The causes are very hard to disentangle. The theory of the unitarians attributes the deviation, as I have already said, to habits, climate, and locality. It is impossible to agree with this.[[60]] Changes have certainly been brought about in the constitution of races, since the dawn of history, by such external influences; but they do not seem to have been important enough to be able to explain fully the many vital divergences that exist. This will become clear in a moment.
I will suppose that there are two tribes which still bear a resemblance to the primitive type, and happen to be living, the one in a mountainous country in the interior of a continent, the other on an island in the midst of the ocean. The atmosphere and the food conditions of each will be quite different. I will assume that the one has many ways of obtaining food, the other very few. Further, I will place the former in a cold climate, the second under a tropical sun. By this means the external contrast between them will be complete. The course of time will add its own weight to the action of the natural forces, and there is no doubt that the two groups will gradually accumulate some special characteristics which will distinguish them from each other. But even after many centuries no vital or organic change will have taken place in their constitution. This is proved by the fact that we find peoples of a very similar type, living on opposite sides of the world and under quite different conditions, of climate and everything else. Ethnologists are agreed on this point and some have even believed that the Hottentots are a Chinese colony—a hypothesis impossible on other grounds—on account of their likeness to the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire.[[61]] In the same way, some have seen a great resemblance between the portraits we have of the ancient Etruscans and the Araucans of South America. In features and general shape the Cherokees seem almost identical with many of the Italian peoples, such as the Calabrians. The usual type of face among the inhabitants of Auvergne, especially the women, is far less like the ordinary European’s than that of many Indian tribes of North America. Thus when we grant that nature can produce similar types in widely separated countries, under different conditions of life and climate, it becomes quite clear that the human races do not take their qualities from any of the external forces that are active at the present day.
I would not, however, deny that local conditions may favour the deepening of some particular skin-colour, the tendency to obesity, the development of the chest muscles, the lengthening of the arms or the lower limbs, the increase or decrease of physical strength. But, I repeat, these are not essential points; and to judge from the very slight difference made by the alteration of local conditions in the shape of the body, there is no reason to believe that they have ever had very much influence. This is an argument of considerable weight.
Although we do not know what cataclysmal changes may have been effected in the physical organization of the races before the dawn of history, we may at least observe that this period extends only to about half the age attributed to our species. If for three or four thousand years the darkness is impenetrable, we still have another period of three thousand years, of which we can go right back to the beginning in the case of certain nations. Everything tends to show that the races which were then known, and which have remained relatively pure since that time, have not greatly changed in their outward appearance, although some of them no longer live in the same places, and so are no longer affected by the same external causes. Take, for example, the Arabs of the stock of Ishmael. We still find them, just as they are represented in the Egyptian monuments, not only in the parched deserts of their own land, but in the fertile, and often damp, regions of Malabar and the Coromandel Coast, in the islands of the Indies, and on many points of the north coast of Africa, where they are, as a fact, more mixed than anywhere else. Traces of them are still found in some parts of Roussillon, Languedoc, and the Spanish coast, although almost two centuries have passed away since their invasion. If the mere influence of environment had the power, as is supposed, of setting up and taking away the limits between organic types, it would have not allowed these to persist so long. The change of place would have been followed by a corresponding change of form.
After the Arabs, I will mention the Jews, who are still more remarkable in this connexion, as they have settled in lands with very different climates from that of Palestine, and have given up their ancient mode of life. The Jewish type has, however, remained much the same; the modifications it has undergone are of no importance and have never been enough, in any country or latitude, to change the general character of the race. The warlike Rechabites of the Arabian desert, the peaceful Portuguese, French, German, and Polish Jews—they all look alike. I have had the opportunity of examining closely one of the last kind. His features and profile clearly betrayed his origin. His eyes especially were unforgettable. This denizen of the north, whose immediate ancestors had lived, for many generations, in the snow, seemed to have been just tanned by the rays of the Syrian sun. The Semitic face looks exactly the same, in its main characteristics, as it appears on the Egyptian paintings of three or four thousand years ago, and more; and we find it also, in an equally striking and recognizable form, under the most varied and disparate conditions of climate. The identity of descendant and ancestor does not stop at the features; it continues also in the shape of the limbs and the temperament. The German Jews are usually smaller and more slender in build than the men of European race among whom they have lived for centuries. Further, the marriageable age is much earlier among them than among their fellow-countrymen of another race.[[62]]
This, by the way, is an assertion diametrically opposed to the opinion of Prichard, who in his zeal for proving the unity of the species, tries to show that the age of puberty, for the two sexes, is the same everywhere and in all races.[[63]] The reasons which he advances are drawn from the Old Testament in the case of the Jews, and, in the case of the Arabs, from the religious law of the Koran, by which the age of marriage is fixed, for girls, at fifteen, and even (in the opinion of Abu-Hanifah) at eighteen.
These two arguments seem very questionable. In the first place, the Biblical evidence is not admissible on this point, as it often includes facts that contradict the ordinary course of nature. Sarah, for example, was brought to bed of a child in extreme old age, when Abraham himself had reached a hundred years;[[64]] to such an event ordinary reasoning cannot apply. Secondly, as to the views and ordinances of the Mohammedan law, I may say that the Koran did not intend merely to make sure of the physical fitness of the woman before authorizing the marriage. It wished her also to be far enough advanced in education and intelligence to be able to understand the serious duties of her new position. This is shown by the pains taken by the prophet to prescribe that the girl’s religious instruction shall be continued to the time of her marriage. It is easy to see why, from this point of view, the day should have been put off as long as possible and why the law-giver thought it so important to develop the reasoning powers, instead of being as hasty in his ordinances as nature is in hers. This is not all. Against the serious evidence brought forward by Prichard, there are some conclusive arguments, though of a lighter nature, that decide the question in favour of my view.
The poets, in their stories of love, are concerned merely with showing their heroines in the flower of their beauty, without thinking of their moral development; and the Oriental poets have always made their girl-lovers younger than the age prescribed by the Koran. Zuleika and Leila are certainly not yet fourteen. In India, the difference is still more marked. Sakuntala would be a mere child in Europe. The best age of love for an Indian girl is from nine to twelve years. It is a very general opinion, long accepted and established among the Indian, Persian, and Arab races, that the spring of life, for a woman, flowers at an age that we should call a little precocious. Our own writers have for long followed the lead, in this matter, of their Roman models. These, like their Greek teachers, regarded fifteen as the best age. Since our literature has been influenced by Northern ideas,[[65]] we have seen in our novels nothing but girls of eighteen, or even older.
Returning now to more serious arguments, we find them equally abundant. In addition to what I have said about the German Jews, it may be mentioned that in many parts of Switzerland the sexual development of the people is so slow that, in the case of the men, it is not always complete at twenty. The Bohemians, or Zingaris, yield another set of results, which are easily verified. They show the same early development as the Hindus, who are akin to them; and under the most inclement skies, in Russia and in Moldavia, they still keep the expression and shape of the face and the physical proportions, as well as the ideas and customs, of the pariahs.[[66]]
I do not, however, mean to oppose Prichard on every point. One of his conclusions I gratefully adopt, namely that “difference of climate occasions very little, if any, important diversity as to the periods of life and the physical changes to which the human constitution is subject.”[[67]] This remark is very true, and I would not dream of contesting it. I merely add that it seems to contradict to some slight extent the principles otherwise upheld by the learned American physiologist and antiquary.