CHAPTER IX.
SYSTEM.
All science leads necessarily to asystem; and system signifies here, not the proceeds of observation or a route followed by analysis or synthesis in order to arrive at the knowledge of the truth. System here means, a mode of classifying beings or observed facts, a mode essentially in connection with the science which treats of these beings or of these facts, and often applicable to itself alone.
A perfect system can only be really establishedà posteriori, after the knowledge has been acquired of all the phenomena which are to be classed. This is absolute. In practice, a system can only be observedà priori, by reference to a certain number of facts which it is destined afterwards to embrace; it is only true that the more facts we acquire, the more chance has a system of being exact, without our ever having the right of proclaiming it to be absolutely good; it may be satisfactory, and remain so for a long time, but one fine day a new fact may prove it to be false. “I am of opinion,” said Étienne Geoffroy, “that a perfect system cannot exist; it is a sort of philosopher’s stone, impossible to be discovered.”327
A science being given, it does not at all follow that there already exists a proper method for classifying in a natural series the phenomena which manifest themselves to us in this branch of human knowledge. If we have not yet succeeded in discovering a true anthropological system, if Camper, Prichard, and Morton have been foiled, it is because the science of mankind is still too new.
Even in making an abstract of the difficulties always to befound in determining every animalspecies, difficulties which are derived from the way in which we understand its evolution,328must we be astonished that the human race is not yet divided into distinct groups, when animals, much more easy to class on account of their lesser degree of intellectual and social activity, are not yet classed in a satisfactory manner,329when the Geoffroys, Cuvier, and De Blainville have failed in something or other, since this question seems still worthy of examination by the greatest minds of Europe with which the natural sciences are honoured at the present day? The natural history of man is of to-day, and the difficulties are great, because by virtue of his intellect man possesses resistance and special affinity. Living by nations, he lives a double life; his own, and that of the nation—which is a separate thing—into which a neighbouring race or species can enter wholly, adopting the same customs, the same dress, and the same language. There are difficulties which we meet with in anthropology, and which we only meet with there. A species has been known to disappear, for instance, and has left its name to some group entirely different from it, for if the Ethnic name has served at the origin to name the inhabited country, the geographical name has reacted in its turn, and has imposed itself on all the people who have successively occupied the same area. Other difficulties will arise from regions inhabited by distinct species, if these limits are not marked by some physical barrier almost impossible to be passed.
Thus we are far, even at the present day, from agreeing about the bases of a good anthropological classification. Many methods have been tried, but none have as yet succeeded. Some have adopted geographical division. Others, the colour of the skin. Others, the state of the hair. Others (the most numerous class), have stopped at the shape of the head. The skull has chiefly exercised the sagacity of anatomists and anthropologists, and we can say fairly that there is no combination to which it has not been submitted in order to arriveat the distribution of mankind into natural groups. We must remark that all these cranioscopic classifications rest involuntarily upon thisdatum, that the different kinds of men are unequally endowed with intellect. Starting, then, from this principle, that the volume of the brain is inratioto intelligence, or that intellect is inratioto the volume of the brain, people tried to find a simple, rather than an easy, method of taking account of such an irregular solid: and Camper opened the way with his famous angle.
