CHAPTER IX.OF NATIONAL NOSES.
The reader will probably have been led from the nomenclature to inquire whether the assertion that certain forms of Nose are justly named after certain nations might not be extended further? and whether every nation has not a characteristic Nose?
The reply to these questionings would be in the affirmative. Every nation has a characteristic Nose; and the less advanced the nation is in civilization, the more general and perceptible is the characteristic form. While nations are in their infancy, and the mass of the people are uninformed, the features receiving no impressions from within, take the form impressed from without, and follow the national type. If one uniform state of things—of government, climate, and habits—continue, without education, generation may succeed generation, and the original facial type of the race will remain. If, however, the national circumstances alter (still without general education) the national features follow the type impressed by those circumstances. We have appealed to many instances of these simultaneous national changes when describing the different forms of Noses prevalent at different periods of English history.
The existence of such typical features has always been recognized, and ethnologists have founded classifications of the Human Race on their peculiarities.
It is an additional general proof of the truth of Nasology, that the most highly-organized and intellectual races possess the highest forms of Noses, and those which are more barbarous and uncivilized possess Noses proportionately Snub and depressed, approaching the form of the snouts of the lower animals, which seldom or ever project beyond the jaws. Thus the Caucasian races, denominated by Dr. Prichard Oval-headed, which comprise decidedly the most perfect specimens of the human race, are characterized by a Nose Roman or Greek; while the lower divisions, the Mongolian or Pyramidal-headed, and the Negro or Prognathous (protruding-jawed)—than among which no lower and more debased specimens of humanity subsist—have Noses Celestial or Snub, as in the Tartar and Chinese, the Negro and Hottentot nations.
In the Caucasian, or Elliptical-headed, types of the Human Race, the Nose averages one-third of the faces.
In the Mongolian, or Pyramidal-headed, the Nose averages from one-fourth to one-fifth of the face.
In the Negro, or Prognathous-jawed, it is the same, and the nostrils are conspicuous, as in brutes.
When hypotheses thus assist and strengthen each other, we gain an assurance of their truth and accuracy which is wanting where they are seemingly contradictory, and which would have been wanting to Nasology, had it contradicted the observations of philosophers so careful and able as Dr. Prichard and his fellow-labourers in the field of ethnology. Happily this is not the case, and Nasology may claim to stand as the handmaid of ethnologists striving to discover the characteristics of nations.
Among the more highly-organized races more deviations from the original typical patterns occur than among the lower-organized—because the minds of civilized men are more impressible than those of savages. Travellers have always observed that nothing struck them more on visiting a savage nation than the great uniformity of feature, presenting so great a contrast to the diversities among civilized nations; so that while a superficial observer would suppose it to be impossible to characterizethe latter by any uniform description, he finds no difficulty in expressing the characteristics of the former.
Various degrees of culture and occupation produce the greatest possible variations among the individuals of civilized nations, while the uniform absence of education and the uniformity of pursuits among savages perpetuate, and perhaps confer, an uniform national physiognomy.
When education becomes general, nations lose their national typical features; for the physiognomy becomes so variously impressed from within, according to the different bias and affections of men’s minds, that it ceases to receive those impressions from without, which generate national types. At present, however, there is so little generally diffused education that the typical features of most nations may yet be defined.
These are not always the original types of the race. Numerous circumstances have among the more civilized nations contributed to produce changes of greater or less magnitude. The various Caucasian nations, for instance, though all descended from one stock, have varied from their original type in their divers migrations from the plains of Asia, and received such typical form as varying circumstances have since impressed. Hence the various Caucasian nations of Europe and Western Asia differ considerably from each other in mental and bodily organization.
These variations from the original type took place, however, at so early a period, even in the ante-historical period, that historians are apt to regard them as original and innate; and perhaps it is most convenient forthemto do so. But this is not sufficient for the inquirer into the Races of Men. He goes back to ages far beyond the historical, or even the mythic, period; and, finding these nations are descended from one family, perceives that the present variations must have taken place after the dispersion of the family into distant localities under leaders of very various temperament and views of social happiness.
It would lead us too far to inquire whether the tendency of Nature to break up certain types into varieties,and form new races—perhaps even new species and genera—was not originally greater than it has been at any period within the knowledge of man. We see no changes take place now, such as long before even the mythic period, produced from one stock the wild urus, the domestic ox, and the hunched bull of India. Neither do we see new races of men spring up; such as in the very earliest times produced from one common ancestor the various diverse races of men; white, black, yellow, and red.
