This fact, joined to the irregularly prismatic form of the hair in the Negro, is doubtless the origin of the following peculiarity: when the head of a Negro has been shaved, and the hair begins to grow afresh, one is especially struck with its strange appearance. It is arranged in little tufts about the size of a pea, so that the head, it has been remarked,[136] resembles nothing more closely than an old worn-out brush.
This peculiarity is special to the Negro, and is not found in the north-east of Africa, where the neighbouring population have woolly hair. Among the enumeration of the numberless perfections which a dogmatic Hindú requires from Buddha, and which Çakhya-Mouni possessed, it is said, “The hair of Buddha shoots forth in little ringlets.”[137] It is impossible to describe better what happens with the Negro. All this Hindoo tradition is, besides, a veritable enigma for the anthropologist. Why is Buddha depicted with the palms of the hands descending to the knees?[138] Why is the mendicant son of a king, born on the banks of the Ganges, always represented with the features or characteristics of a Negro, with black skin, and crisped hair? Nevertheless, Çakhya-Mouni did not belong to these inferior varieties of the human race, of whose existence in the Indian Peninsula we have already spoken; in that case, he would have been unfit to formulate any doctrine, either moral or philosophic.
The rest of the pilous system, not less than that of the hair, merits the attention of the anthropologist. Thus, a very especial fact, and to which, in our opinion, sufficient importance has never been attached, is, on the one hand, the relative abundance of the beard among the various races of mankind; and on the other, the time of its development. The Chinese, for example, is for a long time beardless, and it is only about his fortieth year that a few stiff hairs begin to appear upon his face.
Among the Negroes, the Americans, and the Polar race, the hair is, in the same way, very slightly developed on the face. “The length of our beards (of thirty days growth), which had not been shaved since we left the Victory,” said Sir John Ross,[139] “was, among other things, a source of great amusement, while one of them, a stranger, whose beard was of unusual length among this tribe, claimed consanguinity with us on that ground.” The thick and close beard seems, in regarding the matter closely, the exclusive appanage of that race which, sprung from the Imaüs, spread over the whole of Europe, and whose finest representatives still inhabit the table-lands of Iran.[140] Our neighbours, the Semites, are far from being so well provided; and Lieut.-Colonel H. Smith has[141] not, perhaps, done wrong in proposing to make an abundant pilous system the characteristic of one race, just as the crisped state of the hair would become the characteristic of another.
The systems of animal life, doubtless, show as many varieties among different races of men as the systems of the life of relationship; only these varieties are much less known. It will be sufficient for us to remember in this place the darker colour of the blood and the sperma among the Negro race, as already remarked by Aristotle and verified by Jacquinot, and the equally dark tint of the nervous centres; so that the whole œconomy of the Negro is, even in the most hidden parts (and those most distant from solar or atmospheric influence), impregnated with colouring matter.
Let us notice, also, the development of the small labia among the Hottentot women, that of the prepuce and the clitoris among the Semitic race, and even the size of the penis among the Ethiopians—such a size that it would almost impede the union of a black man with a white woman, whilst the union of a white man with a Negress would occur without any impediment. This remark, quite in agreement with the theories of M. d’Eichthal, has been made by a monogenist;[142] we have merely the right to wonder at it. How can we reconcile this impossibility, were it even a shade of a real one, with the notion of indefinite and universal reproduction, which all monogenists—wrongly, as we shall see—make one of their strongest arguments in favour of the specific unity of man?
II. What we call physiological differences are certain functional forms of the same organ, particular to certain races. This is, as may be seen, an entirely artificial distinction, since these differences must necessarily and forcibly refer to material, that is, to anatomical differences.
These alone, either from their small value, or from some other cause, have been hitherto unknown; whilst their effects, being more sensible, have not failed to escape our observation. If an Esquimaux, for instance, eats in one day the food of six English sailors,[143] it is evident that the intestines, the stomach, and the glands which border on them, present special modifications with reference to this kind of nourishment, so different from the frugivorous diet for which man’s organism is adapted. When a Tartar sees further than a European who is using a telescope,[144] it is certain that such a functional superiority depends only on the material quality of the organ,—from a more perfect arrangement of the visual apparatus,—from the more perfect nature of the medium refractive powers of the eye.
It has often been desired to refer these kind of modifications to the education of the race or the individual. The education of the race by itself, independently of the ordinary course, seems to us difficult to admit, since education, in this case, would suppose a triumphant struggle against the ordinary course of things. Every animal comes into the world as its parents came, or, at least, apparently so. If he brings with him, by inheritance, certain particular characteristics, they must necessarily in time become obliterated either by their own means, or by destroying all those who possess them (the case of hereditary degeneracy). In fact, if perfection in a race were possible by means of an individual, the consequence would be that very soon our descendants would be no longer in relationship with the circumambient medium, which would be an absurdity.[145]
As to individual education, it has an undeniable influence; but this does not suffice to explain such important differences. We never find that Europeans, who happen to be thrown among savages, attain to these peculiarly fine and delicate perceptions so special to many aborigines. And, moreover, the American residing in boundless forests, where the view is always restricted, has as piercing a glance as the Kalmuc upon his plain. The question of the education of an organ or a system by the individual himself will be cleared up, doubtless, one of these days, by attentive anatomy. And since we are upon the subject, let us remember that an important study still remains, hitherto merely glanced at,—that of the influence which, for instance, the milk of an animal or a female of another race may have upon the development or the health of a white child.