I. With the exception of Australasia, with which we are but very imperfectly acquainted, and of some islands and deserts which we need not take into account, all the regions visited by man since the commencement of the era of modern discoveries have proved to be more or less inhabited. In wandering over the globe of which he took possession, the European has met with man everywhere, and quaternary palæontology reveals him to us upon the most distant shores of the two continents.
Are all these different populations indigenous? Is man a native of the countries where he is represented by history, and where travellers have met with him? or has he rather invaded by degrees the surface of the globe, starting from a certain number of points, or from a single one? In other words, has man, who is nowcosmopolitan, originally been more or lesslocalised?
These questions have been answered alternately in the different senses which they admit of. Unfortunately these solutions have too often been influenced by considerations entirely foreign to science. It has been thought necessary to adopt either the one or the other in the name of dogma or philosophy, and this question has been confounded withthat of monogenism and polygenism, without seeing that upon this particular point the two doctrines must lead anyone who remains faithful to the data of science to the same result. Science has already been shown to be our only possible guide; let us examine her teaching on this subject.
II. The doctrine which admits the multiplicity of the geographical origins of man, has been more frequently asserted, than sustained by more or less serious arguments. Agassiz is the only naturalist who has developed and defined it, by supporting it with general data. We must, therefore, first examine these data. A very short account will explain the reasons why I must, with regret, oppose one of the men whose learning and character I have always held in the highest estimation.
There are singular points of resemblance, and no less striking contrasts between Agassiz and the most extravagant disciples of Darwin. The illustrious author of theEssay on Classificationis as exclusive a morphologist as the latter; neither in his opinion nor in theirs, does the idea offiliationform any connection with that ofspecies; he declares, as they do, that the questions of crossing, of constant or limited fertility, have no real interest. We are justified in attributing these opinions, so strange in such an eminent zoologist as Agassiz, to the nature of his early works. It is well known that he commenced his career with his celebrated researches upon fossil fishes. We have already remarked upon the influence which is almost inevitably exercised by fossils, where form alone has to be considered, where nothing calls attention to the genealogical connection of beings, and where we meet with neither parents nor offspring.
But while Darwinists admit the perpetualinstabilityof specific forms and theirtransmutation, the illustrious professor of Cambridge believes in theirabsolute immutability. Upon this fundamental point he is in exact opposition to Darwin. In 1840, whilst proclaiming the unity of the human species, he admits that the diversity which it presentsis the result oforiginal physical differences. This is really nothing more than a mitigated polygenism; and, like every polygenistic doctrine, compels its author to place man in contradiction to general laws. In 1845, Agassiz himself accepted this consequence in a memoir upon the geographical distribution of animals and man. He attributed the diversities of both to the same causes. “But,” he adds, “whilst in every zoological province animals are ofdifferent species, man, in spite of the diversity of hisraces, always forms one and the same species.” The following year he declared his belief in “an indefinite number of primordial races of men created separately.”
Agassiz has collected and developed all his theories in a memoir inserted at the beginning of the great polygenistic work entitledTypes of Mankind. It is clear that Nott and Gliddon, the authors of this work, were perfectly aware of the real meaning of a doctrine which proclaims the specific unity of man, while at the same time admitting that the human races have been created separately with all their distinctive characters. We, also, must not be deceived, but recognise Agassiz as a true polygenist.
I shall, therefore, be obliged to make all those objections to the theory of the eminent naturalist which have already been stated. Moreover, the singular association which he has endeavoured to establish between theunity of speciesand theoriginal characterisation of races, has led him into contradictions and consequences which are peculiar to him, and which it would scarcely be possible to pass by in silence.
Agassiz, like the greater number of polygenists, gives no intimation of what he means by the wordrace. Yet he makes use of it incessantly and declares, for example, that he is ready to show that “the differences existing between human races are of the same nature as those which separate families, genera, and species of apes or other animals....” “The chimpanzee and the gorilla,” he adds, “do not differ from each other more than Mandingoes from the Negroes of Guinea; there is less difference between either of them andthe orang, than there is between the Malay or the White and the Negro.”
Must not the logical consequence of such positive language be, that man forms a zoological family comprising several genera and many species, precisely similar to the family of anthropoid apes? But no; Agassiz devotes a new paragraph to declaring that this opinion, which he has expressed so clearly, agrees entirely with the theory of unity, and in no way brings human fraternity into question. In one of his first memoirs upon questions of this nature, he declared thatman is an exceptional being, and we shall see how far he pushes this unavoidable consequence of his theories.
