The substance of this theory is, that individuals are superior in intellect in proportion as their skulls are larger.[127] Taking this as the general rule, Dr. Morton and Mr. Carus proceed thereby to demonstrate the difference of races. The question to be decided is, whether all types of the human race have the same craniological development.
To elucidate this fact, Dr. Morton took a certain number of skulls, belonging to the four principal human families—Whites, Mongolians, Negroes, and North American Indians—and, after carefully closing every aperture, except the foramen magnum, he measured their capacity by filling them with well dried grains of pepper. The results of this measurement are exhibited in the subjoined table.[128]
| Number of skulls measured. | Average capacity. | Maximum. | Minimum. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White races | 52 | 87 | 109 | 75 | ||
| Yellow races | { | Mongolians | 10 | 83 | 93 | 69 |
| Malays | 18 | 81 | 89 | 64 | ||
| Copper-colored races | 147 | 82 | 100 | 60 | ||
| Negroes | 29 | 78 | 94 | 65 | ||
The results given in the first two columns are certainly very curious, but to those in the last two I attach little value. These two columns, giving the maximum and minimum capacities, differ so greatly from the second, which shows the average, that they could be of weight only if Mr. Morton had experimented upon a much greater number of skulls, and if he had specified the social position of the individuals to whom they belonged. Thus, for his specimens of the white and copper-colored races, he might select skulls that had belonged to individuals rather above the common herd.[129] But the Blacks and Mongolians were not represented by the skulls of their great chiefs and mandarins. This explains why Dr. Morton could ascribe the figure 100 to an aboriginal of America, while the most intelligent Mongolian that he examined did not exceed 93, and is surpassed even by the negro, who reaches 94. Such results are entirely incomplete, fortuitous, and of no scientific value. In questions of this kind, too much care cannot be taken to reject conclusions which are based upon the examination of individualities. I am, therefore, unable to accept the second half of Dr. Morton's calculations.
I am also disposed to doubt one of the details in the other half. The figures 100, 83, and 78, respectively indicating the average capacity of the skull of the white, Mongolian, and negro, follow a clear and evident gradation. But the figures 83, 81, and 82, given for the Mongol, the Malay, and the red-skin, are conflicting; the more so, as Mr. Carus does not hesitate to comprise the Mongols and Malays into one and the same race, and thus unites the figures 83 and 81—by which he receives, as the average capacity of the yellow race, 82, or the same as that of the red-skins. Wherefore, then, take the figure 82 as the characteristic of a distinct race, and thus create, quite arbitrarily, a fourth great subdivision of our species.
This anomaly supports the weak side of Mr. Carus's system. The learned Saxon amuses himself by supposing that, just as we see our planet pass through the four stages of day, night, morning twilight, and evening twilight, so there must be four subdivisions of the human species, corresponding to these variations of light. He perceives in this a symbol,[130] which is always a dangerous temptation to a mind of refined susceptibilities. The white races are to him the nations of day; the black, those of night; the yellow, those of morning; the red, those of evening. It will be perceived how many ingenious analogies may be brought forward in support of this fanciful invention. Thus, the European nations, by the brilliancy of their scientific discoveries and their superior civilization, are in an enlightened state, while the blacks are plunged in the gloomy darkness of ignorance. The Eastern nations live in a sort of twilight, which affords them an incomplete, though powerful, social existence. And as for the Indians of the Western World, who are rapidly disappearing, what more beautiful image of their destiny can be found than the setting sun?
Unfortunately, parables are no arguments, and Mr. Carus has somewhat injured his beautiful theory by unduly abandoning himself to this poetical current. Moreover, what I have said with regard to all other ethnological theories—those of Camper, Blumenbach, and Owen—holds good of this: Mr. Carus does not succeed in systematizing regularly the whole of the physiological diversities observable in races.[131]
The advocates for unity of species have not failed to take advantage of this inability on the part of their opponents to find a system which will include the many varieties of the human family; and they pretend that, as the observations upon the conformation of the skull cannot be reduced to a system which demonstrates the original separation of types, the different varieties must be regarded as simple divergencies occasioned by adventitious and secondary causes, and which do not prove a difference of origin.
This is crying victory too soon. The difficulty of finding a method does not always prove that none can be found. But the believers in the unity of species did not admit this reserve. To set off their theory, they point to the fact that certain tribes, belonging to the same race, instead of presenting the same physical type, diverge from it very considerably. They cite the different groups of the mixed Malay-Polynesian family; and, without paying attention to the proportion of the elements which compose the mixtures, they say that if groups of the same origin can assume such totally different craniological and facial forms, the greatest diversities of that kind do not prove the primary plurality of origins.[132] Strange as it may be to European eyes, the distinct types of the negro and the Mongolian are not then demonstrative of difference of species; and the differences among the human family must be ascribed simply to certain local causes operating during a greater or less lapse of time.[133]