[59] “Principles of Geology,” tenth edition, 1868, ii. p. 471.
[60] The ground upon which Lyell pronounces this judgment is (ii. 479) “that no fragment of pottery has been found among the nations of Australia, New Zealand, and the Polynesian islands any more than ancient architectural remains, in all which respects, these rude men now living, resemble the men of the Palæolithic age; when pottery is known to all, it is always abundant, and, though easy to break, is difficult to destroy. It is improbable that so useful an art should ever have been lost by any race of man.” The argument is strongly put, but many things are left out of consideration. Supposing the primitive knowledge, is not pottery one of the arts which would be most likely to be lost in a migration across the seas? Again, that they had no pottery, and that the Palæolithic age had no pottery, shows that in the interval there had been no progress. When will there be? As to the circumstance that it is the same among the Australians and Polynesians, the fact cuts both ways. You assume that there is a uniformity in progress, but may not there be the same uniformity in the processes of degradation? and, assuming the fact, may it not simply prove that these savages have reached the same depth as the other savages?—Vide [appendix] to ch. xii.
[61] The following passage from M. A. Bastian’s article in The Academy, June 15, 1871, “On the People of India,” seems to me to afford an illustration in point—“The natural system becomes an indispensable necessity in every science, so soon as it is clearly seen that the question is not of classification, but of observation of, and insight into, law. Classification was long held to be the sole end, instead of being merely or mainly the means of study. As, in this respect, systematic botany gave place to vegetable physiology, so, in like manner, ethnology will have to look upon its classification of race—with which the school books hitherto have been almost exclusively occupied—as merely a preliminary step towards a physiology of mankind, and to a science of the laws which govern its spiritual growth.” Now, if no physiology of mankind, in the sense here intended, can be traced, and if “the science of the laws which govern its spiritual growth” (vide infra, an exposition of Mr Baring Gould’s theory) has come to no definite conclusion, then the only result, as far as science is concerned, will have been the revolutionising of its classifications, and the classifications of the different races of men (and, in so far as they have been accurately ascertained, their confusion will be matter of regret) is the legitimate and ultimate end of ethnology under normal conditions.
[62] Sir J. Lubbock’s “Prehistoric Times,” p. 313.
[63] It has almost passed into a proverb, says Morton—who is among those who know the Americans best—that he who has seen one Indian tribe has seen them all, so closely do the individuals of this race resemble each other, whatever may be the variety or the extent of the countries they inhabit.” Reusch’s “La Bible et la Nature,” vide also Card. Wiseman’s “Lect. on Science and Rev. Rel.” lect. iv., vide, however, Reusch, p. 498, where “a remarkable difference in the cranium” is noticed, “sometimes approaching the Malay, sometimes the Mongol shape.”
[64] That the negro has undergone modifications, seems established by the fact that we nowhere find all the characteristics of the negro united in any one case—unless, perhaps, in the case of the negroes of Guinea, to which I have alluded. Yet, in the people who border them, there has been noticed “un retour vers des formes superieures.” The Yoloss, “out le front élevé, des machoires peu saillantes, leurs dents sont droites, et ils sont en général bein constitués, mais ils sont tout à fait noirs. Leurs voisins, les Mandingues, tiennent beaucoup plus du type négre ... mais leur teint est beaucoup moins noir.”—De Bur. ap. Reusch, p. 505. But under no influences of climate has the negro ever become white like the European, or the European black like the inhabitant of Guinea; if they become darker, “c’est simplement la teint particulier à leur race qui gagne en intensité.”—Burminster, ap. Reusch, p. 509.
[65] Captain Burton (ii. 165) also quotes a Catholic and a Protestant missionary as to this point. M. Wallon says, “Avec leur tendance à nous considérer comme réellement supérieurs à eux, et leur croyance que cette supériorité nous est acquise par celle de notre Dieu, ils renonceraient bientôt aux leurs idoles pour adorer celui qui nous leur prions de connaître.” Mr Dawson says, “Fetish has been strengthened by the white man, whom the ignorant blacks would not scruple to call a god if he could avoid death.”
Assuming the identity of Bacchus and Noah, it is a striking circumstance, from this point of view, that the name of Bacchus, among the Phœnicians, was a synonymous term for mourning.—Vide Hesychius in Bryant’s “Mythology,” ii. 335; vide also the verses of Theocritus. Comp. p. 247, [note] (Boulanger).
[66] Perhaps Captain Burton’s phrase (ii. 178), “the arrested physical development of the negro,” may, if extended to his mental development, exactly hit the truth, the standard being fixed by the age at which we conceive the boy Chanaan’s development to have been arrested.—Comp. Wallace, infra, p. 91; comp. 217.
[67] “Annales de Philos. Chret.,” t. xiii. p. 235.