possess the highest voucher. M. Faye states:13 “Another part
relative to the great question of human races, has heen translated
by M. Guigniaut, Member of the Institute. This question was
foreign to my habitual studies: moreover, it has been treated, in
the German work,, with such superiority of views and of style, that
M. de Humboldt had to seek, among his friends, the man most
capable of giving its equivalent to French readers. M. de Humboldt
naturally addressed himself to M. Guigniaut; and this savant has
been pleased to undertake the translation of the last ten page's of
the text, as well as of the corresponding notes.” Consequently,
besides the guarantee for exactitude afforded by the name of the
erudite translator of Creuzer's Symbolik, it may be. taken for granted
that, whatever the German original may or may not say,34 Baron von
Humboldt, to whom the French edition was peculiarly an offspring
of love, endorses the latter without reservation.
It only remains now for me to retranslate M. Guigniaut’s French
into our own language, in order that the reader may seize the MM.
de Humboldts’ point of view. To facilitate his appreciation, I
mark with bold type those expressions requiring particular attention;
and, furthermore, insert, between brackets and in italics,
such deductions as appear to me legitimately to be evolved from
them.
“ Geographical researches on the primordial seat, or, as it is said,
upon the cradle of the human species, possess in fact a character
purely mythic. ‘¥ e do not know,’ says William de Humboldt, in
a work as yet inedited, upon the diversity of languages and of peoples,
‘we do not know, either historically, or through any [whatsoever]
certain tradition, a moment when the human species was not
already separated into groups of peoples. [Hebrew literature, in
common with all others, is thus rejected, being equally unhistorical as
the rest.] Whether this state of things has existed from the origin
[say, beginning], or whether it was produced later, is what cannot
be decided through histoiy. Some isolated legends being re-encountered
upon very diverse points of the globe,' without apparent
communication, stand in Contradiction to the first hypothesis and
make the entire human genus descend from a single pair [as, for
M Cosmos, Fr. ed., “ Avertissement du Traducteur,” p. ii.
r»articrZarar TC “ P6™ “06 °f 6erman authors g their translators teaches me to be
w ' - ? Pr e’ ln8tance' Chevr- Bunsen's JEgyptms sidle in der Weligechiehte,
a M M B » Engli?h>ite As is w m m I f
very J f Sa“ e document ^Printed for the North, and another,
S°’ “ hke mann6r’ tbat wWch mits th® masculine stomachs
of German men of science becomes diluted, nntil its real flavor is gone, before it is offered
to the more sensitive palates of the British and Anglo-American “ reading public 1
example, in the ancient book called “ Genesis.”] This tradition is go
widely spread, that it has sometimes been regarded as an antique
remembrance of men. But this circumstance itself would rather
prove that there is not therein any real transmission of a fact, any-
soever truly-historical foundation; and that it is simply the identity
of human conception, which everywhere leads mankind to a
similar explanation of an identical phenomenon. A great number
of myths, without historical link [say, connection] between the ones
and the others, owe in this manner their resemblance and their
origin to the parity of the imaginations or of the reflections of the
human mind. That which shows still more, in the tradition of
which we are treating, the manifest character of fiction [Old and
New Testament narratives included, of course] is, that it claims to
explain a phenomenon beyond all human experience, that of the
first origin of the human species, in a manner conformable to the
experience of our own day; the manner, for instance, in which, at
an epoch when the whole human genus counted already thousands
of years of existence, a desert island, or a valley isolated amid
mountains, may have been peopled. Vainly would thought dive
into the meditation of this first origin: man is so closely bound to
his species and to time, that one cannot Conceive [such a thing as]
an human being coming into the world without a family already
existing, and without a past [antecedent, i. e. to such man's advent].
This question, therefore, not being resolvable either by a process of
reasoning or through that of experience, must it be considered that
the primitive state, such as a pretended [alluding to the Biblical,
necessarily] tradition describes to us, is really historical—or else, that
the human species, from its commencement, covered the earth in the
form of peoples?15 This is that which the science of languages
cannot decide [as theologers suppose!] by itself, as [in like manner]
it ought not either to seek for a solution elsewhere,16 in order to
draw thence elucidations of those problems which occupy it.”
16 “ Peuplades” corresponds, therefore, at the Humboldts' united point of view, with
P e o f . A g a s s iz ’s doctrine (Christian Examiner, Boston, July, 1 8 5 0 ) that—Men must have
originated in “ nations:’’ adopted and enlarged upon 6y Dr. Nott and myself in “ Types of
Mankind,” pp. 73-9. Two years of subsequent and exclusive devotion to this study, in
France, England, and this country, have satisfied my own mind upon its absolute truth.
16 Something of the same nature, viz., that comparative philology should confine its
investigations within its legitimate sphere, has been set forth as a precept, if violated in
practice, in that extraordinary chapter, entitled “ Ethnology v. Phonology,” contributed by
Prof. Max-Miiller to CheV. Bunsen’s still more extraordinary and most ponderous work
(Christianity and Mankind: their beginnings and prospects; in 7 volumes! See vol. iii.
“ Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History, applied to Language and Keligion, pp.
352, 486, &c.) There was really no need that the erudite Chevalier should warn his readers
(P- 21) that “ Comte’s Positivism has no place in the philosophy of history,” understood it la