“ I have read and re-read your Two Lectures with great pleasure and instruction. I am
especially pleased with the triumphant manner in which you have treated the absurd postulate,
that one race can be transmuted into another. The only illustrations that can be
adduced by its advocates, as you justly observe, are certain diseased and abnormal organizations,
that, by a wise law of nature, wear out in a few generations. Some of your aphorisms
have delighted me. ‘ Man can invent nothing in science or religion but falsehood;
and all the truths which he discovers are but facts or laws which have emanated from the
Creator.’ This is a noble sentiment admirably expressed^ I am slowly preparing my
memoir ‘ On the Size of the Brain in various Races and Families of Man; with Ethnological
Kemarks.’ The latter clause will give me sufficient scope for the expression of my views
on those sensitive points of Ethnology in which I entirely agree with you in opinion;
leaving out all theological discussion, which I have carefully avoided. You will observe a
note in my Essay on Hybridity, in which I avow my belief in a plurality of origins for the
human species, and I have now extended those observations, and briefly illustrated them;
but in so doing I find no difficulty with the text of Genesis, which is just as manageable in
Ethnology as it has proved in Astronomy, Geology, and Chronology. When I took this
ground four years ago, (and in the Crania Americana my position is the same, though more
cautiously worded,) it was with some misgivings, not because I doubted the truth of my
opinions, but because I feared they would lead to some controversy with the clergy. Nothing
of the kind has happened; for I have avoided coming into collision with men who
too often uphold a garbled text of Scripture, to defeat the progress of truth and science.
I have had some letters from the clergy and from other piously-disposed persons, but the
only one that had any‘spice of vehemence was from a friend, Dr. Bachman, of Charleston.
A number of clergymen have called upon me for information on this subject,- and I confess
to you my surprise at the liberal tone of feeling they have expressed on this sensitive question
; and I really believe that if they are not pressed too hard, they will finally concede
all that can be asked of the mere question of diversity; for it can be far more readily
reconciled to the Mosaic annals than some other points, Astronomy, &c., for example. As
for Chronology, we all know it to be a broken reed. | Look at the last page of Dr. Prichard’s
great w o rk ^ the last page of his fifth and last volume — and he there gives it as his matured
opinion that the human race has been ‘ chiliads of centuries’ upon the earth! He
had before found it necessary to prove the Deluge a partial phenomenon, and he also admits
that no physical agents could ever have produced the existing diversities among men; and
ascribes them to accidental varieties which have been careful to intermix only among themselves,
and thereby perpetuated their; race! Compared with this last inadequate hypothesis,
how beautiful, how evidently and inherently truthful is the proposition — that our species
had its origin, not in one, but in several or in many creations; and that these diverging
from their primitive centres, met and amalgamated in the progress of time, and have thus
given rise to these intermediate links of organization which now connect the extremes together.
Here is the truth divested of mystery; a system that explains the otherwise unintelligible
phenomena so remarkably stamped on the races of men.” .
The remaining letter is addressed to Mr. Gliddon, under date of
Philadelphia, April 27th, 1851, little more than two weeks before its
author ceased to breathe. I publish it verbatim, so that the reader
may see that the concluding emphatic declaration stands unqualified
by anything in the context.
“ My dear S i r H a v e you Sqiiier’s pamphlets on California and New Mexico ? Is it not
in them that is contained a refutation of the old fable of white Indians on or nean the Bio
Gila ? If so, please send me the above paper by mail as soon as you can. I must have
them somewhere, but I am in an emergency for them, and they cannot be found. I am
hard at work at my chapter for Schoolcraft’s book, and am desirous to get it off my hands.
I send you a paragraph from the Ledger which will gratify you. There is no higher praise
than this. It is all the better for being so aphorismally expressed. The doctrine of the
original diversity of mankind unfolds itself to me more and more with the distinctness of revelation.
' : • ■
p With kindest remembrances to Mrs. G. and your fine boy, I am,
“ Ever faithfully yours,
“ S. G. Mobton.”
These citations are sufficient for our purpose, I apprehend, especially
the laconic emphasis of the last, which may be regarded as the ethnological
testament of our lamented friend. I have been thus full upon this
point, because I believe it but justice to his memory to show that he
was among the very earliest to accept and give shape to the doctrine
stated. As the mountain summits are gilded with the early dawn,
while the plain below still sleeps in darkness, so it is the loftiest spirit
among men. that first receives and reflects the radiance of the coming
truth. Morton has occupied that position among us, in relation to this
important advance in scientific opinion. I have desired to put the
evidence of it fairly upon record, and thus to claim and secure the
distinction that is justly due him.
Many well-meaning, but uninformed persons have, however, raised
an outcry of horror against the assertion of original human diversities,
in which they have been joined by others who ought to know better.
The attack is not made upon the doctrine itself, nor upon any direct
logical consequence of it. The alleged grievance consists entirely in
the loss of certain corollaries deducible from the opposite proposition.
Thus it is asserted that our religious system and our doctrine of social
and political rights, alike result from the hypothesis of human consanguinity
and common origin, and stand or fall .with it. To this effect
we have constantly quoted to us the high authority of Humboldt, who
says, “ En maintenant l’unité de l’espèce humaine, nous rejetons par
conséquence nécessaire, la distinction désolante de races supérieures
et de races inférieures.”*
In a note he again applies the term désolante to this doctrine. I
have used the Erench translation, because it is the more forcible, and
because it was that read by Morton, whose felicitous commentary
upon it I am fortunately able to adduce, from a letter to Mr. Gliddon,
of May 30th, 1846.
“ Humboldt’s word désolante is true in sentiment and in morals—but, as you observe, it is
wholly inapplicable to the physical reality. Nothing so humbles, so crushes my spirit, as
to look into a mad-house, and behold the drivelling, brutal idiocy so conspicuous in such
places ; it conveys a terrific idea of the disparity of human intelligences. But there is the
* Cosmos : traduit par H. Faye. Paris : 1846. I. p. 430. Also, note 42, p. 579. Otté
translates by depressing in one place, and cheerless in another. Cosmos: New York, 1850.
I. p. 358.