Full text of "The natural history of man: a course of elementary lectures"

NATURAL HISTORY

OF MAN

A.DEaUATREFAGES

l_g ^ ..__™._gj

ANTHRO

THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND

MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

The Englishman.

"White Eace, European Branch.— The head has a beautiful oval form, the nose is larg'e and
straight, the aperture of the mouth moderate in size, inclosed by delicate lips ; the
teeth are nrransred vertically; the eyes are large, wide open, and surmounted by curved
brows. The forehead is advanced, and the face well proportioned ; the hair is glossj%
long, and abundant.

THE

NATURAL HISTOEY OF MAN:

A COURSE OF ELEMENTARY LECTURES.

A. DE QUATEEFAGES, ^ T^T^a^U^

MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; PROFESSOR IN THE MTJSEtIM O?
KATCRAL HISTORY.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH,
By ELIZA A. YOUMANS.

WITH AN APPENDIX.

NEW Y^ORK:
B. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

549 AND 551 BEOADWAT.
1875.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1ST5, by
D. APPLETON & COMPANY,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

TKANSLATOE'S PEEFAOE.

The study of the races of mankind in recent times, by the
method of Natural History, has given rise to an important branch
of knowledge known as the science of Anthropology. Societies
have been established in various countries for its promotion, and
many learned works have been written upon it in different lan-
guages. The subject has, moreover, now become one of such
great public interest, that it is important it should be presented
in its rudiments for the benefit of beginners. In this country,
'especially, where all the great races of the world — European,
African, Asiatic, and American — are thrown togetlier on an im-
mense scale, and practical problems of great difficulty arise from
the interaction of diverse foreign populations, it is desirable that
broad scientific views of the subject should be widely dissemi-
nated.

The author of this little volume of lectures. Prof, de Qua-
trefages, of Paris, is one of the eminent founders of Anthropo-
logical Science, and he has also shown himself to be a most suc-
cessful popular teacher of the subject. In the clearness and sim-
plicity of his statements, the fehcity and fullness of his illustra-
tions, the colloquial vivacity of his style, and the skill with which
he brings large questions within the range of ordinary apprehen-
sion, he certainly has but few equals. His elementary lectures on
the "Natural History of Man," delivered to audiences of work-

ivi3650KS

4 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

ing-people in Vincennes, were extensively circulated upon the
Continent in diflerent languages ; and the translations of several
of them, printed in The Popular Science Monthly^ have heen re-
ceived with such favor as to induce their republication in this
collected form.

Upon certain fundamental questions in Natural History, such
as the nature of species, and the origin of man, wide differences
of opinion have latterly grown up among naturalists, and are
contested with great earnestness by the respective parties. The
theory of development, which teaches that the higher forms of
life are derived from tlie lower, is now maintained by many emi-
nent scientific men in Germany, England, and this country; but
Prof, de Quatrefages holds to the old views which still prevail in
France, and he enforces them with his usual ability in the follow-
ing pages. That this little book may fairly represent the present
state of opinion upon the subject, it has been thought best to give
briefly the arguments on the other side in an Appendix. The ob-
jections to Prof, de Quatrefages's positions, there stated, have
been kindly furnislied by one of our leading biologists. Prof.
Theodore Gill, of the Smithsonian Institution ; and the notes of
the Appendix, when not otherwise accredited, are on his au-
thority.

It is proper to remark, however, that these differences of
opinion are of minor importance in relation to the objects of
this book. It has been translated, because it is the most admi-
rable popular introduction to the study of the races of mankind
that has yet appeared ; and, in the work of translation, the
author's style of exposition has been followed as literally as
possible.

COISr TENTS

PAGE

Preface 3

LECTURE I.
The Unity of the Human Species 7

LECTURE IL
The Antiquity of Man 34

LECTURE m.
The Origin of Man 64

LECTURE IV.
Physical Characters of the Human Race 89

LECTURE V.
Intellectual and Moral Characters of the Human Race . .110

APPENDIX 139

THE :n^atueai. histoet of man.

LECTURE I.

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.

Gentlemen: Each of my fellow-laborers in science
comes here to lecture to you, and selects the subject which
habitually occupies him. Some tell you of the heavens,
the earth, the waters ; from others you get the history of
vegetables and animals. As I am Professor of the Natural
History of Man at the Museum, I ask myself why I should
not speak to you of man.

There is evidently as much interest for us in the his-
tory of our own species as in that of animals, even of those
most useful to us. Indeed, at the present time, the mind
is drawn toward this study by an irresistible movement.
Formerly, Anthropology, the natural history of man, was
not represented in philosophical bodies, nor by the periodi-
cal press. Now, in Paris alone there are two Philosophical
Societies occupied exclusively with this science, and two
large publications equally devoted to it. At the Museum
the teaching of anthropology is older. It is there aided by
a collection which is still the best in the world.

I do not hesitate to say that it is one of the glories of
France to have given by these methods an example to the

8 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

entire world — an example followed to-day in America as
well as in Europe. And I wish to make you take a part
in this movement, by giving you some serious notion of the
ensemble of the human family.

My task, gentlemen, is more difficult than is that of
my associates. In all these lectures we are to speak of
only a single being, man. Consequently, there will be an
intimate union between them, so much so that any person
who should miss a lecture would find difficulty in thoroughly^
understanding those that follow. To remove this difficulty,
I mean to shape my teaching so that each lecture w^ill form
as definite a whole as possible. Then, at the commence-
ment of each lecture, I shall endeavor to give, in a few
words, a resume of the preceding. In this way I hope to
carry you to the end without ceasing to be understood.

Each lecture, then, will be a sort of chapter of what we
might call Popular Anthropology.

By-and-by I hojoe that these lectures will be collected
into a volume, and I shall be very proud if one day they
merit the adjective I have employed — if, in reality, they
become popular among you.

Let us enter, then, upon our first chapter. Since man
is the subject of our discourse, we must first ask what he
is. But, before answering, I ought to enter into some ex-
planation.

This question has been often asked, but generally by
theologians or by philosophers. Theologians have an-
swered in the name of dogma and religion; philosophers in
the name of metaphysics and abstraction. Let it be well
understood between us that I shall take neither of these
grounds, but shall avoid, with great care, both that of
theology and that of philosophy. Before I became pro-
fessor at the Museum, I was occupied wdth the study of
animals — I was a naturalist. It is as a naturalist that I
have taken my chair at the Institute. At the Museum I

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 9

remained what I was, and nothing else. I shall continue
the same at Vincennes, leaving to theologians theology, to
philosophers philosophy, limiting myself to science, and
especially to natural science.

Let us now return to the question I was about to put :
What is man ?

It is evidently useless to insist that man is neither a
mineral nor a vegetable — that he is neither a stone nor a
jDlant. But is he an animal ? No, indeed, especially when
ice take mto account all which exists in him. And I am
sure that in this respect j^ou all agree with me.

Certainly none of you would w^ish to be compared with
cattle that ruminate, with hogs that wallow in the mire.
Nor would you wish to be classed wdth the dog, notwith-
standing all the qualities which make him the friend and
companion of man ; nor with the horse, though it should
be with Gladiator.*

Man is not an animal. He is widely distinguished from
animals by numerous and important characters. I shall
here only refer to his intellectual superiority^ to which be-
longs articulate speech, so that each people has its special
language ; writing.^ which permits the reproduction of this
language ; the fine arts., by the aid of which he conveys,
and, in some sort, materializes the conceptions of his imagi-
nation. But he is distinguished from all animals by two
fundamental characfers which pertain only to him. Man is
the only one among organized and living beings who has
the abstract sentiment of good and evil ; in him alone,
consequently, exists moved sense.

He is also alcne in the belief that there will be some-
thing after this life., and in the recognition of a Supreme
Being., who can influence his life for good or for evil. It
is upon this double idea that the great fact of religion rests.

By-and-by these two questions of morals and religio7i
* See Appendix A.

10 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

will turn up again. We shall, I repeat, examine them,
not as theologians, but simply as 7iaturalists. I will only
say for the present that man, everywhere, however savage
he may be, shows some signs of morality and of religion
that we never find among animals.

Hence man is a being apart, separated from animals by
two great characters, which, I repeat, distinguish him yet
more tlian his incontestable intellectual superiority.

But here the differences end. So far as the body is
concerned, man is an animal, nothing more, nothing less.
Except some differences of form and arrangement, he is the
equal, only the equal, of the superior animals that surround
him.

If we take, for terms of comparison, the species that
approach us nearest in general form, anatomy shows us
that our organs are exactly the same as theirs. We can
trace in them, almost muscle by muscle and nerve by nerve,
those which Ave find in man himself.

Physiology^ in its turn, shows us, in the body of man,
the organs, muscles, nerves, performing exactly the same
functions as in the animal. This is a capital fact which
daily profits us, both from a purely scientific and from a
practical point of view. We cannot experiment upon
man — we can upon animals. Human physiology has em-
ployed this means to discover the functions of our organs.
Physicians go further still ; they bring to the sick-bed the
fruit of experiments made upon animals. Anthropology
also, as we have just seen, applies to these inferior creatures
for very important instruction.

But Anthropology should descend much lower than the
animals when it would enlighten us completely. Vegeta-
bles are not animals, any more than animals are man. But
men, animals, and vegetables, are all organized and living
beings. They are distinguished from minerals, which are

Fig. 1.

The Esquimaux.
Yellow Eace, Hyperborean Branch.— The famihes helonsring to the yellow race hare high
cheek-bones, a lozenge-shaped head, a small, flat nose, a flat countenance ; narrow
obhquely-set eyes ; straight, coarse black hair ; a scanty beard, and greenish-liued com-
plexion.

12 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

neither the one nor the other, by certain general facts
common to all.

All organized beings have a limited duration ; all are
born small and feeble ; during part of their existence, all
grow and strengthen, then decrease in energy and vitality^
sometimes also in size ; finally all die. Throughout life,
all organized and living beings need nourishment. Before
death, all reproduce their kind by a seed or an egg (we
speak here of species, not of individuals), and this is true
even of those which seem to come directly from a bud, from
a layer, from a graft, etc. ; for from bud to bud, from layer
to layer, from graft to graft, we can rise to the seed and to
the egg. Finally, then, all organized and living beings
have had a father and a mother.

These grand phenomena, common to all living beings,
and consequently to man, imply general laws which control
them, and which must therefore govern man as well as the
plant.

Science every day confirms this conclusion, which might
have been reached by reason alone, but which may now be
regarded as a fact of ex2)erience. And I believe I need not
dwell here, to make you understand the magnificence of
this result.

As for me, I find it admirable that man and the lowest
insect, that the king of the earth and the lowliest of the
mosses, are so linked together that the entire living world
forms but one whole, all the parts of which harmonize in
the closest mutual dependence.

From this community in certain phenomena, from this
subjection to certain laws equally common, results a con-
sequence of the highest importance. Whatever questions
concerning man you may have to examine, if they touch
upon any of these properties, of these phenomena common
to all organized and living beings, you must interrogate
not only animals, but vegetables also, if you would reach
the truth.

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 13

When one of these questions is put and answered, to
make the answer good, to make it true, you must bring
man under all the general laws which rule other organized
and living beings.

If the solution tends to make man an exception to
general laws, you may affirm that it is bad and false.

But also, when you have resolved the question so as to
include man in these great general laws, you may be cer-
tain that the solution is good, that it is true, and really
scientific.

With these data, and these alone, we will now consider
the second question of Anthropology, and here it is :

Are there several species of men, or is there but one,
including several races ?

To be understood, this question requires some exj^lana-
tion.

Look at the drawings I have hung at the bottom of the
hall. These figures are part of those I em^^loy in the
course at the Jardin des Plantes.*

I have brought but a small number, but they suffice to
give an idea of the principal varieties which the human
type presents. You have here individuals taken from
nearly every part of the world ; and this I regard as a very
important point. You see that they differ considerably
from each other in color, often also in hair, sometimes in
proportions, sometimes in features.

Well, our question is, whether the differences presented
by the human groups from which these designs were taken
are differences of species, or if they indicate only differences
among races that belong to one and the same species.

To answer this question, Ave must begin by getting a
clear idea of what is meant by the words species and o'ace.
In fact, the whole discussion turns on these two words.

* Represented by illustrations of different races in this lecture and
throughout the volume.

Fig. 2.

New-Caledonian.
Black Race, Eastern Branch.— The hlack race is distinpruished by its short, woolly hair,
compressed skull, flattened nose, prominent jaws, thick Ups, bowed legs, and black
or dark-brown skin.

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 15

Unhappily, tliey have been often taken one for the
other, or else they have been badly defined. The dis-
cussions which have hence arisen would very quickly cease,
if the subject were studied a little more closely.

Let us see if we cannot get precise ideas without going
into details impossible here.

Certainly none of you would ever confound an ass with
a horse ; not even when a horse is small, and there are
horses no larger than a Newfoundland dog; nor when an
ass attains the size of an ordinary horse, as, for example,
our large asses of Poitou. You say immediately, the}" are
different species ; here is a big ass and a little horse. And
you say the same on seeing, side by side, a dog and a wolf.^'

On the other hand, all of you here would give the single
name of dog to animals which differ from each other, as do
the bull-dog and water-spaniel, the greyhound and the lap-
dog, the Newfoundland dog and the King-Charles; and
you are right.

However, judging by sight alone, even after detailed
observation, you see, between the dogs I have just named,
differences of size, of proportion, of color, much greater than
those which separate the horse from the ass. An ass and
a horse of the same size certainly resemble each other much
more than the types of dog I have just named.

Further, if you place side by side a black and a white
water-spaniel, you will not designate them by different
names. You will call them both water-spaniels, although
one is black and the other white.

In the case of vegetables you do exactly the same thing.
A red rose and a white rose are equally roses ; a pear is
always a pear, w^iether you buy two for a sous in the
street, or pay three francs at Chevet,

Well, without doubt, your decision is exactly like that
of the naturalists. You have answered, just as they do,
* See Appendix B.

IQ THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

the question of species and race — a question that at first
appears very complicated, because of the confusion before
referred to. Here, then, is one more example to prove
that, under many circumstances, popular observation and
good sense go straight to the mark, as well as the labors of
science.

Indeed, let us translate into general scientific language
what I have just said of your views, and I am very sure not
to be mistaken with regard to them.

The meaning of this judgment is, that an animal or a
vegetable may vary within certain limits. The dog re-
mains a dog, whatever its general form, its size, its hair ;
the pear remains a pear, whatever its size, its savor, the
color of its skin.

From these facts, which I simph^ allude to, it results
that these variations may be transmitted by way of genera-
tion. You all know that the union of two water-spaniels
will produce water-spaniels ; that the union of two bull-
dogs gives bull-dogs.

It results, finally, in a more general way, that individuals
of the same species may cease to resemble each other in an
absolute manner, may sometimes even take very difi"erent
characters, without becoming isolated and forming difi'erent
species. As we have just said, the dog remains a dog,
whatever its modifications.

Well, these groups, formed by individuals which have
departed from the primitive type, and have formed distinct
secondary groups, are precisely the ones that naturalists
call races.

You understand why we constantly speak of races of
cattle, horses, etc. There is, in fact, but one species of
domestic cattle, which has given birth to the race hretonne,
as well as to the great cattle of Uri with their savage
aspect, and to the peaceful Durham. We have, again, but
one species of domestic horse, and this species has given

Fig.

A NouER Chief.
Brown Race, Ethiopian Branch. — The brown race is composed of a great variety of
peoples, with nothini? in common but a complexion darker than that of the white
and yellow races. It is supposed to be a mixture of the white, yellow, and black
races.

18 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

birth to the little Shetland pony, of which I sjooke just
now, and to those enormous brewers' horses that we see
in the streets of London. Finally, the various races of
sheep, goats, etc., have arisen from one and the same
species.

We must give more precision to our ideas on this point,
because the least vagueness here will make very serious
inconvenience. I will cite some further examples taken
from vegetables and animals, being careful to choose such
as are entirely familiar.

You all know the seed of the coifee-tree. Permit me to
give its history. You will see that it is instructive.

The coifee-tree came originally from Africa, where from
time immemorial it has been cultivated on the declivities
of Abyssinia that slope toward the Red Sea. About the
fifteenth century, something like four hundred years ago,
the coffee-tree crossed this sea and penetrated into Arabia,
where it has since been cultivated, and whence especially
we get the famous Mocha coffee.

The use of coff'ee spread very early and with great
rapidity in the East. It penetrated Europe much more
slowly, and it was first made use of in France at Marseilles.

Coff'ee was first drunk in Paris in 1667. The seeds
which furnished it were brought in small quantity by a
French traveller named Thevenot. Two years afterward,
in 1669, Soliman Aga, ambassador of the Sublime Porte in
the time of Louis XIV., induced the courtiers of that great
king to taste it, and they found it very agreeable. How-
ever, its use did not spread for a long time. It was not
until the eighteenth century that it began to be generally
adopted.

You see that coff'ee has not been very long in circula-
tion. In fact, it is scarcely a century and a half since it
became an article of general consumption by the people of
Europe.

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 19

Well, during many years Europe remained tributary to
Arabia for this commodity. All the coffee consumed in
Europe came from Arabia, and particularly from Mocha.
Toward the commencement of the eighteenth century the
Dutch attempted to import it into Batavia, one of their
colonies in the Indian Archipelago. They succeeded very
well. From Batavia some stalks were taken to Holland
and put in a hot-house, where they succeeded equally well.
One of these stalks was brought to France toward 1710,
and was placed in the conservatory of the Jardin des
Plantes, and there also it prospered and gave birth to a
certain number of sprouts.

In 1720 or 1725 (I have not been able to find the precise
date), an officer of the French Navy, Captain Desclieux,
thought that, since Holland had cultivated coffee at Batavia,
he might also acclimate it in our colonies of the Gulf of
Mexico. When embarking for Martinique, he took from
the Jardin des Plantes three stalks of coffee, and carried
them with him. The voyage was long and difficult, by
reason of contrary winds. The supply of water proving
insufficient, it was necessary to put the crew on rations.
Captain Desclieux, like the others, had but a small quantity
of water to drink each day. He divided it with his coffee-
plants. Notwithstanding all his care, two died on the
passage ; only one arrived safe and sound at Martinique.
Put at once into the earth, it prospered so much and so
well that from it have descended all the coffee-trees now
spread over the Antilles and tropioal America. Twenty
years after, our Western colonies exported millions of
pounds of coffee.

You see the coffee-tree, starting from Africa, has reached
the extremity of Asia on the east and America on the west.
Hence, it has nearly traveled round the world. Now, in
this long voyage, coffee has become modified.

Passing by the tree, of which we know little, let us con-

20 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

sider the seed. We need not be grocers to know the
different qualities of coffees and their different production.
Nobody would confound. Mocha with Bourbon, Rio Janeiro
with Martinique. Each of these seeds carries in its form,
in its proportions, in its aroma, the certificate, so to say, of
its birth.

Whence came these changes ? We cannot know with
certainty, and explain the why and the how, and follow
rigorously the filiation of cause and effect ; but, consider-
ing the phenomena as a whole, it becomes evident that it
is to differences of temperature, of climate, of culture, that
all these modifications are due.

This example, taken from vegetables, shows that if we
transport to considerable distances different specimens of
the same vegetable, placing them in different conditions of
cultivation, we obtain different races. Tea transported
some years ago into troj)ical America would present us
w^th like facts.

Take, now, an example from animals. You all know
the turkey; but, perhaps, some of you do not know that it
came from America. Its introduction into Europe is quite
recent.

In America the turkey is wild ; and there, in its natural
conditions of existence, it presents many characters which
distinguish it from our domesticated individuals. The
wild-turkey is a very beautiful bird, of a deep-brown color,
very iridescent, presenting reflections of blue, copper, and
gold, which make it truly ornamental. It was because of
its fine plumage that it was first introduced into France.
In the beginning no one thought of the turkey as food ;
and the first turke}^ served at table in France was in 1570,
at the wedding of Charles IX., three hundred and four
years ago.

As soon as the turkey is tasted, it is found that he
is too good to be merely looked at. He passes from the

THE UNITY OF TUE HUMAN SPECIES. 21

park to the poiiltry-j^ard, from the poultry-yard to the farm,
and from one farm to another, east, west, north, and south.
At present, in ahnost all France, turkeys are raised and are
a considerable object of commerce.

But, in going from farm to farm, in traveling all over
our country, this bird has encountered different conditions
of existence, differences of nourishment and temperature,
and never the primitive conditions that it had naturally in
America. As a consequence of all tliis, the turkey has also
varied, and, to-day, not a turkey in France resembles the
wild stock. Generally, it has become much smaller ; when
it has preserved its deep plumage it has become darker and
duller ; but some have become fawn-colored, others are
more or less white, and others again are spotted with white,
gray, or fawn-color.

In a word, almost all the localities to which the turkey
has become addicted have given birth to new varieties
which have been transformed into races.

Now, in spite of these changes, and although they do
not resemble their first parents in America, and do not
resemble each other, are our French turkeys less the
children of the wild-turkey of America ? Or, if you like
it better, are they less brothers and sisters ? Have they
ceased to be part of the same species ? Evidently not.

What I have just said of the turkey might also be said
of the rabbit. The wild-rabbit lives all around us — in our
downs, in our woods — and he does not resemble, or resem-
bles but little, our domestic rabbits. These, you know,
are both great and small, with short hair, and with silky
hair ; they are black and white, yellow and gray, spotted and
of uniform color. In a word, this species comprehends a
great number of different races, all constituting one and the
same species with the wild stock which still lives around
us.

From these facts that could be multiplied, we have to

22 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

draw an important consequence, to which I call your atten-
tion :

A pair of rabbits, left in a plain where they would en-
counter no enemies, in a few years would fill it with their
descendants, and, in a little while, all France would be
easily peopled. We hav^e just seen that a single stalk
of coffee gave birth to all the coffee-trees now found in
America.

The wild-turkeys and their domestic offspring, the wild-
ral)bits and their captive descendants, may then be con-
sidered by the naturalist as alike arising from a jDrimitive
pair.

Gentlemen, this is the stamp of a species. Whenever
you see a greater or less number of individuals, or groups
of individuals, if, for one reason or another, you can look
upon them as descendants of a single primitiv^e pair, you
may say you have before you a species ; if from group to
group there are differences, you say these are the races of
that species.

Observe carefully, gentlemen, that, in thus expressing
myself, I have not stated for certain the existence of this
primitive pair of the stock of rabbits or of the stock of tur-
keys. I affirm no such thing, because neither experiment
nor observation — the two guides we should always follow
in science — can aid us on this point. I only say to you,
every thing is as if they had been derived from a single
pair.

