Fig. 5.—Cross Sections of Hairs.
Fig. 5.—Cross Sections of Hairs.
The amount of hair on the face and body is also apoint of some moment. As a rule, the American and Mongolian peoples have little, the Europeans and Australians abundance. Crossing of races seems to strengthen its growth, and the Ainos of the Japanese Archipelago, a mixed people, are probably the hairiest of the species. The strongest growth on the head is seen among the Cafusos of Brazil, a hybrid of the Indian and negro.
The Muscular Structure.—The development of the muscular structure offers notable differences in the various races. The blacks, both in Africa and elsewhere, have the gastrocnemii or calf muscles of the leg very slightly developed; while in both them and the Mongolians the facial muscles have their fibres more closely interwoven than the whites, thus preventing an equal mobility of facial expression.
The anomalies of the muscular structure seem about as frequent in one race as in another. The most of them are regressive, imitating the muscles of the apes, monkeys, and lower mammals. Indeed, a learned anatomist has said that the abnormal anatomy of the muscles supplies all the gaps which separate man from the higher apes, as all the simian characteristics reappear from time to time in his structure.13
Certain motions or positions, such as I may call “muscular habits,” are characteristic of extensive groups of tribes. The method of resting is one such. The Japanese squats on his hams, the Australian stands on one leg, supporting himself by a spear orpole, and so on. The methods of arrow-release have been profitably studied by Professor E. S. Morse. He finds them so characteristic that he classifies them ethnographically, with reference to savagery and civilization, and locality. The three most important are the primary, the Mediterranean, and the Mongolian releases. The first is that of many savage tribes, the second was practiced principally by the white race, the last by the Mongolians and their neighbors. (Figs. 6, 7, 8.) The last two are the most effective, and thus gave superiority in combat.
Fig. 6.—Primary Arrow-Release.
Fig. 6.—Primary Arrow-Release.
Fig. 7.—Mediterranean Arrow-Release.
Fig. 7.—Mediterranean Arrow-Release.
Allied to muscular variation are the peculiar deposits of fatty tissue in certain portions of the system. The Hottentots are remarkable for the prominence of the gluteal region, imparting to their figure a singular projection posteriorly. It is called “steatopygy,” and appears to have been, in part at least, a cultivated deformity, regarded among them as a beauty. The thick lips of the negro, and the long and pendent breasts of the Australian women, are other examples of ethnic hypertrophies.
Fig. 8.—Mongolian Arrow-Release.
Fig. 8.—Mongolian Arrow-Release.
Stature and Proportion.—Differences in stature are tribal, but not racial. The smallest peoples known, the Negrillos, the Aetas, the Lapps, belong to different races, as do the tallest, the Patagonians, the Polynesians, the Anglo-Americans. The researches of Paolo Riccardi and others prove that stature is correlated with nutrition; the better the food, other things beingequal, the taller the men.14It is also markedly hereditary; the stature of children will average that of their parents.
What is called the “canon of proportions” of the human body varies with the race and the nation. There is indeed an ideal, an artistic canon, which the sculptor or the painter seeks to body forth in his productions; and this seems in close conformity with an extensive average of the proportions of the highest peoples; but it is never found in individuals, and it is essentially unlike in man and woman, in youth and age, in the blonde and brunette.15Nor is the ideal of the artist also that which is consonant with the greatest muscular development or highest powers of endurance.
Special Senses.—It cannot be said that the different races display positive discrepancies in the special senses. Their development appears to depend on cultivation, and all races respond equally to equal training. There is, to be sure, a higher musical sense in the native African than in the native American, but quite as much difference is seen between European nations.
Much has been written of the color-sense as a trait of nations. It has been said that some tribes, some races, appreciate hues more keenly than others; that within historic times marked gains in this respect arenoticeable. I think these statements are incorrect. The savage of any race distinguishes precisely the difference of hues when it is to his material interest so to do; but concerns himself not at all about colors which have no effect on his life. He is well acquainted with the colors of the animals he hunts, and has a word for every shade of hue. This proves that his color-sense is as acute as that of civilized people, and merely lacks specific training.
Ethnic Relations of the Sexes.—There are some curious facts in reference to the relative position of the sexes in different peoples. As a rule the expression of sex in form and feature is less in the lower than in the higher races. Travelers frequently refer to the difficulty of distinguishing the men from the women among the American Indians or the Chinese. Investigate the fact, and you will find that it is not that the women are less feminine in appearance, but the men less masculine. In other words, the expression of sex in such peoples is less in man than in woman. This seems to be true also of the highest ideals of manhood in artistic conception. The Greek Apollo, the traditional Christ, present a feminine type of the male. This was carried to its excess in the Greek Hermaphrodite.
The reason for this approximation to the female in art-ideals is probably the zoological fact that the law of beauty in the human species is the reverse of that in all the other higher mammals, the female sex with us being the handsomer. This also becomes moreevident in the comparison of the best developed peoples.
On the other hand, the muscular force of the sexes presents the greatest contrast in nations of the highest culture. The average European woman of twenty-five or thirty has one-third less muscular power than the average European man. But among the Afghans, the Patagonians, the Druses and other tribes, the women are as tall and as strong as the men; and in Siam, Ashanti, Ancient Gaul, and elsewhere, not only the field-laborers but the soldiers were principally women, selected because of their greater physical force and courage.
As the value of mere brute force in a social organization lessens in comparison to mental powers, the condition of woman improves, and her faculties find appropriate play. Her brain capacity, though absolutely less, is relatively more than man’s. That is, the difference of the whole average weight of woman and man is greater in proportion than the difference of their brain weights.
It is believed, also, that the viability or prospect of life in woman is greater in higher than in lower peoples; and generally greater than in men. European statistics show that 106 boys are born to 100 girls: but at twelve years of age the sexes are equal, the boys suffering a greater mortality. At eighty years of age, there are nearly three women living to one man, indicating a superior longevity.