This system was soon followed by others who are less celebrated, having come after him. We may quote, among others, the interior angle of Walther, described by two lines, the one going from the occipital protuberance to thecrista galliprocess, the other from the frontal prominence to the root of the nose. There is also the external angle of Mulders, described by the facial line of Camper, and another line going from the base of the process to the root of the nose. And, lastly, that of Daubenton, described by a line going from the inferior margin of the orbit to the posterior region of the occipital orifice, and by another following the direction of the plane of the same.330All these systems are worth as much as Camper’s. All, including Camper’s, are false and worthless, from the mere fact that they pretend to measure a solid by the inclination of two of its boundary-planes one upon the other. After these methods of measurement, and superior to all of them, comes thenorma verticalisof Blumenbach; then the measurements of Cuvier, Owen, etc. Here we gain a step; we endeavour to measure a solid by its outline, or by the area of a systematic division or section. Already had Camper, better gifted than his angle would inform us, endeavoured to compare the different diameters of the profile of the skull, as seen in front.331As to Cuvier’s division, it is a very happy modification of a former proposed measurement, the incisive-occipital line of Doornick. It is obtained by lowering a vertical line to the plane of the external auditory orifice, and by leading anotherline from the incisors to the extreme protuberance of the occipital region. The relation of the two determinated divisions in this line by its intersection with the first, will give the statistics of comparison.332
Progress has been immense, and yet our systems remain very unsatisfactory; the skull seems to escape every method of measurement. Some time ago a meeting of craniologists took place at Gottingen, and yet the learned assembly was obliged to separate without settling anything.333It seems that the old saying of Bernard Palissy about measuring some peculiar skull, will remain true in spite of all our efforts: “I have never known how to obtain a correct measurement.”334Another method is that of Morton, to which he has attached his name by the multiplicity of facts which he has drawn, from it, by the justice of the views which he has expressed, after having used it thousands of times; we speak of the direct measurement of the interior capacity of the skull. It is for ever to be regretted that Morton finished his laborious career without having been able to publish the ultimate results of his long researches; but this method (which M. Broca has actively applied), is, however, not quite perfect. If there was merely a difference among the different races in the amount ofintellect shown in their works, this measurement would be sufficient to establish a division; but there is more than that; all races have different aptitudes, and here is to be found the fault of Morton’s system, which only takes the whole, which makes no distinction between very different skulls if they have the same volume, like those of the Esquimaux, for instance, and those of Americans. The subject of measurement differs, like intellect, otherwise than merely in dimension, and that which craniology wants is the definition of all these special tendencies of the intellect by as many tangible varieties as possible.335
Craniology is not anthropology; it assists it materially, but the partial results which it obtains have not necessarily the same value in the more general point of view of anthropology. Every classification, based on the form of the skull, will be necessarily an artificial classification, because it will only rest upon one sole order of phenomena. Besides, this study presents great difficulties from the individual differences which the various heads show, in which the qualities belonging to the individual have been so far able to hide the general characters of the race, that these often remain unrecognisable. Divisions have also increased in proportion as craniological collections have come richer in specimens. Morton only reckoned eleven human races, but he believed under the truth. We may very well have a poor idea of the value of this classification by studying the materials which were used by the philosopher of Philadelphia. Besides the American race, Morton had only a very few skulls at his disposal. The Philadelphian collection, which has been much increased since his death, contained, only a few years ago, 1035 skulls, 38 of them pathological; there remain therefore but 997. Out of this number the American race figures in 502, or more than one-half. There remains, therefore 495, 154 of which came from the valley of the Nile; so that merely 350 skulls represent the whole of Europe, Asia, the Oceanic countries, and Africa (excepting Egypt). This is not much for the purpose of classing a population likely to be raised to five hundred millions of inhabitants.336
It remains for us to study and determine the intrinsic value of each of these heads. The authentic production of a skull is not always easy to be established when it comes from the other side of the world, obtained by travellers who have not made a special study of anthropology; it is even less so when a skull is dug up in a burial ground, where there may be a certain promiscuousness very apt to hinder our inquiries. Errors of this kind steal into science only too often, and we have for a long time in particular objected to the name ofGallic mummy, which has been given to a body in a collection at Paris, the history of which does not at all justify this denomination, since we simply believe thatwhen it was first dug upit was only referred back to thethirteenthcentury!337
Craniology was anthropology itself, whilst this science was being cultivated merely by learned men in their studies. If a skull does not always bear about it the stamp of the race to which it belongs, we must nevertheless own that it is the best representative of the dead individual. Craniology obtains all its weight and powers from the study of ancient races and extinct peoples. There it ought to intervene with an unequalled importance, for want of better points of reference. By its means anthropology can search in the past, clearing up those questions which history is incapable of explaining. In this manner Morton has been able to prove better than by any historical document that Ancient Egypt was inhabited by very mixed races, and composed of the most different elements, exactly as in our own days. But there remained a problem even more interesting: that of knowing if the different races who then inhabited the banks of the Nile were as much divided into various occupations as at the present day: the Albanians are all soldiers, the Copts all scribes and officials, the Fellahs all labourers, etc. Doubtless it would be possible, if not easy, to arrive at the solution of this new problem by collecting skulls and mummies with more care than has hitherto beendone, and, above all, by assisting the researches of the Egyptiologists, who can read upon the coffin that such and such a body is that of a workman, a priest, or a king. We may thus be able to ascertain if the kings of such or such a dynasty were black or yellow; if the dominant population of such or such anomehad the Coptic, Berberine, or Fellah type. Here we have a large field for study, which has been almost entirely neglected by the American school of anthropology, precisely because Morton found himself without information about the production and true age of the immense materials which he had at his disposal.
