Ethnology, to which we repair, is a science of recent origin, exhibiting the different races or varieties of Man in their relations with each other, as that other science, Anthropology, exhibits Man in his relation to the animal world. Nature and History are our authorities, but all science and all knowledge are tributary. Perhaps no other theme is grander; for it is the very beginning of human history, in which all nations and men have a common interest. Its vastness is increased, when we consider that it embraces properly not only the origin, distribution, and capacity of Man, but his destiny on earth,—stretching into the infinite past, stretching also into the infinite future, and thus spanning Humanity.
The subject is entirely modern. Hippocrates, one of our ancient masters, has left a treatise on “Air, Water, and Place,” where climatic influences are recognized; but nobody in Antiquity studied the varieties of our race, or regarded its origin except mythically. The discovery of America, and the later circumnavigation of the globe, followed by the development of the sciences generally, prepared the way for this new science.
It is obvious to the most superficial observer that there are divisions or varieties in the Human Family, commonly called Races; but the most careful explorations of Science leave the number uncertain. These differences are in Color and in Skull,—also in Language. Of these the most obvious is Color; but here, again, the varieties multiply in proportion as we consider transitional or intermediate hues. Two great teachers in the last century—Linnæus, of whom it was said, “God created, Linnæus classified,” Deus creavit, Linnæus disposuit,[127] and Kant, a sincere and penetrating seeker of truth—were content with four,—white, copper, tawny or olive, and black,—corresponding geographically to European, American, Asiatic, and African. Buffon, in his eloquent portraiture, recognizes five, with geographical designations. He was followed by Blumenbach, who also recognizes five, with the names which have become so famous since,—Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Here first appears the popular, but deceptive term, Caucasian; for nobody supposes now that the white cradle was on Caucasus, which is best known to English-speaking people by the verse of Shakespeare, making it anything but Eden,—
“Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?”[128]
Blumenbach was an able and honest inquirer; and if his nomenclature is defective, it is only another illustration of the adage, that nothing is at the same time invented and perfected.
If I mention other attempts, it is only to show how Science hesitates before this great problem. Cuvier reduces the Family to three, with branches or subdivisions, and lends his great authority to the term Caucasian, which he adopts from Blumenbach. Lesson began with three, according to color,—white, yellow, and black; but afterwards recognized six,—white, bistre, orange, yellow, red, black,—represented respectively by European, Hindoo, Malay, Mongolian, American, and Negro, African and Asiatic. Desmoulins makes eleven. Bory de Saint-Vincent adds to Desmoulins. Broc adds to Saint-Vincent. The London “Ethnological Journal” makes no less than sixty-three, of which twenty-eight varieties are intellectual and thirty-five physical; and we are told[129] that thirty varieties of Caucasian alone are recognized on the monuments of ancient Egypt, as they appear in the magnificent works of Rosellini and Lepsius. Our own countryman, Pickering,—whose experience was gained on the Exploring Expedition of Captain Wilkes,—in his work on “The Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution,” enumerates eleven varieties of Man, divided into four groups, according to color,—white, brown, blackish-brown, and black. In his opinion, “there is no middle ground between the admission of eleven distinct species in the Human Family and the reduction to one.”[130]
The Dutch anatomist, Camper, distinguishes the Human Family by the facial angle, ranging from eighty degrees, in the European, down to seventy degrees, in the Negro.[131] This attempt was continued by Virey, who divides Man into two species: the first with a facial angle of 85° to 90°, including Caucasian, Mongolian, and copper-colored American; and the second with a facial angle of 75° to 82°, including dark-brown Malay, blackish Hottentot and Papuan, and the Negro. Prichard, whose voluminous works constitute an ethnological mine, finds, chiefly from the skull, seven varieties, which he calls (1.) Iranian, from Iran, the primeval seat in Persia of the Aryan race, embracing the Caucasian of Blumenbach with some Asiatic and African nations; (2.) Turanian or Mongolian; (3.) American, including Esquimaux; (4.) Hottentot and Bushman; (5.) Negro; (6.) Papuan, or woolly-haired Polynesian; (7.) Australian. The same industrious observer finds three principal varieties in the conformation of the head, corresponding respectively to Savage, Nomadic, and Civilized Man. In the savage African and Australian the jaw is prolonged forward, constituting what he calls, by an expressive term, prognathous. In the nomadic Mongolian the skull is pyramidal and the face broad. In Civilized Man the skull is oval or elliptical. But the naturalist records that there are forms of transition, as nations approach to civilization or relapse into barbarism.
Thus does the Human Skull refuse any definitive answer. There are varieties of skull, as of color; but the question remains, to what extent they attest original diversity. Equally vain is the attempt to obtain a guide in the form of the human pelvis. But every such attempt and its failure have their lesson.