456 
NATURE 
[Sept. 9, 1886 
It is hoped that, by obtaining accurate information of this kind 
regarding the many races, tribes, and castes of these great pro- 
vinces, a flood of light may be thrown on the social history of the 
human race, It is a very great undertaking, but successfully 
carried out must have very great results. I can conceive nothing 
more important and interesting, and only hope that something 
of the kind may be attempted for India as a whole. Some of 
the most important castes, the Brahmins for instance, are so 
widely spread that we can hardly realise their position without 
extending the survey over India. In Bengal I think they are 
little agricultural, while in some provinces they are among the 
best of the agriculturists. 
I could well wish that we had systematic inquiries of this kind 
nearer home. Europe is almost as good an anthropological field 
as India, and in our islands there is still very much room for 
investigation. In my own country of Scotland, after much 
asking, I have never been able to get any information who the 
Aberdonians are, and what is the language they speak, so different 
in its forms and intonations from the rest of Scotland. In England 
sone most interesting maps might be made if it were only to trace 
the letter , showing where it begins and where it ends. I have 
a belief that though languages may be changed and cease to 
indicate races, there is a great racial persistency in the letter 4 
or the absence of it. The Scotch and the Irish have adopted 
the English language, but no Scotchman or Irishman was ever 
in the smallest degree wanting in aspirates—an Englishman 
might perhaps call them hyper-aspirators. The greater part of 
England, on the contrary, is equally persistent in the dropping 
of #’s. The whole subject is most interesting, not only in regard 
to the use or omission of the % by various races, but also on 
account of the very singular—I may say phenomenal—tendency 
of so many of the English neither to maintain nor to abandon 
the 4, but simply to reverse the written language, omitting the 
A where it is written, and putting it in where it is not, ina 
peculiarly aggressive manner. It has been noticed, with truth, 
that we seem legitimately to drop the % in almost all words that 
come direct from the Latin, as ‘‘hour,” ‘‘ heir,” ‘ honour,”’ yet 
in the Latin we pronounce the % fully. Is the spoken language 
the true tradition? Can it be that, while the Greeks spoke in 
aspirates which they did not write, the Romans clipped those 
which they did write, and that the modern Englishman combines 
the practice of these two famous races ? Oris there any foundation 
for what I can call no more than a conjecture, viz. that the real 
English is that spoken by the Scotch, and that the corruption of 
the 4’s is French brought in by the Normans? If a language 
map showed the clipping of #’s to be coincident with large 
Norman settlements, that might be so. Perhaps a few hundred 
years ago it was the aristocratic thing to clip the /’s, and the 
fashion may have gradually gone to the lower classes like the 
swallow-tailed coat worn by the typical Irish peasant, while the 
upper classes have been partially reformed back to true English 
by contact with the Scotch—only partially though, for they still 
say “‘ wen” and ‘‘wale” instead of ‘‘when” and ‘‘ whale,” to 
say nothing of ‘‘idear” and ‘‘ Indiar.” 
This, however, is a digression. Iam afraid I have been long 
in coming to the main object of this address, viz. to recommend 
the systematic and scientific cultivation of man—what I may 
call *‘homi-culture,” in the same sense as “‘ oyster-culture,” 
‘*bee-culture,” or *‘ cattle-culture””—and that with a view both 
to physical and mental qualities. It seems very sad indeed, that, 
when so much has been done to improve and develop dogs, 
cattle, oysters, cabbages, nothing whatever has been done for 
man, and he is left very much where he was when we have the 
first authentic records of him. Knowledge, education, arts, he 
has no doubt acquired ; but there seems to be no reason to 
suppose that the individual man is physically or mentally a 
superior creature to what he was five thousand years ago. We 
are not sure that under very modern influences he may not retro- 
grade. No one doubts that, by careful selection and cultivation, 
cattle, vegetables, and many other things have been immensely 
improved. In regard to animals and plants we have very largely 
mastered the principles of heredity and culture, and the modes 
by which good qualities may be maximised, bad qualities mini- 
mised. Whyshould not man be similarly improved? It is true 
that the mind has a larger share in that which constitutes a man ; 
but after all this is only a question of degree—the cultivation of 
the mind doves enter very largely into animal-culture. I appre- 
hend there isno doubt that the superiority for our purposes of 
shorthorns, black-polled, and other famous breeds of cattle is 
very largely due to placid and well-regulated minds, which 
enable them to take calmly a short and happy life, and to 
assimilate their food, differing in this very much from their 
restless and often vicious ancestors. Surely, then,. if we only 
had the requisite knowledge, and, taking a practical view of life, 
could regulate our domestic arrangements with some degree of 
reason, rather than by habit, prejudice, and the foolish ideas 
cultivated by foolish novelists, man too might be greatly 
improved. 