But we must not be forgetful: the classification of skulls by their shape, of hairs by their colour, or skins by their hue, is not the classification of races of mankind. We only perceive here one order of phenomena. A classification established upon such bases has its point of departure only in the mind of him who conceived it, and not in the nature of things.
We shall only have a natural and rational classification by comparing entire individuals one with the other.338To this we must come; we must study at one and the same time the height, the skin with its dependencies, and, above all, the character of the countenance, the attitude, thefacies, and thehabitusof different races, which Caldwell called “the variety discoverable in the complexion and feature, the figure and stature of the human race;339” thissomethingis explained in one word, which we calltype, about which we are never mistaken, and which makes us say, “This is a man from the south, that is a man from the north; this is a Mongolian, that an Indian.”340By this means alone we can form natural groups; difficulties will, doubtless, be great at the beginning, but light will come little by little, and time will teach us surely to distinguish certain distinctive characteristics, whose expression will be gradually more and more simple. This is a work for the future.
Anthropology regarding man as a whole, classifiers ought not to neglect his psychological value. Although craniology is only an indirect appreciation of the same, few had ever thought, Linnæus excepted, of using the purely intellectual characteristics of races in order to assist them in classification, when all at once the American school gave an immense importance to these characteristics, and placed psychological varieties above all the material differences which can be observed in the configuration of the bony case of the skull. The American school has gone too far, for it is tangible forms especially which must furnish specific characteristics in the animal kingdom.
However this may be, we may willingly give a secondary value to the intellectual classification of the human race, althoughdataare still wanting in order to establish one which can be considered as complete. We will even add that the characteristics of this order are the more authentic and the more precious since they are not the expression of a given moment, nor that of a certain number of individuals. They belong to a whole race.
We must seek for them in the literary remains of a people. These teach us surely, even after many ages have elapsed, about the mind, belief, and thoughts of their readers. The monuments of plastic art remain, even if they were a complete contradiction against their time, their epoch, the men who ordered them, and the crowd which now regards without understanding them.341A book, on the contrary, has no success except as it enters into the mind of a people,—except as the ideas which it expresses are those of all the world. Each book which is published, then (like the Mosaic books among the Jews, the Korán amongst the Mussulmen), is the true expression of the mind of a race at all the periods of its existence, even were it written in a language which is no longer spoken. The best Greek and Roman works, written for men of the same blood as ourselves, have remained classical. We must understand them, even at the present day, and we do understand them, because the thoughts which animated their authors are still our own. If, on the contrary, we wish topenetrate into any foreign literature, it becomes a labour and a fatigue, we only reach it by making an abstraction of our thoughts and our ideas, by endeavouring to enter entirely, by a violent effort, into the life and feelings of another people.
Languages also have been considered capable of serving as a basis for the classification of the human race. Their importance has been largely discussed, and counts numerous warm partisans.342At their head we may perhaps mention Latham, who wishes the ancient history of mankind to be studied by languages,343and agreeing in Prichard’s ideas about the production of intermediary hybrid races, he only sees this method of reading the history of the past, and he is quite naturally led to language, which seems to him to offer better conditions of resistance344than physical characteristics.
