Notes on Noses

by Eden Warwick

In the Negro, or Prognathous-jawed, it is the same, and the nostrils are conspicuous, as in brutes.

When hypotheses thus assist and strengthen each other, we gain an assurance of their truth and accuracy which is wanting where they are seemingly contradictory, and which would have been wanting to Nasology, had it contradicted the observations of philosophers so careful and able as Dr. Prichard and his fellow-labourers in the field of ethnology. Happily this is not the case, and Nasology may claim to stand as the handmaid of ethnologists striving to discover the characteristics of nations.

Among the more highly-organized races more deviations from the original typical patterns occur than among the lower-organized—because the minds of civilized men are more impressible than those of savages. Travellers have always observed that nothing struck them more on visiting a savage nation than the great uniformity of feature, presenting so great a contrast to the diversities among civilized nations; so that while a superficial observer would suppose it to be impossible to characterize the latter by any uniform description, he finds no difficulty in expressing the characteristics of the former.

Various degrees of culture and occupation produce the greatest possible variations among the individuals of civilized nations, while the uniform absence of education and the uniformity of pursuits among savages perpetuate, and perhaps confer, an uniform national physiognomy.

When education becomes general, nations lose their national typical features; for the physiognomy becomes so variously impressed from within, according to the different bias and affections of men’s minds, that it ceases to receive those impressions from without, which generate national types. At present, however, there is so little generally diffused education that the typical features of most nations may yet be defined.

These are not always the original types of the race. Numerous circumstances have among the more civilized nations contributed to produce changes of greater or less magnitude. The various Caucasian nations, for instance, though all descended from one stock, have varied from their original type in their divers migrations from the plains of Asia, and received such typical form as varying circumstances have since impressed. Hence the various Caucasian nations of Europe and Western Asia differ considerably from each other in mental and bodily organization.

These variations from the original type took place, however, at so early a period, even in the ante-historical period, that historians are apt to regard them as original and innate; and perhaps it is most convenient for them to do so. But this is not sufficient for the inquirer into the Races of Men. He goes back to ages far beyond the historical, or even the mythic, period; and, finding these nations are descended from one family, perceives that the present variations must have taken place after the dispersion of the family into distant localities under leaders of very various temperament and views of social happiness.

It would lead us too far to inquire whether the tendency of Nature to break up certain types into varieties, and form new races—perhaps even new species and genera—was not originally greater than it has been at any period within the knowledge of man. We see no changes take place now, such as long before even the mythic period, produced from one stock the wild urus, the domestic ox, and the hunched bull of India. Neither do we see new races of men spring up; such as in the very earliest times produced from one common ancestor the various diverse races of men; white, black, yellow, and red.

It is a singular proof both of the tendency of the human race to break into varieties at a very early period, and of the permanency of those varieties in later ages—that the four races into which Blumenbach and the best writers have agreed to divide the races of the old world are distinctly recorded and separated in like manner on some of the most ancient monuments of Egypt. On the tomb of Osirei, father of the Great Rameses, are represented the “dwellers upon earth as well those of Egypt as those of foreign countries.” Four figures are given in each group, and are coloured to represent the Tawny, the Yellow, the Black, and the White Races, respectively, with features corresponding to those of the same races in the present day. Such facts should teach us that the laws which regulate the generation and production of species and races are very different from those which regulate reproduction and succession, and that while we endeavour to explain the laws of origination by the laws of reproduction, we shall never arrive at the true solution of the origination of types.

It is no poetical fancy that Nature’s infancy was more active than its later years; that “Nature wantoned in her prime,” and produced more gigantic effects than now. Not that the powers of nature are weakened: but the purpose having been accomplished, its workings are stayed by the fiat of the Almighty God, and are employed in sustaining and reproducing, instead of generating anew and creating. When those powers are wanted again, they will spring into undecayed operation; let a new continent rise from the deep and the new world have to be people, and Nature will again resume the gigantic forces of its infancy, and become young to fill with life and activity a young world.