INTRODUCTION.
For a long period, in mediæval days, science was to most people what it was to Servetus, a simple paraphrase or glossary of a revealed text. In this was the truth, and if observation itself seemed sometimes contradictory, it was certain that there was some mistake; it was necessary to re-examine the contested question, and by dint of inquiring into the facts, they were altered so wisely, that in the end they always were found to agree.
All over the East, among the Semitic race,[1] that which above all other possesses respect for authority, science still lives. Without the law there is no science, and the Korán is what the books of the sons of Israel and the writings of the apostles were in the middle ages, the great, the only authority, to which everything was referred.[2]
If science has shone with a bright light in the East, this was due solely to the introduction of a more human philosophy, born among another race, and conveyed there by the works of Aristotle and the neo-Platonists. The East was inspired for an instant with these foreign doctrines, which it would have been incapable of originating itself. It revived for a century or two under their influence, but soon everything reverted to a former state of order; having shone in the barbarism of a pure theism, whence it would never have come out without the contact of a world extrinsic and superior to certain considerations, without the momentary education which it had thus received from it.
All the sciences are not in the same intimate relation with the texts called revealed; the mathesiological order is that in which the sciences have had, and could have, the least to suffer from religious influence; in the first place, mathematics, which, from their nature, would never have known how to yield; and, lastly, geology and anthropology, allied by intimate relations to the Divine tradition of the first chapter of Genesis. But see how geology, which we thought for so long a time was in agreement with it, grows more distant every day as new discoveries are multiplied. The pretended epochs see, day by day, that their artificial limits are disappearing, now that one finds reptiles in coal-fields and mammalia in Trias.
Anthropology in France seems, at last, to desire to free itself from the shameful yoke which has for so long paralysed its flight. In its turn it claims independence. But, we would declare this, that the principle of authority, defeated on so many points, has concentrated its highest efforts behind this last rampart, calling to its aid the pretence of morality and propriety. The question of the unity or the plurality of the human race, so far as relates to species, is only a scientific one; but others make of it a question of principle, as in the time of Galileo, when it was a matter of overturning the ideas of the old world, supported by a testimony which was not allowed to be doubted. So the struggle is a sharp one;[3] it is felt that it refers almost to a dogma, and not merely to an accessory fact. Science clashes there with religion, as is the case with geology, and as formerly with astronomy; but in no way is the shock so violent, in no way can its consequences be as great. Anthropology, more than any other science, ought to produce immense results.[4] Who does not see that the abyss becomes every day deeper under the belief of the past, and that science, at a given moment, will become the foundation of more perfect morality?
This antagonism is the first difficulty which we find at the threshold of anthropology. We should have wished to have entered upon our subject without being obliged, not absolutely to discuss it, but merely to show the disputed point in the question. Unfortunately, the example has been given us; we must follow it. Two schools are to be found in anthropology; one called that of the Polygenists, the other that of the Monogenists,[5] two words which came from America, and which we receive because they have the great advantage of being clear and precise, determining, by the opposing point of their doctrines, two distinct schools, the one recognising but one family in the human race, of which some members have alone preserved the primitive type—altered everywhere else; the other school recognising no direct relationship among the races of mankind. The Polygenistic school is comparatively modern; the founders of anthropology—the Blumenbachs and the Prichards—belonged to the other. Now, if they took their stand on an entirely philosophic or experimental point of view, we should be very badly received now-a-days if we were to reconsider the question upon a burning soil. It has not been so, however. Most Monogenists[6] have, up to the present time, done the universal wrong of invoking, in proof of their ideas, an authority which it is not allowable to discuss. Science is neither a special attribute of privileged castes, nor given to certain times in preference to others; it has never been obliged to wait for a revelation; it is universal, and all men, endowed with the same faculties, have always been able, in all countries and at all times, to carry it as far, when they have had the same means and the same occasions of observation; it is thus that psychology, based upon simple reflection, has not farther progressed in our days than at Athens or at Alexandria; from Plato to Descartes there is only the distance between one system and the other.
“Historians of that which is,” has said the illustrious chief of the philosophical school of France, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, “we cannot fail, except when we cease to relate the truth.”[7] Now, truth in science cannot be governed except by two means, reasoning after the manner of mathematics, and observation, of which experiment is but a variety. Every idea à priori, every hypothesis is only good if we accept it with a strong determination of abandoning it if the facts are no longer explicable by its means. Without this, its influence is disastrous, let the origin of this previous idea be in ourselves or in others, whether it is our own or has been imposed upon us.[8]
In starting with a preconceived idea one arrives most often, in science, at false allegations, always at uncertainties. It is upon reasons of this sort that some have not feared to rest the theory of the unity of the human race;[9] since this hypothesis being accepted, they have caused, willingly or otherwise, their observed facts to correspond with it. Were the generally-admitted principles of classification irksome to them? They passed on; they shut their eyes to the most profound, the most positive, the most evident differences. Ought not, then, unity to triumph? What did it signify, besides, whether the Negro descended from the white man, or the contrary—for these two opinions have been defended; for some, a few generations have been sufficient to transform the fine Greek blood, which gave models to Phidias and Praxiteles, into an Australian aboriginal. For others, the Negroes were the true representation of our first parents, that perfect work which last of all left the hands of God. Lieut.-Colonel H. Smith[10] would admit that in the beginning were created separately certain groups of men, if revelation were not positive on this point. We notice especially in Kaempfer a specimen of what we may call orthodox ethnology, which is curious above all things; having discovered that the Japanese have nothing in common with the Chinese, he decides, with a marvellous assurance, that they are directly descended from the men on the scaffoldings of the Tower of Babel. And as their language resembles no other tongue, he draws the conclusion that their ancestors must have travelled very fast, so as not to have become acquainted with anybody else![11]
And let no one say that it is obsolete matter to treat of science. Orthodox physics and chemistry are indeed no myths. M. Marcel de Serres, who has also occupied himself with anthropology, speaking of the discussions which have been raised between the partisans of emission and those of luminous undulation, adds, that this latter theory has more chances of being exact, “because the facts related by the legislator of the Hebrews seem to him to be more favourable to truth.”[12] The Congregation of the Index, judging Galileo, reasoned in the same way.[13] We arrive thus at once at the proscription of certain inquiries, and we ask ourselves, How two men, so eminent as Humboldt and Bonpland, could have approved of such lines as the following? “The general question of the first origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond the limits prescribed to history, perhaps it may not be even a philosophical question.”[14] It is true that the work in which this singular declaration is to be found is dedicated to his Catholic Majesty Charles IV.
