparkling eyes and projecting cheek bones, exactly
resembling those of the Calmuck. “The old men look

The Kymm‘c
Never begs, is too proud; wants
the Saxon’s energy to make
money, but has more than the
Saxon’s caution to take care of it,
and so seldom wants; cares not
for glory ;

Has talent for mathematics
(William I’rice, &c.); Classics (Sir
XV. Jones, Archdeacon Williams,
8m.) W’elshmen ﬁll half the Dis-
senting pulpits of England.

The Erse or Gaelic
Is by nature a beggar, never
thinks of the morrow, and so fre-
quently is destitute and a burden
to other nations; loves glory;

When the two races are brought
in contact, they always display
great antipathy;

Has talent for mob oratory,
with true pathos; for newspaper
editing (witness half the news.
papers of England); for Govern-
ment ofﬁces (witness the Excise
and Customs, &c.)

I could enlarge, but it is unnecessary.

“ You are, of course, better acquainted with these matters than the
humble writer of this letter. Mr. I’ropert, of the Benevolent College,
is a good specimen of the one race. I should here mention my ﬁrm
conviction that the Kymri is not the race which inhabited Britain in
the time of the Romans, but are the descendants of an invading race
Which came into the island after the Romans left or when they were
about leaving. The Gael is the true ancient Briton. I should mention
that, in saying this, I am thoroughly conversant with Kymric litera-
ture, and consider it a myth, which proves nothing.

“ I remain, sir, yours very respectfully,
“ KYMRO.”

,THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOGY. 583

like satyrs, even uglier and more brutish than the fright-
ful and sensual negroes of the Soudan, met with in
Algeria."*

“ I once related,” observes Dr. Wagner, “ to an
Ossetian, in Tiﬂis, that amongst the learned in Germany
it is a common opinion that the Germans are of the same
stock as the Ossetians, and that our forefathers formerly
dwelt in the Caucasian mountains. The Ossetian, who
was a very handsome man, with the Circassian aquiline
proﬁle, laughed outright at this, and an educated Russian
who w as standing near, agreed with him.

“ A W urtemburg peasant, of the colony of Marienﬁeld,
was just then passing by. The plump ﬁgure of this
German, his broad countenance, with its heavy expression,
and his slouching gait, contrasted, certainly, in a striking
manner, with the glorious ﬁgure of the Caucasian. ‘ How
is it possible,’ said the Russian, ‘ that there can be such
fools amongst you as to believe that people of such dif-
ferent types could possibly proceed from the same stock?
N o; the ancestors of these two men have no more come
from the same nest than hawks and turkey-cocks. Look
you; this Ossetian and that German carry on the same
business; they plough the ﬁeld and tend the cattle; let
them send their peasants to the high mountain, and dress
them all in the Caucasian coat, yet you would never make
an Ossetian or Circassian out of them. A thousand years
hence it would be easy to distinguish the posterity of both
a mile oﬁ'.’ ”

When we recollect that Hippocrates has placed near
the borders of the Black Sea the former existence of a
race of men called Macrocephali, the whole territory, in-
cluding the Caucasus and Caspian, becomes of great
interest to the ethnologist. Wagner has treated this
question in a superior manner. On the subject of' mixed
marriages he remarks: “The Russ, or Muscovites, are
fond of intermarriage with the women of other races, and
it has been remarked that, whatever be the race of the
woman, the male (Muscovite) inﬂuence predominates.”

* Wagner.

584 ,THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOGY.

The Hungarian is a Turk or Tartar, and an intrusive
race in Europe. Had he mingled with the Sclavonian, the
mixed race might perhaps have stood its ground for a.
time ; but, as it is, they have probably fought their last
national battle in Europe; their only hopes rest in a
union with their own race, the Turk, whose expulsion
from Europe must, I should think, shortly take place.

The Sclavonian race wants a leader. They are the most
intelligent of men, the most intellectual, the most meta-
physical, the most original in thought. Kossuth, perhaps,
has no equal in the present day. The Bohemians are
- Sclavonians, not Germans. The Austrians are the de-
scendants of the Gothic race. All these races are now to
i be found where they were when ﬁrst they became known
to the Romans.

