CHAPTER VI.
THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE.
Monogenists—starting from unity of origin as a fact, if not proved, at least accepted and unquestionable,—were necessarily led to discover a physiological explanation of the profound differences which we find at the present day among mankind, and which would have led them, according to monogenists, from one extreme state to the other, or from a medium state to the two extremes.
Now, it is necessary to remember that every question concerning influence implies a previous historic notion. We cannot establish that a modification is not produced in a body (here is humanity), except by comparing it with itself at two distinct moments of duration, more or less distant. When a monogenist admits as an origin one uniform human race, he places a term of comparison in the past, he gives an historical date more or less definite to this uniform human species. And it is because religious cosmogonies alone dare, at the present day, to arrogate to themselves the power of making history dart back to the commencement of humanity, that we shall always be much troubled by not seeing a theological influence as the basis of monogenist ideas; now, they say, however, that they have discovered the trace of this human uniformity upon which they rely, in order to prove this great historical fact.
In our own opinion, history is very far from commencing with mankind; it only goes back two or three ages before the invention of figurative language,—a more important and difficult language for man than articulated language, which was discovered long before, and at many different points. It iswritingwhich makes the Asiatics and the lost people of Central America better than savages; and if we were asked for a specific distinction with regard to intelligence between mankind and animals, we should only be able to find it there. It will be seen later that we are far from denying the influence of a middle course; but we maintain that every term of comparison is wanting at the present day to show that man, since the most distant historic periods, has ever shown less dissimilarities than now. Most monogenists, disagreeing about the whole system of modifying causes, agree generally in acknowledging that climates and hybridity have a decisive creative influence as regards races of men. These two kinds of influence alone deserve our consideration. We shall commence by climate, putting on one side, for the present, the study of the specious question of hybridity, whose part is so badly understood by those who believe that it creates varieties, when it can only weaken differences.
An important part in the means of alteration from one race to another has been given, by Hippocrates, to external influences. He seems to have been the first to point this out, in hisTreatise on Air, Water, and Places.207“The form, colour, and manners of nations,” says Polybius, “depend solely on the diversity of climates.”208In general, the ancients believed in the immediate and sudden influence of climate, so much so that a stranger, at the end of a few years, would be completely changed and altered to the type of the inhabitants of the same place.
In our days, Cabanis alone has dared to go so far as this.209
Some monogenists have simply enlarged Grecian theories, and explained everything by the prolonged duration of the same influences. Others have supposed that local changes in the atmospheric conditions of the world, anterior to the actual epoch, were the cause. This is a sort of progress beyond the preceding hypothesis, in the sense that at least we must recognisethe insufficiency of actually existing causes, in order to explain the great differences observed at the present day between men. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire has agreed with his father upon the great question of the influence of the surrounding medium; but death seized him before he could apply these theories to mankind. However, the high position that hisHistoire Naturelle Généralehas taken in science obliges us to pause a moment on the subject of his opinions, which have, besides, easily triumphed over the ruins of Cuvier’s school. And if we do not agree with all the doctrines propounded by the second Geoffroy, we are all the more satisfied, since, differing from the son, we incline more to the theories of the father.
Isidore Geoffroy believed in a decisive influence of the medium, but only under certain conditions. He believed that these influences are limited, as he himself calls it, every time that it relates to anything beyond the action of man, that is to say, on savage or free animals. In this case, the action of themedium, according to him, would be confined exclusively to the producing of varieties in form and in the colour of the skin,210—a form we never see varied in the same class of men; the colour of the skin,—which is sensibly the same among men, among whom the fair type is itself exceptional, and spread over a very small portion of the ancient north-west continent.
In every case, Isidore Geoffroy acknowledged that these variations are sometimes very inconsiderable;211and although they have in no way approached those which separate human races, we may be allowed to believe that the differences observed among savage species were, in his eyes, much less important. He has endeavoured, on the contrary, to compare insignificant differences among free animals with varieties much more marked, and much clearer than those shown by domestic animals, and therefore, doubtless, he wished to make a step towards the fundamental question of anthropology,which was evidently at the bottom of his thoughts, and which he had for a long time resolved in a monogenist sense.