You see, after all, the question of species and of race is
not very difficult to comprehend, not even very difficult to
settle when we know the wild type, when Ave have the his-
toric data which enable us to connect with this type the
more or less different groups which domestication has de-
tached. But when we do not know the wild type, when
the historic data are lost, the question, on the contrary,
becomes extremely difficult at the first step, because differ-

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.

ences that we encounter from individual to individual, and,
above all, from group to group, might be considered as
specific differences.

Happily, Physiology comes now to our relief. We en-
counter here one of those great and beautiful general laws
upon which the established order depends, and which we

Fm. 4.

Mexican Indian.

Red Race, Northern Branch.— This division is rather imperfect from an ethnological
point of view. Its characters are a mbcture of the yellow, white, and black races.

admire more the more we study. Tliis is the law of cross-
breeding — a law which governs animals as well as vege-
tables, and is, of course, applicable to man himself.

You know what is meant by the word crossing. We

24 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

mean by it all marriages occurring between animals that
belong either to two different species, or to two different
races. Well, the results of these marriages obey the fol-
lowing laws, which are:

When this union takes place between two animals be-
longing to different species — that is, when we attempt
hybridization — in the immense majority of cases the mar-
riage is sterile. Thus, for example, the experiment of
uniting rabbits and hares has been tried thousands of times
all over the world. This experiment is said to have suc-
ceeded twice. But these two alleged facts are much more
doubtful than the results of experiments recently made by
a man of true talent, skilled in the art of experimenting,
and who believes in the possibility of these unions, who has
completely failed. Although he furnished the best condi-
tions for success, he w^as not more fortunate in his results
than Buffon, and the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires before
him.

So the rabbit and the hare are of such a nature that, al-
though presenting in appearance a great conformity, they
cannot reproduce together.*

Such is the general result of crossing two different sj^^e-
cies.

In many cases, the union of two individuals of different
species is fertile, but the offspring cannot reproduce. For
example, I refer you to the union of the ass and horse. This
union produces the mule. All the mules in the world are
the offspring of the jackass and the mare. Now, these ani-
mals are numerous, for in Spain and in tropical America
they are much preferred for work to horses, because of
their resistance to fatigue. The hin?ii/, less in demand,
because less robust than the mule, is the result of an in-
verse cross ; it is the offspring of the horse and the ass.
The hinny, like the mule, cannot reproduce its kind.
* See Appendix C.

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 25

When we wish for either, we must have recourse to the
two species.

Finally, in extremely rare exceptions, the fertilit}^ per-
sists in the oiFspring, but it is much diminished. It dimin-
ishes still more in the grandchildren, and it is extinguished
in the third or fourth generation at the most. This is the
case when we unite the canary-bird with the goldfinch.

I might here accumulate a mass of analogous facts and
details. But over them all would appear a great general
fact including them, which is the expression of a law;
and here is this fact : notwithstanding observations reach-
ing back for thousands of years, and made on hundreds of
species, we do not yet know a single example of interme-
diate species obtained by the crossing of animals belonging
to different species.

This general fact explains how order is maintained in
the present living creation. If it had been otherwise,
the anima] world and the vegetable world would be filled
with intermediate groups, passing into each other by in-
sensible shades, and, in the midst of this confusion, it
would be impossible for even naturalists to make discrimi-
nations.

The general conclusion from all this is, that infertility
is the^ law when animals of different species unite (Htbei-
dization).

T\^ien, on the contrary, individuals which are only of
dffh'ent races^ but of the same species, are brought to-
gether, that is to say, when we produce a mongrel^ is the
result the same ? No, it is exactly contrary.

These crossings are always fertile, and sometimes more
so than the union of animals of the same race. But es-
pecially the children and grandchildren are also as fertile
as the parents and grandparents ; so much so that the}'"
propagate their kind indefinitely. The difficulty here is
not to procure mixed races ; the difficulty is, when we

26 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

have pure races that we desire to j^reserve, to keep strange
blood from modifying them.

Races thrive by crossing — that is, by the union of differ-
ent races of the same species, thej^ multiply abundantly
around us ; such are our street-dogs, our roof-cats, our
coach-horses, all our animals where the race is indistinct ;
because, by cross-breeding in all directions, the differential
characters have become confounded.

So far from experiencing difficulty in obtaining off-
spring from races, the men who are occupied with cattle,
with sheep, with horses, amateurs in dogs, in pigeons,
know with what watchful care they must protect their fa-
vorite race.

Here, then, is a general fact, and from this fact it re-
sults that fertility is the law of union between animals
belonging to different races (Mixed Breedixg).*

Here, gentlemen, you see the great distinction, the
fundamental distinction, between species and race. And,
it is all the more important to recognize and record this
distinction, as it facilitates experiment. When you have
two different vegetables, or two different animals, and wish
to know whether they belong to two distinct species., or
only to two races of the same sjjecies, marry them. If the
union proves immediately fertile, if the fertility is propa-
gated and persists, you may affirm that, notwithstanding
the differences which separate them, these vegetables and
these animals are only races of the same species. If, on
the contrary, you see the fertilitj'- disappear completely or
diminish notably at the first union, if you see it decreas-
ing, and go on diminisliing, to disappear at the end of a
few generations, you may without hesitation affirm that
these vegetables and these animals belong to distinct
species.^

Gentlemen, I have discoursed at length of vegetables

* See Appendix D. f See Appendix E.

TUE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 27

and animals, of the cofFee-tree, of the turkey, of the rabbit,
of the dog, of the cat, of cattle, etc., and you may think
that I am forgetting man. On the contrary, I have not
ceased to think of him.

What is our question concerning man? Distinctly
this.

Look once more at these designs. They show you
diflPerences, marked enough, between the human groups,
although less considerable than at first appears.

Now, we do not know the type or the primitive types
of these human groups.

Even when we encounter one or several men, present-
ing the characters of these types, we cannot identify them,
for lack of historical documents upon the subject. Conse-
quently, if we judge by the looks, if we take account only
of the men themselves, we cannot decide whether the differ-
ences they present are differences of race or differences of
species ; whether man is to be considered as arising from a
single primitive stock, or whether we ought to suppose
several primitive stocks.

But we have already said, and we again repeat, that
man is an orgayiized and living being ; and, as such, he
obeys all the general laws which govern all organized and
living beings ; he consequently obeys the laws of crossing.
These, then, we must interrogate, to find out whether there
is one or several species of men.

Take, for example, the tw^o most distinct types, those
which, more than any others, seem separated by profound
differences — the white man and the negro.

If these types really constitute disti7ict species^ their
union ought to bear the stamp we have found to charac-
terize the unions between animals and vegetables of differ-
ent species. In the great majority of cases they should be
infertile ; in all the remainder, slightly fertile ; the fertility
should soon disappear and they should not be able to form

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

intermediate groups between the negro and the white.
If these two men are only races of one and the same
species, their anion, on the contrary, should be very fertile ;
the fertility should be kept up by their descendants, and
intermediate races ought to be formed.

Fig. 5.

^=^^

Young Esquimaux.

Well, gentlemen, the facts here are decisive, and admit
of no hesitation. It is scarcely three centuries since the
white man j9ar excellence — the European — made, so to say,
the conquest of the world ; he has gone everyw^here, and
everywhere he has found local races, human groups that

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 29

do not resemble him; everywhere he has crossed with
them, and the unions have been very fertile, sometimes
very sensibly more fertile than those of the indigenous peo-
ple themselves.

And further, in consequence of a detestable institution
wliich happily has never sullied the soil of France, in con-
sequence of slavery, the white has taken the negro every-
where, everywhere he has crossed with his slaves, and
ever37where a mulatto population has been formed. Every-
where, also, the negro has crossed with the local groups,
and everywhere there have sprung up intermediate races,
which, by their characters, proclaim this double origin.
The white, finally, has crossed with these mixed breeds,
and hence has resulted in certain parts of the globe, and
notably in America, an inextricable mass of mixed peoples,
perfectly comparable with our street-dogs and roof-cats.

The rapidity with which these mixed races cross and
multiply is truly remarkable. It is hardly three centuries,
about twelve generations, since the European spread over
all parts of the world. Well, we estimate that already
one-seventieth of the total population of the globe are
mixtures, resulting from the cross of the whites with indige
nous peoples.

In certain states of South America where the mixture
began earlier, where the European arrived in the first days
of discovery, a quarter of the population is composed of
cross-breeds, and in some regions the proportion is more
than half.

You see, our experience is to-day as complete as possi-
ble. Unless we deny all modern science, unless we would
make man a solitary exception in the midst of organic and
living beings, we must admit that all men form only one
and the same species, composed of a certain number of
different races ; we must, therefore, admit that all men may
be considered as descended from a single primitive pair.

30 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

You see, gentlemen, we have reached this conclusion,
outside of all species of dogmatic or theological considera-
tion, outside of all species of philosophical or metaphysical

Fig. G.

Sir Salaii Jung, K. S. I.
Brown Eace. Hindoo Branch,

consideration. Observation and experiment alone, applied
to the animal and vegetable kingdom, science, in a word,
leads us logically to this conclusion: there exists hut one
sj^ecies of men.

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SrECIES. 31

This result, I do not fear to say, is of great and serious
importance, for it gives to the thought of universal brother-
hood the only foundation that many people now recognize,
that of science and reason.

I hope, gentlemen, that my demonstration has convinced
you. However, I am not unaware of the fact, and you
doubtless also know, that all anthropologists are not agreed.
There are among my fellow-laborers a certain number of
men, even of great men, who believe in the plurality of the
human species. Perhaps you may have come in contact
with them. Well, listen, then, with attention to the rea-
sons they bring in support of their view. You will easily
see that all these reasons may be summed up in this :
There is too much difference between the negro and the
white man to permit them to belong to the same species.

Then you reply: Between the white or black water-
spaniel and the greyhomid, between the bull-dog and the
lapdog, there is much more difference than between the
European and the inhabitant of Africa, and yet the grey-
hound and the water-spaniel, the bull-dog and the lapdog,
are equally dogs.

They will perhaps add : How could the same primitive
man, whatever his characters might be, give birth to the
white man and the negro ?

You will answer : How has the wild-turkey, of which
we know the origin, of which we know the grandparents,
how has the wild-rabbit, which we find still among us, how
have they been able to give birth to all our domestic races ?

We cannot, T repeat, explain rigorously the how and
the why ; but this we know, the fact exists, and we find its
general explanation in the conditions of existence, in the
conditions of the environment.

Now, man, who has progressed upon the earth a much
longer time than the turkey or the rabbit, who has been
upon the globe for thousands of years, living under the

32 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

most diverse, the most opposite conditions, multiplying
further the causes of modification by his manners, his
habits, his kind of life, by the more or less care he takes of
himself — man, I say, is certainly found in conditions of
variation much more marked than those which have been
encountered by the animals we have cited. It is not, then,
surprising that men, from one group to another, present
diflferences of which we here see the specimens. If there
is any thing in them to astonish us, it is that these differ-
ences are not more considerable.

In your turn you ask of the polygenesists — for this is
the name given to the philosophers who believe in the
multiplicity of the human species — how is it that when the
white man comes to any country whatever, at the antipodes,
in America, in Polynesia — how is it, I say, that everywhere
he crosses with human groups that differ most completely
from him ; that these unions are alwaj^s fertile, and that
everywhere he has left traces of his passage in producing
a mixed population ?

If you press your interlocutor a little, he will quite
often deny the reality of species ; he will thus put himself
in contradiction ,with all naturalists without exception,
botanists or zoologists — with all the eminent minds who,
following Buffon, Tournefort, Jussieu, Cuvier, Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire, have studied vegetables and animals, out-
side of all discussion, and without thought of man.

In thus dealing wdth the question, the polygenesist falls
into disagreement with the best-established science.

Sometimes, also, you will hear him declare that man is
an exception, that he has his particular laws, that the argu-
ments taken from plants and animals are not applicable to
him. Answer him, then, in the name of physiology, in the
name of all the natural sciences, that he is certainly mis-
taken.

It is quite as impossible that an organized and living

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 33

body should escape the laws of organization and life as
that material substances should escape the laws that govern
inorganic matter. Therefore, man, an organized and living
being, obeys, as such, all general laws, afld those of cross-
ing like the rest. The conclusion we have drawn is then
legitimate, and the nature of the arguments employed to
combat it is a further proof in its favor.

Gentlemen, the subject of this lecture, which has oc-
cupied about an hour, at the Museum took up an entice
course. The exposition has necessaril}^ been brief. But I
hope you have seen reasons strong enough to make you
accept m}' view.

If doubts remain, try to come to my lectures. Some of
you will be able, perhaps. I sometimes see working-men
on the seats of my lecture-room, and I can testify to the
interest of some among them. I own I was happy to see
the attention they gave to these exalted questions. It
would give me great pleasure to see at the Jardin des
Plantes some of mv audience at Vincennes.

LECTURE II.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

GFXTr.KMF.7sr : I shall to-day continue the Natural His-
tory of Man. Those of you who were present at our first
lecture know that it was devoted to the examination of a
fundamental question. We inquired if all the men living
upon earth, however they may difi'er among themselves,
are of one and the same species ; that is, if they are to be
regarded as descended from a single primitive pair.

To answer this question, we appealed to science alone.
We started with the principle that, so far as the body is
concerned, man is an animal — nothing more, nothing less ;
that, consequently, all the general laws to which animals
are subject bear upon him, and he cannot evade their do>
minion.

We then asked, not only of animals, but also of plants,
What is meant by the word si^ecies ? and we were led to
distinguish species from race.

Without going into the details I then gave, this distinc
tion is easily established. When two individuals of difi'er^
ent species unite, the union is almost always infertile, and^
if the first union is fertile, the offspring, either immediately
or at the end of a few generations, will reproduce no more.
So that, between two species, w^e cannot establish a third
series of individuals, starting at first with a father and a
mother taken from two distinct species. The examples I

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 35

gave arc known to you all. When we luiite a jackass with
a mare, an ass with a stallion, we obtain a mule or a hinny,
and never a horse or an ass ; and, to get mules, it is always
necessary to have recourse to a jackass and a mare.

When, on the contrar}', we take two individuals of two
different races of the same sj^ecies, whatever their differ-
ences of exterior conformation, the resulting individual is
fertile, and may give birth to an intermediate series of in-
dividuals between the two races.

As examples, I took the different races of dogs, of
sheep, of cattle. Whatever the skin, the color, the form,
the proportions of the dog, he is still a dog; whatever the
proportions, the figure, the color of horses or of oxen, they
remain horses and oxen. So, when \ve cross a water-
spaniel with a greyhound, a lap-dog with an Havana dog,
the offspring are fertile, and we get what are called fertile
mixed races.

Now, when human beings unite with each other, what-
ever their exterior differences, whether they are white, or
black, or yellow, these marriages are fertile. From this
fact, verified a thousand times, we draw the conclusion that
there is but one species of men, and that the differences
existing between them are only differences of race. Again
I say, in reaching this conclusion, we have never gone
beyond science. I repeat this declaration, because, in all
that I shall say to you, I wish you distinctly to understand
that I never put foot outside the domain of science, where
alone the scientific man can speak with authority.

The unity of the human species once demonstrated,
many problems rise before us.

The first is that of the antiquity of man. Have men
been always upon the earth ? Did they appear at the
same time with the other species of animals ? Are they
very ancient on the globe ? Such are the first questions
which present themselves to our minds.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN

Throughout all time have men lived on the earth?
Many of you, doubtless, are already able to answer me.
My brother professors of geology and paleontology have
probably addressed you on these questions. I shall only
recall to you the general facts bearing upon the case.

Fig. 7.

Extinct Elephant, or Mammotli.

You all know what is the action of heat upon certain
bodies. For example, you all know that water heated to
a certain degree vaporizes ; that if this vapor loses a cer-
tain quantity of heat, it is liquefied ; that in losing still
more, it forms a solid body — ice. This ice may become
so solid, that in St. Petersburg they have been able to con-
struct it into palaces, and have made cannons of ice that
have been fired. You can understand that a sufficient
quantity of heat will reduce all bodies to vapor, and that
sufficient cold will solidify them.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 37

No\v, the facts of astronomy seem to prove that, of ohl,
our earth, with all it contains, and all the materials that
compose it, began as a vast, vaporous mass diffused in
space. It was a globe of vapor. When the process of
cooling set in, this mass became liquid, and, during periods
of time which we cannot compute, it was only an immense
mass of rocks and of matter melted by fire.

It is needless to insist on the fact that, at this epoch,
on the surface of our globe, there were no living beings,
and consequently no men.

The cooling progressing, there is formed a pellicle on
the surface of the globe, and this pellicle goes on increas-
ing in thickness. This is what we will call the primitive
earth. On this primitive earth, during a long period,
water could not exist in a liquid state, and consequently
there were as yet upon our globe no living beings, for all
these beings need water ; and, of course, no men.

But the process of cooling continued. The water which
was vaporized in the atmosphere fell in torrents on this
crust which enveloped the globe ; chemical reactions, of a
violence of which we can form no idea, were produced.
At this moment began the formation of what we call the
earth of transport, and the globe entered upon what is
known as the Secondary epoch.

Strictly we may say that, from the moment the waters
rested in a liquid state upon the surface of the earth, life
might begin to manifest itself. In certain thermal waters
of high temperature, we find confervse — microscopic vege-
tables which are already organized and living. But no
animal could yet live in this medium, for the heat would
coagulate its albumen. Later, the cooling always pro-
gressing and the sea enveloping the greater part of the
globe, more complex vegetables appeared. Soon animals,
chiefly aquatic, made their appearance, and among them I
would mention those gigantic reptiles you have sometimes

38 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

seen represented in certain book announcements on the
walls of Paris. Mammals — man — could not yet inhabit
our globe.

As the cooling progressed, continents were formed by
the upturnings of Nature. The time came when true mam-
mals and birds, analogous to living species, appeared in
their turn. This was the commencement of the Tertiary
epoch. Then, very probably, man might have lived. We
shall presently have to ask if he did not exist, at least in
the latter part of this period.

The dislocation of the crust of the globe elevated the
mountains, dug the valleys, sank the seas, formed the con-
tinents, and, toward the end of the Tertiary period, the
globe presented a svnface much resembling what we see
now^ Here commences the Quaternary period. This quater-
nary period presents to us a very remarkable jDhenomenon.

Up to this time, putting out of account the slight oscil-
lations that have occurred, the globe seems to have cooled
in a nearly uniform manner, from the period when it formed
only a mass of vapor, down to the Tertiary epoch. With
the Quaternary period came a moment wherein a cooling,
perhaps sudden, but in any case very m.arked, showed it-
self and then disappeared.

At this time, a part of the globe at least, and Europe
in particular, was much colder than it is now. We have
proof of it in the glaciers of the Alps. Instead of stopping
in the place where they do now, these glaciers filled most
of the Swiss valleys, descending even in the valley of the
Rhone; and from one end to the other of these valleys
enormous blocks of rock were transported by the glaciers,
and -left on the spot. It is these which now constitute
what we call erratic blocks.

During the Quaternary epoch, there lived in France
very different animals from those which we find now.
Among them I may refer to the great cave-bears, which

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 39

were remarkable for their size and for their bulging fore-
heads. I will also mention the hyena. You know that
now we have no hyenas, and that they are only found in
countries much warmer than France. To the preceding
species I will add the rhinoceros. I call attention particu-
larly to an elephant, of which this is the picture (Fig. 7),
and which we call the mammoth. This elephant, you see,
is easily distinguished from species now living ; by its size,
first, for it is much larger than they ; then by the form of
its remarkably recurved tusks ; finally and chiefly because,
in the place of the naked skin of the elephants we know,
he was covered with a thick wool and very long hairs.

Of these things we are certain ; for this elephant has
been found preserved whole, with his skin and hair. At
different times there have been discovered in the frozen
earth of Siberia the dead bodies of these animals. That
country contains in such great numbers the tusks of these
antediluvian elephants, to employ a vulgar expression, that
the commerce in fossil ivory constitutes a considerable
source of revenue, and the state reserves a monopoly of it.

I call special attention to this elephant, and we shall
presently see why.

The Quaternary period ended as those that preceded it ;
and then began the present period. Since the time of its
commencement, the continents, the flora, and the faunae,
have not undergone any considerable modifications.

Nobody has ever questioned the existence of man at
the beginning of the present period, and some have even
considered his appearance as the characteristic feature of
this period. But did man exist before ? To use the com-
mon expression, were there antediluvian men ? In other
words, and to return to scientific language, is man the con-
temporary of those animal species among which appears
the mammoth ? May he be found, like the mammoth, in a
fossil state ?

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

Such is the question that has been often asked, and
which was long answered in the negative. Down to these
later times, the most eminent men in Natural History, in

FiQ. 8.

Fig. 9.

Arrow-shaped Flint Implements.

Greolog}^, in Paleontology, were all agreed on this point;
even Ouvier never admitted the existence of fossil man.

To-day we are led by many Avell-ascertained facts to
answer this question very differently. We are forced to

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 41

admit that fossil man does really exist, and that man was
contemporary with those species of animals I have been
speaking of, especially with the mannnoth.

This is certainly one of the most remarkable discoveries
of modern times ! The ground for it was laid by the es-
tablishment of a number of facts observed in England, in
Germany, in France. But the honor of having brought
decisive proofs, which convince everybody, belongs incon-
testably to two Frenchmen — to M. Boucher de Perthes,
and to M. Edouard Lartet.

M. Boucher de Perthes, the eminent archaeologist of
Abbeville, while inspecting the excavations made in the
earth around his native village, at Menchecourt, and at Mou-
lin-Quignon, discovered stones fashioned in a peculiar man-
ner, and the same form was constantly reproduced. It was
soon evident to him that this circumstance was not acci-
dental, but that these stones owed their form to human
industr3\ Now, these polished flints (Figs. 8 and 9), these
stone hatchets (Figs. 10 and 11), were found in the earth
associated with the bones of elephants ; whence he con-
cluded that the men who had fashioned them lived at the
same epoch with those great mammifers long since ex-
tinct.

This conclusion, drawn by M. Boucher de Perthes, w^as
at first vigorously disputed. Some of the men whose de-
cisions have justly the highest authority on questions re-
lating to the history of the earth, thought that the chipped
flints and the bones of elephants were found together in
the same bed because this bed had been altered. They
said : A first bed was formed which inclosed the bones of
elephants. On this bed, during tlie present period, men
lived, and have left these chipped flints as a trace of their
presence. Then came a mighty tempest, which rolled and
confounded together the hatchets and the elephants' bones.
Hence we now find them side by side, although the bed in

THE NATUEAL HISTORY OF MAN.

which they are found contains the remains of two perfectly
distinct epochs.

It will be apparent to you that, if, in our day, men
were buried in this bed of Menchecourt and of Moulin-
Quignon and, if a great storm should come and mingle
these modern bones with the hatchets and bones of ele-
phants, our grandchildren would find them all mixed to-

FiG. 10.

Fig. 11.