“The features of Oriental women are regular but
unimpressive, they want sentiment and soul.” The re-
mark strictly applies to the Jewess, who, no doubt, is
Asiatic and Oriental.

“ The handsomest of the Georgian race are the Imeri-
tians of Colchis.”

Some primitive races of men seem to have existed in the
vicinity of the Euxine, presenting the form of cranium
which in later times has been found to prevail only in
America. “The Macrocephali,” observes Hippocrates,
“were so named by reason of the length of their heads.
This disproportion arose at ﬁrst from a‘custom, but at
present nature concurs also.”* “ So soon as a child is
born they fashion it with their hands, compress it with
bandages and other machines adapted to this practice or
custom, so that they force it to elongate itself and to take
insensibly a spherical form. At ﬁrst this was merely a
custom, but with time, nature was so bent (pliée) that it
no longer required to be forced by custom.”

He further adds, “ If this does not happen amongst these
people as formerly, it is that the practice has fallen into
disuse by man’s negligence.”

On reading this passage one is almost tempted to ex-

* P. 73. Coray's edition.

THE PRESENT PHASIS or ETHNOLOGY. 585

claim, “ Is there never to be any thing new under the sun P”
Here is the entire description, theories and all, of those
who have described the same practices as prevailing
amongst the Chenooks. The coincidence is most remark-
able, and leads the cautious, not to say the sceptical, to
entertain the strongest doubts on the subject.

Similar skulls were dug up a few years ago near the
Danube, and were thought to have belonged to the Avars,
a Hungarian race, but were also conjectured by some
to have been the skulls of Peruvians brought to Europe in
the time of Charles V. They resemble, in fact, the skulls
of the ancient Aztecs. I have not seen them, and decline
Oﬂ'ering any opinion.

Pallas, a distinguished naturalist and original observer,
remarks that “ the Tartar mountaineers of the three villages
of Keckenue, Leimere, and Somans, have a strange
physiognomy, different from that of all the other inhabi-
tants of Crim Tartary. Faces of an uncommon length,
as well as arched noses, exceedingly long and high heads,
compressed with a view to render them unusually ﬂat, all
contribute to produce diversiﬁed caricatures, so that the
greater part of these persons have distorted countenances,
and the least deformed resemble the ﬁgures of Satyrs.”

“ It is further remarkable that the hair and beards of
such mountaineers are almost uniformly light brown,
reddish, or even ﬂaxen, a circumstance seldom occurring in
the Crimea.”

In Strabo (Xi. 297), I ﬁnd the following remark bearing
on this question of artiﬁcial deformation of the cranium-—
“ On dit aussi que quelques uns de ces peuples s'étudient
a rendre les tétes de leurs enfans fort longues et a faire en
sorte que leurs fronts saillient au point d’ombrager 1e
menton.””‘=

Thus Pallas borrowed from Scaliger, and he from

* Pallas’ remark may be traced, I think, to Scaliger, who seems to
have disliked the Genoese. Scaliger, in Comment. sup. leeophrast. de
Causis Plantarum, lib. v. p. 287 :—“ Genuenses cum 3. Mauris progeni-
toribus accepissent olim morem ut infantibus recens natis tempera com-
primerentur, nunc absque ullo compressu Thersiteo et capite et animo
nascuntur.

586 .THE PRESENT PHASIS OF ETHNOLOGY.

Strabo; nevertheless, on Pallas’ authority we must be-
lieve that there is some foundation in fact for the ill-
natured remarks of Scaliger. Pallas resided long in the
Crimea.

That the form of the skull might be greatly modiﬁed,
and even its texture affected by external circumstances,
seems to have been a received fact in very ancient times.
Thus Herodotus saysﬁt “ I saw on the ﬁeld of battle a.
very surprising thing, which the inhabitants of the canton
pointed out to me. The bones of those who perished on
this day (the battle between Cambyses and the Egyptians,)
are still dispersed, but separately, so that you see on one
side those of the Persians, and on the other those of the
Egyptians, in the same places where they were from the
beginning. The heads of the Persians are so tender that
one may pierce them by striking them merely with a nail
(caillou) ; those of the Egyptians, on the contrary, are so
hard that one can scarcely break them by striking them
with stones. They told me the reason, and easily persuaded
me of its truth. The Egyptians, they observed, began at
their tenderest age to shave the head; their skull hardens,
by this means exposed to the sun, and they do not be-
come bald; one sees, in fact, much fewer bald men in
Egypt than in any other country. The Persians, on the
contrary, have the cranium feeble, because from their
youngest years they live in the shade, and have the head
always covered with a turban. I remarked at Paprenies
something similar in respect of the bones of those who
were defeated with Achemenes, son of Darius, by Maros,
King of Libya."

