Next to geographical discovery, perhaps the most stimulating influence on Anthropology has been the succession of controversies in which it has constantly been involved. It has always been regarded as a somewhat anarchical subject, advocating views which might prove dangerous to Church and State; and many are the battles which have raged within and without. Huxley attributed the large audiences which were wont to throng the Anthropological Section of the British Association to the innate bellicose instincts of man, and to the splendid opportunities afforded by Anthropology for indulging those propensities.[[31]]
[31]. Add. Brit. Ass., Dublin, 1878.
The discussions of the earlier centuries were focussed round the question of the origin of man, and from this highly debateable problem arose the two antagonistic groups of the monogenists, or orthodox school, deriving all mankind from a single pair, and the polygenists, who believed in a multiple origin. Before the discoveries of prehistoric archæology had advanced sufficiently to show the futility of such discussion, anthropologists were split up into opposing camps by the question of the fixity of species, and became embroiled in one of the fiercest controversies of modern times—that of evolution. A subordinate subject of contention, implicated in the polygenist doctrines, was the place of the Negro in nature, involving the question of slavery.
Origin of Man.
Among the ancient philosophers the question of the origin of man was answered in various ways; some, like Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, believed that mankind had always existed, because there never could have been a beginning of things, relying on the scholastic argument that no bird could be born without an egg, and no egg without a bird. Epicurus and Lucretius believed in a “fortuitous cause,” a preparation of fat and slimy earth, with a long incubation of water and conjunction of heavenly and planetary bodies. Others, that men and animals “crawled out of the earth by chance,” “like mushrooms or blite.”
With the spread of Christianity the Mosaic cosmogony became generally adopted, and monogenism developed into an article of faith. The Church fulminated against those atheists who admitted doubts on the subject of Adam and Eve, or believed in the existence of antipodal man, or that man had existed for more than the 6,000 years allotted to him by Scripture. If the censure of the Church did not lead to recantation, the heretic was burnt. A seventeenth-century divine, Dr. Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, was even more precise than Archbishop Ussher: he reached the conclusion that “man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o’clock in the morning.”[[32]]
[32]. Clodd, Pioneers of Evolution, quoting from White, Warfare of Science with Theology.
The discovery of the New World dealt a severe blow to the authority of the Fathers on matters of science. Antipodal man, whom St. Augustine[[33]] had extinguished as “excessively absurd,” was found to exist, and the Spaniards forthwith excused their barbarities to the American natives on the plea that they were not the descendants of Adam and Eve.
[33]. De Civitate Dei.
Polygenism and Monogenism.