Flint Hatchets.

gether, and yet the men of to-day are not contemporaneous
with the hatchets you see before you.

The objection was all the stronger for having been
advanced, as I have said, by the highest authorities in
Geology. This is why I attach such importance to the
facts for which we are indebted to M. Lartet, and which
entirely refute these conjectures.

M. Lartet studied at Aurignac, in the south of France,

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 43

a burial-place of these remote times. It is a grotto ex-
cavated in the side of a hill, at a height which is not at-
tained by water-courses analogous to those of which we
find the trace in the neighborhood of Abbeville. This
sepulchral grotto at the time of discovery was closed by a
slab taken from a bed of rocks at some distance from this
point. In the interior were found the bones of seventeen
persons, men, women, and children ; and before the entrance,
the well-attested remains of a fireplace. There were traces
of funeral repasts that the first inhabitants of our country
were in the habit of making, and such as we sometimes
find in our own day among certain European people. In
the ashes of this fireplace were found bones scorched by
fire, and excrements of wild animals. These bones were
those of the bear and rhinoceros. The excrements be-
longed to a species of hyena contemporaneous with the
preceding animals. Here, consequently, man appears as
eating the animals in question ; as making his repast of
those very animals whose contemporaneousness with him
had been disputed.

M. Lartet crowned these beautiful researches by dis-
covering in a cave, in the centre of France, a piece of ivory
(Fig. 12) on which was unmistakably represented the very
mammoth to which I have just called your attention. It
is very evident that it could only be made by a man who
lived at the same time with this elephant.

In view of M. Lartet's discoveries, we must admit the
existence of fossil man, that is to say, the coexistence of
our species with the lost species of animals of which I have
spoken.

Since this epoch, besides, we have not only found traces
of these primitive industries, but debris of jawbones, and
entire crania. Hence we can judge of the characters which
distinguished our first ancestors. Strange to tell, we find
that these men who, even in France, warred with stone

44 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

weapons sucli as I have shown you, against the elephant
and the rhinoceros, have still at the present day in Europe
descendants presenting the same characters.

So man lived in the Quaternar}'- epoch. May we go
further, and admit that he also existed during the Tertiary
epoch ? Was he contemporaneous, not only with the rhi-
noceros and mammoth, of which I have spoken, but also
with earlier mammals ?

The question is perhaps still premature. Some facts
seem to indicate that it is so ; but in such ipatters it is
better to adjourn conviction than to admit ojoinions that
are yet in doubt. Consequently, we shall regard the de-
bate as remaining open.

After demonstrating that man goes back in geologic
time to an epoch much anterior to that in which we
formerly believed, we are naturally led to ask if it is pos-
sible to estimate in figures this antiquity of our species.
We are obliged up to the present time to answer, No.
We can perfectly establish relative epochs ; but we cannot
judge of the number of years that each of these epochs
represents.

This, however, has been attempted. From calculations
of the time required to form a bed of peat, some have
attempted to compute the duration of certain periods,
of the age of stone, of the age of bronze, and of the age
of iron.

But the results have been so discordant as to throw
doubt upon the method. Then the accumulations of debris
thrown up by torrents of the Alps have been studied, and,
in particular, the one known under the name of the cone
of Tinniere. A railroad has cut through these materials,
which have probably been accumulating ever since the com-
mencement of the present epoch, and in the cut there have
been found debris reaching back in one case to the Gallo-
Roman epoch, in others to the Roman epoch — these to the

Fin. 12.

gketch of Fossil MamTnoth on Ivon', found among- Cave Relics.

46 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

epocli of iron, those to that of bronze, and, finally, to the
epoch of stone.

As we know the duration of some of these periods, it
has been thought possible by a simple proportion, taking
account of the thickness of the beds, to go back to the
time of the first formation of the cone. But here, again,
I repeat, the results are so uncertain that we do not give
them any serious confidence.

We cannot, then, give precise figures. Yet, from all
these researches, and from arch^ologic facts not less de-
monstrated, it results that it is necessary to go back much
further than we have been accustomed to, in seeking for
the advent of man upon the earth. Let me cite you just
one of these proofs.

You were at the Universal Exposition — probably you
entered the Egyptian Temple. At the bottom of the hall,
facing the entrance, you saw a statue — that of King
Cephren. This statue goes back something like four
thousand years before our era. Consequently, it was*
sculptured about six thousand years ago. Now", you may
know that the work was very difficult, for the stone of
which it is made is very hard. The statue is remarkably
perfect. From this, as well as from other data, we learn
that in Egypt, six thousand years ago, civilization was al-
ready much advanced. We must, therefore, date back the
origin of the Egyptians more than six thousand years.
But we shall presently see that Egypt was not the first
inhabited country. Man must have come there from his
original home. Consequently, his first appearance on the
globe will be found much more remote in time.

So we are now certain of the existence of Quaternary
man ; we already suspect the existence of Tertiary man,
and it is in France that the discoveries which led to these
conclusions were made.

Is it, then, in our country, in the vicinity of Abbeville,

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 47

or of Aiirignac, that man first appeared? Now, he is
found everywhere: did he arise everywhere? or was his
original abode at some particular point of the globe, and
did he afterward disperse in all directions ? If this be so,
where is the privileged spot which gave him birth ? Such
are the questions that arise after that of the antiquity of man.

There has been much discussion on these questions.
It has been said, and some still say, that men have origi-
nated where we find them. But a more careful study, a
more profound knowledge of the laws that regulate organic
and living beings, leads to the opposite conclusion.

Observe that here we can no longer appeal to the sci-
ences which hitherto have served as our guide. Anatomy
and physiology teach us nothing concerning the place of
man's origin, his first dispersion, or his original home. It
is all the same with regard to physiology, whether man ap-
peared at a single point, or whether he appeared at several
points at the same time. To study these questions we
must interrogate another order of ideas and facts, but with-
out on that account changing the method. We must al-
ways recur to other organized and living beings. It is to
botanical and zoological geography that we now appeal.

Plants and animals are not distributed by chance upon
the earth. Their distribution is subject to precise laws;
and, because living and organic beings in general obey the
same laws, man ought to follow the laws of geography as
well as animals and plants.

Now, these laws of botanical and zoological geography
teach us that, in certain parts, the flora and fauna are char-
acterized by certain species ; that the globe is partitioned
off into a certain number of provinces that have their par-
ticular vegetables and animals. These provinces have been
called centres of creation.

It is natural enough to ask if each centre of creation has
not had its own particular man, as it has had its peculiar

48 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

vegetables and its peculiar animals. Led astray by cer-
tain coincidences, more apparent than real, some natu-
ralists have replied in the affirmative. But, whoever will
examine the question closely, will find that it is an error ;
for this mode of reasoning makes man a single exception
among all organic and living beings. Now, you know we
do not admit this to be possible. Man ought to obey the
laws of geography as he obeys the laws of physiology.

I cannot enter into all the details required for the com-
plete demonstration of this statement, but limit myself to
two facts that I hope will suffice to convince you.

The first is : not a single species of vegetable, not a
single species of animal, is found at the same time all over
the globe.

The most wide-spread species occupied at first only a
small part of the earth, and man must have carried with
him not onlj^ certain vegetables but also certain animals, to
find them as widely diffused as they are in our day. Not-
withstanding this intelligent and voluntary intervention,
you well know that there are certain parts of the globe
occupied by man in which neither the vegetables that have
accompanied us almost everywhere, nor the animals which
we habitually transport, can survive. Man, on the con-
trary, is cosmopolitan in every sense of the word ; that is
to say, we find him everywhere, amid the ice of the poles,
as under the equator.

Hence, if he had originated wherever we find him, he
would constitute a single exception among all organic and
living beings, whether vegetable or animal.

This reason, alone, ought to make us accept at least
this much: that man has, at all events, peopled a part of
the globe by emigration.

But we may go much further; and always, in conse-
quence of the law I have just stated, we may say that he
had his origin in one spot, and that a narrow one.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 49

In fact, when we study animals, we find that the area
occupied by a species, what we call its habitat, is as much
less extended as the species is more perfected, more ele-
vated, in the zoological series.

Not only is this true of species, but of types themselves.

Thus, below man, the animal form which most reminds
us of the human is, you know, that of the monkey. Are
monkeys among the number of the most widely-distributed
animals? No. The monkey-type is found neither in very
cold countries nor in the greater part of the temperate re-
gions, but only in the warmest parts of the globe. Besides,
a great part of Oceanica contains not a single monkey.

If, now, we no longer consider the type, the entire
group of monkeys, but only the species which approach
nearest to us, we see them occupying an area still more
limited. America has not a single species of monkey in
common with Africa and Asia. And, when we come to
the most perfect monkeys— to those which, by reason of
their great resemblance to man, have been called anthro-
poid, that is, with a human form — we see the area of their
habitat is restricted still more and becomes extremely nar-
row. So the orang-outang, which some have wished to
make our ancestor, is found only in the isle of Borneo, or
at most, perhaps, in the isle of Sumatra ; the gorilla, still
another of the species which comes nearest man in his gen-
eral proportions, occupies only a small part of the western
regions of Africa.

Now, man is everyw^here, and still he is incontestably,
even from the point of view of his body, very superior to
the monkeys. He alone has true hands, those marvelous
instruments which you know so well how to use ; he alone
possesses a brain of which the size of the skull attests the
development. Without speaking of other characters, man
is evidently superior to all monkeys by his hand and his
brain.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

Well, then, the monkey — which, although so distant
from man, still comes nearest to him — occupies but a re-
stricted habitat ; while man, the superior being ])ar excel-
lence^ has originated, vou say, simultaneously everywhere !

Native of Feejee.
Black Race, Eastern Branch, Papuan Family.

Evidently, gentlemen, to accept this interpretation of facts

will be to make him a single exception among all organized

beings ; and so, I repeat, we can never accept this conclusion.

You see, we are led to admit, not only that man origi-

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 51

nated in one single place upon the globe, but further, that
this was a limited region — of very small extent. It was
probably not greater than the habitat now allowed either
to the gorillas or the orangs.

Can we go still further ? Can we determine the par-
ticular spot of the globe w^here arose this privileged species
which was to go forth and conquer the whole earth ? We
cannot answer this question with the same confidence as
the others. But we may answer it with great probability.
According to all appearances, the point where man origi-
nated, and whence he emigrated to all parts of the globe,
was situated somewhere in the centre of Asia.*

The reasons which lead us to this conclusion are of
many kinds. I can only indicate the two following :

Around the elevated central region that you see pict-
ured upon the chart in the heart of Asia, we find the three
fundamental types of humanity : the black man, the yellow
man, and the white man. Black men are at the present
time widely enough dispersed. We see them still, how-
ever, in the peninsula of Malacca and in the isles of Anda-
man. Again, we find traces of these blacks in the east of
Asia, at the isle of Formosa, at the south of Japan, and in
the Philippines : the Melanesia belong to them. The yel-
low race occupies almost all the southeast part and even
the centre of Asia ; and finally we know that from this
elevated central region came the great white race which
to-day rules everywhere — the Aryan race, that to which
we belong. The groups, more or less pure, are besides re-
lated to each other by a multitude of intermediates which
may be regarded as transitional.

It is not only by the features, by fundamental physical
traits, that the men found around this immense table-land
are interrelated and seem to blend into one another. We
see, furthermore, on the sides of this vast table-land, the
three essential types of language— the most striking intel-
lectual manifestation of man.

* See Appendix F.

52 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

We shall come to this question by-and-by, but to-day I
may say to you that we distinguish three fundamental forms
of human language : monosyllabic languages, in which each
word has but one syllable ; agglutinated languages, in which
the words are welded together ; and, finally, flexible lan-
guages, which resemble the language now generally spoken
in Europe.

Now, we find around this central plateau of Asia the
monosyllabic language, ]jar excellence^ all over the Chinese
Empire ; on the north an assemblage of peoples speaking
agglutinative languages, and extending even to Europe.
Then, again, we have the portion occupied by the Aryan
race, speaking the flexible languages. So the three lin-
guistic types are represented around this table4and of Asia
the same as the three fundamental physical types. It
seems that, almost from his cradle, man has presented all
the essential modifications that he could undergo.

I pass to another question. Man, starting from a sin-
gle and Hmited spot, has spread all over the globe. Conse-
quently, he has peopled the globe by emigration and colo-
nization. Such is the conclusion drawn from actual facts
interjDreted by science alone. But, is it possible to people
the earth by human migration ? Some say no ; and make
this assertion an objection to the ideas that I have just
indicated.

I own that, for my part, this has always surprised me.
Migrations — colonizations ! why, they occur everywhere in
history, and particularly in our own history.

Go back as far as we may, we see populations in move-
ment from one end of continents to the other ; so that, to
say a priori that man has always lived where we find him,
is to contradict all historical documents.

However, some have insisted that certain migrations
were beyond human power and intelligence. I will give
you two examples to show that migrations are always pos-

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

sible, even when the conditions in the midst of which they
take place seem made expressly to arrest them.

We must distinguish, in migrations, those over land
from those across seas.

As to migrations by land, it is very evident that, when

Fia. 14.

Siamese Domestic.
Yellow Race, Sinaic Branch, Indo-Chinese Family.

men have to war only against brute Nature, nothing can
prevent their passage, especially when they can choose
their moment. But I add that men will emigrate, even

54: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

when they have to combat all difficulties united, not only
the rigors of physical Nature, but also the action of man,
who alone absolutely arrests man.

For example, I will cite a fact borrowed from the his-
tory of the Cal mucks :

Toward 1616, according to Chinese dates, a horde of
these people, for some reason Avhich Ave do not know, left
the country bordering upon China, crossed the whole of
Asia, and established themselves on the banks of the Volga.
There they accepted the sovereignty of Russia, and for
more than a century rendered good service to the empire.
But there came a time when the Calmucks found that the
Russian yoke was growing more and more oppressive. To
throw it off, they decided to emigrate, and return to the
country of their ancestors. The tribe had settled on either
bank of the Volga, and, in order to come together at a de-
termined place, it had been arranged to start in the dead
of winter, at a time when the ice would be strong enough
to allow the people on the right bank to gain the left bank
of the river. On a given day, all the people of the left
bank came together ; but some unknown cause hindered
the people of the right bank from crossing. The number
of emigrants was, however, very considerable, for, includ-
ing women and children, there were two hundred and fifty
thousand. The rear-guard was comj^osed of a select body
of horsemen, which counted eighty thousand men. You
see, here was an emigration of an entire peojDle.

From the beginning of the journey, the leaders under-
stood that they must hasten ; for, at the first news of their
departure, the Russians gave orders to pursue the fugitives.
A regular army was soon organized and advancing up-
on them, preceded by a host of Cossacks. These sworn
enemies of the Calmucks massacred all tliose that strayed
away any distance from the main body. Although it w^as
the oth of January, 1771, when they started, this entire

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

people traversed the intervening regions, arriving on the
following September on the frontiers of China.

In this long journey of more than 700 leagues, this
wandering horde was constantly pursued by the Russian
army, obliged to advance always by forced marches, to
open a passage through hostile countries, harassed not
only by the Cossacks but also by the Kirgheez, and the
Bashkeers, the most savage and warlike inhabitants of these
countries, who gave them not a single moment's peace.

Fig. 15.

Tartak of Kasak (Russian).
White Race, European Branch, Slavonic Family.

I forgot to say that the winter, always very severe in
these regions, was exceptionally so at this time ; that in
the first eight days all the beasts of burden perished, and
that they had to biun their tents to obtain a moment's

56 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

warmth. The women, the children, the aged, and men in
their vigor, perished by thousands from the cold. This
journey was, in reality, for these people, what the retreat
from Russia was for the French army ; but with this differ-
ence, that the Cal mucks emigrated in families, with women
and children, so that the disaster would be much more ter-
rible. Winter was followed by summer ; and, much as
they had suffered from cold, they suffered equally from
heat, and, above all, from w^ant of water. There was even
a time when the entire body of Calmucks, at the sight of
water, disbanded to quench the thirst that devoured them.
The rear-guard itself yielded to the temptation. The Bash-
keers and the Kirgheez, taking advantage of this disorder,
fell upon the multitude and put them to great slaughter.
HapiDily, Kien-Long was engaged in the chase in these
parts, and, as is usual with the Emperors of China, he was
accompanied by a real army, in which were several bat-
teries of artillery. He fired some pieces of cannon on the'
Kirgheez and the Bashkeers. The Calmucks recovered
their coolness, defended themselves, and all that remained
of these people w^ere saved. The emperor immediately
gave them food and clothing ; then he granted them the
country which is occupied by their descendants at the pres-
ent time.

I will add that Kien-Long caused a column to be erect-
ed on the spot w^liere the encounter had taken place.
On this column we read an inscription, in very simple
words, recording how Kien-Long saved an entire nation.
The inscription ends with these words : " Let this place
ever be regarded as holy." Gentlemen, I cannot be de-
ceived in saying that you will join in this prayer of one of
the greatest sovereigns of China. The place where a
nation has been saved merits consecration much more than
that where the most brilliant victory has been gained at
the jDrice of thousands of human lives.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 57

The hour passes, and I cannot enlarge upon this inter-
esting question of migration as much as I intended. I will
content myself with citing one example of migration by
sea. It is still more striking, as it bears upon a race con-
stantly referred to when it is wished to prove that men
were born where we find them. At the present time, the
part of the globe of which I am about to speak is one of
those where the peopling by migration is most completely
demonstrated. I mean Polynesia.

It occupies a good part of the great Pacific Ocean, and
is included in a triangle whose sides, from the Sandwich
Islands to New Zealand and to the isle of Paques, measure,
in round numbers, eighteen hundred leagues. The islands
dispersed in this immense space are scarcely as much as a
grain of sand in the Place de la Concorde. Several among
them are smaller than Paris. The isle of Paques in partic-
ular, w4iich forms one of the extremities of the triangle,
has precisely the extent of the city-wall of ancient Paris be-
fore the annexation of the suburbs — that is to say, fifteen
and a half miles in circumference.

You understand what in this vast sea an isle of these
dimensions amounts to ; and there are others much small-
er, which are likewise peopled. The argument drawn from
this situation would seem, then, to have great force. How
do you suppose, says one, that savages, having no improved
means of navigation, have been able to cross such spaces ?
Why were they not lost in this vast ocean before finding
these small isles ?

Unfortunately, I cannot go into the detail of facts to
show you how inexact is this a priori reasoning. I wall
only say that at the present time we know not only that
the people of Polynesia came from some other place, but
that they came from the Indian Archipelago. We know,
besides, what has been the general course of their migra-
tions, and can trace them on the map. Further, we have

5S THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

been able to determine the epoch when they took place,
relying on precise documents, as positive as the charts on
which we depend in writing the history of our middle
ages.

These people came from Asia, from a point of the Indian
Archipelago that we can determine approximately. They
reached the Marquesas Isles in the beginning of our era, or
in the years immediately preceding. We knew with still
greater certainty that the emigration to New Zealand, that
is to say, to the most distant portion of Polynesia, took
place in the beginning of the fifteenth centurj^, and that
the emigration from New Zealand to people the Isles of
Chatham occurred scarcely a century ago.

Here we meet with a significant fact. When these
emigrants established themselves in the islands of which
we are speaking, they found them deserted. This circum-
stance singularly facilitated their new settlement. If the
Calmucks, of whom I just sketched the history, sufi'ered so
much, it is because they found men on their route. In our
day, if it is still difficult to traverse Africa — if the journey
from Timbuctoo has cost the lives of so many courageous
travelers — it is because the Tuaregs close the passage to
us.

The more we study, the better we know that all over
the surface of the globe man surmounts every difficulty,
so long as he wars only against Nature. If he is arrested,
it is when he encounters man. In brief, man alone can
arrest man.

I wish to say a few words also on the last of the ques-
tions suggested by this subject.

Man, we have seen, took his departure from a particu-
lar place on the globe, and now he is everywhere. Con-
sequently, in his long and multiplied journeyings, he has
encountered climates the most extreme, and conditions of
existence the most opposite. He has adapted himself to

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 59

all. Does it follow that a new-comer, that a European, for
example, can establish himself anywhere on the globe and
immediately prosper there? You know he cannot. He
must become acclimated; and you can easily understand
that it must be so. The human body, which has developed
under certain conditions of existence, is in harmonj^ with
them. If they change, and above all if they change sud-
denly, it is evident that the entire organism receives a
shock ; and this shock brings with it suffering that, you
know, often ends in death.

Experience has shown that these suflferings have been
more grave and frequent when the course of emigration
has been from cold toward warm countries — whence certain
physicians and anthropologists have drawn the conclusion
that there are some countries on the globe that the Eu-
ropean cannot inhabit: — in which he can never prosper and
multiply. Some have even gone further. They have main-
tained that men could only propagate where they were
born ; so that, in reality, the Frenchman can only live in
France, the Englishman in England, the Dutch in Hol-
land, etc.

This exaggeration needs no refutation. It is already
refuted by the existence of our colonies. We know very
well that there are some parts of the globe where the Euro-
pean is acclimated almost immediately; not that he can
escape all sacrifices, but they are relatively few. I refer
you to the case of Acadia, that country in Canada peopled
by sixty French families, and which, in a very short time,
counted its inhabitants by thousands. I may cite you also
to what is passing every day at the Cape, in Australia, at
Buenos Ayres.

You see, then, in both w^orlds, and under the most di-
verse climates, Europeans prosper, multiply, and work, as
they do in Europe. Still there are places where the ques-
tion is much more difficult of solution, and which have been

60 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

considered fatal to Europeans. I will name especially, on
the western coast of Africa, our colony of Senegal, and
above all that of Gaboon ; I wdll point out, in America, the
Antilles generally, and consequently Guadeloupe and Mar-
tinique ; then French Guiana. Algeria itself has been a
subject of lively debate from this point of view. It will
seem natural to you that I should dwell a little more upon
this last place, because of its special interest for all of us.

From the day of our conquest the question has been,
whether the French could be acclimated on the soil of Al-
geria ; and, curiously enough, friends and enemies, English-
men and Frenchmen, military commanders and physicians,
were almost unanimously agreed that it could not be done.
They relied on the tables of mortality, which showed an
excess of deaths over births. It is easy to see that a coun-
try, where the number of those who die gains on that of
those who are born, is fated to become depopulated, unless
new immigrants repair the annual losses. This is what
was said of Algeria, and it is one of the points that I have
had to discuss in my lectures.

Novv, in spite of documents so often quoted, I do not
hesitate to say that Frenchmen have been acclimated in
Algeria, and have lived there very well. To arrive at this
conclusion I have not denied the figures — the facts cited
by those who reach the opposite one ; on the contrary, I
have accepted them. But I have interpreted them, resting
on this principle, which we never abandon, namely, that,
as regards his body, man is an animal and nothing else.
Consequently, if the laws that govern animality bear heav-
ily on him in certain circumstances, he profits, in return, by
advantages that these same laws bring to animals.

