VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 



1317 



must give way. But, on the other hand, the 

 conviction is now fast spreading among en- 

 lightened thinkers, that the Scriptures are no 

 more intended to teach men Ethnology than 

 to instruct them in Geology or Astronomy ; and 

 that the former, like the latter, is a legitimate 

 object of scientific investigation, and should 

 be pursued without fear as to the results. 

 Any attempt, in fact, to fetter the scientific 

 inquirer by the supposed authority of inspira- 

 tion, is certain to damage the latter in the 

 estimation of the most intelligent part of man- 

 kind ; for, as has been well remarked by a 

 very orthodox theologian, Dr. Henry More, 

 " the unskilful insisting of our divines upon 

 the literal sense of Moses has bred many 

 hundred thousands of atheists." But even 

 those who profess to place the most implicit 

 confidence in the declarations of the Scriptures, 

 as to the common origin of all the races of 

 mankind, do, in effect, get rid of all the force 

 of these declarations, when it suits their pur- 

 pose to do so, by the mode of interpreting 

 them which they adopt. They assert that the 

 Adamic race does not include the barbarous 

 inhabitants of remote regions ; and that Ne- 

 groes, Hottentots, Esquimaux, and Austra- 

 lians are not, in fact, men in the full sense of 

 the term, or beings endowed with mental 

 faculties similar to our own. They contend 

 that these and other uncivilised tribes are 

 inferior in their original endowments to the 

 proper human family, which supplied Europe 

 and Asia with inhabitants ; and that, being 

 organically different, they are separated by an 

 " impassable barrier" from the race which dis- 

 plays in the highest degree all the attributes 

 of humanity, and can never be raised to an 

 equality with it. They maintain that the 

 ultimate lot of the ruder tribes is a state of 

 perpetual servitude. ; and that if, in some in- 

 stances, they should continue to repel the 

 attempts of the civilised nations to subdue 

 them, they will at length be rooted out and 

 exterminated from every country on whose 

 shores Europeans shall have set their feet. 



Now if the distinct origin of these tribes be 

 admitted, if we are to regard the Negro and 

 Australian, not as our fellow-men, brethren 

 of the same great family as ourselves, but as 

 beings of an inferior order, and if duties 

 towards them were not contemplated, as we 

 may in that case presume them not to have 

 been, in any of the positive commands on 

 which the morality of the Christian world is 

 founded, our relations to those tribes will ap- 

 pear not to be very different from those which 

 we might consider' ourselves to hold towards 

 the higher races of brutes. If such races be 

 not men, then the golden rule, " Whatsoever 

 ye would that men should do unto you, do 

 ye even so unto them," is not applicable to 

 our intercourse with them. We can scarcely 

 imagine a Grotius or a Puffendorf, or any 

 other great jurist, attempting to determine the 

 jus belli or pads between ourselves and a tribe 

 of orangs, who had just sense enough to pass 

 for men, and began to be suspected of the 

 cheat, which is nearly the true character 



of the Negroes, if those are right who maintain 

 the doctrines just alluded to. And we may 

 go a step further, and assert that there is, in 

 such a case, no moral principle which should 

 prevent a hungry wanderer in Negroland or 

 Australia from satisfying his appetite, by killing 

 and eating the first native he might happen 

 to meet. 



Thus, then, the widest extremes of opinion, 

 and the greatest diversity in those rules of 

 conduct which are founded upon such opi- 

 nions, may exist among those who profess the 

 most implicit reverence for the scriptural dic- 

 tum, that " God hath made of one blood all 

 nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of 

 the earth.'* For, whilst some include under 

 the term " men," all the individuals grouped 

 together by the naturalist under the genus 

 homo, and regard this genus as consisting of 

 but a single species, of which the several races 

 are only to be ranked as varieties, others assert 

 that this genus includes several species, which 

 form a gradual transition from the highest and 

 most cultivated races of mankind, to those 

 degraded races, which (as they affirm) have 

 more in common with the brutes ; the former 

 alone being really entitled to the appellation 

 men, whilst the latter should be called by some 

 other name indicating their close affinity to 

 chimpanzees and orangs. Thus we are 

 thrown back upon scientific inquiry, as the 

 only legitimate means of bringing this ques- 

 tion to an issue ; and such an inquiry can 

 only be rightly pursued, when it is prosecuted 

 upon the broadest possible basis, and is made 

 to comprehend every kind of information which 

 can be brought to bear upon it. Nothing 

 can be easier than to bring together an ex 

 parte collection of facts, which shall give 

 to either doctrine, that of the specific unity y 

 or that of the specific diversity, of the human 

 races, an apparently fair claim to recep- 

 tion. But since both cannot be true, and 

 since the question can only be decided by 

 the balance of probabilities, no evidentiary fact 

 having any relation to the subject ought to 

 be left out of view ; and thus the science of 

 Ethnology must be built upon the foundation 

 afforded by numerous other departments of 

 scientific inquiry. The anatomist examines 

 the configuration of the body, and compares 

 the peculiarities of the various tribes, with the 

 view of determining how far structural dif- 

 ferences prevail over resemblances, and of 

 ascertaining whether these differences possess 

 that constant and untransitive character, which 

 the naturalist requires as a justification of 

 specific distinction. The physiologist searches 

 into the history of the vital functions in the 

 several types of humanity, and seeks for in- 

 formation with regard to the permanence of 

 anatomical differences, the effects of external 

 agencies in modifying the configuration or 

 constitution of the body, and the tendency to 

 spontaneous variation in the forms presented 

 by individuals, families, or tribes, known to be 

 of the same stock. The psychologist has a 

 most interesting subject of investigation, in 

 the study of the psychical constitution of the 

 4 P 3 