It is a singular proof both of the tendency of the human race to break into varieties at a very early period, and of the permanency of those varieties in later ages—that the four races into which Blumenbach and the best writers have agreed to divide the races of the old world are distinctly recorded and separated in like manner on some of the most ancient monuments of Egypt. On the tomb of Osirei, father of the Great Rameses, are represented the “dwellers upon earth as well those of Egypt as those of foreign countries.” Four figures are given in each group, and are coloured to represent the Tawny, the Yellow, the Black, and the White Races, respectively, with features corresponding to those of the same races in the present day. Such facts should teach us that the laws which regulate the generation and production of species and races are very different from those which regulate reproduction and succession, and that while we endeavour to explain the laws of origination by the laws of reproduction, we shall never arrive at the true solution of the origination of types.
It is no poetical fancy that Nature’s infancy was more active than its later years; that “Nature wantoned in her prime,” and produced more gigantic effects than now. Not that the powers of nature are weakened: but the purpose having been accomplished, its workings are stayed by the fiat of the Almighty God, and are employed in sustaining and reproducing, instead of generating anew and creating. When those powers are wanted again, they will spring into undecayed operation; let a new continent rise from the deep and the new world have to be people, and Nature will again resume thegigantic forces of its infancy, and become young to fill with life and activity a young world.
But at whatever period impressed, certain it is that many nations have a typical form of Nose, together with other peculiar distinctive features; and it concerns us now rather to regard the fact as it exists than to inquire how it happened.
The Roman, the Greek, and the Syrian forms of Nose have been already descanted upon, as forming three bases of our nomenclature. The present European nations are the Gothic, the Celtic, the Sclavonic, and the Finnish.
The Gothic has been subjected to so many varying circumstances that it is now perhaps impossible to assert, with confidence, its original natural form. Where a uniform dull system of despotism, political and religious, has for centuries bound down these nations in abject servitude, the Nose is sharp, devoid of Cogitativeness, and Romano-Greek in profile.
This is the case with the Spanish Goths and with those of France and Italy. These nations were so long held in mental thraldom that they ceased to cultivate cogitative powers which it was dangerous to use. Where espionage andLettres de Cachet, the Inquisition and Monachism dog and punish men’s secret thoughts, and forbid the expression of any sentiment breathing a spirit opposed to the powers that be, or demonstrative of a disposition to inquire into the why and wherefore of political and religious dogmas, the mind, by an instinct of self-preservation, must cease to think. Where to think is a death-warrant, where a look of reflection or an aspect of discontent may be followed by the axe of the executioner, or the more fearful incarceration by the gaoler, the mind has no alternative but to forget itself and live in bestial oblivion, to “sit down to eat and drink and rise up to play.” With the cessation of the Cogitative powers, the Cogitativeness of the features will disappear, and the Nose will become defective in breadth, thin and sharp. To this want of reflection succeeds, in the naturally higher and more energetic nations, animal passion; and if ever the pressure is removed from the national mind and it obtain the upper hand of its keepers,fearful retribution and sanguinary revenge inevitably ensue. They who lived the animal life of a caged wild beast in apparent ease and quietude, well fed and perhaps, sensually, better provided for than if left to their native freedom, will, when let loose from confinement, fearfully vindicate the natural law of liberty, and with an insane instinct tear in pieces the keepers who have fed them for their own purposes and nurtured them for their own pleasure and profit, reckless of the natural social rights of man.
It is for this reason that the sharp, thin unthinking Nose appears symbolical likewise of cruelty; not so much because the natural disposition is cruel, as because the mind, when unchained, acts from animal impulse and not from sage reflection; and animal revenge is always wild and cruel.
We say this of nations which, like the Gothic and other Caucasian races, were originally well organized and endowed with higher capacities. This higher organization exhibits itself—whatever the degrees of Cogitativeness which incidental circumstances may have added, or adeemed—in a profile, Roman, or Greek, or compounded of both; and which may therefore be called nationally Romano-Greek. The profile not being so subject to variation from the pressure of external circumstances as the breadth, remains still pretty uniformly the same in all the Caucasian races in Europe, which might be writtenIII. Other races there are which, either naturally of less penetrable stuff, and a lower and more obtuse organization, or longer ground down beneath a more crushing and uniform despotism, remain contented slaves and willing bondmen. This degradation, as we shall see when we come to speak of the Asiatic nations, appears also in their Noses.