Now, before studying the acclimation of man, I began
by studying the acclimation of plants and animals. This
study taught me that, from the moment when an organized
species changes its environment, be it plant, animal, or man,

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 61

it must be ready to make two kinds of sacrifices : sacrifices
bearing upon the individual, and sacrifices bearing upon
the race. In Algeria, the former were shown by the figures
of mortality of the army, which were much more consider-
able than in France. The latter were made apparent by
the figures of mortality of children, which, in Algeria, were
double those of France.

But I was aware that, when we Europeans tried to
transplant to America certain species of domestic animals,
the figures of mortality at first were much more consider-
able than those of the mortality of our army; that the
figures of the sacrifices bearing on the race were much
higher than those of the mortality of children in Algiers.
However, to-day, those animals are acclimated in America,
and prosper so well that certain species have run wild, and
are, so to speak, become indigenous.

Belying upon these facts, I said, almost from the first
of my lecturing. The time will come when Frenchmen will
be acclimated in Algeria.

The event has justified me sooner than I hoped. Pub-
lic documents this year, containing the quinquennial cen-
sus, show, relatively to the preceding period, an increase
of more than twenty-five thousand souls. But, what is
more important, they establish that this increase is almost
entirely due to the excess of births over deaths.

So that the sacrifices of the French in peopling Algeria
already begin to bear fruit ; and certainly the time will
come W' hen that country, conquered by our armies, will be,
for the descendants of our first colonists, as salubrious as
France is for ourselves. Then Algeria will truly be the
France of the South.

But the sacrifices which accompany colonization are
none the less sad, and it is often asked if there are no
means of diminishing them. Unhappily, this is always diffi-
cult, often impossible.

62 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

However, here are two facts that I ask you to reflect
upon :

Some of our colonies have the reputation of being par-
ticularly unhealthy, and it is said that in them manual
labor is impossible for Europeans. The worst of these are
on the western coast of Africa. Now, listen to the state-
ment of Captain Bolot, commanding a company employed
in the construction of a pier at Great Bassam, made to
Captain Vallon, from whom I drew the fact : " A single
Sunday put more men in the infirmary than three days of
work under the hot sun." This is because the Sunday was
given, not to work, but to debauchery.

Captain Vallon profited by the experience thus acquired.
In his cruises to Gaboon he maintained on board his ship
severe discipline and regular work. When not at sea, he
made the sailors of the Di aim ate Avork regularly in the full
sun, but he forbade all excess, and in this way he preserved
his own health and that of his crew.

I will give you another and much more important ex-
ample, as it constitutes a true comparative experience.

It is another of the colonies I referred to as devouring
Europeans. I mean the Isle of Bourbon, at the east of
Madagascar, almost under the tropics — on one of the warm-
est points of the globe.

The tables of mortality of this island show a frightful
excess of deaths over births. Judged alone by these tables,
we must admit that the inferences draw^n are perfectly
justified. But these tables are true only when we take the
population e7i masse. Now, the people composing it form
naturally two parties. One includes the great proprietors,
the great planters, the leading merchants, and all those
who belong to them, who, so to speak, lead the life of
colonists. It is to such, and to such alone, that the deso-
lating figures referred to apply.

The other part of the population is composed of people

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 63

who till the grouud with their hands, and who are disdain-
fully called by the name of poor whites. These are the
descendants of the first colonists, who were all too poor to
buy slaves, too proud to enter into the service of others,
and who accepted for themselves and their posterity the
life of small farmers. This last population keeps very
much by itself; it has multiplied, and not only become pros-
perous, but its physical type has improved so much that
travelers all speak of the personal beauty, both of the men
and the women, of this race.

So, ill this same Isle of Bourbon, the rich planters, and
the working-men in cities, perish from the life of excess
and debauchery, for which they are too much inclined in
the colonies. The poor whites, who devote themselves to
the cultivation of the earth, which is said to be imjDossible
for the European under the tropics, have continued to
develop, and have gained in all respects, because they have
joined to moderate labor a sober life and pure manners.

Gentlemen, there is in this fact a practical lesson. Per-
haps some among you will leave France ; perhaps you will
go to the colonies or to Algeria to seek your fortune ! Let
me impress upon you the history of the poor whites of the
Isle of Bourbon — they have found that, to maintain health
of the body, one of the best means, undoubtedly, is to pre-
serve the health of the soul.

LECTURE in.

ON THE OEIGIN OF MAN.

Gentlemen: We meet in this hall, jou know, to speak
of man. I have already given two lectures here on the
history of our species, and intend to give several more up-
on the same subject. You will not be surprised that the
study of the human species, lightly as we may touch upon it,
requires several lectures ; for it includes all organic beings.
Although man is superior not only to plants chained to the
soil, but to all the animals that move upon the surface of
the globe, yet, like plants and animals, he is a living organ-
ism. Hence he is subject to all the laws of organization
and life. By his body he is an animal, nothing more, noth-
ing less ; and so he must obey all the laws of animalit}^
For this reason, whenever a difficult question presents it-
self, which cannot be resolved by the direct study of man,
we have recourse to indirect study. We then apply not
only to the history of animals, but also to that of vegeta-
bles, to reach conclusions concerning man himself.

This is evidently the only scientific procedure ; we
have followed it so far, and we shall remain true to it.

Let us first glance at the questions already examined,
and the answers given.

The first occupied an entire lecture. We asked if there
was one or several species of men. Our conclusion was,
that the human species is single. Comparative physiology

ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 65

teaches that, in spite of the diversity joresented by different
human groups, everywhere men remain men, as dogs re-
main dogs ; as cattle remain cattle ; as horses remain
horses ; notwithstanding differences of figure, color, pro-
portions, etc.

This question is fundamental ; for, according to the an-
swer given, we encounter in our path, or rather, we leave
on one side, a certain number of other very important ques-
tions.

We devoted the second lecture to some of these ques-
tions, but we studied them more briefly.

We asked first, when man appeared on the earth.
Guided by recent investigations, we replied to this question,
which was till lately regarded as insoluble. We affirmed
that man existed in France, in the neighborhood of Paris,
at the same time with the elephant and the rhinoceros;
and that, consequently, fossil man, whose existence was
universally denied till within twelve or fifteen years, is a
sure reality.

We then asked if the human species appeared simul-
taneously or successively on the different parts of th^
globe where it is found to-day. Always relying on the
study of animals and vegetables, but appealing to geogra-
phy and not to physiology, we concluded that he must have
appeared on a single pomt of the globe — on a very circum-
scribed area, an inconsiderable space of the earth's surface.

We were able to go much further, and, without dwelling
long on the proofs, we succeeded in determining with
great probability the favored region where arose the human
species, which was afterward to spread and dominate every-
where. We showed, according to all probability, that the
centre of human creation was toward the middle of Asia.
As man appeared on a particular spot of the globe, and
is to-day everyv/here^ having overrun the earth in all di-
rections, he must have emigrated from his first country,

66 THE NATURAL HISTOKY OF MAN.

and traveled to those lie inhabits at the present time.
The partisans of the plurality of the human species, the
polygenecists, have singularly exaggerated the difficulties
of these emigrations, and have thus sought to make an ar-
gument against mo7io genesis. In reply we cited only the
emigration of the Calmucks and the voyages of the Poly-
nesians. These two examples suffice to show that emigra-
tions, combining all the conditions that render success most
difficult, have ended well even in our day.

Finally, in the immense journeyings of the human race,
from its birthplace to all the other lands it now occupies,
it has encountered all possible conditions of existence. It
has had to become acclimated everywhere, among polar
colds as well as in the burning winds of the tropics. We
established the possibility of this acclimation of the race as
well as of its emigrations. We then showed by examples
that the difficulty was much exaggerated, and that, if all
acclimation in a very different climate from that before oc-
cupied required sacrifices of individuals, and even of gen-
erations, it is not less true that, in a certain time, races the
Most different can be acclimated and prosper in the most
ojDposite climates. Algeria furnishes a near and very strik-
ing example. But we cited others, and one of them enabled
us to refer to a grave consideration too often overlooked —
the influence of the moral health on the health of the
body.

Such, gentlemen, are the points in the history of man
that we have already examined.

To-day we enter upon a question put by the most un-
cultivated tribes, as well as the most civilized peoples ; so
profoundly does it concern the inmost nature of man.
Whence came man? How did he come to be upon the
earth ? How happens it that during incalculable periods
we find no trace of him on the globe, and at other epochs
he is everywhere ? This question, I repeat, has been pro-

Fig. 16.

Lady of Cairo (Eg} ptian).
White Race, Aramean Branch.

68 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

pounded in all times ; it has occupied the most savage
tribes and the most enlightened nations. It has always
been answered in the name of dogma and religion ; but
this is a ground absolutely denied us, and we must look
elsewhere.

Science has also put this question, and has tried to an-
swer it with scientific data alone. Has it succeeded ? I
hesitate not to answer, No, it cannot, and I think you can
easily understand why.

Let us distinctly state the case in all its breadth ; for,
here, as elsewhere, we cannot separate man from the rest
of the organized and living creation.

The successive appearance of vegetables and animals,
and of man, on the surface of the globe, is a fact. This is
attested by geology. Thanks to this science, we have the
right of affirming that at a certain epoch no organized being
could live on the surface of the globe ; that there came a
time when the globe could be occupied by certain vege-
tables, by certain animals ; that it afterward passed into a
state which permitted the appearance of birds, of mammals,
and then of man. What has produced this succession
of appearances? Whence came the beings that some-
times suddenly appear where nothing seem.ed to exist
before ?

Again I say these questions are unanswerable, at least
at the present time. We find these organized and liv-
ing beings existing, and, if we see them multiply, it is al-
ways by the way of filiation. They ahvays have a father
and a mother. But who ever saw the first father and the
first mother? We do not know by what process they
were formed, or, if you like it better, what phenomena
have preceded and accompanied their birth. The phenom-
ena — the processes which support the existence of a soul, or
even of a body — are very different from those which pro-
duced this soul or this body. The phenomena which led

ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 69

to the appearance of animals and vegetables were very cer-
tainly any thing but those which sustain them.

This proposition is perhaps a little abstract, and some
of you may not seize it at first. Let us take an example :

Without doubt, there are among you clock-makers,
mechanics ; in any case, whatever you are, you handle in-
struments of iron and steel. Well, you can understand that
we may know perfectly the watch in our hands, may be capa-
ble of taking it to pieces to detect the slightest defect in
the works, of cleaning it, of combining it again, and not
know at all where the metal came from that enters into
its composition, nor how the wheel-work was made. Noth-
ing in the study of the watch indicates how the metals
composing it were taken from the earth ; how a material
that once resembled stone was transformed into this some-
thing we call a metal. And, unless we have been em-
ployed in steel manufacture, we cannot know how iron is
changed to steel, how it is made capable of receiving what
w^e call temper. Consequently, the watch-maker, unless he
has gone elsewhere for instruction, does not understand
the manufacture of the mainspring which gives movement
to the whole watch.

In the case of vegetables and animals, of organized
beings in general, we are in the same position as the watch-
maker who knows only watch-making. We can, to be sure,
study plants, animals, and man, from the point of view of
anatomy and physiology, can know the organs and give an
account of the functions, but this study does not enlighten
us concerning the origin of these complex and marvelous
machines. We are in the position of the watch-maker who
knows only his watches ; and, unhappily, we have not yet
found the school where we can go to learn the equivalent
of what the w\atch-maker and mechanic can learn at the
conservatory of arts and trades.

I repeat, nobody has yet seen the first appearing of any

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ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 71

organized being whatever. Men of merit and undeniable
good faith believe that they have produced organic beings
complete in all their parts — microscopic vegetables, and ani-
mals. This is called spontaneous generation. But these
experiments have failed whenever they have been repeated
with proper precautions to prevent the introduction of
germs which float constimtly about us. More than ever
we can say that this is so, for over and over again the
question has been revived, and now it has come up again
apparently supported by irrefutable proofs, and once more
the errors of its defenders have been made manifest.

Let us own it, then, frankly, and without false shame;
we yet know nothing of the way by which organic beings
came to exist on the surface of the globe.

I am not afraid, gentlemen, thus to avow our incompe-
tence. Mistrust the men who pretend to explain every
thing: gen eralW, they are the ones who know the least.
You never find a true philosopher who hesitates to say,
" I know not." At any rate, this is what I am obliged to
say to you at this time.

So, gentlemen, science cannot say whence came man ;
but it can tell you whence he did not come. It is some-
thing that it can judge, and judge with certainty, of some
of the hypotheses that have been put forth under the guise
of science to explain our advent upon the globe.

These hypotheses are widely different from each other,
but for the most part there is a general likeness among
them, to wit : that man is nothing but a transformed and
pefected animal ; that he descended, by way of trans-
formation, from animals that existed before him. In our
day especially it is said, " Man is descended from the
monkey."

You see this human head, and these heads of the species
of monkey called anthropomorphic (Fig, 17) ; that is to
say, monkeys in human form, because in certain respects

72 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

they approach very near us. You may yourselves judge,
at a glance, that in all these instances, and taking account
only of the most important part, the head, the transfor-
mations must have been at least ver}^ considerable.

Although this theory is reproduced to-day under diverse
forms, it is any thing but new. For a long time men have
wished to explain themselves by animals. We find the
same idea even among many savage tribes. When they
come to speak of their history, we shall find they claim to
be descendants of bears, of beavers, etc., and some of them
have also thought, of monkeys. Some have even seen in
the orang a sort of brother, who preserves silence that he
may not be compelled to work.

Among savages, traditions wrongly interpreted, and of
which the true sense is lost, have given rise to these ideas.
With us it is in the name of science that the descent of
man from an animal species has been sustained. We find
traces of this hypothesis in Greek philosophy, but it was
not clearly formulated till quite recently. About the mid-
dle of the last century, in 1755, a Frenchman, De Mailiet,
published a work to show that all terrestrial and aerial ani-
mals came from transformed marine animals. He gave,
as the ancestors of men, the tritons of the ancient fables,
the mermen spoken of in the legends of the middle ages,
and seemed even to wish to establish their filiation to
fishes.

A little after the publication of the " Telliamed " of De
Mailiet, an Englishman, Lord Monboddo, a distinguished
antiquary, published a curious book in many respects, on
the origin of language, in which he attempted to show that
civilized man is only the man of the woods (orang) per-
fected (1774).

In his "Zoological Philosophy " (1809), our great natu-
ralist, Lamarck, maintained that all animals are derived
from less complex animals by way of transformation ; and,

ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 73

especially, lie tried to show liow lie could conceive that
man had as ancestor some one of the flighly-organizcd
monkeys. It is this idea which is at the present time re-
produced and upheld by new arguments drawn from the
progress of science.

At bottom, this view of the origin of our species is but
a particular application of a more complete and general
doctrine which has been put forth in England by a natu-
ralist of great ability', Mr. Charles Darwin. We must,
therefore, say something of this doctrine. I will go over it
as rapidly as possible.

Darwin, having to give account of the origin of species,
supposes that originally there existed, so to speak, but a
single organized being, which he calls an archetype. In
consequence of the action exerted upon it by its conditions
of existence, this type was modified more and more ; and
these successive modifications gave birth, by way of trans-
formation, to all the animal and vegetable species that wc
find on the surface of the globe.

By a very simple illustration I will give you an idea of
the way in which Darwin understands this transformation.
Let us represent by a point the first ty2:)e. For a time this
type will give birth to beings which will more or less re-
semble it, will have nothing that will sharply distinguish
them one from another. We may trace a white line to
indicate this first interval. Then at a given moment, and
under the influence of the particular conditions of existence
in which they find themselves placed — under the empire
of what Darwin calls the struggle for existence and natural
selectio7i — the characters of these beings change little by
little ; differences more and more marked appear and give
rise to distinct groups that I will represent by two diverg-
ing lines, one red the other blue. In their turn these two
secondary types will in the same way be more or less modi-
fied, will give rise to new distinct groups, that we can again

74 THE NATURAL HISTOEY OF MAN.

represent by lines diverging from the preceding ones.
These lines, moi% and more multiplied and diverging in all
directions, end by forming a kind of tree in which the last
branches represent the beings, or the groups of beings
which are most removed from the primitive archetype.

YoLi will remark — and it is this which makes the theory
of Darwin so seductive — you will remark, I say, that when
a being has started in one direction it cannot take another.
From the red type there can arise only secondary, tertiary,
quaternary types, resembling more less the first parent.
Take an example. Compare a part of our theoretic tree
with what we see in zoological classification. A common
type, the type of vertebrates, has given the four secondary
types — fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals — like the main
branch which here gives off four secondary branches.

Now, in the same way that each of these branches gives
off other branches, which again subdivide and ramify, so
each of the classes that I have just named has its particular
types which can never pass to one of a neighboring class.
From a fish, according to Darwin there will never spring a
mammal and mce versa.

Notwithstanding the device by which we have attempt-
ed to illustrate these abstract ideas, they are still, perhaps,
a little difficult for some of you. I will try to make them
plainer by a rough comparison which will serve to convey
my thought.

You all know that great school which is one of the glo-
ries of France — the Polytechnic School. You know the
pupils enter this institution on leaving the Lyceum, and af-
ter passing an examination. Here they all receive a certain
number of general scientific notions. Their minds are given
one impress; they are developed and enlarged ; individual
differences of course exist ; but, upon the whole, taken en
masse, they get the same degree of instruction, and instruc-
tion of the same nature. On leaving the school, what hap-

i?ia. 18.

A Young Chinese.
Yellow Kacc, Chinese Family.

76 • THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

pens ? Some jDursue a military career, others civil careers,
and, once entered on these careers, they are differentia4;ed
more and more in proportion to their, progress.

Moreover, they never swerve from the course on which
they enter. No matter how high they rise, they Avill not
pass from one career to another. The pupil of the school
of 3Ietz will no longer cooperate with his old classmates of
the school of engineers. On leaving the school oi3Ietz^ the
officer of artillery and the officer of engineering will each
follow his own special career. The first will be able, in
some cases, to perform functions analogous to those of the
civil engineer — to lay out roads and construct bridges ; but,
for all that, he will never become engineer-in-chief. The
Poly technician, entering the navy, may rise to the highest
grades, he may become admiral; he will never become
marshal of France.

That which is true of the Polytechnician in civil and
political life, is true also of vegetables and animals in the
matter of development, on the hypothesis of Darwin. It
is this which makes Darwin's theory so popular, for it ex-
plains problems constantly put by naturalists, such as the
relations of types, the characterization of groups, the anal-
ogies between them, the transitional types that link them
together, etc.

But, while recognizing the convenience of this theory of
the English philosopher, in the interpretation of a great
number of facts, I am obliged to reject it because it is ir-
reconcilable with other facts ; but chiefly because it is in
disaccord with the physiological laws of which I spoke in
my first lecture upon the history of man.

However, since the attempt has been made to derive
from the Darwinian hyjDothesis the conclusion that man
descended from the monkey, let us see how this pretended
filiation agrees with the theory of which they claim it is a
consequence.

ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 77

Before a theory which makes man descend from the
monkey can be logically deduced from the ideas of Darwin,
it must be admitted that the human type may be derived
from the monkey type ; that the first is, in fact, but the de-
velopment of the second.

Now, in spite of superficial resemblances, which early
led to the remark that the monkey is a caricature of man,
there are, in the general plan of the two organizations, sci-
entifically considered, profound differences. Man walks
about on his feet, preserving the full liberty of his arms and
hands ; the monkey is made for climbing, and employs his
four members for this purpose. In man, all the apparatus
of locomotion, the feet, the legs, the thighs, the vertebral
column, all the muscles that are attached to it, are modified
to make an animal with two feet — a walker. In the mon-
key, on the contrary, all these parts are arranged and com-
bined in a way to make an animal climber ; the anterior
members themselves, with all their dependencies, are ap-
propriated to this purpose.

Now, the walker and the climber are two different types ;
to derive the one from the other is in formal opposition
with the doctrine of Darwin.

This fundamental difference between the human type
and the monkey type has been long known to science as
true of the little monkeys, that could be easily procured.
There has been a great desire to determine if it would hold
equally in the monkeys that approach us more nearly, called
the anthropomorphic monkeys. Extremely profound stud-
ies on this question have been made for many years and in
many countries. The facilities now existing for procuring
animals from far distant regions have enabled Mr. Richard
Owen, the most distinguished anatomist of England, to
make a serious study of this subject. M. Davernoy, the
friend and colaborer with our great Cuvier, has made the
complete anatomy of a gorilla. Later, an anatomist of whom

78 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

we regret the premature loss, M. Gratiolet, and Dr. Alex,
have made a not less detailed anatomy of the chimpanzee.
These two anatomists have given particular attention to
this question. These men, having studied the monkeys
that most nearly approach the human type, have shown that
the adaptation of all the parts is not for walking, but for
climbing, so that even among anthropoid apes the charac-
teristic fundamental monkey type is most strikingly appar-
ent.

So, although perfected in certain respects, the monkey
does not change its nature. This fact agrees with the ideas
of Darwin. Pushed to their utmost limit, faithfulness to
these ideas leads us to say : Even when the monkey has by
evolution become a being equal to man, this being wall not
be man. It wall be a monkey as intelligent as we are, but
it will not be a walker, it will be a climber.

It may be said, gentlemen, as I am not a Darwinist,
that I falsify the doctrine, and draw inexact conclusions.
But I have had the pleasure, this very year, of seeing one
of the most reliable Darwinists, M. Charles Vogt, and he
expresses himself on this question exactly as I have done.
He also admits that, according to Darwin, man and the mon-
key could not arise from a common stock, but that the two
tj^pes commenced to diverge, and were sharply separated
before the appearance of the most inferior monkey ; before
the formation of those striated monkeys of which I here
show you a specimen. This opinion, put forth by my emi-
nent contem.porary, in a special work, and repeated in full
anthropological congress, has double authority. As M.
Vogt is a zoologist, an earnest anatomist, he would know,
although a Darwinist, that man could not have descended
from the monkey.

Permit me to enlarge still further upon this question, and
to show you that every thing leads to the same conclusion.

I have just glanced rapidly at the subject of adult man

ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 79

and of adult monkeys. Take them now when they are
in progress of development, and see what occurs in the

Fig. 10.

Japanese.

Yellow Race, Sinaic Branch.— Comi) rising the Chinese, the Japanese, and the

Indo-Chinese Families.

brain during the period of life passed by either of them in
the bosom of its mother. I scarcely need to remark upon

80 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

the importance of this study. The brain is incontestably,
and, above all, from the point of view of development, the
most interesting organ, whether of man or of the monkey.
It is the seat of intelligence and of instinct. On this ac-
count all the world attributes the highest value to the char-
acters furnished by it. Well, how does brain development
proceed in the monkey and in man? Here, in a few words,
I can show you an important fact.