But domestic animals have quite special conditions, which do not allow the assimilation of these varieties with those which have been simply produced by natural forces. Cuvier212had already pointed out this difference, and rejected all assimilation between them and free animals. Without taking too much account of the reasons which impelled him towards such opinions, we believe that upon this point, at least, he was entirely in the right; as to the rest, Isidore Geoffroy himself furnishes us with weapons against his own theories. “Since nature, left to herself,” he says, “does not give us witnesses of the great changes in the conditions of existence, it is clear that there only remains one means of seeing such changes, and of deducing therefrom the effects upon organisation,—it isto force nature to do what she would not do voluntarily.”213All the condemnation of this system of Isidore Geoffroy is contained, in our opinion, in these last words. As for ourselves, we reject, in the most absolute and formal manner, the connexion which some have desired to make between man and the domestic animals. Man is a sociable animal, like many others; but he only becomes exceptionally a domestic animal when he falls into slavery. The domestic animal is a being drawn from the normal state, and constrained by man. He is constrained by nature to obey the influence of his master alone,—an influence infinitely variable. It resembles itself no longer; the habit of obedience does not even leave it its will; it ceases to be a personality, and becomes a mere machine, producing for the benefit of another person.
Domesticity has certain characteristics of degeneracy; the animal loses its activity, it becomes less eager, and assimilates itself more; it becomes almost incapable of subsisting alone; it vegetates; together with its personality it has lost this resistance to the ambient medium, which is the necessary characteristic of the species, the condition of thenisus formativus;it modifies itself to everybody’s will. Its organism may be considered as being in a state of unstable equilibrium, so that the least influence causes this organism to vary, and with the least possible delay, to a considerable degree.214But when man ceases for an instant to be attentive in directing these modifications, when he forgets himself for a moment, nature—always vigilant and ready to seize upon her rights—destroys all this human edifice, and recalls the animal to a type which may be called normal, but which is not the type of the stock, since nature, acting on an organism endowed, as we have just said, with the wonderful malleability and ductility acquired by domesticity, immediately and naturally modifies the animal, which is restored to liberty, by the power of the new medium into which it is cast.
Nothing of the same sort takes place with mankind. This does not mean, however, that he cannot also be reduced to a state of domesticity.215Slaves, indeed, are nothing else; and all that is wanting in order to place them in comparison with animal domesticity, would be the history of a race of Ilotes, which has always been free from any mixture, and has continued so during a time equal to that which separates us from the first conquest of the dog, the sheep, and the ox, upon the high table-lands of Asia.
Let us, then, leave all comparison216between man, free to come, to go, and to choose his own food,—and domestic animals. Let us return to those who live free, and say, once for all, that if we stop our progress with so many details concerning thesecomparisons, it is from a kind of respect for the character of certain learned men who have thus treated anthropological science. We believe very little in biology, or in demonstrations bysimilarities. Every animal, every organ, every anatomical element, has its own life, its own laws of birth, development, nutrition, and reproduction. At the commencement of science, everything is clear and easy, like the cellular theory, for instance, in the elements of anatomy; but every day the laws of life (we might say, the laws of nature) are multiplied and complicated; every morning the searcher after truth must expect to discover some phenomenon which will disturb the scientific belief of the night before. “Every evening,” said one of the masters of science, “our best prayer is to form afresh a synthesis of the sciences.”217Well, if modern anatomy has taught us that the initial phase of the development of the egg differs according to the animal,218even as nothing resembles less the development of certain bones of the face than that of their neighbours, how shall we dare to compare any animal with man?219Having said this, let us return to the influence of climate upon wild or free animals.
Isidore Geoffroy quotes, with complacency, the instance of the Corsican and African stag taken from Europe to these two countries scarcely twenty centuries ago, which form at the present day two clearly distinct varieties. From that the author of theHistoire Naturelle Généraleargues rapid and sensible modifications, caused by the action of the medium. But,first of all, the evidence of this fact is simply negative; the old authors, who denied the existence of the stag in Corsica and Africa, were perhaps simply ignorant of it. Then, this introduction, if it did take place, was perhaps performed by means of animals which had been kept in domesticity or captivity for many generations, and consequently, were easily able to change their mode of life directly they recovered their liberty, as we have already said. However this may be, it is simply man himself whom it is necessary to examine, without comparing him to any animal, and without misleading ourselves with the connexion of climates, generally compared too hastily, and with regard to mere equality of temperature.
It is sufficient to run over, in Humboldt’sCosmos, the lengthy enumeration of circumstances which make up a climate, in order to understand that all the comparisons which our minds may make between any two regions of the world are, at least, rash. The analogy of two climates is rather a sort of experimental notion, which can only be reasonably deduced by the similarity of the biological as well as the meteorological phenomena of every kind in the two regions to be compared. And when climates shall have been able to change a white man into a black (a fact we energetically deny), must we also lay to the charge of meteorological influence the clear moral aptitude and profound differences of the various species of mankind? Shall we admit that a little more cold or heat will alter the intellect? and why not language?