Thanks to these fatal influences, thanks to the interdicts with which some would have desired to stifle the natural history of mankind, as if they were afraid of seeing the spark, which should accomplish the ruin of the past, disappear with the full light; thanks to all these obstacles, anthropology was for a long time thrown into the background.
It is in America where we behold it reinstated in its rank, in that country of every kind of liberty. It is there that our old continent ought to go in order to find masters who have known how to enter into scientific pursuits with this free and independent mind which, in old times, according to Epicurus, freed mankind from the yoke of superstition, and gave to intelligence the sceptre of the world.
The eighteenth century, with all its scepticism, had not done little in this way; its fault, indeed, was in this scepticism, in this doubting à priori. It rejected without examination, therefore its work was not lasting, and the few lines of Voltaire which his good sense had written with a Polygenistic tendency, had no influence at all.[15]
At present France and England walk entirely in the scientific path opened by the American school. It is some years since it was vainly endeavoured to establish in these two countries learned societies for the study of ethnology; that time has passed. Now Paris and London maintain two prosperous anthropological societies.[16] We do not hesitate in attributing the reason of this success to the profound discredit in which the continued blending of matters of faith with matters of science, has justly fallen.
Apart from religious influence, there is another which may make itself felt as regards anthropology. We mean those very honourable sentiments about equality and confraternity which an honest heart will feel towards all men, whatever may be their origin, whatever the colour of their skin, but of which the searcher[17] after truth must disembarrass himself, cost what it may to him as a man. Such feelings honour those who are animated by them, but when they interfere with science, they can only injure it. How many years, how many centuries, have anatomy and medicine been obliged to wait until they could take a lasting and an upward flight! Respect for the dead is doubtless a human sentiment, if any; but it used to paralyse these two branches of our knowledge; they are only possible to be learnt by profaning mortal remains reverenced by the religions of antiquity. Physiology, rendered so clear by vivisection, knows no pity; mankind feels it, but the physiologist shuts up all knowledge of it from himself; it is momentarily destroyed, since it would injure any inquiry into the laws of life.
It must be owned that the science which engages our attention has not been able entirely to disembarrass itself among us of that which we may call moral propriety.[18] It has a powerful influence on certain minds, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes of their free will.[19]
We have ourselves heard eminent professors make a noble appeal to the fraternity which ought to exist among men,—plead in their chairs the cause of inferior races, and proclaim the equality of the African people with ourselves. Such noble theories were received as they ought to be, with the most ardent applause. There remains only to inquire if this is truly philosophical progress, and if kindness, pity, or compassion, have any value in the great balance of facts.
It was time, indeed, that a new method—an independent one—should see the light in anthropology, as it has already done in astronomy, as it also has begun to do in geology. It was time to return to the human mind its wings. Facts, reasonings supported by facts, are the sole basis of every solid work—of every certainty in scientific matters; it is the only method which can lead us—by a slow path, perhaps, but a sure one—to the solution of the most difficult and the most obscure problems. We do not except that of the origin of man.
We do not pretend to be first in the path which we here point out, but we wish to express our regret at not having seen it openly enough followed by all those who are worthy to enter it. As for ourselves, what we have desired in this essay is, first, to hold ourselves apart from all extra-scientific data—from all sentimental science; we have desired to treat some anthropological questions as they would have done at Athens, Rome, or at Alexandria—a task above our powers, doubtless, but which we hold ourselves bound in honour to attempt.
We shall carefully, then, avoid entering into any controversy touching the dogmas of one religion or the other; we shall not contest the authority of the Scriptures, whatever they may be, Hebrew, Christian, Arabic, or Buddhist; we have put them on one side, and that is all.[20] Descartes has truly observed that every scientific question ought to be examined, even those which are most superstitious and most false, “so as to recognise their just value, and to guard against being deceived by them.”[21] One may be free to consider this essay as an attempt of that kind.
We shall be praised or blamed: we have been so already. We have, for our comfort, the conscientious feeling of having no other object before our eyes but an inquiry into truth,—the truth, the common end towards which the power of every man who believes in progress should tend. “Where truth reigns,” says M. Chevreul, “no disputes or discussions are possible.”[22] The reign of truth is the reign of concord amongst mankind. It is the golden age.