The brain, contained in its bony case, is separated into
diverse regions. Let us consider only two, the anterior or
frontal lobe, and the median or temporal lobe. It is evi-
dent that in the case of animals, united by links of filiation,
the succession of development in these two lobes ought to
be the same. Well, between men and monkeys there is,
in this respect, a complete difference. In man, it is the an-
terior lobe which begins to develop first, and is most
promptly formed, the lateral or temporal lobe coming last.
In the monkey, on the contrary, it is the temporal lobe
which is developed first, and the anterior lobe which is de-
veloped afterward, so that, in the successive formation of
the parts of this most important organ, there is a complete
opposition.

It is evident that two beings that develop inversely, so
to say, cannot be derived the one from the other.

This fact has great significance, not only by itself, but
also in its consequences. It gives an answer to one of those
vague assertions, too often employed by those who wish to
establish the monkey as our ancestor. There exist human
beings with very smaU skulls,' and consequently with the
brain equally reduced. Moreover, at the same time that
the brain is diminished in volume, it is also simplified, and
then it jDresents a certain resemblance to the brain of the
anthropomorphic monkey when considered in the lump and
without entering into details.

There has been no want of arguments from this resem-

ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 81

blance. Some have wished to see in these facts a ease of
atavis77i, that is to say, a case of the reproduction of the
characters of a very remote ancestor. It has been said that
these individuals with rudimentary brains, which have been
called microcephals, realize accidentally the form of brain
of our first ancestors when they were detached from the
family of monkeys.

Well, the researches of M. Gratiolet, on the mode and
the succession of development of man and the monkeys,
have shown that this pretended resemblance does not exist
at all.* On the contrary, precisely by reason of the different
manner in which the development proceeds when the human
brain is arrested in its course, it is separated still further
from the brain of the monkey. In this case the brain of
man may sometimes be smaller and more simple than that of
the monkey, but it does not resemble it for all that. In a
word, although man may seem to fall below the beast by
the imperfection of his organ of thought, he does not be-
come an animal anatomically.

I understand, gentlemen, that this part of our subject is
likely to give you some difficulty. Perhaps you have not
always followed me step by step. However, you compre-
hend, I think, how deep and conclusive are the arguments
opposed to the theory that we are descended from the mon-
keys.

The conviction becomes still more complete, if that is
possible, when we examine with some care, and seriously
compare with positive scientific data, the reasons on which
it has been attempted to found this doctrine. We are
then struck with the vagueness and partial verification of
the facts or assertions almost always alleged by its parti-
sans. Pretty much always they are reduced to simple
possibilities. They say. Would it not be possible for the
hand of man, by the transformation of such and such mus-
* See Appendix G.

82 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

cles, to come from that of the monkey ? Is it not possible
for a monkey, by dint of standing, to end by changing his
posterior hands into true feet ? Is it not possible that the
same course should enable him to acquire calves, which are
wanting in the monkey, and should have lengthened the
bones, which are much shorter in the monkey, etc. ?

Gentlemen, when we get upon the ground of possibility
I know not where we shall stop. Every thing is possible
except that which implies contradiction. Consequently we
are no longer on the ground of science, which demands pos-
itive, precise facts. We are living in the land of romance.

I will add that in many cases these possibilities are op-
posed to the facts that transpire in our day, so that the
reasoning comes to this : " But is it not possible that
events took place in former times differently from those
which happen to-day ? " Serious science, gentlemen, can-
not accept this mode of reasoning. It does not admit
changes in the laws which rule this world — in those which
touch organic beings, any more than in those which concern
inorganic bodies.

There is but one argument which has been worked
out in detail in such a manner that it can be taken and dis-
cussed point by point. It is the one drawn from a certain
number of skulls discovered at greater or less depths in the
soil, and which present somewhat exceptional characters.
These skulls tave been described with cafe and offered as
presenting features intermediate beween the human crani-
um and that of the monkeys.

I can show you a model of the skull that has been most
relied upon, and has acquired a real notoriety, under the
name of the Neanderthal skull (Fig. 20). It was discovered
in 1857 in the environs of Dusseldorf. This skull is chiefly
distinguished from the human cranium by the very great
prominence of the eyebrows. It is further characterized by
its less height, by its length, and by some other particulars

84 THE NATUEAL HISTORY OF MAN.

of which the description would take too much time. From its
general form, and from the existence of two eyebrow swell-
ings, it has been said that it is related to anthropomorphic
monkeys and particularly to orangs. Gentlemen, you need
only compare this Neanderthal skull wdth the crania of
the orang and gorilla. Even at the distance where you
are sitting, you can see that between the human head and
the animal head there is an enormous difference, resulting
from the volume of the cranium and consequently of the
brain. The brain of the man to whom this cranium be-
longed would never remind us of that of the animal whose
head I am now holding.

There are yet other points on which I believe I ought
to dwell. To this Neanderthal skull has been given an
exaggerated antiquit3\ It is said to be the most ancient
skull that was ever found. This statement is, at least, very
adventurous. It has been said that it resembles no other
cranium. This is an error easily exposed.

As to the antiquity of this famous head, it was found
in a cavern situated on the bank of a small river where the
soil presents no characters which enable us to fix its pre-
cise geological age. So that to assign to this cranium an
antiquity superior to that of the men of whom I spoke in
a preceding lecture, an existence anterior to the men in
France who, with stone weapons, combated the rhinoceros
and the mammoth, is a supposition purely gratuitous. And,
mark you, Mr. Lyell, the famous English geologist, who
has written a volume to demonstrate the antiquity of man,
was the first to express his serious doubts as to the age of
this cranium. I repeat, the geological conditions in which
it was found do not enable us to fix its precise date ; but
nothing in the whole case authorizes us to consider the
cavern in which it was found as more ancient than the
geological formation which contained the bones of Auri-
gTiac or Moulin-Quignon.

ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 85

Be this as it may, the statement that this cranium re-
sembles no other is an error (Fig. 21). From the first, when
the designs and moulds of the Neanderthal skull spread
over England, English anthropologists, strong partisans of
the antiquity of man, did not hesitate to say that they had
found in their country skulls that much resembled this one.
Later, it was clearly demonstrated that its general form
was no other than that of the Celtic skull. It is unwise to
lay stress upon the frontal protuberance, on the flattening
and elongation of the skull. Here is a smaller head which
presents the same characters. You can even see that the
frontal prominences, uniting at the centre, resemble still
more that of the orang-outang than those of the Neander-
thal skull. Now, this skull is that of an idiot who died
some years since in a hospital of Paris.

Finally, gentlemen, we have proofs of another nature.
The owner of tlie Neanderthal skull, M. Docteur Fullrott,
made moulds of the interior of this cranium, and it is easy
to see that the brain of which we have here the imperfect
reproduction is that of a man belonging without doubt to
a savage race, but who has not less the essential human
characters.

Once more : M. Bruner-Bey, w^hose works on these ques-
tions are of great importance, has made a cast of the in-
terior of a cranium found in a tumulus of Poitou, and he
shows that this mould, taken from an individual of indis-
putable Celtic origin, adapts itself perfectly to the interior
of the Neanderthal skull. So that it is not only in the ex-
terior form of the head that the man of Neanderthal re-
sembles the Celt, but also in the brain.

The demonstration appears to me complete, and we have
no hesitation in recognizing in the so-called pithecoide
(relative of the monkey) a truly human cranium, and, what
is more, a Celtic cranium. The enlarged arch of the eye-
brows is no objection to this conclusion ; for this fact is

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

reproduced in our day, as I have just shown, and as was

also shown by examples at the congress of anthropologists.

To sum up : the theory that man is descended from the

monkey, by means of successive modifications, is in reality

Fig. 21.

An Australian Skull from Western Port, in the Museum of the Roj'al College of
Surgeons, with the Contour of the Neanderthal Skull. Both reduced to one-
thii% the Natural Size.

only a brilliant fancy which has no support in precise facts ;
in most cases it depends upon possibilities and often upon
possibilities in flagrant opposition to facts.

This theory, I hesitate not to say, is without support
from any source ; but especially, and mark me well, it is in
absolute contradiction to the theory of Darwin.

I have dwelt upon the question because it has made
around us a great noise. The idea of giving us the monkey
as our ancestor is impressive, because it is new to certain
persons, though already ancient ; it is impressive by the
species of liberty of thought that it seems to imply. Hence

ON THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 87

it has become as it were popular, and probably you have
already heard it spoken of many times. Another cause of
the notoriety it has acquired is, that it has been sustained
in the name of philosophy and combated in the name of
theology, reappearing consequently in the grand current of
controversy that often carries men of good judgment away
from the ground where they ought to stand.

As for us, gentleman, we do not pretend to be either
theologians or philosophers. We are exclusively men of
science ; we have, then, to disturb us, only the truths of
science. It is in the name of these truths that I have had
to recognize the weakness of science, to say. Whence comes
man ? but, in the name of scientific truth, I can affirm that
we have had for ancestor neither a gorilla nor an orang-
outang nor a chimpanzee ; any more than a seal or a fish^
or any other animal whatever.*

* Sec Appendix H.

LECTURE IV.

PHYSICAL CIIARACTEES OF THE HUMAN EACES.

Gentlemen : I have already given you three lectures
on the history of man. They have all been devoted to the
examination of general questions, the solution of which can
alone throw light on the study of the human races, and
guide us in the midst of the thousands of facts of detail
it involves.

These three lectures constitute the first part of the
collection of facts and ideas that I have undertaken to
expound to you. In them, you know, I considered man in
his relation to the universe and to the earth he inhabits.
We found tliat there exists only one species of man ; tJiat
this species, much more ancient than was formerly believed,
was the contemporary of the elephant and rhinoceros on
the soil of France. Although spread everywhere at pres-
ent, the human species, like other organic and living
beings, had its special centre of creation. It must have
appeared at first on a particular and circumscribed joart of
the globe, situated probably in the centre of Asia. Our
earth, then, was peopled by migration. In the varied jour-
neyings performed to reach all points of his domain, man
has encountered thousands of conditions of existence. He
has accommodated himself to them all — in other words, he
has become acclimated everywhere.

There is another question we had to meet, because it

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN RACES. 89

was seriously put to us, but, to answer which, we had to
confess the insufficiency of present knowledge : it is the
question of the first origin of man. Our answer to this
question was founded on science alone. I have made this
declaration many times ; I repeat it every time I speak
before a new audience. For the most part, the problems
we have considered are treated by theologians and philoso-
phers. I am simply a man of science, and it is in the name
of comparative physiology, of botanical and zoological
geography, of geology and paleontology, in the name of the
laws which govern man as well as animals and plants, that
I have always spoken.

To-day, however, I shall not need to recur, as much as in
preceding lectures, to these terms of comparison. We have
to commence the study of man considered in himself; and,
in the first place, to account in a general way for the
modifications presented by the human type.

These modifications constitute the characters which serve
to distinguish divers groups of men — the different human
races. Before studying these races in detail, we must fix
somewhat the extent and the meaning of these characters.

To give order even to the brief study of the characters
of the human race, it is necessary to separate them into a
certain number of groups. This division is easily made,
because of the multiple nature of man, which at the same
time connects him with the rest of creation, and gives him
a position apart.

Like all organic and living beings, man has a body.
This body will furnish a first class of characters — the
physical characters. Like animals, man is endowed with
instinct and intelligence. Though infinitely more developed
in him, these characters are not changed in their funda-
mental nature. They appear in the various human groups
in phenomena, sometimes very different, as in the case of
the languages. The differences of manifestation of this

90 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

intelligence will constitute the second class of cliaracters —
the intellectual characters.

Finally, it is established that man has two grand facul-
ties, of which we find not even a trace among animals.
He alone has the moral sentiment of good and of evil ; he
alone believes in a future existence succeeding this actual
life ; he alone believes in beings superior to himself, that
he has never seen, and that are capable of influencing his
life for good or evil.

In other words, man alone is endowed with morality and
religion. These two faculties are revealed by his acts, by
his institutions, by facts that differ from one group to ano-
ther, from one race to another. From these is drawn a third
class of characters — the onoral and religious characters.

Let us attend to-day to the physical characters, to those
furnished by the body.

In man, as in animals, the body is made up of organs.
We can not only study the exterior of the body, but we
can also penetrate the interior and discover its anatomy.
Indeed, this is the only means of finding out its most im-
portant organs. In this study we can stop with the form,
the arrangement, or we can go further, and seek to under-
stand the actions of the parts, the functions they perform.
We thus pass from anatomy to physiology. But these
functions may be disturbed by many maladies that cannot
be neglected, and which are the province oixjatliology.

In our present study, we must not neglect any of these
orders of facts. You see how^ we are led to draw, from the
body alone, four categories of characters, namely : I. Ex-
terior characters ; II. Anatomic characters ; III. Physiologi-
cal characters ; IV. Pathological characters.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS.
I. Exterior Characters. — When we see men or ani-
mals, the first thing that strikes us is their size. Our do-

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN RACES. 91

mestic species are made of great and small races, and it is
the same with man.

The extreme dimensions of the human form, whether
great or small, have been very much exaggerated. Every-
where there has been a belief in the existence of races of

Fig. 22

Patagonian.
Ecd Eace. Southern Branch, Pampoan Family.

dwarfs and races of giants. For instance, the Greeks be-
Keved in the existence of a people, called by them pigmies,
whose country they phiced sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, but always beyond the limits of the
world they truly knew^ These w^ere little men about four-

92 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

teen inches in height, who, it was believed, were obhged to
pluck down the com with strokes of the axe, and who
passed a part of their time defending themselves against
the cranes. In the last century this fable of the pigmies
was, so to speak, renewed and applied to the kymos, w4io
were said to inhabit Madagascar. It is needless to add
that, sinc§ we have seen them more closely, pigmies and
kymos have disappeared.

The fables relative to giants are the contrary of the
preceding. Among these fables there are some modern
ones, for a time believed to be founded on real observation.
The first voyagers who doubled Cape Horn found there the
Patagonians, whose dimensions they singularly exagger-
ated. Pigafetta, the companion of Magellan in the first
voyage around the world (1520), pretended that he and his
companions scarcely reached to the height of their waists.
One of his successors, Jofre Loaysa, with still greater ex-
travagance, declared that the heads of the Christians reached
only to the upper part of their thighs. This was, you see,
to attribute to these people a height of thirteen to sixteen
feet.

Time and science have done justice to these fables and
exaggerations. Let us see what are in reality the extremes
presented by the human stature.

It is plain that in this research we must leave out ex-
ceptional individuals, of w^hich we see a certain number in
the fairs and museums, or anywhere, for money. It is a
question neither of General Tom Thumb, whom you have
perhaps met sometimes in the Champs Elysees, nor of the
French or Chinese giants, recently exhibited in Paris. I
will only remark, in passing, that these individual excep-
tions appear among all nations, although more rarely, per-
haps, in the midst of savage populations.

The smallest known race is that of the Bushman, which
inbabits the southern part of Africa ; the greatest is the

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN RACES. 93

Patagoniaii, of wliicli we just named the country. An
Eno-lisli traveller, Barrow, measured all the inhabitants
of a tribe of the first ; a French traveller, Alcide d'Orbigny,
took the exact measure of a great number of individuals
belonging to the second of these two extreme races.

It results from these measurements that the mean height
of the Bushman is four feet three and one half inches, and
that of the Patagonian five feet eight inches. The mean
dijBPerence between the greatest and the smallest human
race is then sixteen and one-half inches.

The smallest Bushman measured by Barrow was a wom-
an who was only three feet ten and one-half inches. The
largest Patagonian measured by D'Orbigny attained six
feet three inches. The greatest difference existing, then,
between normal human individuals is two feet eight and
one-half inches. The ratio between the extremes of height
just named is nearly as 1 to 0.6. These figures signify
much and lead to important consequences.

First, the difference in size among our domestic animals
is much greater than that above indicated. From the
great dogs that promenade in our court-yards, down to cer-
tain dogs which have figured at dog-shows, the ratio is 1 to
0.3. The difference is also as great between the large
brewers' horses of London and horses from Shetland, which
are sometimes not larger than a Newfoundland dog. These
horses and these dogs are, however, only different races of
a single species. One cannot reason, then, from differ-
ences of height to sustain the multiplicity of human
species.

There is another consideration not less important :

From all the data I can gather, it results that the mean
stature of men, the world over, is about five feet three
inches. But this mean, like that given above, results
from very numerous and very diverse heights. If in
thought we place all men in one line according to their

94 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

height, it is easy to see that we should obtain a series in
which the difference from one to the next will not be, per-
haps, the -^xTo*^ ^f ^^ inch.

But this is not all. In this graduated series, the men
of the same race will be far from being placed together.
There will be in this respect the strangest mixture. All
the Patagonians are not nearly six feet three inches in
height, nor all the Bushmen as short as three feet ten and
a half inches. Among our cuirassiers and the hundred
guards of the emperor many individuals would be found
with the first ; the Lapps of the north of Europe and the
Mincopees of the isles of Andaman in the Gulf of Bengal
would mix with the second.

Now, in no other kind of animal, with numerous species
and of limited growth, is there any thing parallel. Tlie
domestic races alone present something like its analogue.
So that, by themselves, these considerations drawn from
the height furnish excellent proof of the unity of the hu-
man species.

The study of proportions would show us like facts and
conduct to similar conclusions. But I leave considerations
of this kind, to pass to other characters almost as striking
as those of height. I v,^ish to speak of those drawn from
the complexion, and first of all from the color of the skin.
The general coloration of the body is a well-defined charac-
ter ; but we need not exaggerate its value.

If you observe several portraits representing individuals
of the white race, you may see that their tint is sometimes
as dark as that of the Guinea negro. In the portrait of
Rammohun-Roy, the celebrated Brahman reformer, the fine-
ness and regularity of his profile attest that he is of the
purest Aryan blood, and his color is that of a negro just a
little blanched. Again, there are Abyssinians whose fea-
tures recall the fine Semitic type, and yet few negroes sur-
pass them in blackness. So all black men are not negroes.

Fig. 23.

A Fellah Woman and Children (Egyptian).
White Race, Aramean Branch, Libyan Family,
5

96 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

Reciprocally, Livingstone has found in the centre of Africa
negroes of the color of cafe au lait.

The color of the human race varies from white, such as
is seen in Dutch and Danish women, to violet or yellow, to
yellow-citron or smoke, to copper-red or brick. By ap-
pealing to your recollections, you can establish a series
passing from light to dark by insensible shades such as
could scarcely be reproduced upon the palette of a painter.

Recollect that some of these extremes of color are fre-
quent among domestic animals, and are sometimes much
greater. With black hens, it is not the skin alone that is
colored. All the great interior membranes, the sheaths
of the muscles, the aponeuroses, as well as the flesh of the
wings, present an aspect very little appetizing. So it is
sought to weed them out of the poultry-yard ; and still in
certain parts of the globe they are constantly produced and
would evidently soon become a race if left to multiply.
Here, again, in the case of animals, the difference from
race to race is much greater than in the case of man.

Sometimes, in the presence of variations of color like
these we have described, we ask if, between the negro and
the white, there do not exist anatomical differences in the
skin ? The minute study of this organ answers us in the
negative.

The skin is composed of three layers, which together
constitute a true organ having its proper functions. So it
is often called the cutaneous organ. On the exterior is
the epidermis^ that dry and insensible layer which covers
the entire body, and protects it against the action of outer
agents.

Interiorly, and immediately above the fatty layer, is the
true skin — it is the essential and living part of the cutane-
ous organ ; it is this which receives the blood-vessels and
nerves.

Between the true skin and the epidermis is a dark lay-

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN RACES. 97

er, composed of distinct cells. It is the mucous membrane
of Malpiglii, so named from the anatomist who first de-
scribed it. The cells that form it are a simple secretion of
the true skin. It is this layer which is the seat of color.
It exists in all men, but the cells that it contains are more
or less colored according to race. In whites themselves, in
certain parts of the bod}", around the nipples, in the specks
of freckles, in the beauty-spots, etc., we sometimes see them
as deep as in the negro.

You see that the color in different human races is, when
developed, only a phenomenon of local coloration, of ex-
actly the same nature as that encountered in races of do-
mestic animals. If time permitted me to enter more fully
into the subject, I could make this fact much more evident,
but the hour advances and I must hasten.

To the skin are attached a certain number of organs
w^hich may be considered as adjuncts. These are chiefly
the villosities or hairs, the sebaceous glands, and the sweat-
glands. Between these annexed organs, there exists a
certain balance which physiology easily explains. So in
glabrous races, that is, races with little or no villosities on
the body, the sebaceous apparatus is much more developed.
This fact is very marked in the African negro, whose skin
sometimes bears slight prominences, sketching a sort of
arabesque by the extraordinary development of these little
organs.

It is to the development of the sebaceous apparatus
that the odor of the negro is due. This odor is so strong,
so persistent, that it suffices to the identification of a negro-
ship a long time after it has left the trade. But it is not
negroes alone that are characterized by malodorous exha-
lations. It is the same with the whites themselves. You
all know that a dog follows his master by the scent.
Savage people, whose senses are more exercised than
ours, distinguish very quickly the general odor which char-

98 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

acterizes a race ; and, in Peru, they give special names to
that of the white and of the black as well as to their own.

Fig. 24.

Oblong and Prognathous Sknll of a Negro ; Side and Front Views, one-third
of the Natural Size.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN RACES. 99

As to the hair which may be seen on different parts
of the body, a special mention is due to that of the head.
All people have more or less hair on the head, and this
gives also very good characters. Among these the most
essential are drawn from the form presented by the trans-
verse cut when examined under the microscope. In the
yellow peoj^le, the Americans and the white allophyles, this
cut is more or less circular. In the Aryans, of which we
are a part, it is oval ; in the negroes it takes the form of an
elongated ellipse. It is evident that a circular cut indicates
a cylindrical hair. Such hair is very coarse and stiff, and
never curling or frizzled ; an oval cut indicates a slight
and regular flattening. In this form the hairs are finer,
and may be made into curls or waves more or less marked.
Finally, the elliptical cut can only appear when the hair is
much flattened, almost like a thick ribbon. These are the
finest, and these alone have the aspect of wool which
characterizes the head of the negro.

Crosses between these different races sometimes produce
very remarkable heads of hair. The negro crossed with
the Brazilian produces the Cafuso, whose hair, forming an
immense wig, is at the same time long, stiff, and kinked.

I would further enlarge upon these exterior characters,
as being the ones of which we can most easily give account,
but time fails me, and I pass to the second class of physical
characters, to those which we must seek in the interior.

II. Anatomic Characters. — The anatomic characters
may be drawn from the solid parts of the body, that is, the
skeleton, from the soft parts, and even from the liquids.
I shall at first confine myself particularly to those displaj^ed
by the head.

