C H A P T E R VI I I .
NEGRO T Y P E S .
“ When the prophet J e r e m i a h ^ exclaims, ‘ Can the Ethiopian change his
skin, or the leopard his spots ? ’ he certainly means us to infer that the one
was as impossible as the other.” — Mobton’s MSS.
* “ Niger in die (quodam) exuit vestes suas, incepitque capere nivem et fricare
cum ea corpus suum. Dictum autem ei fu it: quare fricas corpus tuum nive ?
Et dixit (ille): fortasse albescam. Venitque vir (quidam) sapiens, (qui) dixit
e i: 0 tu, ne afflige te ipsum; fieri enim potest, ut corpus tuum nigram faciat
niyem, ipsum autem non amittet nlgredhiein. --— Locmam Fabula XXIII:
translated from the Arabic by RosenmuUer.306
H ad every nation of antiquity emulated Egypt, and perpetuated
the portraits of its own people with a chisel, it would now he evident
to the reader that each type of mankind, in all zoological centres of
man’s creation, is by nature as indelibly permanent as the stone-
pages upon which Egyptians, Chinese, Assyrians, Lycians, Greeks,
Romans, Carthaginians, Mero'ites, Hindoos, Peruvians, Mexicans, (to
say naught of other races,) have cut their several iconographies. How
instantaneously would vanish pending disputes about the Unity or
the Diversity of human origins!
Contenting ourselves at present with the now-acquired fact, that
the Egyptians, according to monumental and craniological evidences,
no less than to all history, written or traditionary, were really autoc-
thones of the Lower Mile, we think the question as to their “ type”
has been satisfactorily answered. In reply, furthermore, to our previous
interrogatory, whether this ancient family obeyed the same law
of “ gradation” established for other African aborigines; we may now
observe, that the Egyptians, astride as it were upon the narrow isthmus
which unites the once-separate continents of Africa and Asia, figure,
when the Aurora of human tradition first breaks, as at one and the
same time, the highest among African, and (physiologically, if not
perhaps intellectually) as the lowest type in West-Asiatic gradations.
Were we to prosecute our imaginary journey northwards, the dark
Cushite-Arabs would naturally constitute the next grade, and the
ancient Canaanites probably the one immediately succeeding. The
primitive group of Semitic nations would he found to have aboriginally
occupied geographical levels commencing with Mount Lebanon
and rising gradually in physical characters as we ascend the Tauric
chain passing, almost insensibly, into the Japethic or whitest races
(also possessing their own gradations), until the highest types of prehistoric
humanity would reveal their birth-places around the Caucasus.
But, dealing mainly with the Natural History of Man, elucidated
through new archaeological data, the scope of our work permits no
geographical digressions beyond the Caucasian mountains. We have
already insisted that the term “ Caucasian” is a misnomer, productive
of infinite embarrassments in anthropology; because a name in itself
specifically restricted, since the times of Herodotus, to one locality
and to one people, has become misapplied generically to types of
mankind whose origins have no more to do with the mountains of
Caucasus than with those of the moon. Would it not he ridiculous
to take, for example, the name “ Englander” (a compound of Angl
and land — “ man of the land of the Angli”), and to classify under
such an appellative, Hebrews, Egyptians, Hindoos, &c. ? That “ Caucasian”
is equally fallacious, will he made clear to the reader, in Part
H., under the article on MaGTJG; hut we anticipate a portion of the
philological argument by mentioning, that the Hellenized name
CAHC-A808 means simply the “ Mountain of the A s i;” being the
Indo-Germanic word Khogh, signifying “ mountain,” prefixed to the
proper name of a nation and a race: viz., the Aas, Asi, Jases, Osseth,
or Osses ; who, dwelling even yet at the foot of that C a t t c -A s o s where,
from immemorial time, their ancestors lived before them, would he
astonished to learn that European geographers had bestowed theiv
national name upon the whole continent of Asia, and that modern
ethnologists actually derive a dozen groups of distinct human animals
from the mountain (“Khogh”) of which such Asi
are aborigines!307
Turning our hacks upon the Caucasus, and
retracing our steps toward Africa, let us incidentally
notice the recognition by ante-Mosaic Egyptian,
and by post-Mosaic Hebrew, ethnographers,
of the general principle of gradation among such
types of mankind as lay within the horizons of
their respective geographical knowledge. The
Egyptians; for instance, in their quadripartite
division of races, already explained [ante, p. 85,
Eig. 1), assigned the most northerly habitat to
the “ white race,” of which we here reproduce the
standard type (Eig. 162) — one of the four designed
in the tomb of Seti I., about 1500 b. c .
Precisely does the writer of Xth Genesis, as
Fia. 162.
White races— Japheth. set forth elaborately in Part H., follow the same