France, Spain, and Italy have been depressed, not only beneath a political despotism till within a very recent period, but under the still more soul-crushing despotism of a gross superstition and corrupt religion—the latter even more than the former has repressed Cogitativeness in those nations. If there is one subject which more thananother interests the human mind and occupies the thoughts, it is its religion—its eternal prospects—for Man is essentially a religious animal. Debarred from exercising thought upon its most natural and interesting topics—and all other subjects being dragged within the jealous circle of a religious despotism—so stern a barrier is opposed to thought that the mind rarely dare overleap it. While a political despotism may be well pleased to see its subjects occupied in scientific or metaphysical researches, in order to wean them from too critical an examination of itself, a religious despotism forbids any such researches unless made within the small circle it has prescribed. Death or imprisonment awaits a Galileo or a Copernicus, as it would under a similar rule, even now, await a Buckland or a Lyell.
At present, we lament that we can see nothing in the recent revolutionary movements in France and Italy, to indicate the existence of those Cogitative powers, the want of which has always hitherto checked their advancement towards true liberty and self-government.
Now, as in 1793, there seems “equally a want of books and men; without which, after a few years of bloodshed and anarchy, those countries must again submit to a despotic form of government. No country can be governed without intellect; and if that is not to be found in the many, the few who possess it must become the ruler.
“By theSoulOnly, the Nations shall be great and free.”Wordsworth.
“By theSoulOnly, the Nations shall be great and free.”Wordsworth.
“By theSoulOnly, the Nations shall be great and free.”
“By theSoul
Only, the Nations shall be great and free.”
Wordsworth.
Wordsworth.
This country has never long needed such a despotism. Germany, too, though hardly yet freed from a political despotism, has through a large portion of its area long thrown off the despotism of Rome, and embraced the more elevating and life-giving doctrines of the Reformation. In those provinces where this blessed change has taken place, Germany is starting rapidly into that career of intellectuality which England commenced three hundred years ago. The Germans and the English are preeminently deep-thinking nations; and in both of them isthe Nose more decidedly and more generally of a Cogitative form than in any other Gothic nations.
The Cogitative may therefore, perhaps, be said to be one of the characteristic forms of the Noses of those Gothic branches, and might be expressed thus, (I + II)/III. Nevertheless, various degrees of education and various pursuits, with (in England) free institutions, have so diversified their features that they exhibit a much less uniform character than the features of most other nations.
The Anglo-Americans afford a further corroborative proof that the Cogitative Nose is dependent on the cultivation of a Cogitative mind. They present a striking contrast to their puritan forefathers,—men who abandoned home, country and friends for the sake of religious and political opinions; men to whom conscience was dearer than life, and freedom more precious than worldly advantage; men of the strictest integrity, the most scrupulous honesty, and the sternest firmness, sullied only by an excess of over-wrought feeling—fanaticism. All these virtues, and this vice (itself a virtue gone mad) are wanting to the American character. That there are happy exceptions, it is true; but a nation which boastssmartnessas its most prominent virtue, must not complain if it is accused of want of principle. The circumstances of young America have contributed to render hers an unthinking people. The wild life to which so large a portion have been subjected, cut off from all neighbourhood, debarred from communication with cultivated minds, thrown entirely on the active business of the day for mental food, they have necessarily degenerated from the thinking men to whom they are indebted for their origin.
So far from the American Nose inheriting the Cogitative form of their ancestors’, it is thin and sharp; and, as a national nose, the most unthinking of any of the Gothic stock. America is, however, a fast-growing nation; it has had no infancy, but started at once into life, a full-grown youth. There is hope, therefore—of which already some assurance has been given—that it will yet furnish its quota of thinkers to the history of the human mind.
Strange as the assertion may appear, it is susceptible ofmany proofs, that the now degraded and dwindled Celts were originally the most powerful and widely dispersed people of the earth, boasting simultaneously a geographical extent and political importance, which have been achieved only by successive generations of the Gothic branches of the Indo-Germanic nations.
The Aborigines, Autochthones, Gigantes, Titanides (all which names signify earth-born), Atlantides, Cyclopeans, Pelasgi, Umbri, Etrusci and Sikeli, the Iotuns in Scandinavia, Pali in India, Kaous in Persia, Hycsos in Egypt, may all equally, by plausible and unanswerable facts, be surmised to have been Celts, with whom the immigrators of other races waged continual wars for possession of the earth. All the myths—so universal—of the wars of the gods and the giants, relate to wars between the invading conquerors and the primitive inhabitants, who are everywhere to be traced by their gigantic works of unhewn stone, cromlechs, stone circles, &c., not referable to any historic period, because the conquerors destroyed all records of their architects, and then, in idiotic wonder at their vast dimensions, referred them to gigantic first possessors of the earth.