Correlation of Physical Traits to Vital Powers.—Thephysical traits are correlated to the physiological functions in such a manner as profoundly to influence the destiny of nations. They enable or disable man with reference to the climatic and other conditions of his surroundings. For instance, certain races can support given temperature better than others. The intense heat and humidity of Central Africa or Southern India are destructive to the pure whites, while the climate north of the fortieth parallel soon exterminates the blacks. The food on which the Australian thrives destroys the digestive powers of the European. Exemption and liability to diseases differ noticeably in races. The white race is more liable to yellow fever, malarial diseases, syphilis, scarlet fever and sunstroke; the colored races to measles, tuberculosis, leprosy, elephantiasis, and pneumonia.
Indeed, from the physical point of view, the pure white is weaker than the dark races, worse prepared for the combat of life, with inferior viability. This has been shown by the careful researches of statisticians.16But in the white this is more than compensated by the development of the nervous system and the intellectual power. He can bear greater mental strain than any other race, and the activity of his mind supplies him with means to overcome the inferiority of his body, and thus places him at the head of the whole species.
Thetolerance of diseaseis an obscure but momentous element in the comparison of races. It is almost a proverb among the Spanish-American physicians that “when an Indian falls sick, he dies.” The greater longevity of the European peoples is due to their ability to support disease long and frequently, without succumbing to it. On the other hand, surgical injuries, wounds and cuts, appear to heal more rapidly among savage peoples.17It is clear that in civilized conditions this is less important than tolerance.
The Causes of the Fixation of Ethnic Traits.—These causes are mainly related to climate and the food-supply. The former embraces the questions of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure (altitude), malarial or zymotic poisons, and the like. All these bear directly upon the relative activity of the great physiological organs, the lungs, heart, liver, skin and kidneys, and to their action we must undoubtedly turn for the origin of the traits I have named. On the food-supply, liquid and solid, whether mainly animal, fish or vegetable, whether abundant or scanty, whether rich in phosphates and nitrogenous constituents or the reverse, depend the condition of the digestive organs, the nutrition of the individual, and the development of numerous physical idiosyncrasies. Nutrition controlsthe direction of organic development, and it is essentially on arrested or imperfect, in contrast to completed development, that the differences of races depend.
These are the physiological and generally unavoidable influences which went to the fixation of racial types. They are those which placed early man under the dominion of natural, unconscious evolution, like all the lower animals. To them may be added natural selection from accidental variations becoming permanent when proving of value in the struggle for existence, as shown in the black hue of equatorial tribes, special muscular development, etc.
But I do not look on these as the main agents in the fixation of special traits. No doubt such agencies primarily evolved them, but their cultivation and perpetuation were distinctly owing toconsciousselection in early man. Our species is largely outside the general laws of organic evolution, and that by virtue of the self-consciousness which is the privilege of it alone among organized beings.
This conscious selection was applied in two most potent directions, the one to maintaining thephysical ideal, the other towardsexual preference.
As soon as the purely physical influences mentioned had impressed a tendency toward a certain type on the early community, this was recognized, cultivated and deepened by man’s conscious endeavors. Every race, when free from external influence, assigns to its highest ideal of manly or womanly beauty its special racialtraits, and seeks to develop these to the utmost. African travelers tell us that the negroes of the Soudan look with loathing on the white skin of the European; and in ancient Mexico when children were born of a very light color, as occasionally happened, they were put to death. On the other hand the earliest records of the white race exalt especially the element of whiteness. The writer of the Song of Solomon celebrates his bride as “fairest among women,” with a neck “like a tower of ivory;”18and one of the oldest of Irish hero-tales, theWooing of Emer, chants the praises of “Tara, the whitest of maidens.”19Though both Greeks and Egyptians were of the dark type of the Mediterranean peoples, their noblest gods, Apollo and Osiris, were represented “fair in hue, and with light or golden hair.”20
The persistent admiration of an ideal leads to its constant cultivation by careful preservation and sexual selection. Thus the peoples who have little hair on the face and body, as most Chinese and American Indians, usually do not like any, and carefully extirpate it. The negroes prefer a flat nose, and a child which develops one of a pointed type has it artificially flattened. In Melanesia if a child is born of a lighter hue than is approved by the village, it is assiduously held over the smoke of a fire in order to blacken it. Thecustom of destroying infants markedly aberrant from the national type is nigh universal in primitive life. Such usages served to fix and perpetuate the racial traits.
A yet more powerful factor wassexual preference. This worked in a variety of ways. If is well known to stock breeders that the closer animals are bred in-and-in, that is, the nearer the relationship of father and mother, the more prominently the traits of the parents appear in their children and become fixed in the breed. It is evident that in the earliest epoch of the human family, the closest inter-breeding must have prevailed without restriction, as it does in every species of the lower animals. By its influences the racial traits were rapidly strengthened and indelibly impressed. This, however, was long before the dawn of history, for it is a most remarkable fact that never in historic times has a tribe been known that allowed incestuous relations, unless as in ancient Egypt and Persia, for a sacrificial or ceremonial purpose. The lowest Australians, the degraded Utes, look with horror on the union of brother and sister. The general principle of marriage in savage races is that of “exogamy,” marriage outside the clan or family, the latter being counted in the female line only. This strange but universal abhorrence has been explained by Darwin as primarily the result of sexual indifference arising between members of the same household, and the high zest of novelty in that appetite. Whatever the cause, the consequences will easily be seen. The racial traits once fixed in theperiod before this abhorrence arose would remain largely stationary afterwards, and by exogamous marriages would be rendered uniform over a wide area.
This form of conscious selection has properly been rated as one of the prime factors in the problem of race differentiation.21The apparently miscellaneous and violent union of the sexes in savage tribes is in fact governed by the most stringent traditional laws, and their confused cohabitations are so only to the mind of the European observer, not to the tribal conscience.22
Causes of Variation in Types.—The physical type once fixed by the influences just mentioned remains very stable; yet may fall under the influence of conditions which will greatly modify it.
