This incontestable fact has led to the inquiry whether in those species which, by domestication, have lost their original habits, and contracted others, the forms and instincts of the primitive stock were still discernible. I think this highly improbable, and can hardly believe that we shall ever be able to determine the shape and characteristics of the prototype of each species, and how much or how little it is approached by the deviations now before our eyes. A very great number of vegetables present the same problem, and with regard to man, whose origin it is most interesting and important for us to know, the inquiry seems to be attended with the greatest and most insurmountable difficulties.
Each race is convinced that its progenitor had precisely the characteristics which now distinguish it. This is the only point upon which their traditions perfectly agree. The white races represent to themselves an Adam and Eve, whom Blumenbach would at once have pronounced Caucasians; the Mohammedan negroes, on the contrary, believe the first pair to have been black; these being created in God's own image, it follows that the Supreme Being, and also the angels, are of the same color, and the prophet himself was certainly too greatly favored by his Sender to display a pale skin to his disciples.[142]
Unfortunately, modern science has as yet found no clue to this maze of opinions. No admissible theory has been advanced which affords the least light upon the subject, and, in all probability, the various types differ as much from their common progenitor—if they possess one—as they do among themselves. The causes of these deviations are exceedingly difficult to ascertain. The believers in the unity of origin pretend to find them, as I remarked before, in various local circumstances, such as climate, habits, &c. It is impossible to coincide with such an opinion, for, although these circumstances have always existed, they have not, within historical times, produced such alterations in the races which were exposed to their influence as to make it even probable that they were the causes of so vast and radical a dissimilarity as we now see before us. Suppose two tribes, not yet departed from the primitive type, to inhabit, one an alpine region in the interior of a continent, the other some isolated isle in the immensity of the ocean. Their atmospheric and alimentary conditions would, of course, be totally different. If we further suppose one of these tribes to be abundantly provided with nourishment, and the other possessing but precarious means of subsistence; one to inhabit a cold latitude, and the other to be exposed to the action of a tropical sun; it seems to me that we have accumulated the most essential local contrasts. Allowing these physical causes to operate a sufficient lapse of time, the two groups would, no doubt, ultimately assume certain peculiar characteristics, by which they might be distinguished from each other. But no imaginable length of time could bring about any essential, organic change of conformation; and as a proof of this assertion, I would point to the populations of opposite portions of the globe, living under physical conditions the most widely different, who, nevertheless, present a perfect resemblance of type.
The Hottentots so strongly resemble the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, that it has even been supposed, though without good reasons, that they were originally a Chinese colony. A great similarity exists between the ancient Etruscans, whose portraits have come down to us, and the Araucanians of South America. The features and outlines of the Cherokees seem to be perfectly identical with those of several Italian populations, the Calabrians, for instance. The inhabitants of Auvergne, especially the female portion, much more nearly resemble in physiognomy several Indian tribes of North America than any European nation. Thus we see that in very different climes, and under conditions of life so very dissimilar, nature can reproduce the same forms. The peculiar characteristics which now distinguish the different types cannot, therefore, be the effects of local circumstances such as now exist.[143]
Though it is impossible to ascertain what physical changes different branches of the human family may have undergone anterior to the historic epoch, yet we have the best proofs that since then, no race has changed its peculiar characteristics. The historic epoch comprises about one half of the time during which our earth is supposed to have been inhabited, and there are several nations whom we can trace up to the verge of ante-historic ages; yet we find that the races then known have remained the same to our days, even though they ceased to inhabit the same localities, and consequently were no longer exposed to the influence of the same external conditions.
Witness the Arabs. As they are represented on the monuments of Egypt, so we find them at present, not only in the arid deserts of their native land, but in the fertile regions and moist climate of Malabar, Coromandel, and the islands of the Indian Ocean. We find them again, though more mixed, on the northern coasts of Africa, and, although many centuries have elapsed since their invasion, traces of Arab blood are still discernible in some portions of Roussillon, Languedoc, and Spain.
Next to the Arabs I would instance the Jews. They have emigrated to countries in every respect the most dissimilar to Palestine, and have not even preserved their ancient habits of life. Yet their type has always remained peculiar and the same in every latitude and under every physical condition. The warlike Rechabites in the deserts of Arabia present to us the same features as our own peaceable Jews. I had occasion not long since to examine a Polish Jew. The cut of his face, and especially his eyes, perfectly betrayed his origin. This inhabitant of a northern zone, whose direct ancestors for several generations had lived among the snows and ice of an inhospitable clime, seemed to have been tanned but the day before, by the ardent rays of a Syrian sun. The same Shemitic face which the Egyptian artist represented some four thousand or more years ago, we recognize daily around us; and its principal and really characteristic features are equally strikingly preserved under the most diverse climatic circumstances. But the resemblance is not confined to the face only, it extends to the conformation of the limbs and the nature of the temperament. German Jews are generally smaller and more slender in stature than the European nations among whom they have lived for centuries; and the age of puberty arrives earlier with them than with their compatriots of another race.[144]
This is, I am aware, an assertion diametrically opposed to Mr. Prichard's opinions. This celebrated physiologist, in his zeal to prove the unity of species, attempts to prove that the age of puberty in both sexes is the same everywhere and among all races. His arguments are based upon the precepts of the Old Testament and the Koran, by which the marriageable age of women is fixed at fifteen, and even eighteen, according to Abou-Hanifah.[145]
I hardly think that biblical testimony is admissible in matters of this kind, because the Scriptures often narrate facts which cannot be accounted for by the ordinary laws of nature. Thus, the pregnancy of Sarah at an extreme old age, and when Abraham himself was a centenarian, is an event upon which no ordinary course of reasoning could be based. As for the precepts of the Mohammedan law, I would observe that they were intended to insure not merely the physical aptitude for marriage, but also that degree of mental maturity and education which befit a woman about to enter on the duties of so serious a station. The prophet makes it a special injunction that the religious education of young women should be continued to the time of their marriage. Taking this view, the law-giver would naturally incline to delay the period of marriage as long as possible, in order to afford time for the development of the reasoning faculties, and he would therefore be less precipitate in his authorizations than nature in hers. But there are some other proofs which I would adduce against Mr. Prichard's grave arguments, which, though of less weighty character, are not the less conclusive, and will settle the question, I think, in my favor.
Poets, in their tales of love, are mainly solicitous of exhibiting their heroines in the first bloom of beauty, without caring much about their moral and mental development. Accordingly, we find that oriental poets have always made their lovers much younger than the age prescribed by the Koran. Zelika and Leila are not, surely, fourteen years old. In India, this difference is still more striking. Sacontala, in Europe, would be quite a small girl, a mere child. The spring-time of life for a Hindoo female is from the age of nine to that of twelve. In the Chinese romance, Yu-Kiao-li, the heroine is sixteen; and her father is in great distress, and laments pathetically that at so advanced an age she should still be unmarried. The Roman writers, following in the footsteps of their Greek preceptors, took fifteen as the period of bloom of a woman's life; our own authors for a long time adhered to these models, but since the ideas of the North have begun to exert their influence upon our literature, the heroines of our novels are full-grown young ladies of eighteen, and very often more.[146]