This consideration must, I think, bring those who raise scriptural difficulties against the theory to the admission that blackness was a sign of inferiority, and that certain races were either smitten with, or were predestined to, in consequence of culpability, this degradation.
This, I admit, is no reply to those who argue from the evidence of the Egyptian monuments. But the evidence from the monuments, so far from embarrassing my conclusion, seems absolutely to enforce it. If, indeed, the evidence from the monuments did not stare one in the face, we might fall back upon the line of argument which I have just indicated, and whilst recognising in their blackness the operation of a curse, trace it in the lapse of centuries and the influences of the torrid zone. But they are recorded as being black on the earliest monuments known to us, and within a few centuries of the Deluge. The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable, that they were so from the commencement, which exactly hits in with the tradition of the curse of Canaan.
Such, from his own point of view, is the conclusion of Sir J. Lubbock (“Prehistoric Times,” p. 478)—
“If there is any truth in this view of the subject (p. 478), it will necessarily follow that the principal varieties of man are of great antiquity, and, in fact, go back almost to the very origin of the human race. We may then cease to wonder that the earliest paintings on Egyptian tombs represent so accurately several various varieties still existing in those regions, and that the Engis skull, probably the most ancient yet found in Europe, so closely resembles many that may be seen even at the present day.”
The following conclusion of Mr Wallace also exactly coincides with De Maistre’s view.
Lyell, in his “Principles of Geology” (ii. 471) says—
“Wallace suggests that at some former period man’s corporeal frame must have been more pliant and variable than it is now; for, according to the observed rate of fluctuation in modern times, scarcely any conceivable lapse of ages would suffice to give rise to such an amount of differentiation. He therefore concludes, that when first the mental and moral qualities of man acquired predominance, his bodily frame ceased to vary.”
But, although science in its own way may arrive at approximations to the truth, yet, if the traditional solution be true, assuredly it is not a solution which will be reached by any merely scientific process; and therefore, if it should be the truth, the ethnological difficulty will remain an enigma and embarrassment to the learned in all time to come.