the nature of the object which we examine. This science is the Physiology
of races, or, in other words, a knowledge of their moral and
physical characters. Through Physiology has been established the
existence of antediluvian beings, their genera, their species, and
their varieties ; by it also we shall discover the origin of races of
men, even the most mysterious. Through it we shall one day be
able to classify populations as surely as we now class animals and
plants: histoiy, philology, annals, inscriptions, the monuments of
arts and of religion, will be auxiliaries in these researches. Herein
we consider its indications as motives of certitude, and its decisions
as a criterion.” 62
Anthropology has been involved in not a little confusion by certain
injudicious departures from the well-tried zoological methods employed
by naturalists generally. But little difficulty seems to be
experienced in the practical determination of species in the animal
and vegetable worlds ; but as soon as the rules and specific distinctions
here employed have been applied to man, exceptions have
been taken at once, and attempts made to invalidate their applicability,
by excluding man entirely from the pale of the animal
kingdom, as if, in the latter, development, formation and deformation
were controlled by laws different from these processes in the former.
Barbançois regards man as “ un type tout à part dans la création,
comme le représentant d’un règne particulier — le règne moral.” So
the celebrated Marcel de Serres says, ‘^l’homme ne constitue dans la
nature ni une espèce, ni un genre, ni un ordre, il est à lui seul un
règne, le règne humain.’,63 Aristotle, the father of philosophical
natural history, Ray, Brisson, Pennant, Vic d’Azyr, Daubenton,
Tiedemann, and others equally distinguished, have all unwisely attempted
this disruption of nature. The futility of the arguments
employed may be learned by reference to., Swainson’s Hat. Hist, and
Classification of Quadrupeds.64 But those who recognize the ani-
mality of man, and place him accordingly at the head of the Mammalia,
are not exactly agreed as to the extent of isolation which
should be claimed for him in this position, or, in other words, difference
of opinion exists as to the extent and scientific meaning of the
gap which separates him from the highest brute. Linnæus grouped
Man, the Simiæ and Bats under the general division, Primates.65
Illiger,66 Cuvier,6? Lawrence,68 and others, assign him a distinct order.
62 Etudes sur l’Algérie, Alger, p. 18.
63 Voyage au Pole Sud. Anthropologie, de Dumoutier, par Blanchard. Paris, 1854, p. 18.
wPp 8-10
65 He observes, “ Nullum characterem hactenus eruere potui, unde Homo a Simiâ inter-
noscatur.” — Fauna Suecica. Preface, p. ii.
66 Prodomns Systematis Mammalium. w Règne Animal. 68 Op. cit.
\ an A mringe considers Man the sole, representative of a distinct and
separate mammalian class, to which he applies the term Psychical
or Spiritual, in contradistinction to the Instinctive mammals.69 As
might be naturally expected from the above remarks, still less agreement
is manifested in relation to the classification of the different
races or tribes of men. This want of accordance arises from the
difficulty of determining what characters are fundamental and typical
and what are not.
How, it should never be forgotten that an ethnical, like any other
natural type, is an ideal creation, not a positive entity. It is analogous
to the mean or average of a series of numbers. These numbers
may all be but slightly different from each other, and yet none of
them be exactly identical with the mean. In examining a number
of objects presenting many peculiarities, the mind instinctively
figures to itself an object possessing all these peculiarities. This
object, this ideal image, gradually assumes the dignity and importance
of a standard to which all other similar objects are referred, as
greater or less approximations to the type, the approximation being
dependent upon the degree of predominance of the peculiarities in
question. If, on comparing any body with this imaginary standard
“ this form which exists everywhere, and is nowhere to be found”
the points of resemblance are in number equal to or even less
than the points of difference, then it is said to diverge from the type.
It is a divergent form. How, a type as it is manifested in nature is,
for all practical purposes, fixed and immutable; our mental conception
of it is necessarily a constantly varying one. The more
numerous the individuals of the group, and the more extensive our
examination, the more perfect will be our generalization, upon
which, in fact, the type is based. The examination of but a few
individuals of a group is apt to lead to an erroneous idea of the type.
But a singular fact here claims our attention. Along with this
increasing perfection of the typical idea comes a diminished confidence
in its importance; for the same observations which serve to
establish the type, also lead us to perceive that the distance which
separates one type from another is a plenum, and is not marked by
gaps, but by transitionary forms — not transitionaiy in the sense of
variations from certain persistent forms brought about by climatic
conditions, &C., but transitionary forms ab origine and self-existent,
presenting themselves unchanged as they were characterized by the
breat First Cause, and inherently capable of those known and
limited variations produced by intermarriage, Ac. The elements
D 72An InV6Stigation o f the Th<vries of the Nat. History of Man, &c. New York, 1848