In a letter addressed to the same authors, and printed in theIndigenous Races of the Earth, Agassiz returns to the same subject. He here insists upon considerations which, in his first work, he had merely alluded to, and which we are truly astonished to receive from his pen. In order to show that the same local causes have acted upon man and animals, he draws attention to the resemblance of colour, which, according to him, exists between the complexion of the Malay and the colour of the hair of the Orang; from the same point of view he compares the Negrittoes and Telingas with the gibbons.
If it were possible to consider seriously this comparison between the skin of a human group, and the colour of the hair of an animal, we should have no lack of arguments to bring against the author. I shall only remind my readers that black gibbons are found in Sumatra, which is one of those islands where men are considered by Agassiz to resemble the orang in colour.
Carried away by the heat of controversy with those naturalists who admit the unity of the geographical origin of man, Agassiz goes much further than this. He considers the various languages as being of primitive origin as well as all other characters. Men, he asserts, were created by nations, each of which appeared upon the globe with its own language. He draws a comparison between theselanguages and the voices of animals; he laughs at philologists for their belief in the discovery of any connection between one language and another. In his opinion, there is just as much relation between one human language and another, as between the growling of different species of bears, the mewing of the cats of the two continents, the quacking of ducks, or the song of thrushes, who all pour forth their gay and harmonious notes, each in its dialect, which is neither inherited nor derived from another.
Philologists will most certainly reject the law as laid down by Agassiz. But I must also protest against the comparison admitted by this illustrious naturalist. If I attribute alanguageto animals, I do not forget how rudimentary it is. I recollect that no animal has ever learnt the language of another. I know too well the distance there is betweenanimal interjectionsandarticulate speech, and I am as well aware as anyone that to use such an instrument, so as to produce from ittrue languages, can only be accomplished by the superior intelligence of man.
Agassiz, when he had arrived at this point, must have felt that he had lost himself, and that, in trying to harmonise the idea of a single human species with that of several races of distinct origin, he was entering an endless labyrinth. His last work betrays the signs of this embarrassment only too clearly. It is probably in the hope of escaping from it that the author has finally even denied the existence of species. After having again rejected the criterion drawn from crossing and degrees of fertility, he adds: “With it disappears in its turn the pretended reality of species as opposed to the mode of existence of genera, families, orders, classes and branches. Reality of existence is, in fact, possessed by individuals alone.” Thus, from adhering solely to morphology, from a disregard of the physical side of the question, from having allowed themselves to be guided by a logic which is only founded upon incomplete data, Agassiz and Darwin have arrived at a similar result. Both have disregarded this great fact, intelligible to common sense, demonstrated by science, andwhich governs everything in zoology, as it does in botany, the division, namely, of organised beings into elementary and fundamental groups which propagate in space and time. But Darwin, starting from thephenomenaofvariationswhich are presented by these beings, considersspeciesas onlyraces. Agassiz, entirely preoccupied with thephenomenaoffixity, finally considersindividualsonly as existing in living nature. Both forget that the great Buffon passed successively to both these extremes only to return again to the doctrine which includes and explains all facts, and which may be summed up in these words: distinction ofraceandspecies.
III. In spite of these dogmatic assertions, when it comes to application of any kind whatever, Agassiz, like Lamarck in former times, and Darwin in our own day, is obliged to use the wordspeciesin the sense in which it is employed by so many others. In the memoir, from which I have already quoted, animal and vegetablespeciesare constantly being discussed. Their geographical distribution serves as a foundation to the theory of human origins. The author admits that they could not have arisen upon one and the same point of the globe; that the centres of creation were numerous, and that the species diverging from these centres give to the actual flora and fauna all their characteristic features.
Up to this point Agassiz has only accepted the doctrine of centres of creation, a doctrine entirely French in origin, having been formulated by Desmoulins and developed by M. Edwards.
What is due to Agassiz is the reproduction, in the name of science, of a theory at first proposed by La Peyrère in the name of theology: giving to man the whole world as his original home: the admission that the human races originated in the same places as the groups of animal and vegetable species, and the connection of one of these races with each centre of creation; the multiplication of the number of human creations to such a degree as to profess that “man was created by nations,” endowed from the first with alltheir distinctive characters, and each speaking its own special language.
