Man and His Migrations

by R. G. Latham

And so, perhaps, he is, if we are to judge by certain characteristics: if agreement in certain matters, wherein the intermediate populations differ, form the grounds upon which we make our groups, the Fuegians, Eskimo, and Hottentots form one class, and the Negroes and Australians another. But are these classes natural? That depends upon the questions to which the classification is subservient. If we wish to know how far moisture and coolness freshen the complexion; how far moisture and heat darken it; how far mountain altitudes affect the human frame; in other words, how far common external conditions develope common habits and common points of structure, nothing can be better than the groups in question.

But alter the problem: let us wish to know how certain areas were peopled, what population gave origin to some other, how the Americans reached America, whence the Britons came into England, or any question connected with the migrations, affiliations, and origin of the varieties of our species, and groups of this kind are valueless. They tell us something—but not what we want to know: inasmuch as our question now concerns blood, descent, pedigree, relationship. To tell an inquirer who wishes to deduce one population from another that certain distant tribes agree with the one under discussion in certain points of resemblance, is as irrelevant as to tell a lawyer in search of the next of kin to a client deceased, that though you know of no relations, you can find a man who is the very picture of him in person—a fact good enough in itself, but not to the purpose; except (of course) so far as the likeness itself suggests a relationship—which it may or may not do.

Classes formed irrespective of descent are classes on the Mineralogical, whilst classes formed with a view to the same are classes on the Zoological, principle. Which is wanted in the Natural History of Man? The first for Anthropology; the second for Ethnology.

But why the antagonism? Perhaps the two methods may coincide. The possibility of this has been foreshadowed. The family likeness may, perhaps, prove a family connexion. True: at the same time each case must be tested on its own grounds. Hence, whether the African is to be grouped with the Australian, or whether the two classes are to be as far asunder in Ethnology as in Geography, depends upon the results of the special investigation of that particular connexion—real or supposed. It is sufficient to say that none of the instances quoted exhibit any such relationship; though many a theory—as erroneous as bold—has been started to account for it.

It is for Ethnology, then, that classification is most wanted—more than for Anthropology; even as it is for Zoology that we require orders and genera rather than for Physiology. This is based upon certain distinctive characters; some of which are of a physical, others of a moral sort. Each falls into divisions. There are moral and intellectual phænomena which prove nothing in the way of relationship, simply because they are the effects of a common grade of civilizational development. What would be easier than to group all the hunting, all the piscatory, or all the pastoral tribes together, and to exclude from these all who built cities, milked cows, sowed corn, or ploughed land? Common conditions determine common habits.

Again, much that seems at first glance definite, specific, and characteristic, loses its value as a test of ethnological affinity, when we examine the families in which it occurs. In distant countries, and in tribes far separated, superstition takes a common form, and creeds that arise independently of each other look as if they were deduced from a common origin. All this makes the facts in what may be called the Natural History of the Arts or of Religion easy to collect, but difficult to appreciate; in many cases, indeed, we are taken up into the rare and elevated atmosphere of metaphysics. What if different modes of architecture, or sculpture, or varieties in the practice of such useful arts as weaving and ship-building, be attributed to the same principle that makes a sparrow’s nest different from a hawk’s, or a honey-bee’s from a hornet’s? What if there be different instincts in human art, as there is in the nidification of birds? Whatever may be the fact, it is clear that such a doctrine must modify the interpretation of it. The clue to these complications—and they form a Gordian knot which must be unravelled, and not cut—lies in the cautious induction from what we know to what we do not; from the undoubted differences admitted to exist within undoubtedly related populations, to the greater ones which distinguish more distantly connected groups.

This has been sufficient to indicate the existence of certain moral characters which are really no characters at all—at least in the way of proving descent or affiliation; and that physical ones of the same kind are equally numerous may be inferred from what has already been written.

It is these elements of uncertainty so profusely mixed up with almost all the other classes of ethnological facts, that give such a high value, as an instrument of investigation, to Language; inasmuch as, although two different families of mankind may agree in having skins of the same colour, or hair of the same texture, without, thereby, being connected in the way of relationship, it is hard to conceive how they could agree in calling the same objects by the same name, without a community of origin, or else either direct or indirect intercourse. Affiliation or intercourse—one of the two—this community of language exhibits. One to the exclusion of the other it does not exhibit. If it did so, it would be of greater value than it is. Still it indicates one of the two; and either fact is worth looking for.

The value of language has been overrated; chiefly, of course, by the philologists. And it has been undervalued. The anatomists and archæologists, and, above all, the zoologists, have done this. The historian, too, has not known exactly how to appreciate it, when its phænomena come in collision with the direct testimony of authorities; the chief instrument in his own line of criticism.

It is overrated when we make the affinities of speech between two populations absolute evidence of connection in the way of relationship. It is overrated when we talk of tongues being immutable, and of languages never dying. On the other hand, it is unduly disparaged when an inch or two of difference in stature, a difference in the taste in the fine arts, a modification in the religious belief, or a disproportion in the influence upon the affairs of the world, is set up as a mark of distinction between two tribes speaking one and the same tongue, and alike in other matters. Now, errors of each kind are common.