THE RACES OF MEN.
THE great interest which Mr. Darwin's speculations have excited among all classes is a curious proof how much science suffers from the tendency of its professors to ignore the language and thoughts of common men. In days when the chemist no longer secludes himself underground to work out the secret of potable gold, and when the anatomist can procure specimens without being forced, like Vesalins, to prowl by night in churchyards, this divorce of speculative from practical life is as unmeaning as it is unnatural. It is in the great questions in which all of us have a common interest that the real value of every, special study consists, and the crucible and scalpel are only recondite toys if they are not working out a meaning which may come home to every man. The contrast between a vulgar medical student and a thoughtful physician is perhaps greater than that which exists between the leaders and the ruck of any other pro- fession. The first has a positive pleasure in injecting a diseased liver or performing a horrible operation, merely that he may gratify the sense of power which a quick eye and ready hand confer, and if this part of his nature predominates, he becomes irredeemably brutal. The educated man, on the other hand, finds every branch of his pro- fession an illustration more or less pregnant of the manifold relations of mind and matter; and questions of the composition or structure of the brain, of the transmission of disease, and of permanence or variety of type throng upon him every day, and force him to grapple with the gravest problems of metaphysics and religion.
The science of ethnology, which has almost been created within the last fifty years, is a good instance of the wide bearings a single study may have. It involves at its very onset the question whether all men are descended from a tingle stock, or from several centres of creation; whether Adam and Eve are a scientific fact, or if the Pawnee in the far West, the negro on the Gold Coast, and the Englishman in Bond-street, belong to distinct families that have sprung up in their, appropriate homes at intervals of some thousand years. Assuming the first, how are we to explain the great differences that exist actually? Can veritable white men be changed, as Dr. Prichard once believed, into Ethiopians, or must we take refuge in a Darwinian modification, and assume some original stock, of which white men, red men, and black men, arc varieties? Although the change of colour is the most obvious distinction between race and race, it, is one of the least importance. Could it be shown that it
was no index of deeper differences, the better among us would soon train themselves to mislike no man for his complexion. But what are we to say to varieties of moral feeling and intellect. Is the Bonny negro who accounts for his melancholy looks, "Tshi ! I be too sorry; mother get well—she no go for devilly yet," of the same lineage with Ruth cleaving to Naomi, "Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." Is the blank mind of the Paraguay savage, who, being left to himself after years of careful training, turns his plough into a fetish and sacrifices oxen to it,. really cast in the same mould with that of Shakspeare or Newton? Assume the second hypothdsis, by which man is merely part of the fauna of his respective locality, and the Hottentot only typical cousin, so to speak, to the Esquimaux, will the difficulties of this theory be less ? It is easy to believe that the Fingo or Papuan is a lower creature than the Englishman. But these are the two extremes, and if we run down the sliding scale of humanity, where do we observe any broad interval? Tradition, language, and physical characteristics assign a common origin to three such varieties as the Greek, the Jew, and the Copt. Is the Copt higher than the Hungarian or the Fin, who are merely the advance guard of those tribes of Central Asia which we vaguely term Mongolic ? Again, if the Brahmin claims kindred with his English conquerors, are the Cingalee, the Pariah, and the Malay to be disowned? Yet, if the natives of Malacca be admitted, any further principle of exclusion is impossible, for their name includes the lowest savages of Polynesia. If general charac- teristics are delusive, is there any special test that can be relied on— the facial angle, the form of the skull, the volume of the brain, or several such indications, or will differences of vocabulary or of gram- mar be sufficient?