Whether the original stature of the Celts was greater than that of the Gothic nations, may be doubted; but it is a curious fact that nearly all the modern European giants have been Celts, and immense stature was a common property of the wild Irish of former generations.
The existing Celtic races call for more extended observation. As an un-Gothicized nation, the Irish is the only remnant of a people which probably was at one time thinly spread over the whole of Europe. Nearly related to, if not originally identical with, the Goths, yet naturally of a less vigorous constitution and lower habit of mind, the Celts rapidly gave way before, or irretrievably amalgamated themselves with, their Pelasgian invaders in Greece and Italy, and their Gothic invaders in Trans-Alpine Europe.
Thus, at one time losing themselves in the overwhelming flood of their invaders, like the waters of a lake inundated by the sea; at another, retreating westerly before the oncoming torrent, the Celtic nations have gradually almostdisappeared from continental Europe, and alone find a miserable home and wretched abiding-place on the most eastern shores of the Atlantic, and the most western corners of the Old World.
If the Atlantic could have afforded them a footing upon its turbulent waters, they would long since have been driven into it by their rapacious invaders. The complaint of the unhappy Celts has, ever since they were hunted to the extreme west of Europe, been the same, “Our enemies drive us into the sea; and the sea drives us back upon our enemies.”
Saxon ingenuity has, however, at last endeavoured to circumvent the sea. If it cannot receiveintoits bosom the last wreck of the Celts, it can carry themuponit to lands still further west, there to pine, and dwindle away and die; out of sight, and therefore out of the mind, of the haughty invader, who turns with well-feigned horror and disgust from the ruin and degradation which he has wrought.
To make room for himself, he expatriates the ancient owners of the soil, not only without remorse or compunction, but with much self-laudation and pharisaical pride that he has not extirpated them, and has not—only because he could not—adopted the ingenious idea of temporarily sinking an island to purify it for his own undisputed use and enjoyment.[44]
Naturally, however, the Celtic is not a low-class race. It may not have been originally so highly organized, or so mentally gifted as the Gothic; but in its infancy it had virtues which long thraldom has exterminated.
It is no fiction that Cæsar found the Gaulish and British youth more apt than the Goths at acquiring the arts and language of Rome, and that, in a few years, Roman civilization, more efficient than Saxon, had converted Britain into one of the most fertile and well-ordered provinces of the empire. It is no fiction that Rome found in Britain one of the most determined opposers of its claim to universal dominion, and that if it were to be
“Asked, why from Britain Cæsar did retreat?Cæsar himself might whisper—he was beat.”[45]
“Asked, why from Britain Cæsar did retreat?Cæsar himself might whisper—he was beat.”[45]
“Asked, why from Britain Cæsar did retreat?Cæsar himself might whisper—he was beat.”[45]
“Asked, why from Britain Cæsar did retreat?
Cæsar himself might whisper—he was beat.”[45]
It is no fiction that after British Christianity had been driven by Saxon Paganism from Britain into Ireland, the Irish Celts furnished the best schools for literature, and the ablest scholars in Europe—and it is no fiction that ever since the Saxon has set foot in Ireland it has continuedto droop and decay, until it is now a foul bog of iniquity; a wretched irreclaimable sink of inhuman vice and monstrous infamy.
Its Cogitativeness has been repressed till it cannot reflect nor appreciate any but physical modes of escape from thraldom. This is but the caged wild beast gnawing at its chain, and snapping at its keeper, whether his hand approaches to feed or to beat it.
It may be said, escape lies open to it in self-elevation, in moral rectitude, and industrious exertion; but it is too late for it to see and understand that. We might as well say to the broken leg, walk now, you walked once; or to the encaged madman, calm yourself and be free, you were calm and free once.
We need no better proof of the non-cogitativeness of Ireland than the facile manner in which it throws itself beneath the Juggernautic car of every demagogue, and sacrifices itself to his avaricious cruelty. We need no better proof of the truth of our theory, than that the Nose of the same nation is deficient in Cogitativeness, and is forthe most part thin and sharp. It has not, however, lost the Romano-Greek profile, usual among the Caucasian races.
