pie” in the Nicarauguan Republic, &c. Furthermore, let him contemplate
the members of our National Legislature daily debating
questions involving the antipathies and affiliations of the races of
men, without the slightest notion of their true ethnological import;
let him not he unmindful, also, of the various political parties and
secret associations which have suddenly sprung up in our midst, and
are based upon ethnical peculiarities.; let him behold the Chinaman
celebrating his polytheistic worship in the heart of a Christian community,
and within the shadow of a Christian, temple ; while upon
Beaver Island, and about Salt Lake, another institution of the East,
polygamy, flourishes in rank luxuriance. Let the American reader,
I say, contemplate all this, and in his anxiety to know the causes of
these strange phenomena, the labors of the cranioscbpist, in conjunction
with those of the philosophical historian will assume their full
importance.
From a long and comprehensive study of history, a European
thinker,1 of profound erudition, has at length, in the diversified
ethnographic peculiarities of the different races of men, detected and
formuled the cause of the apparently mysterious revolutions and
final decadence of once-flourishing nations.—“ Toute agglomération
humaine, même protégée par la complication la plus ingénieuse de
liens sociaux, contracte,- au jour même où elle se forme, et caché
parmi les éléments de sa vie, le principe d’une mort inévitable. . . .
Oui, réellement c’est dans le sein même d’un corps social qu’existe
la cause de sa dissolution ; mais, quelle est cette cause ?%La dégêné-
ration, fut-il répliqué ; les nations meurent lorsqu’elles sont composées
d’éléments dégénérés................ Je pense donc que le mot dégénéré,
s’appliquant à un peuple, doit signifier, et signifie que ce peuple n’a
plus la valeur intrinsèque qu’autrefois il possédait, parce qu’il n’a
plus dans ses veines le même sang dont des alliages successifs ont
graduellement modifié la valeur; autrement dit, qu’avec le même
nom, il n’a pas conservé la même race que ses fondateurs ; enfin, que
l’homme de la décadence, celui qu’on appelle l’homme dégénéré, est
un produit différent, au point de vue ethnique, du héros des grandes
époques. Je veux bien qu’il possède quelque chose de son essence ;
mais, plus il dégénère, plus ce quelque chose s’atténue.................... 11
mourra définitivement, et sa civilisation avec lui, le jour où l’élément
ethnique primordial se trouvera tellement suh-divisé et noyé dans des
apports de races étrangères, que la virtualité de cet élément n’exercera
plus désormais d’action suffisante.”
Undoubtedly, the Science of Man commences with B uffon and
L in næ u s—Buffon first in merit, though second in the order of time.
21 De Gobineau, op. cit., pp. 3, 38, 39, 40.
By the writers anterior to their day, but little was done for human
physical history. Among the classical authors, T h ucydides, the type
of the Grecian historians, treated of man in his moral and political
aspects only. The nearest approximation to a physical history is
contained in his sketch of the manners and migrations of the early
Greeks, and in his history of the Greek colonization of Sicily. The
books of H erodotus have more of an ethnographic character, in
consequence of the account w'hich he gives of the physical appearance
of certain nations, whose history he records. H ippocrates theorizes
upon the influence of external conditions upon man. A ristotle
and P lato also distantly allude to man in his zoological character.
From the Romans we derive some accounts of the people of North
Africa, of the Jews and ancient Germans, and of the tribes of Gaul
and Britain. Of these, as L atham has appropriately observed, “ the
Germania of Tacitus is the nearest approach to proper ethnology
that antiquity has supplied.”
L in næ u s and B uefon, in their valuation of external characters —
such as Color of skin, hair, &c.,— bestowed no attention upon the
osseous frâme-work. Of cranial tests, and of bony characters in
general, they knew nothing, or, knowing, considered them of no
value. Hence, although L in næ u s , in his Systerna Naturae, brought
together the genera Homo and Simia, under the general title Anthro-
pomorpha, and although B uffon, filled with the importance of human
Natural History, devoted a long chapter to the varieties of the human
species, yet the first truly philosophical and practical recognition of
the zoological relations of man appears in the anthropological introduction
with which the illustrious C u v ie r commences his far-famed
Règne Animal.
By the publication of his Decades Craniorum—commenced in 1790,
and completed in 1 8 2 8 - * B lum en b a c h early occupied the field of the
comparative cranioscopy of the Races of Men. In consequence of
the application of the zoological method of inquiry t<5 the elucidation
of human natural history, that work at once gave a decided impulse
to the science of Ethnography, and for a long time exerted a considerable
influence on the views of subsequent writers upon this and
kindred subjects. Unable to satisfy the constantly increasing demands
of the present day, its importance has sensibly diminished.
The general brevity of the descriptions, the want of both absolute
and relative measurements, and the defective threë-quarter and other
oblique views of many of the skulls, render it highly unsatisfactory
to the practical cranioscopist. Moreover, the number of crania
(sixty-five) possessed by B lum en b a c h was too small, not only to establish
the characteristics of the central or standard cranial type of