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Show 408 TilE MONOGENISTS AND possess the highest voucher. M. Faye states : 13 "Another part, relative to the groat question of human races, has been translated uy M. Guigniaut, Member of tho Institute. This question was foreign to my habitual studios: moJ·covcr, it has been treated, in the German work, with such superiority of views and of style, that M. de Humboldt had to seck, among his friends, tho man most capable of giving hs equivalent to French readers. M. de Humboldt natmally addressed himself to M. Guigniaut; and this savant has boon pleased to undertake tho translation of tho last ten pages of the text, as well as of tho correspondin()' notes." Consequently, besides tho guarantee for exactitude afforded by the name of the erudite translator of Orett.zer'.~ Symbolilc, it may be taken for granted that, whatever the German original may or may not say,H Baron von Humboldt, to whom the French edition waR peculiarly an oilspring of love, endorses the latter without reservation. It only remains now for me to retranslate M. Guigniaut's French into out· own language, in Ot'dcr that the reader may seize the MM. de Humboldts' point of view. To facilitate his appreciation, I mark with bold type those expressions requiring particular attention; and, furthermore, insert, between brackets and in italics, such deductions as appear to me legitimately to be evolved from them. " Geographical researches on the primordial scat, or, as it is said, npon the cradle of tho human species, possess in fact a character purely mythic. 'We do not know,' says William do Humboldt, in a 'vork as yet incditcd, upon tho diversity of languages and of peoples, 'we d? not l~1~ow, either historically, or through any [whatsoever] c01tam tradttwn, a moment when the human species was not alr ady separated into groups of peoples. [lleb1·ew lite1·atu1·e, in common with all others, is thus re;'ected, being equally unhistorical as the rest.]. ~ether this state.of things has existed from the origin [say, begmnmg], or whether 1t was produced later, is what cannot be decided through history. Some isolated legends being re-cncounterc~ u~on very d~verso points of the globe, ·without apparent commumcatw~, stand m contradiction to tho first hypothesis, and make tho entire human genus descend from a single pair [as, for 18 Co&mo&, Fr. od., "Avortissoment du Tro.ducteur," p. ii. 14 ?ompamtivo experience of German authors and their translators tonches me to b pn. rticular ·. Co mpar.e, f or r·. n sta~co, Chcv•. Dunson's ./Egyptm& &telle in der lVfltgechichlee, w~th wh~t rs called, m Enghsh, 1ts tran1lation! As is usunl with politicnl composition in l ose ~mtcd States, one version of tho same document is printed for the North nnd !mother v;r~ lfl'eront, for the. South: so, in like mn.nnor, thn.t which suits tho masc~line atomu.ch~ 0 orman men ~~ screnco becomes diluted, until its real fl!Lvor is gone, before it is ofl'ored to tho more sonsrllvo ptLiatos of tho British and Anglo-American "reading public." TilE POLYGENISTS. 400 example, in tlte ancient boolc called "Genesis."] This tradition is so widely spread, that it has sometimes been regarded as an antiquo remembrance of men. But this circumstance itself would rather prove that there is not therein any real transmission of a fact, anysocvct · truly-historical foundation; and that it is simply the identity of human conc~ption, which everywhere leads mankind to a similar explanation of an identical phenomenon. A great nnmbct· of myths, without historical link [say, connection] between the ones and the others, owe in this manner their resemblance and tl1cir origin to the parity of the imaginations or of the rcflcctionR of the human mind. That which shows still more, in the tradi Lion of which we arc treating, the manifest character of fiction [Old and New Testament nm·ratives included, of course J is, that it claims to explain a phenomenon beyond all human experience, that of tho first origin of the human species, in a manner conformable to tho experience of our own day; the manner, for instance, in which, at an epoch when the whole human genus counted already thousands of years of existence, a desert island, or a valley isolated amid mountains, may have been peopled. Vainly would thought dive into the meditation of this fil'st origin: man is so closely bound to his species and to time, that one cannot conceive [such a thing a11] an human being coming into tho world without a family already existiu()', and without a past [antecedent, i. e. to such man's advent]. This question, therefore, not being resolvable either by a pt'occss of reasoning or through that of experience, must it be consider d that the prim iti vo state, such as a pretended [alluding to the Biblical, necessa1·ily] tradition describes to us, is really historical-or else, that the human species, from its commcncemcn t, covered the earth in tho form of peoples 115 This is that which the science of languages cannot decide [as tlteo:logers suppose!] by itself, as [in like manner J it ought not either to seck for a solution clscwhcrc,16 in order to draw thence elucidations of those problems which occupy it." 15 "Peuplndcs" corrospontls, therefore, at tho IIumboldts' unitotl point of view, with PnoF. AoAss rz's doctrine (Christian Examiner, lloston, July, 1850) that--Men must have originated in "nations:" adopted u.nd enlarged upon by Dr·. Nott anti rnysolt' in "Typos of Mankind," pp. 73-9. Two years of subsequent and cxoltrsivo devotion to this study, in Prnnco, Englttnd, anti this country, have sntisficd my own mind rrpon its absolute truth. IG Something of tho same nature, vir.., that compamtivo philology should confine its investigations within its legitimate sphere, has been set forth as 11 precept, if violated in pmctico, in that extraordinary chtlptcr, entitled "Ethnology v. Phonology," contributed by Prof. 1\lllx-Milllcr to Chov'. Bun8on's still more extraortlimLry 11nd most ponderous work ( Cllri&tianity and Afankind: tlteir beginning& and prospects; in 7 volumes! Sec vol. iii., "Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal llistory, tLppliod to L:tngun.go and Religion, pp. 352, 480, &o.) There wns really no need that tho erudite Chcmlicr should wttrn his rc:~dore (p. 21) th~t "Cemte's Positivism h~s no place in the philo~ophy of history," understood d la |