In the head itself we must distinguish the cranium from
the face. The first incloses the brain, whence proceed the
organs of sense, with the exception of those of touch, prop-

100 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

erly speaking. Above all, it is the seat of intelligence ;
on these various accounts it merits a separate examination.

The general form of the cranium, that is, the relation be-
tween the longitudinal and transverse diameters, furnishes
an excellent character. When this relation is less than
that of 100 to 78, the cranium is considered as elongated
from front to back : it is dolichoceplialic. When the rela-
tion varies from 100 to 78 or 80, the cranium is medium or
average ; we say it is mesocephalic. Finally, when the
relation is from 100 to 80, and above, the cranium is con-
sidered short, and is said to be hr achy cephalic.

These forms sometimes characterize very large human
groups. So almost all the negroes are dolichocephalic;
nearly all the j^ellow people, and most of the Americans,
are brachycephalic or mesocephalic. Among the whites,
and even sometimes in tw^o populations belonging to the
same branch of the white race, we find the two extremes.
The Germans of the north are dolichocephalic, the Germans
of the south brachycephalic.

While recognizing the importance of the characters
drawn from these general forms, we must guard ourselves
against exaggerating their import or giving them a wrong
signification. Some authors, belonging to the dolichocephalic
races, have pretended that the elongation of the head behind
is a sign of intellectual superioritj-. The fact I have just
stated suffices to refute this conclusion, and nothing justifies
it. The Germans of the south are noways inferior to their
countr^mien of the north. In the Academy of Sciences
in Paris, the brachycephalic crania, or at most the mesoce-
phalic, are in very great majority ; and still, what associa-
tion of men is superior, in an intellectual point of view, to
this philosophical bod}' ?

Analogous indications have been drawn from the
greater or less capacity of the cranium. It has been sup-
posed that this exactly corresponded in measure to the

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN RACES. 101

volume of the brain, and this volume has been regarded as
a sort of measure of intellectual power.

That there is some truth at the bottom of the idea that
a brain sufficiently developed is necessary to give the power
to fulfill its functions, is what all the world admits. But
that intellectual power is measured by the quantity of
cerebral matter entering into the composition of the organ
is in contradiction to the observations and the figures of
many anatomists, among others, of R. Wagner.

In considerations of this nature we do not generally take
account of the stature. Now, although the head does not
enlarge in the same proportion as the rest of the body, it is
not the less true that the body influences its dimensions.

Besides, with organized and living beings, the volume,
the mass of organs, is not ail. Their special energy is
much more. Certainly you all know small persons, of
slender aspect, who are more active and strong than some
of their comrades who are larger and more muscular.
Well, how is it that what is true of flesh, of muscle, is not
also true of brain ?

After the cranium we come to the face. But I will
only speak of a single order of characters drawn from the
jaws and teeth.

Observe a negro, and a European. Look at the jaws
and teeth of the first. You see them project in front. In
the second, on the contrary, teeth and jaws are equally
vertical. The first of these is called prognathism (Fig. 24),
and the peoples or individuals who present them are said
to be prognathous; the second (Fig. 25) takes the name
of orthognathism and characterizes the orthognathous races
or individuals.

Prognathism has long been considered as characterizing
the negro races. Since, we have found it in people who
could not be affiliated with the negro; and, fi nail}', looking
closely into the matter, we have found it in the heart of

Fig. 25.

Side and Front Alews of the Eound and Orthognathou? Skull of a Calmuck,
after Vou Baer. Oue-third the Natural Size.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN RACES. 103

white populations. At Paris, even, it is frequent enough,
particularly among women. This is a fact of which you
can convince yourself, as I have often done during my
rides in the omnibus.

Judging by the crania that we possess, prognathism is
characteristic of a population incontestably European which
lives at the south of the Baltic, the Esthonians. This peo-
ple is, furthermore, the remains of the most ancient race of
Western Europe. It is this race, without doubt, which,
mixing its blood with new-comers, has left in the midst of
our great cities those indications of a prognathous race to
which I have just referred.

After studying the cranium and face separately, we must
examine the head in its ensemble. From this, also, we draw
important characters. I will only mention one, which has
a certain real value, but the signification of which some
liave exaggerated and falsified.

Camper, an anatomist of Holland, studied comparatively
the Greek and Roman medallions and statues, and, struck
with the air of majesty presented by the Greeks, gave for
a reason that the facial angle was greater than in the Ro-
mans (Fig. 26). This angle is formed by two lines which
meet at the extremity of the front teeth, and of w^hich one
passes by the middle of the orifice of the ear, while the
second is tangent to the forehead.

Pushing these researches much further. Camper believed
that he discovered a regular decrease of the facial angle in
the human race. Going further, and applying it to animals,
he placed in a descending scale, man, monkeys, carnivora,
birds, all characterized by smaller and smaller angles.
Whence, to conclude that the facial angle measures, so to
say, the intelligence, is but a step, which was taken with-
out hesitation.

As this conclusion gives great interest to the measure-
ment of the facial angle, many processes and many instru-

104 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

ments have been j^roposed to obtain it with all possible ex-
actitude. The go7iiometer, invented by my assistant M.
Docteur Jacquart, attained this end better than any other.

Jacquart did not stop with making this instrument. He
used it ; and, in a beautiful work, he shows among other
things that the right angle exists in the white race, contrary
to what Camper believed; that we do observe it, in intelli-
gent persons, who are, however, not sensibily superior to
others with a lesser angle. The facial angle cannot, then,
be considered as measuring the intelligence, the reach of
the mind.

M. Jacquart shows, besides, that, in the population of
Paris, the angular differences of which we are speaking are
much more considerable than those that CamjDer regarded
as characterizing races. He shows that here, again, there
is from race to race that entanglement of traits which I have
so many times pointed out. Yet here, as elsewhere, the
average furnishes good characters to determine human
groups.

Again, the skeleton presents important characters.
We ought, at least, to examine the breast, the pelvis, the
bones of the limbs, etc. ; but we must leave this subject, to
say a word on the soft parts.

Regarded in the two extremes of humanity, the white
European and the negro, the nervous system presents a fact
which it is important to point out. With the first, the
nervous centres — the brain and spinal cord — are relatively
more voluminous. In the second, on the contrary, it is the
expansions from the centres — the nerves — which are more
voluminous.

The circulatory apparatus presents a balance some-
what analogous. With the white, the arterial apparatus,
which carries the blood to the organs, is relatively more
developed than the venous apparatus that draws the blood
toward the heart.

Fig. 26.

Greeks op Athens.
Wiute Race, European Branch, Greek Family.

106 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

The blood of the negro, studied in his native country, is
more viscous and darker colored than that of the white.
That of the Creole negro of New Orleans is, on the contrary,
paler and more aqueous, and recalls the blood of the anaem-
ic. So, a simple change of habitat sometimes modifies a
human race in this most profound character — in this liquid
pabulum destined to penetrate and nourish all parts of the
body.

III. Physiological Characters. — I shall dwell briefly
on the physiological characters, and only point out two
general facts, of which you will easily see the importance.

As regards all the great periods of life and all the great
functions, there is a nearly complete identity among all men,
to whatever race they belong.

When this resemblance is not apparent, the cause is not
in the nature of the races, but in the influence of conditions
of existence. This is well proved by the fact that races the
most widely separated resemble each other completely
when they are exposed to identical conditions through a
change of habitat. So, the precocity of the negro has been
cited as distinguishing this race from European nations ;
but, when white people live for generations in hot countries,
they take on the same peculiarity. The negress and the
English Creole of the isles of the Gulf of Mexico are just
alike in precocity.

On the contrary, the study of secondary functions shows
that they vary from one group to another, and sometimes
very widely. But, then, also, we see that the environment,
the manners, the habits, etc., are the cause of these vari-
ations ; and, again, we see races the most unlike come to
resemble each other so much as to be confounded. There
are hunters of English and French descent who have their
senses of sight and hearing as quick and sharp as the red-
skins.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN RACES. 107

111 conclusion, the study of physiological characters
strongly attests the fundamental unity of the human race,
b}'- throwing light on the marvelous flexibility of our organ-
ism.

Fig. 27.

Indian of the Mexican Coast (Aztecs).
Red Race, Northern Branch, Southern Family.

IV. Pathological Characters. — The study of dis-
eases presents entirely similar facts, and conducts to the
same conclusions.

All the human races are accessible to the same diseases.
If any circumstances — isolation, for instance — have pre-
served some one of them from affections common to the
others, a simple coming together suffices for the propaga-
tion of the disease. The eruptive maladies seem to have
been implanted in America by the Europeans ; but, once
implanted among the indigenous races, they have raged

108 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

with a violence unknown to us — a violence whicli is ac-
counted for by the kind of life led by these people.

Yet immunities, at least relative, have been proved.
For instance, the negro race is much less sensible to the
emanations of marshes, to the miasms from stagnant wa-
ters, than the white race. On the other hand, it is much
more easily affected by phthisis.

Other more complete immunities have been observed,
and some have even wished, in consequence, to justify the
admission of a distinct human species. But these immuni-
ties, even the best marked, disappear with time, especially
under the influence of conditions of existence. I will give
you a curious example :

Ele^Dhantiasis is a hideous malady, peculiar to certain
warm countries, which swells and deforms, sometimes in
the strangest way, the parts of the body it attacks. In
one of the Antilles, in Barbadoes, this disease was seen
from the first among the negroes, but had constantly spared
the whites till 1704. That year a white person was seized,
and since then the malady has extended in this race; but
it never attacks any but Creoles. Up to the present time,
Europeans, who settle in this isle, enjoy the ancient im-
munity. You see it is only a question of complete accli-
mation.

Gentlemen, I believe I have sketched, in this one lecture,
a body of facts and ideas which, at the museum, occupied
at least ten lectures, each as long as this to-day. So, you
see how many things I have been compelled to omit. In-
complete as is this presentation, it is sufficient, I think, to
establish clearly some general facts, and prepares the way
for an important conclusion.

You have seen that, considering man from the point of
view of his height and color, we may form a graduated
series which passes from one extreme to the other by
insensible gradations. You have seen further that, in this

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE HUMAN RACES. 109

series, groups the most distinct by otiier cbaracters — the
most separated by their habitat — are found intermixed.

Permit me to add that we should get the same result,
whatever the exterior or anatomical character upon which
we establish our series.

The study of functions, whether performed in a normal
manner, in a state of health, or under the perturbing in-
fluence of disease, shows us identical fundamental facts
revealing the unity of human nature.

Even apparent exceptions come under the general facts
when we take account of the influence of the environment
which, as you have seen, effaces some of the most marked
diflferences.

In this examination of the physical man, every thing-
leads to the conclusion which we had already reached in
our earlier lectures ; and we can repeat with redoubled
certainty : the differences among human groups are char-
acters of race, and not of species ; there exists only one
human species ; and, consequently, all men are brothers —
all ought to be treated as such, whatever the origin, the
blood, the color, the race.

Gentlemen, the lectures I have given here require a
special preparation, and are not always easy to prepare;
but I shall not regret either my time or my pains, if I am
able, in the name of science, and that alone, to render a
little more clear and precise for you this great and sacred
notion of the brotherhood of man.

LECTURE V.

INTELLECTUAL AISTD MORAL CHAKACTEKS OF THE HUMAN
KACE.

Gextlemex : I resume my discourse for the fifth time
on the same subject. You have already, on four different
occasions, studied man ; and, again, man is the subject of
this lecture.

On the preceding occasions I ran over some of the
general questions that arise concerning the history of the
human race. Depending ahvays and exclusively upon sci-
ence, I have shown that this species is unique ; that all
men are of the same species ; and that, in consequence of
this fact, they ought to regard each other as brothers, what-
ever the color of the skin, whatever language they speak,
whatever country they inhabit.

This species at first occupied a very limited part of the
earth. It spread all over the globe at an earlier epoch
than w^as formerly believed ; more recent researches have
demonstrated that man existed in France along with the
hyena, the elephant, the rhinoceros — that is to sa}^, along
with animals seen, in our day, only in distant countries.

As man appeared at first on a restricted point of the
globe, and is found to-day everywhere, it is evident that he
has traveled in all directions from his ce?itre of creation^
and peopled the earth by migration much as do the Euro-
peans at the present time. These journeyings have exposed
him to all the influences which can be encountered on the

INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS. m

surface of our planet, and he lias become acclimated every-
where as we see him to-day.

In the study of general questions relative to the history
of our species, we had to ask w4iat was the origin of man.

On this point I have been obliged to confess the insuffi-
ciency of actual knowledge. But, if I was not able to say
whence man came, I could say, in the name of science,
whence he did not come ; I could affirm that our ancestor
was not an animal — neither a monkey, nor a seal, nor any
other animal whatever.

At our last meeting we commenced the study of the
general characters presented by the human species, and we
examined ii& physical characters ; that is, those which may
be drawn from the body studied in a state of health and of
disease. We were led also to pass in review its exterior
characters, its anatomic characters, physiological and path-
ological. We thus obtained an idea of the general nature
of man, considered exclusively from "an organic point of
view. Well, this study of man, in his material relations, led
us to the conclusion that there is but one human species,
so that it confirmed the results at which we arrived in our
first lectures.

But is the body all of man ? And, after studying the
material being that strikes our senses, is there nothing more
to study ? Science will answer.

When a naturalist studies ants, he is not content with
describing the thorax, the abdomen, the jaws and the legs.
He shows also how they construct their ant-hill, and to
what use its chambers are destined ; its galleries, where
so manj^ and such divers things are stored ; he shows
further, how they raise their larvae and their young ones ;
how they hold in captivity the plant-lice destined to furnish
an aliment which they secrete, as do the cows and sheep we
keep in our stables.

When a naturalist gives the history of bees, he does not

112 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

limit himself to a description of their body and wings ; he
is careful to show how they build their hives, gather and
knead the wax to construct the comb in which they deposit
honey, the first sweet known to man. He calls the atten-
tion of the reader or listener to that unique female, always
alone in each hive ; he shows the respect and care that all
the bee-workers have for this female, who is at once their
queen and their mother.

In other words, the naturalist studies the instincts of
the ants and the bees.

When he attempts the history of man, shall he put aside
that which in him represents these instincts ? Evidently
not.

Consequently he must not stop w^ith the body. He
must consider the intelligence which is in us, and which, up
to a certain point, we have in common with animals ; he
must show that it is this element of our being w^iich recog-
nizes the outer world, which judges, which aspires. His
work will be very imperfect, if he neglects this something
of which the nature escapes us, but of which the power is
such, that through it man has not only vanquished all ani-
mals, whatever their defenses, their size, or their strength,
but he has overcome and made to work, as his servants,
even the immutable forces of the inanimate world, achiev-
ing all distances, thanks to the railroad ! outstripping time,
thanks to the telegraph ! and even annihilating pain, thanks
to chloroform !

Then, along with the material characters Avhich we stud-
ied at our last lecture, we now take up intellectual char-
acters.

It is our distinct intention, in taking up characters of a
nature so new, still to remain exclusively on the ground of
science.

We know the existence of faculties, and we shall point
out their most general manifestations ; but we shall have

INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS. II3

no concern with the nature of these faculties. In a word.

we are not philosophers. Here, as in preceding lectures,
we shall remain a man of science — a naturalist, and noth-
ing else.

It will be impossible for me to examine these characters
in detail. I shall neglect several, and limit myself to say-
ing something on language, on writing, on the fundamen-
tal forms of society, on industry, and on dress.

I. Language, — It will not be denied that the most es-
sential of all the manifestations of intelligence is language.

"Animals have voice, man alone has speech." This
phrase is from an ancient philosophic naturalist — from the
great Aristotle, who lived some four centuries before our
era ; it is as true to-day as it was more than two thousand
years ago. In fact, man alone possesses articulate speech.

But, you all know that the manifestations of speech
vary from people to people. Each of these manifestations
— the languages, as we call them — constitutes one of the
most essential characters of the different human groups.
You all know a German, a Spaniard, an Englishman, by
his language. But this is not the limit of the scientific im-
portance of this character. Unhappily, I cannot here enter
into details. I shall only attempt to show you, in a few
words, how the study of language throws light on the
history of human groups, even in the case of those who
have lost all historic data.

You know that in France other languages than French
are spoken, and that, on all sides of us, we find the Gascon
in the south, the bas-Breton in Brittany, the Alsatian in
Alsace, etc. Whence comes this diversity of language
among a people at present so remarkably homogeneous ?

History answers this question. It teaches us that, until
a certain epoch, Languedoc, Alsace, Brittany, formed so
many separate states, having each its own language. From
this fact we are enabled to draw important consequences.

114 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

When we encounter a group actually designated by a
single name, and when we find in this group secondary
groups speaking diverse languages, we may ahnost to a
certainty conclude that formerly all these secondary groups
had their individual life, their political independence.

The study of language conducts us still further.

When, in place of mere juxtaposition, each remaining
in the place it has occupied for an indefinite time, the dif-
ferent nations, from any cause whatever, come to be mixed
together, they each bring their language ; and, in conse-
quence of the fusion, each brings his part of the language,
that becomes common. A language so formed is a mixed
language, which consists of words and turns of phrases re-
calling the mother-languages which gave it birth.

Here, again, history shows us that this thing has actu-
ally been done. The English language, for example, has
words and expressions which bring to mind the languages
of all the races that have been mixed and confounded in
that island.

Consequently, when we enter for the first time a country
of which we know not the history, and find a population
presenting in its language words and phrases borrowed
from other languages, on the right and on the left, we are
authorized to conclude that this population results from the
mixture of anthropological elements, which imjoly the lin-
guistic elements themselves.

We may go still further.

Language, you know, changes — is transformed with
time. The French language of our day is not the French
of five centuries ago ; the Frenchman of to-day must study
specially and with dictionaries before he can read the French
of the past.

So, language changes, even when there has been no
displacement of population. And all the more when im-
migration intervenes; if mixtures occur, the language will

INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS. 115

be altered, and a new language will arise. This new lan-
guage may differ so much from the primitive one as to
appear at first to have no resemblance to it. This may
happen not only for one people and for one language,
but for many. A language may also become the mother
of many different languages. But these daughter lan-
guages always j^reserve something in common with that
from which they descended ; and men who have made these
questions the object of continued study, the linguists,
know very well how to discover the filiation. They know
how to rise from derivative languages to their primitive
tongues. In this w^ay they attach together people that
were thought to be very distinct because they spoke lan-
guages that at first seemed very different.

It is by this study, wholly recent, but which for some
years has advanced with the stride of a giant, that we are
able to unite in one source most of the people who now
cover almost the whole of Europe ; such as, on the one
hand, the French, the Germans, the Swedes, and the Span-
iards ; and, on the other, the people who inhabit Persia
and the valley of the Ganges. These people constitute
what is called the Aryan race.

More marvelous still, thanks to the comparison of lan-
guages, a philosopher of Geneva, M. Adolph Pictet, was
able to trace a sort of history of the primitive Aryans, the
common parents of Europeans, Persians, and Indians. He
retraced their manner of life, and, although they left no
historical data, he has shown almost in detail the point of
civilization at which they had arrived.

I cannot, you know, enter into details relative to this
science, at once so recent and already so immense that it
has been called comparative linguistic science. I can only
indicate the great divisions, because, perhaps I shall, by-
and-by, have to refer to them.

All the languages spoken on the surface of the earth

116 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

have been divided into three fundamental groups ; these
are the monosyllabic languages^ the agglutinative lan-
guages^ and the flexible languages.

The monosyllabic languages are the most imperfect.
Each of their words consists of one syllable. As an exam-
ple, I will name the Chinese, which is a monosyllabic lan-
guage, 2^cir excellence. In this language each Avord presents
itself with a sense perfectly absolute, and the delicacies of
our language, even the distinctions of time, of place, of
going, of coming, etc., can be translated only by a kind of
paraphrase.

The agglutinative tongues form the second stage of lan-
guage ; here there are words, placed after the fundamental
conception, which serve to modify the primitive sense —
roots, to emplo}^ the expression in use. As examples of
agglutinative languages, I will name the negro languages,
and those spoken by yellow people, and also by very small
numbers of white people.

Finally, the highest development of language is that of
flexible language, so named because, by simple changes in
the termination of a word, we can change and modify the
absolute sense, and make it express divers shades of mean-
ing, thus : je parle {I sj^eaJc) now ; je parlerai {T shall
speak) to-morrow. Almost all the white races speak flexi-
ble languages.

II. Writing. — Speech is evidently the first element in
the formation of societies ; writing is the most essential
element of the progress of these societies. It is speech
fixed. This alone permits the transmission of the results
of our efforts to the most distant descendants — of the accu-
mulation of the treasures that each generation has sepa-
rately acquired. I should like to dwell upon its history ;
but I should be drawn too far, and so, for writing as for
language, I can only indicate a few facts.

Almost with the lov/est savages we find means to aid

INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS.

117

the memory, and serve as souvenirs of events to which more
or less importance is attached. These are called rtmemonic
signs. They are sometimes stones, sometimes pieces of

Fig. 29

Fig. 28.

jj- n-.c. .^J.

6 5 4 3-1

^^^WMf

Indian Bark-lettek.

Indian Bark-letter.

Explanation of Fig. 28.— On one occasion a party of explorers, with two In-
dian guides, saw one morning, just as they were about to start, a pole stuck
in the direction they were going, and holding at the top a piece of hark,
covered with drawings, which were intended for the information of any
other Indians who might pass that way. This is represented in Fi?. 28. No.
1 represents the subaltern officer in 'command of "the party. He is drawn
with a sword, to denote his rank. No. 2 denotes the secretary. He is repre-
sented as holding a book, the Indians having understood him to be an at-
torney. No. 3 represents the geologist, appropriately indicated by a ham-
mer. Nos. 4 and 5 are attaches ; No. 6 the interpreter. The eroup of figures
marked 9 represents seven infantry soldiers, each of whom, as shown in
group No. 10. was armed with a musket. No. 15 denotes that they had a
separate fire, and constiiuted a separate mess. Nos. 7 and 8 represent the
two Chippewa guides. These are the only human figures drawn without
the distinguishing symbol of a hat. This was the characteristic seized on
by them, and generally employed by the Indians, to distincruish the 7'ed from
the ivhite race. Nos. 11 and 12 represent a prairie hen and a green tortoise,
which constituted the sum of the preceding day's chase, and were eaten
at the encampment. The inclination of tiie pole was designed to show the
course puresued; and there were three hacks in it below^ the scroll of bark,
to indicate the estimated length of this part of the journey, computing from
water to water.

Explanation of Fig. 29. — This figure gives the biography of Wiugemund, a
noted chief of the Delawares. No. 1 shows that "he belonged to the oldest
branch of the tribe, which had the tortoise on their symbol. No. 2 is his
totem, or symbol; No. 3 is the sun, and ttie ten strokes represent ten war-
parties in which he was engaged. Those figures on the left represent the
captives which he made in each of his excursions, the men being distin-
guished from the women, and the captives being denoted by having heads,
while a man without his head is of course a dead man. The central figures
represent three forts v,^hich he attacked; No. 8, one on Lake Erie; No. 9,
that of Detroit; and No. 10. Fort Pitt, at the junction of the Alleghany and
the Monongahela. The sloping strokes denote the number of his followers.