Butweare not the first to doubt all these marvels. Bacon220and Albin221fairly doubted the effect of the sun on the colour of the skin. Camper, who admitted that all varieties come from external influences, acknowledged, and with good faith, that the influences which we can appreciate are not sufficientto explain fully either the prominent jaw-bone in the Negro, the cheek-bone in the Kalmuc, or the obliquity of the eyes in the Chinese and the Malay, etc. We can declare the same about all the other peculiarities of the same order,—the flattening of the nose, the crisped state of the hair, the colouring matter which we find even in the arch of the palate in the Negro, etc.
We owe a very good observation to Camper: “The black colour which is noticed in the natural parts of both sexes, and even in white individuals, clearly proves that our reticular membrane has its colour only from the blood.”222This fact alone should have long ago given a more rational impulse to researches on this subject. If—putting all these hypotheses on one side, for all that we can bring forward has no other value—if we wish to study in apositivemanner the influence of the sky upon man, we have only in reality one resource,—it is to shut ourselves up in the limits of history, to study the effect of the migrations of which it tells us, and to see whether man, transported far away,doesbecome modified, and how this modification takes place. Then we shall find two answers to these questions, which form together a kind of anthropological law.
Law.—In historical times, either man(we mean a society of men)who is taken far from his medium does not alter his type, or he entirely disappears.
What nation has been transformed? We cannot answer, even with history in our hand; we know not of any. And yet, the short period of time embraced by the records of mankind would be quite sufficient if it were true, as Isidore Geoffroy thought, that we could conclude from animals to men, and that two thousand years would have been sufficient to alter fundamentally thegenusstag.223It is a well-known fact, that the inhabitants of the Island of Bourbon, who were colonists established in the high lands for two centuries, have preserved intact the purity of their blood.224The Spanish and Portuguesefamilies established in Brazil, and who have carefully avoided foreign marriages, have lost nothing, it is said, of their original characteristics.225The Icelanders have not become Laplanders in their own island, and they have now been established there eight hundred years; they are as fair andGerman-lookingas at first.226The Dutch have prospered at the Cape under the name of Boers. They say that at Cochin and Malabar there exists a Jewish tribe, which has been established there for a long time, and which traces back its origin to the captivity; it has remained pure,227and as similar to the inhabitants of the Jewish quarter at Cairo, as to the Jews in Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, and in the pictures of the Flemish school.
Indeed, among ourselves in Europe, have not the Irish preserved, under their foggy and cold sky, that southern nature which is revealed in their taste for certain arts, their small height, their black hair, the vivacity of the women, and the indolence of the men? Now, here is another order of facts,—man is not altered by emigration. Perhaps these facts are not very conclusive to all people, either on account of the difficulty of observation, or the short period which they embrace. They must be taken just as science offers them to us, and we must give our attention solely to reckoning the conclusion from the value of the premises.
We now arrive at the second term of the law which we have laid down,—that man, transported to another country, eventually disappears. The theory which we thus form is of considerable importance. It has even received a particular name, it has been called theTheory of the non-Cosmopolitanism of Man. It is at the present day defended in France by Dr. Boudin, with as much energy as talent. In this matter, facts are abundant enough, and they at once take a considerablesignificance; and this is determined by figures, so that we must acknowledge that in most cases each race is by its nature attached to the ground which supports it, and that it is not with impunity that it oversteps its limits.
It is because a foreign climate has in general a really destructive influence, producing degeneracy among emigrants, that is to say, a parallel morbid alteration of both the intellect and the body, that we always see the same races moving about in the same areas, and disappear when they pass them.228If the Semite, who has left Yemen, has come to pasture his camels near the shores of the ocean, opposite the Fortunate Islands, it is because he and his animals find in the Riff the same conditions of life that they did by the Nile and the Isthmus of Suez. Whatever has been said about the Jews and some other races, not one of them seems to be really cosmopolitan. To admit that a Jewish tribe, thrown into the midst of a black population, has become black by the sole action of the climate, is to admit that there were no conversions, no adoptions, and no sexual unions contrary to the law of Moses; and in this way the philosophic editors of the Code Napoléon, as well as daily medical practice, teach us what to think. For our part, we only see in these transformations of Jewish families, established far away, the result of the absorption of the type of a small group of emigrants by a population which outnumbers them. The Jew has disappeared; the language has been transmitted like the belief, and also the name.
The acclimatisation of man, as well as of the wild animal, takes place only when he finds the conditions of existence sensibly identical with those in which he has been created. Beyond that, nature punishes him for having overstepped the limits which she had assigned to him, and within which he ought to continue to move his organism in relation to this defined medium. The domestic animal, on the contrary, by reason of this malleability of which we have before spoken, accommodates itself in general very conveniently. And thevarieties which it shows on recovering its liberty, are of themselves a proof that it has been under a different sky to that of its original country.