It is true that philology, applied to anthropological research, is of immense assistance to it; it can give us powerful inductions on the history of the past, and on the origin of the present human species. But even these, solutions agree very well with the theory of gradual evolution, and with the corollary of this theory, namely, that man has not always possessed the faculty of speech.345Philologists tell us, for instance,that two sister tribes may have been able, at some past time, to create on each side of a mountain two different idioms, which may produce in their turn two families of languages absolutely irreducible one from the other. This is what would take place, according to M. Renan, when the sons of the same parents, separating on the sides of the Imäus, became the double branch from whence have sprung the Semites on one side, and the Aryas on the other. This would be the explanation of the fact so embarrassing for anthropologists, that physical characteristics are sensibly identical among the Semites and Europeans, whilst these races are as distinct as possible in the matter of language. Now, we may even go further, and infer from these facts that the common species from whence the Semites, on the one hand, and the Aryas, on the other, are descended, did not yet know how to speak.
Inversely to Latham, some anthropologists have given, in our opinion, too little importance to language: we speak especially of Edwards and M. Omalius d’Halloy.346The truth lies, doubtless, between these two extremes. It must be acknowledged that language can very often furnish excellent evidence, but it must not be forgotten that it shows at the same time a more rapid liability to change than moral characteristics and corporal form. Niebuhr seems to us to be right when he insists upon the precautions to be taken in order to apply philology in a useful manner to the determination of races, and he concludes that we must give the greatest attention to physicalconfiguration.347This is also the opinion of Humboldt348and M. Vivien.349A language, like every custom, and every act of individual relation, can transmit itself from one race to another which is very different. The unity of a family of languages is not always sufficient to establish that the people who speak these idioms are of one and the same origin; we can only conclude from it that they have been in relation one with the other, and it is even reasonable to admit that this cause has been able to act with a decisive influence at the epoch when man first commenced to lisp.350These two tribes meeting for the first time, physically strangers one to the other, were doubtless able to borrow mutually certain habits, and to mingle in a decided manner their two manners of explaining their thoughts, from which has resulted one sole language, in which we cannot distinguish except by analysis the two different branches which have contributed to its formation. This hypothesis has been even elevated to a general thesis by several philologists, and M. d’Escayrac de Lauture, among others, believes that the centre of Africa, that land of the unknown and of mystery, is reserved to us as a spectacle of this phenomenon.351Without going back to origin, it is evident that two neighbouring peoples, in continual relation one with the other, ought to end by borrowing mutually the forms of language, letters, and articulation, especially when they have neither of them any literaturecapable of retaining the language within its limits, and of preserving it from all separation.
Hence it results that anthropology must take its most precious authorities from the study of languages, in the language of the islands, for instance, and in the idioms spoken at the extremity of the continents: thus surrounded by the sea, in relation by its less extent with the others, these idioms will be preserved even more intact. We shall find here the real expression of the most ancient state of things which we can directly recognise by philology. Theclicklanguage, so peculiar to one single race,352exists only in the most southern part of Africa. They still speak the ancient Pali353in the south of Asia and at Ceylon. The most ancient language of Europe, so far as we know, namely the Celtic, still remains in Britanny and in Wales.
From all which has gone before, we may then conclude that in order to establish a rational classification of human species, the first characteristics to be considered will be theexternal aspect, and perhaps themoral characteristics; the rest will come in the second rank: at first, language, then deep anatomical varieties which do not strike us at the first glance, then physiological and pathological varieties, etc. Such is, we think, the only certain basis upon which anthropology can rest—the true distinctions between human species. We do not even yet know exactly their number, and naturalists do not at all agree on this subject; the work is to be done over again, by following a new route.
Without troubling ourselves with enquiring into the whole system of the genushomo, we must at first examine these well-characterised centres of population which are entirely distinct as regards aspect and physiognomy. We must mark these centres with care, paying attention to all the physical, moral, and philological varieties which we are able to notice. M. Flourens has given some excellent principles for the study of animal species; he wishes simply to apply them to the study of humanspecies; and from this connection, which nobody can contradict as a means of investigation, there arises a farther proof of the rank which we must give to man in the organic series. “We must observe the living animal,” said M. Flourens; “we must observe him for a long time, and also both sexes and all ages. We must study his nature, his instincts, and his intellect. Each of these things has its own characteristic in each animal, and it is by the whole of these characteristics put together that species is defined.” It is impossible to trace in a better manner the anthropologists’ task.