Thus early was hypothesis introduced into the great
question, involving the very essence of the natural history
of man.

I have sometimes felt disposed to view the elongated
head as an exaggerated type of cranium, common enough
in France and throughout Europe. It is characterized by
great length, narrowness, and a depression extending

* Thalia, lib. 3, p. 97.

THE PRESENT PHASIS 0F ETHNOLOGY. 587

across the vertex nearly from ear to car. This depression
M. F oville regards, erroneously, as I think, as the effect
of a mode of swathing or bandaging the head of the new-
born infant in some parts of France; but this form of
cranium is to be met with frequently enough in Britain
where no such practice prevails.

It would seem that amongst European races, there
occur from time to time individuals having a form of cra-
nium resembling, to a certain extent, the characteristic
forms of other races; but I do not remember ever 0b-
serving in any European cranium a size of maxillary bones
equalling, or even approaching, that of the Negro.

A disﬁgured or distorted skull is not peculiar to, though
most remarkable in, the Chenooks ; it affected more or less
the whole Carib race. The Aboriginal Peruvians also had
the skull distorted, one side of the face being much shorter
than the other. This want of symmetry extended to the
basis of the skull and involved the maxillary bones.

LINGUISTIC VIEW OF RACE.

I was much pleased to ﬁnd that so excellent a linguist
and observer as the Baron de Dirgkinck Holmﬁeld takes
the same view as I have always done in respect of the
linguistic question in its hearings on ethnology. In a
memoir published in London in 1859, to which my atten-
tion was called by my esteemed friend Mr. Somervell, of
Hendon, the Baron explains, as I think, clearly, in his
theory of the origin of words, why all languages should
have certain relations to each other, certain common roots,
which in no way, however, proves an identity of race.
“Thus when the Jutes call the cow bos, it is far from
being derived from the Latin bos, and the theory of afﬁnity
among the primitive inhabitants founded on such compa-
risons is a mere illusion.” After the invention of the
word from the involuntary expression of striking sensa-
tions or impressions, comes their extension by analytical
analogy, also common to all men and instinctive. The
afﬁnity of lineage between nations must not be rashly sup-
posed on account of a precarious similarity in the forms of

588 RESUME.

speech, which no more imply a common descent than the
use of similar coverings or dress, and of instruments for
various purposes.* In a. word, the afﬁnities of language
do not bear much on the qualities of race, for many reasons
which could be given; their diversities, on the other hand,
prove the existence of different races, each expressing,

after its own fashion, the view it takes of the external
world.

RESUME.

THE object of this resume’ is to present to the reader de-
sirous of knowing the true bearing of the author’s opinions
on the inﬂuence of race over human aﬁ'airs, a. brief outline
of these opinions. The inquiries contained in the preceding
pages were ﬁrst delivered as lectures, and subsequently
collected and published as a work on The Races of Men.
To that work he has now added a supplement.

When the author commenced these inquiries, the clever
essay of Blumenbach and its extension by Prichard con-
stituted nearly all that had been written expressly on the
question of race. Historical research speedily satisﬁed
him that these excellent writers had scarcely touched this

great question ; and Court de Gebelin’s failure on the

linguistic view of race convinced him that the natural
history of man was not to be arrived at from that point of
view.

All writers on race had, prior to his time, omitted the

Khistory of the morale of the race described ; an eXtraor-
dinary omission, seeing that the intellectual character of
the race was a much more important one than the physical.
The causes of this were the vague notions taught in all the
national educational institutions of every civilized nation——
institutions whose object it is to stereotype the human
mind according to their model or pattern and to stop all
intellectual progress. Overcoming this deep-rooted pre-
judice that the human mind was a tabula raw, and could

* P. 22.