This is true in the main; but unhappily more recent information compels us to modify it, and add another proof of Nasology from degradation of physical structure simultaneously with mental degradation. “There are certain districts in Leitrim, Sligo, and Mayo” (as pointed out by an intelligent writer in the Dublin University Magazine, No. 48), chiefly inhabited by descendants of the native Irish driven by the British from Armagh and the south of Down, about two centuries ago. These people, whose ancestors were well-grown, able-bodied, and comely, are now reduced to an average stature of five feet two inches, are pot-bellied, bow-legged, and abortively featured, and are especially remarkable for “open projecting mouths, with prominent teeth, and exposed gums, (i. e.prognathous-jawed—the Negro type), their advancing cheekbones, anddepressed noses, bearing barbarism on their very front.” In other words, within so short a period, they seem to have acquired a prognathous type of skull, like the savages of Australia, “thus giving such an example of deterioration from known causes, as almost compensates by its value to future ages, for the sufferings and debasement which past generations have endured in perfecting its appalling lesson.”[46]
The study of the British Legislature should be “How to get” Ireland a Cogitative Nose; not by any surgical process, such as that of the
“Learned Taliacotius, who fromThe brawny part of porter’s bum,Cut supplemental Noses.”—Hudibras.
“Learned Taliacotius, who fromThe brawny part of porter’s bum,Cut supplemental Noses.”—Hudibras.
“Learned Taliacotius, who fromThe brawny part of porter’s bum,Cut supplemental Noses.”—Hudibras.
“Learned Taliacotius, who from
The brawny part of porter’s bum,
Cut supplemental Noses.”—Hudibras.
for phlebotomizing is the worst mode of legislation—but by cultivating in her people a Cogitative mind; well assured that whether or not the attempt succeed in developing their probosces, it will be well repaid by other and more important improvements in their condition. How this is to be effected would afford matter for an interesting essay; but it would be out of place here, though we haveour nostrums on the subject like every other political doctor, and cannot resist saying that it will never be done by “Constitutional” Legislation, which is only fitted for the Teutonic races. The Irish, like the cognate race, the French, must be governed by an enlightened despotism; they must be gently pushed on by their leaders to their own good, while the Teutonic races may be safely left to push on their leaders—treading, not always too gently, on their heels, by way of hint to get on. It is a most fatal error in legislation to disregard the psychonomic differences in races, and under a philanthropic pretence of the natural equality of man, to endeavour to govern all by the same laws and institutions.
It was the sad misfortune of Ireland to be conquered after the downfall of the feudal system, and to be at once inducted—with sanguinary and therefore ineffective restrictions on their use—into free forms of government. The feudal system, in its original integrity—without its on-grafted abuses, as fines, heriots, &c. &c.—is almost the only system on which a naturally high-class but barbarous race can be held down, while they are being elevated in the scale of humanity; and if for three or four generations Ireland could be subjected to pure and beneficent feudality—whereby every man would be linked to a superior, and be compelled to exert himself to retain his feud—together with the Alfredic tithing-man system—to prevent or detect and punish crime—it might be gradually placed on such an equality with England, as to enable it to be safely governed on the same constitutional principles. Perhaps, however, it is rather to be wished that this had been done in past times, than to attempt it now: it might be dangerous to the liberties of England to retrograde; for it must be admitted that a return to feudality is retrogression, and the state of external peace to which it would bring Ireland might afford an argument to future English Legislatures, to tie down the turbulent liberties of England with the same bonds—which God forbid! better live in a storm than rot in a calm.
It is the unhappy fate of Ireland that its evils are past remedy. Her woes are the executioners of God’s judgments against England for the latter’s crimes towards her.Ireland suffers that she may be a sharp thorn in the side—perhaps a dagger in the heart—of England. No nation sins without retribution from the quarter against which the crime has been committed, and much more evil must England suffer from Ireland ere an equivalent punishment has been inflicted. Nevertheless Ireland is not wretched only because England must suffer; she is wretched for her own crimes, and her wretchedness is over-ruled to be the punishment of her oppressor likewise.
This is by no means an isolated instance of the duality of purposes in the Divine judgments. The crimes of a nation have ofttimes been made the punishment of itself and another; so likewise, among individuals, the visitation of one man’s sins frequently extends to punish the faults, or try the virtue, of his friends and relations.
The ambitious pride of Babylon punished the idolatry of the Israelites, but at the same time brought down ruin on itself. The conquest of America punished the gross vices and savage idolatries of the natives, and at the same time retributed the cruelties and crimes of their punishers by inundating Spain with the gold and silver which has wrought her present degradation. May we not add that England’s punishment of the revolutionary crimes of France, is now retributing her own commercial jealousy, and wild interference in Continental politics, by clogging her with debt, and raising a host of European rivals to her claim for universal commerce.