When we have well studied a homogeneous centre of population under all its aspects, when we have rendered an account of its physiological, psychological, and philological characteristics, we may stop; and without prejudging anything concerning the area of this race, may then pass on to another centre, which we shall notice in the same way, without troubling ourselves with intermediary varieties, which will always be in a greater or lesser number wherever we do not happen to meet with a physical barrier, like the sea or a chain of mountains, which may separate the two centres which are to be observed. Then we shall, doubtless, have numberless shades and transitions; but these are merely the phenomena of hybridity, entirely secondary, and which ought not at all to influence our essays on anthropological classification. At a later period, when we know more, we shall be able to review all these intermediary varieties, when we understand their conditions of existence better. In this manner we must take care at the beginning to study certain countries, places of travel, and meeting, to which all the neighbouring races have given some portion of their blood. Such are most European countries, and such always was the Valley of the Nile and the Blue Nile. The streets of Cairo are not only a picturesque spectacle; from thence did Étienne Geoffroy borrow his grand views about the position of the genushomoin nature; the man of science profits here as much in his search after truth as the artist in his search after the beautiful.
Who can forget, even if he has only once seen it, this phantasmagoria of customs and physiognomies which developes itselfbefore our eyes at every moment; here a gigantic Circassian, there a smaller sized Copt, with an arched nose; a Nubian, with his “violet ebony” colour, but with a pleasing figure, nose straight and small, thin lips, well arranged teeth; a Turk, with as white and transparent a skin as a man of the north; a Negro, with crisped hair, flat nose, prominent cheek-bones, thick lips, large and projecting teeth; a Fellah, with olive complexion; a Bedouin, almost as black as a Nubian, but tall, with aquiline nose, thin lips, and kingly bearing.
We must not seek for a pure population in the streets of Paris, London, Marseilles, Trieste, or Constantinople: we only find in these capitals isolated facts, good specimens, perhaps, of different species, but lost in the multitude of hybrids. We can only study in these placesindividuals, notspecies. In those parts alone which we must make centres of observation, can we see the same man indefinitely multiplied among really primitive people, still free from intermixture, or with the least possible taint of the same. Then we must hasten to seize his general characteristics, and take both his physical and moral portrait.
The physical portrait in particular comprises two series ofdata, features and colour. As to feature, photography is an unequalled resource, but it belongs to anthropological study to settle its application in a clear manner: we must always choose some individual presenting the usual type of the population in the midst of which he is found, rather than among the chiefs or nobles of the land. We must select this type in the prime of life, when the animal œconomy has arrived at its perfect development, and has not yet commenced to decay, and still shines in all the splendour of its reproductive force; this would be, for man, from twenty-two to twenty-seven years of age. For photographic portraits to be of real utility to anthropologists, they ought to represent the individual completely full face, or in profile; thus only can they be of use in measurements. For it is important not to confound anthropology with ethnology, as is done every day. They are two things entirely different.Dressed-upportraits are the domain of the latter, thenaturalhistory of man demandsalwaysabsolutely nuderepresentations, and the best will be those which show us the individual with untouched beard and hair.
As to colour, we must refer as much as possible to oil-painting. In fact, the colour of the human skin, as we have formerly said,354is, in reality, a complex visual impression; all the coloured rays (we employ the term here in the conventional sense given to it in physics) which emanate from the skin, and which strike the eye of the observer, are not formed by the same plane surface; they arise from the more or less profound parts seen by transparency, through a more or less diaphanous medium, more or less favourable for the emission of these rays. Hence results, as regards the eye, a special sensation, and as regards the mind, a special notion, which we explain in the arts by the wordtransparencyordiaphaneity.