RESUME. 589

be made to assume by human means any colour, and to
admit and retain any impression; having, in a word, become
convinced that the Hippocratic doctrines were false, and
that it was in reality the quality of race which played the
great part in the modiﬁcation of human character, there
remained for him but two methods—either to accept of
ancient history as it is, or to endeavour to trace backwards
in time the history of race, starting from the present age,
and pursuing the inquiry until trustworthy documents,
could no longer be found. The ﬁrst method was wholly
out of the question. The ancient history, accepted by the
men of the last century, had been proved to be utterly
worthless. The Indian, Chinese, and Egyptian records
could not be trusted, and the Jewish chronology had turned
out to be defective in the alloimportant matter of dates and
circumstances. Its cosmogony was refuted by Cuvier; its
human chronology by Lepsius, Bunsen, and others. There
remained, then, for the author but the second course-—
namely, to trace the history of race backwards in time
from the present day, and thus avoid a difﬁculty which
must for ever prove fatal to all inquiries conducted by the
other method.

A disquisition into the origin of the universe, or even
of the globe itself and what it contains, is scarcely a philo-
sophic inquiry ; at all events, it is, for obvious reasons,
not Within the bounds of science. It requires no logic of
the schools, but simply common sense, to be convinced that
the human mind cannot penetrate into the origin of things.
For even admitting to the full the philosophy of Goethe and
Lamarck, as p0pularized by Geoﬁ’roy St. Hilaire, and other
modern transcendentalists,* which teaches the transmutation
of forms in time and space, this philosophy (which, be it
observed, is not science) does not explain to us the origin of
life on the globe. The author adopted, therefore, unhesita-
tingly the second method, proceeding from the present to
the past. The materials at ﬁrst at his command were scanty,
but they increase daily: these materials were, 1st, Ana-
tomical research : 2nd, The artistic remains of ancient and

i“ The Author of The Vestiges of Oreation,Darwin, 8w.

590 RESUME.

modern races ; 3rd, History. A few of the leading results
are as follow 2—-

1. The time and the mode of the introduction of life and
living forms on the globe of the earth are equally un-
certain. What is certain is, that the remoteness of the
period surpasses the human imagination. This was de-
monstrated by Cuvier as regards the so-called lower
animals; he avoided speaking of man. But, as all living
animal forms have an obvious common consanguinite’, are
constructed upon one plan, and are physiologically identical
as forming one great chain of being, it is not to the
scientiﬁc man a matter of so much moment to determine
man’s antiquity on the globe. A fossil man will no doubt
be discovered, together with numerous links in the chain
of being connecting him with the highest of the existing
apes, but now extinct. Between a gorilla and man several
intermediate links have been lost which one day will be
found. The antique or fossil man was no doubt speciﬁcally
different from all the now existing races of men. How
specialities arise we know not, but as they constitute the
realizations of nature’s great scheme or plan, we must hold
by them; there being, in fact, no other guide for him in
acquiring a knowledge of the living organic world. Even
were he convinced that there is in reality no such thing as
adistinct species; that the idea of species is fast leaving
the minds of philosophic observers; that neither Goethe
nor any of his school ever believed in the doctrine; still
man, having no other idea to rest on, must hold by this
idea of species, remaining content with the great dogma of
Buﬂ’on—species is everything; is perpetual, and never
alters. The illustrious De Blainville, the greatest ana-
tomist and palaeontologist of his day, called the author’s
attention, about ten years ago, to the inquiries he was then
engaged on in his cabinet in the Museum. He showed
the author of this resume’ a series of crania and drawings
of two natural families (the rhinoceros and hippopotamus),
which demonstrate the singular fact, that if you examined
any two of the specimens nearest in anatomical or other
characters, the distinction of species had altogether dis-

