The Human Race. Figuier Louis
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deviation in the ideas of naturalists who wrote after Virey. We find Bory de Saint Vincent admitting as many as fifteen species of men, and another naturalist, Desmoulins, doubtless influenced by a feeling of emulation, distinguished sixteen human species, which, moreover, were not the same as those admitted by Bory de Saint Vincent.
This course of classification might have been followed to a much greater extent, for the differences among men are so great, that if strict rule is not adhered to, it is impossible to fix any limit to species. Unless therefore the principle of unity has been fully conceded at starting, the investigation may result in the admission of a truly indefinite quantity.
This is the principle which pervades the writings of the most learned of all the anthropologists of our age, Dr. Pritchard, author of a Natural History of Man, which in the original text formed ten volumes, but of which the French language possesses but a very incomplete translation.
Dr. Pritchard holds that all people of the earth belong to the same species; he is a partisan of the unity of the human species, but is not satisfied with any of the classifications already proposed, and which were founded upon organic characteristics. He, in fact, entirely alters the aspect of the ordinary classifications which are to be met with in natural history. He commences by pointing out three families, which, he asserts, were in history the first human occupants of the earth: namely the Aryan, Semitic, and Egyptian. Having described these three families, Pritchard passes to the people who, as he says, radiated in various directions from the regions inhabited by them, and proceeded to occupy the entire globe.
This mode of classification, as we have pointed out, leaves the beaten track trodden by other natural historians. For this reason it has not found favour among modern anthropologists, and this disfavour has reacted upon the work itself, which, notwithstanding, is the most complete and exact of all that we possess upon man. Although it has been adopted by no other author, Pritchard’s classification of the human race appears to us to be the most sound in principle.
M. de Quatrefages, in his course of anthropology at the Museum of Natural History, Paris, makes a classification of the human race based upon the three types, white, yellow and black; but he appends to each of these three groups, under the head of mixed races attached to each stem, a number of races more or less considerable and arbitrary which were excluded from the three chief divisions.
The classification of M. de Quatrefages will be found in his Rapport sur les progrès de l’Anthropologie, published in 1867.3 It is extremely learned and well worked out, but a classification which entirely passes by the simple mode of reasoning we shall adopt in the following pages.
The classification of the human race which we propose to follow, modifying it where in our opinion it may appear to be necessary, is due to a Belgian naturalist, M. d’Omalius d’Halloy. It acknowledges five races of men: the white, black, yellow, brown and red.
This classification is based upon the colour of the skin, a characteristic very secondary in importance to that of organization, but which yet furnishes a convenient framework for an exact and methodical enumeration of the inhabitants of the globe, permitting a clear consideration of a most confused subject. In the groups, therefore, which we shall propose, the reader will fail to find a truly scientific classification, but will meet with merely such a simple distribution of materials, as shall permit us to review methodically the various races spread over every portion of the Earth’s surface.
CHAPTER II
General characteristics of the human race – Organic characteristics – Senses and the nervous system – Height – Skeleton – Cranium and face – Colour of the skin – Physiological functions – Intellectual characteristics – Properties of human intelligence – Languages and literature – Different states of society – Primitive industry – The two ages of prehistoric humanity.
Before entering upon a minute description of each of the human races, we shall find it well to lay before the reader a generalization of the characteristics which are common to all.
Since man is an intelligent being, living in an organized frame, our attention has to be directed to the consideration of his organs and intellect, that is, in the first place, we must investigate the physical, in the second, the intellectual and moral elements of his constitution.
The physical characteristics bear but secondary importance among those of the human race. Man is a spirit which shines within the body of an animal, and the only difficulty is to ascertain in what manner the organism of the mammalia is modified in order to become that of man; to compare the harmony of this organism with the object in view, namely the exercise of human intellect and thought. We shall see that the organs of the mammalia are greatly modified in the human subject, becoming, either on account of their individual excellence or the harmony of their combination, greatly superior to the associations of the same organs among animals.
Let us first consider the brain and organs of sense. When we examine the form and relative size of the brain in ascending the series of mammiferous animals, we find that this organ increases in volume, and progresses, so to say, toward the superior characteristics which it is to display in the human species. Disregarding certain exceptions, for the existence of which we cannot account, but which in no way alter the general rule, the brain increases in importance from the zoophyte to the ape. But, in comparing the brain of the ape with that of man, an important difference becomes at once apparent. The brain of the gorilla, orang-outang, or chimpanzee, which are the apes that bear the greatest resemblance to man, and which for that reason are designated anthropomorphous apes, is very much smaller than that of man. The cerebral lobes in man are much longer than in the anthropomorphous apes, and their vertical measure is out of all proportion with the height of the cerebral lobes in apes; this is what produces the noble frontal curve, one of the characteristic features of the human physiognomy. The cerebral lobes are connected behind with a third nervous mass called the cerebellum. The large volume of these three lobes, the depth and number of convolutions of the encephalic mass, and other anatomical details of the brain, upon which we are unable here to treat at greater length, place the brain of man very far above that of the animal nearest to him in the zoological scale. These differences bear witness in favour of man to an unparalleled intellectual development, and we should be better able to measure these differences, were we able to show in what the cerebral action consists, but this we are utterly unable to do.
The senses, taken individually, are not more developed in man than they are in certain animals; but in man they are characterised by their harmony, their perfect equilibrium, and their admirable appropriation to a common end. Man, it will at once be admitted, is not so keen of sight as the eagle, nor so subtle of hearing as the hare, nor does he possess the wonderful scent of the dog. His skin is far from being as fine and impressionable as that which covers the wing of a bat. But, while among animals, one sense always predominates to the disadvantage of the rest, and the individual is thus forced to adopt a mode of existence which works hand in hand with the development of this sense, with man, all the senses possess almost equal delicacy, and the harmony of their association makes up for what may be wanting in individual power. Again, the senses of animals are employed only in satisfying material necessities, while in man, they assist in the exercise of eminent faculties whose development they further.
Let us consider shortly in detail our senses.
Man is certainly better off, as regards the sense of sight, than a large majority of animals. Instead of being placed upon different sides of his head, looking in opposite directions, and receiving two images which cannot possibly be alike, his eyes are directed forwards, and regard similar objects, by which means the impression is doubled. The sense of sight thus brings to his conceptions a complete image and solid idea of what surrounds him; it is his most useful sense, the more so when it is guided in its application by a clear intellect.
The sense of touch in man reaches a degree of perfection which it does not attain in animals. How marvellous is the sense of touch when exercised by applying the extremities of the fingers, the part of the body the best suited to this function, and how much more wonderful is the organ called the hand, which applies itself in so admirable a manner to the most different surfaces whose extent, form, or qualities, we
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