We may now understand the advantage of such a process in anthropological iconography. We must, indeed, almost give up all other methods. It is easy to convince oneself of the fact by examining the coloured portraits which illustrate the works of Prichard,[355] Nott, and Gliddon,[356] who are, however, extremely particular about the correctness of the types which they bring before our notice. But all these coloured portraits are unsatisfactory, and when we see some anthropologist invoke the authority of these bad prints, we really ask ourselves which we ought most to admire, either the blind confidence of the savant, the imprudence of the author, or the rashness of the artist. Fancy, however, attacking with such platitudes the portraits of dark-coloured men which the masters of painting have left us, from Veronese to Géricault! They alone have been able, by their process, to seize the reality of the complexion and colour of their models.[357]
But the surest method of arriving at conclusive evidence in anthropology is necessarily travels. Doubtless the study alone of the materials collected from afar is of the greatest possible use. But we repeat concerning the study of mankind what we said about the study of animals; the anthropologist must leave his library and go into the great continents, in order to study by means of his own eye-sight. “We can only arrive at the distinction of species,” says M. Flourens, “by direct and complete personal observation.” That it must be complete, we have endeavoured to show; but the only condition for its being complete is its being direct. Had we even the genius of Buffon,[358] we should see but poorly by means of others; facts reach us distorted and altered, because they have not always been observed by competent men; they are not comparable, resulting as they do from diverse individual impressions. It will be especially necessary to control with care travellers’ tales as regards the study of intellectual tendencies, since they are too often influenced by their own ideas on the subject.
Let us say this before concluding: among the à priori proofs which polygenists can bring forward on their side, there is one which is of some importance; it is this, that while contrary ideas have been sustained and defended by men who never go beyond their own studies, the former have been generally brought forward by travellers and sailors, by those indeed who have been best able to put in practice this direct observation, which is generally conclusive and decisive. It is these whom we find the most ready to separate mankind into distinct groups, and to recognise in the inferior species a manifest tendency to approach nearer the nature of the anthropomorphous apes. A valuable source of information, from which anthropologists must not neglect to borrow, are the accounts of those who landed for the first time on certain islands and continents.
If they have even conceived any erroneous ideas, it must usually be acknowledged that they are most likely to be able to give us a tolerably faithful portrait of the nations with whom they have met, even more important in certain points of view than the accounts afterwards given of them, since at that time these people have not been submitted to the various influences which necessarily result from contact with Europeans.
We can study philology and craniology in the library and in solitude, assisted by proper documents and sufficient materials, but not anthropology; because anthropology is a science still in its cradle, and observation must have furnished its proper and necessary contingent before we can endeavour to apply any general idea or view. But anthropology ought, more especially, to disengage itself from all trammels of former ideas, as well as from all pretended humanitarian tendencies. It would be nonsense to believe that the advance of the truth will not contribute to social progress. The searcher after it can free himself in all tranquillity of mind from this kind of trouble. Haller has said, in reference to this matter, “The cultivation of truth alone is sufficient for the good man.”[359] That which is true,[360] cannot be evil, because it is in the eternal order of nature.
Thus, free from fetters, and obeying pure reason, resting on all the sciences which can assist it, anatomy, physiology, psychology, and philology, the science of mankind will advance, like every other science, towards the conquest of that truth which is so much to be desired; and sooner or later, by means of archæology and palæontology, retracing its steps in the past beyond history itself, and beyond the remotest geological epochs of which we have any record, science will eventually discover the grand problem of the origin of mankind, if the elements themselves are not for ever engulphed in the depths of the ocean.
FINIS.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
- Aborigines, [54]
- Abou Simbel, [50]
- Abyssinia, [57]
- Acclimatisation, [58], [89]
- Aërolites, [112]
- Africa, Central, inhabitants of, [14], [68]