RESUME. 591

appeared, and that it was only by selecting two specimens
remote from each other in the series, that unmistakeable
speciﬁc distinctions became apparent. The result was
this: intercalating the palaeontological with the living
world, all links were ﬁlled up, speciﬁc distinctions disap-
peared. Species then, after all, had no real existence, but
existed solely by this, that the intervening links having
disappeared, differences became apparent and manifest,
which in reality formed no part of nature’s plan. What
conclusion, then, did De Blainville draw from these pro-
found researches in which he stood alone? 1. That there
was but one creation ; and that speciﬁc differences, as they
seem to us, were caused by time and circumstances. But
in truth this was Goethe’s view, although the author felt
unwilling to point this out to his illustrious friend—namely,
that there never could have been any creation, life being
eternal and co-existing with matter; that all forms may
spring from all, and that all forms are possible within
certain limits. This is the philosophy of the present day.
It was ﬁrst presented to the public in a popular manner
by Baron Holbachfl“ and, after a hundred years, it returns
to us again, slightly modiﬁed by the facts of modern
science. Thus all things move in a circle; and history,
instead of never repeating itself, represents the revolutions
of a wheel, which, as it revolves, presents to you the same
aspects, making allowance for time and circumstances.
2. Men are of different races palpably distinct. These
races are entitled to the name of species. These species,
though distinct in themselves, form groups so as to con-
stitute one or more natural families. As in animals, so
in man, who also is one. The afﬁliated races, although
strongly resembling each other, yet differ remarkably, as
well physically as morally, in a way wholly inexplicable,
but on the principle that essentially they are not of distinct
species or races, however originating. This difference in
moral and physical qualities so remarkably distinguishing
even the European races (mostly formed into nations) is
best seen by referring to their various forms of civilization,

* Syst‘emc de la Nature.

592 . RESUME.

to their religious follies or belief, their antagonism to each
other, and, generally, to the View they each take of the
external world, which constitutes or gives a tone, as we '
say, to the character of their civilization. By this the author
simply means their progress in literature, science, and art,
which together constitute civilization. Conﬁning his obser-
vations at ﬁrst to races frequently mixed and many strongly
afﬁliated by nature, he would venture to point out that,
as regards modern times, the Celtic race has never altered
or been modiﬁed in any way by climate or conquest.
Settled for about 200 years by the banks of the St. Law-
rence and in the forests of le bas Canada, they retain the
character, institutions, religion, and habits of their fore-
fathers who emigrated from La belle France in the age of
Louis Quatorze.* For at least 700 years the Irish Celt has
never altered, nor the Caledonian for twice that period.
France is Velshes, not Teuton. The author borrows the
phrase from Voltaire. Look at her armies and her present
attitude towards the world. M. de Montalembert com-
plains bitterly that his countrymen had disappointed him
and the world: had he read The Races of Men, or the
lectures which preceded that work by some years, he
would therein have found that all was foretold, and that
no race could ever disappoint the author of that work
in respect of what we might expect them to do. Had he
cast aside his Utopian notions of the power and inﬂuence
of education, religion, government, and other circumstances,
and studied deeply the Decline and Fall of the immortal
Gibbon, or, still better, the Esprit et Mazurs des Nations
of his immortal countryman, he would never have expe-
rienced any difﬁculty in predicting how the various races
of men would act under various circumstances. This
unalterability, by climate or other accidental circumstances,
is not conﬁned to the Gaul; it appears equally strong in
the Teutonic, Scandinavian, Gothic, and Sclavonian races.

* The minds of the Gaulish race in Canada have been so degraded by '
their educational institutions (priesthood) that they beneﬁted neither
by the American nor French Revolutions. In two hundred years they
have not produced a single superior mind.

 

RESUME. 593

They may mingle, but they do not give rise to hybrid
races; the original elements being as distinct in Britain,
France, Spain, and elsewhere as they ever were. The hybrid
races of Central and South America will perish in time.
3. Out of this question of the inﬂuence of race arise
several others ; such as, what may be the antiquity of some
at least of these races, and what the result of a commingling
of two or more races? If we appeal to the present and
past conditions of man, we ﬁnd that races seldom unite;
that when mingled together they gradually separate into
their original elements, and that. the product is never a
hybrid race; that What more frequently occurs is the ex-
tinction of one or other of the races. For many hundred
years Italy has been more or less overrun by the Gothic
and Celtic races ; all northern Italy was Celtic or
Gaulish for more than a thousand years before the time
of Augustus. There is no Celtic blood there now ; and
this unpleasant fact has been twice made manifest to
France in late times on two great occasions ; that is, after
the battles of Marengo and Solferino. The “ furious Frank
and ﬁery Hun” fought for possession of Italy ; but the
Italian race said, “ We will have neither of you here any
longer.” This was in Milan, a Gaulish city built by the
Gauls of France. If ever race was to show its sympathies
it was surely here ; but, in truth, the Gaulish race, once so
powerful in Northern Italy, was long extinct. To this
day, all the European races occupy as nearly as may be the
localities they were found in by the intrusive Romans, and
they are still quite distinct, physically and morally, as
proved by the varied forms of their civilization. No hybrid
races exist anywhere. Intrusive races constantly perish
or disappear in time ; for either the climate so tells on
their vitality as to lead to their extinction, or this process
is hastened by commingling with the aboriginal race. If
this aboriginal race differ widely from the intrusive (as the
Negro, for example, and European, or the native American
with a race from Europe), the product is a hybrid, which
ultimately dies out. Of the morale and physique of such
a hybrid population the author need say nothing. In the
Q Q