Now, this kind of sensation will not be reproduced by the artist unless he employs certain processes recalling to the mind those of nature itself. This is not the case with water-colour painting. The colouring matter, reduced to extremely fine particles, is applied, it is true, in a transparent vehicle—water; but this, destined to evaporate almost immediately, leaves the colour on the surface of the paper, stretched into an extremely fine layer, without appreciable thickness. We perceive from this the radical imperfection of water-colour for portraiture, and the impossibility of rendering by such means, at least with truth, the effect of skin colours. Oil painting offers far better resources, and here is the secret of its incomparable superiority. The colouring matter, diluted by the oil, remains suspended as before in its transparent medium when the painting is dry; so that the luminous rays, in order to arrive at the eye, start from the surface of the paint as well as from its interior substance. We find exactly the same process in nature; an impalpable powder, like the pigmentary granulations, or the globules of blood in the capillaries of the skin, is spread over a diaphanous substance.
We may now understand the advantage of such a process in anthropological iconography. We must, indeed, almost giveup all other methods. It is easy to convince oneself of the fact by examining the coloured portraits which illustrate the works of Prichard,355Nott, and Gliddon,356who are, however, extremely particular about the correctness of the types which they bring before our notice. But all these coloured portraits are unsatisfactory, and when we see some anthropologist invoke the authority of these bad prints, we really ask ourselves which we ought most to admire, either the blind confidence of thesavant, the imprudence of the author, or the rashness of the artist. Fancy, however, attacking with such platitudes the portraits of dark-coloured men which the masters of painting have left us, from Veronese to Géricault! They alone have been able, by their process, to seize the reality of the complexion and colour of their models.357
But the surest method of arriving at conclusive evidence in anthropology is necessarilytravels. Doubtless the study alone of the materials collected from afar is of the greatest possible use. But we repeat concerning the study of mankind what we said about the study of animals; the anthropologist must leave his library and go into the great continents, in order to study by means of his own eye-sight. “We can only arrive at the distinction of species,” says M. Flourens, “bydirect and complete personal observation.” That it must be complete, we have endeavoured to show; but the only condition for its being complete is its being direct. Had we even the genius of Buffon,358we should see but poorly by means of others; facts reach us distorted and altered, because they have not always been observed by competent men; they are not comparable,resulting as they do from diverse individual impressions. It will be especially necessary to control with care travellers’ tales as regards the study of intellectual tendencies, since they are too often influenced by their own ideas on the subject.
Let us say this before concluding: among theà prioriproofs which polygenists can bring forward on their side, there is one which is of some importance; it is this, that while contrary ideas have been sustained and defended by men who never go beyond their own studies, the former have been generally brought forward by travellers and sailors, by those indeed who have been best able to put in practice thisdirect observation, which is generally conclusive and decisive. It is these whom we find the most ready to separate mankind into distinct groups, and to recognise in the inferior species a manifest tendency to approach nearer the nature of the anthropomorphous apes. A valuable source of information, from which anthropologists must not neglect to borrow, are the accounts of those who landed for the first time on certain islands and continents.
If they have even conceived any erroneous ideas, it must usually be acknowledged that they are most likely to be able to give us a tolerably faithful portrait of the nations with whom they have met, even more important in certain points of view than the accounts afterwards given of them, since at that time these people have not been submitted to the various influences which necessarily result from contact with Europeans.
We can study philology and craniology in the library and in solitude, assisted by proper documents and sufficient materials,but not anthropology; because anthropology is a science still in its cradle, and observation must have furnished its proper and necessary contingent before we can endeavour to apply any general idea or view. But anthropology ought, more especially, to disengage itself from all trammels of former ideas, as well as from all pretended humanitarian tendencies. It would be nonsense to believe that the advance of the truth will not contribute to social progress. The searcher after it can free himself in all tranquillity of mind from this kind of trouble. Haller has said, in reference to this matter, “Thecultivation of truth alone is sufficient for the good man.”359That which is true,360cannot be evil, because it is in the eternal order of nature.
Thus, free from fetters, and obeying pure reason, resting on all the sciences which can assist it, anatomy, physiology, psychology, and philology, the science of mankind will advance, like every other science, towards the conquest of that truth which is so much to be desired; and sooner or later, by means of archæology and palæontology, retracing its steps in the past beyond history itself, and beyond the remotest geological epochs of which we have any record, science will eventually discover the grand problem of the origin of mankind, if the elements themselves are not for ever engulphed in the depths of the ocean.
FINIS.