The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-26 00:00:00

OUR PROTO-PARENTS.

Voltaire says somewhere, that the first time a
white man met a nigger he must have felt exces-
sively astonished ; but not more so, he adds, than
he himself would be if any one seriously assured
him that both the white man and the black one
were children of a common parent. What was
thrown out in the shape of a joke by the infidel has
been taken up and made a matter of scientific in-
vestigation by the learned. To prove that the
various races of men spread throughout the earth
are in reality different species, originating in diffe,
rent proto-parents, with no blood connection be-
tween them, would be a great feather in the cap
of Ethnologists and natural philosophers ; and
what would possibly be equally delightful to some
of them, a blow which would jar to its centre the
framework of supernatural religion.
The question of "the origin of the species" is
therefore an important one, and one moreover on
which much has been written in Germany and
England and France—much that is worthy of the
name of science, and much also which is only fit
for the pastry-cook or the trunk-maker. It ap-
pears to us that Catholics can easily become too
timid and retiring in the face of these bold disco-
verers in the kingdom of physical and natural
science. Just as there is quackery in medicine,
just as there are adventurers in politics, and just
as there are humbugs in religion, so there are
pedants, rogues, and impostors, to be found in
science. Because a man happens to take up the
Baconian theory of induction, and applies inductive
principles to the phenomena of the visible crea-
tion, he is not thereby at once proved to be a fair
and a skilful, or an impartial and enlightened
philosopher. Bold theories enough, indeed, are
started every day, and bold assertions are made,
and bold solutions to difficult problems are offered
in abundance, and the public is attracted and
listens to the novelty, and Catholics feel uneasy
and perceive some subtle attack upon the Chris-
tian faith ; and yet all this boldness very often
is nothing more than the stupid blundering of
some smatterer, or the outcome of some pet idea
which has been working its way through all man-
ner of tortuous windings into the light of day.
It need hardly be remarked that not religion
simply, but the whole plan of Christian civiliza-
tion, in its antagonism to heathendom, is mightily
affected by this question of the species. Chris-
tianity and heathenism point in diametrically
opposite directions. The one attracts, the other
is repulsive and egotistic. Lactantivs, for in-
stance, full of the omne unum spirit of Chris-
tianity, exclaims—" Since we are all sprung from
a common parent, we are related to each other
by blood, and so hatred becomes a species of
fratricide." Galen, on the other hand, full of
the pagan principle of repulsion, declared to his
friends, while inventing some new kind of cure,
that he had his mind fixed in doing so exclusively
on the Greeks, and that he " took no more account
of Germans and barbarians than of bears and
hogs, and other wild beasts." Several American
writers, with Strauss and the materialists, violently
maintain the theory of multiplicity ; for thus they
are able to fix the abominations of cruelty, despo-
tism, and slavery upon a philosophical basis, and
can take out, as it were, a species of scientific
licence for shooting, robbing or poisoning the black
man, as the case may be, and destroying him off
the face of the earth, not from rapacity, but on
the philosophic principle that the inferior species
must make way for the more perfect, and the black
man must be exterminated to make room for the
white.

What at the very outset seems to us rather
strange is the hardihood of those philosophers who
maintain that it is absolutely impossible that the
races of men spread over the earth at this hour
should all be the children of Adam and Eve, since
it is notorious that the first origin of all things is
buried in the most misty scientific obscurity. They
never condescend to explain why the very case in
point should be the one solitary exception to the
universal rule. The fact is, as Liebig implies,
they are not drawing their conclusions from in-
duction, but from their own imaginations. The
learned German investigator, Bischof, tells us clear
enough that science affords us no more information
as to how the first plant came upon the earth, for
instance, than it does of the primary construction
of the heavens, or the primal causes of universal
law.;, Materialists, who maintain that " matter
alone is true and real," would have man spring out
of the mould of the earth ; for, " if such be not
the case," says Burmeister with charming naivte,
" how can we account for the origin of life without
reference to somehigher influence. If anything
has ever been proved false by induction, it is
this extraordinary theory of a "generatio ccjuivoca
sui spontanea ;" and if induction has ever proved
anything to be true, it is what we may call Har-
vey's dictum of " omne vivens ex ovo." Of course,
much must depend on the definition of the term
" species." Weighty authorities such as Muller,
envier, Buffon, Saint Hilaire, and a host of others
whom it would be wearisome to mention, agree in
substance with Flouring that " l'espke vient de la
fecondete continue." The character of each species,
Buffon says, forms a type ; and while the accidental
qualities vary, the essential ones remain unaltered.
It is worthy of remark that Aristotle, in his de
anima, has anticipated the moderns in the true
definition of species. Morton and the leaders of
the American school to which we have already re-
ferred seem to possess the monopoly of a defini-
tion which falls in with the practices of South
American alayery. These men, curiously and gig-