- African equality with European, [8]
- Age of the world, [122]
- Aldridge, Ira, [63]
- America, [6], [67], [74]
- Anatomy, human, [13]
- Angles of the skull, [137]
- Anoplotherium, [42]
- Anthropological Societies of Paris and London, [7]
- Anthropomorphous apes, [11], [41]
- Antilles, [56]
- Ants, [33]
- Arabs, [47]
- Aryan family, [19], [131], [143]
- Asiatic tribes, [18]
- Australia, [14], [67]
- Australian aborigines, [5], [16], [17], [44]
- Babel, Tower of, [5]
- Bedouin, [147]
- Bees, [33]
- Bigenerate hybrids, [96]
- Bimana, order of, [38]
- Blood, [53]
- Bosjesmans, [55], [79]
- Bourbon, Isle of, [87]
- Bowed legs, [47]
- Brain, [12]
- Brazil, [69]
- Brute and man, [19]
- Buddha, [52], [67], [71]
- Caffres, [68], [79]
- Cairo, [146]
- Çakhya-Mouni, [52]
- Caledonians, [103]
- Cartesian theory, [26]
- Causæ degenerationis, [90]
- Central America, [81]
- Chain of gradation, [37]
- Chinese, [5], [53], [78]
- Circassia, [147]
- Classification, [64], [135]
- Climate, [92]
- Clitoris, [54]
- Colour, [148]
- Consanguinity, [107]
- Consciousness, [12]
- Copts, [147]
- Cordilleras, [66]
- Craniology, [138]
- Crétins, [106]
- Crocodile, [128]
- Cross-breeding, [97]
- Danelag, [104]
- Degraded nations, [75]
- Desdemona, [63]
- Development of animals, [15]
- Dhargonis, [18]
- Disease, [58]
- Dog, [34]
- Earth, motion of, round the sun, [6]
- Egyptians, [49], [139]
- England, [103]
- Esquimaux, [15], [17], [18], [53], [54], [68], [75]
- Eurygnathi, [45]
- Évangile de l’Enfance, [64]
- Evolution, [122]
- Family of man, [42]
- Fellah, [147]
- Flinder’s Island, [97]
- Flood, the word, [122]
- Foot, [49]
- Forearm in Negro, [48]
- France, ethnology of, [104]
- Frugivorous man, [39]
- Gallic mummy, [139]
- God, belief in, [71]
- Good and evil, [23]
- Goths, [62]
- Gradation, chain of, [37]
- Grecian, theories, [81]
- Hair, colour of, [50], [52]
- Half-castes, [98]
- Hamites, [131]
- Harems, [101]
- Height, differences of, [47]
- Hindoostan, [40], [145]
- Hippopotamus, [128]
- History, [80]
- Homoïdes, [98]
- Host, elevation of the, [66]
- Hottentots, [68]
- Human kingdom, [10]
- Humanitarian considerations, [73]
- Hybridity, [95]
- Iconography, [148]
- Ilotes, [84]
- Index, the congregation of the, [6]
- Individual-element, [124]
- Intelligence of man, [12]
- Japanese, [5]
- Jesus, [64]
- Jews, [70], [89]
- Korán, [1], [141]
- Labrador, [101]
- Language, [30], [33], [142], [145]
- Leucous, [51]
- Lima, [105]
- Linear series, [10]
- Lions, [128]
- Man and brute, [18]
- Marsh fever, [59]
- Material substance, [12]
- Mathesiological order of science, [2]
- Mechanical theory of mind, [26]
- Mediæval science, [1]
- Medium, action of, [82]
- Melanesians, [57]
- Melanocomous, [51]
- Monkey-countenance, [56]
- Monkey-people, [18]
- Monogenists, [3], [80]
- Monotheism, [66]
- Moral sense, [23]
- Mosaic statement, [114], [141]
- Namaquas, [68]
- Natural selection, [119]
- Negroes, [5], [39], [44], [48], [52], [53], [54], [58], [59], [60], [63], [64], [86], [147]
- Neo-Platonists, the, [2]
- New Guinea, [40]
- Nicaragua, [106]
- Niger, [59]
- Nile, [68]
- Nile-boats, [39]
- Noah’s curse, [50]
- Norma verticalis, [136]
- Normans, [101], [102]
- Nubians, [39], [101], [147]
- Official science, [113]
- Orang-outang, [19], [20], [22], [24], [41]
- Orthodox ethnology, [5]
- Orthognathi, [45]
- Othello, [63]
- Palæontology, [131]
- Pali, [145]
- Pandora, [133]
- Pathological varieties, [43], [58]
- Pelvis, form of, [46]
- Penis, [54]
- Peruvians, [55]
- Phidias, [5]
- Physiological varieties, [43]
- Polygenists, [3]
- Praxiteles, [5]
- Prepuce, [54]
- Prognathi, [45]
- Prometheus, [133]
- Protozoa, [111]
- Psychology, comparative, [24], [36]
- Races, [65]
- Reason and faith, [23]
- “Records of Creation,” [37]
- Religious dogmas, [9], [65], [67], [85]
- Reproduction by eggs, [111]
- Réunion, Isle of, [88]
- Revealed religion, [2]
- ” ” relations with science, [4]
- Revolution, [122]
- Riff, [89]
- Rosin-makers of the Landes, [39]
- Scandinavian antiquities, [48]
- Scriptures, the Holy, [1]
- Selection, natural, [118]
- Self-consciousness, [28]
- Semitic race, [1], [53], [65], [75], [89], [143]
- Sidereal kingdom, [11]
- Sierra Leone, [41], [93]
- Silurians, [103]
- Slaves, [84]
- Soudan, [45], [61]
- Soul in animals, [25]
- South Africa, [78]
- Spaniards, [47]
- Species, definition of, [108]
- Speech, [30]
- Sperma, [53]
- Spontaneous generation, [110], [123]
- Squatting attitude, [57]
- Stags, [85]
- Stirrup leather, [39]
- Struggle for existence, [102]
- Sumatran animal, [21]
- Sunburn, [91]
- Tartars, [47], [54]
- Thomas, St., [69]
- Toe, great, [39], [42]
- Truth, the reign of, [9], [23]
- Tuân, an orang-outang, [20]
- Turk, [147]
- Type, [99]
- Valmîki, poem of, [40]
- Vanikoro, [49]
- Variability of species, [115]
- Vera Cruz, [61]
- Vertebrate kingdom, [125]
- Vital competition, [128]
- Voice in animals, [34]
- Vulcan, [133]
- Wild man of the woods, [14]
- Woolly hair, [51]
- Xanthus, [51]
- Yellow Fever, [94]
- Zambos, [105]
- Zoology, [65], [85], [109]