There is, at first sight, no absurdity in the idea itself, nothing at all contradictory to anything which we have as yet met with. We have seen above that physiology leads to the conclusion that “human groups areto all appearancedescended from one primitive pair.” It goes no further than that. Anyone who confines himself to inferences drawn from this order of facts might, therefore, accept the theory of Agassiz as, it is true, a very gratuitous hypothesis, but convenient in order to account for the distribution and actual diversity of human types.
This is no longer the case when we turn to another branch of the natural sciences,zoologicalandbotanical geography. We then can easily prove that the theories of Agassiz tend to make an exception of man, to place him at variance with the general laws of the geographical distribution of all other organised beings, and, consequently, that they are false.
IV. I fully agree with the views of Agassiz, as far ascentres of creation, or rathercentres of appearanceare concerned.
All who confine themselves to the data of observation and experiment will see at once that all animal and vegetable species could not have originated upon any one spot of the globe. The former shows us, in various regions, different types and species, living naturally in countries which present almost precisely the same conditions of existence. The latter teaches us that we can transport the greater number of species from one region to another, and that they will prosper there, if the conditions of existence are the same; that, on the contrary, arctic and tropical species cannot, even temporarily, be submitted to the action of the same conditions; that neither can withstand the action of a temperate climate. It is impossible with all these facts to avoid the conclusion that plants and animals had several points of appearance.
But if I accept this doctrine as the only one reconcilable with facts, it is upon the condition of adopting it entirely,and as developed by studies upon the geographical distribution of all living beings. Now, works of this kind are numerous at the present time.
For all phanerogamous plants we have the work of M. Ad. de Candolle, which has been a standard work ever since its appearance.
Animals have not yet had their de Candolle. The great work of M. Alphonse Edwards will partly fill up this gap for the more southern regions of the globe. In the meantime, important investigations have been made in some of the principal classes. Buffon, by his admirable researches upon the geography of mammals, opened the way, in which he has been followed by the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires, Fr. Cuvier, and Andrew Murray; Dumeril and Bibron have studied reptiles from the same point of view;Fabricius, Latreille, Macley, Spence, Kirby, and Lacordaire have done the same for insects; M. Milne Edwards has worked out the distribution of the crustacea; I have endeavoured to do as much for the annelids. Finally, a great number of works bearing upon the lower groups have long been known to science, and Agassiz himself has largely contributed to increase our knowledge in this direction.
A certain number of general facts stand out from this mass of research, which we calllaws. If the theory of Agassiz is true, it ought to agree with these laws. Now the disagreement is apparent from the outset.
Let us prove, in the first place, that this theory includes two very distinct ideas: that of the original cosmopolitanism of the human species; and, secondly, that of a geographical connection between the human race and the animal or vegetable groups observed in a common centre. Let us examine the truth and error contained in this last statement.
Agassiz holds that the influence of the centre of appearance is general and absolute. It extends to all the products of the soil as well as to those of fresh and salt waters. A country is just as much characterised by its plants and animals as by its human beings. In his opinion, an essentiallylocal force seems to have produced all beings, or at least to have imprinted upon them a common mark.
This generalisation was inevitable. Any one who wishes to attach a human race to each centre of appearance is compelled to localise in each one of them the original cause of all the animal and vegetable forms which are indigenous in it. For all living beings geographical coincidence must be absolute.
Now there is generally no such coincidence. From the waters of a river to the banks which enclose it, the contrast may be striking. This is exactly what was shown by the discoveries of Agassiz himself in the ichthyology of the Amazon. To anyone who accepts the results published by the illustrious traveller, it is evident that this fauna may be divided into groups much more narrowly confined than those of terrestrial fauna. The same fact may be observed upon the shores of two seas separated by even a very narrow strip of land. The terrestrial fauna and flora are the same throughout the whole extent of the isthmus of Suez, whilst M. Edwards has not found a single species of crustacea common to both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and the study of annelids has led me to the same result.
Moreover, the same region may be the centre of appearance for one class of animals, but by no means for another. Australia, for example, is one of the most characteristic centres for mammals, and stands alone from this point of view among the surrounding countries. With respect to insects Australia agrees, on the contrary, with New Zealand, New Caledonia and the neighbouring islands. I have borrowed this last fact from Lacordaire. It has the more value since this entomologist has multiplied the centres of appearance to a much greater extent than Agassiz, and has, therefore, made their characterisation easier.