Changes in climatic surroundings and of the food supply exert a visible effect. These generally come about by migration, though geologic action has occasionally completely altered the climate of a given locality, as at the glacial epoch, which change would have the same effect as migration.
How far migration may alter race-types after many generations is not yet defined. The Spanish-American of pure white blood, whose ancestors have livedfor three centuries in tropical America, the citizen of the United States who traces his genealogy to the passengers in the Mayflower or the Welcome, have departed extremely little from the standard of the Andalusian or the Englishman of to-day, though the contrary is often asserted by those who have not personally studied the variants in the countries compared. Conditions of climate and food materially impress the individual, but not the race. The Greeks of Nubia are as dark as Nubians, but let their children return to Greece and the Nubian hue is lost. This is a general truth and holds good of all the slight impressions made upon pure races by unaccustomed environments.
Another cause of variation is the recurrence to remote ancestral traits, or the appearance of what seem merely accidental variations, which may be perpetuated. It is not very unusual in pure African negroes and Chinese to observe instances of reddish hair and gray or brown eyes.
Those peculiar congenital conditions known asalbinismandmelanismmay be frequent and are unquestionably transmissible by descent.23
The Mingling of Races.—But the mightiest cause in the change of types is intermarriage between races, what the French callmétissage. This has taken place from distantly remote epochs, especially along the lines where two races come into contact. In such regionswe always find numerous mixed breeds, leading to a shading of one race into another by imperceptible degrees.
The widespread custom of exogamous marriage fostered the blending of types, and it was greatly increased in early days by the institution of human slavery, the habit of selling captives taken in war, the purchase of wives and concubines, and the rule in early conquest that the men of the conquered were killed or sent off, and the women retained as the spoils of the victors. In all ages man has been migratory, and very remote relics of his arts show that war and commerce led to extensive intermixture of races long before history took up the thread of his wanderings.
It is noticeable, however, that these prolonged interminglings have not produced another race. The nearest approach to it is in the Australians, but these do not refute my statement as we shall see later. Many ethnologists have indeed classed the mixed types as separate races, running the number of the sub-species of the genushomoup to thirty or forty. But this was hasty generalization.
I would impress upon you this fact, that since the intermingling of two racesdoes not produce a third race, it is not likely that any of the existing races arose from a fusion of two others. The result of observation shows that after two or three generations the tendency in mixed breeds is to recur to one or the other of the original stocks, not to establish a different variety.
Were it not for such constant crossings, we have reason to believe that the race types would resist all environment and retain their traits under all known conditions. It is only where the element ofmétissageprominently enters that we are unable to assign individuals to one or another race.
Such being the case, it is a fair comparison to set one race over against another and deduce the
Physical Criteria of Racial Superiority.—We are accustomed familiarly to speak of “higher” and “lower” races, and we are justified in this even from merely physical considerations. These indeed bear intimate relations to mental capacity, and where the body presents many points of arrested or retarded development, we may be sure that the mind will also.
There are two explanations of the presence of the inferior physical traits in certain races of men; the one, that of the evolutionists, that they are reversions or perpetuations of the ape-like (simian, pithecoid) features of the lower animal which was man’s immediate ancestor; the other, that of the special creationists, that they are instances of surviving fetal peculiarities, or else deficiency or excess of development from unknown causes.
The following are the principal traits of the kind:
Simplicity and early union of cranial sutures.
Presence of the frontal process of the temporal bone.
Wide nasal aperture, with synostosis of the nasal bones.
Prominence of the jaws.
Recession of the chin.
Early appearance, size and permanence of the “wisdom” teeth.
Unusual length of the humerus.
Perforation of the humerus.
Continuation of the “heart” line across the hand.
Obliquity (narrowness) of the pelvis.
Deficiency of the calf of the leg.
Flattening of the tibia.
Elongation of the heel (os calcis).
When all or many of these traits are present, the individual approaches physically the type of the anthropoid apes, and a race presenting many of them is properly called a “lower” race. On the other hand, where they are not present, the race is “higher,” as it maintains in their integrity the special traits of the genus Man, and is true to the type of the species.
The adult who retains the more numerous fetal, infantile or simian traits, is unquestionably inferior to him whose development has progressed beyond them, nearer to the ideal form of the species, as revealed by a study of the symmetry of the parts of the body, and their relation to the erect stature.
Measured by these criteria, the European or white race stands at the head of the list, the African or negro at its foot.
The investigations of anthropologists extend much beyond the outlines I have now presented you. All parts of the body have been minutely scanned, measuredand weighed, in order to erect a science of the comparative anatomy of the races. Much of value has been discovered; but nothing absolutely characteristic, nothing which enables us to divide more sharply one race from another than the facts I have given you. It is a question, indeed, whether not too much, but too exclusive attention has not been devoted by many anthropologists to the purely physical aspects of their science. They have multiplied useless anatomical refinements and a pedantic nomenclature. The more valuable general distinctions and their technical terms I present to you in the following table:—
Contents.—The mental differences of races. Ethnic psychology. Cause of psychical development.I.The Associative Elements.1. The Social Instincts; sexual impulse; primitive marriage; conception of love; parental affection; filial and fraternal affection; friendship; ancestral worship; the gens or clan; the tribe; personal loyalty; the social organization; systems of consanguinity; position of woman in the state; ethical standards; modesty. 2. Language; universality of; primeval speech; rise of linguistic stocks; their number; grammatical structure; classes of languages; morphologic scheme; relation of language to thought; significance of language in ethnography. 3. Religion: universality of; early forms; family and tribal religions; universal or world religions; ethnic study of religions; comparison of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism; material and ideal religions; associative influences of religions. 4. The Arts of Life: architecture; agriculture; domestication of animals; inventions.II.The Dispersive Elements: adaptability of man to surroundings. 1. The Migratory Instincts; love of roaming; early commerce; lines of traffic and migration. 2. The Combative Instincts: primitive condition of war; love of combat; its advantages; heroes; development through conflict.