The lowest organized race of any consequence in Europe is the Sclavonic.
The Sclavones came into contact with Roman civilization earlier than the Goths; but, unlike the latter, they retired to their settlements without carrying away any portion of the manners and habits of the people whom they invaded. Even yet they are but little advanced, since that early epoch. At least till within the present century, the Russian noble, as well as his serf, led the life of a pig, eating, and drinking, and sleeping. Wallowing in filth, insensate with brandy, and degraded by lust, the Russians of various ranks differ only in the size and splendour of their respective styes. To enter with minuteness into the daily habits of all classes of both sexes would be to presenta picture which we should revolt from drawing, and the reader from beholding.
The Snubbo-Celestial form of the Sclavonic Nose stamps its character irretrievably, and accords remarkably with the description of the Sclavonic mind given by Kohl and other recent writers:—“Inconsistent and unstable—wanting in the creative faculty; but we cannot deny them a marvellous aptitude for all kinds of work, and an extreme facility of imitation.”[47]This is just the description a farmer might give of his horse, or a fine lady of her monkey. “The hope of Europe,” says the same author, “from Russian power consists in its total want of vigorous characters, mighty minds, and moral energy.” The pictures which the lively writer Kohl gives of the Russians—their ‘small shrewdness and fox-like common sense,’ their impudent acknowledgment of their shameless cheating and pedlaring dishonesty—accord literally with the indications which we have ascribed to the Celestial Nose; but we must refer the reader to his work on Russia for endless confirmations of our assertion.
Russia may rise above its present animal degradation, but it will never take a high place in the history of civilization. It may be doubted whether it will ever take any station there at all, except when in some future and long distant age, it is recorded, that, like Asia and Africa, Europe fell from its palmy state, and became a heap of ruins before the furious desolation of barbarous swarms from the north.
Napoleon said, with the prophetic vision of old experience, for
“Old experience doth attainTo somewhat of prophetic strain,”
“Old experience doth attainTo somewhat of prophetic strain,”
“Old experience doth attainTo somewhat of prophetic strain,”
“Old experience doth attain
To somewhat of prophetic strain,”
that in fifty years Europe would be Republican or Cossack. He only erred in using the disjunctive; for it does not require much penetration to foresee that, at no very distant period, Europe will be both—first Republican, and then, when thus prostrated at the foot of the first powerful despot—Cossack.
For this purpose, it is probable the Sclavonian nations,with hordes of Mongolian Calmucks, and Tartars—theσιμοὶ, or flat-nosed nations of Herodotus—are gathering force and increasing in their vast plains and desolate forests. The scourge of Europe—once the scourge of Asia—is being prepared slowly but surely; and when civilization shall have taken a firm hold of America and the new continents gradually being built up in the Pacific, Europe, having fulfilled its part in the world’s history, will be swept away, and become a byword and a scorn among the nations—‘Ichabod’ will be written on its temples, and the bittern and the owl shall inhabit it; the wild beast of the desert shall lie there, and the dragons in its pleasant palaces.
The Finnish race presents a remarkable proof of the variation in physiognomy attendant on variation in mental capacity, occasioned by change of circumstances—as government, climate, and habits. The ancient Huns, the modern Hungarians, and the northern Finns and Lapps of the shores of the Bothnian Gulf and the White Sea, are all of the same race; and yet differ widely from each other in physiognomy and psychonomy.
“Few races exhibit greater or more remarkable differences in mental cultivation, and in the direction of their passions, according as they have been determined by the degeneration of servitude, warlike ferocity, or a continual striving for political freedom, than the Finns. In evidence of this we need only refer to the now peaceful Finns of the north, to the Huns, once celebrated for conquests that disturbed the then existing order of things, and lastly, to a great and noble people—the Magyars.”[48]
The differences between those races took place within the historic period, and afford a striking instance of the effect of external circumstances in modifying the mental and corporeal features.
The fierce and savage Huns, who overran a portion of the Roman Empire under Attila in the fifth century, differed wholly from the Finns now existing in Europe. So misshapen were their features, and so hideous their aspect, so savage and demoniacal their warfare, that the terrified Goths could not believe them to be born ofwoman, but asserted them to be the unnatural offspring of demons and witches in the fearful solitudes of the icy north. One of their distinctive features was a flat depressed nose, plainly indicating their low organization.
Although the Finns and Lapps retain the flat nose—never having emerged from barbarism—they are a mild, gentle, meek-spirited race, presenting few features which seem capable of amelioration.