nificantly enough, while they proclaim an inde-
finite variety of species, boldly, and in the face of
all nature, deny the existence of distinction of race.
They surely could never have made a study of the
horse and his countless varieties, and it is evident
that none of them ever assisted at a dog-show at
London, Hamburg, or Munich. According to their
teaching there are as many distinct species as there
are races or even families of men; and th's they
still continue to assert in spite of all the arguments
of Blumenbach, whom they have found it conve-
nient to ignore, but whom they have not attempted
to refute. The teaching of the highest authorities
goes directly against the American sophists. They
tell us that, just as in the animal kingdom and
amongst plants there is a unity of species and a
diversity of race, so is it also the case with man.
The general consent is well summed up in the
words of Muller—" The various races of men,"
he says, "are forms of one identical species
which is prolific and perpetuates itself by gene-
ration. 'They are not species of a genus ; for if
they were these bastards would not beget chil-
dren." Neither Morton nor Vogt, nor any other
writer with whom we are acquainted, has been,
able to break the force of this argument against
the multiplicity of human species—namely, that
throughout the vast animal world the mixing of
two distinct species has never yet been known to
produce creatures which could propagate them-
selves. At the very most there are instances of
one reproduction, but after that procreation has
invariably ceased. The American school has so far
perceived the destructive force of this argument,
that instead of attempting to refute it they have
endeavoured, by boldness of assertion, to bend it
over to their side. They tell us that with regard
to mankind a mixture of two races eventually
issues in barrenness. But the facts of the case go
in just the opposite direction. The children of
European and Philippine parents turn out fine ro-
bust men. The Mulatto -is not only proverbially
prolific and possessed of considerable personal
beauty, but moreover, by his talents and his culture
is capable of raising himself to a distinguished
position in society. The inhabitants of Mexico
and the Philippines of Nicaragua and Paraguay
of New Granda and Curagao, alone offer sufficient
contradiction to the American theory. Then an-
other proof of the oneness of the species consists
in the similarity of conformation between those
races which are the widest apart. The organiza-
tion of all is alike. The distinctions which sepa-
rate race from race are almost entirely confined to
the pelvis and the skull. Nor do the variations in
the latter modify to any great degree the facial
angle. It ranges between 90 and 75 degs., and
never falls below 75 in men, while in the monkey
tribe it fluctuates between 30 and 64 degs., and has
never been known to exceed 65 degs. Then the
teeth in all men in number and general conforma-
tion is identical. What human being ever pos-
sessed a head and tusks like the chimpanzee and
the gorilla ? While the difference between the
brain of a European and- a Hottentot, according
to Tiedeman's and Wagner's experiments, is
scarcely discernible, that of the monkey is altogether
different. So with regard to the internal relation
of the human family. Reason, senses, language,
religion, are common to all, varying according to
culture and climate and development. Burton
speaks of black women with Grecian profiles. Bin-
menbach and Tiedeman speak of educated and even
learned negroes—for instance, Poussaint Louver-
ture and Ira Aldridge. As to colour, Voltaire may
have perpetrated a witticism, but his wit was not
verz wise. He might have remembered that the
old saying, nimium ne creole colori, is not without its
truth. To divide mankind into species according
to their colour would create not only inconveniences
but laughable absurdities. Were such a thing
done, Richardson, the traveller, would rejoice in
himself alone being of at least two different spe-
cies ; for he tells us that when he left Ghadames
he was of a rosy tint, " but now," he says, " I am
yellow, like these men." Barth would enjoy the
same privilege. It is known to all travellers that
Europeans who dwell any considerable time in
Guinea become a copper colour ; in Egypt they
take a smutty cast, and in Abyssinia they turn
brown. Arabs of North Arabia are oompara-
tively fair; in Mecca they are of a yellowish
brown ; in the Desert their head is covered with
wool, and in Nubia they become shining and black
as jet. Europeans living in the tropics become
olive, and in Africa they turn quite brown. Any
one who will give himself the trouble to look at a
Portuguese who has just come from a life on the
coast of Africa, will at once perceive that colour
is not ruled by difference of species, but by the in-
fluence of the sun and of the atmosphere. Some-
times the vastness of the population of the earth
is offered as an objection to the possibility of man's
origin in Adam. Such as make it cannot fully
realize the results of geometrical progression. In
1589 a few Englishmen, with four women, were
shipwrecked and cast upon an uninhabited island.
In eighty years they multiplied to 12,000 men.
Thum reckons that in 425 years 800,000,000 of
men would be produced. One man and woman
with their four children, multiplying at the rate
of four to each pair, in a thousand years would
double the population of the earth. This becomes
more intelligible when we recollect that those
countless herds of cattle which are now spread
hill and dale in Paraguay and Buenos Ayes are all
descended from one solitary bull and a few cows
left there by Salagar in 1516. In a word, far from
true science based upon severe induction being
hostile in its results to the teachings of religion,
the more it is studied, and the more scientific the
methods employed, so much the more triumphantly
do they testify to the harmony which must exist
between truth and truth, between science and re-
ligion. Should the reader feel tempted to verify
the facts brought forward in this article, we can
refer him to Dr. Hettinger's learned " Apologie
des Christentharns."— Westminster Gazette.