Contents.—The mental differences of races. Ethnic psychology. Cause of psychical development.
I.The Associative Elements.1. The Social Instincts; sexual impulse; primitive marriage; conception of love; parental affection; filial and fraternal affection; friendship; ancestral worship; the gens or clan; the tribe; personal loyalty; the social organization; systems of consanguinity; position of woman in the state; ethical standards; modesty. 2. Language; universality of; primeval speech; rise of linguistic stocks; their number; grammatical structure; classes of languages; morphologic scheme; relation of language to thought; significance of language in ethnography. 3. Religion: universality of; early forms; family and tribal religions; universal or world religions; ethnic study of religions; comparison of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism; material and ideal religions; associative influences of religions. 4. The Arts of Life: architecture; agriculture; domestication of animals; inventions.
II.The Dispersive Elements: adaptability of man to surroundings. 1. The Migratory Instincts; love of roaming; early commerce; lines of traffic and migration. 2. The Combative Instincts: primitive condition of war; love of combat; its advantages; heroes; development through conflict.
The mental differences of races and nations are real and profound. Some of them are just as valuable for ethnic classification as any of the physical elements I referred to in the last lecture, although purely physical anthropologists are loath to admit this. No one can deny, however, that it is the psychical endowmentof a tribe or a people which decides fatally its luck in the fight of the world. Those, therefore, who would master the highest significance of ethnography in its function as the key to history, will devote to this branch of it their most earnest attention.
The study of the general mental peculiarities of a people is called “ethnic psychology.” As a science, it may be treated by various methods, applicable to the different aims of research. For our present purpose, which is to study the growth, migrations and comminglings of races and peoples, the most suggestive method will be to classify their mental distinctions under the two main headings of Associative and Dispersive Elements. The predominance of one or the other of these is ever eminently formative in the character and history of a people, and both must be constantly considered with reference to their bearings on the progress of a nation toward civilization.
The psychical development of men and nations finds its chief explanation, less in the natural surroundings, the climate, soil, and water-currents, as is taught by some philosophers, than in their relations and connections with each other, their friendships, federations and enmities, their intercourse in commerce, love and war. Around these must center the chief studies of ethnographic science, for they contain and present the means for reaching its highest, almost its only aim—the comprehension of the social and intellectual progress of the species.
The sense of fellowship, the gregarious instinct, was inherited by our first fathers from their anthropoid ancestors. The “river drift” men, who dwelt on the banks of the Thames and the Somme before the glacial epoch, were gathered into small communities, as their remains testify. The most savage tribes, Fuegians and Australians, roam about in detached bands. They are not under the control of a chief, but are led to such union by much the same motives as prompt buffaloes to gather in a herd.
These fundamental mental elements which impel to association are:
Strongest of them all isthe sexual impulse. The foundation of every community is the bond of the man and woman, and the nature of this bond is the surest test of a community’s position in the scale of culture. It is not likely that miscellaneous cohabitation, or that slightly modified form of it called “communal marriage,” ever existed. No instance of it has been known to history.24In the most brutal tribes the man asserts his right of ownership in the woman. The rare custom of “polyandry,” where a woman has several husbands at once, gives her no general license.
It is equally true that the tender sentiments of loveappear to be less known to the lowest savages than they are to beasts and birds. The process of mating is by brute force, marriage is by robbery, and the women are in a wretched slavery. Mutual affection has no existence. Such is the state of affairs among the Australians, the western Eskimos, the Athapascas, the Mosquitos, and many other tribes.25
But it is gratifying to find that we have to mount but a step higher in the scale to find the germs of a nobler understanding of the sex relation. In many tribes of but moderate culture, their languages supply us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among them, and this is corroborated by the incidents we learn of their domestic life. This I have shown in considerable detail by an analysis of the words for love and affection in the languages of the Algonkins, Nahuas, Mayas, Qquichuas, Tupis and Guaranis, all prominent tribes of the American Indians.26
Some of the songs and stories of this race seem to reveal even a capability for romantic love, such as would do credit to a modern novel. This is the more astonishing, as in the African and Mongolian races this ethereal sentiment is practically absent, the idealism of passion being something foreign to those varieties of man.
The sequel of the sexual impulse is the formation of the family through the development ofparental affection. This instinct is as strong in many of the lower animals as in human beings. In primitive conditions it is largely confined to the female parent, the father paying but slight attention to the welfare of his offspring. To this, rather than to a doubt of paternity, should we attribute the very common habit in such communities, of reckoning ancestry in the female line only.
Akin to this isfilialandfraternalaffection, leading to a preservation of the family bond through generations, and in spite of local separation. It is surprising how strong is this sentiment even in conditions of low culture. The Polynesians preserved their genealogies through twenty generations; the Haidah Indians of Vancouver’s Island boast of fifteen or eighteen.
The sentiment offriendshiphas been supposed by some to be an acquisition of higher culture. Nothing is more erroneous. Dr. Carl Lumholtz tells me he has seen touching examples of it among Australian cannibals, and the records of travelers are full of instances of devoted affection in members of savage tribes, both toward each other and toward persons of other races. There are established rites in early social conditions, by which a stranger is received into the bond of fellowship and the sanctity of friendship.27This is often by a transfer of the blood of the one to the body of theother, or a symbolic ceremony to that effect, the meaning being that the stranger is thus admitted to the rights of kinship in the gens or clan. Springing from this clannish affection is the custom ofancestral worship, which adds a link to the bond of the family. It is so widely spread that Herbert Spencer has endeavored to derive from it all other forms of religion. But this is a hasty generalization. The religious sentiment had many other primitive forms of expression.
