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Show 348 TilE CRANIAL CllARAC'l'ERIS'rJCS on Physiology and Medicine, and wrote an cs ay on Fever, and one on Epilepsy, and subsequently a larger work on Nervous Diseascs.'' 273 .All this, it will be rccollcctod, in addition to his laborious Researches into the Phy ical History of Mankind, upon which is based his fame as an Ethnologist. Of Dr. Morton, Prof. Chas. D. Meigs thus writes: " Ris medical practice was inc1·eas'ing up to the time of his death. ITo had tho good sonso and prudence to maintain his active and visible connection with his profession, while striving in tho race for fame as a philosoph r. lie had early begun to make his now celebrated collection of crania, with great labor and toil, and inconvenient cost. lie investigated organic remains: he explained problems in zoology and ethnology; lte diligently attended the siclc; be published valuable treatises on consumption, on tho science of anatomy, and on tho practice of pl1ysic. lie served the city gratuitously, as physician to the .Almshouse Hospital, and delivered courses of lectures at tho P nnsylvania Medical College, whore he was Professor of Anatomy . .All those things wore done by a man whose family was largo, and chat·goablo upon his funds, derivable in chief from his exertions as a physician." 274 Such wore the manifold and onerous duties amidst which Dr. Morton composed and published his two brilliant craniological works, and numerous detached papers on ethnography, hybridity, and allied subjects. Though tho lives of these two men present several interesting parallels, and though their labors wore steadily directed towards tho same groat object, yet they sought that object through different channels of research. With laborious hands, Pricbard gathered from the records of travel, and from numerous philological and archrcological works in vadous languages, an immense mass of materia,}, which ho carefully and learnedly digested. With equal industry and perseverance, Morton gathered fl'om tho rc optaclos of the dead, all over tho world, those bony records which he studied with such untiring zeal and discrimination. Prichard, the erudite scholar, gave to the natural history of man a philosophico-litorary character; Morton, the philosophical naturalist, stamped it with tho seal of tho natut·al sciences. To the ethnological student, the published labol: s of these savants will long continuo a shining and a guiding light; ':ln lo tho world at largo cannot fail to find, in the history of thoi1 hvcs, noble lessons of the power of ceaseless and indefatigable ln.bor. . .Aware of the extreme caution necessary in arriving at conclusions m so grave a study as that which has just occupied our attention througl~ so m:ny pages, and knowing that every erroneous inforemce must 01tl10r d1rectly or indirectly retard tho advancement of Ethno- :: l3iogr1~I~hical Sketch, &c., :E~inburgh New Philosophical ,Journal, VoL XLVII. p. 205. Mcmou, &c., read before Ph1lada, Aoad. Nat. Sciences, Nov01uber 0, 1851. OF TIJE RACES OF MEN. 34!) graphy, I have preferred, occasionally, to suggest what appeared to me a legitimate induction, rather than to pronounce po itivcly and authoritatively upon tho facts presented. In tho same cautious malluer, tho following propo itions arc placed before tho reader, as more or less cl arly d rivablo from the foregoing f~Lcts and arguments. 1. That cranial characters constitute an enduring, natural, and therefore strictly reliable basis upon which to establish ·a true classification of tho races of men. 2. That tho value of such characters is determined by their constancy, rather than by their mao-nitudo. 3. That these chnr:.wtcrs constitute, in tho aggregate, typical forms of crania. 4. Thathistori a] and monumental records, and the remains found in ossuaries, monncls, &c., i ndica.tc a remarkable persistence of those :forms. 5. 'l'hat this pcrsi toncc through tlmo, as viewed from a zoological stand-point, renders it diilicult, if indeed possible, to assign to tho loading cranial types any other than specific values. 6. That, in tho pro. ent state of out· knowledge, however, we are by no moans certain that such types were primitively d.istinct. 275 The llistorical period is too short to d tcrmino tho question of original unity or diversity of cranial forms. Moreover, thi question loses its importance in the presence of a still higher one-tho original unity or diversity of all organic forms. 7. Tl1atdiv t·sityofcranialtypc. clocsnotneceBsarilvimplydivcrsity of origin. Neither do strong rosomblauccs between uch types infallibly indicate a common parentage. Such resemblances merely express similarity of position in tho human scrios.270 275 "Those who hnvo studied the uatural hi story of man," snys Prof. DttAl'tm, in his recent ndmirablc work on tho 'Conditions nntl Course of the Lifo of l\lan,' "hnvc occupied themselves too completely with tho idea of fixity in the nspect of human famili es, and hnvo treated of them ns though thcy ·werc perfectly nnd definitely distinct, or in a condition of equilibrium. They Jmvo described them ns they nrc found in tho various countries of the globe, 1wd since those descriptions remain cOJ-root during 11 long time, tho general inference of n11 invariability has gathered str·ength, until 8ome WJ·itors nrc to bo found who suppoP.e t! 1nt thot·e hnve been ns many separate creations of mrm as there arc races wllioh onn be distinguished from enoh other. We nrc perpetually ~i~trlld~g tl~o sl.ow mov~n.lcn.ts o;, Nnture for nbsoluto rest. We compound tempornry eqmhbrabon wtth final cqmhbrwm. This paragrAJ hI lind in Chnptor VII., which is ns singulal'ly ~nhappy in its CI:nniolo~ical conclusion~ as tho louding idea of tho work, though not novel, ts grnnd nnd plulosoplucal. If the abo:c langungo of Dr. D. is menu! to he npplied to gcologionl periods of time, it is probably con·cot; if it ox tends not boyon<l the hi ~ torical epoch, it is without the Rupport of facts. 276 "S'il n'y n qu'une soulo rnco munble," writes J. E. Con NAY (de Rochefort.), "o'est-0.dire pouvant avoir des vari6!6s, il n'y a eu 0. Ia genese primitive qu'u.n scul ph~ et qu'une scule m~ro d'une memo espeoo. S'il y a plusieurs races immutablea, t! y a en i\ In ~~nc~o ]Jl'imitivo plusieura esp~ces de p~r~a et de m~r~s. 'l'outo. 1!1 qnePtion es.t done rcnfcrw6c. dnns ] 11 rrmtabilitl ou dans l'immutabili/6 des races, pour IIITIVOr i\ Ia oonna1ssnuce du uorubto doa |