The Hungarians, on the other hand—in whom, however, we must suspect a large infusion of Gothic blood—are a bold, independent, noble-minded, and highly intellectual people; characteristics which exhibit themselves in a noble Roman Nose, and a countenance bespeaking the independence of their minds.
We may next advert to the characteristic features of a few of the Asiatic nations.
Perhaps no nation displays a more universal dead level and general sameness of feature than the Snub-nosed Chinese. Notwithstanding the great varieties in climate and soil which prevail in that extensive Empire, and the correspondent variations which must be made in domestic habits and style of living, a remarkable identity of feature prevails among all classes of every province. The faces may be said to be all cast in the same mould; and one could wish that Nature, when she made the first cast, had—as she is reported to have done when she made a certain beautiful female, whose name we forget—broken the mould before she produced any more casts from it. Perhaps, however, we belie the good old dame in attributing the production of this, or any other equally ugly countenance, to her. It is rather the degraded form into which a despotism of unknown duration and unexampled soul-depressive powers has converted the original type.
A form of government more admirably arranged to keep the people in a state of childhood has never been modelled than that of China. The wisdom of its arrangements for securing the permanent despotism of the ruler is undeniably proved by its long and peaceable subsistence. To rebel in China is the heinous crime of filial disobedience: it is not, as in Europe, a political crime merely, it is also a moral crime of the same class as murder or theft. Unless we can imagine a nation by universalassent throwing off the bonds of morality, and living in confessedly gross crime, we can form no conception of the Chinese rebelling. It would present the unnatural and inconceivable state of a nation of parricides and disobedient children.
Every superior in China, from the Emperor to the military officer or civil Mandarin, is “a father;” all under him are his “children,” and as such must obey him without question or demur. “Filial disobedience,” whether to parents or governors, is the highest crime. Filial disobedience is thus defined:—“In our general conduct not to be orderly, is to fail in filial duty; in a Magistrate not to be faithful, is to fail in filial duty: among friends, not to be sincere, is to fail in filial duty: in arms and war, not to be brave, is to fail in filial duty.” A people thus treated as children, must ever remain in a state of childhood; and though education is general among the Chinese, it is an education which, like the bandages on their women’s feet, binds their mindsfromgrowing, and restricts them to the size and calibre of infancy.
Education in China consists solely in social and political training for the purposes of despotism. The studies are confined to one unvaried routine, and no deviation from the prescribed track is permitted. Within this circle all are, and must be, educated. Hence an uniformity of mind prevails, and has prevailed for ages throughout China, and has extended itself to the national features; betraying itself in Snub Noses and a dull, stolid expression of countenance. So much for compulsory education! It is impossible that it should be otherwise.
A nation whose minds are all reduced to the same level; whose thoughts are prescribed; whose daily conduct is measured out; whose very amusements are dictated by an imperial will, must necessarily soon become uniform, both mentally and physically. This uniformity will be the waveless level of the Dead Sea. Storms may agitate the upper sky, winds may rage, and floods descend; but the waves are too heavy to rise from their death-like repose. They sleep the calm sleep, not of peace, but of death. The last trumpet alone can arouse their torpor. The benignant mind of the Christian may nourish sweet hopes of evangelizing a nation so sunk.but the hopes are vain. Christianity came not till the human mind was fitted and prepared to receive and understand its divine precepts. It came not to the infancy of the world, but to its old age and matured judgment. A nation, therefore, steeped in the irreclaimable dotage of a childhood which has endured throughout its whole life, cannot receive it. Both the Hindoos and the Chinese have forfeited by their long-lived puerility the blessed message.
The first and every subsequent step of Christianity, as of civilization, has been Westward. Neither can they ever return to the East. The Apostle of the Gentiles preached from Judea to Pamphylia and Galatia, but was forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia;[49]and when he assayed to go Eastward into Bithynia, the spirit suffered him not, but compelled him westerly into Macedonia. From Macedonia to Rome; from Rome to Gaul; from Gaul to Britain; from Britain to America and Polynesia, the course has still ever been uniformly westward.[50]A few isolated Christians may be made in Asia; but it will never be Christianized. Asia has performed its part on the world’s stage. It is dead out, and cannot be resuscitated. When Christianity is entertained by “all nations,” Asia will be no more. It will not be reckonable among the nations, even as a dead man is not among the living. This may seem a harsh judgment. But is it harsher that nations whose own degradation unfits them for Christianity, shall remain ignorant of it during the brief remainder of the world, than that they have been ignorant of it for nearly two thousand years?