594 RESUME.

present condition of Mexico and the States of Central and
South America we have the results foretold in the work on
“The Races of Men” more than tWenty years ago, these re-
sults originating in the existence of a hybrid population,
and, as hybrid, devoid of every principle. It is fortunate for
humanity that such populations die out in time, returning
generally to the original coloured race. This is the only
theory or view by which the present condition of such
States as are alluded to- can be explained, and even his-
torians * begin to admit the truth of the theory.

4. Paleontological research will lead some day to the dis-
covery of man’s antiquity on the globe; the antiquity of
race, the author thinks, may be shown to be very great.
He means races as they now are, being still of the opinion
of Cuvier, that species do not alter or become metamor-
phosed into other forms so long as the existing order of
things continues ; but should this be altered, then a new
organic world may appear, not wholly new to man, but new
speciﬁcally; and this is what man must ever look to. If
all the young of all the species of an extended natural
family represent the adult forms of all the species com-
prising that natural family, then the young of every species
is a generic animal, having a form so modiﬁable by altered
circumstances as to assume under these alterations a dis—
tinct speciﬁc adult forms?“ The species thus produced is new
to the earth; is to man a new species ,- nevertheless it is the
immediate and direct descendant of the preceding organic
world. Distinct epochs or acts of creation imply a miracle,
and miracles are impossible. The philosophy of Goethe,
adopted by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Oken, and some popular
writers,1‘ is most probably the correct one; but the really
scientiﬁc me‘n dd not as yet look on the theory as established
on a strictly scientiﬁc basis. The candid Broun, backed
by the French Academy, denies it in toto. Returning to
man, the author of this work, many years ago, fancied that

* Gervinus, in his latest works.
t See “Enquiries into the Natural History of the Salmonidae." in the
Lancet and Zoologist.
1 The Author of The Vestiges of Creation, Mr. Darwin, 8w.

RESUME. 595

the antiquity of certain races at least might be tested by
an appeal to their artistic remains. Accordingly, he traced
and pointed out to many friends the appearance of at least
three races on the tombs of ancient Egypt. What, then,
was the age of these monuments P The lowest date as-
signed to them is about 7000 years, counting backwards
from the present day. Thus crumbled into ruins the
Mosaic chronology : his six days’ cosmogony had been
destroyed by Cuvier.* N iebuhr, the greatest of all critics
in matters of history, has recorded his solemn opinion and
conviction that the Jewish history of mankind is simply a
fable or myth, and is beneath the notice of any historian.
The author of this resume? would be glad to see the theo-
logians handle these Opinions of Niebuhr in a fair spirit :
they show symptoms of great distress at the publication of
a few harmless essays and reviews, forgetting that Voltaire
and Gibbon, N iebuhr and Gresenius, Hume, Milman, and
Middleton, remain unanswered.

5. Each race on becoming a nation creates its own form
of civilization : what they borrow from others they modify
and adapt to their own nature. Of the elements of civiliza-
tion the social arts stand lowest ; they may indeed exist to a
very great extent without entitling the race to be called civi-
lized. These social arts are human inventions, originating
in the necessities of man, and, consequently, are in relation
to these necessities, to his wealth and to his wants. As they
are not in nature no standard of taste is applicable to them,
each generation neglecting and despising the inventions or’
discoveries, as they are rather facetiously called, of the
preceding generation. All races are equal to such in-
ventions, however low they may be in intelligencej The
Chinese seem to carry away the palm even from the
Hindoo ; then comes the Arab. The strong-armed utili-
tarian barbarians of Europe followed these slowly and after
a long intervaH‘ It is otherwise with literature and the ‘

* The theologian now endeavours to show that these six days were
vast periods of time; but, in this case, what becomes of the seventh day,-
was that a period too ?

t In Holland—Flanders ﬁrst; following, of course, the progress of
commerce and wealth.

