The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

The first arises from the manner in which we regard, as a whole, the population to which we belong. The offspring of instructed and civilized classes, we forget that part of the nation which we left so far behind, which doubtless profits by the work of the intelligent classes, but does not follow them at all, or but very little, in the path of progress. There is not a country in Europe where numbers of facts, justifying what I have briefly stated here, may not be met with. If Lubbock had taken more notice of the facts around him, he would most certainly have modified many conclusions in his book.

The other cause proceeds from our pride of race, from the prejudices of our education, which altogether prevent us from going to the root of the matter, and from recognising extreme resemblances, almost identities, if they are in the least degree obscured by the slightest difference of forms or words. It was a long time before the resemblance was observed between the organisation of the Maories and that of the ancient Scotch. And yet if we deduct anthropophagy from the one people and from the other all that it has borrowed from the neighbouring nations, we shall be forced to admit that at the period when Cook visited the New Zealanders, the latter offered strange points of resemblance to the Highlanders of Rob Roy and Mac Ivor. As to the Children of the Mist, akin to the other Scotch clans, were they much above the Australian tribes?

We must conclude, therefore, that civilization, with improvements and learning of every kind, is an exceptional fact, even in the midst of a most privileged people, and that upon their own territory they have had, and still have, their savage representatives. We must add that this fact is exhibited in different degrees among yellow and black tribes. Lastly, in reflecting upon our past history, we must avoid denying to other races aptitudes, which remained latent for centuries in our ancestors before they were developed, and which are still in the same condition in too many of our fellow-countrymen, and of our contemporaries.

XIV. In his remarkable work upon Origins of Civilization, Sir John Lubbock admits that the “primitive condition of man was a state of absolute barbarism.” But he does not say what he means by this expression. Have there indeed ever been men living for centuries in the state depicted in Chinese traditions, men acknowledging no law, destitute of industry, ignorant of the use of fire, abandoning their dead without sepulture, living in trees...? There is every reason to doubt it, for all established facts protest against this conclusion.

Whenever it has been possible to attain even a slight knowledge of the life of savage tribes, they have been found subject to laws, which, although not written, are still rigorously observed. This fact is proclaimed by Lubbock himself. True, these laws may often appear to us iniquitous or barbarous, but sometimes there is, even in their severities towards certain classes of the population, a trace of the most just and praiseworthy sentiments. We cannot indeed approve of the Australian code as regards the enactions which make a miserable slave of the woman; the privileges which it reserves to the chiefs are perhaps excessive; but how can we help being struck when we see it grant to age the same advantages as to rank. Respect for old age was a feature in the manners of the Spartans which met with the admiration of the Athenians; we may well recognise its value in the Australians.

Mention has sometimes been made of races or populations dwelling in trees, such as the Orang-Kubus, certain Blacks of New Guinea, etc. They have been described as making their homes in trees after the manner of monkeys. Earle has reduced these exaggerations to their true value. He has shown that upon certain coasts, lined with a belt of mangroves, it is easier to walk upon the crowded, interlaced branches, than to force a passage along the network of aërial roots plunging into a bed of mud. He saw European sailors several times, with their muskets slung, passing over marshes of this nature in single file, in the same way as the Indians. We see, therefore, that it is not at all necessary to be absolutely savage and nearly allied to monkeys to travel in this manner.

The Tasmanians, as good an example of a nomad people as it would be possible to mention, only erected temporary shelters, and yet they burnt their dead, and raised to them mausoleums of branches and bark, which have been described and figured by Péron. I have just remarked that the Australians had their institutions and their industries. Undoubtedly in Tasmania and Australia man is exhibited with the smallest amount of human development. And yet we nowhere observe that absolute barbarism which is apparently admitted by the learned Englishman.

However far we go back into our past history we shall meet with similar facts. The little that we know of tertiary man shews him to be in possession of fire and the art of cutting flints. He already has his industries, and this fact alone proves that his mode of life was different to that of the brute.

It could not be otherwise. Whatever the cause may have been which determined the appearance of man upon the surface of the globe, he has, from the first, always been in possession of his specific nature. He has had from the outset his intelligence and his aptitudes which, though at that time in a torpid and slumbering state, were ready to start into life under the spur of necessity. To procure nourishment and to defend himself against the external world, he could only have recourse to them, and the smallest manifestations of these superior faculties have of necessity traced from the commencement a line of demarcation between him and the brute.

XV. The intelligence and the aptitudes of man have manifested themselves in a thousand ways, which may be included under the general name of industries. Pacific or warlike, relating to the individual or to the whole population, they very often differ in different races, in different peoples, sometimes almost in different tribes. The greater number may consequently be considered as so many characters by which the different groups of the human species may be distinguished. It will, however, at once be understood that questions of this nature can only be discussed in a detailed history, and I must here confine myself to stating one of those general facts which, by themselves, are sufficient to separate man from animals.