CHAPTER V.
INTELLECTUAL AND PHILOLOGICAL VARIETIES.
From time immemorial, common sense has enlightened mankind upon the intellectual differences which make one nation differ from another, and one race from another. Almost all nations, in admitting that they are superior to their neighbours, acknowledge thereby a characteristic difference between themselves and those whom they thus place below their own level. An overweening sense of vanity may possibly cause deception in this case; but this belief is, at least, based on a veritable fact,—intellectual inequality. There are, indeed, sensible and manifest differences, which no one will deny, especially those who seek in the literary monuments of a race for the history of its ideas and its tendencies, and those who have mingled with other nations, and who have examined their manners, their customs and their religion. “It is sufficient to have seen the blacks,” says their most enthusiastic defender,[165] “to have lived some time with them, to feel that there is in them a humanity quite different to that of the white man.”[166] Some persons have wished to deceive themselves; they have wished to raise the Negro race to our own level, in the name of some sort of sentimental feeling, which, moreover, has always turned out to be a mistake. Many persons have been engaged upon them. Not being able to give them plastic equality, they had recourse to intelligence,—they wished to deceive themselves, like Desdemona, when she said,—
“I saw Othello’s visage in his mind.”[167]
The Negro was declared to be our equal by the moral law, only with certain shades of distinction depending on some particular and transient circumstances which would soon disappear. It was announced that, in their turn, they would advance ideas, and would work at what is called progress, that is to say, “the increase of good on the earth.”[168] “In proportion as work makes vital energy to predominate in the head,” said M. Marcel de Serres in 1844, “these deeply coloured men,[169] with crisped, woolly, or short hair, will tend in a manifest manner towards the white race,—will march with them in the path of progress.”[170] And farther on, “This experiment has scarcely commenced, but it already shows sensible effects.” Unfortunately, the twenty years which have passed since these words were written, have not shown that they are true; and the challenge offered by an American has never yet been accepted, “Let anyone quote to me one single line written by a Negro which is worthy of being remembered.”[171] They are not more advanced now than at the time when Mohammed refused them the gift of prophecy.[172] And, as Dr. Hunt remarks, there is certainly no means of civilising those who have been uncivilised for three thousand years, during which time they have been connected with the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, the Arabs, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English.[173] If it be objected that they have always been slaves, we may say our Gallic and German ancestors were so also; but we ask, Why do they continue to be slaves?
The merit of first endeavouring to distinguish races of men by characteristics taken from without the physical world, by the quality of the manifestations of their intelligence, is, perhaps, due to Linnæus. With this spirit of laconism, which led him to group in one simple and easy formula the characteristic facts which he desired to impress on the mind of the reader as being important, he endeavoured to determine, in a few words, the various tendencies of different races, and it must be acknowledged that he has at times been happy in this kind of synoptic classification.[174]
In proportion as modern knowledge has made us penetrate more deeply into the minds of races,—since we are no longer contented with studying them superficially in the ordinary manifestations of life, which we may call “common-place,” and which belong to nearly all countries,—we perceive that insuperable limits separate one set of men from another with regard to intellectual affinity, so that here, as in the case of physical characteristics, each race is almost to be distinguished from its neighbours. “Profound and unchangeable differences,” said M. Paul de Remusat,[175] in 1854, “which would, perhaps, suffice of themselves to found definite and thoroughly limited classifications.”
It was in order to point out a new branch of anthropology, a new and fruitful branch,—that a work appeared which was destined to throw a bright light on the subject. It was necessary to explain these distinctions, and not merely to enunciate them. The merit in this matter belongs to M. Renan, who, in his treatise on the languages of the great Semitic family, has painted, from the most favourable characteristics, this humanity which is, morally, so different from our own, however like it may be in external form. The intellectual disparity of races is henceforward an undeniable fact.
The religious or moral system of a people being the highest manifestations of its intellectual tendencies, we see that the study of religions enters quite naturally into anthropology; it is a part of this comparable study of the human mind, unfortunately too much neglected, but which begins to take a place worthy of its importance in the world of science.[176] We do not wish to discuss theological or religious questions, the anthropologist ought to leave them to others. His duty is to endeavour to put himself outside the narrow circle in which nature has placed him; to forget, as much as possible, his inclinations and personal sentiments; to look around him; to put the world in one view, and to endeavour to be the sole spectator of the same. Then a curious phenomenon will strike his gaze,—the chains of mountains and the rivers which separate the various races of mankind, will also separate different religions. Like the sea which breaks on the shore, every belief has seen its disciples, armed with the sword, or with the pacific weapons of persuasion, stop at certain limits, over which they are not permitted to pass. Of course, we only speak here of true proselytism, of real progress in religion in its form and spirit. Humboldt and Bonpland saw, one day, in the Cordilleras, a savage crowd dancing and brandishing the war-hatchet round an altar where a Franciscan was elevating the Host. Such neophytes are only called Christians in the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi,—they are not converts in the opinion of the anthropologist.