It may be admitted that we are not in a position to begin 
confident man-culture at once. Much study is first required and 
much knowledge must be accumulated before we can be confi- 
dent in practice. The first thing that most strikes us in man, 
as compared with all domesticated and even most widely-spread 
wild animals, is the extremely small variation in man all over 
the globe. There are differences which seem large to us, but 
are extremely small from a more enlarged point of view. How 
enormous are the differences between different breeds of dogs, 
horses, and cattle! When we come to man the difference of 
which we make most is that of colour—a feature which we think 
quite trivial in animals. Who thinks very much more highly of 
a white than of a black cow, of a grey horse than of a black 
one? Our skilled eyes recognise variations of human feature, 
but they are so slight that the inhabitant of another planet would 
see no more difference than in the countenances of a flock of 
sheep. In size, compared to other animals, the differences are 
but slight. Probably there is no race whose average height really 
approaches six feet, and I doubt if any are on the average so 
small as five feet. In other physical features there are no con- 
siderable differences of formation whatever. Then as regards 
the mind we have yet to learn that there are very wide differ- 
ences of mental capacity between different races. Very likely | 
—probably, I may say —there are considerable variations, but 
they are not so wide as to be apparent without careful and 
accurate study. With the superficial knowledge we have, no 
one can say that Europeans, Hindus, Chinese, are born with 
brains superior or inferior to the other; and even in regard to 
the negro I do not know that it is yet shown that with equal 
advantages Negro babies might not grow up nearly or quite as 
intelligent as Europeans. I do not say that it is so, but only 
that the question has not yet been sufficiently worked out. The 
difference is not so radical as to be self-evident from the first. — 
Still, such experience as we have and the analogies derived from 
domesticated animals both tend to the belief that there ave con- 
siderable, if not excessive, variations in the qualities and capacities 
of different races of men. 
It seems to me, then, that.the first object to which observation 
and experiment should be directed is to ascertain how far the — 
qualities which distinguish different races, peoples, castes, and 
families are congenital and hereditary, and how far the result of 
education and surroundings. The distinguished President of the 
Anthropological Institute, Mr. F. Galton, has done much to 
make a beginning of the study of hereditary qualities in man, 
but there is still much to be done. To begin with very rudi- 
mentary facts, we hardly know whether courage in man and 
absence of courage in women are natural or artificial qualities ; 
whether right-handedness is natural or a very ancient fashion. 
Coming nearer to modern variations we do not know how far 
energy, enterprise, constructive power, and all the rest of it are 
qualities appertaining to particular breeds, like the qualities of 
pointers or greyhounds ; or whether they are more the result of 
education and surroundings. What is the effect on mind or 
body of vegetable and animal food respectively, and of the use 
of one stimulant and another? Why do particular races affect 
particular stimulants? Why is the Northern European more 
especially given to spirits, and the Chinese and Indo-Chinese 
races to opium? Is there anything in the breed that enables 
Britishers to rule over Hindus, or is it only education? Why 
has a Chinaman some virtues which an Irishman has not, and 
vice versa? Allthrough, the most important inquiry is to siftout 
those qualities in regard to which we must look to improvement — 
in the breed, and those which more depend on education, so 
that power may not be wasted by efforts in the wrong direction 
—by breeding for qualities which already exist, or educating 
where the breed renders a particular education hopeless. 
We must try to learn the direction in which we are to work 
first, and then the methods by which we may effect improvements 
in the ascertained direction—whether it be in the direction of 
breed or in that of education. f ‘ 
Now to come to the practical modes by which effect might be 
given to some such ideas as I have ventured to suggest. 
