CHAPTER XI
RACIAL DIFFERENCES ARE PERMANENT
The Unitarians say that the separation of the races is merely apparent, and due to local influences, such as are still at work, or to accidental variations of shape in the ancestor of some particular branch. All mankind is, for them, capable of the same improvement; the original type, though more or less disguised, persists in unabated strength, and the negro, the American savage, the Tungusian of Northern Siberia, can attain a beauty of outline equal to that of the European, and would do so, if they were brought up under similar conditions. This theory cannot be accepted.
We have seen above that the strongest scientific rampart of the Unitarians lay in the fertility of human hybrids. Up to now, this has been very difficult to refute, but perhaps it will not always be so; at any rate, I should not think it worth while to pause over this argument if it were not supported by another, of a very different kind, which, I confess, gives me more concern. It is said that Genesis does not admit of a multiple origin for our species.
If the text is clear, positive, peremptory, and incontestable, we must bow our heads; the greatest doubts must yield, reason can only declare herself imperfect and inferior, the origin of mankind is single, and everything that seems to prove the contrary is merely a delusive appearance. It is better to let darkness gather round a point of scholarship, than to enter the lists against such an authority. But if the Bible is not explicit, if the Holy Scriptures, which were written to shed light on quite other questions than those of race, have been misunderstood, and if without doing them violence one can draw a different meaning from them, then I shall not hesitate to go forward.
We must, of course, acknowledge that Adam is the ancestor of the white race. The scriptures are evidently meant to be so understood, for the generations deriving from him are certainly white. This being admitted, there is nothing to show that, in the view of the first compilers of the Adamite genealogies, those outside the white race were counted as part of the species at all. Not a word is said about the yellow races, and it is only an arbitrary interpretation of the text that makes us regard the patriarch Ham as black. Of course the translators and commentators, in calling Adam the common ancestor of all men, have had to enrol among his descendants all the peoples who have lived since his time. According to them, the European nations are of the stock of Japhet, hither Asia was occupied by the Semites, and the regions of Africa by the Hamites, who are, as I say, unreasonably considered to be of negro origin. The whole scheme fits admirably together—for one part of the world. But what about the other part? It is simply left out.
For the moment, I do not insist on this line of argument. I do not wish to run counter to even literal interpretations of the text, if they are generally accepted. I will merely point out that we might, perhaps, doubt their value, without going beyond the limits imposed by the Church; and then I will ask whether we may admit the basic principle of the unitarians, such as it is, and yet somehow explain the facts otherwise than they do. In other words, I will simply ask whether independently of any question of an original unity or multiplicity, there may not exist the most radical and far-reaching differences, both physical and moral, between human races.
The racial identity of all the different kinds of dog is admitted by Frédéric Cuvier among others;[[59]] but no one would say that in all dogs, without distinction of species, we find the same shapes, instincts, habits, and qualities. The same is true of horses, bulls, bears, and the like. Everywhere we see identity of origin, diversity of everything else, a diversity so deep that it cannot be lost except by crossing, and even then the products do not return to a real identity of nature. On the other hand, so long as the race is kept pure, the special characteristics remain unchanged, and are reproduced for generations without any appreciable difference.
This fact, which is indisputable, has led some to ask whether in the various kinds of domestic animals we can recognize the shapes and instincts of the primitive stock. The question seems for ever insoluble. It is impossible to determine the form and nature of a primitive type, and to be certain how far the specimens we see to-day deviate from it. The same problem is raised in the case of a large number of vegetables. Man especially, whose origin offers a more interesting study than that of all the rest, seems to resist all explanation, from this point of view.
The different races have never doubted that the original ancestor of the whole species had precisely their own characteristics. On this point, and this alone, tradition is unanimous. The white peoples have made for themselves an Adam and an Eve that Blumenbach would have called Caucasian; whereas in the “Arabian Nights”—a book which, though apparently trivial, is a mine of true sayings and well-observed facts—we read that some negroes regard Adam and his wife as black, and since these were created in the image of God, God must also be black and the angels too, while the prophet of God was naturally too near divinity to show a white skin to his disciples.
Unhappily, modern science has been able to provide no clue to the labyrinth of the various opinions. No likely hypothesis has succeeded in lightening this darkness, and in all probability the human races are as different from their common ancestor, if they have one, as they are from each other. I will therefore assume without discussion the principle of unity; and my only task, in the narrow and limited field to which I am confining myself, is to explain the actual deviation from the primitive type.