Through these various personal affections we reach the development of the family into thegens, the clan ortotem, all of whose members, whether by consanguinity or adoption, are held to represent one interest.
The union of several gentes under one control constitutes thetribe, which is the first step toward what is properly astate. The tribe passes beyond the ties of affinity by embracing in certain common interests persons who are not recognized as allied in blood. Yet it is curious to note that the tribal sentiments are among the very strongest mankind ever exhibits, surpassing those of family affection. Brutus felt no hesitation in sacrificing his son for the common weal. Classical antiquity is full of admonitions and examples to the same effect. So powerful is the devotion of the Polynesians that they have been known when a canoe was capsized where sharks abounded, to form a ring around their chief, and sacrifice themselves one by one to the ravenous fish, that he might escape.
This sentiment ofpersonal loyaltyhas been in historythe main strength of many a government, and has in it something chivalric and noble, which challenges our admiration; yet it is quite opposed to the principles of republicanism and the equal rights of individuals, and we must condemn it as belonging to a lower stage of evolution than that to which we have arrived.
The result of these gregarious instincts is the formation of thesocial organization, the bond under which first the primitive horde and later the members of the developed commonwealth consented to live. From first to last, wherever found, communities of men are bound together by ties of consanguinity and affection rather than mere self-interest. Those writers who pretend that society once existed without the idea of kinship, with promiscuity in the sexual relation, and without some recognized controlling power, have failed to produce such an example from actual life.
These ties led to the systems of “consanguinity and affinity” which recur with singular sameness at a certain stage of culture the world over. They give rise to what is called the totemic or gentile phase of society, in which its members are organized into “gentes” or clans, “phratries” or associations of clans, and the tribe, which embraces several such phratries. This theory affected the disposition of property, which belonged to the clan and not to the individual, and the form of government, which was usually by a council appointed from the various clans. The recognition of the wide prevalence of these ideas in the ancient world has led to profound modifications of our views respectingits institutions, and a better understanding of many of the events of history.28
In social organizations one of the criteria of excellence is theposition of woman. Upon this depends the life of the family and the development of morality. Those nations which have gained the most enduring conquests in power and culture have conceded to woman a prominent place in social life. In ancient Egypt, in Etruria, in republican Rome, women owned property, and enjoyed equal rights under the law. Where woman is enslaved, as among the Australian tribes, progress is scarcely possible; where she is imprisoned, as in Mohammedan countries, progress may be rapid for a time, but is not permanent. Unusual mental ability in a man is generally inherited from his mother, and a nation which studies to prevent women from acquiring an education and from taking an active part in affairs, is preparing the way to engender citizens of inferior minds.
Among other ethnic traits, the appreciation of theethicalstandard differs notably. Long ago the observant Montaigne commented on the conflicting views of morals in nations, and remarked rather cynically that what was good on one side of a river was deemed wicked on the other. This is especially noticeable in the sense of justice, the rights of property,and the regard for truth. No Asiatic nation respects truth telling, or can be made to see that it is abstractly desirable when it conflicts with their immediate interests. The rights of property are generally construed entirely differently to ourselves among nations in the lower grades of culture, because the idea of independent personal ownership does not exist among them. What they have belongs to the clan or the horde, and they merely have the use of it.
The basis of ethics in all undeveloped conditions is not general but special; it relates to the tribe and the family, and is in direct conflict with the philosopher Kant’s famous “categorical imperative,” which makes the basis the welfare of the whole species. Hence, in primitive culture and survivals there is a dual system of morals, the one of kindness, love, help and peace, applicable to the members of our own clan, tribe or community; the other of robbery, hatred, enmity and murder, to be practiced against all the rest of the world; and the latter is regarded as quite as much a sacred duty as the former.29Ethics, therefore, while a powerfully associative element in the one direction, becomes dispersive or segregating in others, unless the sense of duty is taught as a universal and not as a class or national conception.
The sentiment ofmodestyis developed by man in society, and he alone among animals possesses it. Whatever has been said to the contrary, it is neverabsent. Frequently, indeed, its manifestation is not according to our usages, and is thus overlooked. Women with us expose their faces, which a Moorish lady would think most indelicate. The Bedawin women consider it immodest to have the back of the head uncovered; the Siamese think nothing of displaying nude limbs, but on no account would show the uncovered sole of the foot. In certain African courts, the men wear long robes while the women appear nude. The necessary functions of the body are everywhere veiled by retirement, and in the most savage tribes, a regard for decency is constantly noted.
The second chief associative principle is
Unlike the elements of affection which I have been tracing, language is not a legacy from a brute ancestor. It is the peculiar property of the genus Man, and no tribe has ever been known without a developed grammatical articulate speech, with abundance of expressions for all its ideas. The stories of savages so rude that they were forced to eke out their words with gestures, and could not make themselves intelligible in the dark, are fables. The languages of the most barbarous communities are always ample in forms, and often surprisingly flexible, rich and sonorous.
We must indeed suppose a time when the speech of primeval man had a feeble, imperfect beginning. “The origin of language” has been a favorite theme for philologists to speculate about, with sparse fruitfor their readers. We can, indeed, picture to ourselves something like what it must have been in its very early stages, by studying a number of very simple languages, and noting what parts of the grammar and dictionary they dispense with. Following this plan, I once undertook to show what might have been the language of man far back in palæolithic times. It probably had no “parts of speech,” such as nouns, pronouns, prepositions or adjectives; it had no gender, number nor case, no numerals and no conjugations. The different sounds, vowels or consonants, conveyed specific significations, and each phrase was summed up in a single word.30
In some such way language began. But remember that this is quite another question from the origin oflanguages, or, to use the proper term, oflinguistic stocks. They are very numerous, and many of comparatively late birth. Those convolutions of the brain which preside over speech once developed, man did not have to repeat his long and toilsome task of acquiring linguistic facility. Children are always originating new words and expressions, and if two or three infants are left much together, they will soon have a tongue of their own, unlike anything they hear around them. Numerous examples of this character have been collected by Horatio Hale, and upon them he has based an entirely satisfactory theory of thesource of that multiplicity of languages which we find in various parts of the globe.31In the unstable life of barbarous epochs, very young children were often left without parents or protectors, or wandered off and were lost. Most of them doubtless perished, but those who survived developed a tongue of their own, nearly all whose radicals would be totally different from those of the language of their parents. Thus in early times numerous dialects, numerous independent tongues, came to be spoken within limited areas by the same ethnic stock.
