1342 



VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 



The Psychical comparison of the various 

 races of mankind is really, in a practical point 

 of view, the most important department of 

 the whole investigation ; and yet it has been 

 the most neglected, until Dr. Prichard took up 

 the inquiry. Whilst the capaciousness of the 

 skulls of the Negro and European has been 

 measured and compared, but little account 

 has been taken of the workings of the brains 

 which they contained. The colour of the 

 skin, the flatness or projection of the nose, 

 the lankness or crispness of the hair, the 

 straightness or curvature of the limbs, have 

 been scrutinised and contrasted, as if these 

 alone constituted the proper description of 

 Man ; though it is surely in his mental cha- 

 racter and its manifestations, that the attri- 

 butes of humanity peculiarly consist. 



The tests by which we recognise the claims 

 of the outcast and degraded of our own coun- 

 try to a common humanity, are surely the 

 same as those by which we should estimate 

 the true relation of the Negro, the Bushman, 

 or the Australian, to the cultivated European. 

 We must not judge of their capabilities solely 

 by their manner of life, however wretched 

 that may be ; since this is often, in great 

 degree, forced upon them by external circum- 

 stances. Nor have we any right to pronounce 

 them incapable of entertaining any particular 

 class of ideas, simply because we cannot find 

 the traces of these in their existing forms of 

 expression. It is only when such people have 

 been attentively studied not by passing 

 travellers, who, though they may pick up a 

 little of their language, see little of their 

 inner life, but by residents who have suc- 

 ceeded in gaining acquaintance with habits 

 which a jealous reserve would conceal, and 

 ideas which the imperfections of language 

 render most difficult of transmission *, that 

 we have any right to affirm what they are ; 

 and even this amount of information affords 

 little means of judging what they may be- 

 come. 



It will be only when the effect of education, 

 intellectual, moral, and religious, has been 

 fairly tested, that we shall be entitled to speak 

 of any essential and constant psychical differ- 

 ence between ourselves and the most degraded 

 beings clothed in a human form. It will only 

 be when the influence of a perfect equality in 

 civilisation and social position has been in- 

 effectually brought to bear upon them for 

 several consecutive generations, that we shall 

 be entitled to say, of the Negro or of any other 

 race, that it is separated by an " impassable 

 barrier " from those which arrogate to them- 

 selves an inalienable superiority in intellectual 

 and moral endowments. All our present 

 knowledge on this subject tends to show that 



high temperature, the European cannot toil in the 

 way or to the degree which the cultivation of those 

 regions requires. 



* A curious example of the difficulty of fully 

 comprehending the import of abstract terms, in a 

 language which has been so much studied, both by 

 linguists and by philologists, as the Chinese, will be 

 found in the Athenaeum for March 1. 1851. 



no such barrier exists, and that there is a 

 real community of psychical characters among 

 the different races of men ; the differences in 

 the degree of their positive and relative de- 

 velopment, not being greater than those which 

 exist in the successive or contemporaneous 

 varieties of our own race. And it may be 

 added, too, that in almost every instance, the 

 more we learn concerning any particular 

 nation or tribe reputed to possess the meanest 

 possible aspect of humanity, the more we 

 generally have to recede from the harshness 

 of our first impressions. 



A very striking example of the near affinity 

 that may exist between the most degraded 

 " outcasts of humanity," and races consider- 

 ably advanced in civilisation and intelligence, 

 is presented by the relationship of the Bush- 

 men of the Cape of Good Hope to the Hot- 

 tentot population which tenanted that region 

 previously to the arrival of European colonists. 

 The following is a graphic account recently 

 given of them by one who has had ample 

 opportunities of observation : " The Dutch 

 Boer, the Griqua, the Bechuana, the Kaffir, 

 all entertain the same dread of, and aversion 

 to, these dwarfish hordes, who, armed with 

 their diminutive bows and poisoned arrows, 

 recklessly plunder and devastate, without 

 regard either to nation or colour, and are in 

 their turn hunted down and destroyed like 

 beasts of prey, which in many respects they so 

 nearly resemble. . . . Time, a knowledge 

 of, and an occasional intercourse with, people 

 more civilised than themselves, have made 

 little change in the habits and disposition of 

 this extraordinary race. The Bushman still 

 continues unrelentingly to plunder, and cruelly 

 to destroy, whenever the opportunity presents 

 itself. His residence is still amongst inacces- 

 sible hills, in the rude cave or cleft of the 

 rock on the level karroo, in the shallow 

 burrow, scooped out with a stick, and shel- 

 tered with a frail mat. He still, with deadly 

 effect, draws his diminutive bow, and shoots 

 his poisoned arrows against man and beast. 

 Disdaining labour of any kind, he seizes when 

 he can on the farmers' herds and flocks, 

 recklessly destroys what he cannot devour, 

 wallows for consecutive days with vultures 

 and jackals amidst the carcases of the slain, 

 and, when fully gorged to the throat, slumbers 

 in lethargic stupor like a wild beast, till, 

 aroused by hunger, he is compelled to wander 

 forth again in quest of prey. When he can- 

 not plunder cattle, he eagerly pursues the 

 denizens of the waste, feasts indifferently on 

 the lion or the hedgehog, and, failing such 

 dainty morsels, philosophically contents him- 

 self with roots, bulbs, locusts, ants, pieces of 

 hide steeped in water, or, as a last resource, 

 he tightens his * girdle of famine,' and, as 

 Pringle says, 



' He lays him down, to sleep away, 

 In languid trance, the weary day.' 



Whether this precarious mode of existence 

 may, or may not, have influenced the personal 

 appearance and stature of the Bushmen it is 