596 RESUME.

ﬁne arts. To excel in these requires that the races possess
that quality of the mind which is not to be found in any
Oriental race—namely, an innate love of truth, of ﬁne
forms, of the perfect, and of the beautiful. These} qualities
were innate only in the antique Greek race, the race which
produced Homer and Pindar, Xenophon and Thucydides,
Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Euclid; who built the
Parthenon, carved the Venus, and fought the battle of
Marathon ; a matchless race, to whom the world is indebted
for all that is lofty and true in civilization. As we turn
from the contemplation of a Grecian temple, but, still
more, from that of a Grecian statue, to examine the follies
and extravagances of the European workmen (for they
were not artists) of the Middle Ages, and even of the
present day, it is impossible to avoid reﬂecting on the low
condition to-which human intellect had fallen from an
innate contempt for truth, a condition which would have
continued till now, but for the disinterment of the remains
of ancient Greek art. Thus, with the author of this work,
the quality of race is everything in human affairs, and, to
a certain extent, it sways the destinies of nations. Great
conquerors have trodden down nationalities, but they
could not so easily extinguish the qualities of race. De-
tach a portion of 'a race from its cradle and force it into
contact with another, under circumstances to which it must
bend, they may soon lose their language, manners, and
customs, mingling with the mass around; but provided
they become not extinct, their physical characters and
moral nature remain long after has been eﬁ'aced the modi-
ﬁcation which social man receives from his government,
his education, and his laws; for beneath this superﬁcial
varnish there lies the quality of race, which, like a
smouldering ﬁre, awaits but a spark to rekindle into a
ﬁerce and devouring ﬂame.

6. With the extinction for a time of nationalities and of
the conﬂicts arising out of the antagonism of race, conse-
- quent to the universality of the Roman power, there oc-
curs also the declinc of courage and of genius, and the
rapid degeneracy of all the races whose political existence

RESUME. 597

had been extinguished by Rome: nor was it until Rome
fell that life and vigour returned, as it were, to the subju-
gated races of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The natural
antagonism of race to race productive of so much misery,
but at the same time of so much activity, had ceased, or at
least was not permitted to show itself anywhere between
the wall of Antoninus and the Euphrates, between the
Rhine and Danube and the borders of the Sahara. Rome
was the aim of all; one language alone claimed every re-
spect, and not to be a Roman citizen was not to exist. As
the modern phrase is, “ Order reigned throughout the
world ;”ﬁ‘eedom of thought, as of action, was incompatible
with that “order." Genius and the energy of thought
and language could no more exist in the reign of Adrian
or Vespasiau, than under Cromwell or Napoleon the Great.
Hence all the nations composing that vast empire had be-
come, as it were, a compound of well-to-do pigmies “ when
the ﬁerce giants of the North broke in and reanimated the
puny breed." They enabled the ancient races to recover
their individual existence; their natural antagonism and
the power to show that the Procrustean bed of Roman civi-
lization had ceased to satisfy the minds of men. It must
not be supposed that this antagonism of race had ceased:
it merely could not exhibit itself. On the dissolution of
the central power of Rome it recovered all its ancient
vigour.

From the shores of the Baltic and the icy promontories
of Nor way to the Great Wall of China, the barbarous races
of this large zone of the earth quickly perceived that the
restraining barrier had become weakened and might be
forced. Accordingly it was soon overthrown, and the
European races recovered ultimately to a certain extent
the power to modify their form of civilization according to
the character of the race. They assumed naturally national
characters, characteristic in some measure of their race,
and falling into the hands of despots, gradually subsided
into the present condition of States ruled by despots, who
base their government on the snord. Ever ready to assist
each other against the peoples, there remains but one hope

598 assume.

for the recovery of the rights of' men—the continuance and
growth of the United States of America.