118 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

wood sbajDed in divers ways. A mode of appeal to the
memory, fomid in both the Old and the New World, con-
sists in uniting packages of strings of diflferent colors, on
w^hich are made knots of divers forms. These are called
quijypus. You make, so to speak, a quippu every time you
tie a knot in your handkerchief to enable you to recall
something.

Picturing objects, men, events, in a more or less faithful
manner, is not writing; it is what is Q^Xi^^ pictography.
Such are those gross representations employed even to-day
by the Indians of North America to transmit information
(Figs. 28 and 29).

When the object figured has a conventional signification,
we may say that writing has begun. For example, the
idea of prudence would be represented by a serpent, that
of force by a lion. This manner of translating thought is
symbolic, ideographic writing. It presents many stages.
The hieroglyphics seen on Egyptian and Mexican monu-
ments belong here. But all these signs do not constitute
veritable writing.

In reality, this appears only when the signs employed
represent the sounds of the language. After reaching this
point, writing again presents two very different stages.
Each syllable may have its particular character ; or, better
still, the elements of the syllable maybe represented. This
last form constitutes writing, properly speaking. It is this
that we employ. The collection of signs we call an alpha-
bet; and this alphabet, which constitutes the first step of
elementary instruction, is certainly one of the most marvel-
ous inventions of the human mind. So almost all the an-
cients attributed to it a divine origin.

III. Prhnitive Forms of Society. — As I just said to you,
it is by language that societies begin, and by writing that
they make the greatest progress in ciYilization. But, be-
fore they attain civilization, they have long halting-places

INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS. 119

to get over, and, regarding the human races in their ensem-
ble^ we see three very distinct kinds of primitive society.

The lowest degree of human association is people that
hunt and fish ; and this inferiority is easily explained. A
society composed entirely of hunters cannot be numerous,
because it must live on the game it kills. Therefore, a
great space is needed to nourish a sparse population. Be-
sides, the hunter's chances are for the day ; he is never sure
of a living for to-morrow. This incessant uncertainty pre-
vents him from directing his intelligence toward more ele-
vated subjects. Hunters, besides, have incessantly to watch
their hunting-grounds to prevent encroachments. In other
words, the hunter is the image of war. Wars easily arise
between neighboring populations placed in identical condi-
tions. These wars are without mercy, for each prisoner is
one more mouth to feed ; kill him, then. Hence, hunting-
tribes are almost inevitably courageous, sometimes heroic,
but warlike and cruel.

As soon as man domesticates certain animals — cattle,
sheep, or llamas — as soon as he becomes pastoral, his to-
morrow is assured. He can at once begin to occupy him-
self with something besides his food ; and we see societies
of this kind begin to make progress. However, pastoral
people need vast spaces for their animals ; these promptly
exhaust the herbage of a canton ; it becomes needful to go
elsewhere after food for the animals which supply milk and
flesh, the nourishment of the master, and so a pastoral
population cannot exist in great numbers. They easily be-
come nomadic. In their migrations the hordes meet and
dispute by force of arms for the precious pasturage. War
breaks them up ; but prisoners may be utilized by the con-
queror, and their food will not be a great sacrifice. They
are spared, and slavery is born.

Society takes its third form, when man finds that the
vegetable kingdom furnishes more abundant and reliable
6

120

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

food than that obtained from animals — when he becomes an
agriculturist. Besides, agriculture gives him leisure. His
manners soften. War, when it breaks out, becomes less
cruel. Prisoners employed to work in the field can render
services more and more considerable. Slaver}^ becomes
serfdom. Relieved from imperious material necessities, the
intelligence of the master awakens and enlarges. A true
civilization may arise and grow among agriculturists.

Fig. 30.

Centuries ago Europeans attained a social state permit-
tin «• the degree of civilization of which we are so proud,
and this leads me to make an observation.

Too often, under the influence of our actual superiority,
we disdain the people who are behind, whether in the pas-

INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS. 121

toral state or in the state of liiiiiters. We proclaim them
incapable of reaching our level.

This opinion is nowhere justified. Forget not that we
have passed by the same halting-places. Forget not,
above all, that many civilizations have preceded our own.
Two thousand years before our era the Chinese raised
monuments that still excite the admiration of travelers, cul-
tivated the mulberry, raised the silk-worm, and possessed
notions of astronomy. Egyptian civilization is still more
ancient. You saw proof of this at the Universal Exposi-
tion. In the temple raised under the direction of N. Mari-
ette you must have admired, among other things, that
magnificent statue of Chefren placed at the bottom of the
hall, and which dates four thousand years before our era.
At this time we were true savages, covered with the skins
of beasts, and carrying on our persons, under the pretext
of embellishing ourselves, paints and tattooing like those
of the most backw^ard races of our own day. The effect of
this should be, on the one band, to awaken our modesty,
and on the other to render us indulgent to people who are
yet at the point which we have escaped.

IV. Industries, — It is in the midst of primitive societies
that industries are born and flourish. However low a peo-
ple may be, it always has its own proper industries. Man
is essentially an industrious being.

All industries suppose utensils ; and the matter of which
these utensils are made furnishes the means of determining
to a certain extent the degree of civilization attained by
people whom we know only by traces they have left.

In the beginning w^e see stone alone used to fabricate
utensils and weapons ; for these two things proceed to-
gether. Everywhere, man is at first content to shape
more or less perfectly matter furnished him by the soil.
Look at these samples of stones (Fig. 30) which have
served as hatchets, whether for domestic use or war. You

122

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN,

see they are fashioned very simply. These objects came
from our soil ; they served our first ancestors, and attest
the truth I have just stated.

In proportion as man's progresses, he is not content
simply to shape the stone ; he polishes it. His first at-

FiG. 31.

tempts in this way are coarse enough. At first the edge
of the hatchet alone is polished; later the entire hatchet,
and sometimes in a remarkable manner (Fig. 31).

INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS.

123

posed

as a prize,

and Achilles

Fig. 32.

The hatchets as well as the knives are generally of
silex, that is, of that species of stone which formerly served
as flint in striking fire. Its hardness explains why it was
cliosen for these purposes. When it began to fail they
could employ others. Finally, they fell back on shells, and
it is impossible not to admire some
of their w^orks executed with such
imperfect instruments, with frag-
ments of stone less hard than our
silex, and the debris of marine
shells. After stone appeared the
metals ; but not iron, of which we
know so well the uses and which
alone has made possible the mira-
cles of our modern industry. Cop-
per and bronze preceded iron ; in
America copper, in Europe bronze,
came after stone.

Finally, iron made its appear-
ance, and many evidences prove
that from its first discovery its
value was understood. In the
gymnastic plays celebrated by
Achilles on the tomb of his friend
Fatroclus, at the epoch of the
Trojan War, twelve centuries be-
fore our era, a mass of iron is pro-

himself speaks of its importance.
The diversity of material em-
ployed in utensils marks the true boomekang.
stages in the history of ancient

peoples. At this time we generally admit as distinct pe-
riods the age of stone, the age T)f bronze, the age of iron.
The age of stone is divided into two periods, according as

124 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

the utensils and weapons were polished or only shaped. It
is to this most ancient period that the population belonged
which lived in Europe with the elephant and rhinoceros.

I must refer you to the special history of the several
races for further details of their industries. But I will add
a few facts to the preceding. Let us speak a word about
the warlike industries.

Wherever human society exists, we find instruments of
war. After the need of food, it seems the most pressing
want of man is to kill or enslave his kind. We may say
that man is a warlike being.

Among the lowest people of the globe we find ofi'ensive
and defensive arms; and everywhere those at the bottom
of the scale astonish us by the ingenuity of these arms.
The Australians, certainly a most inferior people, use a not
very large but very thick shield. Their skill in parrying
strokes is most remarkable, as all travelers admit. The
same people use curious weapons ; one, called the boome-
rang (Fig. 32), is a bit of hard wood, very flat, sharp, and
more or less curved. The inhabitants know how to throw
this little piece of wood so that, after it has struck the en-
emy or the game, it rises in the air, turns, and falls into
the hand of the thrower. The boomerang realizes, then,
the enchanted arms spoken of in the old fables — arms
which, after having struck the mark, come back themselves
to their possessor.

V. Dress. — If I point out some facts relative to dress,
it is to show you how much of connection, of real resem-
blance, there is between the most savage and the most
civilized people.

Everywhere and always man has sought to embellish
himself; sometimes by acting on himself, sometimes by
borrowing the elements of his dress from without. In
the tombs discovered from time to time which inclose
the remains of men with their stone hatchets, used in

INTELLECTUAL CUARACTERS.

125

France against the elephant and rhinoceros, in those tombs
I say, we find collars (Fig. 33) made of morsels of shells
or small corals which had not, in the eyes of their possess-
ors, a less value than the precious stones have for us. We
might almost define man as a being who ornaments him-
self; and cei'tainly here is a great diff"erence separating
him from the animals. I shall not dwell on the difi'erent

Fig. 33.

Necklace.

materials taken from the exterior world to cover our bodies
and embellish us. Were you to see a woman of Tahiti in
grand costume, you would remark that when our grand-
mothers had contrived the panniers, and the women of our
day the crinoline, they only borrowed from the children
of the South Sea a part of their attire.

It is worthy of attention that, under the pretext of
embellishing himself, man has almost always sought to
modify his own body. So the Chinese women, in order to
make their feet very small, cripple themselves in so grave
a manner that often the little children succumb in the
operation. The bones of the heel, in place of elongating
behind, are violently displaced and directed downward, so
that the women walk on their own heels as on the heels

126 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

of their shoes. The toes are likewise turned under, the
big-toe alone being in place. Our women do not go so
far; but you know women who, to make the feet small,
fear not to give themselves corns, and jnany men do the
same.

At the Philippines, the group of isles that you see at
the east of Asia, is a people whose women attach great
importance to having the largest possible fist. To make it
large, they swaddle the arms, which consequently remain
slender, while the fist enlarges in a fashion very repulsive
to our European eyes.

But the head seems to have been, by preference, the
object of these strange caprices, probably because it is
the part of the body most evident and most important.
Some people seek to change completely the form of the
cranium. For this purpose they place on the heads of chil-
dren, immediately after birth, contrivances which project
them forward or backward, and then, by pressing tightly
behind and before, the head is made flat. There is a peo-
ple on the western side of America which surrounds the
head of the infant with a bandage so as to give it the form
of a sugar-loaf.

I must remind you that among ourselves the ears are
still pierced to suspend ornaments from them. If men
have generally renounced this fashion, women remain very
faithful to it. But all the other parts of the visage have
been submitted to the same mutilations, the nose, the lips,
the cheeks themselves have been pierced, always to suspend
or introduce into the openings some morsel of wood, of
stone, of bone, as ornament.

The face and the forehead are frequently decorated
with divers tattooings (Figs. 34 and 35), made sometimes by
pricking, and sometimes by cutting the skin. At the Mar-
quesas Isles, not only the countenance, but the entire body
s tattooed. You see here the figure of a man (Fig. 36)

INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS.

127

and jDerliaps you think bim covered with a motley cos-
tume ; no, it is simply tattooing.

Jest not too much at these ornaments of savages. Our
ancestors wore the same, and the fashion is not wholly
effaced with us. More than one of you, doubtless, has on
the arm or on the breast some red or blue figure represent-
ing a heart pierced, two swords crossed, an anchor, or a
hammer, symbols of your profession.

Fig. 34.

Fig. 35.

Head of New-Zealandek.

Head of New-Zealander.

Along with these tattooings incrusted in the skin by
various processes, we may place also the paintings. Here,
again, is a means of embellishing that every jDeople has
practised and practises still. Sometimes these paintings
have precise significations ; there are the paintings of war,
the paintings of peace, the paintings oi fetes ^ etc. We do
not go so far ; but w^e must not forget that the most civil-
ized Europeans have painted and still paint the counte-

128

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

nance. Our grandmothers habitually used white, and,
above all, red ; they put on patches, that is to say, small
rounds of court-plaster, to give beauty to the skin by con-

FiG. 36.

Caboline-Islandee.

trast. And to-day, you know, our fashionable women tint
themselves so well that a word has been invented on this

INTELLECTUAL CHARACTERS.

129

subject. So we find, in our most elevated classes, that
which seems so strange in savages.

Fig. 37.

Fijian Modes of dressing the Haik.

130 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

The head of hair offers the same considerations. With
savages as with us, it is an object of no less special care.
Negroes, Hottentots, Polj^nesians, etc., stiffen their hair;
with grease, and color it with powders, red, yellow, white,
etc. (Fig. 37). Everywhere they decorate it with flowers,
feathers of all sorts, brilliant crystals, grains of glass.
Well, our fathers pomaded and powdered themselves ; our
women pomade themselves, and put flowers, feathers, and
diamonds, in their hair, which are, after all, only crystals,
more or less dear. And as to our pomades, whatever name
we give them, they always have, for foundation, the oil of
almonds, or the fat of pork. You see that, between the
article used by savages and that we make ourselves, there
is no great difference.

III. Moral and Religious Characters. — We pass to
another order of characters. By his body, I repeat, man is
an animal, nothing more, nothing less ; by his intelligence
he is infinitely superior to animals. But, to judge by fun-
damental phenomena, the nature of our intelligence does
not differ from that which they manifest.

Are we, then, only a more intelligent kind of animal ?
I have already answered this question. No ; we are not
animals, we are something else ; for, besides the phenom-
ena which we have in common with them, we have our
special character, connected w^ith faculties, of which we find
not the least trace in the most elevated animals. These
faculties are morality and religion.

I. Morality. — Among all people, in all races, there are
expressions which mean good and bad, honest man and
scoundrel ; consequent!}', all men have the abstract notion
of good and evil.

Objections have been made to this idea that morality
is an attribute of man ; or, rather, difficulties have been
raised on the subject. Some say, for example, that animals
also know what is good and what is bad. This is true for

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTERS. 131

our most perfect domestic animals, as the dog. Thanks to
our superior intelligence, we have accustomed them to that
which is good and had for us. But leave them in a savage
state, and you will never find them doing any thing to
which you can attach the notion here implied. Man is cer-
tainly the only being that we see war against pain — physi-
cal evil — that he may reach moral good.

It has been said again that morals differ from people to
people, and the attempt has been made to draw from this
an inference that morality is not characteristic of man.
The faculty itself is here confounded with its manifestations.
We forget that the same sentiment can be expressed by
very different and sometimes opposite acts. I will take, for
example, those which testify to politeness and the respect
we pay to superiors. In the same case, the European rises
and uncovers his head ; the Turk, on the contrary, remains
with the head covered, and the Polynesian sits. These con-
trary acts are not less, the one than the other, acts of defer-
ence.

We must place ourselves at this point of view to judge
of morahty. We must, in such eases, and, above all, when
it is a question of inferior peoples, forget our own notions
on this subject, and seek after the general ideas of the peo-
ple we are studying. We must recur to what has taken
place with us at certain epochs, and then we shall find that
there is not as much difference as we imagined between the
most civilized and the most savage people. We shall re-
turn to the subject in treating the history of races. To-day
I can only say a few words relative to three chief principles :
Respect for property, respect for the life of others, and re-
spect for one^s self

I. Respect for Property.~Vi has been said that the
notion of property does not exist among savage people.
This is an error. With them, arms, utensils, instruments,
are strictly personal property, as with us ; but some travel-

132 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

ers have been deceived by the existence, among hunting-
tribes, of another kind of property, communal property, if I
may so speak. Among these people the ground does not
belong to the individual, but to the entire tribe. Under
this relation the property is so well known that war is the
consequence of the least violation of the hunting-limits.

Certain races have been accused of being essentially
thievish. This reproach is brought particularly upon the
negroes of the Gulf of Guinea, and upon the Polynesians.
They have been accused of stealing even the nails of the
ship. But let me remind you what iron is for people who
do not have it. It is more precious to them than gold.
Well, suppose there should arrive among us a ship, gold
clad and nailed with diamonds and rubies. Do you believe
it would go out intact from our ports ? Remark further,
that, among the negroes of Guinea and Polynesia, those
who steal of their comrade are dishonored and punished as
they would be with us. They have the idea of respect for
property the same as ourselves.

II. Respect for Life. — Everywhere the life of man
is sacred ; everywhere the murderer is punished ; but, with
ourselves, circumstances determine the nature of the act.
Nobody would treat as an assassin him who beats fairly in
a duel ; the soldier who has killed with his hand a great
number of enemies is decorated ; very far from being
punished, he is recompensed. With savages the formula is
still more elastic. For him the stranger is always an
enemy ; besides, vengeance is in his eyes a virtue, and when
he has a murder to avenge he cares little to strike the
murderer himself. Provided he punishes a member of his
family or his tribe, his vengeance is satisfied ; whence re-
sults the had blood between European travelers and the
Polynesians in particular. These people have too often
complained of violence exercised by Europeans, who have
left without being punished. The savage watches for those

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTERS. I33

who come after the really guilty, sets a trap for them, and
massacres the innocents. He applies his moral law, and we
find the theory horrible. But forget not our middle age;
we have got the start a little, but, in our day, if the vendetta
were not abolished in Corsica, it would be the same, as it
was the same in Scotland between clan and clan.

For the rest, gentlemen, the question of respect for the
life of others is one of those that I least like to enter upon,
because I cannot speak without blushing for the white
race. You know that it rules everywhere, but some of you
do not know, jDcrhaps, that everj^where devastation and
massacre have marked its steps round the w^orld. It seems
that it has used its superiority to annihilate its sister races,
and reign on their tombs.

HI. Respect for Self. — I have showni you that the evils
of which we accuse the savages exist with us. Permit me
to show you among them the good of which civilized
people pretend to have the monopoly. The sentiments of
honor and of modesty are certainly two of the most noble
and most delicate of the respect due to one's self. We find
these two sentiments developed sometimes in a high degree
in the most savage peoples.

It is evident that the idea of modesty must vary from
one region to another ; it cannot be the same among jDeople
forced by the climate to go naked, and among those who
are compelled, by the rigors of climate, to wear clothes.
We ought, in this respect, to look for marked differences,
and to take account of these exigencies ; besides, from
the nature of the subject, I cannot enter into details, and
I will only say that more than one traveler has expressed
his astonishment to find more of true modesty among naked
savages than among civilized and well-clothed people.

Honor is, perhaps, the sentiment which is most uni-
formly manifested among these people. To obey the sense
of honor, they hesitate not to provoke torments ; to brave,

134 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

and even to solicit, death. A young Kaffre chief is con-
demned to death ; he may be pardoned on the condition of
losing his ostrich-feather, which for him represents epau-
lets ; he demands, as a favor, to be thrown to the crocodiles
rather than be dishonored. The red-skin made a prisoner,
bound to the post of torture, defies his enemies to ex-
tract from him the least sign of suffering.

That which we call chivalric generosity exists among
the most savage peoples. Two Irishmen quarreled one day
with some Australians ; they were without arms. Instead
of profiting by this advantage, the savages gave them arms
that they might defend themselves.

In our war at Tahiti, Admiral Bruet, commander of the
French forces, took a bath one day in a river of the interior
of the isle, while a well-armed chief belonging to the enemy
was concealed near by. When peace was gained, this chief
came to see the admiral, and easily showed him that for
nearly two hours his life had been in his power. " Why
did you not draw ? " said the admiral. " I should have
been dishonored in the eyes of my people," replied the
native, " if I had killed by surprise a chief such as thou."

See how the people called savages often conduct them-
selves. Would we do better ?

You see, gentlemen, and you may fearlessly say, to
the honor of our species, that morality, in its more serious
as well as in its more delicate aspects, is found among
all men ; and, decisively, man is a moral being.

II. JieUgion. — I come now to another order of consid-
erations, that it will jDerhaps surprise you to hear me dis-
cuss. I have said, at different times, that I wished to remain
a man of science, that I did not wish to enter here upon
either philosophy or theology, and yet I am going to speak
of religion. I shall continue faithful to my programme.
It is as a naturalist that I shall take up the subject. As
for morality, I showed the existence of the fiiculty : then I

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTERS. 135

pointed out some general facts, reserving the special facts
for the history of races. To-day, as heretofore, I shall
avoid with care the dogmatic and the theologic side of the
discussion.

The first fact to establish is the universality of the mani-
festations which belong to religion. In every countrj^,
with all peoples, in all races, we find the belief in beings
superior to man, and influencing his destinj' for good or
evil. Everywhere we find the belief in another life succeed-
ing to the actual life. These two notions lie at the founda-
tion of all religions, and wdioever admits them is religious.
We can say, then, of man generally, that he is certainly re-
ligious.

Objections have been made to the generality of this
character. Let us rapidly examine the case.

Some authors affirm that there exist atheistic people.
They have cited in proof the Australians of whom I have
already spoken, and Bushmen. These are mistaken asser-
tions ; but this error may be explained. Three causes, act-
ing together or separately, have contributed to a misunder-
standing of the religious beliefs of the inferior races of hu-
manity.

The first is the belief of travelers. When these travel-
ers are missionaries, having an ardent faith but a narrow
intelligence, they are easily led not to accept, as true, reli-
gious beliefs so difi"erent from their own. Often, in their
eyes, these beliefs are a work of the devil ; they put them
aside, or do not take the trouble to discover them, and they
offer us, as atheistic, people who certainly are not.

Ignorance of the language often leads to regarding a
people as atheistic. A traveler encounters a savage tribe ;
he puts questions, well or ill, often by signs alone, on the
Deity, or on the soul ; the natives do not understand, and
reply by some gesture of negation, and the traveler con-
cludes that they believe neither in God nor immortality.

136 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

But, the great cause which has often led to the conclu-
sion I am opposing, is the disdain of Europeans for savages.
Generally, the European, proud of 'his knowledge, and over-
rating his superiority, judges in advance their incapacity to
attain to notions a little elevated. He takes no great pains
to discover what he believes does not exist. At the first
failure he thinks himself right in concluding that these in-
ferior races are incapable of attaining to the notion of God
and of a futiire life.

Happily there are some tolerant missionaries who have
studied them more closely, and laymen who have been able
to see brothers in these inferior representatives of the
human family. Thanks to the intelligence of these patient,
clear-headed men, we now know that these Australians,
that were said to have no idea of God, have in reality a rudi-
mentary mythology, which sometimes recalls our own Euro-
pean superstitions. We now know that the Bushmen deify
their great men, and address prayers to them. These Bush-
men have a remarkable idea of the Divinity. They regard him
as a great chief, who resides in heaven. They say of him :
" We see him not with the eyes ; we feel him in the heart."