It is a common error to suppose that there was once but one or a few languages, from which all others have been derived. The reverse is the case. Within the historic period, the number of languages has been steadily diminishing. We know of scores which have become extinct, as many American tongues; others, like the Celtic, are in plain process of disappearance. We can almost predict the time when the work and the thought of the world will be carried on in less than half a dozen tongues, if indeed that many survive as really active.
If we take a comprehensive survey of the grammatical structure of all known tongues, we are cheered by the discovery that they can be divided into a few great classes or groups. The similarities of each group are not in words or sounds, but in the plan of “expressingthe proposition,” or placing words together in a phrase to convey an idea.
This may be accomplished in one of four ways:
1. Byisolation. The words representing the parts of the phrase may be ranged one after another without any change. This is the case in the Chinese and the languages of Farther India.
2. Byagglutination. The principal word in the phrase may have added to it or placed before it a number of syllables expressing the relations to it of the other ideas. Most African and North Asian tongues are agglutinative.
3. Byincorporation. The accessory words are either inserted within the verbal members of the sentence, or attached to it in abbreviated forms, so that the phrase has the appearance of one word. Most American languages belong to this type.
4. Byinflection. Each word of the sentence indicates by its own form its relation to the main proposition. All Aryan and Semitic idioms are more or less inflected.
These distinctions have great ethnographic interest. They almost deserve to be called racial traits. Thus, the inflected languages belonged originally solely to the European race; the isolating languages are still confined wholly to the Sinitic branch of the Asian race; the incorporative languages are found nowhere of such pure type and so numerous as in the American race; while the agglutinative type is that alone which is found in independent examples in every race.
The principles on which languages should be compared are frequently misunderstood, and this is one of the reasons why the value of linguistics to ethnography has so often been underrated.
The first rule which should be observed is torank grammatical structure far above verbal coincidences. The neglect of this rule will condemn any effort at comparison. For example, there have been writers who have sought to derive the Polynesian, an agglutinative, from the Sanscrit, an inflected tongue; or an American from a Semitic stock. Such attempts reveal an ignorance of the nature of language.
A second rule is that in tracing the etymology of words, thephonetic laws of the special group to which they belongmust be followed. This is an even more frequent source of error than the former. Writers of high reputation will trace variations in African or American or Semitic names by the phonetic laws ofthe Aryac dialects—an absurd error, as the phonetic changes are not at all the same in different linguistic stocks.
Yet a third rule isto appraise correctly the value of verbal identities. Generally, it is placed too high. All developed tongues include many “loan words,” borrowed from a variety of sources. They are notprima facieevidence of ethnic relation; they have frequently been transmitted through other nations, as is the case with thousands of English words.
An absolute verbal identity is always suspicious; or rather it is ofnoethnic value. There must be a series of words in the languages compared of the same or similar meanings, but whose forms have been altered by the phonetic laws peculiar to the group, for such lists of words to merit the attention of a scientific linguist.
The question how far languages can be accepted as indicating the relationships of peoples has been a bone of contention. One principle we may lay down, with unimportant exceptions—No nation has ever willingly adopted a foreign tongue.Whenever such a change has taken place, it has been under stress of sovereignty,vi coactum, as the lawyers say. Hence in the savage state, where prolonged domination of one tribe by another rarely occurs, language is an excellent ethnic guide, as in America and ancient Europe.
Another principle is that in a conflict of tongues, as after conquest,that tongue prevails which belongs to the more cultured people, whether this be conqueror orconquered. This is well illustrated by the survival of the Romance languages after the inroads of the Teutonic hordes at the Fall of the Western Empire.
A third maxim in linguistic ethnography is thatmixture of languages, especially in grammatical structure, indicates mixture of blood. When, for instance, we find the Maltese a dialect partly Arabic, partly Romance, we may correctly infer that the people of the island are descended from both these stocks. This holds good even of loan words, when they are numerous; for though such have no influence on the grammatical structure of a tongue, they testify to some relations between nations, which we may be sure corresponded to others of a sexual nature.
The “American citizens of African descent” speak English only; and though they have been in contact with the white race for but three or four generations, the majority of those now living are related to it by blood, that is, are mulattoes.
Themental aptitudeof a nation is closely dependent on the type of its idiom. The mind is profoundly influenced by its current modes of vocal expression. When the form of the phrase is such that each idea is kept clear and apart, as it is in nature, and yet its relations to other ideas in the phrase and the sentence are properly indicated by the grammatical construction, the intellect is stimulated by wider variety in images and a nicer precision in their outlines and relations. This is the case in the highest degree with the languages of inflection, and it is no mere coincidence thatthose peoples who have ever borne the banner in the van of civilization have always spoken inflected tongues. The world will be better off when all others are extinguished, and it is only in deep ignorance of linguistic ethnography that such a language asVolapük—agglutinative in type—could have been offered for adoption as a world-language.
I have said that alone of all animals, man has articulate speech; I now add that also alone of all animals, he is capable of
Not only is he capable of it; he has never been known to be devoid of it. All statements that tribes have been discovered without any kind of religion are erroneous. Not one of them has borne the test of close investigation.32The usual mistake has been to suppose that this or that belief, this or that moral observance, constitutes religion. In fact, there are plenty of immoral religions, and some which are atheistic. The notion of a God or gods is not essential to religion; for that matter, some of the most advanced religious teachers assert that such a notion is incompatible with the highest religion. Religion is simply the recognition of the Unknown as a controlling element in thedestiny of man and the world about him. This we shall find in the cult of every nation, and in the heart of every man.
