T H E C R A N I A L C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S
on Physiology and Medicine, and wrote an essay on Fever, and one
on Epilepsy, and subsequently a larger work on Nervous Diseases.”273
All this, it will be recollected, in addition to his laborious Researches
into the Physical History of Mankind, upon which is based his fame
as an Ethnologist. Of Dr. Morton, Prof. Chas. D. Meigs thus writes :
u His medical practice was increasing up to the time of his death. He
had the good sense and prudence to maintain his active and visible
connection with his profession, while striving in thé race for fame as
a philosopher. He had early begun to make his now ^celebrated
collection of crania, with great labor and toil, and inconvenient* cost.
He investigated organic remains : he explained problems in zoology
and ethnology; he diligently attended the sick; he published valuable
treatises on consumption, on the science of anatomy, and on the
practice of physic. He served the city gratuitously, as physician to
the Almshouse Hospital, and delivered courses of lectures at the
Pennsylvania Medical College, where he was Professor of Anatomy.
All these things were done by a man whose family was large, and
chargeable upon his funds, derivable in chief from his exertions as
a physician. 274 Such were the manifold and onerous duties amidst
which Dr. Morton composed and published his two brilliant cranio-
logical works, and numerous detached papers on ethnography, hÿ-
bridity, and allied subjects;
Though the lives of these two men present several interesting
parallels, and though their labors were steadily directed towards
the same great object, yet they sought that object through different
channels of research. With laborious hands, Prichard gathered
from the records of travel, and from numerous philological and
archaeological works in various languages, an immense mâsé' of
material, which he carefully and learnedly digested. With equal
industry and perseverance, Morton gathered from the receptacles
of the dead, all over the world, those bony records which he studied
with such untiring zeal and discrimination. Prichard, the erudite
scholar, gave to the natural history of man a philosophtico-literary character
; Morton, the philosophical naturalist, stamped it with' the seal
of the natural sciences. To the ethnological student, the published lar
hors of these savants will long continue a shining and a guiding light ;
while the world at large cannot fail to find, in the history of their
lives, noble lessons of the power of ceaseless and indefatigable labor.
I Aware 0± tte extreme caution necessary in arriving at conclusions
in so grave a study as that which has just occupied our attention
through so many pages, and knowing that every erroneous inference
must either directly or indirectly retard the advancement of Ethno- 2 ®0grapM“al Sketich> &c” Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, Vol; XLVH. p. 205.
Memoir, &o., read before Philada. Aead. Nat. Sciences, November 6, 1851.
graphy, I have preferred, occasionally, to suggest what appeared to
me a legitimate induction, rather than to pronounce positively and
authoritatively upon the facts presented. In the same cautious manner,
the following propositions are placed before the reader, as more
or less clearly derivable from the foregoing facts and arguments,
1. That cranial characters constitute an enduring, natural, ano
therefore strictly reliable basis upon which to establish a true classi
fieation of the races of men.
2. That the value of such characters is determined by their constancy,
rather than by their magnitude.
3. That these characters constitute,: in the aggregate, typical forms
of crania.,
4. That historical and monumental records, and the remains found in
ossuaries,-mounds,: &e., indicate a remarkable persistence of these forms.
fi. That this persistence through time, as viewed from a zoological
stand-point, renders it difficult, if indeed possible, to assign to the
leading cranial types any other than specific values.
6. That, in the present state; of our knowledge, however* we are
by no means certain that such types were primitively distinct.275 The
historical period is too short,to determine the question of original
unity or diversify of cranial forms. Moreover, this question loses its
importance in the presence of a still higher one—the original unity
or diversity of all organic forms.
7. That diversity of cranial types does not necessarily imply diversity
of origin. Reither do strong resemblances between such types infal-
lbly indicate a common parentage. Such resemblances merely express
similarity of position in the human series.276
8,5 “ Those -who have studied the natural history of man,” says Prof. D e a f e r , in his
recent admirable work on the ‘ Conditions and Course of the Life of Man,' “ have occupied
themselves too completely with the idea of fixity in the aspect of human families, and have
treated of them as though they were perfectly and definitely distinct, or in a condition
ot equilibrium. They have described them as they are found in the various countries of the
globe, and since these descriptions remain correct during a long time, the general inference
o an invariability has gathered strength, until some writers are to be found who suppose
that there have been as many separate creations of man as there are races which can be
distinguished from each other. We are perpetually mistaking the slow movements of
ature for absolute rest. We compound temporary equilibration with final equilibrium ”
This paragraph I find in Chapter VIL, which is as singularly unhappy in its craniological
conclusions, as the leading idea of the work, though not novel, is grand and philosophical.
the above language of Dr. D. is meant to be applied to geological periods of time, it is
of facts °0rre0t; if eXt6Dds ”0t bey0nd the historioal epoch, it is without the support
8,6 “ S’il n’y a qu’une seule race muàble,” writes J. E. Coknay (de Rochefort), “ c’est-à-
ire pouvant avoir des variétés, il n’y a eu à la genèse primitive qu’un seul père et qu’une
seule mère d’une même espèce. S’il y a plusieurs races immutables, il y a eu à la genèse
primitive plusieurs espèces de pères et de mères. Toute la question est donc renfermée dans
a mutabilité ou dans l’immutabilité des races, pour arriver à la connaissance d i nombre des