Such is, in our opinion, the sole manner of explaining at the present day, in a serious and general point of view, all climateric influences. We must render justice to some monogenists, that they have perfectly understood the real part taken by these influences. Blumenbach calls themcausæ degenerationis; and here the German anatomist, in defending, like Prichard, the specific unity of the human race, raises himself above the English anthropologist, without, however, reaching what we believe to be the truth. Prichard, inclining to the belief that humanity is entirely descended from the Negroes,229acknowledged, consequently, a kind ofcausæ perfectionis, that is to say, an ascending march of phenomena, where his predecessor had only seen an inverse march. Now, this ascending march of phenomena is difficult to reconcile with the notion of the specific unity of man. Every species, in fact, is necessarily constituted by reason of the defined space in which it ought to move. It is unreasonable to suppose that elsewhere the same organism and the same species can meet with more favourable conditions of existence.
In Blumenbach’s opinion, all races are unhealthy deviations from a primitive type, of which we are the representatives;230so that nine-tenths of the human kind are, according to him, composed of degenerate individuals. Blumenbach did not know that one of the essential characters of degeneracy is the limited development of its produce, that is to say, the disappearance of the race at a more or less distant period.231We ask ourselves only how monogenists, who all partake more or less of Blumenbach’s opinions, and who nearly all pride themselves on moral and humanitarian sentiments, can consent tolower in this manner the number of human beings who are worthy of this name? Is not the best part, if there could be one in the case of science, played by the polygenists, who consider that other races are special entities, pursuing an end, which is their own and not ours, and dividing with us the planet, inaccessible in all its extent to the Iranian; just as certain kinds of animals, likewise, cover the globe with different species? Climate, we have said, has a decisive influence upon a man taken to another country; it must only be understood in the sense of this influence, and we have seen that it is generally a pernicious one.232It makes itself felt in the physical and moral nature of man, both deeply and superficially.
We may point out among the most simple and the most profound climateric influences, thesun-burn, the study of which is so interesting in anthropological study. We know, at the present day, that the sun is far from being always the cause of it; that a bivouacat nighthas as powerful an action in the same manner, and that the north-pole explorers found that their hands and faces were browned under a northern sky.233
Are these not facts which will diminish the decisive part which has so long been given to solar heat in the production of colouring matter in the Negro?234The colour of sun-burndoes not even seem to remain in the layers of the epidermis, in which the normal colour is found. Indeed, we must remember, that it is always easy to distinguish a sun-burnt nation, since individuals who, for some reason or other, are but seldom exposed to external influences, like the women, are infinitely whiter; children are quite white when born, but as soon as they go much into the air, they become brown.
Unfortunately, the action of climate upon a man taken from his own country is not merely a case of sun-burn. And medical statistics have shown, in treating on the different races of mankind, the dangers of changing one’s position on the surface of the globe, even if it takes place in the sense of isothermal lines. We find from the results of careful inquiries made in the English colonies at the Antilles for about forty years, that the black population is continually diminishing, the number of deaths being to that of births :: 28 : 24. Under the tropics, northern organisations are much disquieted, life changes its aspect, and its course is much more rapid. The glandular system governs;235man becomes “more sensible to pleasure, and less disposed to activity,”236his mind loses its vivacity. Those noble faculties, which have made the white man the monarch of creation, become weakened, and that especially in some colonies where government is obliged to entrust everything to Europeans.237Dr. Barnard Davis lately announced to the Paris Anthropological Society,238that one of his friends, Dr. J. A. Wise, after thirty years residence in India, had never been able, after numerous inquiries, to find any descendants of a European in the third generation.
Our temperate regions are to the Negro what the tropical zone is to the European. Even at Gibraltar,239the Negrocontingent that was employed in the English army paid a heavy tribute to death.240On the contrary, official documents for 1861 tell us that, at Sierra Leone,241the respective mortality of English and Negro soldiers was as follows:—
It is an indubitable fact that, in general, the mortality of an emigrated population is in an inverse ratio to the distance they are taken.242During many years the island of Ceylon was occupied by Hindú troops (from Madras and Bengal), Malays, Negroes and English. The mortality of these races respectively was, 12, 24, 50, and 69.
This is so clearly a biological law, that we again meet with its application even in certain particular cases. Concerning the yellow fever, for instance, Townsend has thus laid down a rule,—“The mortality to the new-comer from the cooler latitudes may be said to be in an exact ratio to the distance from the equator of his place of nativity.”243Daniel Blair244has given the following statistics, according to his observations of the same disease, made in British Guiana, from 1827 to 1835:—
The epidemic of 1853, at New Orleans, allowed Barton to make a scale of mortality on the same principle, and absolutely comparable, and which would take away all doubt in this respect, if any existed.245