“ Were it possible,” wrote the vigorous expunger671 of a dogmatical work which of erst
tried to uphold, categorically, the “ unity of the human species”—“ Were it possible for an
individual to gain access to a situation sufficiently commanding, and to be indued with
optics sufficiently powerful, to take, at once, a clear and discriminating survey of the whole
earth—could he thus obtain an accurate and distinct view of the appearance and sensible
character of everything existing on its surface—diversities of colour, form, dimension, and
motion, with all other external properties of matter — were such an event possible, one of
the most curious and interesting objects that would attract our spectator’s attention, would
be, the variety discoverable in the complexion and feature, the figure and stature of the human
race. In one section of the globe, he would behold a people lofty and well-prpportioned,
elegant, and graceful; and in another, not far remote, a description of men diminutive,
deformed, unsightly, and Awkward. Here would rise to view a nation with flowing locks,
a well-arched forehead, straight and finely-modelled limbs, and a complexion composed of
the carnation and the lily ; there, a race with frizzled hair, clumsy and gibbous extremities,
a retreating forehead, and a skin of ebony. In one region he would be charmed with
a general prominence and boldness of feature, an attractive symmetry, a liveliness of air,
and a vigor of expression, in the human countenance; while in another, he would be disgusted
by its flatness, vacancy and dulness, offended with its irregularity, or shocked at its
fierceness. Between these several extremes would appear a multiplicity of intermediate
gradations, constituting collectively an unbroken chain, and, manifesting at once the simplicity
yet diversity of the operations of the Deity, in peopling the earth with human inhabitants.”
After refuting, point by point, every postulate advanced by bis
scholastic but unscientific author, and exposing the sophisms through
which each is supported, Dr. Caldwell remarks on the doctrine itself;
“ Its principles, if admitted to their full extent, would lead to results which our author
would be himself the first to deprecate. They would prove unfriendly in their operation to
morality and religion, and even subversive of the dignity o f man and the , order and harmony
of the physical world. They are calculated to favdr a system of levelling and consolidation
which would reduce to the same species many animals that appertain, in reality,
to different genera. By their seductive, and pernicious influence we might be gradually led
to a belief in the original identity of even the white man himself, the golok [hylobates Hoo-
lookf] or wild man of the woods, and the large Orang-outang; so apparently inconsiderable
are the shades of difference between them, when their systems are analyzed, and their
individual features and limbs attentively compared with each other. When examined,
however, and compared in their general result, their dissimilarities are so numerous and
striking, as to constitute insuperable objections to -such a monstrous hypothesis. We become
at once convinced by the evidence before us, that differences so wide and radical, could
never have been produced by the agency of any common causes now in operation on .our
globe; but that the beings marked by them belong to races originally and immutably distinct.
Such precisely is the case in relation to the different races of men.”
“ It now remains to be said,” continues the profound physiologist Desmoulins,572 “ whether,
in each of these races, of these species, men were children of, the earth whereupon history
perceives them from times the most obscure; or, if, coming in similar likeness from one
6,1 Criticism — For the Portfolio (Philadelphia, 3d series, vol. iv., 1814; articles 1 and 4,
pp. 8-9, 863-4)—of “ An Essay on the causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure, in
the Human Species, &c., &c. By Samuel Stanhope Smith, D. D. LL. D., &c., &o.” I owe
acquaintance with this most powerful argument to the favor of Mr. George Ord, President of the
Acad, of Nat. Sciences; who informs me that it was written in early life by one since eminent
in medical and ethnological questions—the late Dr. Cha io.es Caldwell. These papers are
an enlargement of a previous oritique published in the North American Review, July, 1811.
572 Races Surnames, 1826; pp. 156, 158.
and the same native country, they became diversified according to the novelty of each
climate; of which the influenoe, singly, or united with that of a supposed sidereal revolution,
would thus have transformed children of one and the same father,—creating there some
negroes, here some Kourilians, yonder some Finns, hither some Mongols, &c. * * * 'Races
and species, everywhere that they remain pure and without mixture, preserve invariable all
the traits, all the physical characters which the first observers saw in them, and that they
indubitably possessed from the very beginning. Their alteration is everywhere the product
of intermixture, the fusion between heterogeneous populations. Climate and all the influences
engendered by it have alone no hold, whether upon the form of the body and face, or
on the color of the skin, or upon that of the hair and its nature. These causes possess only
a slight power, as will be seen in the' following book, on the color of the skin in certain
races. In all these mixtures there does not either result indifferently a mean of expression
of. traits of each race. Ordinarily, ono dominates the other.”
Denying, therefore, with Dr. Caldwell,, that climatic changes of
latitude or longitude have had any permanent influence upon the
race-character of the human skin; and recognizing, with Desmoulins
and Morton, no known causes subsequent in action to the Creator’s
coloring of each race, hut direct amalgamation,—otherwise intermixture
between different types—as explanatory of the endless gradations
of color now befleld in humanity throughout the world ; it follows
that, according to my conception of the primitive state of mankind
'in zoological province of creation, the shades in coloration of
the skin, eyes and hair, must have' been less numerous than appear
at the present day after so many thousand years of interminglings
and migrations. What may have been the exact primordial, or aboriginal,
cuticular color of each type ; into how many or how few
distinct national tints they might be resolved, there seems to he (outside
of the comparatively small area covered by the earth’s historical
nations), no means now of ascertaining; although some plausible conclusions
are attainable through induction. In any case, the historical
permanence of many colors being determined through monumental
and written evidence for 3000 to 4000 years, we may fairly challenge
objectors to produce évidence that other unrecorded shades did not
exist contemporaneously. Egyptian monuments, Hebrew ethnology,
Assyrian sculptures, Greek and Roman iconography, Chinese annals’
Mexican and Peruvian antiquities, with many ancient descriptions
of personages or nations,573 combine to establish, in each geographical
centre, that the peoples within and around it presented the same
coloration as their descendants at this day,—all later variations being
satisfactorily accounted for through phenomena produced by physical
amalgamation between subsequent intruders and the primitive'stocks.
Thus, for instance, there are now two very distinct colors seen among
"he Israelites ; one exceedingly dark, sallow, with black eyes and
hair; the other, fair even to pallor, with light blue or hazel eyes, and
5»s All these positions are now proved, I take it, in the present volume.