Thus the coincidence admitted by Agassiz, far from extending to all the organised beings of a region, does not even exist in certain cases between the different classes of animals alone.
V. Agassiz divides the entire surface of the globe into ninegreat regions orkingdoms. I cannot here give in detail the numerous criticisms to which the fixed limits and characterisation of these centres are open. I shall confine myself to a few short remarks upon each.
1.Polynesian Kingdom.We shall see presently that it is impossible to regard Polynesia as a centre of human appearance. This region has been entirely peopled by migration from the Indian Archipelago, the history of which has been partly preserved. The first kingdom of Agassiz must be struck out as far as we are concerned; it is an exclusively animal and vegetable centre. Agassiz, moreover, though he supports it in the text and upon the map, does not assign it a place in the illustrated table, in which he sums up his ideas.
2.Australian Kingdom.Agassiz includes New Guinea in this kingdom. He thus destroys the homogeneity of the mammalogical fauna. At the same time he unites the several human races of Australia with the Negrittoes and Papuans. This alone destroys all unity of type.
3.Malay or Indian Kingdom.This kingdom comprises India, the Malay Archipelago, and the Andaman Islands. Now, anterior to the Aryan conquest, Yellows and Blacks lived in India. The latter are still found in a pure state in the peninsula of Malacca, and in the Andaman Islands; Malaysia presents a perfect mixture of most different races, from the White to the Negro. The Malays, properly so-called, are much rather a population levelled by the action of Islamism, than a race in the true sense of the word; they present in a high degree the characters of intercrossing. All these facts protest against the idea of making these regions a centre of human appearance.
4.Hottentot Fauna.Agassiz abandons the expression kingdom in speaking of the south of Africa, without giving any reason for the change. Whatever the cause may be, this is one of the least unfavourable regions for the application of his theory. From a geological or botanical point of view, South Africa constitutes a veritable centre. TheBosjesman and the Hottentot might be considered as the characteristic human type. But the Negroes of Delagoa and the Kaffirs still protest against this partial coincidence.
5.African Kingdom.This region is considered by Agassiz to comprise the rest of Africa, with the exception of the shores of the Mediterranean. He adds Madagascar and the southern half of the Arabian peninsula. Now, from a mammalogical point of view, Madagascar forms a little centre of itself, whilst the human population is very mixed. The Hovas are very slightly modified Malays, and the languages of the Sacalaves themselves indicate relations with the Malayo-Polynesians. As to the continental portion of the kingdom, it is enough to remark that it includes Negroes, Abyssinians, Arabs, etc. History, as well as the present state of things, protests against the connection made in this case by the author.
6.European Kingdom.This division Agassiz considers as comprising the entire circumference of the Mediterranean, Persia and Beloochistan. Consequently it embraces very different fauna and flora; it mixes up Aryan, Semitic and Chamitic populations, and takes no account of history. Agassiz himself recognises this fact, and declares that he has only taken into consideration prehistoric times. Since the Quaternary epoch, however, France alone has supported tribes which were tall and dolichocephalic, and others which were short and brachycephalic. Finally, although Agassiz includes the Persians with the Europeans, he leaves out the Hindoos who are ethnologically connected with them, and places them in an entirely different kingdom.
7.Mongolian or Asiatic Kingdom.This kingdom encloses all the central portion of Asia, beginning at the Bolor and the Himalayas, and extending as far as Japan. The Mongol is taken as the human type of this vast extent of country. But Agassiz forgets the Aryans of the Bolor, the white Jutchis, the Japanese of the same type, the Aïnos, etc. He unites, therefore, people which belong to at least two extreme types of mankind.
8.American Kingdom.Agassiz makes but one kingdom of the whole of America, whilst all zoologists and botanists are agreed in dividing it into at least two great and distinctly characterised centres. He adopts the opinion of Morton, who only admits one human race in America, with the exception of the Esquimaux. Now, since the publication of d’Orbigny’sHomme Américain, it is no longer possible to believe in this uniformity. The numerous investigations which have been undertaken upon this question have, moreover, proved still more strongly the multiplicity of races admitted by this traveller. Again, if the human races of America are compared with those of the old world, we shall find, with a few exceptions, a very close connection with Asia, especially in certain populations of Central America: if we compare the fauna and flora, the connection is, on the contrary, closer in North America. These facts are in direct opposition with the theory of Agassiz.