But the scientific difficulties are really among the least. Men like Mr. Yancey, who build up a state on the sacred principle that negroes are beasts of burden like jackasses, and the opposite school, who perhaps think with Mr. Greg, of the Edinburgh Review, that Europeans will one day sit at the feet of the negro for religious training, represent in an extreme form the two theories which are now convulsing America. Of course it is quite possible to hold that a race of men is distinct and inferior, and yet to be treated as if it had human capacities and a moral future ; but even the patriarchal doctrine, that negroes are the eternal children of our common hu- manity whom we, the mature men, must govern and train by labour, is of dangerous application under certain latitudes. It is not won- derful, therefore, if most Englishmen hating slavery, and judging scientific questions from the moral point of view, cling somewhat tenaciously to the doctrine that we are all brothers by blood. Curiously enough, however, it is the least spiritual school in science that holds the doctrine of unity. In fact, the schism, between phy- sical geographers and ethnologists proper, is a little like the old feuds of Calvinist and Arminian, or of materialist and idealist. The school of which Mr. Buckle is a representative, holds that climate, food, and soil are the blind destiny which determines the lives and characters of men; will, thought, and feeling are all modified as he eats meat or rice, as he lives in a valley or on a mountain, and at the equator or near the poles. The ethnologist, on the other hand, how- ever he may-explain the rise of the different races of men, assumes that their characteristics are so far permanent, that neither time nor place will affect them appreciably; that the Englishman will transmit energy and common sense, and the negro indolence and a low type of intellect in any countries in which they perpetuate their kind. Briefly, the geographical theory subordinates man to nature; the ethnological subordinates nature to man; the first regards morals and polity as accidents of place; the second believes in an un- changeable right and wrong. The disciples of Prichard and Agassiz may contend among themselves how far the lower races can compre- • bend the thought, the art, and the religion of the higher; but no one seriously questions that the highest conceptions on these subjects attained by the highest race are the practical standard for all the brotherhood of mankind.
Our business, however, is not so much to discuss ethnology as to assume the existence of such a science, and call attention to some of its minor results. The last volume of Transactions which the Ethnological Society of London has published, is a fair instance of the various interests which the study of man presents, though we can only notice two or three out of something like twenty articles. One of the most interesting to Englishmen is by Mr. Mackintosh, who.has tried to classify the different races of England and Wales by their features and mental peculiarities. Any one who can call to mind such types as those prevalent in Essex, Yorkshire, and Devon- shire, will see at once that old family characteristics have been pre- served without change in north, east, and west, and of course the eye of a trained ethnologist will often detect differences where an ordinary observer sees nothing remarkable. Mr. Mackintosh has not attempted to strengthen' his argument by any appeal to philology or history, but his results confirm, with an almost curious exactness, the main facts that chronicles and local dialects give us.„. Where
there is any difference it is that Mr. Mackintosh has made subdivi- sions with which general history does not concern itself. He, of course, accepts the main division into Keltic or Germanic, and allows for the influence of Roman or Iberian colonists, or of ylemish and Norman-French settlers at a later date. Judging from the great re- semblance of the country people to one another in the midland parts of England and in South Wales, he hints that the bulk of the Eng- lish peasantry' are British and not' Teutonic. British, of course, in- cludes two or even three varieties. The Kymric,' or Welsh, prevails in North Wales, and in the districts north of the Thames. The Erse, or Gaelic, is found in South Wales, and in the south-eastern counties. The third, or Belgic, subdivision is now chieflyto be found in Sussex or North Hampshire. The Kymro is broad-chested and short, with abroad head and full forehead, and with the face tapering off sharply towards the chin. He is gloomy by temperament, and rather critical than creative by intellect. The Gaelic type is *pretty well represented by the popular idea of an Irishman ; the low nose, the projecting mouth and jaws, the quick restless character, with its sudden alternations of grief and joy, are alike unmistakable. The Belgic type, with hard angular features, and a dark complexion, is a little difficult to define, and is practically unimportant. The Germanic races in England consist of the Saxon, the Jute, the Angle, and the Dane, the' first and last being the two extremes in the scale, Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Cambridgeshire, and part of, Essex are the chief habitat of the Saxon, whose light hair and comparative regular features show his Frisian affinities, which are perhaps not belied by his obstinate, self-reliant, and truthful character, a little disfigured by a narrow and unready intellect. Passing over the intermediate Jute and Angle, we find the tall loosely made. Dane of Lincolnshire, and East Yorkshire differing from his old enemy, the Saxon, by just that fiery energy, that power to command and create, which would naturally belong to a race of conquerors, combining the virtues of action with the faults of passionate self-will. A curious corrobora- tion of these local differences may be found in facts of every-day occurrence. The broad-chested Cornishman. and Welshman are found to require considerably more room on parade than regiments that have been raised in other counties. Calvinism flourishes in the Keltic districts, and the vigorous self-reliance of the Germanic character finds expression in Independency. Of course it is generally unsafe to assert of individual Englishmen that they are Keltic or Teutonic on account of their name or county. In a country where all races have been so much mixed up together we can only trust to general averages. The Pilgrim Fathers who colonized New Eng- land were recruited from Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and East Yorkshire, while Virginia and Carolina drew their population much more from the South of England, and from the Normanized upper classes. Speaking broadly, it may be said that our mathematicians and engineers, like Newton and Stephenson, come from the northern counties, our poets from the midland. The south, with the excep- lion of Devonshire, has been singularly barren in great names. Norman families have of course the preponderance among our states- men and soldiers, but they, no doubt, owe this very much to the advantage of social position.