This last phrase, which I quote literally, was obtained
1 y travelers who lived in the midst of these people. They
show that sometimes the people justly placed in the low-
est rank of the human races may have, along with the
strangest superstitions, religious notions remarkably ele-
vated. This fact is often presented when we examine the
religion of different people. We find, it is true, much
that is bizarre, many strange and shocking things, but we
find also behind these absurdities ideas and beliefs which
astonish us by their seriousness, by their elevation, by the
resemblance they offer to that which is believed by more
advanced people.

The negroes of Guinea may serve to illustrate this sub-
ject. All travelers have spoken of their absurd beliefs, all

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTERS. 137

have spoken of their fetiches. They tell us how these peo-
ple prostrate themselves before serpents, trees, bits of
wood, bone, etc., carefully wrapped uj3, and on which their
priests have performed certain ceremonies. Ihere are few
who would seek that which might be found at the bottom
of all this. Those who have made the search have found
religious ideas, very superior to these appearances ; the
belief in divinities of different orders, living in the skies,
and presided over by a sovereign creator who made every
thing. When we look still further, as M. d'Avezac has
done, we find prayers conceived in terms such as a Euro-
pean, a Christian, might repeat without blushing. In the
case of these negroes, as in our own, we must distinguish
between religion and superstition, two extremely different
things, which are too often confounded. I will add but
a few words.

Gentlemen, I close to-day the first part of the lectures
that I have undertaken to give you. Let me formulate the
last conclusions.

We have asked only general questions, those which bear
on the entire human race, and which may consequently
conduct us to the foundation of the nature of man. We
have asked them exclusively from the point of view of natu-
ral science ; we have studied man as we study an animal
or a plant. The result of this examination is to show in
man a resmiie of the entire creation.

In him we find phenomena exactly parallel to those
encountered in minerals, in plants ; consequently, all the
forces acting in minerals and plants we find in man.

By his body, from an anatomical and physical point of
view, man is an animal, nothing more, nothing less ; hence
all the animal forces act in him.

But is it by his body that man has acquired that em-
pire that we have seen he possesses ? You know very well
it is not ; you know very well that, if he reigns over all

138 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN.

around him, over inanimate Nature as over organized Na-
ture, he owes it to his intelligence, of like nature, but im-
mensely superior to that of animals.

Finally, man has his own attributes — faculties that
belong exclusively to him — morality and religion. Well,
these exclusively human faculties seem admirably to com-
plete this exceptional being. It is these that ennoble him,
and justify the incontestable empire that he claims over
the globe ; for it is these which, along with the sentiment
of punishment, give birth to the idea of duty, the thought
of responsibility.

Here, gentlemen, is the summing up that one is led to
make of man when he is studied exclusively from knowl-
edge by the naturalist.

APPEKDIX.

Pkof. Huxley, in his volume entitled " Evidence as to
Man's Place in Nature," presents the other side of this
question as follows : " Science has fulfilled her function
when she has ascertained and enunciated truth ; and, were
these pages addressed to men of science only, I should
now close this essay, knowing that my colleagues have
learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe
that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it
may jar against their inclinations.

" But, desiring, as I do, to reach the wider circle of the
intelligent public, it would be unworthy cowardice were I
to ignore the repugnance with which the majority of my
readers are likely to meet the conclusions to which the
most careful and conscientious study, I have been able to
give to this matter, has led me.

" On all sides I shall hear the cry : ' We are men and
women, and not a mere better sort of apes, a little longer
in the leg, more compact in the foot, and bigger in brain,
than your brutal chimpanzees and gorillas. The power of
knowledge, the consciousness of good and evil, the j^itiful
tenderness of human aflFections, raise us out of all real fel-
lowship with the brutes, however closely they may seem
to approximate us.'

140 APPENDIX.

" To this I can only reply that the exclamation would
be more just and would have my own entire sj-mpathy, if
it w^ere more relevant. But it is not I who seek to base
man's dignity upon his great-toe, or insinuate that we are
lost if an ape has an hippocampus minor. On the contrary,
I have done my best to sw^eep away this vanity. I have
endeavored to show that no absolute structural line of de-
marcation, wider than that between animals w^iich imme-
diately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the
animal world and ourselves ; and I may add the exjDression
of my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinc-
tion is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties
of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower
forms of life. At the same time no one is more strongly
convinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between
civilized man and the brutes; or is more certain that,
whether from them (5r not, he is assuredly not of them.
No one is less disposed to think lightly of the present dig-
nity, or despairingly of the future hopes, of the only con-
sciously intelligent denizen of this w^orld.

" We are indeed told, by those who assume authority
in these matters, that the two sets of opinions are incom-
patible, and that the belief in the unity of origin of man
and brutes involves the brutalization and degradation of
the former. But is this really so ? Could not a sensible
child confute, by obvious arguments, the shallow^ rhetori-
cians who would force this conclusion upon us ? Is it in-
deed true that the poet, or the philosopher, or the artist,
whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded from his
high estate by the undoubted historical probability, not to
say certainty, that he is the direct descendant of some
naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence was just suf-
ficient to make him a little more cunning than the fox, and
by so much more dangerous than the tiger? Or is he
bound to howl and grovel on all-fours because of the w^holly

APPENDIX. 141

unquestionable fact that he was once an egg, which no
ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from
that of a dog ? Or is the philanthropist, or the saint, to
give up his endeavors to lead a noble life, because the
simplest study of man's nature reveals, at its foundations,
all the selfish passions and fierce appetites of the merest
quadruped ? Is mother-love vile because a hen shows it,
or fidelity base because dogs possess it ?

" The common-sense of the mass of mankind will an-
swer these questions without a moment's hesitation.
Healthy humanity, finding itself hard pressed to escape
from real sin and degradation, will leave the brooding over
speculative pollution to the cynics and the righteous ' over-
much' who, disagreeing in every thing else, unite in blind
insensibility to the nobleness of the visible world, and in
inability to appreciate the grandeur of the place man occu-
pies therein.

"Nay, more, thoughtful men, once escaped from the
blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find, in the
lowly stock whence man has sjDrung, the best evidence of
the splendor of his capacities ; and will discern, in his long
progress through the past, a reasonable ground of faith in
his attainment of a nobler future."

It is probable that if M. Quatrefages had made the ex-
periment of taking persons to a case wherein were jackals,
wolves, and varieties of " dogs," from the Esquimaux to the
greyhound, the bull-dog, and terriers (not labeled), he
would have come to an entirely difi'erent conclusion. In
fact, there is much less difference between the w^olf and
some dogs— e. g., Esquimaux and Spitz— than between
them and some fancy breeds. The name (dog) indeed is a

X42 APPENDIX.

quasi generic term connected with an assumption of com-
mon origin of the animals embraced thereunder; in other
words, it is the expression of a preconceived idea which
will not stand the test of analysis, or confronting with
facts. So far are the propositions that dogs and wolves are
different species from being true, that the eminent John
Hunter, after a series of experiments on their mutual fer-
tility, came to the conclusion that they (as well as the
jackal) are of the same species, and M. Quatrefages, if
obedient to his own criterion of specific determination,
should have come to the same conclusion.

On the contrary, not only have hares and rabbits fre-
quently reproduced with each other {see Gindre, " Rapport
a la Commission des Recompenses sur le Memoire de M.
Gayot relatif aux Leporides." Bulletin de la Societe Im-
periale Zoologique d'Acclimatation, 1870, pp. 659-667), but
with certain precautions they readily copulate and produce
young, and these hybrids and their descendants are fertile
among themselves, and the hybrids between the hare and
the leporide are " fine and valuable animals for the table,
growing quickly and attaining a greater size than the lepo-
rides. They are excellent for the market, and can be sent
there when four months old. They have admirable health,
beauty, and size" {op. cit., 1873, p. 871).

Our information respecting hj^brids is too limited as
yet to afford us a sufficiently large inductive basis for gen-
eralization, but it is at least certain that M. Quatrefages's

APPENDIX. 143

laws are altogether too general, and that, in fact, there are
no such laws. In the cases especially referred to (the
horse and the ass), we have representatives not only of
different species but of different genera ; and, although the
hybrids of these, as a rule, are infertile, exceptionally they
have reproduced with the parent-stock. In another case,
however, where the representatives not only of different
genera {JBos and Bison) were coupled, the hybrids were
perfectly fruitful when coupled with the parent buffalo,
and, so far as the exj^eriments are recorded, no difficulty
was experienced in raising offspring from the hybrids.
Still more : there are two species of geese so distinct that
they have been geiierically separated, i. e., the common
goose (^Anser) and the Chinese {Cygyiopsis^ Gygnoides),
and yet not only have (1) hybrids been obtained, but those
hybrids (2) were fertile with the parents, and (3) with each
other, to an indefinite extent. In a state of nature, too^
on the confines of the geographical limits of two species
of woodpecker ( Golaptes auratus and Golaptes Mexicaniis),
intermediate forms of all degrees are found, and in such
numbers as to have produced a specific name {^Golaptes
hybrides)^ and the inference is that they are hj^brids be-
tween the different species, and are fertile among them-
selves. Many examples of like and even excessive fertility
of hybrids might be adduced in the case of plants. It must
be admitted, however, that in a state of nature animals of
the same kind prefer to associate together, and that infer-
tility^ or diminished fertility ^ is the eule when animals
and 2'jlants of very different sjyecies unite.

On the other hand, we have another curious assemblage
of facts. The experiments of various investigators, and
especially of Mr. Darwin and Fritz MuUer, prove that,
when flowers are dependent on self-fertilization, there is
diminished fertility, and even barrenness, and every stock-
breeder will testify to the impoverishment of stock by
7

144 APPENDIX.

interbreeding. In connection with the rule just referred to,
then, we have to consider another, i. e., that infertility^ or
diminished fertility^ is the rule when animcds and plants
very closely related ifiy consanguinity') unite. Sterility is
thus a two-edged weapon which must be used with caution,
or not used till w^e know more about it, and the accumu-
lated evidence tends to show that there is every degree of
fertility and sterility coordinated, but in not very definite
ratio, with the affinities of the subjects.

The chief objection of many eminent naturalists of
England, Germany, and the United States, to the view of
species presented by M. Quatrefages, is its assumption
that they are immutable. The works of Mr. Charles Dar-
win, published from time to time during the last ten or
twelve years, have led to a wide-spread suspicion that
varieties are incipient species, and that the prevalent ste-
rility of species, when crossed, is due to changes in the
reproductive system, brought about, if not in the same way
as are the changes that produce varieties and races, that i«,
by natural selection, yet that they have arisen incidentally
during the slow formation of species in connection with
other and unknown changes in their organization. Dar-
win's work on the " Origin of Species " is filled with facts
and arguments in support of this view. In his chapter
upon Hybridism, Mr. Darwin says : " It is certain, on the
one hand, that the sterility of various species when crossed
is so different in degree, and graduates away so insensibly,
and, on the other hand, that fertility of pure species is so
easily affected by various circumstances, that for all practi-
cal purposes it is most difficult to say where perfect fer-
tility ends and sterility begins. I think no better evidence
of this can be required than that the two most experienced
observers who have ever lived, namely, Kolreuter and Gart-
ner, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions in regard
to the. very same forms. It is also most instructive to

APPENDIX. 145

compare tbe evidence advanced by our best botanists on
the question whether certain doubtful forms should be
ranked as species or varieties, with the evidence from fer-
tility adduced by diflferent hybridizers, or by the same ob-
server from experiments made during different years. It
can thus be shown that neither sterility nor fertility affords
any certain distinction between species and varieties. The
evidence from this source graduates away, and is doubtful
in the same degree as is the evidence from other constitu-
tional and structural differences." Again he says :

" I have as yet spoken as if the varieties of the same species
were invariably fertile when intercrossed. But it is impossible to
resist the evidence of the existence of a certain amount of sterility
in the few following cases, which I will briefly abstract. The
evidence is at least as good as that from which we believe in the
sterility of a multitude of species. Tlie evidence is, also, derived
from hostile witnesses, who in all other cases consider fertility
and sterility as safe criterions of specific distinction. Gartner
kept during several years a dwarf kind of maize with yellow
seeds, and a tall variety with red seeds growing near each other
in his garden ; and although these plants have separated sexes,
they never naturally crossed. He then fertilized thirteen flowers
of the one kind with pollen of the other; but only a single head
produced any seed, and this one head produced only five grains.
Manipulation in this case could not have been injurious, as the
plants have separated sexes. No one, I believe, has suspected
that these varieties of maize are distinct species ; and it is im-
portant to notice that the hybrid plants thus raised were them-
selves perfectly fertilQ ; so that even Gartner did not venture to
consider the two varieties as specifically distinct.

" Girou de Buzareingues crossed three varieties of gourd,
which like the maize has separated sexes, and he asserts that their
mutual fertilization is by so much the less easy as their differences
are greater. How far these experiments may be trusted, I know
not ; but the forms experimented on are ranked by Sagaret, who
mainly founds his classification by the test of infertility, as vari-
eties, and I^audin has come to the same conclusion.

146 APPENDIX.

" The following case is far more remarkable, and seems at first
incredible ; but it is the result of an astonishing number of ex-
periments made during many years on nine species of Yerbascum,
by so good an observer and so hostile a witness as Gartner :
namely, that the yellow and white varieties when crossed produce
less seed than the similarly-colored varieties of the same species.
Moreover, he asserts that, when yellow and white varieties of
one species are crossed with yellow and white varieties of a dis-
tinct species, more seed is produced by the crosses between the
similarly-colored flowers than between those which are different-
ly colored. Mr. Scott also has experimented on the species and
varieties of Verbascum ; and, although unable to confirm Gartner's
results on the crossing of the distinct species, he finds that the
dissimilarly-colored varieties of the same species yield fewer
seeds, in tlie proportion of 86 to 100, than the similarly- colored
varieties. Yet these varieties differ in no respect except in the
color of their flowers ; and one variety can sometimes be raised
from the seed of another.

" Kolreuter, whose accuracy has been confirmed by every sub-
sequent observer, has proved the remarkable fact that one par-
ticular variety of the common tobacco was more fertile than the
other varieties, when crossed with a widely-distinct species. He
experimented on five forms which are commonly reputed to be
varieties, and which he tested by the severest trial, namely, by
reciprocal crosses, and he found their mongrel offspring perfectly
fertile. But one of these five varieties, when used either as the
father or mother, and crossed with the Nicotiana glutinosa^ al-
ways yielded hybrids not so sterile as those which were pro-
duced from tlie four other varieties when crossed with Nicoti-
ana glutinosa. Hence the reproductive system of this one
variety must have been in some manner and in some 'degree
modified.

" From these facts it can no longer be maintained tliat vari-
eties when crossed are invariably quite fertile. From the great
difficulty of ascertaining the infertility of varieties in a state of
nature, for a supposed variety, if proved to be infertile in any
degree, would almost universally be ranked as a species ; from
man attending only to external characters in his domestic vari-
eties, and from such varieties not having been exposed for very

APPENDIX. 147

long periods to uniform conditions of life ; from these several
considerations we may conclude that fertility does not constitute
a fundamental distinction between varieties and species when
crossed. The general sterility of crossed species may safely l)e
looked at, not as a special acquirement or endowment, but as
incidental on changes of an unknown nature in their sexual ele-
ments,

" Independently of the question of fertility and sterility, in
all other respects there seems to be a general and close similarity
in the offspring of crossed species, and of crossed varieties. If we
look at species as having been specially created, and at varieties
as having been produced by secondary laws, this similarity would
be an astonishing fact. But it harmonizes perfectly with the
view that there is no essential distinction between species and
varieties."

It will occur to many of our readers that in this propo-
sition a logical fallacy in the form of a petitio principii
is involved. It is assumed — 1. That fertility is an invariable
criterion of varieties, and 2. That infertility is an equally
invariable criterion of species, and, as expressly urged, no
structural evidence is sufficient to gainsay that evidence.
Applying these criterions — (1) inasmuch as no limit has
been found to the fertility between the common goose and
the Chinese goose, those animals are of the same species,
and (2) inasmuch as no fruit has been obtained from individ-
ual flowers of the same plant of certain species of lobelia,
passion-flowers, orchids, etc. (although fertile with those
of other plants), those individuals belong to different
species ! The reductio ad ahsurdum is indeed completed
by the terms of M. Quatrefages's propositions, and the
facts confronting them.

148 APPENDIX.

Other views are entertained by eminent archseologists.
In an address before the Oriental Society of London, Sep-
tember 20, 1874, Prof. Richard Owen makes a strong
claim as a geologist for the recognition of far more ex-
tended periods of time since the appearance of man than
are usually allowed by anthropologists. He states that
probably we must remove the scene of the origin of man
to anotlier continent, which has been since submerged, leav-
ing only an archipelago. Prof. Owen says :

" The Papuans of l^ew Guinea, with cognate dark-skinned,
crisp-haired, prognathic peoples of Australia, New Hebrides, New
Caledonia, and neighboring islands, bespeak by affinities of their
rude dialects, as well as by physical characters, a low and early
race of mankind, which in some respects indicate kinship with the
Boschismen of South Africa, but are yet sufficiently distinct to sug-
gest a long term of existence in another and distant continent.
Zoological and geological evidences concur, as in a degree exem-
plified in Wallace's 'Malay Archipelago,' to point to a prehistoric
race of mankind, existing generation after generation on a con-
tinent which, in course of gradual, non-cataclysmal, geological
change, has been broken up into insular patches of land ; there such
race is still open to ethnological study. "Wending westward to
regain the proper field of our congress, we have evidences of as
early — if I say ' primitive ' it is because we know none earlier —
bipeds, in the trans-Gangetic peninsula and Indonesian Archi-
pelago. These Nigritos, in India, have fled before invaders from
the sub-Himalayan range, represented by Burmese and Siamese ;
before invaders from the South, the Malays, with their maritime
advance in civilization; before later immigrations from the North,
with the religion and literature respectively of the Aryan Hindoos
and the Arab Mussulmans. Fragments of the dwarf Nigrito
stratum may be picked up — a scanty one in Engomho, the largest
island off Sumatra, in the Mergui Archipelago, in the Nicobar
Isles, and in the Andamans. The Nigritos who have survived
such changes, and have been caught, so to speak, upon a new con-

APrENDIX. 149

tinent, have ])reserve(l themselves in mountain fastnesses and
forests, have fled before hiter immigrants, have never assimilated
therewith, have always been looked upon by them as prior in
time, and now are verging toward extinction. In speculating,
therefore, on the place of origin of Mincopics and hill-tribes, I
would impress upon ethnologists to set aside ideas of the actual
disposition of land and sea as being necessarily related thereto,
and to associate with the beginning of such low forms of humanity
a lapse of time in harmony with the latest geological changes of
the earth's surface. . . . The cardinal defect of speculators on the
origin of the human species seems to me to be the assumption that
the present geographical condition of the earth's surface preceded
or coexisted with the origin of such species."

Some of our readers will hardly be prepared to learn
that M. Gratiolet scarcely knew any thing whatever from
autopsy of the development of the brain in any of the true
apes (Simiinm), and that the only basis for the strong
statements made in the text is as follows :

" I have found," says Gratiolet, " by a careful compari-
son of adult brains in men and monkeys, that they are ar-
ranged in the same plan as to the gyrations^ and, when the
view is thus limited to the adult structure, there is no
marked ground for separating them. But, in studying
the development, I find that in apes" (monkeys) " ^Ae
gyrations of the posterior lobes appear before those of
the anterior lobes, which is just the reverse of the suc-
cession in man." The differences, in fact, simply amount
to this :

(a.) In man the appearance of the superficial convolu-
tions is accelerated toward the anterior portion of the cere-
brum, and to such a degree that those of the anterici lobe
are first developed.

150 APPENDIX.

(b.) In monkej^s the development of the same convolu-
tions is retarded, and consequently those of the temporal
lobes are first developed.

Such are the differences which isolate man from " ani-
mals ! "

But even such differences, as already intimated, have
not been verified, in the case of the apes ; and far from the
inference being a necessary one that their development will
be the same as in the lower monkeys, it is scarcely legiti-
mate as a provisional one, inasmuch as the higher apes in
many features notably resemble man more than the mon-
key, and it may be that they represent an intermediate
stage, or even that they approximate most to man in
those respects. At least the statement in the text is
premature.

But perhaps the same succession may be verified in the
apes as in monkeys; and there are parallel cases which
M. Quatrefages has neglected — notably the development of
the teeth.

The teeth are essentially similar in man and the apes
(as are the convolutions, according to M. Gratiolet), "but,
in studying the development," it is found that in apes the
hindmost (as well as other) grinders appear before the
canines of the second set, " which is just the reverse of
their succession in man," in whom they are cut after the
canines (eye-teeth) of the second series; and in this re-
spect the lowest apes (gibbons) most nearly resemble him !

Inasmuch, however, as there is no exact ratio as to
dates in the relative appearance of these teeth, any more
than there is in the development of the convolutions of
the brain, although the formal antithesis may appear strik-
ing, in reality, there is a gradual transition from one type
to the other, and it would be unsafe for man to base his
tenure to manhood in the possession of any such differ-
ences. A little acceleration of the one, a little retarda-

APPENDIX. 151

tion of the other, would result in approximation ; in time,
if continued, would bring coincidence, and finally reversal
of development.

This very decided opinion of Quatrefages's may be met
by the equally decided counter-statement of Mr. Darwin,
as given in his work on the " Descent of Man." In sum-
ming up the evidence and arguments which he has em-
ployed, he says that the conclusion now held by many
competent naturalists is, that man is descended from some
lower and extinct form. The close similarity between man
and the lower animals in embryonic development and in
bodily structure and constitution, the rudimentary organs
he retains, which are regularly present and highly service-
able to many animals, and the reversions to which he is
liable, are facts which cannot be disputed. They have
long been known, but told us nothing of the origin of man,
till viewed by the light of our recent know^ledge. It is
now seen that the great principle of Evolution stands up
clear, firm, and unmistakable, when these facts are consid-
ered in connection with the classification of organized be-
ings, their geographical distribution and geological succes-
sion. It is incredible that all these facts should speak
falsely. A careful study of the phenomena of Nature, in
their connections, forces us to admit that the close resem-
blance of the embryo of man to that, for instance, of a dog,
the construction of his skull, limbs, and whole frame, on the
same plan as that of other mammals — the occasional reap-
pearance of various structures, which man does not nor-
mally possess, but which are common to the quadrumana,
and a crowd of analogous facts — all point in the plainest
manner to the conclusion that man is tlie co-descendanf
with other mammals of a common progenitor, that we car

152 APPENDIX.

approximately place in its proper position in the zoological
series. We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy
quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably
arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.
This creature, if its whole structure had been examined by
a naturalist, would have been classed among quadrumana,
as surely as would the common and still more ancient pro-
genitor of the Old and New World monkeys.

THE END.

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