It was not, however, from, ratiocination upon such data, which
are later sequences of palaeontological revelations obtained only
since 1837, that the greatest champion of the “unity of the human
species” (at whose equivocal dictum trembling orthodoxy clutches
like sinking mariners at their last plank) draws his conclusion that
our first parents were of the negro type; indeed, logically speaking,
that “Adam and Eve” must have appertained to that same “ bevy
of black angels (caught) as they were winging their way to some
island of purity and bliss here upon earth, and reduced from their
heavenly state, by the most diabolical cruelties and oppressions, to
one of degradation, misery, and servitude.”326
In 1813, Dr. Prichard wrote:327 “ If there be any truth in the
above remarks, it must be concluded that the process of Nature in
the human species is the transmutation of the characteristics of the
negro into those of the European, or the evolution of white varieties
in black races of men. * * * This leads us to the inference that the
primitive stock of men were negroes, which has every appearance
of truth. * * * On the whole, there are reasons which lead us to
adopt the conclusion that the primitive stock of men were probably
negroes; and I know of no argument to be set on the other side.”
With regard to Prichard’s now-forgotten view, that “ the process
of Nature’’ is the “ transmutation” of species, nothing can be less
historically founded. To the facts established in our former work,358
and others in this essay, I would here add the authority of the ablest
polygenist, no less than one among eminent comparative anatomists
of the Doctor’s time, viz., Desmoulins:329 “ The species of the
same genus, and with stronger reason those of different genera, are
therefore unalterable throughout all those influences which heretofore
were regarded as the ever-producing and ever-altering causes
of them. It is, then, the p e rm a n e n c e o e t y p e , t i n d e r c o n t r a r y
i n f l u e n c e s , which constitutes the species. That which is called
‘varieties’ bears only upon differences of size and color: they are
but the accidental subdivisions of the species.” Confirming it by a
later authority, Courtet de l’lsle,330 who after citing, like Morton,
826 B l e d s o e , Liberty and Slavery, Philadelphia,. 12mo, 1856; p. 54. Dr. Livingstone,
however, according to newspaper report, has since found such angelic negroes in the centre
of Africa. ¥ Nous verrons.”
827 Researches into the Physical History of Man, London, 8vo, 1st ed., 1813; pp. 233-9.
This curious chapter is expunged from all later editions of his works ; nor did the learned
Doctor ever refer, in them, to his early theory !
828 Types of Mankind, pp. 56, 81, 84, 465.
329 Histoire Naturelle des Races Humaines du nord-est de VEurope, de VAsie boréale, et de
VAfrique australe, Paris, 8vo, 1826; p. 194.
390 Tableau Ethnographique (supra, note 1 in Chap. II), pp. 9-10, 67-76; Pl. 26, 27, 31, 32
t, an<^ myself, thp testimony of Egyptian -monuments to prove
that types have not altered in 4000 years, continues: “ These facts
are, to my eyes, of the utmost importance, because they tend to fix
the opinion of those who might be tempted to believe that races
undergo, in the course of ages, such modifications as that the negro,
for instance, might be derived from the white man. All inductions
drawn from archaeology give to this opinion the most splintering
denial. The idea of the permanence of races is justified by all
known facts, blow, remarkable circumstance! in order that one
could admit the variability of types, it would require that, for three
or four thousand years, if not a radical change in races, at least a
tendency towards change, should have been observed; whereas the
facts, far from demonstrating any tendency of this kind, prove, on
th,e contrary, that the races of to-day are perfectly identical with
those of by-gone ages/’
Discarding, therefore, as non-proven, such deduction as the existence
o f negro races in early Europe, there are other circumstances
which favor the probability that, even subsequently to humatile
man, inferior types of humanity preceded the immigration into (or
rather, perhaps, inferential occupancy of) Scandinavia, Germany,
France, Spam, and Italy, by high-caste Indo-Germanic races. See
philological inductions of IVfaury ^supvci^ ^p. 431.
I have read somewhere, though my note of the work is mislaid,
that Prof. Eetzius has met, in the peat-bogs and oldest sepulchres of
orthern Europe, with skeletons of a Mongolic or hyperborean (Lapp ?)
type, of an age anterior to the cairns and barrows wherein he and
Nilsson,33' recognize those of brachy-Jcephalic and dolicho-hephalic
races—these last being, to some extent, precursors of the historical
Norsemen,-Danes, Swedes, Jutes, Saxons, &c., scattered along the
western Baltic coasts.
De Gobineau,332 notwithstanding some slight inadvertences due to
velocity of thought and composition, joined to the use of the term
‘ finmque” (Finnish) in senses which I fancy to be historically untenable,
333 has certainly brought out some startling phenomena on the
^ primitive populations of Europe.” To his brilliant pages I must
reter for sketches of early Thracians, Illyrians, Etruscans, Iberes,
Galls, and Italiots. They are painted by a master-hand.
Skandmaviska Nordem Urinvanare, &c., Christianstad, 4to, 1838; PI. D pp 1-13
19, \ l nS9am des SaCes Humai™> P“ « , 8vo, 1855; III, pamm, Chapters I-IV, and pp. 2,
i ge0grapWCaI °rig!n’ "° Finns cou,d teen in primitive France. Cf.
p. 231 “ 1IN3’ ^ Bumaines' PP- 63-5. 154:—also, K l a p r o t h , Tableaux,