Indigenous Races of the Earth

XGN23N881857 301

....... . ·. ... .... . • '. ... 'n1 E M N 0 G·~·N IS T S AND comes in to shod light upon tho very cradle of humanity, and to consecrate the mcmol'y of g ncraLions loner since oncrulphcd in the quicl san Is of time." Thus much is certainly wiLltin tho comp LC11cy of "philology;" and we may concede to it nh;o Lhc faculty, wlwrc the historic clements for comparison exi t-as in tho range of' Indo-ger­manic, ScmiLic, and some few other well-studied crroups of tongues­of asccdainino- relationships of inte1·cou1·Be between wid ly-sopnrat,e famili •s of man; but not always, as it is fashionable now to claim, und which I will presently show to bo abstml, of a community of oricriu bctw en two given races physiolocrically and geographically di~tin ·t. Arrain, no tongue is pcrman nt. More than 150 yon1·s ago, Rtehard 13 ntl y, perhaps tho groat st critic o{ his ag ,480 exemplified this axiom wl1ilc unmasking tho Gro k forgeries of .A.lcxand1·ian sophi~ts. '.'~very living language, like tho pcl·~pit·ing bodies of Jiving creatures, 1s 1n porp Lual motion aud alteration ; some words go oil~ and become obsoloLo; others Me taken in, and by degrees grow into common usc; or th same word is inverted in a new l:lensc and 11otion whi •h in t.1·act of time makes as observable a ·hango iH tl1c air and feaLurcs of a ]auguacrc, as ago makes in the lines and mien of a face. All arcs nsiblc ofthis in th it· own native tongues, wlloro contiuual use mak sa man a Cl'itic." But, at j,he same time that tl1is is the la~ <l ~uced from tho hi 'Lorical evidences of wriLLon lm1gnao·es, its actiOn 1s enormously ace lcmLod amoncr pctLy bm·bar us tribes such as a few Asiatic, many Aft·ican, several American, and still' more ft· qucntly among tho Malayan, and Occani o-Australian ntcos. Here, met·o linguistic lancl-mal'ks arc as often completely o·mwed as re-ostalJlishod; while the typicrtl characteristics of tho l'!tce endure, and tlJcrcforc can alone s rve as bases for etllnic classificaLion. Yet we read very day in som shape or other: "The decision. of the A ademy (of St. Pctcrsbur , 40 yca1·s ago) was, .h~wcver, qUJto unreserved upon this point; fol' it maintains its conv~ctwn, after a long rosoar ·h, tlutt alllangua.r;eB are to be considered aB dwlectB (of one) now loBt." 491 'l'his enunciation of an eminent Car<linal, althouO'h dating some 20 years back, is sLill gnotcd and rc.-quotc<l by thankfnl imb cility which, on any other point of doc­tl'l~ , would shudder at Hornanist authority. And ito,' it s If om ric sm1l s among those who happen to know the estimation in which Egyptol.ogists now ~told M. de Goulianofl"s A1·clu!ologie egyptienne and Acrolog~e, to sec h~s report to the Russian Acauemy used as a doo-­maticul :finality to further linguistic adv::wcem nt! Iu Eugland }~e ' 86 Di~m·tation~ upon tiLe Epistlet of l'lialaris, Themi8tocles, Socrates Euripides and upon the Fa!~et of ./E'sop (I GOO); Dyco's ou., London, 8vo, 183(); IJ, p. 1. ' ' WISEMAN, Oon1uctio1l, &c., 2d cu., 8vo, London, 1842; pp. GB-9. T ID; P 0 L Y G l~ N I S T S . [)71 has h en su ceod (I by a school which discards tho term "race" alto­gether; bccaus its Oracle, after an amazing number of contradict­ory pl'opositions, has latterly stat, d 488 how" he believes that al l the varieties of man Me referable to a single species," as pe1· catalogue, Luke Durko judiciously comments, of barbarian vocabularieB. One recipe, f( L' atLaining expeditiously a conclusion so d vontly wished, is si mplc enough. It is the following: -1st, to start, with Icing James's version of GenesiB, Chapter IV, verse 25 :-2d, to jnrnp over 4730 y at·s tl1at an Archbishop says have elapsed from that day to this, and tak the population descended from "Adam and Eve" to be now exactly 1,21G,G70,000 :489-3d, to invent a sort of fmmo-work (say " scritoirc") containing precisely 9 pigeon-hol s :-4th, to label them MonoByllabic, Turanian, Oaucasian (alias Dioscurian, said to be the ·amo thino'), Persian, Indian, Oceanic, Ame1"ican, Aj1·ican, and Ew·op(!an:- 5th, clisr garcling such trifics as history, anatomy, or physiological distinctions, to squeeze all lmmanity, "as per vocabu­lary," into tl1CHO D compartmonts:-Gth, to chant "to Deum" over the whole }JOrlcnmanec;-and lastly, 7th, to baptize as infidelB those who disbelieve th u unity of' tho human species" to bo proved by any such ltocus-pocus, or at·bitrary methods of establishing that of which Sci nco, at tho present day, owing to insufficiency of materials, humbly ·onfc scs hot'self to be ignorant; whilst she indignantly re­pudiat, s, as impcttin nt and mendacious, the suppression of all facLt; that <trc too thl'oo-comered to be jammed into tho 9 pigeon-holes afore­said. Such, in sober sadness, is tho effect pro<luccd upon tho minds of unLiasscd anthropologists, by this unscientific system. '!'boy can­uot, fin· tho lifo of them, as coucorns real ethnology, whot·o tho thco­logor sees in each of these 9 pigeon-holes a wondr·ous "confit·nHttion," perc ivc in the whole arrangement anything more than a reflex: of the. mind of th iring nious inventor. What true philological science has achieved, in the 6th year after the middle of our XL'<:th century, may be studied in M. Alfl'cd Mamy's Chaplet· I of this volume. Its l'esults do not appear to iavor monogonistic theories of human lan­gung. It is with tho express object of avoiding this, or any other umHtLul'al 8ystem, that 1ny "Ethnographic 'l'ableau" bas boon prepal'ed. ~l'ypo­graphi ·al exigencies compel an appearance, I must.all.ow, of arb1Lra.ry classification : but no dofiniLivo bat· to progress JS mtenl1cd by 1ts at'rangemcnt; and I shall be proud to follow any b:L.ter that imparti~l jnquirics into Nature's lawl:! may in tho future cltCit. Such as thts ~ 88 ];ondon Atltcncvum, Juno 17, 1854. · 480 RAnNS'l'BJN, Descriptive Notes, und Etlinograpltical Map of tiLe World, London, 1854; PP· 2-4.