9.Arctic Kingdom.This latter kingdom deserves a little more attention than the others. It comprises all the northern regions of the two continents. The southern limit is somewhat arbitrarily fixed by Agassiz at the zone of forests. In no region of the world does man meet with such identical conditions of existence, for all are governed by cold. It would seem, therefore, to be better able than any other to justify the author’s theory, and yet facts agree but very slightly with it.
Agassiz characterises this kingdom by the existence of one plant and six species of animals, five mammals and one bird. The plant is the Iceland lichen (cenomyce rangiferina). Now, this lichen is so little characteristic of polar regions that it is found in many parts of France, and even in the neighbourhood of Paris at Fontainebleau. M. Decaisne believes that our hares and rabbits live upon it in winter, as the reindeer do in Lapland. Further, the observations recently made in Greenland by the German Polar Expedition, show that in this country, which, of all countries inthe Arctic Kingdom, should most readily adapt itself to the conceptions of Agassiz, and which is inhabited by pure-blooded Esquimaux, possesses scarcely one vegetable species which can be said to be peculiar to it, and that a great number of them are found in the Alps, and upon the summits of the Vosges. It is a result of the return of heat after the glacial epoch, the species which resisted it having emigrated in altitude as well as in latitude.
In animal species, the white bear and the walrus are really polar. The same may be said of the Greenland seal considered as a species. But as a type we meet with it everywhere; as a genus it inhabits all the seas of Europe. The reindeer inhabited France in the Quaternary epoch; it was living in Germany in Cæsar’s time; it descended yearly to the Caspian Sea during the lifetime of Pallas. The true whale used to visit our coast before it was driven away by man. Finally, at this day, the eider duck builds yearly in Denmark, ten to fifteen degrees south of the Polar circle. Thus, in the six species mentioned by Agassiz as peculiar to his Arctic Kingdom, three at least belong equally to his European Kingdom.
Agassiz was certainly more capable than anyone else of nicely characterising the region in question, if it had been possible to do so. He failed, because there is in reality no such thing as a true Arctic fauna. The cause of this lies in the extension of more southern fauna, which become impoverished as they advanced northwards, but change their character very slightly. In reality, this kingdom is broken up into independent provinces, or rather, is connected with regions situated more to the south, and consequently better divided. The Polar region, says Lacordaire, in speaking of insects, is characterised less by the speciality of its products than by their scarcity. All these facts, again, are the consequence of the peopling of the Arctic regions after the glacial epoch.
It would seem that man at least might present at the pole the homogeneity supposed by the theory. It is not so,however, whatever may be the assertions of Agassiz upon this subject. “A peculiar race of man,” he says, “live there, known in America by the name of Esquimaux, elsewhere by that of Lapps, Samoyedes or Tchouktchis.... The uniformity of their characters throughout the whole extent of the Arctic seas unites them in a striking manner with the fauna with which they are so closely connected.”
There are, in these words of Agassiz, grave ethnological and anthropological errors. The uniformity of characters of which he speaks does not exist at all. It will suffice to remind my readers that the Lapps are one of the most brachycephalic, and the Esquimaux one of the most dolichocephalic races with which we are acquainted. In fact, these two races are so entirely distinct that no anthropologist has ever dreamt of establishing a connection between them.
As to the Samoyedes and Tchouktchis, they have not always inhabited the icy lands where we now meet with them. The former have still a recollection of having come from the south, and M. de Tchiatchef has discovered the original stock upon the confines of China. The latter settled at Behring’s Straits but a short time ago to free themselves from Russian conquest, against which they had bravely struggled. They subjugated and absorbed the Yukagires, their predecessors. They differ, moreover, equally from Esquimaux and Lapps.
Thus, in the Arctic Kingdom, where all the most favourable conditions for the display of any truth which the ideas of Agassiz may possess are brought together, everything protests against these ideas. In spite of his vast knowledge, he could not characterise it zoologically in a precise manner; the special fauna which he admits does not exist; the identity of populations which he proclaimed disappears under the slightest examination.
Finally, the theory which attaches a human race to every centre of appearance as a local product of that centre, ought to be rejected by anyone who sets the least value upon the results of observation.