HARDWICKE'S SCI EN CE-GOSSIP. 



[Jan 1, 1868. 



THE UNITY OF MANKIND. 



I TAKE the liberty of offering a few concluding 

 remarks upon this topic, not with a view of 

 defending my own opinions or statements, but of 

 endeavouring to serve the interests of truth in a 

 question of such vast importance, — one of the 

 greatest problems that can occupy the human mind ; 

 — and of placing before the readers of Science- 

 Gossip the facts as they originally stood, as the 

 gentleman who mooted the subject has altogether 

 left the ground he first occupied. 



In the May number of Science-Gossip, the 

 writer in question, " E. A. A.," proposed to divide the 

 races of man into three families, according to their 

 colour — white, brown, and black, and then directly 

 after into two — white and black, on the ground that 

 brown is merely white in a state of transition ; a 

 division which, as " R. G." very justly remarks, has 

 the merit of being simple if not satisfactory. 

 Among the white he included the Mongols, who 

 have thus become yellow without any valid reason ; 

 among the blacks he comprised the Hindoos, who 

 are not black ; and among the brown, the American 

 aborigines, some of whom are as red as Armenian 

 bole ; the Gallas, some of whom are black and 

 others fair ; and the Indo-Chinese, comprehending 

 at any rate some yellow tints. As all these are in 

 a state of transition,* the process must be rather a 

 slow one. When asked what he proposed to do 

 with the millions of people who are neither white 

 nor black, but, on the contrary, are red, green, 

 chocolate, and other colours, he made no answer. 



Having cut up mankind in this way, "E. A. A." 

 proceeded to account for the different colour of the 

 sections, and decided at once that it was owing to 

 difference of climate. So far from being an almost 

 inscrutable problem, it is a very simple affair indeed. 

 Nature makes no mystery of her great chemical 

 process. Any person who will look at the hands of 

 a countryman or the face of an old Indian resident, 

 can see how easily the white man turns brown. 

 Any person who will read and believe Mr. Win- 

 wood Reade's assertion, that the Gamma tribes 

 inhabiting the interior of the Gaboon country have 

 turned black within the memory of man, can have 

 as little trouble in understanding the second stage 

 of the process. The objection made to this was, 

 that such careful observers as Sir William 

 Lawrence, Crawford, Knox, and others, who had 

 devoted years of labour to the study of the subject, 

 had arrived at the conclusion that there was not 

 one jot of evidence to prove that white people 

 transplanted to the tropics ever became black, and 



* " It is very important to prove that brown nations are 

 merely white nations becoming black, because, if we can do 

 so, it will be a complete answer to the assertions of those 

 individuals who dispute the unity of the white and black 

 races ! " — Sciknce-Gossip, May 1, IS67. 



that the theory of the varieties of colour being due 

 to heat was entirely unproved. Now, mark the 

 reply. It is : 1. That Mr. Crawford admits that 

 dark-skinned races do usually inhabit hot countries, 

 a fact which had not been disputed, and which, if 

 disputed, has no connection with the argument. 

 2. That "E. A. A." did "not believe that heat 

 alone produces a dark skin ; but that heat, an un- 

 healthy climate, and prolonged isolation " (!) will 

 " produce and perpetuate the most marked and extra- 

 ordinary peculiarities." As "R. G." pointed out, 

 such influences would produce, not blackness, but 

 death, disease, and extermination, — different pro- 

 cesses altogether. But, indeed, the whole sentence 

 is so vague, that one can no more deal with it than 

 fight with a shadow. " Extraordinary peculiarities " 

 may mean anything, and therefore I leave " E. A. A." 

 to settle the point with Mr. Crawford, whom 

 he has attacked, and who is pretty well able to take 

 care of himself. As to the quotation from Mr. 

 Huxley, it appears to me so irrelevant, that I 

 would rather not seek to influence the reader in the 

 matter, so I refer him to the papers themselves. 



"E. A. A." asserted that " we know from history, 

 and the evidence of our senses," that "white 

 nations have become black ! " And in proof of this 

 astounding statement, he cited the black Jews of 

 Bombay, the Shegiar Arabs of Nubia, and the 

 Hindoos. He was asked to give the names of some 

 of the historians, as it was generally believed that 

 history is silent on the subject of colour. " E. A. A.' 5 

 says that this is scarcely an ingenuous reply, because 

 I must know that the colour of all the Shemitic 

 races, as represented on the walls of the Nineveh 

 palaces and Egyptian obelisks and temples, was a 

 warm red-brown, and that I myself had quoted these 

 very monuments as undeniable authorities concern- 

 ing the colour of the Negro. If the reader will 

 kindly turn to the passage in question, he will see 

 that / did nothing of the kind; that I never men- 

 tioned the Assyrian paintings at all, and that I did 

 not quote the Egyptian paintings as authorities in 

 any way. Besides, I am not aware that all the 

 Shemitic races are painted brown on any Egyptian 

 obelisk, or that paintings constitute history. 



"E. A. A." then put forward Mr. Winwood 

 Reade's assertion that the distinctive blackness of 

 the Negro is owing to disease,— a theory which he 

 embraces with such ardour that he says he would 

 go further, and " suggest that in the case of every 

 black nation throughout the world its blackness is 

 the result of disease," a statement I commend to the 

 notice of those physiologists who would have us 

 believe that the pigment iu the skin of the Negro is 

 a normal product ; that he grows pale in sickness 

 and starvation, and that he is blacker iu proportion 

 as he is healthier. To these objections "E. A. A." 

 rejoins, not by proving that Mr. Reade is right, but 

 by calling them a sneer and flippancy ; forgetting that 