Our space only suffers us to allude briefly to an invaluable paper by Mr. Busk, on a systematic mode of craniometry. Those who may wish to know what the objects proposed in such an inquiry are, will find no difficulty in understanding, them, disengaged of technicalities. A man with a skull before him ought to ascertain, first, its length, and breadth, and height; secondly, the comparative size of the three great divisions of the forehead, the middle and the back, which are Said to represent intellect, emotion, and will; thirdly, how far the jaws or the back of the, head protrude or recede beyond the normal standard ; and, fourthly, what is the extent of the cranial angle. It must be remembered that the character of a type is not merely determined by the volume of its brain. A race like the negro, in which emotion predominates over will and intellect, will be at the mercy of stronger or cleverer races ; the Greek, in whom intellect is strongest, will be deficient in conscience and the power of political organization; and the Comanche or Sioux Indian, with a narrow fore- head and large occiput, is likely to prove an untamable savage to the last. Whether the size and proportions of the brain can be modified by religion and civilization is among one of the in- teresting questions which ethnology opens up. But the fact that there is no noticeable difference between the oldest Saxon skulls and the skulls of the people lately dead in the Saxon districts of England, seems to show that any change, even if it be possible, can only be slow-and gradual.
A paper by Dr. Beddoe on The Characteristics of the Jews will probably startle many who have never had the subject forced upon them by travel. An almond-shaped eye, an aquiline nose, somewhat heavy and rounded at the tip, full lips, a receding chin, and a dark complexion and hair, are commonly regarded as un- mistakable Hebrew characteristics. The Exeter Hall school even sees a fulfilment of prophecy in the permanence of this type. But the case of England with its marked provincial differences would alone show that every type is permanent, though it is not as easy to distinguish Saxon and Angle kindred races that have intermarried, as to recognize an Oriental people living in the West and not mixing its blood with Kelt or German. Again, the Jews of East Germany and Poland are notoriously quite as often as not lank and tall men, with blue eyes, clear complexions, and red or ohesnut hair. Here, how- ever, it may be said that there have been intermarriages in past cen- turies, and no one who knows Germany, or considers the Jewish extraction of Heine, Borne, Auerbach, and Mendelssohn, can doubt that this cause has actually operated. But it seems likely, from what we know of the race, that Jews making Christian connexions would more often be absorbed into the large society around them than draw their wives into the narrrow fold of the syna- gogue. Dr. Beddoe has, hoviever, set the point at rest by as- certaining from personal observation that xanthous or light-com- plexioned Jews are quite numerous enough in Syria and Palestine to form a distinct variety of the race. In the Levant, North Africa, and Morocco, the case seems to be even stronger, the blond-haired, blue-eyed type, which is here accompanied with a straight profile, preponderating. There seem, therefore, to be two varieties, each equally entitled to be called Jewish, and together representing " two extreme types of the Caucasian family." A plausible ex- planation of this difference lies in the position of Palestine between Syria, which a race similar to the dark Jew inhabits, and Edom, "the red," perhaps so named from Esau and the prevalent com- plexion. Settlement in Egypt and the presence of Greek and Roman conquerors are modifying causes which must not be overlooked. The question is of great interest in connexion with early pictures of Jesus Christ. Sir Gardner Wilkinson has observed that " the Saviour's head, though not really a portrait, is evidently a traditional repre- sentation of the Jewish face which is still traceable in Jerusalem." Kohl and James have remarked on the likeness of the Jewish heads in Italian pictures to Polish and Volhynian Jews, and it seems probable that this was not merely because Giotto and Raphael, chose that peculiar form of beauty, which belongs alike to the European and to the xanthous Jew, for Grimm, in his interesting little work on Pictures of Christ, describes the earliest known as almost invari- ably with straight profile and red or brown hair. The spurious letter of Publius Lentulus, a friend of Pilate, to the Senate, adds to this that the eyes were clear and of uncertain colour (varii), epithets which, taken together, probably denote that bluish grey iris that seems to vary, as it dilates or contracts, from yellow-grey to violet. But whatever be the value of these traditions, it is pleasant to know that the last results of science confirm the conjectures of the highest art. A picture of the Saviour in the Syrian type would' seem too special for One who belonged to all mankind ; and it was a wise instinct that led Mr. Holman Hunt to venture the seeming anomaly of a Christ painted from an English boy among Asiatic elders.
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