Some nations identified this unknown controlling power with one real or supposed existence, some with another. Those in whom the family sentiment was well developed believed themselves still under the control of their deceased parents, giving rise to “ancestral worship;” more frequently the change from light to darkness, day to night, impressed the children of nature, and led to light and sun worship; in some localities the terrific force displayed in the cyclone or the thunder-storm seemed the mightiest revelation of the Unknown, and we have the Lightning and Storm Myths; elsewhere, any odd or strange object, any unexplained motion, was attributed to the divine, thesuper-natural. The last mentioned mental state gave rise to those low cults called “fetichism” and “animism,” while the former are supposed to be somewhat higher and are distinguished as “polytheisms.” In all of them, the prevailing sentiment is fear of the Unknown; the spirit of worship is propitiatory, the gods being regarded as jealous and inclined to malevolence; the cult is of the nature of sorcery, certain formulas, rites and sacrifices being held to placate or neutralize the ill-will or bad temper of the divinities. In its lowest forms this is called “shamanism;” in its highest, it is seen in all dogmatic religions.
In early conditions, each tribe has its own gods, which are not supposed to be superior, except in force,to the gods of neighboring tribes. No attempt is made to extend their worship beyond the tribe, and in their images they are liable to be captured, as are their votaries. Special prisons for such captive gods were constructed in ancient Rome and Cuzco.
These “tribal religions” prevailed everywhere in early historic times. The religion of the ancient Israelites, such as we find it portrayed in the Pentateuch, was of this character. In later days, profoundly religious minds of philosophic cast perceived that tribal cults do not satisfy the loftiest aspirations of the religious sentiment. The conceptions of the highest truths must be universal conceptions, and in obedience to this the Universal or World-religions were formed.
The earliest of these was preached by Sakya Muni, Prince of Kapilavastu, in India, about 500 B. C. It is known as Buddhism, and has now the largest number of believers of any one faith. The second was that taught by Christ, and the third is Islam, introduced by Mohammed in the seventh century. It is noteworthy that all these world-religions were framed by members of the white race. None has been devised by members of the other races, for the doctrines advanced by Confutse and Laotse in China are philosophic systems rather than religions.
The three World-religions named have rapidly extinguished the various tribal religions, and it is easy to foresee that in a few generations they will virtually embrace the religious sentiments of all mankind. They are all three on the increase, Christianity themost rapidly by the extension of the nations adhering to it, but Mohammedanism can claim in the present century the greater number of proselytes, its fields being in Central Asia, India, and Central Africa.
In the ethnographic study of religions for the purpose of estimating their influence on the life and character of nations, we must take notice especially of three points: 1. The ethical contents of a faith; 2. The philosophic “theory of things” on which it is based (cosmogony, theosophy, etc.), and 3. Its power over the emotions, as upon this rests its practical potency.
As currently taught, no one of the three world-religions named is fully adequate on all these points. The cosmogony of Christianity is a series of Assyrian and Hebrew myths contradicted by modern science, and its ethical purity has been often sullied by efforts to place faith in dogmas above the law of conscience. Mohammedanism, a more genuine monotheism than Christianity, in some respects higher in practical morality (temperance, charity, equality), and certainly superior in power over the emotions, is weak in its doctrine of fatalism and in its degradation of woman. Buddhism is tainted by a profound distrust of the value of the individual life, by a false theory of the universe, and by its borrowed doctrine of metempsychosis; but rises high in its appeals to the sense of justice and right within the mind.
A religion tends to elevate its votaries in the proportion that it withdraws their minds from merelymaterial aims, and sets before them stimulating ideals. This is the distinction between “material” and “ideal” cults. Where the rites are directed mainly to conjuration, where the prayers are for good luck in life, where the myths are mere stories of exaggerated human shapes, there the faith is material. Such were all the religions of the African blacks and of the Eastern and Northern Asiatic tribes. They have never developed any thing higher. Among the whites, however, and in a less degree among the American Indians, there were mythical ideal figures, ranked among the gods, who embodied grand ideal conceptions of the possible perfectibility of man, and served as examples and models for the religious sentiment.33
The associative influence of a religion, whether tribal or universal in theory, is singularly powerful. The Mohammedan who looks toward Mecca, the Christian who turns toward Rome, feels a like bond of sympathy with his fellow worshippers of every race and color, as did the Israelite who wended his way to Jerusalem, or the Nahuatl who travelled to the sacred city of Cholula. The pilgrimages, the Crusades, the ecclesiastical Councils of past ages, have collected nations together under the control of ideas stronger than any which practical life can offer.
Other bonds of union are those derived from the practice of
Unquestionably the earliest of these to exert such an influence was the construction of a shelter, in other wordsarchitecture. We know that even glacial man had learned enough to make himself a house, though it was probably inferior to that of the muskrat. In early conditions one structure sheltered several families. Such are called “communal houses,” and some ethnologists have argued that they are well nigh universal down to a very late day in the evolution of domestic architecture. The temple, the fortified refuge, the city with its grouped homes shut in by a common wall of defence—all these illustrate how architecture has ever tended to bring men together, and strengthen their instincts of association.
Later in time but wider in its influence in the same direction was the growth ofagriculture. This art completely revolutionized the habits of life, and rendered possible the advent of civilization. The tribe, dependent on hunting and fishing or on natural products for a livelihood, is necessarily migratory and separative in its habits. The tillage of the ground with equal necessity demands a stable residence and a centralization of individuals. The areas of primitive culture, the sites of the earliest cities, were always in situations favorable to agricultural pursuits.