The experiment had been tried which was to determine
the possibility of ruling many races by one power, com-
pelling them to take the same view of the external world,
and, in a word, to adopt for civilization a livery, of thought
impressed on them by the tyranny of the sword. It failed
in the hands of the Romans. Since then it has been often
repeated on a smaller scale, as by the drumhead govern-
ments of Prussia and Austria, but with no better success.
Now it‘ with strongly afﬁliated races the question of anta-
gonism of race cannot be extinguished, analogy leads us to
suppose that it must be still more difﬁcult to overcome
in respect of races remotely afliliated. The result of the
experiment to destroy the antagonism of the Spanish and
native American races is before the world, and of this the
Author has already spoken. It will come to the same results
in India, whilst of its failure in Northern Africa there can-
not be a doubt.

Now this leads the author of this resumé to a question
of great difﬁculty. What is the exact standing,r of the
savage races on the earth ?' and are there races of men, who
by reason of their savage nature can never assume any
true civilization? To this class of men seems to him to
belong most of the coloured races of men, and even others
but slightly tinged. The Moor, or Kabyle, is a true savage ;
just as he was in the time of Marius and Jugurtha,‘ he is
still. Under the Roman empire he became, as it were,
highly civilized, and affected to be a Christian! It proved
a mere varnish simply skin deep. The race, as is said, is
still to be found tolerably pure in the island of Sardinia—
a country as yet in a barbarous condition ; and in the phy-
siognomy of the gallant King of Italy may be traced some
slight remains of an Altaic descent. The native American
race, or races, are still savages, and so are the New Zea-
. landers; the Hottentot and Cafl‘res will remain as they
are. Between the true savage and the civilized man there
is, as has ever been, an antagonism not to be overcome.
Even England, with all her professions of humanity and .

RESUME. 599

philanthropy, cannot afford to admit within the pale of her
society any coloured, that is, savage race ; cannot afford to
admit any coloured man to the rights of civil and military
freedom; in other words, no coloured man can attain in
England the full enjoyment of the rights of a citizen.*
But this is not all. The fall of the Roman empire decided
another great question—the question of acclimatation. At
one time Southern and.Western Europe, and Northern
Africa and Western Asia, Syria, t0 the Euphrates and
beyond, were peopled by Roman citizens of the Italian
race: now and for many centuries not a vestige of such a
race could be pointed out in any of these countries.

It is not merely savage races, properly so called, which
seem incapable of civilization ; the Oriental races have
made no progress since the time of Alexander the Great.
The ultimate cause of this, no doubt, is race. One circum-
stance peculiarly worthy of note is, that from the earliest
period of history. all their educational institutions were
stereotyped, so that all minds ultimately sank to the same
level. As a consequence they ever confounded fable with
truth, and myths they mistook for history. True science
based on an unalterable love of truth they could not com-
prehend, and thus the tree big/at never penetrated the hazy
realms of the Oriental mind. By science I do not mean
mathematical science; the Hindoo calculated eclipses in
the time of Alexander, but still his mind was not open to
a physical truth.

7. The power of man to colonize or to live in other zones
of the earth than that of which he was the native, has
been tested in a great variety of ways from the earliest
period. It is interwoven, though not necessarily, with
other questions of which the most prominent is, the origin
of man from a single stock, and the inﬂuence of climate so
to alter his constitution without necessarily destroying his

* Decided by Sir G. Lewis, in a question of the half-caste native of
Hindostan, who was refused admission to a civil employment in the
English army, and in the refusal by Lord l’anmure, when Secretary at
War. to admit any coloured man of Canadian origin into the English
army.

600 . ' RESUME.

vitality, as to enable him to continue viable and productive
under numerous adverse circumstances.

On this point it is suﬂicient here to observe, that all
history is against the hypothesis of Hippocrates. Certain
races only can exist in certain zones of the earth, Whilst
over the morale of a race climate exercises little or no
inﬂuenceﬁ“

* At the recent meeting of the British Association at Manchester:
my friend, Dr. Hunt, the Honorary Secretary of the Ethnological
Society, submitted to the meeting statistical proofs of the accuracy of
this view, in an enquiry in which, for the ﬁrst time, the great question
of the acclimatization of man has been treated scientiﬁcally in this
country.

THE END.

 

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