It is not for man to judge God, and to say that his ways are unjust. We must not deny the fact because we cannot comprehend it. We cannot tell by what crimes Asia has forfeited her part in the New Covenant of Grace. It may be because she rejected the first dispensation, and flagrantly violated the Old Covenant of Works. To Asia, the mother of mankind, the blissful seat of our first parents, the nurse of the renovated human race, were given the first pure, simple precepts by which Man was taught to obey his God as a child obeys his parent. Howsoon she flung off this obedience and rejected her Great Teacher let history, both sacred and profane, attest. Long ere Asia sent forth peoples and nations to replenish other quarters of the earth, these original precepts had been obscured and obliterated by idolatry and polytheism. A lesser crime, therefore, attached to these mis-instructed offsprings than to the misteaching mother. A second dispensation was therefore revealed to them, but forbidden to her. So far man might think he comprehended the divine purposes without impugning God’s wisdom and justice; yet he may err, and his frail musings be but the cogitations of the flea which reasons on the movements of the elephant, whose back is his universe. This should be the humble reflection of all who strive to justify the ways of God to man. We know but in part, and we see but in part, and therefore cannot judge of Him who sees and knows the whole.
We have incidentally mentioned the Hindoos as partaking in the mental degradation of the Chinese. But, nevertheless, they are not nearly so degraded a race, nor have they so general an uniformity in their features, nor so low a formation of their Noses. India has been subjected to less uniformity of despotism than China. While to the dominant system of the latter we can assign no limit, we find in that of the former numerous epochs when important changes have taken place.
Fierce religious wars, frequent foreign invasions, domestic feuds and intestine warfare have kept the Hindoo mind more on the alert than that of China. Assyria, Egypt, Scythia, Greece, Persia, and Britain have at different epochs overwhelmed India. Idolatrous Monotheism, Polytheism, Mahometanism and Christianity have, in turn, violated its shrines, and endeavoured to overwhelm both Buddha and Brahma. Buddha and Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, have striven to overthrow each other; but while the country has been desolated, the people have been saved from sinking into the uniform degradation of the Chinese. Nevertheless, under each and every system, despotism has prevailed in India; no free institution has ever flourished on its plains; and, therefore, despite the stirring events which have excited it, it has never risen again to thathigh station which its people must have held among their contemporaries when they sculptured the caves of Elephanta and Ellora, and raised the pyramidal pagodas of Tanjore and Deogur.
These gigantic works sufficiently attest that the inhabitants of India are not naturally of a low-class race. Forty thousand men labouring incessantly for forty years would hardly suffice to excavate and sculpture the cavern-temples of Salsette alone. Yet those form but a small portion of similar gigantic works of the same age.
No mean-minded men raised fanes such as these to the Deity. Energy of the most vigorous character, talent of the highest rank, and devotion of the noblest nature, could alone have dictated and executed structures which outvie in magnitude the boldest efforts of modern genius. In comparing them with the latter, we should moreover recollect that they were the first efforts of the human race; made without pattern, designed without exemplar, and commenced and carried out without experience.
How different must those men have been from the soft and effeminate Hindoo who has forgotten in the mist of ages these shrines of his fathers, and abandoned them to ruin and decay; and who, conscious of his own utter inability to achieve or conceive their equals, ascribes their formation to giants and demigods. And they were different. The same race, but different men, different in features as in minds. While the profile of the modern Hindoo is soft and effeminate, and the Nose short and rounded (parabolic), the ancient sculptures demonstrate that the profile of their earliest progenitors was manly and decided, and identical with that of their descendants, the Indo-Germanic nations, in Europe. One well-known instance will suffice. The Trimurti or three-headed deity in the caves of Elephanta.
This is a sculpture of the most remote antiquity, but the dress, the beads, the sacred cord and other religious symbols declare it to be the work of Hindoos. In anthropomorphising the Deity, men always adopt their own typical countenance for that of their God. Hence their idols betray the national features. Now, observe the profiles of Vishnu and Siva in this Trimurti. The face of the former,the good and beneficent “Preserver,” the friend and mediator for man, is a purely Greek face; the Nose straight and well-defined. It has none of the air of the modern Hindoo countenance. Much less has that of the energetic and terrible Siva, “the Destroyer.” The Nose is of the most energetic form; it is a fine Roman Nose, aquiline and rugose. If phrenologists are permitted from similar facts to say that the Greeks—who were but children to these Hindoo artists—were phrenologists, surely we may venture to say that even at this very early period the Hindoos were Nasologists.