Along with the cultivation of food-plants went hand-in-hand the domestication of animals. The horse was trained independently in both Europe and Asia, some species of the dog in all continents, the ox fordraft and the cow for milk principally in Asia, and the camel for the deserts of Arabia and Africa. These humble aids brought together distant tribes, and assimilated their characters.
The prosecution of the various special arts, as pottery, metal work, textile-fabrics, etc., led to the formation of guilds and the association of workers in particular localities favorable to obtaining and utilizing the raw products. Each such conquest of the inventive faculties drew men into closer bonds of harmonious labor, and opened for them new avenues of joint industry. The pre-historic past of the race is measured by archæologists by the rise and extension of new arts, not because of themselves, but because they are indicative of improved social conditions, greater aggregations of men, more potent actions in history. The fine arts, in crowning the useful arts with the iridescent glory of the ideal, impart to the handiwork of men that universality of motive which unites all into one brotherhood.
The second class of psychic traits are:
These have been of the utmost moment in the history of the species, and a controlling factor in the records of every people. They are derived from two quite different impulses in human nature; the one, a natural propensity to roam, the other, a predisposition to contest.
Both have been favored by the ability of the speciesto adapt itself to its surroundings, far surpassing that of any other animal. There is no zone and no altitude offering the necessary food supplies that man does not inhabit. The cat, with its traditional “nine lives,” perishes in the upper Andes, where men live in populous cities. No one breed of dogs can follow man to all latitudes. His powers of locomotion are equally surprising. He can walk the swift horse to death, and his steady and tireless gait will in the long-run leave every competitor behind. An Indian will track a deer for days and capture it through its utter fatigue. A Tebu thinks little of passing three days under the sun of the Sahara without drinking. Such powers as these endow man with the highest migratory faculties of any animal, and give rise to or have been developed from
Many species of animals, especially birds, change their habitat with the seasons, the object usually being to obtain a better food supply. So do most hunting and fishing tribes, and for the same reason. Often these periodical journeys extend hundred of miles and embrace the whole tribe.
This must also have been the case with primeval man when he occupied the world in “palæolithic” time. His home was along the shores of seas and the banks of streams. Up and down these natural highways he pursued his wanderings, until he had extended his roamings over most of the habitable land.
What prompted him and all savage tribes is not alwaysthe search for food. The desire for a more genial climate, the pressure of foes, and often mere causeless restlessness, act as motive forces in the movements of an unstable population. Certain peoples, as the Gypsies, seem endowed with an hereditary instinct for vagabondage. The nomadic hordes of the Asiatic steppes and the wastes of the Sahara transmit a restlessness to their descendants which in itself is an obstacle to a sedentary life.
Such vagrant tribes became the colporteurs and commercial travellers of early society. They invented means or transportation, and conveyed the products of one region to another. Only of late have we learned to appreciate the wide extent of pre-historic commerce. Long before Abraham settled in Ur of the Chaldees (say 2000 B. C.), a well-travelled commercial road stretched from the cities of Mesopotamia, through Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules, and thence into Europe.34When Hendrick Hudson sailed into the bay of New York, the commercial relations of the tribes who lived on its shores had already extended to the coast of the Pacific.35
These lines of early traffic were also the lines of themigrations of nations. They were fixed by the physical geography of regions, and have rightly attracted the careful attention of ethnographers. Along them, nation has blended into nation, race fused with race. The conviction that early man was not sedentary, but mobile, by nature a migratory species, wandering widely over the face of the earth, is one which has been brought home to the ethnologist by the science of prehistoric archæology, and it is full of significance.
The philosopher Hobbes taught that the natural condition of man in society is one of perpetual warfare with his neighbors. This grim theory is sadly attested by a study of savage life. The wretched Fuegians, the miserable Australians, with really nothing worth living for, let alone dying for, fall to cutting each other’s throats the moment that tribe encounters tribe. So it has been in all ages, so it has been in all stages of culture. The warrior, the hero, is the one who wins the hearts of women by his fame, and the devotion of men by his prowess. Civilization helps not at all. In no century of the world’s history have such destructive battles been fought as in the nineteenth; at no former period have the powers of the earth collected such gigantic armies and navies as to-day.
This love of combat at once separates and unites nations. To destroy the common foe, the bonds of national or tribal unity are drawn the tighter; and the aversion to the enemy tends to the preservation of the ethnic type.
In spite of the countless miseries which follow in its train, war has probably been the highest stimulus to racial progress. It is the most potent excitant known of all the faculties. The intense instinct of self-preservation will prompt to an intellectual energy which nothing else can awake. The grandest works of imagination, the immortal outbursts of the poets, from Homer to Whitman, have been under the stimulus of the war-cry ringing in their ears.
The world-conquerors and the holy wars, Alexander and Napoleon, the Crusades and the Mohammedan invasions, have been landmarks in history, a destruction of the effete, an introduction of the new and the viable. Guizot’s bold statement that in the decisive battles of the world it has been, not the strongest battalions, but the truest idea which has conquered, may be a profound ethnologic truth. Certain it is that in weighing the psychical elements of man’s nature and their influence on the past history of the species, we must assign to his combative instincts a most prominent place as stimulants, and we must recognize, amid all the miseries which they have brought upon him, the part they have played in his development. That they have always resulted in promoting the “survival of the fittest,” it is hard to believe, and there is much to make us doubt; but that a great deal of the unfit has thus been destroyed, we may reasonably accept.
What has been true always, is true to-day. It is force, might, which forever exercises “the right of eminent domain;” and this principle is as necessary as itis indestructible. Proudhon was logical, when, in his treatise onWar and Peace, he placed war and the duty of waging war at the basis of all society, and defended it as the necessary condition of civilization, inasmuch as it alone is the highest form of judicial action, the last appeal of the oppressed. Never, we may be sure, will the human species be ready or willing to forego this, the greatest of all their privileges.