Man and His Migrations

by R. G. Latham

Ethnology—its objects—the chief problems connected with it—prospective questions—transfer of populations—Extract from Knox—correlation of certain parts of the body to certain external influences—parts less subject to such influences—retrospective questions—the unity or non-unity of our species—opinions—plurality of species—multiplicity of protoplasts—doctrine of development—Dokkos—Extract—antiquity of our species—its geographical origin—the term race.

In Cuvier—as far as he goes—we find the anthropological view of the subject predominant; and this is what we expect from the nature of the work in which it occurs: the degree in which one genus or species differs from the species or genus next to it being the peculiar consideration of the systematic naturalist. To exhibit our varieties would have required a special monograph.

In Prichard on the contrary ethnology preponderates; of anthropology, in the strict sense of the word, there being but little; and the ethnology is of a broad and comprehensive kind. Description there is, and classification there is; but, besides this, there is a great portion of the work devoted to what may be called Ethnological Dynamics, i. e. the appreciation of the effect of the external conditions of climate, latitude, relative sea-level and the like upon the human body.

Prichard is the great repertory of facts; and read with Whewell’s commentary it gives us the Science in a form sufficiently full for the purposes of detail, and sufficiently systematic for the basis of further generalization. Still it must be read with the commentary already mentioned. If not, it fails in its most intellectual element; and becomes a system of simple records, rather than a series of subtle and peculiar inferences. So read, however, it gives us our facts and classifications in a working form. In other words, the Science has now taken its true place and character.

If more than this be needed—and for the anthropology, it may be thought by some that Cuvier is too brief, and Prichard too exclusively ethnological—the work of [Lawrence] forms the complement. These, along with Adelung and Klaproth, form the Thesaurus Ethnologicus. But the facts which they supply are like the sword of the Mahometan warrior. Its value depended on the arm that wielded it; and such is the case here. No book has yet been written which can implicitly be taken for much more than its facts. Its inferences and classification must be criticised. Be this, however, as it may, in A.D. 1846 Mr. Mill writes, that “concerning the physical nature of man, as an organized being, there has been much controversy, which can only be terminated by the general acknowledgement and employment of stricter rules of induction than are commonly recognized; there is, however, a considerable body of truth which all who have attended to the subject consider to be fully established, nor is there now any radical imperfection in the method observed in this department of science by its most distinguished modern teachers.”

This could not have been written thirty years ago. The department of science would, then, have been indefinite; and the teachers would not have been distinguished.

It may now be as well to say what Ethnology and Anthropology are not. Their relations to history have been considered. Archæology illustrates each; yet the moment that it is confounded with either, mischief follows. Psychology, or the Science of the laws of Mind, has the same relation to them as Physiology—mutatis mutandis; i.e. putting Mind in the place of Body.

But nearer than either are its two subordinate studies of Ethology[3], or the Science of Character, by which we determine the kind of character produced in conformity with the laws of Mind, by any set of circumstances, physical as well as moral; and the Science of Society which investigates the action and reaction of associated masses[4] on each other.

Such then is our Science; which the principle of Division of Labour requires to be marked off clearly in order to be worked advantageously. And now we ask the nature of its objects. It has not much to do with the establishment of any laws of remarkable generality; a circumstance which, in the eyes of some, may subtract from its value as a science; the nearest approach to anything of this kind being the general statement implied in the classifications themselves. Its real object is the solution of certain problems—problems which it investigates by its own peculiar method—and problems of sufficient height and depth and length and breadth to satisfy the most ambitious. All these are referable to two heads, and connect themselves with either the past or the future history of our species; its origin or destination.

We see between the Negro and the American a certain amount of difference. Has this always existed? If not, how was it brought about? By what influences? In what time? Quickly or slowly? These questions point backwards, and force upon us the consideration of what has been.